Carla could tell her husband was working hard to keep a neutral expression. "So you're saying you think this sister could be the murderer?" he asked.
"Either her or her boyfriend." Amy shook her head. "She committed armed robbery when she was only twelve years old, according to Rayshelle. And the boyfriend…he made the actors on the haunted hay ride Alex took me on before Halloween look like cherubs."
He nodded. "So you're basing your theories on physical appearance and unverified past criminal activity. Have you ever heard of the concept of a murderer trying to pin their crime on someone else? This is the first time I've heard she has a sister, but to be honest, that's one family tree I don't really want to go climbing around in until I absolutely have to."
"I'd say it's time to put on your hard hat and grab a chainsaw."
Carla willed her face to smooth into the emotionless mask she often used to keep critically ill patients calm in the emergency room. Even though her husband was roughly twice the size of Amy, her petite friend had no qualms about standing up to him when she felt it was necessary. It was rather like watching a Chihuahua backing a mastiff into a corner.
He reached for his plate, but at the last moment, his hand swerved off course, and he grabbed the bottle of beer next to it. Bruce took a long drink of the stout. Most likely a stalling tactic as he decided on how to survive another round in the game show called Unconventional Logic With Amy. Finally, he set the bottle down and said, "So you think I should be looking closer into Esther Mae's family instead of friends or business associates."
Amy shrugged. "Yes. Her family sounds messed up. From what I've heard, lots of weirdos and criminals. But I do think you are focusing on the wrong sister. I don't like Rayshelle, yet I really don't think she would kill the aunt who saved her from growing up in foster homes."
Bruce sighed. "I know…sometimes you really want to give people the benefit of doubt, but I've learned that lesson the hard way. Some people don't deserve it."
Carla leaned sideways and snagged her brownie off of the coffee table. It sounded like the entertaining disagreement was wrapping up, so she might as well wrap up her meal with dessert. There wasn't much stomach space left in her body anymore, so she often left food dished up by her husband in Bruce-sized portions on her plate in order to save room for the rich brownies. She nibbled on the edge of the fudgy square and discovered a golden raisin within the dense chocolate cake. The dessert had antioxidant-filled chocolate and protein from eggs. Sometimes there were even nuts and dried fruit in them to add to the health benefits. Not bad on the nutrition forefront. At least that's what she kept telling herself whenever she scarfed down square after square of craving-busting deliciousness. Before she got pregnant, she had been skeptical of pregnancy cravings, figuring they were more psychological affectations than truth—because every pregnant woman has heard stories of wanting pickles and ice cream or other strange food. She was wrong. She couldn't make it through a day without a brownie.
The meal continued in silence, with lots of very studious eating, as everybody seemed to be trying to figure out some sort of benign conversational topic. She had to hand it to her mom. She seemed to be taking the discussion over murder suspects in stride. Not only had she adopted a Bohemian hippie wardrobe, but also her personality had become more relaxed and spontaneous. The uptight and emotionally closed off Geraldine of Carla's childhood had become chilled out and fun loving Geri. The change suited her well.
"Amy, would you like to see the mural I'm painting in the nursery after dinner?" Geri asked.
Amy nodded and frowned at the same time. "I would, but I thought Carla didn't want any of the walls painted so they won't need to paint again when the lease is up."
Her mother smiled. She looked sort of like a Cinderella fairy godmother in the pink lace prairie skirt and puffy-sleeved white silk blouse she had changed into for dinner. "Don't worry. No walls are being harmed in the process. I'm painting on a large canvas that can just be hung on the wall, so it can easily move to another house."
"That's a great idea," Amy said as she wiped the last wedge of flatbread over her plate. "I can't wait to see it."
"You know, I can get up and move a bit." Carla dug her heels into the couch cushion and pushed her torso up higher on the angled stack of pillows. "I want to see too. We're only planning on staying here for another six months. I'm not really sure how portable a wall-sized canvas will be, so if you let me see it, I can work on figuring out how to move it to another house while I'm lying here."
