Buried in Beignets

by J. R. Ripley

  Who was I kidding? I was counting on them!

  FIVE

  Thank goodness there were no okra burgers. I hadn’t skipped breakfast, but I had barfed it up in the café, so despite the disquieting morning, I was famished. ‘What have you got, Sis?’ Whatever it was boiling away there on the stove behind Donna’s back, it didn’t smell too bad.

  She poured the concoction into a glass baking dish and popped it in the oven. Twenty minutes later, Donna slid a deep-rimmed plateful in front of me at the kitchen table. I looked down at it, then back up at her. ‘Dare I ask what this is?’ I scrunched up my nose, took a closer sniff and then instantly wished I hadn’t. ‘What on earth!’

  Donna chuckled, wiping her hands on the #1 Mom apron hooked over her neck and around her waist.

  A gelatinous mess of browns, greens and reds lay like, well, this morning’s barf, on my plate. I clutched my spoon, wondering if I dare.

  The boys, fourteen-year-old Connor and twelve-year-old Hunter, chortled. Yeah, I was one funny aunt.

  ‘What is this?’ I looked at Andy but he maintained a lawyerly silence.

  ‘Go ahead, try it,’ my sister insisted, pulling up a chair at the small kitchen table. The kitchen was quite cozy itself with a fifties atmosphere to it, discounting the microwave and blender and other modern appurtenances. The stove was definitely out of a page from the fifties.

  My spoon dangled over the plate.

  ‘It’s intestines!’ cried Connor.

  ‘Yeah,’ echoed Hunter. ‘It’s intestines, Aunt Maggie!’ He bounced, his pine chair scraping against the oak floor.

  ‘Easy there, Hunter,’ Andy said.

  I blanched. ‘In-intestines?’ But they were strictly vegetarian! Weren’t they? Had I missed something?

  Donna scolded her boys. ‘Now, now, don’t go freaking poor Aunt Maggie out.’ She looked pointedly across the table at Andy. ‘She’s had a very difficult morning.’

  I knew from my brief discussion with Andy and Donna before lunch that they hadn’t broken the news of my discovery of a dead body in the beignet shop to my nephews yet.

  Donna turned to me. She held up a spoonful of muck and stuck it in her mouth. She followed this with some mmm-mmm-good noises. ‘See?’ She smacked her lips, then went back for more.

  ‘It’s veggie haggis,’ explained Andy, breaking his silence. ‘I suppose,’ he said, looking at his sons, ‘you could think of it as vegetarian intestines.’

  I squirmed, looking for the exit. ‘I wish everybody would quit saying intestines,’ I squeaked. My stomach had done one hundred and thirty-two flip-flops since Connor had first blurted the word out. I know, I’d counted.

  Donna gave the boys one of those mother-type looks that seem to be genetically encoded and both boys quickly sobered.

  ‘Sorry, Aunt Maggie,’ Connor said.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry, too,’ Hunter said with an accompanying shoulder shrug.

  Believe you me, nobody was sorrier than I was, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I knew what haggis was – stuff like sheep’s heart, liver and lungs. What I didn’t know was what my sister’s vegetarian version was. I recognized some bits, like onion, carrots, red lentils and oats, maybe some mushroom and peppers. But there was no telling for sure.

  And there was nothing to do but eat.

  I had to set a good example for the nephews, didn’t I?

  Especially now, because soon enough they might be hearing how a dead guy had been found in my new café with my missing rolling pin between his legs. My role modeling record would go right out the window. Which was where I wished I could go right then. Head first.

  I judged the distance from where I sat to the kitchen sink and the window that framed it. Yep, I could definitely manage the leap.

  My spoon somehow found its way to my lips. ‘Mmmm,’ I said. ‘You’re right. This isn’t bad at all.’ I’d rinse my mouth with kerosene later. ‘You’ll have to give me the recipe, Sis.’ So I can burn it.

  She promised she would. I could only hope she’d forget that promise. If Donna did write it down for me, the next thing you’d know she’d be expecting me to brew up a deadly batch for the next family gathering hosted at my apartment. Please, don’t let that happen. My apartment’s foul enough as it is.

