Ice Cream Corpse

by Stacey Alabaster

  Pippa grinned at me and put her sunglasses back on. “I’m excited I might be able to make some money,” she said, rubbing her hands together.

  “I mean, what did you make of Rocky skipping town two years ago?” She was easier to distract than Levon.

  Pippa stopped and nodded. It wasn’t the greatest place to pause, given that we were on concrete with no shade above us from the sun. I could feel the heat rising off the pavement like an oven, practically burning through the rubber of my shoes. “Right after the freezer was returned,” Pippa said with a nod. “Looks like he had something to hide.” She glanced around. “I just wonder where he is hiding.”

  “We need to track him down,” I said, crossing my arms. “And no, not using old technology, either, before you go getting any ideas. We’re going to need to use computers and smartphones if we are going to find him. We need to use the internet.”

  Pippa held her hands up. “I can’t! It will be breaking my diet!”

  “Well, then you’ll just have to look over my shoulder while I use the internet then.”

  Pippa was about to argue, but I think it was too hot by then for her to bother. “Fine then,” she said, sweat beads forming on her forehead. “Let’s just get off this pavement and into some shade.”

  We decided to head to the library for the sole fact that it had the strongest air conditioning in town, and the entire place was dark and cold. So dark and cold that once I swore I saw a little mushroom growing out of the ceiling. It would be better than sitting in a boiling hot car, trying to find the information with my phone. I sighed with relief when I stepped through the glass doors and felt the chilly air.

  “Let’s go find a computer.”

  Pippa might as well have still been on her digital diet. The computer we found in the corner of the library was so old that I wasn’t even sure it WAS digital. It might have been analogue. I turned it on. It did have an internet connection, but a slow one.

  “I can’t look,” Pippa said, swiveling her chair around.

  “Well, I think you’re being ridiculous. But, if you insist, I’ll just read it out to you then.”

  It took about five minutes for Facebook and Twitter to finally load. Pippa had picked up a kid’s book about an owl and was flipping through it.

  “Rocky Morlock,” I typed into the search bar, hoping that he had some kind of social media presence. The Rocky I remembered was a loud, booming type, the type that liked being the center of attention. If he wasn’t on social media at all, that would be very strange indeed.

  I sat back, a little confused. “He has a profile, but he only updates his page about once every three months.” And it was always cryptic updates, so that it was impossible to find out where he was. He didn’t have location turned on and he never said where he actually was. He would say “great day to be driving down to the beach!” but not what beach he was actually going to. I guess it was kind of a clue, though. We knew he lived within driving distance of a beach, but driving distance was relative.

  “It looks like he left Belldale two years ago…” I said, scrolling back through his updates. It didn’t take long to find the message where he thanked everyone in town for a great twenty years at Misty’s Ice Cream, and said he had made a lot of wonderful memories that he would be carrying with him into his new life. “Off to start a new adventure…” I said, reading the end of his message. Huh.

  Pippa was still looking through her book and refusing to pay any attention to the screen.

  “Pippa, have a look at this.” I turned around to look at her, to find her siting there, stubbornly shaking her head.

  “Am I going to have to do this myself?” I asked. “How long does this digital diet last for?”

  “Another week,” she said, then added, “That’s just the trial period, though. If it works well, then we are going to ban screens in our home entirely. I don’t want Lolly growing up with a smartphone permanently attached to her hand.”

  “And how am I supposed to contact you in the meantime?” I asked her.

  “The way you used to, when we were kids,” she stated. “Just turn up at my house or use my landline.”

  There really wasn’t time to be arguing about this, even though I thought it was one of the worst ideas Pippa had ever come up with, and that is really saying something. We had to find Rocky. He’d clearly been laying low for two years, but that was without the body being found. As soon as it becomes public knowledge, he might go into such deep hiding that we’d never be able to find him. He’d probably delete the little social media presence he had.

  “Shoot. I have a missed call from Jackson,” I said, looking at my phone. Pippa spun around to check as well. “Hey, I thought you weren’t supposed to look at any screens?”

  “Are you going to call him back?”

  “It will only be about the case.” I placed the phone back down, screen down, so that neither of us could look at it. “He’ll want to know what we were doing there yesterday, at Pure Gelatosphere.”

  Pippa leaned back in her swivel chair. “Hmm. That will still give you an excuse to talk to him, though. Have you even spoken to him properly since you broke up with Kenneth?”

  Kenneth had been my boyfriend. He was a cake decorator, and we’d dated for a few months, but we’d broken up over a dispute about the bakery. Kenneth held strong views about corporations, and when I’d wanted to go into business with a franchise and have the bakery taken over by them, Kenneth had said it was a bad idea. I’d blamed the breakup on him being an unsupportive boyfriend. When really, he was probably only trying to look out for what was best for me. In reality, the reason I broke up with him had more to do with the fact that I had feelings for someone else.

  I shook my head. “He knows, though.” I went quiet, then.

  “He knows that you broke up with Kenneth?” Pippa sounded surprised. “And what, he hasn’t asked you out yet?”

