by Donna Doyle
Sammy picked up her napkin and dabbed at her eye. “But how are you going to do that? None of us are detectives, unless one of you has a hidden talent you didn’t tell me about.”
Agnes held her head proudly in the air, tears still glistening in her bright eyes. “Maybe not, but I can tell you that I’ve watched every episode of Murder, She Wrote and Columbo.”
“That was over twenty years ago,” Linda pointed out.
“That’s true, but my grandson got me all set up with that streaming television service over the summer. It has all that on there and more. That new Sherlock is good, but I don’t think I have quite his talents.”
Even so, the idea seemed to be catching on. Sammy spotted a gleam in Viola’s eye. “I have quite a bit of experience myself, if you want to count all the mysteries I read in my spare time at the library. If you pick up any book by Rita Mae Brown or Lillian Jackson Braun, I can promise you I will have read it.”
“Those are just cozy mysteries,” Linda argued.
“But people die in them, and the killers are found,” Viola pointed out. “I’ve also read plenty of Agatha Christie, Mary Higgins Clark, and probably anyone else you can think of. You can learn anything when you pick up a book, even if it’s fiction.”
Linda looked as though she wanted to argue with this for a moment, but then she raised an eyebrow toward Sammy. “You know, if you need someone to crunch some numbers, I used to be an accountant.”
Sammy smiled at them all. They were such wonderful ladies, and even in the face of tragedy they were thinking about what needed to be done next. “I hope it doesn’t come down to that.”
“Doesn’t matter either way. We’re all a team now, and we’re going to get this figured out. You’re in too, right Helen?”
The restaurant owner was only a few years younger than the Grandmas, and Sammy thought she looked like she would fit right in with them. The biggest difference was that she insisted on continuing to work. “You bet.”
“Great! I know things are crazy right now, and we’re all going to need at least a little time to grieve. Us Grandmas have already seen plenty in our lifetimes, so we should be ready to go by tomorrow. How about we get together tomorrow afternoon to get started?” Linda slapped the table with authority.
“Make it a little later in the day and we can meet at the diner after it’s closed,” Helen offered.
Sammy smiled through her tears. “I’ll serve up all the cake and goodies you gals can eat.”
The women all nodded their heads and agreed, discussing what time would be best for everyone. Sammy hadn’t known the Grandmas for very long, but already she felt as though she was an honorary part of their group. They didn’t have to stick up for her or help her out with this, but she knew they would even if she tried to say no.
Sheriff Jones interrupted their conversation as he stepped up to the table, his thumbs tucked into his belt. “If you ladies would excuse us, I need to speak to Ms. Baker for a moment.”
Sammy stood slowly, her legs shaking underneath her. She had talked with Sheriff Jones several times before, but it was still intimidating when she knew she might be a suspect. She forced a smile at the other ladies. “Why don’t you go on home and get some rest? It’s already so late.”
“Are you sure?” Agnes asked, giving a piercing stare to Sheriff Jones. “We can stick around.”
“It’ll be fine, really,” he assured them. If Jones was interested in putting her in handcuffs, he probably would have already done it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sammy quietly said.
* * *
The interview with Sheriff Jones was fairly routine, and he seemed to believe her when she told him she had left nuts out of each and every one of the puddings. Still, she had already been exhausted, and the effort of going over all the details drained the rest of her remaining energy. He let her go but remained behind to talk to some of the kitchen staff.
On the spur of the moment, Sammy exited through the pool room. It might not have been the right thing to do, but she felt that if she stood there for a moment and watched the brightly lit water lap at the sides of the pool she might be able to pay a small homage to the strong, spritely woman who had been a part of her life for such a short time.
Yellow police tape stretched from one wall to the other across the room and over the top of the pool, segmenting it off from the concrete walkway that led to the exit. Large, wet boot prints led away from the scene on the other side of the pool, slowly drying as the water absorbed into the concrete. Sammy knew this was not how Maureen would want her precious rec center to be remembered, and she could only hope that the fundraiser would be enough. As she stood there, inhaling the thick scent of chlorine, she imagined what it must have been like that fateful day when the four women met during water aerobics classes. In her mind’s eye, she could see them slowly start talking to one another, building their bonds over underwater arm curls and kicks. It must have been a beautiful, magical thing for the four of them, and now at least part of it was over.
Just as she turned to leave, something floating in the water caught Sammy’s eye. She turned back to see a scrap of paper bumping up against the side of the pool, the small waves created by the filter forcing it into a corner. Sammy glanced around. Nobody was watching. On an instinct that she couldn’t resist, she swiped it out of the water and headed for her car.
5
Make a List
“I hope the sheriff wasn’t too hard on you,” Agnes fussed, her thin eyebrows knitting together. “He didn’t look very pleased when he left last night.”
“That’s the way Alfie looks anytime he’s on the case,” Helen explained as she pulled a stack of dessert plates out. “But he’s never as mean as he looks.”
“Alfie?” Linda questioned.
