A Second Helping of Murder

by Christine Wenger

  How did we get so far away from Claire Jacobson, and how do I turn the conversation back?

  “Joan, I can’t help wondering how Hal managed to discover that Claire was shot so long ago.”

  “He’s good. He’s really good.” She grinned, and it seemed that she was talking about something other than his coroner skills. “She wasn’t in great condition either. The cave was pretty wet, but Hal’s good.”

  “Where was she shot?”

  “In the chest.”

  “Oh.” My mind was whirling. Two bodies. Both shot in the chest. Was it a coincidence?

  The same wound.

  The same cabin.

  No. No way. The murders were too far apart. There couldn’t be a connection—not in little Podunk, New York.

  I shouldn’t be so quick to rule it out. Maybe . . .

  I’d wanted to discuss the possibility of the murders being connected with Joan, but Ty Brisco would be a better bet.

  Just then, Ty pulled open the door of the diner and was shrugging out of his yellow raincoat. He hung it from a peg by the front door. His hat followed.

  So did two dozen or more cops, all shedding their rain gear and heading for the side room of my diner where I had tables instead of booths.

  “Joan, I’m sorry. I wish we could talk more, but it looks like I have some cooking to do.” Standing up, I ate the last bite of my pie. “Maybe we could meet again?”

  “I’d like that. I don’t have many friends in Sandy Harbor.”

  “I know how that feels. It’s tough to be a new person in a closely knit community. We’ll have to get together. I’ve been thinking of starting a book club. We could meet at the diner once a month or every two weeks. What do you think?”

  “I’d love to. Can we make it a mystery book club?”

  That was the last thing that I’d want to do. I felt as if I’d been living in a mystery.

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Whatever everyone wants. I was thinking of the books on the bestseller list, no matter what genre.”

  “That sounds great, too,” she said, waving to me as she hurried out the diner, still chewing something. No doubt, she wanted to catch up to Hal Manning.

  Ty smiled at me as he passed by. “There’re another dozen or so coming behind us.”

  I mentally ticked off how many hot roast beef specials I could prepare before running out. I thought I’d be okay.

  The orders came fast. I was faster. Chelsea had arrived early to help the waitresses. Juanita had arrived early to help me and to get the gossip.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Police scanner,” said Chelsea. “My brother’s obsessed with all kinds of cop stuff, but that’s a story for another time.”

  “My nephew John called me,” Juanita said. “He works at the gas station where many of the state police fill up their patrol cars. They were talking about Mr. Burrows and the Silver Bullet and how you gave them coffee and pastries. Then he said that you invited all of them to eat the roast beef special for free. I said to John that it’s just like you to do something like that, and that I’d better go help you.”

  Juanita took a breath, then added, “How are you doing, Trixie, considering everything?”

  “I’m okay, now that you both are here.” I hugged them both. “You both are fabulous. Thanks so much. Of course, I’ll pay you double time.”

  “That’s not why I’m here, Trixie,” Chelsea said.

  Juanita sniffed. “Me either, and you know it.”

  Tears stung my eyes. I hate when that happens. “I’m going to cry. Stop it!”

  “Let’s get to work,” Chelsea said. “Bettylou looks like she’s dead on her feet.”

  I wished Chelsea had picked another word rather than dead, but I got her drift.

  Juanita and I heated up more gravy, whipped up more mashed potatoes that I just took off the stove, pulled a big pan of stuffing out of the fridge, and blasted it in the pizza oven to heat it in a hurry.

  “Family-style salad,” I said. “That’ll buy us some time, Juanita.” Then I realized how ridiculous that sounded. Cops eating salad? Possibly some of the health-conscious ones did. “Nope. Let’s give them big bowls of homemade chips. Peels on. You start cutting and I’ll start frying.”

  I peeked out the pass-through window. The cops were seated in groups of four to twelve. Tables were moved around and the noise level was high. After the gruesome scene that they’d just witnessed, and all the caffeine they’d consumed, they seemed ready to let loose.

  I decided to make salads after all while the chips were frying. We made several large house salads with various types of baby lettuce and spinach, carrot curls, grape tomatoes, radish roses, and cukes. I shook a healthy portion of Uncle Porky’s special house Italian dressing on them, set them on three large trays, and rang the ship’s bell for the waitresses.

  “They are going to love these,” said Bettylou, clipping several orders to the carrel. “But they’ll love the chips even more.”

  She hoisted a tray of salad onto her shoulder. “Most all of those orders are for the hot roast beef, Trixie, but I have a couple of orders for western omelets and burgers and fries.”

  We pulled out the fries and divided them into plastic baskets that we lined with absorbent paper. Juanita rang the bell.

  “I’ll get the stuffing out of the oven,” I said, pulling the stuffing pan out of the pizza oven. I tested it with a thermometer. “Perfect.” Then I slid the pan into the steam table. “The stuffing is good to go, Juanita.”

  We had time to get organized while everyone ate their salads and munched on the chips.

  More orders came in for the special. Others wanted steak, spaghetti and meatballs, club sandwiches, and various omelets. Three people wanted pancakes.

