Ain't Seen Muffin Yet (Lexy Baker Cozy Mystery Series Book 15)

by Leighann Dobbs

  Nans glanced at the vintage Seiko on her wrist. “Oh, look at the time. We have to run! So great to see you, Jack!” She rushed past Jack with the others following.

  As Lexy hurried behind them, Jack caught her by the elbow. “I’ll talk to you later at home.”

  His face was stern, but his velvety brown eyes were soft. He might be a little mad, but Lexy was sure he’d get over it, hopefully before dinner.

  “Great! I’ll be looking forward to that. Love you!” Lexy rose up on her toes and gave him a peck on the cheek before escaping out the door as fast as she could.

  Chapter 4

  Nans and the rest of the ladies could barely wait for Lexy to pull to a stop in the parking lot of the Brook Ridge Falls Retirement Center before they were pushing open the doors and jumping out. They were eager to get up to Nans’s apartment and go over the clues.

  “Uh oh.” Ruth pointed toward the lawn in front of the building. “Do you see what I see?”

  All of the campaign signs that Helen had put up on the lawn in front of the building had been replaced with Mario’s signs.

  “I told you he was replacing my signs!” Helen stormed over and started pulling the signs out.

  “Helen! I’m so glad I caught you!” Norm Rosen hurried up the sidewalk and Helen straightened, plastering a smile on her face.

  “Hello, Norm. So lovely to see you.”

  “Yes, yes indeed. I just wanted to tell you that your idea for expanding the library at the community center is a grand one. You have my vote.”

  “Why, thank you very much, Norm.” Helen beamed at him, placing herself strategically in front of Mario’s signs so as to block them.

  “Well, have a nice day!” Norm trotted off.

  Helen went back to pulling out the signs. “See that? The people want to vote for me. They can tell that Mario is a shady liar!”

  “Hey! What are you doing? Leave those signs alone!” Mario rushed up and grabbed the sign out of Helen’s hands. “What do you think you are doing, pulling out my signs?”

  “Your signs? Mine were here first and you pulled them out!” Helen said.

  Endora, who had slithered up beside Mario, butted in, “You hogged the whole lawn! You put all your signs here and there was no room for others. It’s only fair that you guys share the space.”

  “Yeah, fair’s fair.” A slim man in his mid-thirties with dark, greasy hair and a scraggly beard stood beside Endora. “You better watch who you mess with.”

  Mario ripped the sign out of Helen’s hands, almost smacking Endora in the face. Luckily, Endora had quick reflexes and she turned her face, narrowly avoiding the edge of the sign. Good thing, too, as a slice from the side of that thick poster paper would have made for a nasty paper cut. But judging by the scars Lexy could now see on Endora’s chin and cheek, it appeared as if Endora was used to avoiding things hitting her in the face. Perhaps that was from being part of the acts in the Circo Acrobato.

  “Fine, then. I’ll take this side of the lawn.” Helen pointed to the left of the front door. “And you take the other. Won’t make any difference, anyway. The residents all seem to favor voting for me.”

  “Ha!” Mario stalked over to the left of the door and planted the sign in the ground. “They won’t want to vote for you after they see the types of people you consort with.”

  “What are you talking about?” Helen frowned at Nans, Lexy, Ruth, and Ida. “My friends here are the most upstanding citizens. Well, maybe except for Ruth…”

  “Not them. That Maguire woman. Her grandson murdered my granddaughter.” Mario’s dark eyes glistened with hatred. “Yeah, don’t think I didn’t see you conspiring with her. I know you ladies are up to no good, and don’t think you’ll get away with it. That boy is a killer, and don’t you think that you’re going to use some of your influence with the police to get him out of it.” Mario shoved the sign into the ground with great effort then rubbed his hands.

  “We’ll see about that! Besides, we don’t use our influence, we prove cases on clues and facts.” Helen turned to Lexy and the others. “Come on, ladies. We have work to do!”

  She stomped off toward the door with the others following. Ida paused to throw a dirty look in Mario’s direction.

  “Can you believe the nerve of him?” Helen said as they traversed the hallway to Nans’s apartment.

