Christmas Cocoa Murder

by Carlene O'Connor

“But if Jed didn’t ingest any poison, why does it matter?”

  Buck regarded me. “Because we could still nab somebody for attempted murder. Like O’Neill. The wife, of course. Or, in theory, you.”

  “Me?” I screeched in a whisper, cranking my eyes open to maximum.

  “Look. I know you wouldn’t have done such a thing, but you did assemble them mixes, am I correct?”

  I nodded as I set my fists on my hips. “I would never do something like that, Buck, and Howard wouldn’t, either. He’s a good man.”

  “I know, I know. We got higher-ups to satisfy, though, and the court system, too, as you’re well aware.”

  “And what about the ice on the sidewalk?” I asked. “Is Oscar looking into why it was icy despite zero precipitation for the last couple weeks?” I kept my voice low, but even I could hear the ire and impatience in it. “And is he checking who knew—besides Willa Mae—that Jed walked that way every single morning? His wife told me he was a creature of habit, that he always followed the same route.”

  Buck pressed down the air with one hand. “Calm yourself down, now, Robbie Jordan. All in due time. And speaking of time, I got a hole in my stomach bigger than the Grand Canyon, and if I don’t eat a triple breakfast right quick, I won’t make it back to the major powwow at the station at eleven. Any chance you could scare me up some food?” He smiled with a hopeful look.

  “If you’ll tell me what the big meeting is.”

  “You know.” He pulled his mouth to the side. “Oscar. My boss. The staties’ commander. Madame Mayor. Heck, maybe other mucky-mucks. They want this thing solved yesterday. Can’t blame ’em, really. It’s near Christmas.”

  “I’ll bring you breakfast.” I blew out a breath. “You want to pick or you just want a bunch of food?”

  “A bunch of food. Thanks, hon. You’re the best.”

  I turned away. Right now, I was feeling a lot more like the worst. Jed hadn’t been poisoned. That was good. But the fact that nothing was really solved made me queasy. As I headed to the kitchen area, I realized Buck hadn’t mentioned what I’d texted Oscar about Karinde saying she wished she’d killed Jed. I almost turned back to Buck’s table, but kept on going. I didn’t want him going all hangry on me. I’d mention it when his food was ready.

  “Any three breakfast plates for Buck, Danna, please,” I said when I reached the grill. “Whatever we have the most of. He didn’t seem to care except he needs to eat a lot and then leave.”

  She lowered her voice. “Did he tell you something upsetting? Things looked a little dicey between you and him.”

  I nodded. “You could say that.” Four women stood. One waved their check like the group was eager to pay and leave. “Tell you when I get a chance.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Where’s your grandma?” I asked Danna at a little before one o’clock. “I thought she was coming in for lunch?” I was antsy to find out what Josie Dunn knew.

  “Yeah, she said she was. I’ll text her.” Danna worked her phone. “She’s a pretty busy lady. Still running her own IT business and stuff.”

  Business was waning on this Christmas Eve afternoon, which was fine with me, even though I still had six lunch orders to fill. If we got a chance to close early, I wouldn’t complain. I’d written a bonus check for Danna before she’d arrived this morning and tucked it into her gift bag back in my apartment. I’d assembled a selection of small games and local gifts for both her and Turner: a South Lick Celebs game like Authors, except it featured cards with photographs of people like Corrine, my aunt Adele, and Buck. One of Adele’s multicolored knit hats. A little jigsaw puzzle of Brown County. Plus a fat candy cane, a jar of local honey from my Mennonite beekeeper friend, and a box of mocha fudge from Nashville Fudge Kitchen. The gift bag was one of the new blue Pans ’N Pancakes totes I’d ordered, but Danna and Turner were the first to have them. The bonus check would be the real present for my hardworking and inspired young employees, though.

  Danna’s phone dinged. She glanced at it, then pointed at the front door with a raised eyebrow. “There she is.”

  The woman who had petted Cocoa on my way to talk to Georgia walked in. Aha. That was what had seemed familiar to me, her resemblance to her granddaughter and to her daughter, Corrine, too. Danna hurried over to greet her. I flipped a beef patty and positioned a slice of cheddar on it, cracked two eggs for a sunny-side up order, and laid four strips of bacon on the hot surface.

