6 The Missing Dough

by Chris Cavender

  “No, but I have a feeling that we’re about to find out,” I said.

  As Jenny opened the back door, I asked Maddy, “Are you sure you don’t mind riding in the back?”

  “Are you kidding? It sounds like a hoot. Besides, my younger bones will be able to stand up to it better than your brittle old ones.”

  “I’d argue with you about it, but I might end up losing my nice comfortable seat.”

  As we drove back to Timber Ridge, Jenny asked, “Have you had any luck finding the killer yet? That’s what you two were really doing at the concert, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t miss much that goes on around town, do you?” I asked her.

  “Do you mean for a flower lady?”

  “I mean for anybody,” I said.

  “I get around a lot, I talk to a lot of people, and I’m always listening. Momma always said that you don’t learn a thing by talking, and she was right.”

  Jenny’s mother had run the flower shop before her, and I knew that the two of them had been close. “You still miss her, don’t you?”

  “Every day. I imagine it’s the same with Joe, even if you do have a new man in your life these days.”

  I laughed. “Like I said, you don’t miss much. Sure, I miss Joe, but it’s not so much a hole anymore as it is a sweet feeling of what I was lucky enough to have once.”

  “And maybe again,” she said with a smile.

  “You’re a hopeless romantic, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t see how I could be a florist unless I was,” she admitted.

  “How’s your love life going?” I asked.

  “You know me. I’m the one who is always giving the flowers to other people. The last time I actually got them was in high school. It was the first dozen roses I ever got for my very own.”

  “Was he the love of your life?” I asked. Jenny rarely talked about herself, and I was interested in what had made her such a romantic.

  “You’d think so, but no. He was just a sweet guy, naive in the best way, you know? I was sad about another guy breaking up with me, and the two of us were good friends, so he bought me roses to cheer me up. And you know what? It worked.”

  “Did he ask you out after that? Did you fall in love?” I asked, hoping for a happy ending to the story.

  “No, like I said, it wasn’t like that. His girlfriend went to a rival school, and they were a great match. Tim just had that kind of heart, you know? I have to admit, though, sometimes I wonder what ever happened to him,” she said wistfully, and I wondered if Jenny had wished they were more than just friends after all.

  “You should look him up. With the Internet these days, it would have to be pretty easy to find him.”

  “I’ve thought about it a few times, but you know what? I think maybe the memory is better than what the reality might be these days.”

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that she was probably right. The memory she had from the past was probably too lovely to risk.

  Chapter 17

  After we parked in front of the flower shop, I went around back and opened the door for Maddy. “How was your ride?” I asked her.

  “Adventurous,” she answered, clearly a little weary from the trip. “Next time, you get to ride in back.”

  Since there wasn’t much danger of that ever happening, I was quick to agree. “It’s a deal.”

  Jenny joined us, and I hugged her as we stood on the sidewalk in front of her shop. “Thanks again for the ride.”

  “Honestly, it was fun having the company,” she said. “If you want to go with me to the next concert, I’d love to have you.”

  I knew in my heart that this particular group would never perform together again, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that. “Sounds great,” I said.

  As Maddy and I walked to the pizzeria, I asked, “Was it really that bad?”

  “No. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn’t too tough at all. Did you two have a nice comfy ride up front?”

  “It was fine,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell her how special it had really been. “Now, let’s open the pizzeria back up. I’ll make ’em in back, and you serve ’em out front. How does that sound?”

  “Like it’s where we belong,” she said with a laugh.

  We didn’t hear a word from Greg or Josh for quite some time, and I kept checking my cell phone to make sure that it was working. Fortunately, we were pretty busy, but every now and then Maddy would come back and ask, “Have you heard anything yet?”

  I’d just shake my head and try not to worry about the possible danger I’d put them both in. It was amazing how responsible I felt for the two grown men. If anything happened to either one of them, I’d never be able to forgive myself.

  “Should we call them?” Maddy asked the last time she came in.

  “We have to show them that we trust them,” I said. “Let’s give them a little more time.”

  I was about to break down and call them anyway when Josh finally showed up first. Maddy followed close on his heels all the way back to the kitchen. “I couldn’t wait to find out what he had to say, and he wouldn’t tell me a thing unless you could hear it, too,” she explained.

  “You’ve got three minutes until this sandwich is ready to deliver,” I said.

  She looked at Josh and said, “Then you’d better talk fast.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, but it’s not all that much. After they split up, I followed Samantha, just like you asked me to do.”

  “Where did she go first?” I asked.

  “She headed straight for an Internet café in town. Samantha spent about a half an hour there, and then she went back to her apartment in Cow Spots and didn’t budge an inch.”

  “But that was over two hours ago,” I said. “What did you do after that? Were you just waiting outside of her apartment the whole time?”

  “Actually, I went back to Grayson’s Corners.”

  “Why did you do that?” Maddy asked.

