Gingerbread and a Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

  “Is that a hint?” I asked.

  “It could be,” he said raising one eyebrow.

  Cade was predictable where breakfast was concerned. He loved his scrambled eggs and white toast for breakfast. It made it simple and easy to remember. “I tell you what,” I said. “You fill me in on what you know about Chrissy’s death, and I’ll go turn in an order to Sam for your scrambled eggs and toast.”

  He sat back in the seat and groaned. “You only want me around for my murder case information.”

  “Maybe. But maybe you know something that’s useful,” I said. “Spill it.”

  “Chrissy Jones died of blunt force trauma and we still don’t know who did it,” he said wickedly. “Does that satisfy you?”

  “Hardly. I heard her gingerbread decorating partner, Jenna Dennison, hated her in school and yet they partnered for the contest. Kind of odd, eh?”

  “Why would people who hate each other become partners?” he asked.

  “According to Jenna, she always wanted to be in the competition and didn’t have the entrance fee, so when Chrissy offered to pay, she jumped at the chance.”

  “Who wants to be in a gingerbread decorating contest bad enough to put up with someone that you hate?” he asked, suspiciously.

  “That’s what I thought. Kind of odd, if you ask me, but Jenna said Chrissy offered to pay the entrance fee because she was intent on winning, so that Natalie wouldn’t.”

  “Why would that be important to her?” Agatha asked, a forkful of scrambled eggs poised midway to her mouth.

  I looked at Agatha. “When I said Chrissy and Natalie had been friends, what I left out was that they had a terrible falling out in the seventh grade. Personally, I think Chrissy thought she was better than Natalie and dumped her when they got to junior high.” I shrugged. “You know how hormonal girls are at that age.”

  “So Chrissy was still holding a grudge? But she was the instigator of the falling out?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Natalie says she didn’t have much to do with her after that, but apparently Chrissy still had some bad feelings toward Natalie.”

  “I see,” she said. “There’s no accounting for the actions of young girls sometimes.”

  “I sure could use a cup of coffee,” Cade hinted.

  I groaned. “You’re going to make me get up, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “That I am.”

  I playfully shoved him off the seat, and he got to his feet so I could get out of the booth and get him some coffee. Before I did that, I wrote down his breakfast order on a diner ticket and went into the kitchen to hand it to Sam.

  “It’s quiet out there isn’t it?” Sam asked, turning from the grill.

  I nodded. “You better believe it. But lucky for us, Cade just came through the door and ordered scrambled eggs and white toast.”

  Sam nodded. “That’ll help me pay the rent,” he said with a chuckle and went to get eggs from the refrigerator. “So what’s up with the latest murder?”

  I sighed. “I guess everyone knows I’m snooping around whenever there’s a murder?”

  “I don’t know why you would even have to ask that. You know practically the whole town knows that.”

  “Sadly, I really don’t know anything this time around. At least not yet. When I saw her under the table, there was blood coming from her head.”

  He returned to the griddle and began cracking eggs. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  I nodded. “I feel sorry for the young girl that found her. Poor thing. She looked like she was only sixteen or seventeen.”

  He shook his head. “It’s a shame. I don’t think I know anything about Chrissy Jones. That was her name, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes that was it. Something will turn up,” I said and headed back out to get Cade a cup of coffee.

  “I just made a new pot of coffee,” Luanne said to me. She was standing at the coffee maker, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. “I heard about Chrissy Jones.”

  “What did you hear?” I asked and got a cup from the cupboard for Cade.

  “She lied about being in the competition for Miss America. Apparently, she couldn’t qualify, but she told everybody she just didn’t want to compete anymore.”

  I looked at her. “Why would she lie about that?”

  Luanne shrugged. “Pride?”

  “I guess that would do it, wouldn’t it?” I said, thinking about this. “When I spoke to her a few months ago, she was feeling very sure of herself. She said she just knew she was going to win. Who did she tell that she didn’t want to compete anymore?”

  “She told me. But Chrissy’s mother told me she didn’t qualify. I saw her mother at Michelle’s when I was shopping for a new dress right before Thanksgiving.”

  That was odd. Carol hadn’t mentioned to Stormy and me that Chrissy had changed her mind about being in the Miss America pageant. She had said she never got a chance to compete, but she didn’t say she hadn’t qualified. “How well do you know Carol Jones?”

  “She’s my mother’s second cousin,” Luanne said nodding. “We don’t talk to that side of the family very much, except when we do. When I ran into Carol, I asked her how Chrissy was and if we’d be seeing her on TV on the Miss America pageant next year. She said Chrissy didn’t qualify, and she asked me not to tell anybody.” Luanne turned to me and gasped. “Oh. I told somebody. But don’t you tell anyone else, okay?”