  “Josie, this is Robbie, my boss and the best cook around,” Danna said, her arm linked through the older woman’s. “Robbie, Josephine Dunn, grandma extraordinaire.”

  I extended my hand. “I’m delighted to meet you, Ms. Dunn.”

  She shook with a firm grip. “I’m Josie, Robbie, and that’s that. Now, I think you were walking a puppy yesterday, if I’m not mistaken.” Her green eyes, only slightly faded with age, bore into mine.

  “That’s right.” I had a moment of panic, thinking I’d forgotten to let Cocoa out, until I remembered that Abe had taken the puppy with him when he left early this morning. He’d said Sean would be with his grandparents all day, and Abe had the day off to finish shopping and wrapping, so he could mind Cocoa. Whew. “It’s so nice to meet you, Josie. Your daughter and granddaughter are both super. I couldn’t run this place without Danna, and we all know how much Corrine does for South Lick.”

  That eyebrow of Josie’s went up again. “As my daughter is so fond of telling anyone who’ll listen.”

  “Josie,” Danna chided. “You know Mom works hard.”

  Josie’s gaze at Danna was fond and indulgent. “Of course, my dear.”

  “Can we get you some lunch?” I asked.

  “Dan, here, has been lauding the place since she started. I’m afraid I’ve been traveling so much with my consulting company I simply haven’t made the time to come in and eat.” Josie glanced at the list of specials. “The hoagie sounds nice, but only a half, please. And a glass of chocolate milk.”

  “You got it,” Danna said, then turned away to attend to customers.

  “Oops.” I worked my stove for a minute rescuing a few nearly burnt items. “I’ll get that sandwich out to you in a sec. Please sit wherever you’d like.”

  “I understand you have some questions for this insomniac,” Josie murmured to me.

  “I do, and I’ll appreciate whatever you can tell me.”

  It took me five minutes to finish up the last of the open orders and to assemble the half hoagie. I carried it and the milk to where Josie sat with the Wall Street Journal open on the table. She closed it and stashed it in a roomy leather bag on the floor.

  “Please sit with me if you can.” Josie gestured to the opposite chair.

  I surveyed the store and decided I could. “Thanks.”

  She chowed into her sandwich with the enthusiasm of a hungry Buck. I smiled to myself.

  When Josie finished chewing the first mega-bite, she began. “Danna told you I’m awake a lot at night, I believe.”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t actually seem to need much sleep in my advanced years. Sometimes I work or read a memoir, my favorite kind of book.”

  “My aunt is the same,” I offered. “She’ll sit up knitting or reading a mystery when she can’t sleep.”

  “I know Adele. We went to high school together, did you know that?”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. She’s only a couple of years older than me. I liked her then and I like her now. She’s always been one of my inspirations in life.” Josie took another bite.

  “She’s sure one of mine.”

  She swallowed. “Anyway, I also like to sit at the window in the dark and look at the night sky. I’m on the third floor—the top one—and no trees obstruct my view of the firmament. But there’s one annoying streetlight down behind the library, near that returns box they have.”

  Where Jed met his end.

  “Sunday night, or perhaps it was early Monday morning, I was looking for the Ursids met
eor shower, and I saw a woman do the oddest thing.”

  My heart rate increased and I sat as still as one of those spray-painted living statues. I sensed customers leaving, Danna moving around clearing and cleaning, the big school clock ticking, but my attention was locked on Josie Dunn—with the key tossed down the drain.

  She took a sip of chocolate milk. “The person parked in the lot and approached the returns box. But instead of a stack of books, she carried something heavy in one hand, something sort of big and round. You can believe my attention perked right up.”

  I didn’t dare interrupt.

  “She proceeded to tip the thing over the walkway. It must have been water. On the walkway, I tell you! Well, I felt like I was back in the Mary Poppins book I read as a child, with the woman who had fingers made of barley sugar and the uncle who floated to the ceiling when he laughed. You know? Why was she watering pavement? I almost expected red poppies to sprout from the concrete.” She gazed at me.