  After lunch, if you could call it that, Connor and Hunter went back to their bedrooms to study. Donna was homeschooling my nephews. They had a place to study at the store downtown as well because Donna spends so much of her time there running Mother Earth/Father Sun Grocers, too.

  Donna and Andy lived in a ramshackle 1870s-era house plopped down on a rare one-acre lot a few blocks from the Historic Old Town, as the locals liked to think of it. I liked to think of it as just plain old and desperately in need of a DIY Network makeover, preferably by the guy from House Crashers. That man could crash my house anytime. Table Rock Crashers, anyone?

  Andy’s phone chirped and he fished it out of his shorts. Hey, they’re hippies, not Luddites. His brows shot up as he listened intently. Donna and I waited and wondered.

  ‘I see,’ he said finally. He rang off and laid the phone on the table.

  I raised an eyebrow in question.

  ‘That was the Table Rock Police Department.’ Andy had told me he had a friend there. ‘It’s definitely blood on your rolling pin, Mag.’

  Ouch.

  He continued relaying what he’d been told. ‘Rick Wilbur was definitely struck on the back of the head with a blunt weapon. You know what that means …’

  As his voice trailed off in one direction, my thoughts trailed off in another. And it wasn’t a good one. Something told me this was going to make me Suspect Number One. I could see the line-up now. Turn to the left, turn to the right. Step forward.

  Face the firing squad …

  I shook myself. This trail was leading no place good, way too fast for comfort.

  ‘Of course, they don’t have official autopsy results yet. Nothing conclusive to say that’s what killed him. Nothing to even say that’s his blood on the rolling pin.’ He gave me his best lawyerly face. The one that said, Don’t worry, everything’s going to be just fine.

  But all three of us knew that was a load of, well, veggie haggis.

  Donna’s Vegetarian Haggis

  (for those with intestinal fortitude)

  Here’s the recipe I got from Sis:

  1 large carrot, finely chopped

  6 medium mushrooms, chopped

  1 large turnip

  2 cups red lentils

  1 cup kidney beans

  1 cup of rolled oats

  1 cup buckwheat

  1 cup of nuts (mix peanuts, almonds, walnuts)

  1 cup vegetarian suet

  1 tsp black pepper

  1 1/2 cups vegetable stock

  2 tbsps oil

  1 tbsp lemon juice

  Salt to taste

  Dash of soy sauce

  Dash of gravy browning

  Fry the onion, carrot, turnip and mushrooms in a large frying pan or wok. Cook the lentils in stock and reduce. Add the cooked lentils, kidney beans and nuts to the onion mixture. Stir-fry the rolled oats and buckwheat for several minutes, then add to the other mixture with the soy sauce, lemon juice, suet, gravy browning and black pepper and simmer for a few minutes until the liquid begins to thicken. Pour into an ovenproof dish and allow to stand for approximately twenty minutes, then cook in a medium oven for thirty minutes and … enjoy?

  SIX

  ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’

  I nodded as firmly as I could. Frankly, I was feeling a bit jellyfishy – it was almost as if Mom was watching covertly over my shoulder.

  But the answer was no, I was not going to be all right. ‘Hey,’ I said aloud, sitting in Donna’s Mini Cooper on the street outside my fledgling beignet business, ‘I’m Maggie Miller.’ I smiled. ‘Of course I’m all right. I get things done. And I’m going to get through this,’ I insisted, looking directly at my sister. ‘You’ll see.�
�� I waved up the street. While the shops were open, it was that time of the day when things got hot and quiet. ‘Trust me – tomorrow morning there’s going to be a line out the door – people clamoring for a plate of hot beignets!’

  Or my head on a platter when the newspaper comes out with my mugshot on the front page. Not a pretty thought. I sort of liked my head where it was.

  Donna’s nod looked as false as my own. ‘You want me to come in with you?’

  I popped open the passenger-side door and checked for traffic. It was mid-afternoon and the Arizona sun was letting us know it. One hundred degree heat baked the already baked bricks that lined Laredo Street. Laredo is just a couple of blocks over from and runs perpendicular to Main Street – Table Rock’s main thoroughfare.

