Madeleine Murder

by Sandi Scott

  “There have been a couple of issues out at the campground,” Smoke Daddy Lee said. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. Every couple of years, some fool gets the idea that they can start dealing drugs on my property. I call up a couple of friends, and we change his mind.”

  “The Localists?” Ashley asked.

  “Just some friends,” Smoke Daddy said evasively. He wasn’t admitting anything — but neither did he deny it. “The dealers are mostly small-time criminals who drag in a lot of trash behind them. It’s worse than having a multilevel marketing scheme come to town. Everybody gets dragged in. If you ask me, I think we might as well hurry up and legalize the plant. Live and let live.”

  Ashley tapped her finger on her chin. “The thing is, Ryan told me they were on alert to look for pot selling, and I’m pretty sure that Sparrow, Moonbeam, and—” She paused momentarily, not wanting to say too much that might implicate Betty. “—others, were involved.”

  “I wish Gordon had had better policies in place to cover that,” Smoke Daddy said. “I told him it might be a problem this year. But would he listen? I told him drugs could get dangerous. But would he listen? Now look where we’ve ended up, a murder and all.”

  “Eh,” Patty said, leaning gracefully against the doorway. “He’ll change the rules for next year and pretend it was his idea all along.”

  Smoke Daddy Lee’s shoulders dropped. “That’s true. He listens… as long as he can take the credit later. So, what you’re saying is that I won, right?”

  Patty straightened. “What? I said no such thing. I wasn’t talking about french fries.”

  The two of them both turned toward Ashley. She raised her hands. “Fine. I’ll eat whatever you feed me. But I can’t promise that I’ll be fair. My loyalties still lie with L’Oiseau Bleu. They fried their pommes frites in duck fat. And nobody can beat that.”

  She sampled one of Smoke Daddy Lee’s french fries. Unsalted and without any kind of sauce, it was delicate and crunchy on the outside, a little bit darker than most fries in America. The inside was soft and still tasted of potato.

  “Good,” she said.

  “Now add salt,” Smoke Daddy Lee said.

  She ate one with salt.

  “Now, one with mayonnaise,” Patty said.

  She ate one with homemade mayonnaise.

  “Now, one with catsup.”

  She ate that one, too.

  “Now, one with—”

  “Enough!” she said, laughing. “I have to call Betty and confirm what day the Galveston catering event is. She must be almost frantic to hear from me. Tell me when Patty’s pommes frites are ready. Until then, I have work to do.”

  12

  She dug Betty’s card out of her wallet and stepped outside to make the call. The day was another beauty—blue skies and a few determined, tilted palm trees along the horizon. The breeze was hot and dry and dusty, coming off the Texas plains. Tonight, the wind would shift and bring in air from the ocean.

  She dialed the number. She pushed Smoke Daddy Lee’s words “drugs could get dangerous” out of her mind as she listened to the ringing on the other end.

  “Hello, Betty’s Bayou Cuisine,” Betty announced. “We got it cookin’.”

  “Hello, Betty? This is Ashley Adams from Seagrass Sweets. I’m so sorry I missed your call yesterday. It was rude. I woke up this morning and realized that you were supposed to call me, and… anyway, just to double-check. The catering event that you talked to me about the other day is for tomorrow, right?”

  “Yup,” Betty said cheerfully. “It’s tomorrow here in Galveston, and I’ve been bragging about your cakes to them all day. Don’t tell me you’re going to cancel now.”

  “No, no,” Ashley said. “I’m not canceling at all. I’ll be ready.”

  Betty sighed with relief. “That’s great. I was starting to worry.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Ashley’s throat, which had tightened almost painfully, started to relax. “Good. What are the details? When, where, and how much to bake?”

  “You’re not coming down with anything, are you? You sound kind of rough.”

  “No, no, there’s just some… smoke in the kitchen.”