  Except this wasn’t magical realism. This was murder. I cleared my throat. “What did this woman look like? Hair, height, shape?”

  “Aha, now there’s the rub.” She tapped one of those red fingernails on the table. “I’d taken out my contact lenses, of course, because I don’t sleep in them. I’m not as nearsighted as I used to be, but I’m afraid I’ll need cataract surgery before long. Plus, no one’s eyes work as well in the dark at seventy as they did at twenty. My plain answer is that the woman’s form—height, weight, appearance—was on the fuzzy side. When she was under the light, she was bending over, and it was only for a minute or two.”

  “So, how do you know it was a woman and not a man?”

  Josie laughed, a raucous sound that reminded me of Corrine’s enthusiastic cackle. “That much I could see. Last time I checked, men don’t tend to wear red skirts.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Stunned at Josie’s revelation, I knew exactly who had caused the icy pavement. I stared at her. “When you heard about Jed’s death, did you tell the police what you’d seen?”

  “I didn’t hear about his demise until this morning. I left town on business Monday morning and didn’t get back from California until yesterday. Right before I saw you walking the puppy, in fact.” She raised a single elegant eyebrow. “A death in a town like South Lick doesn’t exactly make the national news.”

  “No kidding. Thanks for sharing that information.” I wanted to take action, but the restaurant didn’t empty out like magic, so I kept working.

  Josie ate and departed, giving Danna a hug and me a handshake. I refused Josie’s offer to pay, of course. The rest of the customers settled up and left. The clock read one-thirty. I looked at Danna. She looked back. I gave her a thumbs-up and hurried to the door. Once it was locked and the sign turned to CLOSED, I exchanged a high five with my employee.

  “We did it,” I said. “Now for some well-deserved time off.”

  “I can’t wait. Let’s do this cleanup in double time.”

  I cranked up a playlist of reggae Christmas carols. We cleared and stashed and scrubbed. By two-thirty, we had all the chairs upside down on the empty tables, ready for the cleaning folks I’d hired to come in next week to deep clean, and to wax and buff the floor, too. Any food likely to spoil in the eight days was either tossed or packaged up and ready for Danna and me to take to our respective homes and consume—not that my home was very far away.

  “How about a beer to celebrate?” I asked her. “I know you drink a little.” She was still nearly a year shy of twenty-one, but hey. It was Christmas.

  “Like obviously, Robbie, I’d love to. And I’m walking home, so no worries.”

  “Come on back.” I took my share of biscuits, bacon, and cut-up veggies to my apartment fridge. Birdy crouched, wary, near his empty food bowl. “Hey, kitty cat. Doggy’s gone, okay?” I poured pint glasses of beer for Danna and me at the kitchen table, then served Birdy his wet food of the day. I sank into a chair and raised my libation. “Here’s to a great team, and a totally relaxing holiday.”

  She clinked, sipped, and set down her glass. “We should think about bringing in a substitute whenever one of the three of us is gone. That got nutso for a while there this week.”

  I poured tortilla chips into a bowl and popped open a new can of cashews before I answered. “You’re absolutely right. Who we could hire is always the question. But we can work on that.”

  She munched a few cashews. “What’d you think of my grandma? Isn’t she dynamite?”

  “She’s a pistol, all right.” I pictured her sitting awake in the dark, looking with her bad eyesight down onto the walkway.

  “Did she help? Did she see anything?”

  “Only sort of. A woman poured water on the pavement between the box and the iron fence. But Josie said her vision wasn’t up to more details than that.”

  Danna uttered an obscenity and then ducked her head into her shoulders. “Oh, sorry.”

  I snorted. “Like I haven’t heard or said it before.”

  “I know, but I’m trying to get out of the habit of swearing. It totally doesn’t go over well with customers.”

  “True.”

  “Anyway, too bad Josie couldn’t see more, right?” Danna asked.

  “Very much too bad,” I agreed. “Still, I think what she did see might be of use.” It might very well be of use.

  “At least she said it was a woman. How did she know that?”

  “She said she saw a red skirt. Hang on while I text that to Oscar. I should have done it earlier.” I tapped out the message.

  Josephine Dunn, Mayor Beedle’s mother, lives by library. Said she saw woman in red skirt pour water on pavement night before Jed Greenberg’s death.

