I glanced at her feet and saw a pair of blue heels with star cutouts showing a white background. Red and white straps wrapped across the front and up her ankle and the leather sparkled—almost like that cheap craft sparkle stuff Honey’s daughters played with. “Very patriotic,” I said. They were the ugliest things I’d ever seen—and I was a connoisseur of beautiful shoes, so I knew trends and hot styles. “Did you make them for the Fourth of July parade?”
“Yes. I wish there was a division for footwear in the state fair, and not just 4-H clothing. I know these would take first place!” She studied them with obvious satisfaction.
I listened to her mind-numbing discussion about shoe trends (most of it about three years out of date) for several more minutes before Honey beckoned me over. I’d never been so glad to talk to her in my life.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I need to go home. I thought maybe you could give me a ride and we could talk.” She gave me a significant look that had my curiosity shifting into overdrive.
“Yeah? I’d be happy to drop you home. I need to get some work done at the shop.” I turned to her mother-in-law, Lorraine. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk with you tonight. How are things going for you and Mark?” Her reply was much more interesting, and far more succinct, than Sheralyn’s.
The polite deed done, I dragged Honey out to my SUV. I managed to wait until the doors were closed before asking, “So, what did you learn?”
Honey grinned as if she had a great secret. “Wellll, I just put a bug in a couple of ears about Eric, asking about his auditing work. After they had talked it over for a few minutes, one of the ladies leans in and gives me this stage whisper, ‘You know he was working on an audit for Nova Cosmetics, don’t you? The board of directors hired him, and Anise was furious.’”
“Who’s Anise?” I’d heard of the cosmetics company, of course, but the name escaped me.
“The founder and CEO of Nova Cosmetics. She started it right out of high school and is a major employer in the area. Some of her employees probably stop by your shop for a muffin or Danish.”
I stopped at a corner and looked at Honey. “Anything else?”
Her eyes sparkled—she loved sharing gossip, and this sounded very relevant. “They indicated she’d thrown a fit about bringing in an independent auditor and said there was nothing wrong with her books and made such a commotion that most of the staff on her floor overheard it—even from their offices.”
I pulled back into the road. “Hmm. I wonder what she has to hide.”
“I don’t know, but I think we need to find out.”
We speculated on how we could approach Anise without drawing too much attention to ourselves.
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
¾ cup softened butter
¾ cup packed brown sugar
¾ cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond flavoring
Filling
1 3/4 cups raisins
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup water
1 pinch salt
1 tsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp cornstarch
2 Tbsp water
To Make the Dough: Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together; set aside. Cream the butter with 3/4 cup of the brown sugar and the white sugar. Beat in the eggs, milk and vanilla. Mix at high speed for two minutes, then reduce speed and gradually blend in the flour mixture. Refrigerate if you have time, dough will be sticky otherwise and require a little extra flour to be mixed into it for immediate use. Sometimes it still needs a little extra flour when you roll it out.
To Make Raisin Filling: Grind the raisins. (I cook my mixture for a few minutes to soften raisins, then whirl it in my blender for a few seconds before returning it to the pan before adding the cornstarch). In a medium saucepan combine the ground raisins, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup water, salt and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, and simmer for 3 minutes.
Combine the cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of the water and mix until smooth. Add to the raisin mixture and continue to simmer until thick. Remove from heat and let cool.
Preheat Oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease baking sheets.
On a floured surface, roll out the chilled dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut into 2 3/4 inch rounds (the ring off of a canning jar works great.) Place rounds on the prepared baking sheet. Place a couple of teaspoons of the raisin filling on the cookie round, spreading it out to within a ¼ inch of the edges and top with another cookie round. Crimp the edges closed.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 8 minutes. Allow cookies to cool on sheet until just barely warm.
Honey doesn’t care for raisins, so I make a cherry-pineapple variation for her.
To make the filling, reduce the amount of dried raisins in half and replace with dried cherries, reduce the sugar to ¼ cup, Add ½ cup of crushed pineapple and use juice from pineapple instead of water, prepare everything else as directed.
Every morning before I start work, and several times through the day, I check my website email to see if there are any new orders, or quote requests for a custom dessert. The site had been operational since May—thanks to Honey’s brilliant web design skills. It featured some of my most amazing cakes, a blog where I post pictures of newer creations and a list of my other products.
Once I had my store opened and the shelves at least mostly stocked for the day, I sat down to check my email again. I could hear Lenny moving around in the kitchen, humming as he frosted some cupcakes that had been ordered for a party that night.
Since we were still a new company—I loved being able to say we, now that Lenny was here—I didn’t receive a lot of electronic orders yet, but I had been giving out my card like crazy and things had started to trickle in.
I clicked my way into my mail program and my inbox smiling when I found a message from Anon E. Mouse. It should have been a clue, but I didn’t look that closely or read it aloud. Mouse? What a funny name, I thought instead. And I started to read:
I know you’ve been investigating the murder of Eric Hogan. You know Gary Roper is to blame. He’s hidden the murder weapon in the tack room of his barn. If you hurry, you’ll find it before he tries to get rid of it.
