“But now you’re avoiding him,” I pointed out.
Teeny gave Mr. Wentworth an enthusiastic wave. “Hey, John. How are you?”
That was all the invitation Mr. Wentworth needed to turn off his lawnmower and walk over to us. Miss May grumbled in consternation. But she also blushed. Just a little.
John was a rotund guy with a bright smile and a shock of white hair. He had a trustworthy face and a cute red nose I thought was adorable.
“Hey, ladies. Beautiful day, isn’t it? Is the kind of day that makes you glad to be alive. I love those boots, Miss May. They look like they get the job done.”
Miss May blushed a deeper shade of red. “They’re just crummy boots, John.”
“You make them look like high fashion, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Meanwhile, I’m actually wearing high fashion and no one has noticed all day,” said Teeny.
“We noticed,” I said. “We were just confused.”
“Ah, you look wonderful, too, Teeny,” said Mr. Wentworth. “Just, nobody shines quite as bright as Mabel in my eyes.”
Sweet, right?
Miss May didn’t think so. She caught herself mid-demur and shook her head, as if shaking off the haze of Wentworth’s kindness.
“Well. You should keep mowing,” Miss May said.
“You’re right,” Wentworth sighed. “I should get back to work. They’ve got me mowing every blade of public grass in town this week. It’s fine. It’s easy work. I listen to podcasts in Spanish. People say if you hear a native tongue enough you learn to speak it. Hasn’t worked yet but it’s a pretty language. And I’m real curious what all those podcasts are about.”
Miss May stepped toward Mr. Wentworth. “Wait. So you’ve been all over town this week?”
“That’s right.”
“I wonder… Our dog, Steve, he got into some prickly bushes. He’s a real mess. And I can’t even touch him without getting pricked. He needs to be groomed. Have you seen Amy or her dog grooming van anywhere around town today?”
Mr. Wentworth nodded. “Oh yeah. I saw Amy’s truck this morning, all the way out on the edge of town. Thought it was weird. Parked a little ways from the foot of Turkey Mountain. Seemed like maybe she was grooming a turkey or something.”
“Turkey Mountain doesn’t have many turkeys anymore,” I said. “And it’s technically a hill.”
Mr. Wentworth laughed. “I know she wasn’t grooming a turkey, Chelsea.” Wentworth winked at Miss May. “Good luck with your dog.”
17
Going, Going, Dog
We found Amy’s mobile grooming van where Mr. Wentworth had seen it earlier that day, parked a little ways down from Turkey Mountain, on the side of the road. I parked my pickup behind the van. Then Miss May, Teeny, and I got out.
Miss May circled Amy’s vehicle. “This is so strange. There can’t be any customers out here in the woods. Why would Amy have driven all the way out here?”
I looked in the driver’s side window. “Nothing’s out of place in the van. A couple of sticks of gum. An invoice. Nothing suspicious.”
Miss May rounded the van and looked me in the eye. “Nothing suspicious except for the fact that the grooming truck is parked on the side of the road near Turkey Mountain.”
Teeny looked up into the vast expanse of hilly terrain that formed Turkey Mountain. A winding hiking trail led into the forest. Most of the trees were still bare from winter. A bright cardinal perched on the branch of an old oak and then flitted away.
“Are we going to have to hike this trail?” she said.
Miss May joined Teeny at the edge of the forest. “I’m thinking yes.”
Teeny groaned. “I’m not gonna be able to return this pantsuit if I get hiking dirt all over it.”
I stood on the other side of Teeny put my arm around her shoulders. “It’s OK. In the movies, international spies never get dirty, no matter what terrain they encounter. I’m sure the same will be true for you.”
Teeny hung her head. “You’re laughing at me on the inside, aren’t you?”
Miss May put her arm around Teeny just like I had. “We both are.”
I led the hike into the forest. Teeny held onto the back of my shirt for stability, and I think so I would pull her up. Miss May trailed a few steps behind us, the caboose on our investigative train.
“See any clues up there, Chelsea?” Miss May called out.
I stopped and scanned the woods. Brown and muddy as far as the eye could see. “Just a whole lot of forest.”
“I’m looking for footprints or a trail of some kind,” said Teeny. “But this dirt just looks like dirt to me.”
“There’s a big hill coming up,” I said. “Let’s get up there so we can survey the land. Height is a position of power in war and, I’m sure, in mystery investigations. Once we get up there, we’ll have the upper hand. Over…our enemies? I don’t know, but I gotta do something to talk myself into climbing more.”
“That sounds great.” Teeny stopped to catch her breath. “But we’re not even close to the top.”
I chuckled. “We’ll go slow.”