  “He does seem to think that Henry is guilty,” Nans said.

  “Is that what you think?” Ida asked.

  “Not sure yet. We have to explore all angles.” Nans rummaged in her purse for the key. It took a while because the oversized purse was full of items. She pulled out a flashlight, Kleenex, a small can of peas, and several rain bonnets, handing them all to Ruth as she fished inside for the key. Finally, she pulled it out and unlocked the door.

  Nans’s apartment was a spacious two-bedroom overlooking the woods. The living room, with its microsuede sectional, was to the right of the door. The dining room, with the large mahogany table where the ladies usually sat to discuss their investigations, was to the right. The dining room was open to the kitchen beyond, and Lexy could see the white cabinets and cheery red nicknacks on the dark granite counters.

  “I’ll get the whiteboard. We’re gonna need it for this one.” Nans headed toward the spare bedroom, where she kept the six-foot-tall rolling whiteboard.

  “I’ll put on coffee.” Helen headed toward the kitchen, where Ida was already picking through the fridge.

  “I wish we’d brought some snacks.” Ida looked over her shoulder pointedly at Lexy. Normally, Lexy would bring a batch of pastries from her bakery, but this time, she hadn’t had a chance to stop there.

  “There are some Oreos in the cabinet,” Nans said as she pulled the board into the dining room.

  Lexy and Ruth set the table with Nans’s delicate flowered dessert plates, a crystal creamer, sugar, and cloth napkins with pink embroidered edges.

  Soon, the enticing smell of percolating coffee permeated the room, and they were seated around the table with steaming mugs full of the dark brew. All except for Ida—she had a glass of milk.

  Nans put her mug on the table and stood at the whiteboard. “This case is a little different than our usual. I don’t think we’ve ever had a case where the suspect is incarcerated and the police are no longer investigating.”

  Ida grabbed an Oreo from the serving platter in the middle of the table and dipped it in her milk. “I don’t believe we have, but we’re at a disadvantage because all the clues have been found and all the suspects have been interrogated. The case isn’t fresh like it usually is when we come on board, and we don’t know what the police know.”

  “I can ask Jack,” Lexy offered. While Jack didn’t like them investigating his cases, she had a few ways of getting information out of him without it being obvious.

  “He wasn’t the investigating detective, but maybe he’ll know something.” Nans turned to the whiteboard. “All we know is that Henry claims he came home and found Rosa dead. His alibi can’t be verified.”

  “The killer had some sort of skill that enabled them to kill her with the butter knife.” Helen reached for an Oreo. Apparently her low-carb restriction really was over. Though Lexy wondered if she’d ever stuck to it, seeing as they’d discovered her hiding pie crust in her purse. At least now she was eating carbs out in the open.

  “And most likely knew Rosa since they brought the muffins and she had the table set for a friendly social visit,” Ida added.

  “It’s too bad we don’t really have any suspects other than ‘someone who knew her.’ That’s too broad.” Ruth pulled an Oreo apart and licked the creamy middle. “I could pump Vinny for information. You know how those inmates talk to each other. Maybe Henry said something.”

  Nans considered that. “Maybe, but I don’t think we can just waltz into the prison and talk to inmates. We’ll save that for a last resort.”

  “Muriel mentioned that the Blondinis could be behind it, and I wouldn’t put it p
ast them. Did you see how mean Mario looked when he mentioned it? Sure, he pretended to be upset, but I think he was putting on an act. I’m not saying he killed his own granddaughter, but maybe it was someone in the family and he’s protecting them,” Helen said. “Henry did mention that Rosa had a concern about her family.”

  “What about that creepy guy that was with them today? I bet he’s the killer.” Ida crunched into an Oreo. “Who was that guy anyway?”

  “One of their cousins, I believe,” Nans said. “He’s in the Circo act. But we can’t just go making assumptions about people because of the way they look. What motive would he have?”

  “When Henry said Rosa was worried about something to do with her family, he might not have been referring to her actual blood relatives. Remember how the Blondinis consider anyone in the Circo Acrobata as family?” Ruth narrowed her gaze at Helen. “And let’s not go accusing Mario just because you are in competition with him for the president slot. He has kind eyes.”

