by CeCe Osgood
"The photograph?" she said, unable to hide the touch of sarcasm this stinker of a guy brought out in her.
Ross fired back. "No. The box in the photograph, Ms. Little."
Abby stared at the snapshot of a pink dessert box. On the top of the box written in silver was the Burt's Desserts logo. "No, I didn't."
Ross wouldn't let go. "So, you swear you didn't bring this pink box to Mr. Durant's last night?"
"That's right."
Guthrie interceded. "Did you see this box last night at Mr. Durant's?"
Abby closed her eyes, mentally retracing her movements from the time she walked inside the house and moved slowly down the dim hallway toward the kitchen, her vision fastened on the bright bulb shining in the art déco light fixture. Then her awareness veered to the Xavier round table and Alan, seated at the far end, his head resting on his arm. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and sienna trousers. And down on the floor by his polished black leather shoe was...
Abby's eyes fluttered open. "Now that you've brought it up, I do recall seeing the pink box by his black shoe, although my focus was on,"—she gulped—"his body."
Ross let out a rude grunt which ticked her off. "I'm not a person who finds a body every day, detective," she huffed. "I was traumatized. That's why I didn't remember seeing it. But now that you've jogged my memory, yes, I saw the pink box. It was on the floor by his shoe."
Ross narrowed his eyes. "And this box is from your shop, correct?"
Her lips tightened. "I think the logo, Burt's, makes that pretty clear, don't you, Detective Ross?"
His eyes flickered at her sarcastic tone, but he kept going on. "You say you did not bring it with you last night. Is that correct?"
"Yes, detective. I did not bring that box or any box with me last night. Is that clear? Must I repeat it?" Easy, Abs, stay cool. You're being too defensive, too argumentative. Don't get on this jerk's bad side.
She inhaled, trying to calm her whirling thoughts. "Look, detectives, you might know there was a fire at Burt's Desserts, and it took everything, including all of those boxes."
Guthrie leaned forward, not quite as nice now. "Do you store any of the boxes here in your house, Ms. Little?"
Abby's eyes widened. She hadn't thought of that. "Well, yes, sometimes."
"Where?" he said, his deep voice echoing off the walls.
Abby led the two men to the pantry and yanked on the light cord. The bare bulb glowed bright white.
The shallow space was fairly neat and organized; Ross quickly conducted a thorough search. When he didn't find what he was looking for, he turned to Abby. "Where else do you store the boxes?"
"That's it." Then she paused, her brows sprang upward. "Wait a second. I'm wrong. The delivery van has some. I asked Johnny, the driver, to carry extra boxes in case one gets smudged."
Guthrie closed the pantry door. "Was the van damaged in the fire?"
"No. The fire department told me it wasn't there. I assumed Johnny parked it at Hilda's house. She's my assistant. Johnny is her son. He lives with her, and I let him keep the van there sometimes."
She'd hired Johnny when Burt's Desserts secured contracts for breakfast goodies with a half dozen corporate accounts in downtown Omaha and a dozen more restaurants and businesses in Martindale.
Every morning, Johnny delivered scones, bear claws, cupcakes and, when it was special-ordered, the shop's signature dessert, the Cloud Ten.
"What's the address?" Ross said.
Abby inhaled sharply. "But you can't possibly think he did this. Johnny barely knows Alan."
Chapter Five
Trundling downstairs in her pajamas, Abby scolded herself for sleeping late, a rare occurrence since she was used to rising early to get to the shop, but she'd been awakened by a nightmare and couldn't go back to sleep.
"Phone, where are you?" she grumbled before spotting it on the kitchen countertop, right where she'd left it last night.
The only message was a text from Jill. Tennis lesson. Be back around one-ish.
Annoyed, she grabbed the coffee pot. Not one reply to the job applications she'd submitted online.
Holding the pot under the faucet to fill it, she gazed out at the back yard. Goldenrod clusters gave hints of color to the overgrown yard.