  Juanita was already pulling plates from the rack and setting them on the prep table. Two burgers were frying and minced onions and peppers for western omelets were already getting soft in another pan. Two orders of fries were sizzling in a basket of hot vegetable oil.

  “I got it,” she said. “You take the specials, and I’ll do the other orders.”

  “Okay,” I said, spooning stuffing onto the plate, covering it with hot slices of beef and a side of mashed potatoes. For garnish, I put some spiced apples and dill pickles on a lettuce leaf. Unless the order stated otherwise, I ladled gravy over the sandwich and potatoes.

  Juanita and I did the Diner Shuffle in the kitchen for over an hour, until Ty Brisco walked in and stood to the side of the steam table.

  The man always took my breath away whenever I saw him, but I wasn’t looking. No way.

  I was still shell-shocked from my divorce from Deputy Doug. It isn’t easy to be dumped for a very fertile twentysomething.

  But Ty’s smile was contagious, and when he smiled at me, I always felt better, no matter what I’d been worrying about.

  “Worrying is like rockin’ in a rockin’ chair. It gives you something to do, but you don’t get anywhere,” he’d told me a couple of times in that sweet, low Texas drawl of his.

  “Trixie, can you spare a moment to come out front? It’ll only take a second,” Ty said.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked, wiping my hands on a towel. I always expected the negative. I was working on changing that, but it was hard when dead bodies seemed to be turning up everywhere.

  “Everything’s fine,” Ty said. “Come on out.”

  I walked toward him, and he placed his hand on the small of my back.

  Not that I noticed. No way.

  He led me to the middle of the diner and stopped.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Trixie Matkowski, the owner of the Silver Bullet. Let’s show her our appreciation for her generosity.”

  Ty started to clap, and everyone chimed in. Then they started singing. They all knew the wo
rds, like some fraternity song. I was too embarrassed to catch a lot of the words, but it was something about the sweetest gal in the precinct, who cooked like a dream and was always waiting for her cop to come home. A little sexist, but okay . . . maybe it was an old song before the women’s movement.

  As I caught more of the words, I decided that it was a little tongue-in-cheek. In fact, several of the cops couldn’t get the words out as they were laughing too hard, probably thinking of how their wife or significant other would react.

  At the end of the song, they clapped, and I clapped back at them. They had come into the diner wet and tired, and now they were leaving drier, fed, and maybe less stressed.

  I bowed and motioned to Juanita, who was looking through the pass-through window, to join me.

  “I’m not the only one who deserves your thanks. My two excellent employees, Juanita and Chelsea, hurried down here to help.”

  I pointed to Chelsea, who was caught flirting with a cute state trooper. She lowered her head and turned crimson.

  “And an extra thanks to Bettylou and Nancy, your waitresses.” I took a deep breath. “And I hope that you find out soon what happened to Mr. Burrows, and Claire Jacobson, too.”

  “We will,” Ty said confidently, speaking for the crowd.

  I didn’t doubt that Ty would move heaven, earth, and especially Sandy Harbor to find the killer or killers.

  Little did he know that I was going to do the same thing.

  Chapter 5

  Reality was setting in. The body of beautiful Claire Jacobson was found not far from my property. Another body was discovered in my cottage, the Jacobson cottage. People were going to catch wind of this and not want to stay.

  Or my only customers would be reporters.

  Reporters were flocking to the sheriff’s department and to the Sandy Harbor Lure in droves. It wasn’t going to be long before they came to the Point.

  I planned to put Clyde and Max in charge of paparazzi removal.

  Ty walked me back to the double doors leading into the kitchen, his hand warm on my back.

  “Ty, I’m wondering . . . Do you think that Mr. Burrows and Claire Jacobson were killed by the same person? I mean, they both were connected to Cottage Eight. That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?”

  His hand dropped from my back, and, if he had false teeth, those would have dropped, too.

  “That’s kind of a stretch.” He shrugged. “Maybe there’s a connection. We don’t know yet.”

  “Would you tell me when you find out?”

  He hesitated. “Trixie—”

  “Ty, I owe Claire. She was years older than I when she went missing, but I owe her. She was good to me. I want to find out what happened to her.”

  “I hope you don’t plan on doing anything stupid. Leave the investigating to the professionals.”

  He stepped closer to me, and I had to crane my neck to look up. I’m not a short person. I’m five foot eight. But he was trying to intimidate me.

  Good luck with that.

  “Trixie, you manage your diner, and I’ll look for the killer or killers.”

  “Are you saying that the little woman should keep to the kitchen?” I crossed my arms in front of my chest. Okay, that was a cheap shot, but it was a good shot.

  “I didn’t say that, and you know it,” he snapped.

  “Let me help you investigate.” I’d made a promise in that cabin when I came across Burrows, and I intended to keep it.

  “Do you see all those people out there? The ones that you fed and who mainlined your coffee all night? They will all work on this case. And Claire’s case, too. What can you offer?”

  “I care, Ty. I care.”

  “They do, too.”

  “Not as much as I do.”

  “Stay out of it. And you’d better not interfere with the official investigation.” He spoke through gritted teeth, a habit of his now and then.

