Dessert, Diamonds and Deadly Secrets

by A. R. Winters

  “Maybe it’s a flyer,” I said, picking up the envelope. It was unmarked, and I opened it and slid out a piece of paper, expecting to see an ad for a garage sale, or a price list for Wong’s Noodle Bar, and then I frowned.

  Instead of a flyer, it was a letter-size piece of paper, with silver letters glued onto it. The letters spelled out, “Take a break. Leave Tim’s death alone.”

  I passed the paper over to Beth wordlessly. She read the words, and her lips settled into a thin, grim line.

  “This isn’t good,” she said.

  “Someone wants me to take a break,” I said, trying to sound glib. “Just like Aunt Kira says I should.”

  Beth shook her head. “You know that’s not what they meant.”

  I sighed. She was right. And even more worrying was the fact that whoever had sent me the note knew where I lived.

  “You don’t think it was Neve, do you?” I said, sounding slightly hopeful.

  Beth shook her head. “Neve wouldn’t go to the effort. And if she did, she’d probably say something unkind. Like, you’re too ugly to be an investigator.”

  “Hmm.”

  We shuffled our feet thoughtfully, wondering what it all meant.

  “Maybe I’m getting close,” I said, trying to look on the bright side of things. “Maybe whoever sent me the note is worried I’m near the truth.”

  “Maybe,” said Beth. She headed over to the kitchen and began gathering her things.

  “You know, Neve did leave Maria’s soon after we walked in,” I said.

  “Did she leave with Liam?”

  I shook my head no.

  Beth said, “You don’t think this could be from Liam? Maybe he doesn’t want anything that could jeopardize his case to show up.”

  I frowned. “Liam’s a self-centered narcissist, but I don’t think he’d be up for doing something like this. Not right now, anyway—he seems pretty sure he can get Mike convicted. Besides, I don’t think he even knows where I live, right now.”

  “D’you think Neve got a letter, too?”

  I looked at Beth thoughtfully. “Maybe we should check.”

  Beth called Mike’s number and got Neve’s details, and I gave Neve a call. When I explained who it was, Neve snorted. “What d’you want?”

  “Um. I don’t actually want anything. I was just wondering…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, have you gotten any letters recently?”

  “Letters? You mean like, emails?”

  “No, letters. Physical letters mailed to you. Or slid under your door.”

  “Is this some kind of joke? Are you trying to make me leave the case somehow?”

  “No, no,” I said. “I mean, it’s not a joke. Never mind.”

  We hung up, and I looked at Beth and shrugged. “She didn’t get a letter.”

  “So our correspondent doesn’t know about Neve.”

  “Or doesn’t take her seriously.” I smirked, despite myself. “Even criminals don’t think she’s a good investigator.”

  Beth sighed. “Now what? You want to report this to the cops?”

  I looked at the letter again, and then I looked at Pixie. She’d started preening her tail feathers.

  “Pixie,” I said.

  She stopped preening and gave me a small squawk. I suppose that meant, “What?”

  I said, “Did you see something? Or hear anything when we got this letter?”

  I held the letter up for her to look at, and then she yawned.

  “The guy slid it under the door,” Beth said. “How would she see anything? Besides, she was sleeping.”

  “Hello,” said Pixie. “Hellohello.”

  I nodded. Pixie was cute, but she wasn’t much help in the sleuthing department.

  I looked at the letter again. “I know how the cops handle these things. They’ll just make a note of it and do nothing. They’ll say that a crime hasn’t been committed yet.”

  “You should still tell them about it. Maybe it shows that Mike didn’t kill Tim.”

  I wondered how Ethan would react to the sight of the letter. He might not take me seriously, but then again, he was a good cop. “Maybe tomorrow,” I said. “And I know the cops’ll say that Mike might’ve sent me this letter himself. Which he might have.”

  “You wanna sleep over at my place?”

  I looked at Pixie, wondering if it would be okay to leave her alone. Just to be safe, I opened the door of her cage so that she could fly out if she needed to, and she looked at me curiously.