The lawn guy had come two weeks ago, but it needed to be cut again. September had been kind of rainy so far, allowing weeds to invade and conquer what was left of the grass.
"I should call and cancel. I could mow it myself if I had a mower." She thought of Hilda. I could borrow hers.
Then she wondered if the detectives had been by there already to talk to Johnny. He had been a troublemaker in high school but seemed to be buckling down and doing well now in community college. But the police arriving to question him would agitate Hilda. "I should've let her know they were coming."
After a quick shower, she shrugged into a pair of jeans and a Cornhuskers tee shirt, grabbed her checkbook and drove to Hilda's.
Waiting at a stop light, she wrote out a check to Hilda on the shop's account.
An image floated up into her consciousness: orange flames curling like snake tongues as the fire consumed Burt's Desserts.
How did Jill know about the fire?
She'd asked her that night when they got home, but Jill had shrugged it off. "I don't know, Momma," she'd said. "I smelled the smoke and somehow I just knew."
A memory washed over her. She was six and strapped into the seatbelt in her dad's pickup truck and he was badgering her with questions. "How did you know where the little boy was? Tell me the truth, Abby. How did you know?"
They'd been visiting Aunt Caroline, her father's sister, when a neighbor's scream brought them running outside.
The frantic neighbor cried, "My little boy. He's gone! He was playing with a soccer ball and I looked away for a minute and now he's gone."
While Aunt Caroline and her father tried to calm the woman to get more of an idea where the three-year-old had been playing, Abby kept tugging at her father's sleeve. "I see him Daddy."
Her father finally looked down at her. "Who? You see who?"
"The boy. I see him in the woods. He's sitting by a black tree, Daddy."
Aunt Caroline and the lady stared at her, then Aunt Caroline pointed to the woods. "There's a tree burnt black from lightning not too far from here."
Burt raced into the woods and reappeared minutes later with the little boy in his arms.
Later on the drive home, he kept asking how she knew where the boy was.
"I just knew," she had said with a shrug.
Until this very moment, she had forgotten all about that time. Was that what Jill—
A blast from a car horn forced her to skip out of the memory and back to the reality of the busy street.
Abby took a left and then parked at the curb. Moments later, she knocked on the screen door. Hilda, clutching the neckline of a worn house dress, swung open the door, her eyes watery from tears. "Oh, Abby. I feel so bad for you."
"It's okay, Hilda. I don't want you to worry," she said, stuffing the paycheck into the pocket of Hilda's housedress. "It's for the full month. I wish it were more."
Hilda had been with her father for years, almost from the first day he opened Burt's Desserts. She could've run the store but keeping account books and dealing with suppliers made her nervous. She liked to bake. That was pretty much it. That, and waiting on the customers if they weren't too snippy or talked too fast.
"I can't take this," Hilda said, trying to give it back to her.
"I owe you every cent, Hilda, and a lot more for everything you've done for me. I'm not worried, not much." Abby offered her wobbly grin. "I'll figure this out and somehow we'll get Burt's up and running again. I'm sure of it." Oh, if only that were true. I'm really not sure of anything.
Hilda managed a wan smile. "The police came last night. They took the van and left a receipt for me to give to you."
"I guess they're gonna dust it."
Hilda's face pinched in. "Dust it?"
"For fingerprints."
The older woman's thin lips twitched. "When you said that I thought of us flouring the baking pans."
Abby smiled. "Gosh, I'd love for us to be doing that again real soon."
She paused, hating to ruin the levity, but she had to know. "I guess they questioned Johnny?"
"They sure did. They waited for him to get back from his photography class. I told them he was a good student and wasn't getting into any trouble these days. When he came home, they shooed me out of the room so they could talk to him alone."
She winked at Abby. "Of course, that didn't stop me. I listened at the door, but I couldn't hear too much. Johnny told me later they asked him how he knew Alan Durant. He told 'em he didn't. He'd seen Alan with you once or twice at the shop, but that was it. Then they asked him if he'd ever seen you get upset with Alan."