  I’d just have to do it alone. On my own. I walked away from him, back to the kitchen. It looked as though he was going home.

  Since I got married to a cheater at the tender age of twenty-one, I’d been on my own.

  And alone. Even when I was married to Deputy Doug, I felt alone.

  Finding one or two murderers should be a piece of cake.

  “Trixie, let me walk you out,” Juanita said. “Cindy Sherlock is here. I just saw her car. She can help us clean up this mess. You deserve some rest.”

  Cindy, the other cook, had come, too. I just loved my staff!

  How could I leave when there were dirty dishes everywhere, stacked in precarious piles by the industrial dishwasher? The machine would be working overtime tonight.

  “I should help with the dishes.”

  “No. We’ll take care of everything. I insist,” Juanita said. “You go and rest. You’re frazzled from the diner’s extra customers and from stumbling onto a crime scene. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  Once outside, Juanita stopped. “Trixie, how about hiring someone to bus tables? Then that person could load and run the dishwasher.”

  “I totally agree, Juanita. Wish I’d thought of it. I’ll call Joan Paris and put an ad in the Lure for a bus person/dishwasher.” That would give me an excuse to press her for more information and make plans for the book club.

  “Wonderful. Clyde and Max do help with the dishes most of the time, but they are going to be busy when all the cottages are full.”

  I nodded. “I’ll take care of it immediately.”

  Juanita went back into the diner, and instead of going right to the Big House, I walked to Cottage Eight.

  The sun was shining. The lake was sparkling and was a perfect turquoise color. The recent rain had made the sand on the beach perfectly flat. There were no footprints on it.

  I stopped in my tracks. Cottage Eight was wrapped like a Christmas present in bright yellow tape with big black letters that said CRIME SCENE, DO NOT CROSS.

  Now, that ought to attract a plethora of renters—not!

  Who on earth would want to bring their family on a vacation with a “crime scene cottage” smack dab in the middle of their campground?

  It’d certainly put a damper on their fun.

  I got my cell phone out of my pocket and phoned Ty Brisco.

  “Yeah, Trixie?”

  “How long will the crime scene tape be wrapped around Cottage Eight?”

  “No idea.”

  “C’mon, Ty. Give me some sort of time frame. I have renters coming in.”

  “Sorry. I don’t have a clue. The tape will be there until it’s decided that we have every bit of evidence from it that we need.”

  “Wow. Way to go with information, Ty.”

  “Your help will not speed up the investigation, so find some patience behind Door Number Three and let the professionals do it.”

  I wanted to toss my phone into Lake Ontario. No, I wanted to toss Ty Brisco into Lake Ontario.

  “Yeah, right,” I said like a Valley girl, and clicked him off.

  I looked at Mr. Farnsworth’s bait shop that was next to the diner. Ty was renting the upstairs apartment, and I could see him looking out of the big window toward me.

  Glancing up, I saw Ty wave at me. I was so ticked that I didn’t even feel like lifting my hand in response.

  As I walked to the Big House, I got to thinking. To be fair, I should notify the upcoming renters about the murder that took place and about the taped-up crime scene cottage.

  My stomach sank. I didn’t want to do that.

  The next thing I should do was get started on the investigation, but what?

  I walked the grass in the vicinity of my motion sensor light, thinking that I could discover footprints where I’d seen someone running. Or maybe even tire tracks. I knew I’d heard a car start that night. Maybe it was the get
away car.

  Maybe I shouldn’t disturb any tracks.

  I’d be careful.

  Walking past the end of my property, I saw grass matted down in two tracks—tracks that a car would make. I walked farther, searching the area for who knows what, but hoping that I’d find a clue.

  The car had driven through a field that was adjacent to my property. Wildflowers were blooming—sweet peas and wild daisies—but mostly there was just thick grass. I followed the tracks, and I didn’t have to walk far to see that the car had driven through the field up to the highway.

  I walked back to where the person would have gotten into the car and crouched down to look at the wet mud. The police weren’t here that I knew of, having concentrated their efforts mostly on the cottage.

  If I found something the police had missed, I could take it as a sign that I was supposed to continue my investigation, no matter what Ty said.

  Carefully, I stepped, looking for something . . . anything.

  Finally I saw something.

  I could see the bottom prints of the shoes that she wore; I’d decided it was a “she” because the footprint was too small to be that of a man. They weren’t heels, and I ruled out jogging shoes because there weren’t any treads. My guess was they were flats. And the woman wasn’t very large, because she didn’t sink very far into the mud.

  That was my nonprofessional opinion.

  Carefully, I walked around the shoe prints.

  “Trixie Matkowski, what the hell are you doing?”

  I jumped and let out a scream that would make the seagulls drop from the sky in terror. I was going to have a sore throat tomorrow from all this.

  “Ty, you scared the snot out of me.”

  “Good. You have no business over here.”

  “I was just going for a walk.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “And you, Deputy Brisco, were watching me out your apartment window.”

  He slipped his thumbs into the loops of his jeans and stood there looking casual, yet intimidating, yet gorgeous.

  And totally sexy. Not that I noticed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you’re doing here.”