I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and hit the lights.
“Is your coffee made yet?”
Startled, I turned to see that Grandma Ruth was out of the van. She pushed her girth through the door, waddled to the small table in the kitchen, and sat down. When she wanted to, Grandma could move faster than I could. “Well, close the door. You can’t afford to heat the entire outside.” She waved her hand at me.
I closed the door and threw the lock shut. A glance out the peephole showed me that the van doors were closed. I hit the automatic lock on the key and the van’s lights flashed at me, letting me know it was secure.
There wasn’t anything in the van to steal, but I had gotten into the habit of securing everything when I lived in Chicago. It was a good habit to keep in Oiltop. Especially since a wheat-free bakery wasn’t the most popular place in wheat country.
“So, what’s the plan?” Grandma asked, rubbing her hands together.
“Besides figuring out how to help Tim make bail?” I asked. “There is no plan.” I evaded the question. The last thing I needed was to get Grandma involved in whatever I planned to do. I made a show of filling the big perk pot with water and coffee.
“Oh, there’s a plan,” Grandma said. “First off, I can bail Tim out if need be. I have retirement funds.”
“Grandma, you don’t need to put your retirement funds on the line for Tim,” I said. “We can put a lien on the house. It’s what Mom would want.”
“What if you lose the house?” Grandma asked.
“I’m not going to lose the house. Tim isn’t going anywhere and if he were, then it would be better to lose the house than your retirement fund. Case closed,” I said.
“Fine,” Grandma said.
“Fine,” I replied.
She sat in silence for a moment or two and watched me.
“What?” I asked, feeling weird that she kept staring.
“If you don’t want to tell me your plan, then I won’t tell you mine.”
I mulled that over a moment. “Fine. Tell me yours first.”
“Oh, come on, kiddo, you know I’m smarter than that.” Grandma raised her right eyebrow and gave me the look.
“Fine.” I put my hands on my hips as the coffeemaker perked, filling the air with the fresh, hot scent. “I plan on visiting all the local motels and speaking to the staff.”
“Already did that.” Grandma pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “They don’t remember squat. Turns out you don’t need a Mensa card to sit at a reservation desk and welcome people for eight hours.”
I grabbed the second chair and sat down. “What did they say? Anything? Did anyone remember Tim?”
“You would know all this if you’d been investigating from the start like I told you to.” Grandma raised both eyebrows and half lowered her lids.
“Grandma, I don’t have a lot of time here.” I stood. “I’ve got dozens of cookies to make and all the morning pastries.”
“You don’t have to make a full complement of pastries this morning. I listened to the weather. We’re in a severe storm warning with blizzard conditions and such for the next twenty-four hours. No one’s coming to buy donuts.”
“Darn it, Grandma, I need people to buy donuts and pastries and breads. How else am I going to stay in business?”
Grandma shrugged nonchalantly. “I don’t make the weather.” She pointed at the coffeepot with her chin. “Coffee’s ready.”
Great. Grandma was as hard to open as a fresh clam. I poured her coffee. “Fine. If you aren’t going to tell me what you know, then I’ll just have to find out myself.”
“You do that.” Grandma poured a ton of pink packets in her coffee and stirred it with one of the spoons in a container on the table.
“I will,” I said and pulled out the bowls of dough that had been in the refrigerator overnight. One thing to know about Grandma—she hated to be ignored. I did just that, sprinkling the marble countertop with cornmeal and dumping the cool dough onto the surface. The smell of yeast wafted up as I did a couple of turns kneading, shaped the dough into round mounds, and popped it in the proofer.
“The silent treatment isn’t going to work on me,” Grandma said. “I’ve got my smartphone. I’ll just sit here and read the New York Times. Maybe even work the puzzle.”
I continued with my usual morning prep work. My mind raced as I tried to figure out who I could talk to that would know anything about the dead man or the identity thief who framed Tim. Maybe other people’s identities had been stolen. Maybe someone else local had been checking into hotels once a week. It was a start, anyway.
I turned my radio up and blasted Mumford & Sons. Grandma got up and poured herself another cup of coffee and snatched two day-old muffins from the bin where I put the leftovers at night.
“Don’tcha wanna know who I talked to?” she asked as I pulled out the ingredients for the cookies.
“I do, but you won’t tell me,” I said as I measured sugar and butter.
“Darned right I won’t tell you. You have to tell me your plan first.”
“I don’t have a plan,” I repeated.
“Oh, poppycock. We both know you have a plan, and I have information. Spill.”
“I’m making cookies, Grandma,” I said. “See that list on the wall? Those are the orders that need to be baked today.”
“What does that have to do with your brother?”
“Not a thing.” I blew out a breath.
“Humph.” Grandma took her baked goods and coffee and went back to the table. A few more moments of music and Grandma started talking. “Allie May at the Motel 7 says her records show Tim was checked in twice a month, but she doesn’t remember ever seeing him there. She’d remember, too, because she has a thing for your brother.”
“Does she remember anyone else local checking in?” I asked the question casually as if I were talking to the cookie dough.