Thirty minutes and fifteen ‘rest stops’ later, we had reached the top of the hill. Once we’d made it up, all three of us doubled over and gasped like chubby fish out of water for a solid five minutes. Then I grabbed onto a nearby tree and pulled myself upright so I could look around.
The view was gorgeous. I could see twenty miles out over a long, flat horizon. A small patch of clouds hung low in the sky. The trees crackled under the soft breath of the wind. “This is amazing. Why have we never come here before?”
“Because,” Miss May gasped, “it’s at the top of a giant hill.”
“I would have been fine,” said Teeny, fanning herself off, “if I had been wearing the correct attire. This pantsuit adds ten pounds.”
Miss May grabbed my arm to pull herself up right. “Do you see anything helpful?”
I scanned the surrounding forest, slowly turning three hundred and sixty degrees as I looked. That was when I spotted a whisper of smoke rising from the clearing in the distance. I pointed. “Someone’s over there. And they’re making a fire.”
18
Doggone It
“Who’s there?” Amy flipped open a pocketknife and stood on the ready.
Miss May, Teeny and I emerged from behind the bushes, hands held up to show we meant no harm.
“What—What are you three doing here?” Amy did not lower the knife.
As I looked from the knife to her scared, angry face, all my perceptions of her changed. I would have never pegged Amy as a camper, or as the owner of a pocket knife. What else might I have gotten wrong about her?
Miss May took a gentle step forward. “We’re amateur detectives, remember? It’s our job to find people when they don’t want to be found.”
“Maybe put the knife away?” said Teeny. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
Amy lowered the knife but did not close the blade. I took a few seconds to scan the area and check out her camp. Honestly, her setup was crazy cute. Battery-powered string lights hung from the trees. A comfy hammock was strung between two trees with a plush sleeping bag spread on top. A small shelter was nestled in the side of the hill, covered by evergreen branches and a fresh flower wreath. And there was a cute little fire pit with a little stump for seating nearby.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I said. “Very…forest chic.”
“Thank you. These little battery-powered lights are perfect for sprucing up any setting, I find. I got them on Amazon. I’ll send you the link. As soon as you tell me why you followed me out here.”
“You tell us why you’re here first,” said Miss May.
Amy considered Miss May for a moment, then she opened up. “Hard luck, I think some people call it.” She sat on the stump with a sigh. “My business was doing pretty good, for a while. But… I don’t know. Things ebb and flow. I don’t have money to advertise. I’m no good at social
media. So business hasn’t been good in Pine Grove or in this area in general. It’s hard doing the mobile grooming thing. You spend so much money on gas and spend so much time getting around. It’s hard to turn a profit, no matter how many clients you have.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “Back when I was doing more interior design, travel time really ate into my bottom line. People never think about that when they start a business. The little costs.”
“Exactly,” said Amy. “I mean, I love this area, but it’s been so hard. So I decided to try to rent a storefront so I could have a permanent location for grooming. My boyfriend, Zach… He said he was going to help pay for the storefront. He helped me find an amazing place in Pine Grove, right near the ice cream shop. I was about to sign the lease when it got stolen out from under me by someone else. When I told Zach what had happened he blamed me. We got in a huge fight. Then he stole the RV we lived in together and he disappeared.”
“That’s why you’re living out in the forest like a wild mongoose?” Said Teeny. “No offense. Mongeese are cute.”
Amy chuckled. “I didn’t grow up with a ton of money or anything. My dad raised me. Taught me how to survive in the wilderness. Building fires, hunting, fishing… Sometimes it was the only way we could eat. So this may look like mongoose living to you but for me it’s normal. Sometimes I’m more comfortable out here that I am in an RV or an apartment.”
Miss May put her hand on Amy’s shoulder. “You said your boyfriend got upset when you lost the lease?”
Amy nodded. “It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t my fault.”
I shook my head. “I know how that goes. Men. Sometimes they just…aren’t worth the trouble.”
“Oh yeah,” said Amy. “You got left at the altar, right? And your fiancé stole your business and you moved to Jersey City and you wore pajamas for six months straight until Miss May saved you?”
I cocked my head to one side. Amy sure did know a lot about my story, but I didn’t recall having shared any of that information with her.
“I heard people talking about you in town,” said Amy. “Sorry for blabbing it like that.”
Ugh. In my mind, the gossip about me had died down a few months after I moved to Pine Grove. That’s what Miss May had told me. But tales of romantic disaster are gold in small towns. And it seemed the stories had popped up again after I gained local celebrity as a local sleuth. Or, perhaps, they had never died down at all.
“No need to be sorry, that’s exactly how it happened,” said Teeny. “Her only friend was the Chinese deliveryman. Thank goodness Miss May saved her.”
