Books, Cooks, and Crooks (A Novel Idea Mystery)

by Arlington, Lucy

  My eyes widened. “Mieke was your oma?”

  She nodded, pressing her lips together.

  I touched her arm. “I know the story about Mieke. Ryan told me the truth about how he’d come to know her, but he never mentioned that she was your grandmother.”

  “He didn’t know. He didn’t remember me and I never identified myself to him.” Angrily, she wiped her eyes under her glasses. “Not until today. I was just a girl when he used to visit Oma for his cooking lessons. I look nothing like I did then and as you can hear, I managed to get rid of my accent. To him, I was just another New Yorker. And I wanted it that way. If I’d revealed myself too soon, he would have made me leave, so I wouldn’t give away Klara’s secret.” She stood and paced, seemingly unable to sit still. “I adored Ryan from the first day he walked into my oma’s kitchen. He was so handsome, so confident, so American. I’d sit at the table with my homework and watch him learn how to make our family recipes. I loved listening to him speak his broken Dutch. He was sweet to Oma, but he rarely acknowledged me. I was just a gangly twelve-year-old kid with pigtail braids, buck teeth, and glasses.”

  She put her wineglass on the table and sat back on the swing, setting it in rapid motion.

  “I might have been young, but I loved him. Through all these years, I never stopped loving him.” She pushed the swing harder. Faster. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glistened. “A few years ago, I saw him on television with Klara. I recognized him right away. That smile. Those beautiful eyes. Seeing the love of my life on that screen was like a sign that I was meant to go to him. I gave up everything to come to America to make that happen—to give us a chance to be together. I gave up everything!”

  Her agitation was unnerving. I needed to calm her down or the evening would be a total disaster.

  “Annie,” I said, gently stopping the swing with my foot. “Let’s plant those primroses now. It’ll take your mind off Ryan. Come on, I have an extra pair of gloves.” After waiting for her to stand up, I picked up the pot and carried it to the maple tree. I then retrieved the garden gloves, a trowel, and a hand rake from the garden shed and brought them to the tree where Annie stood staring down at the pot of flowers.

  The moment I handed her the gloves, the oven buzzer went off. “I’ll be right back. Our entrée is calling,” I said. Hurrying inside, I quickly turned off the oven, made sure the rice cooker was on the keep warm setting, and rushed back out to the garden.

  Annie was kneeling at the base of the tree, clawing at the dirt with the hand rake. The sun was sinking toward the horizon. Its light filtered through the branches, creating splintered shadows on the lawn. The tranquility I usually felt in my garden was absent. Somehow, Annie’s discontent had tainted the atmosphere and I longed to purify it again.

  “Dinner can wait until we finish here,” I said with forced cheerfulness, but Annie didn’t seem to hear me. I knelt beside her and started to dig a hole next to the dirt she was loosening.

  “How could he not want me once he knew who I was?” she said in a voice tight with anger. “How could he not know how faithfully I loved him for all these years? And how much he owed me and my family?”

  “I guess when he met you as an adult it was in a different context. When he last saw you, you were just a little girl. It was a different chapter in his life. He was a single man in the army,” I offered. “When you were hired to be Klara’s assistant, he was a married man with teenage kids. And he was in love with Klara,” I said very gently. “He wasn’t looking for anyone else.”

  “Oh, yes. Klara.” She attacked the dirt aggressively. “Klara. Klara. Klara.” She stabbed at the ground, gouging the soil until it was riddled with holes. “I got rid of her, now didn’t I?”

  She began to laugh.

  My hand stopped in the midst of removing a primrose from the pot. “What do you mean ‘got rid of her’?” I asked quietly, fighting to keep my voice even.

  In the twilight, the shadows lengthened and fell over both of us. I felt a chill in the air as Annie’s laughter grew louder and more hysterical.

  Was I gardening beside a murderer?

  Chapter 16

  ANNIE STOPPED LAUGHING AND EXHALED LOUDLY. “I made so many sacrifices for Ryan Patrick. So many. Klara was just one of them.”