“He grew up across the street from my house,” Helen said with a smile. “Of course, he wants everyone to call him Sheriff now, but I just can’t. He’s always going to be Alfie to me.”
“Well, good. Then maybe we can use your connection to him if we need to.”
Sammy smiled as she brought out a layer cake she had made with the leftover batter and frosting from her creation for the fundraiser. She had been concerned about how this meeting would go, simply because she didn’t think there was much the five of them could do to figure out Maureen’s death. But as they all sat down and chatted like old friends, she knew it would be all right. They might not be professional detectives, but they could at least have a good time while they tried.
“Oh, Sammy! This is gorgeous!” Viola gushed as she turned her plate around to look at her piece of cake from all angles.
“It’s just a vanilla layer cake, nothing special.” It had seemed like a shame to waste the extra batter, and her initial idea had been to put it up for sale with her other baked goods. But it was the perfect size for them to share, and it seemed a fitting tribute to Maureen.
“Nothing special, my foot! You put Carly’s Cupcakes to shame.” She swallowed her cake and tapped the end of her fork on the table. “Now, how do we need to go about this? I understand you’ve solved a mystery or two lately, Ms. Baker.”
Sammy lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “I just got lucky, that’s all. But I do think we should discuss who might be interested in killing Maureen. We need to find someone who had the right motivation to do such a horrible thing. Did she have any enemies?” She had brought a notebook and a pen with her to the meeting, and she sat poised to write. Notes always seemed to help when she was trying to figure something out.
Linda ran her fingers back and forth over the large pearls of her necklace as she thought. “I can’t really think of anyone. I mean, Maureen wasn’t particularly liked by a lot of people, but I don’t think they would have killed her over it.”
“Why didn’t they like her?” Sammy was intrigued.
“She simply wasn’t the type of woman who sat down and shut up. Maureen always stood up for what she believed in, and she never ac
cepted excuses. She would never bend morals for the sake of profit or fun or popularity.” Agnes smiled at remembering her friend. “She was as hard as they come.”
“Oh, and she loved to argue,” Viola added. “There wasn’t a topic she didn’t know how to debate. If she wanted to save a tree from getting cut down in the park, then she could find a reason to keep it from happening. Maureen always came out on top.”
“More recently was that land developer…what’s his name?” Linda paused with a forkful of cake in the air as she tried to remember.
“Andrew Herzog,” Viola answered instantly as she scraped the last of the icing from her plate.
“A land developer?” Sammy questioned, writing down the man’s name. She had heard the name, but she couldn’t imagine what a man like that would have to do with Maureen.
“It’s been a whole big thing over the last several months,” Viola expounded. “It all started because of the rec center, you see. Herzog’s goal is to build houses, hotels, and office complexes all over this city, and he doesn’t care what he knocks out of the way to do it. The rec center just happened to be on his list of buildings.”
“Maureen wouldn’t stand for it,” Agnes volunteered. “She was the one handling that end of things, so I don’t know all the details, but I do know that he wanted to build some high-rise condo on that spot.”
“But do you really think a business deal is worth killing over?” Helen mused. She had taken the smallest piece of cake, citing that she was trying to watch her figure, but now she cut herself a second one. “And I wouldn’t think Maureen would even be the one in charge of making that decision.”
“That never mattered to Maureen,” Linda advised. “She didn’t require an official capacity to state her opinion or how she felt about the issue. As a matter of fact, she and Mr. Herzog were arguing about it last night, right after the fundraiser had started.”
Sammy was writing as quickly as she could now. “They did? What did they say?”
“I didn’t catch the whole thing. I had just come back from fetching some eggnog for myself when I saw him talking to her. Even when I wasn’t within earshot, I could tell that things weren’t going well. I came up just in time to hear him say that old buildings needed to be moved out of the way, and so did cranky old women like Maureen!”
“That certainly sounds suspicious,” Helen agreed, nodding her head.
“Did she tell you any details?” Sammy asked.
Linda sighed. “No, I’m afraid she didn’t. And I didn’t push her, because I knew she would just want to get the event underway and move past anything negative. Come to think of it, I don’t even know why Mr. Herzog would have been at the party, anyway, not if he wanted the place torn down.”
“It’s definitely a start.” Sammy flipped to a clean sheet of paper, since she had already filled the first one. “Anything else? Anyone else who might have been after her?”
The ladies sat back against the cushioned booth, thinking. “I really don’t know of anyone,” Agnes said. “As I said, most people didn’t like her, but it wasn’t anything worth murder.”
“Fair enough. Maybe we can talk about what she had done over the last few days. There could be a clue there.” She was grasping at straws now, but they couldn’t just leave it at one suspect and call it a closed case.
“I know she went to the doctor a few days ago,” Viola offered, “but that was just a routine checkup. I know because I drove her. The doctor said she was healthy as a horse and stubborn as a mule.”
“She went to a church meeting,” Agnes said, eyeing the rest of the cake. “She was relatively quiet, only arguing with the pastor and a few of the deacons about little things. Nothing unusual.”