  Betty chuckled. “Hey, kid. It’s okay. Not every recipe comes out great, am I right?” Betty gave her the address and the order details. Ashley promised to call Betty to check in the next morning to make sure everything was going well, and to get to the site early, and the two of them hung up with pleasant goodbyes.

  The customer wanted chocolate cake for a hundred, along with enough assorted pastries for another two hundred people—they were going to take the leftovers to a local Veteran’s Affairs home and wanted to have enough extras for everyone. And the rate was good. If everything went well, she should be able to put the money she wanted into her and Patty’s shared account. Betty wasn’t mad. It was all going to work out.

  But, if everything was so great, why was she still feeling terrible?

  By two o’clock the chocolate cakes were cooling on the counter and she still had to finish baking everything else. However, she had eaten enough french fries and pommes frites that she didn’t want to see another one for at least a month. Patty and Smoke Daddy Lee had made her try every kind of fry imaginable, from plain ones, to ones made from regular sweet potatoes, and ones made from white sweet potatoes.

  Then there were the pommes frites: some with different spice mixes sprinkled on them afterward, along with pommes frites dipped in all kinds of exotic sauces from barbecue sauce, to pickle vinegar, to sweet chili sauce, to peanut butter and jelly and she couldn’t remember what else. In short, by the time the cakes finished coming out of the oven, she was sick and tired of potatoes.

  She needed to get out of there. Right away.

  She made her excuses and told them that she had to take Dizzy out for a walk, which was true. While she was home she grabbed a slice of leftover pizza and ate it gratefully, straight out of the fridge, with a glass of cold milk. There were no potatoes on her pizza.

  Then she straightened her shoulders and looked at Dizzy. The visit from Detective Luna had really gotten her thinking. The mystery guitar man—it was too strange that he had kept popping up in so many places. The fact that Detective Luna had mentioned someone selling pot, after she and Ryan had pieced together that Moonbeam and Sparrow were either buying or selling it, meant that Ashley was on the right path—and ahead of the detective.

  The feeling of pride helped her squash the feelings of lurking danger. But not completely—she would be truly out of her league if this was a drug-cartel-related crime. On top of all that, she was still annoyed that her debit card issue hadn’t been resolved.

  She was having some complex feelings, to say the least.

  The phone rang. She glared at it for a moment before answering. “Hello?”

  Ryan said, “It’s me, Ashley. How are you?”

  “I’ve been eating potatoes all day and I’m ready to scream,” she said.

  “Uh…”

  She explained about her day; by the time she had finished, they were both laughing about Patty and Smoke Daddy Lee.

  “So, uh, I called to see if you wanted to come over for supper at six,” he said. “I’m cooking. With your catering event tomorrow and all the french fries that Patty and Smoke Daddy Lee have been throwing at you, I thought you could use a break.”

  “I could,” she admitted. “Did you, um, make any progress on the debit card problems?” she asked.

  “I’ll let you know when you’re here,” he said.

  “What are you making?”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  She laughed. “It must be good, then.” Ryan couldn’t compete with her baking skills, but he wasn’t a bad cook.

  The rest of the afternoon flew by, and soon the baking racks were filled with cooling madeleines, cookies, and other treats. She frosted the chocolate cakes with sour cream chocolate frosting and d
ecorated them with chocolate roses and some powdered sugar. Then she frosted the shortbread cookies and piped in a variety of hearts, ribbons, wedding rings, pearls, the couple’s initials, and the number fifty.

  By the time she was done, she had a smile on her face: a fiftieth wedding anniversary. She hoped the couple was as cute as she was imagining them.

  Five o’clock rolled around. She went down her checklist to see what else she had to do before morning and was surprised to find out that she’d tackled it all.

  After checking with Patty, who had gone home hours ago, to make sure she could borrow the van in the morning, Ashley cleaned a few last dishes before filling a cake box of imperfect treats to take with her to Ryan’s house.

  Her route back from Fresh Start Kitchens took her the opposite way that the route to the festival did. Which meant that she couldn’t help but glance at the house with the coyote on the mailbox as she drove by.

