Murder with a Cherry on Top

by Cynthia Baxter

  I took a few normal breaths, really appreciating what doing such a simple thing could feel like. Then I took some deep ones. Fresh air had never felt better, just as the warmth of the sun on my face had never seemed quite as glorious.

  “Well,” I said, turning to Jake, “I guess I owe you a big thank-you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So what happens now?”

  He looked at me for a few seconds, then said, “How about breakfast? I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  * * *

  As everyone in Wolfert’s Roost knew, the best place for breakfast was Toastie’s. It was a good old-fashioned diner, but a real one, not one of those fake ones that pretends it’s a set for the musical Grease. No jukeboxes at each booth, no bright chrome trim on the counter, no cheerful red leatherette on the seats.

  Actually, it was kind of a dump. But an authentic dump. The permanent grease stains on the Formica tables and counter were the genuine article. The same went for the eternally sticky menus. All that was missing was a gum-snapping waitress named Flo, wearing a tight pink uniform and a frilly white apron.

  “Two?” the owner, Big Moe, greeted us sullenly as soon as we walked in.

  He walked us over to a booth, tossed a couple of those sticky menus on the table, and disappeared.

  It wasn’t until then that I realized that I, too, was starving. I opened the menu greedily, anxious to see which particular carbohydrate-loaded entrée would catch my fancy. Miraculously, Big Moe resurfaced, this time with two white mugs of steaming coffee. Big Moe didn’t even have to ask. He just knew.

  It was that kind of place.

  “So,” I said, leaning back in my seat after doctoring up my blast of caffeine with enough sugar and half-and-half to make the finished product palatable to a three-year-old. “Once again, thanks for rescuing me.”

  “I’ve never in my life thought of you as someone who needs rescuing, Kate,” Jake said.

  I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. I decided not to try to find out.

  I was glad that a waitress came by just then—wearing jeans, not a pink uniform—and took our order. Jake was having an omelet, but I went for waffles with Nutella. It was that kind of day.

  Once we were alone again, I leaned across the table, not wanting anyone to overhear us.

  “I don’t mean to be the voice of doom or anything,” I said, “especially since you’re obviously trying to help me, but isn’t it kind of . . . shall we say, illegal to pretend to be a lawyer? Especially if you’re doing it in a police station, with real live cops around?”

  Jake shrugged. “I’m not pretending.”

  It took a few seconds for the meaning of his words to register. “Wait. You’re not pretending to be a lawyer? Which means you are a lawyer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I went to law school and then, after a couple of months of mind-boggling cramming, passed the New York State bar exam.”

  “Oh.” I leaned back in my seat again, taking a few seconds to digest that interesting little tidbit. “So you practiced and everything?”

  “Yup. I worked for a big law firm in Manhattan. Not one of the fancy ones, but a pretty good one.”

  Manhattan? I was thinking. As in New York City? The same Manhattan I had lived in? Jake had lived there too?

  This was getting more and more surreal.

  I decided to keep my reactions to myself.

  “What kind of law?” I asked, pulling at the paper tab of my now empty half-and-half container. There was absolutely no purpose in what I was doing other than giving my fidgety fingers something to do.

  “Criminal law,” he replied. “I was a defense attorney.”

  This kept getting better and better. “So not only do I have a lawyer, I have a high-powered lawyer from a big New York City law firm.”

  Jake laughed. “Something like that. The only thing is, I don’t understand why you need a lawyer.”

  I sighed. “Me either.” By now the last bit of paper was torn off the plastic thimble. I turned to the sugar packet, also empty. “How did you hear about what happened to Ashley?”

  “Your grandmother,” Jake replied. “She called me at the dairy this morning, right after you left for the station.”

  “Grams? She did that?”

  “That’s right. She said something about you mentioning that you’d run into me, and that you’d told her where I worked. She just wanted someone who knew you to be with you and asked me if I’d do whatever I could. So I threw on a jacket and tie, picked up my impressive-looking briefcase, and hightailed it over to the police station.”

  “What’s in that thing, anyway?” I asked, gesturing toward the briefcase resting on the seat beside him.

  “In here? Socks.”

  “Socks?”

  For the first time since he’d shown up at the police station, Jake smiled. “I’m always losing socks. So I figured out that stashing them in my briefcase was a good way to keep track of them.”

  I stared at him for a couple of seconds, not sure if he was serious. The expression on his face told me he was dead serious.

  “Want to see?” he asked, his blue eyes twinkling like St. Nick’s on Christmas Eve, right after digging in to some of those homemade cookies that had been left out for him.

  “That’s okay. I believe you.”

  Big Moe appeared with two platters the size of pizzas. Jake’s omelet was as big as a Frisbee, accompanied by a mountain of hash browns and two buttermilk biscuits so humongous they kept falling off the plate. I found myself wondering if I could come up with an ice cream flavor that incorporated some of those well-loved flavors. Hash Brown Heaven, with bits of real fried potato? Buttermilk Biscuit, a fluffy ice cream with a buttery flavor and maybe real pieces of biscuit?