Abby gnawed on her bottom lip, worried that these cops were so focused on her, they weren't looking for other suspects.
Hilda went on. "You know, Johnny. He's got a lip on him. He told them he was too busy with his own life to notice what was going on in yours. Then the skinny cop—the know-it-all one—he asked if Johnny had seen anyone suspicious near the van."
"Did he?"
"Johnny told them no, but he did say he sometimes left the van open when he made a delivery."
Abby frowned. She had cautioned him against being so careless. It was an open invitation for a thief. Losing baked goods was one thing, having the van stolen was another.
"Please don't be mad at me, Abby. I interviewed with the day manager at Sweets-To-Eat, and I'm gonna start Friday."
"Mad? No, Hilda. Not at all. I'm glad you got the job. Who knows, I could end up trying to get work there myself."
That was a fib. It would be humiliating to even apply since the manager, a self-important twit in his twenties, had a vendetta against her simply because she had visited during their grand opening. Well, visited and compared prices.
The twit had shooed her out the door in a loud nasty voice saying he knew she was there to spy because she owned Burt's Desserts. Sheesh, didn't he know everybody in retail checks out the competition's products and prices?
Abby left Hilda's house having decided not to borrow the lawnmower since now that the cops had the van, Johnny couldn't bring it over.
No way could it fit in her trunk. Instead, she'd ask a neighbor.
A dwindling knot of reporters stood near the curb just outside the property line as Abby pulled her car into the driveway.
Ignoring the shouts from the reporters, she hit the remote to let the garage door power up. The Volvo came to a stop inside, and the door lowered to shut out the world outside.
Abby didn't grab her bag or make a move to leave. Instead, she leaned back and listened to the silence.
When she was a teenager, she used to do it all the time. She adored her father, but he always had to have the TV or radio, or both, on when he was home.
She had often found refuge sitting out in his pickup truck parked in the garage or in the driveway.
One night, she'd been in the pickup gazing out at the bright full moon when she heard a "whizzing" sound that ended with a crackling-like muted thunder.
She had turned her head to see what it was, and saw absolutely nothing until she was looking away and glimpsed a figure out of the corner of her eye. Her eyes blinked, and the person was gone.
But as she moved her head once again, she could see someone standing close to the side of the house.
It was only with her peripheral vision that she could see the strange figure, dressed all in black except for a glimmering silver belt, standing next to the old rusty wheelbarrow her father used as a pot for herbs. Actually, it had been her mother's idea to use the wheelbarrow and, after she passed away, her father kept it that way, clipping back the overgrowth every few months.
As she looked out of the corner of her eye, she heard another crackling of air and a muted explosion before the appearance of a glimmering silver pony with a straw basket strapped to its back. The pony bucked at little and swayed side to side.
A voice wavered through the air. "Stand still and stop complaining. We'll be back in time for your grooming."
Then the strange figure—she couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman—proceeded to wrench the plants out of the wheelbarrow and drop them into the basket on the pony's back. "This henbane and foxglove are the exact age I need, and the iron rust from the wheelbarrow allows added potency."
Another voice, high and gurgling like a youngster, protested, "I hate this realm. Let's go. I feel eyes on me." It was the pony. The pony was talking!
Astonished, wary and curious, Abby had pushed down on the door handle to climb out of the pickup truck, but by the time her feet hit the ground, she couldn't see the stranger or the silver pony. They had vanished.
The next day, after convincing herself she had dozed off in the truck and dreamed it, she walked out to the wheelbarrow. Most of the herbs were missing.
She hadn't thought about that night in years. "Just a dream. A silly dream," she said, dismissing it as she switched off the Volvo's engine and headed into the house. In the living room, she toed out of her sandals and sat down to rub her feet.
The warmth of her flesh triggered a memory of how warm Alan's shoulder had been when she touched it.
Then an icy chill crawled up her spine. The killer might have still been inside the house when I was there.
She fell back against the pillows, realizing the time of death was likely mere minutes from the time she'd arrived. "No wonder the cops targeted me as a suspect."