  I shook my head. To be honest, though, it was not at all surprising. Jackson was a detective. How could he ask out the woman who seemed to turn up every time a dead body did? It would be a total conflict of interest for him. He probably suspected, deep down, that I was making the bodies appear somehow. It always looked suspicious, and half the time, I wound up being a suspect. How could any relationship flourish under such conditions?

  I shrugged. “I’m starting to think that if Jackson and I are to actually have any chance of being together…” I kind of trailed off, wondering if I should finish my sentence.

  “Then what?” Pippa asked.

  I sighed. “If we are to be together, then I am going to have to give something up. A pretty big part of my life.”

  “What is that?” Pippa asked, looking genuinely confused. “Why would you have to give up the bakery for him?” Her eyes opened wide. “Are you saying that if you and Jackson ever got married, he wouldn’t want his wife working?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh my goodness. I mean this,” I said, waving my hand around the library, at the computer screen where I was investigating the whereabouts of Rocky Morlock, who was the prime suspect in a murder case. “Solving mysteries. Otherwise, it’s always going to be this same problem. Jackson is a detective. I don’t think I can keep being found at murder scenes.”

  “It’s not like you do it on purpose.”

  I sighed. “Even so. I always make the choice to follow these things through to the end.” I shook my head and stared at the screen. “Just like this time.”

  Pippa was quiet for a long time before she finally nodded, glumly, leaning over the back of the chair. “And do you think you can really do it?” she asked. “Can you really give this up?”

  I was quiet for a moment as well. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Either way, I think you’d better call him back,” Pippa said. “He might have some valuable information for us. Maybe he knows where Rocky Morlock is.”

  I sighed and picked up my phone. It turned out I didn’t have to call him, he was calling me.

>   “We got an ID on the body,” Jackson said.

  I was surprised that he was being so candid with me. I waved Pippa back over from where she’d already wandered to the non-fiction section and picked up a book on vegetable farming. “Pippa!” I hissed. “Jackson is about to tell us who the body belongs to.” Wow, this was a real breakthrough. I couldn’t believe he was about to share this information with me.

  But I was about to find out why. It turned out he was only telling me because he thought I knew the victim somehow.

  “Did you know a Harry Daddo?”

  I was a little taken aback. I had to think about it for a moment. “No, I don’t think so?”

  “So he never worked at your bakery?”

  “What? No, of course not. I would have recognized him if he did. I remember all my employees.” I’m pretty sure I would have recognized the body I’d found if he worked for me!

  Jackson continued talking. “Because, according to a source we just spoke to, Harry did a trial at your bakery about three years ago…right before he started working at Misty’s Ice Cream Parlor.”

  “Wait, hold up,” I said, cutting him off. I knew what Jackson was doing—trying to insinuate that I had some connection to Harry—but I was more interested in this connection to Misty’s. “So, he actually worked at Misty’s Ice Cream Parlor?” I asked, interrupting him before he could go on.

  “Yes, for a year before he disappeared. I guess we know the reason for his disappearance now,” Jackson added.

  So, he disappeared around the same time that Rocky Morlock had fallen off the face of the planet. Very interesting.

  “Rachael? It looks very bad that you found the body and you knew the victim.”

  “Look, we did a bunch of trials a few years ago when I was looking for an apprentice baker,” I said, starting to feel the heat creep into the room. Even the strongest air conditioning in Belldale couldn’t fight it off forever. The heat was coming through the smallest cracks in the walls and overpowering the unit. “We probably had a dozen young kids try out. I wouldn’t be able to pick a single one of them out of a lineup now.”

  Jackson didn’t seem satisfied. “We’ll have to have another conversation about this.”

  I hung up, feeling annoyed. And justified. “See?” I said to Pippa, turning the phone over again so that I couldn’t see it. “We can’t go on like this.” I stared at the phone in anger. “Maybe I should join you in your digital diet.” That would definitely not work, though. We couldn’t both go completely off-grid. We would no longer be able to communicate at all. Let alone find directions or track down suspects.

  “What are you so mad about?” Pippa asked. She had her library card out. Apparently, she was going to check out those farming books. Well, I supposed she couldn’t look the information up on the internet.

  “Jackson thinks that we have some connection to Harry. Apparently, he worked for us for about half an hour three years ago.”

  “Really?” Pippa asked, looking shocked. “Yikes.”

  “But that’s not the important thing,” I reassured her. “The important thing is that he was an employee of Misty’s. That’s been confirmed. Pippa, we have got to find Rocky Morlock.”

  “So what do you say? Do you think you can stomach ice cream again yet?”

  We had pulled up outside Dough Planet, late in the afternoon, after a lunchtime shift at the bakery where we were again barraged with requests for frozen treats. I wanted to see how Blake actually did it.

  I could see Blake, with his head down, through the window. Blake and I had been emailing back and forth a lot for the past few weeks. We’d both almost gone into business with the same franchise, the Pastry Tree. We’d both been burned the same way, though, when our respective deals fell through. And now we were both looking to go into business with a partner. We thought we might make perfect partners for each other. I hadn’t mentioned any of this to Pippa yet. I didn’t think Blake had told anyone about it, either. Nothing was set in stone yet. It was all just emails.