  I put down the plant I was holding and shifted sideways, increasing the distance between us. My fingers closed around my spade and I brought it behind my back and held it at the ready. “Tell me about these sacrifices.”

  She turned to me. Her face was cast in gloom, but her eyes blazed with a cold light. “I didn’t mean to kill Joel. The explosion was meant for Klara. She had to look perfect on camera and she always practiced her dishes the night before each show. I figured she’d do it that night, too.”

  “So Joel’s death was a scheduling mix-up?” I couldn’t disguise my disbelief.

  She shrugged. “Yes, it was. I had no idea Joel would do what Klara usually does. If she hadn’t made him feel so crappy about his menu, he would never have been there. I heard about what she said to him over dinner that night. The way she made him doubt his choices. That’s the kind of nasty person she was. The world’s better off without her.” Annie stood up, the hand rake dangling at her side, and gazed down at me. “I may have screwed up killing Klara the first time, but I got her on my second try. At your friend’s café. I hope it didn’t hurt her business too much. She seems nice. I even disposed of Klara’s coffee cup in a trashcan down the street so she wouldn’t be implicated. Remember when I ran after the ambulance?”

  My mouth went dry and dozens of conflicting thoughts crowded my mind. I knew I needed to get away from Annie. I had to get to a phone and call the police. Slowly, so as not to startle her into reacting, I got to my feet. Refusing to show her any fear, I said, “You can tell me everything over dinner. I’ll go check on the food and bring our wineglasses out here. I could really use something to drink.” I gestured toward the house with my free hand and even managed a wobbly smile.

  Annie moved with lightning swiftness. She grabbed my outstretched wrist, her fingers digging into my skin. “No, wait! You need to hear the rest of it. You need to understand.” She tightened her grip. For someone so slight, she had remarkable strength. Pain surged through my arm and I instinctively brought up the other hand, the one holding the trowel, and swung it at her. She ducked, seized the tool, and yanked it away. She gazed at it curiously and then tossed it into the bushes.

  “I know you’ll sympathize with me,” she continued as if I hadn’t just tried to strike her. Her face was a mask of calm. Her eyes had gone cold and dark. “Once you know the whole story you won’t blame me. I know you won’t. Sit on the ground and listen to me.”

  I eyed the hand rake that she still held. “But I really need to—”

  Without warning, she pushed down on my shoulders and I let my knees fold. I didn’t dare put up a fight as long as she had the rake. It was a small tool, but it could still do plenty of damage.

  “Look,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I really don’t. I just need to explain. I need someone to listen to me. Someone to be my audience.”

  I nodded agreeably. If I kept her talking, I’d buy myself more time to figure out how to get her weapon away from her. “I can do that. I can listen to your story.”

  As if she didn’t trust me to comply, she brandished the hand rake and pressed her fingertips against the tines.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I assured her.

  “I’ve been waiting for years for everyone to know who I really am. Especially Ryan.” She took a step closer, looming over me. “I didn’t tell Ryan I was Mieke’s granddaughter when he first hired me because I wanted him to fall in love with the person I had become. I wanted him to see me as a pretty, chic, hardworking, and interesting woman. I could have replaced Klara. I could have been so much better than she ever was. But I never got a chance to prove that to him. He only talked to me about her. It was always Klara this and Klara that.
” Her brow furrowed. “I got rid of her for Ryan’s sake. She wasn’t good enough for him. She was cheating on him!”

  “Why didn’t you just tell Ryan about Klara cheating? Wouldn’t he have left Klara then? Wouldn’t you have had a chance then?”

  She shook her head rapidly. “You don’t really understand the kind of person he is, do you? He was so loyal to Klara. If I’d told him about her and Bryce, he would have always associated me with Klara’s betrayal. He would never realize what I’ve always known. That he and I belong together.”

  “But Ryan doesn’t love you,” I reminded her softly. “Annie, you need to start thinking of a different future. Ryan isn’t going to come around to your way of thinking. You should move on. As you said yourself, you have so much to offer.”