  “There.” I set my phone on the table and munched a chip.

  “And are there women who are suspects?”

  I nodded. “Jed’s wife, Willa Mae, and Karinde, the woman who rescues dogs. I’ve only met Karinde a few times. I don’t think she’s the skirt-wearing type, but I could be wrong. Enough talk of suspects. It’s Christmastime. Hang on a sec.” I rose and went into my bedroom, emerging with Danna’s gift. I handed it to her before I sat.

  “What’s this? I love the cute bag.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to offer them for sale, but you got the first one.” I watched as she unpacked it, crowing over every discovery.

  “Robbie, this is so sweet.” Her cheeks glowed. “You’re wicked awesome, you know that?” She pulled a little green box tied with a red ribbon out of her skirt pocket. “I got you something, too.” She pushed it across the table.

  “You didn’t have to do that. But I’m not waiting until tomorrow to open it.” I untied the ribbon and removed the lid. On a square of puffy cotton sat a pair of round earrings an inch in diameter. They were blue, with our store logo enameled on them in white, with silver wires. “My gosh. Where did you get these? I love them!” I slid out the small gold hoops I wore every day to work and threaded the new earrings through my lobes.

  “Etsy. You can get anything on Etsy.”

  “Thank you, Danna. What a treat.” I pointed at the bag. “There’s one more thing in your bag.”

  She peered into the bag until she drew out the envelope.

  “You earned that, and more,” I said. “Don’t open it now. Turner’s getting one, too. And Merry Christmas.”

  “Thank you, Robbie,” she said, her voice thick. “This is the best job I’ve ever had.” She stuck Adele’s hat on her head and grabbed her phone. “Christmas selfie?”

  “Your arms are longer than mine. You take it.” I scooted around to stand next to her. She was so tall I only had to bend my knees a little to align my face with hers, and she was sitting.

  “Cheers!”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Thanks for coming along, Freddy,” I murmured an hour later as we stood on Willa Mae’s front porch. I’d asked Freddy to accompany me, with a quick stop at the bank, and I hoped the new widow was home. All the lig
hts inside were lit up again, even though night hadn’t yet fallen. “I didn’t want to do this alone.”

  “Sure. I haven’t offered my condolences yet, so the timing was perfect.”

  I’d already rung the bell twice. I raised my hand to knock, but then the door opened.

  “Robbie, Freddy.” Willa Mae looked from me to Abe’s mom and back. “Is everything okay?” She looked like she was wearing the same black turtleneck and yoga pants she’d had on two days ago.

  Freddy stepped forward. “I haven’t gotten a chance to tell you how sorry I am about your husband’s death.” She touched Willa Mae’s arm.

  I reached into my bag and switched on the tiny recorder I’d brought.

  Willa Mae blinked bleary eyes. “Thanks, I guess.” A sharp gust of breeze blew by and she shivered. “Won’t you come in?”

  We followed her in and waited while she shut the door. On the coffee table sat a bottle of Scotch and a half-empty highball glass.

  “Sit anywhere.” Willa Mae plopped onto the couch.

  I set my bag on the coffee table and slipped out of my coat, too, since the heat was once again set way too high for comfort. My comfort, anyway. The air smelled stale, too. I knew the feeling of not wanting to clean, to shower, to do anything except cry. After Mom had died so suddenly, I’d been a basket case for weeks.

  “How are you getting along?” Freddy asked, shrugging out of her coat.

  “Like crap, what do you think? That detective keeps dropping by to talk to me. When I go out, everybody stares. The police won’t tell me when I can bury my husband. Jews are supposed to inter the dead promptly.” She picked up her glass with a shaky hand and took a swig of the whiskey.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know,” Freddy offered.

  “Thanks. I doubt there is.” She gestured to the bottle. “You girls want a drink?”

  “No, thanks,” Freddy replied.

  “Not me, either.” I swallowed. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Willa Mae, I spoke with someone today who said she saw you pour water on the pavement behind the library the night before Jed died.” I half hoped Oscar would already have arrested her, so I didn’t have to do this. Since Willa Mae was here, I was going ahead with my plan.