A friend.
Chills crawled across my shoulders. That was seriously odd.
Lenny came in carrying a tray of chocolate cupcakes, and his brow furrowed. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
I realized my expression showed my consternation and put on a smile, still not sure what I was going to do, and not wanting to drag him into it. “No, nothing’s wrong. How are those cakes for the wedding coming?”
“Fine. They just have a few minutes left in the oven.”
“Great. Did you package up the rest of those cupcakes for the customer?”
“Of course, they’re on the counter.”
“It’s so good having you here,” I told him. His lips twitched half-heartedly, though I wondered if he was getting bored with so much grunt work on easy stuff instead of working on our craft, or if it was the lingering sadness and depression from leaving Kat behind. He hadn’t been himself at all since he arrived in town.
“What else is on the docket?” he asked.
“I need to make a quick delivery of our day-old stuff to the food bank and run a couple of errands. I shouldn’t be long.” I’m not sure what it meant that I was keeping him in the dark and going to Honey to talk about the note I’d just gotten. After all, it wasn’t like Lenny would lecture me on following the law to the letter and turning the email over to the cops. But he would be worried about my safety, and I didn’t want him to get in trouble for knowing about the note and not stopping me if I decided to check it out.
I didn’t want to get so wrapped up in the case that I let things with my business slide, so I made myself finish my other errands before stopping by
Honey’s with a few cookies as bribes.
I found her hunched over her computer, typing code as fast as I could sprinkle cupcakes with chocolate jimmies. The dishes were still all over the kitchen counters and table, the milk and cereal set out, and a dirty pan—probably from George’s morning eggs. In addition, there was a box on the corner of the kitchen counter with a picture of a bird house on it.
“You planning to start feeding birds, too?” I asked when she looked up from her computer.
Honey blinked twice in surprise, as if trying to come out of her frenzy, then shook her head. “Cub Scout project. Jerry’s supposed to come over later this week and help Chance with it. George is helpless with tools.”
Jerry did woodworking in his spare time. He’d made the built-in shelves in her parlor shortly before I returned to town. “It’s good Chance has someone to help him. What are you working on?” I poured myself some coffee, and topped off her cup as I watched her type a few more incomprehensible phrases into the program, before saving it.
She turned to me. “A site for a family who raises show pigs.”
“Show pigs?” It took me a minute to figure out what she meant. “You mean like at the county fair?”
“Yeah, they’ve been major winners on the county and state level for years.” She shrugged and drained half her cup, before swiveleing her chair to face me. “Okay, so spill. What’s going on? I mean, I know Lenny’s at the shop so you don’t have to be there every second of every day, but you’re here for a reason.”
I pulled a chair over from the table and filled her in on the email I’d received.
“You think it’s legit? I mean, it sounds kind of fishy to me,” she said. “Why would they send the tip to you instead of Detective Tingey if it were legitimate?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds hokey enough that I know he’ll laugh it off. I don’t want to bother him unless it’s really there.”
“You sure about that?” Honey asked.
“Yeah. Care to go for a stroll on the east side of town tonight? I could pick you up around dusk.” I was going regardless of whether or not she joined me, but I’d like to have her company.
She considered for a moment and her dark eyes started to twinkle. “You bet. I need to get out for a while, don’t you think? All this sitting is bad for my figure. A walk sounds just about perfect.”
I grinned. “I’ll drive by and check out the area on my way back to the shop.” The fact that the location was way outside my usual drive was beside the point. A little detour wouldn’t hurt anyone.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Honey asked later that evening as we crept toward the barn. “What if we get caught?”
“Shhh.” Why was she talking about getting caught? Wouldn’t that be more likely to cause someone to catch us?
A cow mooed as we tiptoed past an enclosure, making me jump from surprise. Honey squeaked and covered her mouth. I hushed her again, and sidled up to the barn. The cloud cover made the night completely dark, so I could barely make out the silhouette of the building against the sky. My nose wrinkled as a light breeze whipped the smell of manure across me again—there must have been a pile somewhere nearby.
Finally we reached the corner and I started feeling my way around it. “The door has to be here somewhere,” I said as softly as I could manage.
“I think we’re on the right side.”
It was hard to be sure, it was so disorienting in the darkness. My drive-by earlier in the day came in handy. After we followed around the corner of the barn, I found the door and opened it in relief. The sweet smell of hay, the musty interior and the putrid stink of horse droppings assaulted me, but I held my breath and moved inside.
“The email said it was in the tack room,” Honey reminded me.
“Great.” Thanks to my teenage crush that resulted in several horse-riding lessons the summer I was sixteen, I knew tack was the stuff you used when you harnessed the horse, but I was unclear whether that was for hooking it to wagons or for saddling them. It had been a long time since I’d ridden, and I hadn’t actually entered the barn all those years ago.