  “I wanted to check the browser history on the computer she was on,” Josh admitted.

  “You can do that after she’s signed off? Didn’t she clear it when she left?” I asked.

  “She could have, but most folks probably wouldn’t be able to find it. Then again, I’m not most people.” He pulled a few pages of a computer printout out of his back pocket and handed them to me as he added, “Nobody else had been on the computer she was using, so I was able to call this up.”

  I read the pages, with Maddy looking over my shoulder. “It’s a one-way ticket to London,” I said.

  “Look when she’s leaving.” Josh said.

  “She’s going tomorrow?” I asked. “How can she leave so soon?”

  “She was willing to pay a premium price for the ticket,” Josh said. “I’ve got a feeling that she’s not coming back anytime soon.”

  I glanced over at the oven and saw that the sandwich was ready. As I cut it and put it in on a plate, I said, “Maddy, you need to serve this while it’s hot.”

  “Don’t say anything until I get back,” she said.

  “There’s nothing else to tell,” Josh said. “The second I found this, I came straight here.” He handed Maddy her keys. “Thanks for letting me borrow your car.”

  “I was happy to,” she said and then took the food.

  After she had left, Josh asked, “Does that mean I’m finished for the night?”

  I laughed as I threw his apron at him. “Sorry, but we need you here now. Go ahead and give Maddy a hand out front, okay?”

  “You bet,” he said.

  Before he left, I said, “You did a nice job, Josh.”

  “Thanks.”

  There was something I needed to know, but I wasn’t sure if I should ask him. Finally, I decided that the suspense of not knowing would be the hardest of all. “Are you going to tell your dad about this?”

  “Should I?” he asked as he tied the back of his apron.

  I thought about it and began to wonder what the
right thing to do was in this situation. A part of me wanted to keep this a secret between us, but how would Kevin feel when he found out that his son might have been withholding valuable information from him when he still had the chance to do something about it? “Call him and tell him what you know,” I said.

  “Aren’t you going to take some heat because of it?”

  “Don’t worry about me. He needs to hear about what’s going on before it’s too late to do anything about it,” I said.

  “If you’re sure that’s what you want me to do,” Josh said as he pulled out his phone.

  “You’d better call him right now before I change my mind.”

  Josh made the call, and after a minute of conversation, he handed me the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

  I wasn’t thrilled to take the phone, but I didn’t have much choice. “Chief, I didn’t mean to get your son involved, but I thought that it was important.”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” he said. “For now, I just wanted to let you know that we’re pretty sure we know who killed Grant, and it wasn’t Samantha Stout.”

  “So, you’re fine if she leaves the country? Are you that sure?”

  “Why? Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked.

  “You know what I know. Hey, I should get a little credit for having Josh call you with new information, even though I knew you were going to chew me out because of it.”

  “Okay, I’ll take it easy on you. Listen, I’ve got to go. Try not to get him involved in any more murder cases, no matter how wrong you might be about who you suspect, okay? I’ve got only one kid, and I’d kind of like to keep him around.”

  “Understood,” I said, and then he hung up on me.

  “That went better than I thought it would,” Josh said as he took his phone back from me.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I didn’t hear him yell at you even once,” he answered with the whisper of a grin.

  “Well, he wasn’t happy with me,” I said, “but I think we’re okay.”

  “He probably thinks he’s already got the bad guy in his sights. Did I do all of that for nothing?”

  “Josh, we never know what’s going to be useful and what’s not. I stand by what I said before. You did good. Now, get to work,” I said with a smile.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he replied.

  After he left, I started cleaning up a little, since I was still waiting for two pizzas to make it through the conveyor oven. Was Chief Hurley right? Could Samantha be a dead end? And who did he believe was the killer? Was it Maine, an obvious choice, or maybe even Kenny? I wasn’t ready to name the killer myself, no matter how confident the police chief had sounded on the telephone.

  Greg came in less than half an hour later. Maddy walked in with him, and I asked, “Where’s Josh? I thought he’d want to hear this, too.”

  “He’s manning the front,” she said.

  “And he agreed to that?” I asked, knowing his high level of curiosity.

  “Well, let’s just say that I pulled rank on him and leave it at that, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said as I turned to Greg. “Did you have any luck?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first, but it ended up with a bang. It was a good idea to follow him, Eleanor.”

  “He didn’t go back to Samantha’s place, did he?” I had a sudden sense of dread that Josh had left her alone at exactly the wrong time. She wouldn’t be safe until she was on that plane.

  “No, but that doesn’t mean he won’t,” Greg said.

  “Tell us what happened,” I said.

  “Well, at first he went to the garden center and bought some flowers, some fertilizer, and some bagged mulch. It looked as though he was going to use that shovel and pick for exactly what most folks would, and I was about to give up, but you said to follow him, so I did. The next place he stopped was at Parker’s Furniture, and I thought I was really wasting my time. At least I did until he came out.”

  “Why? What was he doing?”