  Main and Laredo make up two sides of Table Rock Town Square. There’s a bronze statue there of our fair town’s founder, Arthur B. Honicker. I can see it if I stand on the sidewalk outside my café and squint. They say he founded Table Rock as a haven from religious and political persecution. The religion he founded, still operating out of an abandoned feed store just up the road, is something called The Universal Guiding Light. Sounds more like a soap opera to me. They say the middle initial B in Honicker’s name stands for Brigham. I say it stands for Bonkers.

  But back to the heat. A few more degrees and I swear the blacktop in the alley was going to turn into black goo. I’d seen it happen before and the footprints I had left in the alley behind the shop proved it. I’d lost a good pair of flip-flops that day. I wondered if this heat wave would ever end and if we’d get back to that fabulous Mediterranean climate that this part of Arizona boasted about.

  ‘No,’ I said finally. ‘You’ve got plenty enough to do of your own.’ I dusted my hands on my shorts. ‘I’ve got to handle this alone.’ We both looked through the plate glass window of Maggie’s Beignet Café. I could see several men and one lone woman chatting inside.

  It seemed the long arm of the law had taken up residence. This was one thing I was going to have to handle immediately. After all, I had a business to open. I couldn’t open my doors tomorrow with a shop full of cops in the place. Unless they were paying customers, of course.

  I had a nearly insurmountable amount of work to get done. I hadn’t even been able to complete my dry run with Clive.

  Clive. I hoped the poor man was OK. But it was only a fainting spell. I mean, sure, it was a fainting spell brought on by the sight of a dead guy in a box. But still, a faint is just a faint. Happens all the time, right?

  ‘See you, Sis.’ I tapped on the car roof and crossed the street as the Mini disappeared up the road. It was warm inside the shop.

  Highsmith was speaking in low tones to a tony young woman in a black power suit. She looked like she’d look more at home in the Scottsdale Neiman Marcus than she did the streets of downtown Table Rock. That tailored pleated peplum jacket and those matching black pleated peplum cigarette pants she was rocking were surely Alexander McQueen originals.

  And if I didn’t know better – and I admit I often didn’t – I’d swear she and Highsmith were flirting. Every time she swung her hips, the jacket’s teasing red lining flashed and his eyes followed. If this kept up, the ape would be drooling all over my clean floor. Well, mostly clean. For the second time today, I thought I might barf.

  Then I wondered if anybody had bothered to clean up that barf I’d left earlier or if I was going to have to do the deed myself. But I’d worry about that later. Right now, I had another deed to do. I strode between luster and lustee. ‘Detective Highsmith,’ I said loudly. ‘You’re back.’ I crossed my arms over my chest. ‘Come to plant some more evidence?’

  There was a smirk on his mug. ‘I don’t have to,’ he said rather smugly. ‘Judging by what we found this morning, I’d say you’d done a good enough job of that yourself.’

  Oh, right. The rolling pin. My rolling pin. The one I hadn’t been able to find yesterday. ‘Yeah, well,’ I blustered. ‘It’s all circumstantial.’

  He looked like he didn’t know what I meant. To tell the truth, I didn’t know what I meant. Circumstantial is one of those words you hear tossed around on cop shows, though, so it had to mean something important. ‘You know what I mean,’ I said.

  Tailored lady finally broke her silence. ‘So you work here.’

  ‘I’m the owner,’ I replied, pushing my hand out. ‘Maggie Miller.’

  She ignored me and turned back to Highsmith. ‘She’s the one who reported the murder.’

  He nodded.

  I held my hand out an embarrassing second longer, then drew it back. Sheesh, this was the second time in one day that someone had refused to shake my hand. I looked it over carefully.

  My nails could use a coat of polish and I had gnawed a little at my right thumb back at the station. But I had a right to be nervous. She couldn’t possibly be holding that against me, could she?

  I looked at those manicured fingernails and the tips of those pedicured toes of hers as they peeked out of those Kors Collection peep-toe pumps. Yep, she could.

  ‘Her prints were on the murder weapon?’ She looked Latin but her English was muy bueno. Not a trace of an accent. I was betting she probably bought her grammar the same place she bought everything else she wore – some snooty high-end place that beignet shop owners could never afford but always dream about.

  ‘Yep.’ He looked at her brunette locks, then at me.

  ‘The rolling pin? Of course my prints are on it. It’s my rolling pin.’ Highsmith had instructed an officer to collect my prints as soon as we’d gotten to the station.

