Trick or Murder: A Bite-sized Bakery Cozy Mystery Book 12

by Point, Rosie A.

  Trick or Murder

  A Bite-sized Bakery Cozy Mystery Book 12

  Rosie A. Point

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  More for you…

  Thank you, Reader!

  Copyright Rosie A. Point 2020.

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  Created with Vellum

  1

  “One order of bloodied vampire teeth donuts,” I said, and set down the tray on the treats table in Prattlebark Village’s town square.

  “Thank you, dear,” Sara Robertson said. “These are a great help.” She was dressed up as Frankenstein’s bride, and she admired our donuts with her green fists on her hips. The center holes of the donuts were outfitted with candy vampire teeth and dripping in raspberry jelly. “You two look great.”

  “Thank you! So do you.”

  Halloween had finally arrived, and the townsfolk who had once been so paranoid now wandered the streets in costumes of every kind. It was a Halloween extravaganza: a haunted house had been set up in the center of the square, there were treats tables, stalls where the local restaurants sold their delicious food, and roving groups of trick-or-treaters, both adult and child alike.

  Bee scratched underneath her black wig, shutting one eye. “This thing is so itchy.”

  “You look fantastic though.”

  “I think I need more blood.” Bee pulled a compact out of her oversized black handbag. She flipped it open and checked her pale makeup, her vampire teeth, and the two trickles of fake blood that ran down her chin.

  We had dressed up as twin vampires, both with long black hair and matching black velvet dresses that swept to the floor. Bee was a little taller than me, but we’d pulled off the dual costume perfectly, if I did say so myself.

  “What would you like to do first?” I asked, searching the crowd of zombies, clowns, fairies, and superheroes. “We could compete in the pumpkin carving contest. Or, ooh, get one of those trick-or-treat bags and head over to the houses. I heard they’re giving out TP in case we want to trick.”

  “That sounds fun,” Bee said. “But I was thinking—”

  “Happy Halloween!” A mummy popped up in front of us. “You two look great!”

  “Oh hey, Vera! I love your costume,” I said.

  Vera, the mummy, was one of the newer visitors staying at the Oaken Branch Guesthouse. She’d wrapped her blonde hair out of sight, but the mummy’s fabric strips didn’t flatter her figure. She was in her forties, portly, and kind. She’d been the life of the party at every dinner this week so far.

  Her brother, Jack, wore a screaming ghost mask, and remained silent, shadowing her as he always did. Taller than most men, he stooped a lot of the time and hardly ever spoke. Rumor had it, he was cared for by Vera because he was unable to look after himself.

  “Isn’t this amazing?” Vera fiddled with a loose swatch of fabric at her wrist. “Not my costume, I mean, it’s a real pain in the neck. I didn’t think this through. You know, I haven’t had a sip of water since I put it on two hours ago. The last thing I want to do is go to the ladies’ room in this.” She gestured to herself, grimacing.

  “Troublesome,” Bee agreed.

  “What are you two going to do first?” Vera asked, turning to study the activity in the square and streets. “There’s so much going on, I can hardly decide what would be the most fun. What do you think, Jack? What do you want to do?”

  Her brother didn’t lift his mask or speak but shuffled to stand beside her.

  Pity welled up inside me, and I couldn’t help but like Vera even more. The fact that she lived with her brother, took him on vacations, and cared for him was amazing to me. How many people out there could say they would do the same for their spouses, let alone their siblings?

  “Come on, Jack, there must be something you’d like to do,” Vera said, patting her brother on the arm. “We’re leaving in a few days. You don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to have fun, do you?”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Oh, nowhere in particular,” Vera replied, smiling at me and readjusting another of her bandages. “We’re on a cross-country road trip on the way to see our aunt in Wisconsin. She’s one of our last living relatives.”

  Jack bowed his head. “She’s nice,” he said, in a low grumble.

  It was the first time I’d heard his voice, and I stiffened. It was incredibly deep and grating, but his words slurred together a little.

  “She’s lovely,” Vera agreed. “We’re very excited to go see her. But we promised ourselves we’d experience all the best parts of the country along the way, didn’t we, Jack?”

  He grunted.

  “And this Halloween event is definitely an opportunity like that.” Vera tapped her chin.

  Bee grabbed an orange paper plate with spooky bats and placed a vampire donut on it. She paid for it then handed the plate over to Vera. “Try this and tell me what you think. I wasn’t sure about the raspberry jelly. I thought maybe strawberry would be better?”

  “I think it’s delicious,” I said. “Bee’s outdone herself again.”

  Vera split the donut in half and took a bite of it. “Oh wow, it’s great. Try some, Jack.”

  Her brother took his half of the donut and lifted the bottom half of his mask, exposing blond stubble and thin lips. He took a bite of the donut and chewed. “Good,” he said.