"Nice try, but no way," her mom said as she made a fairy godmother gesture—waving the fork she was using to eat her brownie around like a magic wand. "I want it to be a surprise. No admittance into the nursery until the kiddo is with you…in your arms."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Amy jumped when the door thumped shut behind her. The electronic open sign was lit, but the only thing that greeted her inside Buzzy's Tattoos was silence. The lobby's color scheme was black as death. The floor, leather upholstered couch, and checkout counter were all coal black. Sheets of paper depicting sample tattoos were hung in columns on the walls. Amy studied the nearest sample page. Did people really want severed heads dripping blood permanently drawn on their skin?
"Can I help you?"
The question rocketed Amy's heart into her throat. A man with dark, slicked-back hair that made him look as though he'd stepped out of the 1950s emerged from a room at the end of the hallway leading into the bowels of hell…tattoo studio.
"Um…I'm interested in possibly getting a tattoo?" She couldn't look him in the eye because she was too busy looking at the samples of all of the tattoos she absolutely didn't want to get. Did she sound as much like a child as she thought she did? She cleared her throat and went for a deeper, more mature voice octave. "Do you have any kind of culinary-themed art?"
While she had been trying to put two coherent sentences together, the man had made the journey up the hallway into the reception area. He stepped behind the counter. Amy jumped when he thumped a thick album on the countertop. He began flipping through the pages, "Do you mean like a hamburger or fried egg?"
Amy swallowed the lump in her throat. She should've thought out this clue-fishing expedition a little bit more. Visiting the tattoo parlor wasn't in her plans for the morning. She was just driving by to see what the business looked like so she could decide whether she had the courage stop by at some later time. Or possibly never if Shepler found enough dirt on Shantelle to charge her with the murder. But when Amy saw the Open sign was lit in the window of the parlor, she figured there was no reason to wait to try to find out more about Miss Triple Eye. Split-second decision making at its finest and worst. She got in, but how was she going to get out without sounding like a delusional housewife? She rotated her left arm and tapped her pulse point with her fingertip. "I was thinking more of a whisk or maybe a chef's knife…to go on the inside of my wrist."
The James Dean look-alike stopped studying the art album and turned his attention to her. "You do realize these are permanent tattoos. They don't wash off. To be perfectly honest, I would suggest you try a henna tattoo first."
She smiled. To be perfectly honest, she didn't even want a henna tattoo. A freckle arrangement that looked like the Big Dipper on her right cheek was enough body art for her. "Do you often talk potential clients out of using your services?"
He nodded his head from side to side. "Trust me, spur of the moment tattoos can lead to unhappy customers. It's not fun to get bad reviews, not because your work is poor quality, but because someone blames you for not trying hard enough to talk them out of getting the tattoo in the first place. Feel free to look through my albums or bring in a picture of what you would like, but I can see you're nervous, so I would suggest thinking about it for a day or two before you schedule an appointment."
"I guess every kind of business has its own type of pitfalls." Like her unofficial murder detective job had brought her to a tattoo studio pretending she wanted some
one to repeatedly jab her with a needle to force ink under her skin. Definitely a pitfall. "But you came highly recommended by Shantelle Applebee."
He squinted at her. "She recommended my shop? You're friends with Shantelle?"
"Small world, isn't it? Although, she's just an acquaintance. Not a friend."
"You'd be smart to keep it that way."
Now she was getting somewhere. And the topic was getting farther away from her getting a tattoo. "Oh, really? Why?"
He snorted. Okay, so she had gone a little heavy on the trying to sound naive angle. Who wouldn't be wary of a woman who looked like an alien?
"She's been bad-mouthing my shop, telling people that my studio is dirty and unhygienic." His eyes narrowed as he frowned. "She was my cleaning lady. So, since she apparently sat on her ass all night instead of working, the place is dirtier than it has ever been. I fired her two nights ago. I had to stay closed yesterday while I had a real cleaning crew come in to get everything back to the way it should be."
