Murder of a Chocolate-Covered Cherry

by Denise Swanson

  “Elbow macaroni.”

  Skye reached into the low cupboard, but couldn’t quite grab the box, which had been pushed to the back. Sighing, she got on her knees and stuck her head inside.

  She had just curled her fingers around the package when she heard someone yell, “Son of a B! Who switched my sugar for salt?” The voice belonged to her mother, and May sounded as if she were ready to have a stroke—or all set to give one to someone else.

  Skye sprang up and hit her head on the shelf. Flailing backward, she threw her arms in the air, trying to regain her balance, but failed and ended up sprawled on the wooden floor as macaroni rained down on her head like rice on a bride.

  Before she was able to get to her feet, May’s shouts bounced off the walls of the warehouse. “I know you did this, Cherry Alexander, and you’re not getting away with it.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Sift Dry Ingredients Together

  As Skye plucked noodles from her cleavage, she toyed with the idea of pretending she hadn’t recognized her mother’s voice or, even better, that she hadn’t heard the screams at all. Which would have been a good plan if, just as Skye became pasta free, another yell didn’t rip through the warehouse.

  This cry was a wordless screech that somehow sounded more ominous than the ones before, and Skye gave up any idea of remaining uninvolved. Crunching over the dry macaroni, she ran toward May’s assigned area.

  Bunny followed, peppering her with questions. “Who’s Cherry Alexander? Why would she switch salt and sugar? What’s May going to do?”

  Skye wished she knew. She was afraid May’s retaliation might involve plucking poultry and heating up asphalt. Two things May did not tolerate were anyone insulting her children, and anyone messing with her cooking. And as Skye knew from personal experience, rather than forgive and forget, May’s specialty was to reprimand and remember.

  When Skye reached the Special-Occasion Baking area, she recoiled. Cameras of all descriptions were pointed at the crowd gathered around her mother’s stove. May stood in the center of the group waving a wooden spoon in the air. Two of Grandma Sal’s employees, Charlie, and Vince were all dancing around her like orderlies at a mental hospital trying to put a straitjacket on a patient.

  Another group restrained Cherry. Unfortunately they had not taped her mouth, and she was screaming, “First she steals my secret ingredient, and now she accuses me of sabotage. I demand she be kicked out of the contest.”

  Skye saw her mother’s face go from red to magenta, and hurried forward. Stopping just out of wooden-spoon range, Skye raised her voice. “Mom, put down your weapon.”

  May sneered. “The only place I’m putting this is up Miss High-and-Mighty’s a—”

  Skye cut her off. “Just calm down and think. We’ll find out who did this.”

  “I know who did it, and she’s standing over there smirking.” May pointed the spoon at Cherry, who did indeed have a smug expression on her face.

  Before Skye could respond, a sweet female voice managed to project itself over the melee. “Oh, my heavens. What in the world is going on around here?”

  The crowd around May and Cherry split open like a cracked egg, and Grandma Sal walked between the two angry women. Skye prayed fervently that no yolks would be broken.

  Both May and Cherry tried to explain at once, but Grandma Sal raised a work-roughened hand and pleaded, “One at a time. My hearing’s not so good anymore.”

  Hmm. That was odd. The older woman’s ears had seemed to work just fine earlier. Skye thought she saw a roguish twinkle in Grandma Sal’s eyes.

  Both May and Cherry tried to speak again, and this time there was a quaver in Grandma Sal’s voice as she begged, “Please, ladies, don’t ruin my contest. If you do, it might be the last one we ever have.”

  Skye barely stopped herself from snorting. Grandma Sal was certainly laying it on thick, but it looked as if one of the angry women was buying it—at least up to a point.

  May put the spoon on the counter and moved toward Grandma Sal. “We wouldn’t dream of ruining your wonderful contest.”

  Grandma Sal clasped May’s hands. “Thank you, my dear. That’s so sweet of you.”

  “But…” May tightened her grip on the older woman’s fingers. “We do have to punish the person who tried to ruin my recipe.”

  “Of course we do.” Grandma Sal maintained her smile as she freed herself from May’s grasp. “If it was intentional, but I’m sure it was just a mistake.” She spoke to the crowd. “One of the reasons we have this trial run the day before the contest is to iron out any kinks, to find the mistakes and make everything perfect for the actual competition.”