When the door closed behind us, I pulled out the mini-flashlight Honey had lent me and clicked the button. It didn’t work. It was even blacker in here than outside—if that was possible. “Your flashlight sucks, just so you know.” I tried the switch again, then tested to make sure it was screwed tightly together and it wasn’t just a connection problem. I held in a growl.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Of course it sucks; it’s not a flashlight, it’s a dark sucker. The batteries must already be full of darkness.” Honey’s voice held a laugh, reminding me of our childhood joke. A moment later, there was a soft light beside me.
I looked over and saw her holding her cell phone in front of her, using the backlight to illuminate the space. Wondering why I hadn’t thought of it myself, I pulled out my cell phone and turned it on. “You take that side, I’ll take this one.”
The light didn’t stretch very far, but by following close to the wall, I was able to see what was around me. A horse pawed the ground and there was rustling in the straw—were those mice running around? I found a door and tested it, but it was locked. I made a mental note to come back to it if we needed to and continued on.
“Come look at this,” Honey hissed to me from across the room. How had she gotten so far down the wall?
Sweat beaded on my forehead and started to run down my face as I turned toward her. It was stifling in here—didn’t the man care about his horses at all? Shouldn’t there be at least a window to let in a cross breeze? “What is it?”
Hinges squeaked and reflexively, I jumped, then looked back at the door to see if anyone was coming in. Stupid, I know, but if Mr. Roper caught us here we could be arrested. I really didn’t look good in jail-house orange, so I wanted to avoid that at all costs. Well, and there was the whole being locked up in jail thing, far, far away from my fondant tools. On the other hand, that would be better than being shot and having him bury our bodies.
Honey had left a door open and stepped inside. When I reached her, she was already coming out again. “Nothing in there. Of course, the whole thing could be a wild goose chase.”
“I know. That’s what I’m afraid of.” I stuck my head inside, but it was just bags of oats. I wondered why he bought it by the bag. Couldn’t he get them in bulk? Wouldn’t it be cheaper that way? “The gun could be buried between or under the bags,” I suggested.
She gave me a withering look. “If you think I’m moving two dozen fifty-pound bags of oats to look for a gun that might not even be there, you’re crazy. Especially since the email mentioned tack, not feed.”
Hard to argue with someone when they make a point like that. I returned to my side of the building and continued searching down the wall. I came upon the horse stalls and poked my head in each one, looking to see if maybe one of them was being used as a tack room. The first two were empty—not even sporting a fresh layer of straw. When I came up on the third one, a horse head loomed at me from out of the darkness and puffed air in my eyes. I squeaked and stepped back, right into Honey.
She pressed a hand to her chest. “You’re going to give me a heart attack. Cut it out!”
“Sorry. My heart’s not exactly calm, either.” The shot of adrenaline from that scare made me more anxious to get this over with. As if I hadn’t already been nervous enough, now my hands were shaky with anticipation.
We finished the row of stalls, finding several more horses, but nothing that looked like a tack room.
“There has to be someplace here to keep their saddles and stuff,” Honey said, her hands on her hips as she surveyed the room.
“Unless we plan to go into the stalls to check for a gun there, we’ve only got one place left to look,” I whispered. I gestured for her to follow me.
We returned to the locked door and I gave the handle another twist, but it didn’t budge. “Now what?” I asked.
Honey
looked at me and frowned. “I knew I’d have a need for this skill someday.” She reached up to her head, then knelt on one knee and stuck something in the key hole.
“Are you picking the lock?” I asked. What was this, a Nancy Drew mystery?
“I’m trying. I read something about it on the internet, but I’ve never tried it before.”
“You think it’ll actually work?” I asked.
“I guess we’ll see.” The minutes stretched and I checked my phone a couple of times to see how long it had been. I was just about to give up when she pumped her fist.
She stood and turned the knob. “We’re in.”
“I’m impressed. I didn’t think you’d get it.”
She chuckled. “Me either.”
She walked into the room and I followed.
Bingo. Tack.
The walls were covered with hooks filled with bridles and straps and a dozen things I didn’t even recognize. We started poking around the room, looking behind saddles, checking between and under the blankets that were piled in one corner and then we hit pay dirt. In the gleam of my cell phone backlight, I could see the pistol shining in all its silver glory.
Honey met my gaze and we did a high-five. I turned my phone back toward me and dialed Detective Tingey.
It rang four times before he picked up. “Hello, this is Detective Tingey.”
“Hi, this is Tess. I received an email tip earlier.” I didn’t realize until I heard his voice that I wasn’t sure how to explain what I was doing in Roper’s barn. I decided to ease into it.
He huffed. “Do not tell me you went searching for the killer.”
I hooked my finger into my belt loop and felt my eyes shift to the side—as if he could see me. “No, not the killer.”
My voice must not have been very convincing because his grew hard. “Tell me.”
“Well... the tip was that someone knew where the murder weapon is.” And I thought this was a good idea because…? Tingey was going to kill me. But not with the murder weapon—that was obviously evidence.
Pistols & Pies (Sweet Bites Book 2) (Sweet Bites Mysteries) Page 6
