A Chili Death: A Classic Diner Mystery

by Jessica Beck

  “I thought you might like to know that you can have your diner back early,” he said as he handed me my keys back. He’d taken them the night before, promising to return them when he and his staff finished investigating the murder scene, but he’d led me to believe that I wouldn’t be getting them back any time soon.

  “You’re really done with the place?” I asked as I glanced at my watch. It was just a little after ten, and Moose and I had two more people left to interview.

  “Why do I get the sense that you’re not happy about this?” the sheriff asked. “I kept two men here all night examining the place from top to bottom. I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  “You did,” Moose said as he took my keys for me. “Great job, Sheriff. Did you find anything while you were searching the place?”

  “Nothing that I’m ready to share with you,” he said, and then studied us both for a second or two before adding, “Should I ask you the same question?”

  “We’ve barely had time to scratch the surface,” I said. “You didn’t rush getting the diner back to us just so we couldn’t investigate, did you?”

  “Would I do that?” he asked with a grin. “Anyway, the place is yours.”

  “Would you at least tell us what killed him?” Moose asked softly.

  I thought for a second that he wasn’t going to answer, but after a brief moment, the sheriff said, “Somebody hit him the back of the head with a roll of frozen hamburger.”

  “Wow, that must have taken a pretty good swing,” I said, trying not to imagine what had happened, but failing miserably. It couldn’t have been the most pleasant way to die.

  “You’d be surprised how delicate the human skull is,” the sheriff said.

  “Well, at least the killer had to be pretty tall to do it,” I said.

  Moose and the sheriff both looked at me oddly, so I added quickly, “It just makes sense, doesn’t it? Howard Lance wasn’t a short man by any means, so if someone hit him in the head, they had to be pretty tall themselves, wouldn’t they?”

  The sheriff shook his head, so I asked, “Why are you acting that way? Am I wrong?”

  “Ordinarily I’d say no, but the thing is, from the angle of impact, Howard must have been leaning over to tie a loose shoelace when he got clobbered. I’m sorry to say that anyone could have done it.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said.

  “What, the fact that someone murdered him, or that the circumstances haven’t eliminated anyone?” he asked.

  I was about to answer when his radio went off. He answered it, and I glanced at Moose, who was grinning at me. I’d have to ask him what that was about after Sheriff Croft was gone.

  “Sorry, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got to run,” he said.

  “Is it about the case?” Moose asked.

  “No, some idiot decided to try to beat a train to a crossing on the edge of town. Nobody got hurt, but this fool’s car is totaled.”

  After the sheriff was gone, I asked my grandfather, “What was that smile about?”

  “I was just impressed with the way you figured that out,” he said. “How did you do it?”

  “Hey, read enough mysteries, and you too can be a crime solver.”

  “Seriously, that’s good work,” Moose said. “We chose our fearless leader wisely.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, but we’re still no closer to finding the killer than we were before,” I said.

  “That’s why we keep digging,” he said.

  “What about the diner?” I asked.

  “The rest of the family can pitch in today. You and I have a murder to solve.” He grinned again, and added, “Besides, I’ve got a hunch that Greg and your mother would jump at the chance to work together for awhile. Why don’t you give Ellen a call and see if she’ll come in? While you’re doing that, I’ll round up the rest of the troops, and then we can get back to our investigation.”

  “That sounds like a plan to me,” I said as I called my morning server at home to give her the good news.

  Moose and I left the diner in the capable hands of the rest of our family a little later, and we went off in search of a killer.

  When we got to The Clothes Horse, though, we found the front door locked and the CLOSED sign in the window.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as we got out of Moose’s truck. I looked at the store hours posted by the door and saw that Hank should have been open for half an hour by now.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Let’s take a drive over to Hank’s place and see what’s going on.”

  When we got there, though, there was no sign of life.

  It appeared that Hank was gone.

  “It doesn’t look good, him running like this. Doesn’t he know that?” I asked Moose as he pounded on the front door for the fourth time. I didn’t figure it would do him any good to keep trying, but on the other hand, it couldn’t hurt, either.

  “The fool must have lost his mind,” Moose said, pausing for a moment.

  “Do you think he might have killed Howard Lance?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what to think at this point, to be honest with you.”

  “You just said that he had to have lost his mind.”

  “Victoria, I was talking about him leaving town. Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean that he’s the killer.”

  “Somebody murdered that man,” I said. “Why couldn’t it have been Hank? His wife started this store herself, and when she died, he took it over. Maybe the thought of losing the last part he still had of her was too much for him to take.”

  “It’s possible,” Moose admitted.

  “Think about it. What if your roles were reversed? Wouldn’t you miss Martha at least that much?”

  “Of course I would, but I’d like to think that I still wouldn’t kill somebody over it.”

  I had my doubts myself. Moose’s charm had a flipside, and that was his temper. He liked to think of it as passion, but my family knew better.

  “So, what do we do about this? Do we call Sheriff Croft and tell him what we suspect, or keep it all to ourselves?”