Her breath caught. What if I'd gotten there a few minutes earlier? I could've been a victim too.
The thought made her dizzy. She sucked in a lungful of oxygen then did her best to shake off the "what if" scenario brewing in her head.
"Just stop thinking like that. You need to get busy, Abs. You've got things to do, like finding a job."
After a few more deep breaths, she turned on her laptop and examined her email. Not one reply so far to the job applications she'd submitted. "Crap," she grumbled. "There has to be something somewhere for me."
She clicked on several sites and finally found something of interest in the restaurant field, which was not her first choice, having been a waitress for years during college.
The tips back then were meager, if non-existent. Of course, her primary customers had been other college students.
If she did waitress now, she would aim for an upscale restaurant with, hopefully, better tippers, although she knew counting on the generosity of the moneyed class could be a disappointment.
Often the best tippers were the people who remembered what it was like to have little or no money.
"Like Alan," she sighed, letting herself dip into melancholy. It was one of the things she'd liked about him. He was a generous tipper.
Her mind skipped to the puffy manila envelope he'd left on her door. She remembered the white envelope with her check, the one he'd forgotten to mail to the insurance company.
Her forehead crinkled as a fragment of memory flitted by. There was something off about that envelope. "Hm. What was it?"
A search of the small secretary desk she'd used for the shop's paperwork when she was home turned up nothing.
She glanced down at the wastebasket. Nope, not there. Then she hurried to the kitchen and lifted the lid of the recycling container, found a few paper items. A shouting voice stopped her from reaching inside.
"Abby! Hey, Abby."
She looked up to see her next-door neighbor, Twila. She was leaning on the fence separating their back yards and waving. "Abby. Come outside."
"Hello, stranger," she said, strolling out the back door. Twila worked as a travel guide and was often gone for weeks at a time.
"I'm so sorry, Abby. I heard what happened," Twila said, tugging at a lock of her dark blonde hair, which she always wore in a loose chign
on to emphasize her high forehead, pointy chin and pale green eyes.
"It's awful. The fire at Burt's, and then your friend's death. How are you doing?"
Abby dipped her head. "Okay, more or less."
Twila rested a couple letters and circulars on the top of the weathered white fence. "I got your mail again. It was mixed up with mine."
Abby reached for the mail and gasped when she saw the return address for the insurance company. She dropped the junk mail and ripped open the envelope.
It was the warning notice stating her quarterly payment had not been paid. If payment is not received within ten days, the policy will be cancelled.
Abby groaned. The notice had been on Twila's floor for at least three weeks.
"What is it, Abby? What's wrong?"
Although she liked Twila, she didn't feel like venting since they barely knew each other.
And besides, Twila had a kooky side. She'd seen her doddering around her back yard talking to birds and squirrels and even the oleander bushes near the back fence.
Instead, Abby changed the subject. "Sorry about these reporters. Please don't talk to them. They're so nosy."
Twila pressed an index finger to her lips. "I promise, not a word."
Her pale green eyes lit up with a twinkle. "Ooh, I just had a delicious idea, Abby. Guess what I won?"
That was another odd thing about her neighbor. She was addicted to all kinds of contests, sweepstakes and giveaways. The first time they met, Twila went on and on about her obsession and how it had started when she won a trip to Mars.
Abby had laughed, thinking it was a joke. But then Twila said the trip was scheduled for the spring of 2030 and was sponsored by some high-tech billionaire genius. Abby realized Twila was serious when she didn't even crack a smile.
"What is it, Twila? You do have a knack for winning good stuff."
"Right you are. I'm on a lucky streak. This time I won a dinner for two at Emile's."
"Emile's? Here in Omaha? I love that place, not that I've ever been there. I've read about it."
"Then you'll have to be my dinner date."
Abby brightened. "Me?""
"You need a break. With everything you've experienced lately. Let me take you to Emile's. We can order anything on the menu including champagne or wine, or both. Would Friday be okay?"