  It had taken me a solid twenty minutes in Donna’s hall bathroom scrubbing away with a bottle of Mrs Meyers and a hand towel to get all the ink off my fingertips. I was going to owe Sis a new pump bottle. I’d pretty much polished hers off. I ran a finger past my nose. I could still smell the lemon verbena. Come to think of it, I probably was going to owe her a new hand towel, too. That fingerprint ink might prove difficult to get out of unbleached organic Egyptian cotton.

  ‘Have you spoken to Judge Wiggins yet?’ Highsmith asked.

  She shook those lustrous tresses of hers and I swear every cop in the place stopped to watch. Even the woman. ‘Not yet. He’s down in Flagstaff.’ She pulled back her sleeve and checked a slender, diamond-encrusted watch. ‘I’m meeting with him later this afternoon.’ She touched his cuff. ‘Let’s catch up after.’

  Highsmith nodded. ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘’Bye, Veronica,’ waved a middle-aged officer with a buzz cut who stood framed in the doorway leading to the storeroom.

  She tossed a languid hand in the air as she fluttered out my front door. Quite a majestic gesture really. She’d probably practiced it in her bathroom mirror.

  ‘So that’s the famous Veronica, eh?’ I quipped. I had no idea who she was or why she was being treated so regally. We watched as a man in blue held open the door to a dark blue Mercedes. She slid behind the wheel and melted into traffic with barely a lookout for oncoming cars.

  Sure, I thought, drivers probably sense her impending royal presence and stop just to let her go by. OK, I might have been a little bit jealous. It’s not that I wanted to be her. It’s not that I wanted Highsmith to want me. Though for a moment there earlier I’d thought …

  I gave myself a mental slap. No, I was not going there.

  I didn’t know what it was. But it was none of those things. Maybe I’d take up that haughty wave of hers. That looked pretty cool. Ice-woman cool.

  ‘You know her?’ Detective Highsmith asked, turning back to face me. Finally.

  ‘No,’ I replied with a shrug. ‘But I feel like I should.’ I looked around the shop. ‘Everybody else around here’ – at least those afflicted with the Y chromosome – ‘seems to treat her with a certain …’ I paused, couching my words, ‘… deference, shall we say?’

  I could have said ‘lecherous yearning’ but I was talking to Table Rock’s only detective. I was trying my best to
stay on his good side. He could be the one person keeping me this side of the slammer doors.

  He chuckled. ‘Veronica Vargas.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘The name means nothing to me.’

  ‘Table Rock’s attorney. Prosecuting attorney.’

  Why was he looking at me like that? ‘Prosecuting attorney? Why would a town the size of Table Rock even have a prosecuting attorney?’

  ‘Because VV’s papa is the mayor. Besides, it’s only part-time.’

  I hated her already. I could think of several things VV stood for besides Veronica Vargas. Venomous vixen, for one. ‘So,’ I said, going into fake nonchalance mode, ‘find anything new?’ Like vain viper for two.

  He leaned his elbows back against the countertop. ‘No. You still claim you have no idea what Rick Wilbur was doing in your backroom?’

  ‘I told you,’ I said sharply, ‘he was nice to me. Gave me a break on the rent. Maybe he thought he’d be nice again and help me unpack the chairs. He’s not still here, is he?’ I asked, shivering as I peered through the doorway to the storeroom.

  Detective Highsmith shook his head. ‘The coroner removed him some time ago.’

  Thank goodness for that. A dead guy in a box was a hard thing to work around.

  ‘You know, Ms Miller, the Wilburs have lived in Table Rock for generations. Rick Wilbur and his family have been nice to a lot of people in this town. He was well liked.’

  ‘Not by everybody,’ I shot back.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? You and he not getting along?’

  I made as sour a face as I could muster. ‘Of course not. I mean, of course we weren’t not getting along.’

  I took a mental step back. What the heck had I just said? ‘I mean, that’s not what I meant at all. What I meant,’ I said, gathering my wits back up, ‘was that there was at least one person in Table Rock who did not like Rick Wilbur.’ I pointed through the doorway to the storeroom. ‘In fact, I’d be willing to go out on a limb and say that somebody around here took a strong disliking to the man.’