  My waffles with Nutella were similarly inspiring. It would be so easy to whip up a rich chocolate-hazelnut ice cream and add in small pieces of waffle....

  I took the fact that I was thinking about ice cream again as a good sign.

  “So how do you feel about all this?” Jake asked, pulling one of the Volkswagen-sized biscuits apart and slathering it with butter. It melted immediately. “About what happened to Ashley, I mean? You’ve known her practically your whole life, after all. Then there’s the fact that the horrible thing that happened took place right across the street from your shop.”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel,” I said thoughtfully. “I guess I’m still in shock. I don’t understand it. I guess I don’t really believe it, either.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Jake agreed. “I kind of feel the same way. It’s going to take a while for all this to sink in.”

  “So what do you think will happen next?” I asked Jake. “In terms of the investigation.” I hesitated before adding, “I guess what I really mean is, are the police going to keep bugging me?”

  “Probably not,” he said. “At least, not once they realize you had nothing to do with the crime. But let me give you my cell phone number, just in case you need to get in touch with me. For some free legal advice, I mean. And let me get yours.”

  We did the usual punching in letters and numbers routine, then lapsed into silence.

  “I didn’t, you know,” I finally said. “Have anything to do with it, I mean. I was at home all evening. Grams can vouch for me.”

  Jake looked startled. “Kate, it never would have even occurred to me that you had anything to do with it!”

  I just nodded, glad about his unqualified belief in my innocence. But I was thinking about what I’d just said.

  My alibi was Grams. My closest relative, the one person in the world who loved me the most. A woman who would do anything to protect me, her granddaughter, a fact that was well known by anyone who knew either her or me. Grams would swear on a mile-high stack of Bibles that I was with her from four o’clock in the afternoon until the next morning when the police showed up at o
ur door.

  The question was, would anyone believe my own grandmother?

  Chapter 5

  Brain freeze, also known as ice-cream headache or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, is a short- term headache caused when something very cold makes contact with the roof of the mouth. It occurs most often when the weather is hot and the cold substance is eaten too fast.

  —MedicalNewsToday.com

  My anxiety over being called in to the police station stuck with me for the rest of the day. When Willow stopped into Lickety Splits to tell me that Ashley’s funeral was scheduled for the next day, I wasn’t even sure if I would go.

  After all, if the police thought I might have had something to do with Ashley’s death, wasn’t it possible that other people might think so, too?

  Yet I felt that not going would be worse.

  “You have to come with me,” I told Willow, not even trying to hide the desperation in my voice. “I know Saturday morning is a busy time for you, but this isn’t just any day. I can’t go alone, and I can’t ask Grams to go with me. She’s just not good with stairs anymore, not to mention getting in and out of a car. . . .”

  “Of course I’ll come,” she said. And she gave my arm a squeeze.

  Good old Willow. I was glad that she and I had remained friends, even when I’d gone to New York straight from college and she’d returned to Wolfert’s Roost to open her yoga studio. I’d cheered her on from afar, genuinely pleased at how quickly her new business took off. And knowing she was still here in our hometown had made it that much easier to come back.

  Ever since we were kids, she had been my rock, a source of strength that I could always count on one hundred percent.

  I’d met Willow the very first week of middle school. She and I had gone to different elementary schools, but middle school brought together kids from three different districts.

  The first day of sixth grade, in Ms. Bender’s fourth-period history class, she happened to sit down at the desk next to mine. But as Ms. Bender talked about what kind of notebook she wanted us to buy, this delicate, graceful girl with long blond hair streaming down her back seemed much more interested in a ring she was wearing.

  “What is that?” I finally whispered, curious about why she kept staring at her hand.

  “It’s a zodiac ring,” she said, holding up her hand proudly. “See? This little silver band has the symbols for all twelve signs. I’m a Gemini. That’s the twins, this symbol here. What sign are you?”

  Right from the start, I admired her interest in learning about things outside our day-to-day life. I’d never heard of astrology before that day, and she was so excited about it that it made it fun to learn what she knew about it.

  But as we became better friends, I found out more about the reason behind it. Despite her calm facade, Willow came from a troubled household. Her mother struggled with addictions that went far beyond my addiction to ice cream. With Willow’s two older brothers spending as little time at home as possible, she was left to find a way to cope with being left pretty much on her own. And astrology was just one of many different areas she explored as a means of creating a sense of order in her world.

  Still, it wasn’t until college that Willow discovered yoga. While she was at the State University at Binghamton, majoring in art, she signed up for it as a gym class. She took to it immediately. Yoga was catching on with the population in general, and she soon realized that making it a career would offer her a chance to spread the word about something she loved. It also allowed her to focus on her need for order, which never quite went away.

  Yet on this particular day, even with Willow at my side, I was pretty jittery as the two of us walked into the Evans Funeral Home. I’d been there twice before, once when a teacher in my elementary school passed away, and another time when a friend’s aunt died.

  But this time, it felt very different.

  “Do you believe how crowded it is?” Willow whispered.

  “I sure didn’t expect anything like this,” I agreed. “I had no idea Ashley had so many friends.”