  “I’ll grab my jammies,” I said to Beth, and I did.

  I was pretty sure that my apartment was safe, but it would be nice to sleep somewhere that the letter-sender didn’t know about. And tomorrow, I’d try to figure out who had sent it.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next morning, Beth had gone for a run, come back, and showered by the time I got up. A quick check on Pixie revealed that she was up, and was busy attacking one of her toys. I showered, changed, and gave her some fresh water and pellets before heading back to Beth’s. The two of us strategized over a delicious breakfast of carrot-walnut cake and piping hot coffee.

  “Kandy seems like a girl with a secret,” Beth said. “I guess we should talk to her first. She might know something about the goings-on at the café which could’ve gotten Tim killed right before he sold the place.”

  I agreed with that, and I supposed that Neve might come to the same conclusion as us. It would be a good idea to talk to Kandy again before Neve got to her, so we headed over to Kandy’s apartment after breakfast.

  Her roommate Darren answered the door and told us that Kandy had stepped out to get milk for breakfast, but we were welcome to wait. Darren was a young twenty-something-year-old wearing red-checked shorts and a white t-shirt, and his brown hair crumpled over his eyebrows.

  While Beth and I sat in the living room, Darren fried up sausages, bacon and eggs, and chatted to us from the kitchen. He was studying physics at Santa Verona University, and we asked about his classes and how he liked the city.

  “It’s nice here,” Darren said. “Always real sunny and pleasant. And the kids at school are nice.”

  “And what about Kandy?” Beth asked. “You guys get along?”

  “Sure,” he said. “She’s late with her rent once in a while, and sometimes she finishes the milk or juice and forgets to get more. Like today. But she’s all right.”

  I’d shot Beth a surprised look when he’d mentioned Kandy’s rent arrears, and Beth said, “Why was she late with the rent?”

  “I think she’d just forget, honestly. It’s not like she was short on cash. She’d buy a new designer handbag every month.”

  “That doesn’t sound like wages from Tim,” I said to Beth under my breath. “Tim was stingy with his employees.”

  “Maybe Kandy was special,” Beth said in a low voice.

  We went back to our conversation with Darren, until Kandy walked in with a carton of milk and looked surprised to see us in her living room.

  “What’re you doing here so early?” she asked us, and then she called out to Darren. “Sorry I’m late. They were out of skim milk, so I got one-percent.”

  “I made myself eggs,” he called back. “I’m heading to my bedroom to eat. You guys chat.”

  “Right.” Kandy looked at us again. “Did you guys eat?”

  “Yes,” said Beth. “It’s really not that early.”

  Kandy shrugged. “I guess I’ve gotten into the habit of sleeping in.” She poured herself a bowl of cereal, added some milk, and sat across from us, eating her cereal slowly. “Did you guys find out anything new?”

  “Not much,” said Beth. “Did Neve come by again?”

  Kandy shook her head. “Why, should she have?”

  Beth said, “No. But we wanted to ask you a bit more about working for Tim. Did you like it?”

  Kandy shrugged. “Look, it was okay. None of the kitchen or waitstaff suspected I was sleeping with Tim or I guess it could’ve be
en worse.”

  Beth made a concurring noise.

  Kandy said, “Now that I think back, I was probably being a little silly.”

  “How so?”

  “You know, sleeping with Tim. I didn’t really think things through.”

  Beth kept her gaze focused on Kandy. “Anything else?”

  Kandy glanced at me and looked away, gazing into her cereal bowl. She took a bit of cereal and shook her head. We waited for her to finish chewing and swallow her mouthful, and when she did, she said, “No, that was it.”

  There was a long minute of awkward silence, and then Beth said, “And how was the pay?”

  Kandy looked at us suspiciously, like she knew we were on to her, but she just shrugged. “It was okay, I guess.”

  “Mike told us his uncle was real stingy, that the other staff turned over really fast.”

  Kandy shrugged. “I guess.”

  “So what was it?” I said, trying not to let my impatience show. “Was the pay okay, or not that great?”