  Her chin dropped to her chest. “He’s still upset over that whore Klara, but he’ll get over her. He’ll soon realize that he does love me. That he can’t have a career without me. I’ll do everything she did and more. And I’m no crook. Those Dutch recipes belong to me. All the money they’ve made from those cookbooks belongs to me.” She swung the rake back and forth, her lips thinning in anger.

  Raising my hands in a gesture of surrender, I said, “You’re absolutely right. They’ve gotten rich off your grandmother’s recipes and your family stories.” Dropping my arms, I changed tactics. “You told me what happened to Joel and that you poisoned Klara’s coffee with arsenic. But what I can’t wrap my head around is how a nice girl like you managed to get her hands on arsenic. How did you do it?”

  She smiled. I think she wanted to impress me. She liked that she could surprise people with her intelligence and daring. “You should see the dumpy apartment building I live in. I have to do my laundry in a huge creepy basement. Imagine a place that hasn’t been cleaned out for decades. Bare lightbulbs and spiderwebs and tons of old crap.” She grimaced. “In the tool room, there’s a set of shelves full of pesticides and mousetraps and boxes of rat poison. I’m talking about the old-fashioned kind. It’s probably as old as the building and its main ingredient is arsenic. It was right on the label. I took it as another sign. Just like when I saw Ryan on TV when I was still living in Holland.”

  “Yes, another sign.” I nodded, encouraging her to keep talking. My gaze darted to my back door and I wondered if I could beat her inside. I’d need a distraction because she was certain to be the faster runner. Annie was much younger than I was and in far better shape.

  “I’ve been carrying a small container of poison in my purse ever since we left New York,” she continued. “This weekend seemed like the perfect opportunity to take action. I’ve stayed in the background for far too long and when I saw the cover of Klara’s new cookbook, I knew it was time to punish her. I didn’t really want to use poison, though. I wanted her to die cooking.”

  I made a sympathetic noise. “You couldn’t have known that Joel would use the stove reserved for her demonstration.”

  She shook her head. “No. I wouldn’t have rigged the oven if I’d known he’d use it. Poor Joel. He didn’t deserve that kind of ending.”

  That was too much for me. The anger I’d been suppressing since she’d begun her twisted confession welled up inside of me. “Nobody deserves to be murdered,” I said. “You could have brought Klara down by proving that she and Ryan were using your grandmother’s recipes. You could have told everyone that she was a fraud. She would have been ruined.”

  “And so would Ryan. I wouldn’t do that to him!” Annie began to scrape bark from the tree trunk using the hand rake. “Klara had to pay for stealing the recipes.” She scratched off another chunk of bark. “For stealing my oma.” The scratches bit deeper and deeper into the flesh of the tree. “For stealing my future. For treating Ryan like crap. For treating me like I was lower than dirt. She had to be punished.”

  “There are other ways to bring people to justice.” I put my hands on the grass behind me, preparing to push myself off the ground and dash for the house. “Listen, Annie. You should turn yourself in to the police. If you did, things would go better for you. You were able to talk to me about this. Don’t you want to tell your story to everyone? Don’t you want people to know how you’ve been mistreated?”

  “You obviously don’t understand me.” Abruptly, she crouched in front of me, bringing her face close to mine. “I did it all for love. Why can’t you see that?” Annie’s hot breath, tinged with the odor of wine, wafted across my face. Her wild eyes pleaded for me to take her side, but I was done listening. I was through pretending to sympathize. She’d killed two people. She’d wreaked havoc on my town and created an atmosphere of fear and distrust for days. I was through with letting her be in charge.

  I pushed against her chest with both hands, putting my body weight behind the thrust and she fell to the ground. The hand rake landed a foot away from her fingertips and I reached for it. That was a mistake. I should have just run.

  Annie grabbed me by the ankle and I lost my balance. My face and chest slammed on the grass, knocking the breath out of me. Before I could inhale more than a shallow gulp of air, she straddled my back and placed the tines of the hand rake against the skin of my neck. The bite of cold steel on my flesh forced me to go still.