  May narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, but Grandma Sal gracefully cut her off. “When you are stocking twenty-four kitchens, there are bound to be mistakes, but let me assure you all that there was no malice involved. It was just an error that could happen to anyone.”

  The crowd broke into applause, and Skye read defeat in May’s face. Sighing with relief that the incident had been averted, Skye turned to go.

  She got about halfway back to her kitchen when she heard a male voice roar, “Dammit to hell! Who switched my sweet peppers for jalapeños?”

  Skye closed her eyes and willed reality to change. If something was about to happen, please let it be Vince or Butch, not Charlie, whose ingredients had been messed with. Vince would grin and make the best of it, and Butch seemed like a laid-back guy, but Charlie would rampage through the warehouse like an angry hippo, chomping anyone who got in his way.

  While Skye hesitated, another voice shouted, “My casserole is ruined. Who screwed with my timer?”

  Within the next few minutes several other contestants added their complaints to the general din, including Monika Bradley, who had discovered that wheat flour had been substituted for her white rice flour. As she explained to Grandma Sal, in her case the switch would not only ruin her recipe, but also had the potential to kill her.

  Whoever was sabotaging the finalists’ recipes had moved from mere mischief to possible manslaughter. The question was—why?

  It had taken hours for Grandma Sal’s employees to straighten out the chaos. Those whose stations had been messed with had to be soothed, and new ingredients had to be obtained for everyone.

  About half of the contestants were still trying to finish their recipes at six o’clock, when Grandma Sal made an announcement. “Due to the dinner being held here at seven this evening, we are asking you all to go home now so we can get the tables set up in time. Because of the technical problems we ran into this afternoon, you will all be allowed in early tomorrow morning to practice your recipe again. Your areas will be available to you from six until nine a.m. At that point the kitchens will be cleaned and restocked, and the contest will start at ten, as previously planned.”

  There was a smattering of applause, a few grumbles of complaint, and a couple of murmured conversations.

  As Skye was putting away the ingredients she had taken out, her mother hurried up to her.

  “Aren’t you ready yet?” she asked. “I need to get home right away. I just talked your brother into doing my hair for tonight.”

  Briefly Skye wondered what Vince would do with May’s short, wavy hair. Both its length and degree of natural curl precluded any new style Skye could envision, but she knew better than to ask. Hair was a touchy subject with her mother, and for once she pitied her brother, who was May’s golden boy 99 percent of the time, but not when her coiffure was concerned.

  Careful not to become involved, Skye said, “Go ahead without me. I need to clean up here.”

  “Can’t your runner do that?” May’s brows drew together. “Who is she, by the way? I got the middle school Home Ec teacher; isn’t that great?”

  “Great.” Skye was not about to share with her mother that Bunny Reid was her runner. May had taken an unreasonable dislike to Bunny from the moment the redhead had arrived in Scumble River. “Mine’s looking for a broom.” Skye fe
rvently hoped that Bunny would stay away until May left. May’s favorite nickname for Bunny was the Trollop, and that was one of the nicer things she called her. “I’m sure she’ll be back to help soon. You go ahead.”

  “How will you get home if I leave you?”

  “Someone will give me a ride.” Skye spotted her godfather chatting with someone she couldn’t see. She pointed to him. “Uncle Charlie can drive me.”

  May’s gaze followed Skye’s finger and she nodded. “Okay. I’ll tell him not to leave without you.” May kissed Skye on the cheek. “Don’t take too long here. You have to get dressed for the dinner, too.”

  “I won’t. See you tonight, Mom.”

  “Do you want Dad and me to pick you up?”

  “No, Wally’s taking me.”

  May walked away shaking her head.

  Bunny returned just as Skye finished cleaning up. They’d gathered their belongings and were approaching the warehouse door when two teenagers rushed through it. The boy was well over six feet tall, skinny, and wore horn-rimmed glasses. The girl was nearly his complete opposite—six inches shorter, well rounded, with long, wavy brown hair.