If Shantelle had just been scraping by before, her income would be hitting rock bottom soon. "It's best to get rid of a bad apple before it spoils the entire bushel."
He blinked at her as if she was speaking Russian instead of quoting folk wisdom. "Yeah. Whatever you say. Besides, she seemed happy to go…said she was going to be getting a big chunk of cash soon, so she didn't need a job anymore."
"Oh. Did she say where the money was coming from?"
Now he was looking at her as if Shantelle's third eye was materializing on her forehead. The only thing she was getting out of the visit with the now upset tattoo artist was a case of nervous hives. She was far, far away from her comfort zone in the kitchen.
"I didn't ask, and I figured it was wiser not to know. I value my life and business. One of my regular customers recognized her boyfriend when he dropped her off last week. The men had been in the same cellblock in Jackson prison a few years ago. When a convicted felon tells you that you don't want to mess with some dude, you listen."
Amy nodded in agreement. "That's even better advice than throwing out moldy apples."
* * *
The last two students walked out of the classroom. Amy sighed as she collapsed onto a chair in the first row. She hadn't been able to stop moving all morning, thanks to the impromptu visit to the tattoo studio followed up with a mad rush of class preparation. She had become Amy: The Perpetual Motion Human—driving, questioning wary tattoo artists, setting up a cooking demonstration, doing a cooking demonstration, and finally, cleaning up the classroom's kitchen. Luckily she made the samples of prosciutto and chestnut cornbread dressing and cranberry crumble the previous night, along with sealing all of the premeasured ingredients in lidded containers. She called it the dump and mix approach to cooking demonstrations. Considering the rushed morning she'd had, slicing onions would've possibly resulted in weeping from a cut finger instead of the usual tears from noxious fumes. She was actually getting pretty proficient at teaching cooking classes and even writing for her blog. And she was pretty good at solving murders, too. That was a plot twist in her life she had never seen coming.
She took a quick walk around to make sure the classroom was spotless—no water bottles under chairs or used plastic silverware on any counters. The last thing she needed to do was turn on the dishwasher. A market employee would come up later in the day and put away the clean dishes. Once the appliance was whooshing away, Amy hoisted the extra-large tote bag full of her own unwashed dishes onto her shoulder and walked out the door. She could finally go home and hang out on the couch with Pogo for a little while before making dinner to take to Carla and family. The air outside the classroom was delightfully cool. Putting on a bubbly, high-energy cooking demonstration in a small kitchen with all three ovens on and several pans sizzling on the cooktop had left her feeling as though the classroom had turned into Rori's hot yoga room.
Amy paused at the landing next to the top of the metal spiral staircase. There was an elevator and straight staircase leading down to the ground floor of Clement Street Market, but she loved the twisty route. It was kind of like a utilitarian adult version of a spiral slide. A conversation distinguished itself from the din of faraway voices and sounds coming from the main floor. She looked around, expecting to find she wasn't alone on the second story walkway. But she appeared to be alone. Amy paused for a second to zero in on the source of the disembodied voices. They were coming from the staircase. A conversation was projecting up the metal chute, and she could hear every word as plain as day.
"The food from The Veggie Crew is healthier than the dishes you learned in that class. Plus, you don't have to prepare them. You can't go wrong with healthy and easy, right? Especially during the busy holiday season."
She leaned over the railing. In the dining area below, Candi was talking to two of the women who had just been in Amy's class. Somebody had double standards.
A surge of energy ba-bumped through her. Amy pounded down the stairs, stomping on each metal step, hoping she sounded more intimidating than she looked, which was pretty much a modern-day Goldilocks considering she had curled her hair into big, bouncy curls that morning. The students smiled and waved at Amy as she approached them. The women walked away from Candi, in the opposite direction of The Veggie Crew booth.