“She said she hasn’t seen anyone from town check in. She has regulars that come for the fishing or the prairie chicken hunting, but that’s it.”
I finished creaming the butter and sugar and added the dry ingredients to my oatmeal raisin cookies. I reached up and switched radio stations to the one that played continuous Christmas music from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve. I loved Christmas, but I had no idea why anyone would want to listen to nothing but Christmas songs for so long.
“Don’t you just love Christmas songs?” Grandma said, her long fingers flying in the air as if she were conducting. “I could listen to them all year long.”
“That’s a lot of Christmas,” I stated as I scraped dough onto waxed paper. I shaped the dough into logs, wrapped them in waxed paper, and froze them. Later I would pull out the frozen logs, cut out discs of cookies, and bake them. That way I always had warm cookies in the bakery.
“I bet Tim’s not getting any Christmas in that cold jail cell he’s stuck in.” Grandma pouted. “All because his sister is too busy with cookies to help him.”
“Tim is a grown man,” I said, pulled out a clean bowl, and started creating more dough. This time it would be chocolate chip. “His time in jail is his business, not mine.”
“He’s being framed, and you’re going to stand there and make cookies?”
I rolled my eyes, turned, and waved my hand to the door. “If you haven’t noticed, there’s a blizzard out there. It’s hard to investigate anything in that kind of weather.”
As if on cue, the radio stopped playing music and the disc jockey came on. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It’s Christmastime in Kansas, which means the winter wheat is in and the cattle are hunkered down because the wind is howling and the snow is falling. Let’s hope you have nowhere to go today, because portions of I-35 are shut down. I-70 is a parking lot. Stay home, stay in bed, and let visions of sugarplums dance in your heads.”
&n
bsp; “This is the best time to investigate,” Grandma declared and whipped out her smartphone. “People are going to be hanging around with nothing to do.”
CHAPTER 17
She dialed a number and handed me the phone. I scowled but took it.
“Hey, this is The Hamilton Inn. I’m Terry, how can I help you?”
“Hi, Terry, it’s Toni Holmes. My brother is Tim Keene. I think you were in his class in high school.”
“Oh, sure, I remember you. You were skinny as a beanstalk and had the awful flyaway hair.”
“Yes.” I shook my head. “That’s me.”
“Hi, sugar, how’ve you been? Weren’t you living in Chicago?”
“I moved back when my mom died last summer.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
There was a pause where I wondered briefly if she was sorry to hear I was back or that my mother had died. I chose to believe it was the fact that my mom had died. “Thanks,” I said. Grandma motioned with her hands for me to get on with things. I gave her the evil eye and turned my back on her. “Hey, Terry, are you real busy?”
“Not right now, why?”
“I don’t know if you heard that my brother Tim was arrested last night.”
“Oh, sure, I heard,” she said. “Terrible news, him killing that man and all—and right there at the Red Tile, where you and your friend Tasha were.”
“You know, I don’t think Tim killed anyone.”
“Well, of course he did,” she chided me. “The police wouldn’t have arrested him unless they were pretty sure he did it.”
Whatever. “Listen, I was wondering, did you have any registrations that belonged to Tim?”
“Excuse me?”
“No worries. I thought I’d help him pay his bills, so I’m calling around asking if he had run up any bills at the local hotels.” I glanced at Grandma, who grinned and put both thumbs up.
“Oh, let me take a look in my computer.” Terry did some fast typing and then some clicking. “It looks like your brother stayed here five times in the last two months. That’s kind of weird since you have that big house and all. Were you having company?”
“No, no company.”
“Huh, well, in any case he’s all paid up. It looks like he paid in cash every time. He must be doing some work on the side. Nobody pays in cash anymore. What’s he doing? Do you know? Because, if he’s plowing, have him call me later. It’s always good to have a backup plow guy. For instance Bill Western’s our regular guy and he’s on vacation this week. It would have been nice to have a backup snowplow. Of course, with your brother in jail and all it wouldn’t have helped much. But still . . . You know Bill saved up and took his whole family to Disney World. I always wanted to go to Disney World.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “I bet it’s warmer in Florida, too. I mean if they had this kind of blizzard it’d ruin the orange crop or something, wouldn’t it? I won’t wish that on Florida, then, because I like my orange juice and I don’t need it to get any more expensive.”
“No, we don’t,” I said and widened my eyes at Grandma. She made the wrap it up signal with her index finger.
“Say, Terry, do you know if anyone else local has been staying at your hotel?”
“I don’t know. . . . I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘local.’”
“Well, you know anyone from Oiltop having a fight with their spouse or getting their place renovated? I mean, surely Tim can’t be the only local guy renting a hotel room.”
“Oh, honey, do I have the stories I could tell you. Why, just yesterday Junior Riley—you remember him, right? He was in your class, I’m thinking. Anyway, Junior came in and asked if we had any vacancies—which, of course, we didn’t because it’s the holiday season and people are visiting their families and all. Well, it turns out Allie May kicked Junior out of the house. She found out he wasn’t going to those AA meetings like he said he was. Instead he was down at the Grey Goose playing pool every Monday. Boy, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Allie May found out. That gal might be small, but she’s feisty. I wouldn’t be surprised if she waited for him with a shotgun in her lap.”