  Kandy took a moment to think and said, “Not that great, I suppose.”

  “And yet you worked there for a fairly long time.”

  Kandy shrugged and chewed her cereal wordlessly.

  I said, “Do you like fashion?”

  “How d’you mean?” asked Kandy, looking at us with a hint of interest.

  “You know,” I said. “Bags, shoes. I love bags. Do you have any Prada?”

  Kandy nodded. “Yep. Two slouchy ones, a tan wallet, one saffiano leather in pink, and another of those new red-lined saffianos in black. How ’bout you?”

  “See,” I said slowly, “I don’t actually own any Prada because I can’t afford them. The bags are over a grand each.”

  Kandy looked at me, and then at Beth. “Um, well,” she said. “I got them on sale.”

  “Prada never goes on sale.”

  Kandy ran her tongue over her lips nervously. “Tim bought them for me.”

  “Tim was into diamonds, not bags,” said Beth. “And you just said you bought the bags yourself.”

  Kandy pursed her lips and stood up to put her cereal bowl away. We watched her walk into the kitchen and then pace back slowly, arms crossed over her chest.

  She pouted for a long minute, looking at a spot in the far corner of the floor, and then finally she turned to us and said, “Why d’you care so much about my bags?”

  Aha! I tried not to do a visible fist-pump as I said, “It’s not the bags. It’s the money you used to pay for the bags.”

  “So?” Kandy sat down and crossed one leg over the other.

  “Tim didn’t pay you well.”

  She shrugged.

  Beth said, “Why don’t you tell us where you got the money from?”

  “It was a gift,” she said.

  Beth shook her head no. “Try again.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” said Kandy.

  “No,” I agreed. “But it would be better than talking to the cops. So let’s try this again. You were lifting cash from the café, weren’t you?”

  Kandy looked away, and then finally, she rolled her eyes and said, “So what if I was? Tim knew about it.”

  My eyes widened and I tried not to look too surprised. Beth said, “What do you mean, he knew about it?”

  Kandy shrugged. “He said I could take a few meals’ worth, as long as I didn’t give the customers a receipt, and then he could save money on tax. Or something like that.”

  “So a bookkeeper wouldn’t find out about it,” I said slowly, thinking that a chat with Brenda would’ve been a waste of time.

  “I guess,” said Kandy. “Anyway, he was okay with it. So, whatever, right?”

  “No,” said Beth, shaking her head. “That means you liked working at the café so much that you wouldn’t want Tim to sell it.”

  Kandy rolled her eyes again and looked at us like we were stupid. “If he sold the damn place, I might’ve gotten a job with the new owners. But now the thing’s closed and I don’t have any work. At all.”

  She had a point.

  Beth gave me a now what look, and I shrugged. “That still doesn’t mean you didn’t kill him,” I said. “Maybe you got mad at him.”

  “You’re talking to the wrong person,” Kandy said. “If you’re looking for people who were mad at him, you should talk to Elaine.”

  “We already did.”

  “Yeah, and she probably told you she’s over Tim, right? But she’s really mean. I think she did it. Or Whitney.”

  “Whitney?” I frowned. “Sara’s Steakhouse Whitney?”

  “Who else? She wanted to sell her place too, and she thought that Tim was stealing her sale. She said that Tim’s place was nicer, and nobody would buy her place even though it was right next door, and that Tim had timed his sale just to spite her.”

  “How are we just hearing about this?” Beth mused out loud.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I guess we need to have a chat with Whitney.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It didn’t take too long to drive over to Sara’s Steakhouse, which was closed at this hour. But when we knocked, Whitney let us inside. The staff were setting up the tables and preparing the breads and salads, and Whitney said, “Don’t tell me ya’ll want a steak already?”

  “No,” I said, feeling a little awkward. “We wanted to have a chat about Tim’s café.”

  Whitney let us follow her out back to the kitchen, where a member of her staff was busy chopping up lettuce and tomatoes.

  She shook her head. “I already told you gals, I can’t really help on that one.”