  Luanne wasn’t trying to be cute. She was an airhead. “That’s okay Luanne, I hardly tell anybody anything anyway.”

  She nodded. “I guess it’s okay then. After Carol left the shop, Chrissy rang up the dress I had picked out, and she told me she didn’t want to be in the Miss America pageant anymore. I thought it was weird since her mother just told me she didn’t qualify, but I didn’t tell her that.” She turned and poured coffee into the cup I had brought over. “Is this for Cade?”

  “It sure is,” I said.

  “Well you tell him I appreciate the hard work he does for this community.”

  I smiled. “That’s very sweet of you, Luanne,” I said. “But he’s right at the corner booth with Agatha. You can just walk over there and tell him yourself if you want to.”

  “Oh no, I don’t want to disturb him.” She poured a cup of coffee for the one other customer in the diner and took it over to him.

  I wasn’t sure if what Luanne said was important to the case or not. I was going to have to dig deeper into this. I wondered if Carol would tell me anything if I asked her about Chrissy not qualifying the pageant. It did seem odd that Chrissy hadn’t qualified. She had been in pageants since before she could walk and was as poised and perfected as any beauty queen I had ever met.

  I headed back to the booth with Cade’s coffee and set it in front of him. “Here you go.”

  “Well, Rainey, as much as I have enjoyed talking to you and your man here, I had better get back to work,” Agatha said and got to her feet. “I’ll talk to you all later.”

  “Bye, Agatha,” I said as she headed to the cash register to pay. Luanne took her payment, and I slid into the booth across from Cade. “Details?”

  He chuckled and took a sip of his coffee. “There was a bloody brick beneath the table where Chrissy was laying.”

  I inhaled. “How awful.”

  He nodded. “It is. I’ve talked to her parents, but they have no idea what might have happened. She came home after the gingerbread house contest but then went out with friends shortly afterward. Her mother said it wasn’t unusual for her not to come home for a day or two and wasn’t worried when she didn’t.”

  “Stormy and I stopped by to tell Carol how sorry we were about Chrissy’s death. She didn’t have a lot to say, other than she thought it was suspicious that she partnered with Jenna Dennison. She did bring up the fact that Chrissy couldn’t stand Natalie.” I shrugged. “Hopefully you’ll get a break in the case soon.”

  “Order up, Rainey!” I heard Sam call through the pass-through window.r />
  “I’ll be right back with your breakfast,” I told him.

  Getting hit in the head with a brick was a terrible way to die. It made me sad for Chrissy. She might not have been the nicest person around, but she didn’t deserve to die that way.

  Chapter Eight

  It was the following afternoon when I ran into Susan Lang at the grocery store. She was looking over the bags of fresh cranberries in the produce department and I pushed my shopping cart next to hers.

  “Hi Susan,” I said. “Those cranberries look good, don’t they?”

  She turned to look at me and smiled back. “Hi Rainey,” she said. “They do look good. I thought I’d better grab some before the season is over. I sure do love them.”

  I nodded. “I do too. It’s convenient having the dried kind, but I prefer the fresh ones. As a matter of fact, I was thinking about picking up a bag or two along with some apples and making a cranberry apple pie.”

  She brightened at the mention of the cranberry apple pie. “That sounds really good. You have great ideas,” she said. “I might do the same. I heard you were writing a cookbook, how’s that coming?”

  “It’s going really well. I’ve been working on new recipes for several months now. I’m hoping to be done with the cookbook early next year,” I said and chuckled. “It sounds like that’s a long way off when I say ‘early next year’.”

  She smiled and put a bag of cranberries into her shopping cart. “It feels like this year went so fast.”

  I nodded. “Susan, can I ask you a question about the gingerbread house contest?”

  One eyebrow arched upward. “Sure, what did you want to ask?”

  “How is it handled? I heard that entering the contest is first-come first-served.”

  She looked away as she picked up another bag of cranberries. “That’s exactly how it’s done. If a team has the money to enter, and they get in before the slots are filled up, then they’ll be accepted.” She tilted her head and looked at me. “You know Rainey, there wasn’t anything we could do about your broken gingerbread house. The rules specifically state that if something happens to the gingerbread house during the competition, it is the contestants’ responsibility to fix it or bow out.”

  “I understand completely,” I said, nodding. “But I have a question about Chrissy Jones and Jenna Dennison. When did they turn in their application?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “If I remember right, they turned it in the first week of November. But I’d have to check my records to be sure. Why do you ask?”

  “Then why didn’t you want them in the competition?” I said, ignoring her question. I thought I might as well put it out there and see what she said.

  She inhaled sharply and her body tensed up. “That’s ridiculous. Who said I didn’t want them in the competition? All they had to do was apply in time and have the entrance fee.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t really remember who said it. I guess it’s just a rumor going around. You know how it is around here.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Well. It’s an unfounded rumor. I didn’t try to keep them out of the contest, and like I said, there wasn’t anything we could do about your broken gingerbread house.”