  Skye’s stomach tightened in concern. What were Justin Boward and Frannie Ryan doing here, and why were they running? Did it have something to do with their personal lives—Justin and Frannie had recently started to go steady—or was it about the student newspaper? Justin and Frannie were the coeditors of the Scoop and very competitive in their reporting.

  The teens skidded to a stop in front of Skye and Bunny, and Justin said breathlessly, “Xenia is missing, and we think she kidnapped Ashley Yates.”

  Several questions crowded Skye’s lips, but she finally managed to push one out in front of the others. “Why?”

  “Because of the lawsuit,” Frannie answered. “Xenia was way pissed when she heard Ashley’s parents were threatening to sue the paper over the article she wrote.

  Xenia’s article had examined the politics of popularity, using Ashley as a prime example of the price girls were willing to pay to be one of the “in” crowd. Xenia had listed all the things Ashley had done to both gain and keep her popular status, including having sex with the entire boys’ basketball team, one right after the other, in their locker room the night they won the championship.

  “How would kidnapping Ashley make it better?” Skye asked before she could stop herself.

  Both teens shrugged, and Skye could have slapped herself for asking such a stupid question. No one knew why Xenia did anything. Skye wasn’t even sure Xenia did.

  Backtracking, Skye asked what she hoped was a better question. “What makes you think Xenia kidnapped Ashley?”

  Justin and Frannie looked at each other. Finally he gave an almost imperceptible nod, and Frannie said, “The last post on her blog.”

  Before Skye could respond, Bunny jumped in. “A blog is like a diary that you write on the computer and let everyone see. All the kids do it.”

  “I know what a blog is,” Skye retorted. “What I can’t understand is why anyone would write on one that she had kidnapped someone.”

  Justin studied his sneakers and mumbled, “She didn’t exactly write that, but we put two and two together and figured it out.”

  “Are you sure you did the math right?”

  Frannie joined Justin in his intense interest in his shoe. “We’re pretty sure, especially after Xenia’s mom called looking for her.”

  “Why is that?” Skye had never pictured Xenia as a teen who reported her every move to her mom.

  Justin explained, “Since we were off school, Xenia and her mom were going into Chicago to see a matinée of this play Xenia really, really wanted to see, then go to this super cool new restaurant for dinner. But she never showed up. They were supposed to leave their house at eleven this morning, and when Mrs. Craughwell knocked on Xenia’s bedroom door to see if she was ready, she didn’t answer. Mrs. Craughwell went in and she wasn’t there, and she hasn’t shown up all day.”

  “Oh.” Shit! It sounded as if Scumble River’s newest wild child might indeed have added kidnapping to her already long list of criminal acts. For a nanosecond Skye wondered if maybe Xenia herself was the kidnapping victim, but she quickly realized how unlikely that would be. No way would Xenia trust anyone enough to put herself in a position to become a victim.

  Still, Skye held out one last hope that neither girl had been kidnapped. “Okay, the big question is whether Ashley is missing or not. Has either of you called her house to check?”

  Frannie nodded. “I pretended to be one of her cheerleading friends.” The teen’s cheeks reddened. “I’m pretty good at imitating voices. Her mom was mad. Said she’d been looking for Ashley all day.”

  “Okay, so both Xenia and Ashley are missing,” Skye acknowledged. “What did you say to Mrs. Yates?”

  “Uh.” Frannie swallowed hard. “Well, the thing is, I didn’t know what to say, so I might have suggested that the cheerleaders had an all-day practice and a slumber party tonight. Which is why I was calling, since I couldn’t remember where the party was. And that Ashley might have forgotten to mention it, since it was sort of a last-minute deal.”

  The muscle under Skye’s right eye twitched, but she kept her cool. She reminded herself that Frannie had just been trying to keep things calm until she could talk to an adult she trusted. She wasn’t really trying to cover up a crime. “I don’t suppose Xenia’s blog said where she was keeping her victim or anything useful like that?”

  “Not that we could tell.” Justin dug in his jeans pocket, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and thrust it into Skye’s hand. “Here. I printed out the post for you.”

  “Thanks.” Skye smoothed out the sheet and, with Bunny peering over her shoulder, read; Crybabies should b careful. If u can’t stand the heat, u need 2 b kooled off. Kept on ice. Get my drift?