  “Kind eyes?” Helen looked incredulous. “They look like the black soulless eyes of a snake to me!”

  “It could still be Henry.” Ida picked another Oreo off the plate and dunked. “He’s a doctor and would know just where to shove the knife in to hit that artery just right. The killer would have to know that because otherwise they’d risk her getting away in the struggle. I mean, with something like a butter knife, you have to be quick and accurate.”

  “He did stand to gain money with the life insurance,” Helen pointed out.

  “Good point,” Ruth said. “And he has that flimsy alibi. Plus, he seems kind of sketchy to me. He was nervous when we questioned him too. Did you see the way he was playing with that pawn?”

  “You mean the chess piece?” Ida asked. “That was a knight.”

  “No, the knight is the horse,” Helen said. “The piece he had was the bishop. That’s the one that goes diagonal.”

  “No, that’s the queen,” Ida said.

  “No.” Helen shook her head. “The queen goes diagonal and up and down, but only one square at a time.”

  Ruth waved her hand. “Whatever. My point is that he was fiddling with it like he was nervous.”

  Nans tapped her marker on the whiteboard. “Ladies! We have work to do!”

  Everyone turned their attention to Nans, and she uncapped the marker. The noxious smell of whiteboard marker drifted over as she started to write on the board.

  “Now we need a way to verify the alibi. Maybe Lexy can find out more about that from Jack.” Nans lifted a brow at Lexy, and Lexy nodded. She’d do her best. Nans turned back to the board. “We don’t really have anything that points to one suspect, so we need to find out who brought those muffins.”

  “How will we do that?” Ruth asked.

  “I can only think of one way. Those muffins are rare, so we need to visit the bakeries near Henry and Rosa’s place. If we find one that has those muffins, we might get lucky and they might remember who buys them.” Nans turned to Ruth. “Henry and Rosa lived in New Ipswich. Can you see if there are any bakeries in town?”

  Ruth whipped an iPad out of her purse, perched a pair of magenta-framed glasses on her nose, and started typing. “There’s the Confection Connection over on Elm Street.”

  Nans wrote the bakery name and street on the board.

  “And Doughy Delights over on Spring Street…” Ruth scrolled down the screen. “And Sugar Daddies on the edge of town on Granville.” She looked up at Nans over the rims of her glasses. “That’s it for New Ipswich, but there are others in the next town.”

  Nans finished writing the names on the whiteboard then turned to them. “We’ll start with these and then branch out.”

  Ida shot out of her chair and grabbed her purse. “Great, I could use a cupcake. Let’s go.”

  Ruth waved her back into her seat. “Wait a minute. Do you really think that someone is going to remember exactly who they sold corn muffins to? And what if they sold to more than one person? Do bakery owners know the names of every single person who buys muffins?” Ruth glanced at Lexy.

  “Well, no, but we do have our regulars. I know many of my customers as well as their favorite pastries,” Lexy said.

  “That’s right,” Nans said. “We might get lucky because corn muffins with sugar crystals on top are very unusual. Seems like something someone would come back for over and over again. We don’t have many other leads right now, so we might as well follow this one.”

  “Good thinking.” Ida shot up from her chair again.

  “Not so fast.” Nans gestured for Ida to sit, and she did so, a look of extreme annoyance on her face. “It’s almost five o’clock, and the bakeries might be closed. Besides, we have the potluck dinner tonight, and Helen wants to be there to get more votes. I say we meet here at ten a.m. tomorrow and start to case these bakeries then. That will give Lexy time to glean information from Jack. If she learns anything new, it might change our course of action.”

  Chapter 5

  Lexy arrived at home that night with a box of leftover pastries she’d salvaged when she’d swung by the Cup and Cake to help Cassie close up. It was Jack’s turn to cook, and she found him out back preparing the grill for the steaks. Just the though of those slabs of N.Y. sirloin sizzling on the flame made her stomach growl.

  Sprinkles, her white Shih Tzu mix, tore herself away from staring intently at the grill to bound around Lexy’s ankles until Lexy picked her up. She petted the dog’s silky fur and accepted wet kisses on her cheek.