  “We could call Croft,” Moose said, “but let’s give Hank a chance to come back on his own before we do anything rash.”

  “We aren’t holding anything back from him, though, remember?”

  “Victoria, if Hank’s on his list of suspects, the sheriff most likely already knows about this.”

  “And if he’s not?” I asked, refusing to give any ground. We’d made a promise, and I meant to keep it.

  “Tell you what. We’ll go see Cynthia, and then we’ll try here again. If he hasn’t popped up by then, I’ll call Croft myself. Is that a deal?” he asked me as he stuck out his hand.

  “It’s a deal,” I said, taking it and doing my best to give him a solid grip in return. Moose had taught me as a small girl to give as good as I got, and I’d practiced on tennis balls until I had a grasp that came close to matching his own.

  At least Cynthia was working in her hair salon when we got there. Thankfully no customers were there at the moment, though I doubted she felt that way about it. I didn’t want an audience for the conversation we were about to have.

  “This isn’t good, is it?” she asked as Moose and I as we walked into A Cut Above.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “By all rights, you should be at the diner, Victoria, and Moose, you would most likely be out on a lake somewhere fishing if everything was all right.”

  “It’s too cold for that,” Moose said.

  “We both know better than that,” she said with a smile. “Are you both here about the murder?”

  “You’ve heard about it already, then?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. As I was opening the doors for the day, Margie Collins came by and filled me in. She embellished it all, of course, but the gist of it was that somebody killed that worm of a man Howard Lance in your diner.”

  “Actually, it was the freezer, b
ut that’s about right.”

  “It must look bad on your family,” Cynthia said.

  “That’s why we’re trying to find the killer,” Moose blurted out.

  “You two? What makes you think you’re capable of doing anything remotely like that?”

  “We really don’t have much choice,” I said. “You can help us, if you’re willing.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Cynthia said, “but it’s just like I told you before, Mom doesn’t remember much about buying the place. If you’d like her number, I’ve got it here on my phone.”

  “Evelyn never did have all that good a memory,” Moose said. “Besides, it’s you we want to talk to about it.”

  “What do you think I can tell you that you don’t already know, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Where were you yesterday between five and five thirty?” I asked. “If you’ve got an alibi, we can mark your name off our list.”

  “I’m not a suspect, am I?” she asked, her voice growing with confusion. “Why would I kill Howard Lance?”

  “To save your livelihood,” I said. “He was threatening to take away all of our businesses. We’re naturally the prime suspects.”

  “I can see the police acting that way, but we shouldn’t be turning on each other,” she said.

  “It’s not that hard a question, Cynthia,” Moose said as he took a step toward her. He was a big man, and he hadn’t gotten that nickname for nothing. My grandfather could be intimidating when he wanted to be, as I well knew from experience.

  She was considering her options when the front door of her place opened. I was ready to push through until we had an answer, but that plan changed almost immediately when I saw that it was Sheriff Croft walking in.

  “Neither one of you look as though you’re getting a haircut,” the sheriff said. “What brings you here?”

  I was trying to come up with a safe answer that wouldn’t make the sheriff irritated with us when Cynthia stole the opportunity from me to spin it in our direction. “They think I killed Howard Lance,” she blurted out.

  “We never said anything of the sort,” I replied quickly.

  “You asked me for my alibi,” Cynthia said, her tone of voice accusing us of far worse.

  “I need to see you two outside. Now,” the sheriff said as he pointed in our direction.

  “We didn’t—” was all I got out. The glare he shot at me was enough to stop a rushing bull, and I didn’t need to be scolded twice.

  Once we were outside, Moose said, “Before you start lecturing us, Victoria was trying to tell you the truth. We were just looking for an alibi so we could strike her name off our suspect list.”

  “Why do you think I’m here?” the sheriff said. “Believe it or not, I’ve been doing this for a long time, a great deal longer than the two of you when you decided to try to solve this case yourselves. Let me guess. She wouldn’t give you an answer, would she?”

  “She was about to when you barged in,” Moose said.

  “That’s not entirely the truth,” I said, and my grandfather glared at me.

  “We don’t know that she wasn’t about to spill it all, Victoria, and you know it.”

  “Do you honestly think that she was going to tell us anything?”

  Moose just shrugged. “You never know.”

  “Maybe not, but I have a pretty good idea.”

  The sheriff stepped between us. “I told you that you could dig into this as long as you both stayed out of my way. What happened to that promise you made?”

  “Hang on,” I said, shifting gears immediately. “How were we supposed to know what you were up to? Send us your schedule, and we’ll do our best to avoid you in the future.”

  Moose liked that, and he grinned at me and added a wink. I didn’t return it, mainly because I was still intent on pinning the sheriff down on his last comment. We weren’t mind-readers, so how could we have known what he was going to do next?

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “Come on, confess. Where have you been so far?”

  I wasn’t about to answer him right away, but Moose surprised me by telling him the total and unvarnished truth. “We’ve been to see Francie Humphries, Bob Chastain, Cynthia here, and Hank Brewer.”