  A middle-aged blonde woman was sitting in a folding chair on the front porch, smoking a cigarette and staring off into the clear blue sky. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but she had styled her bangs to the side, and she had on full makeup. She wore a tan button-up dress with a flower print across the skirt and one sleeve. The realtor’s sign out front still read For Sale.

  Ashley gave her a wave and thought about Ryan befriending Coyote so he’d have a guy to do guy stuff with. If Coyote had a girlfriend, maybe Ashley could befriend her and help out Ryan. I wonder if she’d be willing to chat if I offered her a cookie.

  In her experience, there were few problems that a little food-based bribery couldn’t solve.

  She had some time, so she parked the car and carried the white paper box across the street. “Hi!” she said. “I’m a friend of Coyote. I have some extra cookies that maybe aren’t pretty enough for my catering clients tomorrow. Want one?”

  The woman looked up and smiled. It was a tired smile, and it didn’t go up into the woman’s eyes very far, but it wasn’t the kind of look that said go away, either.

  “Sure,” she said. “Coyote’s not here, but I’d love something sweet.”

  Ashley opened the top of the box, and the woman looked inside.

  “Wait, these are the kind that need coffee, aren’t they? You stay right there. I’ll go get us each a cup. I just started a fresh pot when I stepped out here to get some air. Don’t go anywhere, now.”

  “I won’t.” Ashley closed the lid and leaned against the porch rail. The woman sounded as though she were from somewhere farther east than Texas.

  In a moment, the woman came back outside. She’d lost the cigarette and was carrying two small cups of coffee, the kind of style of cup that went back to the fifties, with straight sides and gold arabesques around the rim. A cream and sugar set that matched the cups balanced on a tray with them.

  The woman put the coffee on the flat-topped porch rails. Ashley handed her the box, and she picked out a cookie with a pair of rings on it. “Someone’s wedding anniversary, it looks like.”

  “Their fiftieth.”

  The woman looked up. “You know, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Sheila Johnson.”

  “Ashley Adams.” Suddenly, the Coyote image from the mailbox popped in her head. “Okay, this is going to sound strange, but—Johnson as in Coyote Johnson?”

  Sheila smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m his mom.”

  “How sweet,” said Ashley. “Are you here helping Coyote with the new house?”

  “Yes,” Sheila said. “That and I just love coming to Seagrass Days. A lot of good memories for me there.”

  “Oh? Are you from Seagrass?”

  Sheila shook her head. “I’m not really from any one place—my family moved around a lot. But when I was a teenager we managed to stay a few years in Seagrass, and when my family decided to move along, I was old enough to stay—so I did. But that was years ago, I’ve moved on since. Still love those Seagrass Days though.”

  “Yes, it’s one of the best parts of summer,” Ashley said. “How’s Coyote? He was telling me he ran into some complications on the home loan.”

  Sheila sighed. “That poor kid. He’s old before his time.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s only twenty-three.”

  “He seems older than that,” Ashley said. “Must just be a mature guy.”

  “He’s only a kid,” Sheila said. “Although that could just be the mom in me talking.” She dunked her cookie in the coffee.

  “I met him at the Seagrass Festival, and he sure had his work cut out for him as a volunteer—thieves, drug dealers, and a murder!” Ashley frowned. “Oh, my. When I say it like that, it makes Seagrass sound like a terrible place.”

  “Oh, no, Seagrass is a wonderful little town,” said Sheila. “That’s why Coyote wanted to move here—he’s only ever heard me say good things. From what I understand, it was the out-of-town crowd bringing all that trouble. Hopefully you were spared the worst of it?”

  “Actually,” Ashley said, “I got hit by a thief this weekend who stole a few hundred bucks. It stings!”

  “I can relate,” Sheila said. “I had a … that is, someone stole my identity earlier this year. Cleaned out my accounts—checking, savings, an investment account—and opened up a few credit cards in my name. They took pretty much my life’s savings. And then they somehow managed to get into Coyote’s accounts, too. That’s what happened. His entire down payment was compromised by some fraudster using his name and social security number to open different loans he had no idea about.”