  “Of course not. I understand completely. They created an absolutely beautiful gingerbread house and it deserved to win. Jenna is a very talented decorator.” I left out the part where I thought that had ours not broken and looked a bit Frankenstein-ish, that we would have easily taken first place.

  She gave me a curt nod of her head. “Good. As long as you understand there was nothing personal about it.”

  “No, I understand completely.” I wasn’t sure I believed what she said about not having an issue with Chrissy and Jenna being in the contest. I can’t say exactly why, but maybe it was because she sounded defensive.

  “How is the murder investigation going? I’m assuming that you know what’s going on?” She tilted her head and smirked.

  I shrugged, trying not to let on that I realized the question was meant to be catty. “I hear things occasionally, but it seems this one really is a mystery,” I said. “I know Cade is working night and day on it and he’ll have the killer behind bars before you know it.”

  “If you ask me,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder. “And I know you didn’t, but I’m going to say it anyway. You might want to talk to Elaine Jeffers and see what she knows about Chrissy’s death.” She gave me another smirk. Susan Lang could be snobby when she wanted to be.

  “Elaine Jeffers? Doesn’t she work at Michelle’s dress shop?” I knew Elaine well enough to say hello to her and ask how she was.

  She nodded and set the second bag of cranberries into the front of her shopping cart and turned back to the display of cranberries. “She sure does. And between you and me, and the bags of cranberries,” she said and picked up another bag of cranberries. “She and Chrissy didn’t get along. Chrissy accused her of stealing jewelry from the shop.”

  “Really?” This was news to me. “Did she do it?”

  “I have no idea, but if you knew Elaine Jeffers, I think you’d have to say there’s a very good possibility that she’s guilty.”

  I considered this. “How do you know this?”

  “My friend Michelle Watkins owns Michelle’s. She told me she’d been having trouble with the two of them when they worked together and Chrissy said she saw Elaine steal a ring and a bracelet.”

  “Did she fire Elaine? I thought I saw her working there not long ago,” I said and reached for a bag of cranberries. I held them up and looked them over to make sure none of them were mushy, and then tossed it into my cart.

  “She said she couldn’t because she had no proof. When Michelle confronted her, Elaine became livid. She swore up and down that she would never steal from anyone.”

  “But Michelle doesn’t believe her?” I asked, picking up a small box of blackberries that were next to the cranberries and looking them over.

  “Michelle has been looking for a reason to get rid of Elaine for months now. She had hoped that this was her chance, but there was no proof that she had taken anything. The ring and bracelet did disappear, but the day they were noticed was a day that Elaine didn’t work, and she insisted she had nothing to do with it. Of course, Michelle thinks she took it the day before.”

  “If she’s been trying to get rid of her for months, why doesn’t she just do it?” I asked.

  “Because Elaine threatened to take her to the board of labor and file a complaint against her for not allowing the girls to take their breaks. She doesn’t want to get into a legal mess, so she’s waiting until she has an ironclad reason to fire her. But, you didn’t hear that from me and I would appreciate it if you would keep it quiet,” she said leaning on her shopping cart.

  I nodded. “It wouldn’t be good to let something like that out. Tell me, Susan, do you know Elaine well?”

  “I know her well enough to know that she’s shady. She worked for Celia Markson at her flower shop when it was open. Celia caught her stealing and fired her a couple of years ago. Honestly, I warned Michelle about hiring her, but she thought she was doing a good deed for someone less fortunate. You know how those do-gooders are,” she said and rolled her eyes.

  Celia had owned the Perfect Florist Shop before she died last spring. “It would be a shame if Elaine hadn’t learned her lesson the first time and stole from her new employer, but I guess it isn’t that much of a stretch, is it?”

  She shook her head. “No, it isn’t. But things got worse when she found out that Chrissy was the one who accused her of stealing the necklace.”

  “How did she find out that Chrissy had accused her? Isn’t that something Michelle would keep to herself?”

  “Michelle did keep it to herself. But you know how Chrissy was. She was smug and full of herself. She told Elaine she had told Michelle she was stealing.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. “Why on earth would Chrissy tell her that?”

  She shrugged. �
�Like I said, Chrissy was smug and full of herself. I guess she thought there was nothing Elaine could do to her. But, I think there was something Elaine could do. And I think she did it and now Chrissy isn’t going to be smug about anything anymore.”

  I considered this a moment. “If this was a funny situation, I’d say the joke was on Chrissy. But there’s nothing funny about murder.”

  “You can say that again,” she said. “I think you should stop in and speak to Elaine. Or at least tell Detective Starkey what I said. Michelle will back me up as long as it doesn’t get around town. She doesn’t want her business broadcast to everyone.”