  “It is, isn’t it? I’m going to come by the truck tomorrow and stock up on some treats for when we leave,” Vera said. “But first. Halloween. OK, so what are we going to do?”

  A cacophony of screams broke out from the haunted house, and a group of terrified costumed people burst out of the right-side door. They stopped, laughing and gasping for breath, while a man in a wizard’s outfit handed them pictures of the moment they’d had their hearts scared out of their chests.

  “Now, that looks fun,” Vera said.

  Jack pointed at the haunted house and nodded.

  “Guess we know what we’re doing,” Vera said. “Thanks for the donut, you two!” The pair walked off to the haunted house together, disposing of the paper plate in a trash can.

  “We have to go too,” Bee said. “I’m in the mood for a scare.”

  “I wonder what our picture will look like,” I replied. “Two vampires screaming. It’s going to be hilarious.”

  We joined the queue of people waiting to go in the haunted house. Vera and Jack were in the group before ours, but we traipsed in a couple minutes later. The inside of the haunted house—set out like a witch’s—was dark, with glowing red eyes peeking out from corners, and the occasional scare from a skeleton or an evil zombie.

  Screams came from a room further in, and I grinned. It sounded like Vera and Jack’s group had just gotten their picture taken.

  The shrieks of terror continued, and my smile faded.

  “Help! Someone call the police!”

  “Bee,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  My baking partner grabbed my arm, and we hurried through the darkened passageways until we came upon the scare room of the haun
ted house. We stopped in the doorway just as the lights came on.

  I gasped.

  A body lay in the center of the room, blood pooling underneath it.

  It was a mummy.

  “No!” Bee cried. “Oh no! It’s Vera!”

  The bottom fell out of my stomach. If only this was some terrible Halloween trick. But the wailing sirens in the distance said otherwise.

  2

  The police gathered everyone who’d been in the haunted house at the time of the murder outside in the town square. We had been corralled along in a section fenced off as a staging area for the event, a single trailer for props and costumes sitting at the rear.

  “This is horrible,” I whispered. “She was so lovely. I can’t believe this has happened.” My white makeup had smudged from my tears, a mirror of Bee’s—she had tracks running down her cheeks.

  “She liked my donuts,” Bee muttered. “No. I refuse to believe this is happening again.” For once, Bee didn’t seem intrigued by the murder. “I can’t deal with it.”

  “It will be all right.” I put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Will it?”

  A shout rang out, and everyone turned, fearing the worst. At least, I was.

  The police had already started interviewing suspects. Outside the fenced area, Detective Snodgrass and Jack, Vera’s brother, faced off. Jack had pulled his mask up onto his head and wore a pained expression, tears glistening in his eyes.

  “Lemme go!” he yelled at her.

  “Sir, you’re going to have to calm down,” Snodgrass replied. “No one is touching you.”

  “This is bad,” I whispered. “Poor Jack. We have to help.” I started forward but Bee caught my arm.

  “No, we don’t,” she said. “For all we know, he’s the one who did it.”

  “He’s crying.”

  “It might be because he’s afraid of being caught. Come on, Rubes, let’s not put our foot in it this time.”

  I got Bee being upset about Vera’s death, she’d been a lovely person, but not getting involved? That was unlike her. She was the first person to mention figuring out who had committed the murder.

  “Bee—”

  “Let go of me!” Jack yelled, as two burly police officers pulled his arms behind his back and placed him in cuffs. “Let go!”

  “Sir, this is for your own good,” an officer barked.

  Snodgrass didn’t have to say a word. After all, she was a detective. One of two that this town had for incidents like this. It didn’t look like they’d arrested him for the murder, though I could be wrong.

  “He’s causing a disturbance and disobeying a police officer,” Bee said. “They’ll probably put him in jail for the night to cool off and talk to him about what happened today.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “He can refuse to talk to them unless they have a warrant. Then he can get a lawyer,” Bee said. “Either way, we’ll end up hearing what happens to him through the grapevine, I’d wager.”

  “Poor Jack.”

  Bee didn’t comment.

  The gargantuan man was taken off to a police cruiser. Murmurs started up in the crowd of onlookers and witnesses and I scanned them.

  There were only a few people back here. The ones who had gone before us into the haunted house and might possibly have witnessed something. There were two college-aged girls, dressed up as a witches, a tall woman with flyaway red hair—she was dressed as a hippie— and then a guy in full clown makeup, his lips turned down at the corners. He fiddled idly with the flower pinned to his colorful lapel.

  Had they seen anything?

  The hippie woman spotted me staring and gave me a bright smile, her teeth slightly yellow. I tried to return it, but she walked off to the other side of the ‘enclosure’ without noticing.

  Hey, she’s limping.

  Was she injured? She favored her left leg, and my curiosity grew immeasurably. There wasn’t any blood on her. Could she have injured herself during a mad dash to get out of the haunted house? Or was there a more sinister reason for her disability?