  Skye felt even worse after reading the brief message. “Sounds like she was planning on stashing Ashley in a freezer somewhere.”

  “We thought of that,” Frannie said, “but where is there a freezer big enough to hold a person, where no one would notice that a frozen cheerleader had been added to their inventory?”

  “I don’t know.” Skye started toward the door again. “But I do know we need to talk to the police.”

  After extracting a promise from Bunny not to tell anyone about the Xenia/Ashley situation, Skye sent her runner home. Skye didn’t like the glint in Bunny’s eye as she hurried out the door, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

  Next, she found her godfather talking to a petite brunette half his age. At six feet tall, he towered over the woman. They were deep in conversation when Skye interrupted to tell him that Frannie and Justin were driving her home. He acknowledged her with a muttered, “Great,” but his gaze never left the woman’s face, and before Skye could add anything, he whispered something in the lady’s ear that made her giggle and pat his arm.

  Having taken care of Bunny and Charlie, Skye led Justin and Frannie out to the parking lot and borrowed Justin’s cell phone—one of the few that mysteriously seemed to work anywhere in Scumble River. “Thea? This is Skye.”

  “Hi, honey. How’s the cooking contest going? Your mom is so proud that you and Vince are in it with her.” Thea Jones was one of the dispatchers who worked with May.

  Thea was a grandmotherly type who knew everyone in town, and Skye acknowledged that there was no way to cut through the social chitchat if she wanted to keep Ashley’s disappearance quiet, so she summarized the day’s events, ending with, “We just finished, and I’m heading home to change for the dinner, but I wanted to ask Wally something first. Is he around?”

  “Sorry, sweetie. He’s not here right now. He’s probably at home getting ready for your big dinner party.”

  “Thanks. I’ll try him there. Bye.” Skye hit the END button before Thea could ask any more questions, grateful she hadn’t had to go through the whole “how are you, how’s your family, isn’t the weather nice”
ritual.

  While she dialed Wally’s home number, Skye said to Frannie, “Start driving toward town.”

  From the seat of Frannie’s father’s pickup truck, Skye watched the trees sweeping by as her call went through. When she got Wally’s answering machine she tried his cell phone, but he didn’t answer that either. She left another urgent message, checked her watch, then said to Frannie, “Head toward my house. He’s supposed to pick me up there at quarter to seven, and it’s already six thirty.”

  Justin and Frannie were strangely quiet as they drove. Skye considered questioning them to try to gather additional information about Xenia, but decided to see what Wally thought before she did anything more.

  It was only a few minutes to the old Griggs place, which Skye had inherited that past summer. The house was a little isolated, and a lot rundown, but Skye had felt an immediate connection with Alma Griggs, and had been touched when the elderly woman’s will revealed she had entrusted Skye with her home.

  During the six months Skye had owned the house, she’d been trying to fix it up. After hiring one horrible contractor, she had been lucky to find a great woman who had whipped the outside into wonderful shape. Skye admired the new siding, windows, roof, and sidewalks as Frannie pulled into the driveway.

  The instant the truck stopped, Skye jumped out and headed up the steps, pausing on the wraparound porch to dig through her purse for the keys. Justin and Frannie caught up to her as she swung open the front door.

  Inside, Skye had had the contractor fix the plumbing and wiring, but she had run out of money before she got to the cosmetic repairs, so she had been trying to do those herself. So far she had managed to paint the entrance hall, parlor, dining room, and kitchen, but the hardwood floors still need refinishing, and the drapes had to be replaced. She hadn’t even begun to touch the upstairs, except for removing a loathsome moose head from the wall of the master bedroom.

  Now, as she stood in the freshly painted foyer, she tried to decide what to do about the present situation. Should she change into the clothes she had planned to wear for the dinner? Should she even attend the dinner? She had no desire to sit through a formal banquet, but if she didn’t May would demand to know why, and that would mean news of Ashley’s disappearance would be all over town. Maybe Wally would want her to go to the party just to keep things quiet. If that was so, she’d better get dressed. He was due in less than five minutes and was rarely more than a minute or two late.