Linda adjusted her earrings. “She told me that she took her granddaughter Christmas shopping over at Gibb’s Department Store. Last year she went over to the big mall in Oak Hills and stayed at that fancy hotel while her daughter’s house was getting remodeled, but there was that big burglary by an insider at the hotel. That put the kibosh on her holiday traveling for sure.”
“Speaking of Gibb’s, did you see how terrible the store Santa is this year?” Viola asked, her tongue sharpening. “He doesn’t seem to care about the children at all. I took my grandson there last weekend, hoping they had the same sweet old man that has been there in the past, but this one didn’t seem to care at all about what Johnny wanted for Christmas.”
“You know, you’re not the only one to complain.” Agnes was a sweet and almost ditzy lady, but she suddenly looked angry. “I’ve heard people all over town talking about how terrible he is, that he doesn’t do the whole routine of asking if they’ve been good boys and girls and what would they like and that they have to make sure they go to bed on Christmas Eve. He just pastes on a smile for the picture and waves the kid on.”
“I think Mr. McLaughlin must have gotten some sort of bargain basement Santa this year,” Linda affirmed. “It’s a shame that the stores care more about how much profit they make than doing something good for the community. I know Gibb’s is a store, not a charity or a church, but our experiences there still mean a lot to us. I remember taking my own children there to sit on Santa’s lap. It was something we always looked forward to, and I was sad when it was over.”
“If you think the Santa is a shame, then have you seen the ‘specials’ they’ve brought in?” Viola scoffed. “The place is full to the brim with extra clothes, and they’re priced so well that I could probably outfit my entire family even on my retiree’s budget, but I don’t think they would last past the first wash.”
Sammy cleared her throat. “As interesting as all this is, I don’t think it’s going to help us figure out what happened to Maureen,” she said gently. She had taken note of the places the women had mentioned, even though there didn’t seem to be anything odd about them. “Maybe we could do what the police did and make a list of everyone who was there, especially anyone who might have been acting a little strange.”
“Why don’t you just go to Jones and ask? He seems to like you,” Helen suggested.
The other women hooted and rubbed shoulders like a bunch of teenagers.
Sammy’s face flushed. “I don’t think there’s anything like that going on. From the way he looks at me, he would just as soon I go running back to New York than to stay here and cause trouble for him. Besides, he would never give me that sort of information. I’m sure it’s police business.”
“Well, since you mentioned it, what about Carly Anderson?” Helen asked.
Linda raised an eyebrow. “From Carly’s Cupcakes?”
“That’s the one,” Helen affirmed. “She was lurking around those Christmas puddings like a vulture. Maybe she was jealous that you were the one asked to provide the desserts for this shindig, and it was no secret that Maureen was allergic to nuts. She could have slipped one in.”
“I don’t know,” Sammy said, although she made a note of the name. “There would be no guarantee that Maureen would eat it, and that seems like a pretty extreme way to go about framing me just to get me out of the way.” She also really didn’t like the idea that Maureen could have gotten caught up in something that was about her. That was the most uncomfortable thought of all.
“But think about it,” Helen advised. “You were already accused of poisoning someone with your baked goods before, when the sheriff got sick. You and your reputation recovered from that pretty well, but I can see how it could have given Carly an idea or two.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, but I think we’ll leave it as a last resort if nothing else comes up.”
“So what do we do now?” Agnes asked, clapping her hands together and looking at the group. “Hit the streets and search for clues?”
“In a way, I guess so,” Sammy agreed. “Can you ladies contact those who she knew best? Friends, family, people she knew from church, and see if they know anything? They’ll be more willing to talk to you than anyone else.”
The Grandmas nodded the
ir agreement.
“Great. I guess I’ll talk to the land developer and see what I can find out. I’ll have to come up with some excuse to go there.”
Helen gestured at the diner around them. “Why not ask him about building a new place for Just Like Grandma’s? It’s the sort of thing he’ll be interested in, considering this place has been here for about a hundred years. There’s nothing really wrong with it that a little bit of regular maintenance doesn’t take care of, but he’ll only be thinking about the money.”
Viola tapped her finger on the table. “I can talk with her neighbors, see if they saw anything suspicious.”
“Sounds like we’ve got it all covered,” Sammy said with a smile. “Let’s see what we can find out.”
6
Check It Twice
Sammy had the next day off. It was good timing, since that allowed her to explore the circumstances of Maureen’s death without having to interfere with her work time, but it also didn’t give her much headway in making appointments and planning her day. Fortunately, it had taken only a simple phone call to get in with Andrew Herzog.
“Oh, you look lovely!” Helen enthused as Sammy came down the stairs from her apartment and into the kitchen. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so dressed up.” Johnny gave her a thumbs-up from over by the griddle.
Smoothing down the dark blue skirt suit and wishing she had some more comfortable shoes to match it, Sammy felt her cheeks flush a little. “I thought I should look professional if I’m going to pretend to be interested in spending a bunch of money with this man. He might not believe me if I show up in an apron covered with flour.”