  Annie leaned down and whispered into my ear. “I can’t go to jail. Ryan needs me. And I can’t let you tell anyone about me. I know who your boyfriend is. I’m not dumb.” She tapped the tines once, twice. “You pretended to be my friend, Ms. Wilkins. You’re a fake, just like Klara.”

  Her comparison frightened me. I had to get out from under her. I knew I’d need to gather a surge of power to throw her off and I used a few precious seconds to garner strength from the people who meant the most to me. Images flashed in my mind. Trey and his impish smile. My mother and her twinkling eyes. Sean’s face on the pillow in the morning. Makayla throwing her head back as she laughed. Empowered by these visions, I gave an immense thrust and rolled to the side.

  The sudden shift was too much for Annie and I felt her weight slide away. Scrambling to my feet, I ran.

  I’d just made it into the kitchen when her hand closed around my hair. I jerked backward, unable to close the door.

  “I can’t let you get away,” Annie hissed.

  I grabbed the phone cradle from the wall and brought it behind my head with all my might. It connected with her hand and she let go with a snarl of rage. A second later, she swung at me with the hand rake and I ducked, lurching farther into the room and barreling against the kitchen table. I’d barely regained my feet when Annie raised the rake above her head, preparing to come at me again.

  “I’m home!” Trey’s voice, followed by the door slamming, burst through the house.

  Annie hesitated and I shot forward. “Trey! The killer’s here!” I shouted. No matter what happened to me, she would not hurt my son. “Run! RUN!”

  The awareness that another person was in the house must have sent Annie into a panic. She dropped the garden tool and vanished through the kitchen door.

  I nearly collided with Trey in the hall. “Mom! Are you okay?” He looked me up and down, his eyes filled with fear and worry.

  “Yes. It was Annie. She’s outside. I need to call the police.”

  Before I could make a move to stop him, Trey dashed out of the house. “NO!” I yelled and reached for my cell phone. I spoke as swiftly as possible to the emergency operator and then hung up. Grabbing a carving knife, I followed my son into the darkness.

  “Trey!” I called desperately. “TREY!”

  “We’re here!” he bellowed from the front.

  I ran around to find Trey on the porch. Trey had used his belt to secure Annie’s wrists to the swing’s chain and though she struggled for a minute, the fight ebbed out of her with amazing speed. Suddenly, her entire body went limp and she began to cry. I heard her whimper for Ryan over and over.

  “She’s a murderer?” Trey whispered when he’d recovered from the initial shock of subduing Annie. “I can’t believe it.” />
  “She told me everything,” I said wearily. “It’s over now.”

  Trey pried the knife from my hand and pulled me to him. “You sure you’re all right? You’re not hurt?”

  I shook my head. “You’re my hero,” I told him with a smile. “You came home just in time.”

  Trey looked pleased. “Yeah, it’s all in a day’s work.”

  We stood like that, arm in arm, until the sound of sirens cut through the night.

  • • •

  LESS THEN FIFTEEN minutes later, a police officer Mirandized Annie and helped her into the back of his cruiser. Trey and I rode with Sean and we were all quiet on the drive to Dunston. Trey held my hand the whole way and I closed my eyes and rested my head against the leather seat. I knew the ordeal was far from over and I couldn’t relax until our statements had been given and Sean had Annie’s signed confession in hand.

  When Sean got to the station, he put the car in park and swiveled around to face Trey. “You’re a fine young man, Trey Wilkins. I’m grateful for your assistance in apprehending a dangerous criminal and for protecting the woman who means more to me than anyone else in this world.” He stretched out his hand. “I wanted to say something to you at the house, but I had to maintain a professional demeanor.”

  Trey smiled and accepted Sean’s hand. “Understood, Officer Griffiths. And I’m going to turn Mom over to your care when I head back to school at the end of the week. Do you think you can keep her out of trouble?”

  The two men grinned and I feigned offense. “Hello. Stop talking about me like I’m not here. Can we go in and do what needs to be done to put an end to this thing?”

  Trey got out of the car, but Sean lingered for a moment. “I have a plan to make sure you stay safe, Lila. In the future, I don’t want to come to your house with my weapon and cuffs. I’d like to show up bearing wine and roses.”