  “Or enemies,” Willow said wryly.

  As we elbowed our way into the entryway, I was amazed at how many people were there. Ashley was a hometown girl, after all. And in more recent years, she’d also become a local business owner.

  But I had a feeling that the sensational aspect of her death had something to do with the large turnout, too.

  I glanced around, clutching Willow’s arm as I tried to get my bearings. I was curious about whether I’d still know very many of the people there. On the one hand, Ashley and I had spent the first eighteen years of our lives traveling in the same circles—kids from school, teachers, even the adults who had been part of our life as children, from the man who ran the candy store in town to the local dentist who was pretty much the one everybody went to. But I also knew that a lot had happened since then. Another fifteen years had gone by, almost half our lives.

  As we shuffled into the main room, I continued to scan the faces. I was struck by how few of them I recognized.

  I found myself growing increasingly curious about how Ashley’s life had unfolded since then. What had been going on in her life, aside from running a bakery? Had she married? Had children? Developed strong friendships?

  Obviously, she’d made at least one enemy somewhere along the way.

  I jumped when my eyes finally zeroed in on a face I recognized. Still, I wasn’t that surprised to spot Detective Stoltz in the crowd. He appeared to be doing his best to blend in. He was wearing a dark jacket and a nondescript tie, along with a solemn expression.

  I wondered if anyone else noticed how carefully he was watching the crowd, studying every face, easing around the room as he briefly listened in to one conversation after another.

  When he spotted me, he simply nodded, his head barely moving in a gesture that seemed to say, “Okay, I see you.”

  “Let’s sit over there,” Willow suggested. “I see a couple of seats in the back.”

  Willow and I were making our way across the room when I let out a little gasp. There was Jake, standing in a corner. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that he would be here.

  I wasn’t sure whether I was happy to see him or not. And that ambivalence had nothing to do with Ashley’s murder.

  It was the simple act of being in the same room with him.

  This just kept getting harder and harder.

  I decided to ignore Jake, largely because I was so embarrassed about what had happened the day before. Having someone I knew see me in that position, sitting in the tiny, windowless room, being given the third degree . . . this was a new level of humiliation that I never dreamed I’d be subjected to. And our awkward coffee klatch right afterward had only added to my embarrassment.

  Whenever I’d thought about the possibility of seeing Jake again, whenever I’d fantasized about sitting down and talking to him after all these years, it hadn’t exactly been under these circumstances.

  When he tried to catch my eye, I made a point of looking away.

  As I sat through the service with my hands folded primly in my lap, I had a hard time tuning in. From what I could tell, the minister who conducted it hadn’t even known Ashley. All I heard was an impersonal speech about life and death and making a difference in the lives of others.

  Frankly, I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

  Once it was and we were filing out of the main room, I was thinking, now we can get out of here.

  But Willow turned to me and said, “I’m going to get some coffee. Want some?”

  “I’m fine,” I replied.

  But I immediately realized I should have taken her up on her offer and trotted after her. As soon as we made it to the large room in back that allowed people to gather after the service, Willow headed over to the refreshments table, leaving me standing alone.

  I studied the crowd anxiously, hoping I’d find at least one person to talk to. So I literally sighed with relief when among the
sea of unrecognizable faces, I finally spotted one that looked familiar. Even though it had been fifteen years since I’d last seen it, there was no mistaking that that face—still pretty, but with sharp features that gave her a pinched look—belonged to Hayley Nielsen.

  Back in high school, Hayley had been Ashley Winthrop’s best friend. In fact, Hayley was the number two girl, someone who played the questionable role of the next best thing to Ashley.

  While it was a role that not everyone would embrace, Hayley had appeared to relish it. She dressed like Ashley, she wore her hair like Ashley, and she pretty much adopted every single opinion Ashley had ever expressed. More than once, I’d overheard her in the hallway, responding to a question someone had just asked her, with, “You know, let me talk to Ashley about that.” I used to think that if we’d been born in medieval times, Hayley’s official title would have been lady-in-waiting.

  Yet even though Hayley was part of the popular crowd back in high school, she was always friendlier toward me than some of the others in that group. Maybe it was because through some glitch in scheduling, she and I always seemed to end up in the same gym class. We both figured out right away that we shared a hatred of both field hockey and gymnastics. That enabled us to bond on some level that went far beyond social structure.

  I caught up with her just as she was ending a conversation with someone I didn’t know.

  “Hayley?” I said.

  She turned and studied me for a couple of seconds. Then her confused expression melted into one of recognition.

  “Kate,” she said. “It’s nice that you came.”

  I wondered if she and Ashley had remained best friends. Even more, I wondered if Hayley had heard anything about the police questioning me . . . or the argument Ashley and I had had a few hours before she was murdered.

  “Of course I came,” I replied. “I’ve known Ashley ever since we were both in kindergarten.”

  I didn’t add anything about the nature of our relationship. I was pretty sure Hayley already knew enough about that.

  “Isn’t this the saddest thing?” I continued. “I guess I’m still in shock.”