  Ashley’s mouth was agape, listening to the details. “Well, now the money I lost seems kind of insignificant in comparison. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize, honey! Your loss wasn’t insignificant at all,” Sheila said. “Big or small, it’s still the feeling of having your fortress invaded that’s the problem, not the amount of treasure that gets plundered.”

  “It makes me so angry,” Ashley said. “I just have to wonder who would do that to a stranger—with Coyote, they had to know on some level that it was going to seriously mess up his life.”

  “Maybe they did; maybe they didn’t. Or maybe they just didn’t give a hoot. But the one thing I’ve learned in my years is that no one is all bad or all good. Even the biggest jerks have something worth loving.”

  Ashley thought for a moment. “What a lovely way to see the world,” she said.

  “Well, I try,” said Shelia. “But it doesn’t always do me favors. Sometimes you need to focus on the jerk part, and overlook the lovey part.” She laughed. “Coyote’s father shoulda taught me that.”

  Not wanting to pry, Ashley just smiled and took a sip of her coffee. It was times like this, when near-strangers told her their darkest secrets that Ashley wondered what it was about her face that got people to talk. She didn’t know the answer, but she didn’t care, either—she loved the stories.

  “You don’t go into a marriage thinking, ‘I shouldn’t trust my husband,’ but sometimes that’s the case. We fell in love young and were surprised to find out Coyote was on his way. We tried to do the right thing, getting hitched and trying to settle down here in Seagrass, but the man didn’t have a settling-down bone in his body.”

  “Does Coyote get along with him?” Ashley asked.

  “Coyote idolizes him. He left when Coyote was eight—just the time when little boys think their dads are superheros. He would come around every few months at first, then less frequently. Eventually, two Christmases without gifts from him passed and I realized it had been a year.

  “But no man can make me laugh and smile like he could, to this day. If I’m being honest with myself, I’d have to say I’d take him back in a heartbeat. But…that’s just not in the cards…at least not in this lifetime.”

  Ashley nodded. Their little family had been through some hard times… and had come out okay. She could only hope to do as well.

  “Enough about me, hon.” Sheila waved her hand in the air. “Wha
t about you—any idea who stole your money this weekend?”

  “I have a suspect,” Ashley said. “Or rather I did. The man who was found murdered this weekend, I believe it was him.”

  “Really?” Shelia looked astonished. “How did you even find out?”

  “I’m not even 100% sure,” said Ashley. “But I bought something from Sparrow Soulbrother right before the suspicious charge came in.”

  Sheila’s eyes narrowed. “Sparrow? Was that his name?”

  Ashley explained about being called over by Sparrow Soulbrother to buy a dog collar, and how he had explained how he’d known afterward.

  Ashley continued. “So… uh… have the police come to talk to you yet?”

  The woman looked up at Ashley, then took a long drink of her coffee. “Not yet,” she said. “I want the murderer caught as much as anyone does, but I don’t have any information that will help them. And not much of an alibi, either. I was on the beach for a while… and then, well, I walked around.”

  “Oh, I was actually talking about the identify theft—Coyote said the credit union told him to call the police. But yes, the murder is a bigger deal. It makes sense the cops will talk to anyone connected to the festival, I suppose." Sheila turned her face to the side, and Ashley could swear she saw a tear.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m just so… I’m so angry,” she said. “I feel like whoever did this to us escaped justice after ripping us and who knows how many other people off.”

  “I understand,” Ashley said.

  “You do understand, don’t you?” Sheila said. She took a big breath, then sighed. “But I’ve kept you long enough. Thanks for the company.”

  “You’re welcome,” Ashley said. “Good luck with getting your and Coyote’s money back.”

  “You, too,” Sheila said. “I won’t get my hopes too far up, though. Some things go away, and they never come back. Not even if you say ‘pretty please.’”