  “Okay,” Beth said. I could tell that she was trying very hard not to be rude. “But what about your place? You’re looking to sell it, aren’t you?”

  Whitney eyed us suspiciously. “Ye-es.”

  “Well, apparently you were unhappy with the timing of Tim’s sale.”

  Whitney glanced away from us and watched the man who was chopping the tomatoes and lettuce. “It was a bit annoying,” she said finally. “But, look, I had nothing against the man, really.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell us you were trying to sell?”

  Whitney shrugged. “None of these places were officially on the market. Tim and I both had feelers out. It’s a small town, right? People know each other, and I was hoping that someone would come by without my having to hire an agent and deal with advertising and stuff. So was Tim—I mean, it’s no fun dealing with agents.”

  “We heard that you thought you’d have a hard time selling your place.”

  “Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem,” Whitney said, with a sigh. “But I only got two people who were interested, and they both preferred Tim’s. Tim’s place looked so much nicer—he renovated a few years ago, and I haven’t renovated since I bought this place twenty years ago. Both Miranda Campbell and Neve would rather have purchased Tim’s place.”

  “So Miranda’s the other buyer,” I mused out loud.

  “Yeah,” said Whitney, “But she ended up buying a bistro near the pier, instead. So it was really just Neve, and that girl had her heart set on Tim’s café. She wants to do some kind of vegan soup place.”

  “I don’t know who’d be interested in vegan soup here,” said Beth. “I mean, soup. It’s not even a real meal. It’s what you have before your meal.”

  Whitney laughed and nodded. “I hear ya. But that girl’s got a mind of her own.”

  I frowned. “You said you had two people interested in the place. What about Simon?”

  Whitney looked at me, confused. “Simon?”

  “You know, the man I was chatting with yesterday. You said he’s one of your regulars.”

  “He is.” Whitney nodded. “But he wasn’t interested in buying the place.”

  “But he was thinking about buying Tim’s place.”

  Whitney shrugged. “I guess you can chalk that up to one more person who’d rather buy Tim’s place than mine. Anyway, you want to know if I had anythin
g to do with Tim’s death, but you know I didn’t. I’d closed up shop by that time, and I’d gone over to my sister’s house to say hello to her and her husband. It was my sister’s birthday the next day, and I wanted to drop off her gift.”

  I sighed and looked at Beth. “We’re sorry to have bothered you,” I told Whitney. “But you’ve been very helpful.”

  I glanced at Tim’s café as Beth and I headed back to our car. The entrance was still surrounded by crime scene tape, and the windows were dark and empty.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Beth and I headed over to John’s Bistro on the other side of town, where Elaine had claimed to be having dinner and drinks till ten. Like Sara’s Steakhouse, John’s Bistro was just getting set up for the lunch crowd, and Beth and I managed to have a quiet word with the owner.

  “Yeah, I was here that night,” John said. “Shame what happened to Tim.” He nodded when we showed him a photo of Elaine. “I remember her. She was here till seven. She had two margaritas and a panini, and then she left.”

  “You mean she was here till ten, right?”

  John shook his head. “No, I’m sure she left at seven. Because we had a booking for a table for six at seven fifteen, and she left in time for us to join her table with another one and make a table for six.”

  Beth and I looked at each other. This wasn’t good. Perhaps Kandy had a point—perhaps we had misjudged Elaine.

  We were back at Elaine’s house as soon as we could get there, and we rang the bell and waited ten minutes for Elaine to open it. “I was just taking a shower,” she told us. Her hair was wrapped up in a white towel, and she was wearing a pink bathrobe. “What’s going on?”

  “Can we come in?” said Beth. “We wanted to talk to you.”

  “It’s not the best time,” Elaine said. “I need to go out. But I can spare two minutes.”

  We sat around the overfurnished living room again, and Elaine began to apply moisturizer to her face.

  “Where are you going?” Beth asked.

  “Meeting up with some girlfriends for lunch at the pier.” Elaine finished moisturizing her face and poured a dollop of lotion onto her hands. She started rubbing the lotion onto her legs, and said, “Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”