  The last name certainly got his attention. “Are you saying that you’ve talked to Hank today?”

  “No,” Moose admitted grudgingly. “He took off before we had a chance to corner him. I take it that Hank’s on your list, too.”

  “He was in the middle of the pack early this morning, but I have to admit, him leaving town at the spur of the moment like that shot him quite a bit closer to the top.”

  “But he’s still behind my family, is that it?” I asked.

  “I’m not ready to release the order of my suspects. Everyone’s a candidate in my book.”

  “Then you figured out the link between Howard Lance and the rest of us?” I asked.

  “Extortion,” he said simply.

  “He didn’t have a case, you know,” Moose said. “It was all done fair and legal back when we all bought land from Joshua. Howard Lance was just trying to rattle our cages a little and get someone to pay up fast before we found out that he was just scamming us.”

  “And did he?” the sheriff asked. “I heard about the missing deed book, and how several folks don’t have receipts for buying their land. It could easily be a motive for murder.”

  I had to give Sheriff Croft props for figuring that all out so quickly, doing it without our inside information. “All we can say for sure is that our family didn’t pay him,” I said.

  “What did the other folks say when you asked them about it? Were you able to get anyone’s alibi?” the sheriff asked, clearly interested in our answers.

  I went down my list. “Francie said that she was working on cupcakes in the back by herself, while Bob claimed that he drove to Hickory and back alone without stopping to talk to anyone on the way. We couldn’t find Hank, and Cynthia won’t tell us anything. Maybe you can sweat it out of her, but we weren’t having any luck at all when you showed up.”

  “You’ve done some pretty good work,” the sheriff said as he nodded. “You only missed one other potential suspect, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I still refuse to believe that a member of my family had anything to do with this mess,” I said.

  “That wasn’t who I was talking about,” he said.

  “So, we’re not suspects?” I asked.

  “I’m not saying that, either.”

  “Then who’s your mystery suspect?” Moose asked.

  It was pretty clear that the sheriff was reluctant to name names, so I asked, “How can we keep from stepping on your toes if we don’t know what you’re doing? All we need is a name.”

  He thought about that, and then shrugged. “Okay, but it goes no farther. Margie Collins is the last name on my list.”

  I could barely believe that I’d just heard that. Margie was a gray-haired widow, a Sunday School teacher, and though she loved to gossip, I couldn’t imagine her as a murderer.

  Moose beat me to the protest, though. “Margie? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Sheriff Croft looked miserable as he admitted, “I wish I were, but somebody claims they saw Margie with the victim not two hours before he was murdered. I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  “What would she be doing with him?”

  “I’d love to ask her that myself, but she’s missing as well.”

  Chapter 7

  “She took off like Hank did?” I asked. “Is there any chance that they’re together?”

  Moose looked at me as though I’d lost my mind, but the sheriff killed that expression when he nodded. “As hard as it is to believe, it turns out that it’s possible.”

  I tried to imagine Margie and Hank together, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the prospect. “I didn’t even know that they were dating.”

  “Nobody else in town did, either,” Moose sa
id.

  “How could you possibly know that?” the sheriff asked him.

  “Do you think they’d be able to keep that kind of secret from all of us? I’d have to see a photo of them together before I’d ever consider it a possibility.”

  I slapped my grandfather’s shoulder. “Eww.”

  “I just meant in the same frame of the picture. Get your mind out of the gutter, granddaughter.” He then turned to the sheriff. “What makes you think they were together?”

  “I can’t reveal my sources,” he said, “but I believe the information is credible.”

  “Funny,” Moose said, “but if it were anybody else, I’d go to Margie to find out what she’d heard. So, who’s the number two gossip in Jasper Fork?”

  “Do you mean besides you?” the sheriff asked with a hint of a grin.

  I could see that Moose was about to explode, so I knew that I had to defuse the situation, and fast. “Moose isn’t a gossip; he’s a collector of town information. Isn’t that right?” I asked him with a wink that I hoped the sheriff hadn’t seen.

  He took the hint. “It’s true that I like to stay abreast of what’s going on in my town,” Moose said. “I make a fair point of it, though. If I didn’t know about it, I doubt that it ever happened.”

  The sheriff wasn’t going to accept that at face value, but it was clear that he wasn’t looking to pick a fight, either.

  “I’m going to go have a chat with Cynthia. Where are the two of you going next?”

  “Back to the diner,” I said before Moose could say a word.

  The sheriff clearly had a hard time believing that we were giving up, even if it was only temporary. “What’s wrong, are there no more clues for you to chase down?”

  “We’re set at the moment,” Moose said. “And besides, our family needs us back at the diner to get things back in shape.” There was very little truth to that, but I wasn’t about to dispute it. I was sure that the crew we had in place was getting along swimmingly.

  “Don’t forget,” the sheriff said as he headed back inside the salon, “let me know if you hear from Hank or Margie, or if anything else comes up that might be important.”