  “How was your day?” Jack kissed her other cheek. Since he was over six feet, he towered over Lexy and had to lean over to do it. “I mean, other than your little visit to the jail.”

  A blush crept into Lexy’s cheeks, and she focused on putting Sprinkles onto the ground gently. “Oh that. Yeah… well, you know how Nans gets when she gets a bee in her bonnet.”

  Jack put the marinated steaks on and flames lept up. “So, what is she into this time?”

  Lexy set the glass-top patio table as she told Jack about Muriel Maguire’s request that instigated the visit to Henry. By the time she was done, they were both seated at the table and their plates full of steak, baked potato, and salad. Glasses of wine sat on the table in front of them. “I think Nans might be on to something though. There was a clue at the crime scene that might shed some light, and I doubt the police followed up on it.”

  Jack looked up from buttering his corn. “What makes you think the police didn’t follow up? I assume the murder happened out of my jurisdiction since the case isn’t familiar.”

  “It happened in New Ipswich.” Lexy stabbed a tomato wedge with her fork and looked at Jack from under her lashes. “I’m sure you would have caught this, but it’s something a lot of police might not have. The killer brought muffins.”

  Jack’s lips quirked in amusement. “Muffins? That should narrow down the suspect pool considerably. And why couldn’t Henry have brought those himself?”

  “Well, he could have, I suppose, except he works late at the hospital, and the bakeries would be closed by the time he got out.”

  “Even so, how are muffins going to help you prove anything?”

  “They were unusual muffins. Corn muffins with sugar crystals on top. Hardly anyone does that. I should know.” Lexy cut off a small piece of steak and savored the tangy morsel as Jack considered what she was telling him.

  Sprinkles, who had been sitting at her feet and staring at every forkful, must have decided Lexy wasn’t going to drop anything, so she took up position at Jack’s feet. He bent down to scratch her behind the ears. “So you’re thinking that you can find out who sells these rare muffins and then figure out who bought them? Sounds like a long shot. No wonder the police didn’t follow up on that.”

  Lexy was a little insulted at Jack’s dismissal. It made her more determined to prove the muffins were a viable clue and to solve the case. Nans was very good at solving cases, and she’d find the real killer. Unless it really was Henry. Lexy still
hadn’t ruled that out. “There’s something else too.”

  “What?” Jack’s eyes were wary as he studied her over the rim of his wine glass. They’d been together for a while now, and apparently, he knew when she was going to ask for a favor.

  “Henry says he has an alibi, but the police arrested him anyway. He’s an emergency room doctor and was at work that night. He lost a patient and then drove around a bit to decompress, but the timing is so tight. Anyway, it seems like whoever investigated just wanted to close the case fast.” Lexy gave Jack her most flirtatious look. “Maybe you could look into the case and see if you notice anything that seems odd?”

  Jack took a sip of wine then smiled. “Okay, I can take a look, but I think you and Nans might be in for a disappointment. I’m sure the police had good reason to arrest Henry.”

  “Nans won’t stop investigating until she sees that for herself.” Lexy speared a piece of lettuce and shoved it in her mouth.

  “That’s why I’m going to look into it. The sooner Nans and the ladies are convinced the right killer is in jail, the sooner they will drop this. There’s one condition, though.”

  Darn it! Lexy hated conditions, but they needed Jack’s help if they wanted insight into the police investigation. “What?”

  “No more going to the jail to visit with inmates.”

  Lexy considered the condition. They’d already talked to Henry, so they probably wouldn’t need another trip to the jail, and even if they did maybe she could stay in the car so as to not break her promise. Finding out the insider information from the police was critical, so she didn’t have much choice. She smiled and reached her hand across the table to shake on it. “Deal.”

  Chapter 6

  Lexy got to the bakery bright and early the next morning. She had to meet Nans at ten and wanted enough time to get the morning baking done and everything set up before leaving Cassie alone for the morning. It would be easier for Cassie if she could focus on waiting on customers and not have to run back into the kitchen to check on things in the oven.