  “Why are you staring at a hippie?” Bee asked, fiddling with her vampire fangs.

  “She’s limping.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Are you hangry again?” I asked. “No offense, but you seem quite grumpy.”

  “Sorry,” Bee said. “This was the last thing I expected to happen today, and I thought we’d have at least a few months before we ran afoul of another murderer.”

  “A few months? How about never again?”

  “I figured that, with our track record, we’d probably wind up encountering something like this again, but so soon?” She shook her head. “And Vera was such a nice person too.”

  Yeah, she had been. Everyone at the guesthouse had liked her, and she’d managed to ingratiate herself with many of the locals during her short stay in Prattlebark Village. So, who on earth would want to get rid of her?

  Maybe I was in investigation mode after the case last week, but, wow, I couldn’t stop going over it. Someone had stabbed her in the haunted house, in front of several witnesses. People had been screaming, losing their minds. There had to be a viable witness who’d seen the murder.

  “Ladies and gentleman.” Detective Snodgrass stood at the entrance to the enclosure, her hands on the low fencing. “Gather round this side, please.”

  We wandered over to her like lost sheep, keeping distance from each other.

  “That’s good,” Snodgrass said, and swept her gaze over the crowd. She spotted us and her eyes narrowed incrementally before she moved onto the next grouping of people. “You’ll all be giving your statements and will be questioned separately. For now, all you need to know is that any information you have will be a massive help to this investigation.”

  “But you arrested the murderer, didn’t you?” The hippie asked, twirling a coil of red hair around her finger and releasing it.

  “No, ma’am,” Detective Snodgrass said. “This is an open investigation, and any information you can give us will be greatly appreciated.”

  “Oh.” The hippie sagged a little. The college girls gave her odd looks and huddled closer together. Were they afraid of her? They were sweaty and pale, but then so was everyone here. We were all shocked by what had happened.

  “How long we gotta be here?” The clown croaked, his accent thick, grating and Brooklyn-leaning.

  “Until we’ve taken your statement,” Snodgrass said, snappily. “And for your information, the Halloween festivities have been canceled. If you’d like something to eat, speak to officer Polehad over there and he’ll get you water and food.” She started walking off.

  “Hey, wait a second!” the clown shouted. “We can’t stay here all night. Exactly how long is this gonna take?”

  But Detective Snodgrass was done mincing words. She stopped next to another officer and talked to him, done with the crowd of waiting witnesses.

  “This is bad,” I said. “What if she thinks it’s us again?”

  “Not possible. The timeframe is all wrong. We walked in after the crime had occurred and the staff members at the haunted house will be able to attest to that,” Bee said. “This time, you don’t have to worry about it Ruby. We’re clear. We don’t have to think about this night once it’s over.” She removed her vampire teeth with a grimace and folded them into a Kleenex before popping them into her bag.

  But Vera. And Jack.

  “Want anything to eat?” Bee asked. “I heard they were serving burgers at one of the stalls down the road.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Bee walked off, her black heels clicking on the stone slabs. I pinched the bridge of my nose, thrown off by her disinterest in the case. An image of Vera on her front, the knife in her back, swam into my mind.

  We can’t let the murderer go unpunished.

  3

  Most of the townsfolk in Prattlebark Village hadn’t gotten the opportunity to enjoy Halloween to its fullest
. Technically, that was good for us because we’d never been as swamped with hungry customers than the morning after the murder.

  We’d decided to dress up in our vampire costumes a second time, continuing the spooky theme for the Sunday, and many of the townsfolk had joined us. Our bloodied vampire teeth donuts were a hit, and Bee had whipped up leftover candy cookies that were chock full of sugar. To top it off, we served up pumpkin-spiced milkshakes, strong coffees, and sodas galore.

  It should’ve been a nice morning, but I kept thinking of Vera and her brother. What a terrible way to go, with panic and screaming all around. It wasn’t those who passed on that had to suffer, but their loved ones left behind to deal with the pain of losing them.

  “Ruby, you’re going to have to crack a smile at some point,” Bee said. “You’re starting to worry the customers.”

  “Right.” I forced myself to smile and cast a sidelong glance at my best friend.

  Bee hadn’t mentioned the murder once this morning. She’d been all grins and sass with the customers this morning, serving treat after treat and accepting generous tips in return. None of her usual pensiveness was there.

  I ought to take a leaf out of her book and learn to relax a little. We only had so much time in the towns we visited and dwelling on negativity would ruin the experience.

  “Good morning, ladies.” Jules stepped up to the front of the truck, carrying a hefty tote bag. She’d tied her bushy brown hair into knotted buns either side of her head and wore a full face of blue makeup. “Can you guess what I am?”

  I shook my head.

  “An oompa-loompa?” Bee suggested.

  “They’re orange,” I said.