  So maybe one day we would be partners, but at the moment, we were still friendly adversaries. I noticed that he’d upped the price of his ice cream sandwiches to $4.50 as we walked through the door. Either there was high demand, he was an opportunist, or both.

  Blake laughed. “Fancy seeing you two ladies here.” He threw down the tea towel he’d been drying mugs with.

  “I’d love an ice cream sandwich,” I said to him.

  He nodded at us with a grin. “They are made with all organic ingredients as well. Oh, and dairy-free.”

  I couldn’t control the face I made. “Even the ice cream?”

  He nodded. “It’s soy ice cream.”

  I stared down at the sign he still had displayed. “You should really warn people about that.”

  “Haha,” he said, reaching into the freezer to get a few scoops to place between the cookies. “My customers are more than happy to eat dairy-free products.”

  “I’m a farmer now, so I make my money from dairy products,” Pippa said, looking less impressed.

  “What money?” I asked her. “You haven’t actually sold anything yet.”

  She made a face. “I will, though. I just need to get the stock ready.”

  We settled down at the counter at the window, the only seats that Blake had in his tiny little shop. “I guess this soy organic ice cream is the reason he was able to get his hands on ice cream when no one else in town could,” I whispered to Pippa before taking a bite of my sandwich. “No one else wants it.”

  It actually wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I was fearing. It was creamy and very sweet and the vanilla flavor was full and clearly real vanilla bean, not extract or essence. Maybe not as good as Pure Gelatosphere, but at least there were no dead bodies involved.

  “Impressed?” Blake asked with a laugh, before he headed back to the coffee machine.

  I tried not to show it too much, but I was.

  I stared down at the sandwich. “You know, I haven’t had one of these in years…” I murmured.

  “Me neither,” Pippa said, finishing off the last bite of hers before she licked her fingers. Seemed like she didn’t miss the dairy after all. “Not since I was a kid.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, staring into my slowly melting sandwich. “No, I’ve had one more recently than that.” I spun around and turned toward her. A memory was coming back to me. Sometimes taste has a way of jiggling free memories that other senses can’t. “Do you remember that really hot day, three years ago, when the mixer broke and we had to mix all the dough and pastry by hand? At the end of the day, we were all half-dead and sweaty. We went to Misty’s afterwards for ice cream sandwiches!”

  Pippa shook her head. “I don’t think that was me.”

  “Wasn’t it?” I couldn’t think who else it might have been. I was sure Pippa just had a bad memory.

  “I’d totally forgotten about it,” I said, shaking my head. “There was a kid’s birthday party going on, but when we went in and asked for a table, Rocky let us sit outside. You really can’t remember?”

  Pippa shook her head.

  I took another bite of my sandwich. “We were outdoors, under the shade of the umbrellas, and Rocky must have forgotten we were there, because I heard someone—I’m pretty sure it was him—yelling at someone around the side of the building. Telling them off for being irresponsible.” I dropped the sandwich. “I remember thinking that maybe he was not as friendly as he came across.”

  Pippa’s eyes were open wide. “Do you think it was Harry?”

  I shook my head slightly and shrugged. “I can’t say, for sure. I wish I could remember him, Pippa. Harry, I mean.”

  Maybe I was going to have to go back over my old records.

  Chapter 5

  It was sweltering. But even with very few customers braving the non-air-conditioned inside of my shop, we couldn’t close completely. Not when Blake was across town, making a killing.

  Bronson walked out from the kitchen
with a red face that matched the color of his red hair. “I can’t do it any longer,” he said, puffing as he leaned over.

  “It’s okay. We don’t want you to die of heat exhaustion. You can take the rest of the day off.”

  Pippa had set up a portable fan and was lying on top of one of the tables in front of it while I searched through my records from three years earlier.

  “Well, I didn’t keep any digital copies of Harry’s resume,” I said, riffling through the old papers that I had, thankfully, kept. “But I should still have all the old resumes that were dropped off in here somewhere. I might even have a list of people we got in to have trials. Maybe even contact details. Not that that would help us a lot right now, I suppose.”

  Pippa had her eyes closed in front of the fan. I wondered if she was drifting off to sleep.

  “Here it is!” I finally called out, waving it in the air. “A list of all the people we had in on trial!”

  Pippa sat up. “See? You don’t need digital files! Good old paper copies always save the day.”

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

  I opened it and skimmed down, using the tip of my finger, searching for Harry’s name. “Here is it! Harry Daddo!” My stomach sunk a little. So we really had met him. He’d been in here, inside the bakery, and had actually worked for half a day. I felt guilty that I had no recollection of him.

  “He was in here just over three years ago. That summer that the mixer broke.” I searched through the files again until I located Harry’s resume. “Good,” I said, reading over it. “Harry listed some of the social clubs that he belonged to. We’ll be able to track down some people who knew him. Maybe they have some idea what might have happened to Harry.”

  “What is this place?” Pippa asked. “It looks like a sports field, not the sort of place that I’d expect people like this to be hanging out.” She waved a fly away that had flown in through the open car window. “It’s not the sort of place I’d expect anyone to be hanging out on a day like today.”