"I thought stealing customers equated to murdering a business." Amy attempted to reproduce Candi's signature threatening smile. She probably looked more like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. "So why are you telling my students that they should buy food from your booth?"
A couple men in business suits sitting at a table nearby looked up from their pulled pork sandwiches. One leaned toward the other and said something, maybe a warning to watch out because there could be a fight. Not that Amy wanted to get into a physical fight. That wasn't her thing, but it might be Candi's preferred way to settle disputes. She had to be ready for anything now that she had started the interaction. If the confrontation turned into a food fight, Amy would grab one of the sandwiches loaded with sticky-sauced meat. How would a devout vegan react to a literal meat bomb?
Candi's pecan-colored curls quivered as she clenched her fists at her side. Now both barbecue eating men were staring at them. She bared her teeth in an angry cat sort of smile and said, "Those women aren't technically your customers. They're students who should be educated on how not to clog their arteries with your cholesterol-filled recipes."
What had Carla's mom said about people getting radical about their beliefs? Oh yeah, basically they could get crazy fanatical and do ridiculous things. "Well, I think it's okay for people to indulge a bit during the holidays. I doubt anybody is going to eat such rich foods every day. Don't you believe in treating yourself with something naughty once in a while?"
"My body is a temple built on healthy food." Candi flicked her long hair over her shoulder. "I plan on living until I'm at least one hundred years old. Bacon and butter kill people."
Or maybe she would live forever because she had made a deal with the devil. In exchange for torturing people with her passive-aggressive personality, she would be immortal. And maybe, knocking off people who doled out unhealthy food to innocent diners was also part of her evil food crusader agenda.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Amy cracked open the oven door. A blast of heat made her nose tingle. The vegetarian entree for the evening was almost done. Portobello mushrooms with spinach and millet stuffing. Italian wedding soup with plenty of meatballs for the mommy- and daddy-to-be. Geri had said she would make her own food since her daughter and son-in-law ate meat. In fact, she had even offered to do all of the cooking since she was sleeping in the under-construction nursery. While the sleeping arrangement had been worked out, the cooking duties were still undecided. Carla had been unimpressed with her mother's eggless, gluten-free, carob brownies. Shepler left behind a greasy fast food bag that Carla found one morning in the half bath's wastebasket—of all places. Evidence that he had made a late night run to Taco Hut aft
er politely finishing a rather delicate portion of baked tofu with onion gravy. So Amy decided to give the family some peace since she could easily use the same ingredients to make meat-filled and meat-free entrees.
In the living room, Carla was talking on the phone to one of her emergency room coworkers. From the snippets of one-sided conversation that Amy could overhear, the woman on the other end of the line was trying to organize a baby shower for the celebration-phobic momma. "I've been shopping online for baby stuff…can't think of anything we really need now…nobody wants to see me sprawled on the couch like a beached whale…"
Whomever Carla was talking to wasn't the only person who wanted to have a shower for mini Shepler or Sheplerette. Amy had been too busy planning Carla and Shepler's hurried wedding at the beginning of the summer to also throw a shower for that event. There was no way her best friend was bypassing a baby shower too, even if it meant having the celebration after the baby was born. As Amy stirred baby spinach leaves into the soup broth and eavesdropped on one side of the diversion-filled conversation, she thought about her own plans to pull off what everybody, except Carla, knew she needed.
The phone conversation in the living room fell silent, but a new one started before she could get the mushrooms topped with parmesan and leave the kitchen. Luckily, the town house had great acoustics so she could hear what Geri was saying. "Honey, I know you like to do things differently, but a baby shower is a tradition I think you should keep. You'll get all kinds of things for the baby that will be useful…and I would just love to experience this with you. Nothing fancy because neither you nor I are into pomp and circumstance. I really want to do this since I couldn't make it to your wedding. It would also be a great time to unveil the painting I'm doing in the nursery. I would even let you see it."
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