“Right?” I agreed in an effort to keep Terry talking. “So really no one else local comes in every week?”
“Not to rent a room,” Terry said. “We have a few regulars come into the restaurant and have supper or sit at the bar for a drink.”
“Oh, I imagine you do see regulars; I hear the food there is good—especially Sunday-morning brunch.”
“It is good.”
“Too bad I can’t eat there.” I acted casual. “My needing to eat gluten-free and all.”
“Well, you know, we don’t get much call for people with allergies to eat here. I imagine if we ever did we’d be calling you to find out what all we had to do.”
“I appreciate that, and Terry, always remember: if you need anything gluten-free, from donuts to rolls to sandwich bread and dessert, you can always call me. I give a discounted rate for small businesses.”
“Now, that’s good to know.” Terry’s voice sounded chipper. “I’m going to write that down on a big old notepad and stick it near the kitchen phone.”
“Thank you. I appreciate all your help.” I hung up after Terry said good-bye and frowned at Grandma. “The Hamilton Inn is like the Motel 7. They rarely see anyone from town except to eat at the restaurant or stop in at the bar.” I worried my bottom lip. “How many of the places where Tim supposedly rented a room have restaurants or bars in them?”
“Give me my phone and I’ll tell you.” Grandma held out her hand. I studied her. It could be a ploy. She might dial someone else or she might have the list in her phone.
I suppose I could always refuse to talk to the next person she dialed. Yeah, like that was going to happen. I handed her the phone. She flipped through the icons like a pro. It made me sigh. Even my grandmother was better versed in smartphones than I was. I was still doing all my online ordering through e-mail, and that I checked from my desktop computer in my office. And here I was so proud to be modern and have a flat-screen television.
“A quick glance tells me half of them have restaurants and another third have bars.”
“So they don’t all have bars or restaurants?”
“Well, the Bait and Buckle is right next door to the Two-Hand Saloon.” Grandma shrugged. “They don’t need a restaurant or a bar. It’s not like you get families staying at a place like Bait and Buckle.”
“What other hotels are left?” I drew my eyebrows together. For goodness’ sake, Oiltop only had twenty thousand residents. How many hotels did it need? No wonder Tasha had had a problem keeping her bed-and-breakfast going. I knew they were working on the new lake project and hoping to bring in race boats and sportfishing, but that meant there was a lot of summer campground business and such. Winter months were left to truckers and stranded motorists trying to get home.
“There’s Paulette’s Cabins on the other side of town.”
“She’s not even open. Why would she be on the list?”
“She’s not. You asked me what other hotels were in town. Paulette’s is down closer to the lake. It’s a bit shady. The police blotter says they send someone down to break up the rowdies at least once a week.”
“You read the police blotter?”
“It’s an old habit. When I first started out I wrote the police report column. It was a completely boring exercise,” Grandma said. “The dispatch writes down all the calls and the police blotter is a shortened version of dispatch notes. Sometimes the editor of the Times would tell me to keep something or someone out. But most of the time it was simply an address, a time, and a title—say, for instance, ‘domestic dispute,’ or ‘disturbing the peace.’”
“Is that when you got the crime beat?” I always loved
to hear Grandma’s stories. I figured sooner or later she was going to pass on and then I’d share her stories with the family. That was if I didn’t die first. Knowing Grandma, she just might live to be 120 years old.
“Yes, one night I picked up a blotter notice of a Peeping Tom on Locust Street. They sent a squad car down there three nights in a row and never saw anything. So I decided to go undercover. Now remember it was during WWII and things were rationed, so I was a bit thinner in those days.”
“How old were you?”
“I was in my twenties. Just finished my college degree and was working at the paper so the men could be drafted. Anywho, I decided to go undercover and spend a night on Locust Street to see if I could catch the perpetrator of this crime. I dressed all in black and smeared mud on my face like I saw in the war movies. Then I took my flashlight with me and patrolled the street in a three-block radius of the calls.”
“You patrolled the area?” After the usual early morning flurry of activity, the bread was rising and the cakes had come out of the freezer to thaw. I had set the mixer to low mixing powdered sugar and butter for buttercream frosting. I liked it to mix a while for a creamy result so I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table to hear Grandma’s story. The wind howled outside, and I still had half an hour before I needed to open. “Yes, I did.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I did all right up until three A.M. Then I sat down under Mrs. Rawlings’s maple tree—you know, the one in her side yard—because I was tired. I dozed for a bit when something woke me up.”
I leaned in closer. The scent of coffee filled the air and the steam swirled above my cup. “What was it?”
“The oddest thing I’ve ever seen. Two beady eyes staring at me. Gave me such a fright I jumped up and bit my tongue to keep from screaming. I turned my flashlight on the intruder.” Grandma stopped to sip her coffee.
“And . . .”
“And the flashlight revealed . . .”
Grandma gave this dramatic pause until I was forced to say, “What? What did it reveal?”
Flourless to Stop Him Page 14