  “He had a huge footlocker with him,” Greg said. “It took him twenty minutes to tie it to the roof of his car, and at one point I was about to help him secure it myself just to get things moving along again.”

  “You didn’t, though, did you?” I asked.

  “No, as tempting as it was, I sat in the car and waited. After he got it latched down securely, he drove to his place in Cow Spots, but he didn’t unload the footlocker. In fact, everything stayed right there in his station wagon.”

  “Why is that significant?” Maddy asked.

  “He’s renting a place on the outskirts of town,” Greg said. “The yard’s not much bigger than a postage stamp, but there are enough woods behind his place to get lost in.”

  “What do you think he’s going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Greg admitted, “but I don’t like it. Maybe my imagination’s just getting the best of me, but that footlocker was big enough to bury a body in.”

  “You think he’s going to kill Samantha before she gets a chance to escape?” I asked.

  “That was the first thing I thought of. There’s something else, too. When he was inside the furniture store shopping, I casually walked past his station wagon so I could take a closer look at those tools.”

  “You shouldn’t have taken that kind of chance,” I said.

  “He doesn’t even know me, though. We never met, remember?”

  “So, what did you see?” Maddy asked.

  “The tools had been used recently. There was still red clay sticking to both of them. I’ve got a feeling that he’s already dug his hole.”

  I felt a chill run through me as he said it. “You really think he’s going to kill her, don’t you?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility,” Greg said. “Should we call the police chief?”

  “He might already know about it,” I said. “He hinted earlier that he was close to catching someone.”

  “What if he’s after somebody else, though?” Greg asked. “If something happens to Samantha and there was anything I could do to stop it, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to forgive myself.”

  “Hang on,” I said as the kitchen door opened and Bob Lemon walked in.

  He was smiling broadly, as though the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders. “Ladies, I’ve got good news.”

  “That’s great to hear, because we could sure use some,” Maddy said after she kissed him.

  “The police chief has invited me to join him when he arrests Grant’s killer,” he said proudly.

  “You’re off the hook?” Maddy asked, hugging him tightly.

  “Yes, I’ve been officially cleared of the crime,” he said.

  I didn’t care who solved the murder, just as long as someone did. “Then who killed Grant? Was it Kenny Stout?”

  “No, the chief is convinced that it was Bernie Maine. He found Grant’s wallet when he searched Maine’s place a second time, and an envelope with fifteen hundred dollars in it was right beside it. The wallet had a spatter of blood on it, too, and it looks like Maine took it off the body after he skewered Grant.”

  “It’s still just circumstantial, though, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “You’re not upset just because you didn’t figure it out first, are you? The police chief has advantages and resources that you don’t. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “That’s not it at all,” I said. “How is he going to catch Bernie, even if he believes that he’s the killer? The man has just vanished since Maddy and I chased him down that country road.”

  “The chief had an idea, and he was going through some papers of Maine’s and found a Web site address for a realty company in Grayson’s Corners. It seems that old Bernie rented a remote cabin in the woods two weeks ago, and the chief is pretty sure he’s holing up there.”

  “Can we come, too?” Maddy asked.

  “Sorry. He let me tell you, but I’m the only civilian that’s going to be inc
luded. I’ll give you a call when it’s all over, though, I promise,” he told Maddy and then gave her another kiss. “Thank you all for all of your hard work. I’m sure Chief Hurley couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Once he was gone, Maddy said, “Well, I guess we were wrong, Sis.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  Greg said, “Even if someone else is the killer, I’m still worried about Samantha. Kenny Stout may not have killed Grant, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not capable of murdering his ex-wife. Eleanor, I’d like to go over there and make sure nothing’s happened to her, and I know that Josh is going to want to go, too. Is there any way we can get off early?”

  I looked at the clock and saw that we had an hour left on our evening shift, but Greg was right. If we could stop something bad from happening, then we should. “Go on. We’ll handle this. But don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

  “We won’t,” Greg said, and then he took off.

  “It looks like it’s just the two of us again,” I said to Maddy as we walked out of the kitchen. The dining room was almost empty, with one couple waiting for their pizza.

  “I know. It feels as though we’re missing out on all of the action.”

  “I’ve got an idea.” I approached the couple and said, “I’ve got a deal for you tonight, one night only. If you get your pizza as a carryout, it’s free, and so are two sodas of your choice. How does that sound?”

  “Like a winner,” the man said. His companion started to protest, so he added, “I’ll watch Morning Glory with you again if we can eat in front of the TV.”

  “But you hate chick flicks,” she said, softening slightly.

  “Maybe so, but I love you,” he said.

  “It’s a deal, then,” she said as she turned to me.

  I pulled out the pizza, boxed it, cut it, and then carried it back out. Maddy had already given them their drinks.

  “I feel like we’re taking advantage of you,” the man said.

  “Honestly, you’re doing us a favor,” I said as I let them out and locked the door behind them.