“But we’re not talking about me right now,” I said. “Although, yes, I did have a special relationship with Mingh Ho.”
Miss May spoke in a gentle tone. “When you say your boyfriend was angry… was that anger only directed at you? Or was he angry at Todd, too?”
Amy slowly backed away from the three of us. “My boyfriend didn’t kill that Todd guy.”
“He skipped town after Todd’s murder,” said Miss May.
“Zach might be a jerk but he’s not a killer. He’s a flake. If you’re looking for the real villain in this story it’s that jerk, Todd. Or the landlord, Damien. Those guys are liars and they’re rude and they can’t be trusted.”
“One of those guys is dead,” I said.
“I didn’t kill Todd.”
Miss May held up her hands to calm Amy. “OK. We believe you. We’ve seen how gentle you are with Steve the dog and Kitty. None of us thinks you committed this crime. Still, and I hate to ask this, but where were you Friday night?”
“You want me to give you an alibi?!” Amy exclaimed.
“No need to use the technical crime jargon,” I said. “We just want to know where you were.”
Amy stood tall and jutted out her chin. “I was grooming Tom Gigley’s poodle all night Friday, as a matter of fact. She was squirmy. It took hours.”
Miss May looked over at me with narrowed eyes. “Tom Gigley doesn’t have a poodle. Does he?”
19
Soup’s On
We trudged out of the forest one muddy step at a time. As we walked, Miss May and Teeny grumbled about the mud and the dirt. But I tried to appreciate the nature. Amy had only moments earlier reminded me of my bleak life in Jersey City in excruciating detail. I could remember under my skin how bad it felt to be trapped by brick and concrete in every direction. Man, my Jersey City apartment needed a nice power washing. My whole block could have used a power wash, in fact. The addition of a tree, a small bush or a maybe a single dandelion, pushing up through the sidewalk crack, would have been a big quality of life improvement.
Nature is funny like that. You don’t realize how much it improves your life until it’s stripped away. I know what you’re thinking, prior to living in Jersey City I lived in Manhattan and Manhattan isn’t exactly famous for all of its nature. Unless you count skyscrapers as really tall, really sparse trees. But the parks in New York City are abundant. And so are the charming tree-lined streets. Those tree-lined streets, with their dappled light and rows of old brownstones, were all I needed to get by. In the spring and summer, those urban forests thrived with life — birds, squirrels, bugs — and in the winter the branches hung heavy with glorious, white snow.
You haven’t seen all of the most beautiful things in the world until you’ve seen New York City on a snowy day.
But I digress.
Once Teeny, Miss May and I made it out of the forest we decided to head over to Teeny’s restaurant, Grandma’s, for lunch. Teeny confessed she hadn’t been to the restaurant since Todd’s body was discovered. She wanted to stop by to check on the business. And to harangue diners into voting for her in the Best of Pine Grove competition.
There was a line out the door when we arrived. Miss May nodded in approval. “Wow. This is pretty good for a Monday lunch. You’re a master businesswoman, Teeny.”
“It is easy to do good business when you’ve got the best restaurant in Pine Grove.” Teeny approached a young couple who were waiting in line to get inside. “You two agree this is the best restaurant in Pine Grove, right? You would tell anyone that?”
The couple exchanged a confused look. They were both wearing jean jackets and tawny brown boots. They almost looked like twins. The guy spoke first. “I’m sorry, what?”
Teeny took a step toward the guy and gave him an intimidating look. “I don’t know why you have an attitude problem, but you’ll be sorry if you don’t vote for Grandma’s restaurant as the best in Pine Grove.”
“I don’t know what that is,” said the guy. “We came up from Brooklyn for the day to get a taste of the country life. But I’ll do whatever you want, lady. You’re small but intimidating.”
Teeny stepped back and smiled. “Great. There will be a voting form on your table. Don’t forget to fill it out. Do your civic duty and all. Enjoy the food.”
Moments later, Miss May and I were seated at our booth at the back of Grandma’s. We chatted for a few minutes about Teeny’s wacky antics. Then Teeny approached holding three steaming bowls of soup. She sat down and joined us at the table.
I clasped my hands together over the hot soup. “Mmmm. What do we have here?”
“Vegetable soup with lots of potatoes and a million macaroni elbows. It’s a new recipe that I want you girls to try.”
I leaned in and looked inside the bowl. The soup was a creamy red and I could see zucchini, carrots, onions and potatoes inside. It smelled almost like marinara sauce, filled with vegetables and pasta. And that’s how it tasted, too.
“This is the best vegetable soup I’ve ever tasted,” I said.
Teeny grinned and turned to Miss May. “You agree?”
Miss May closed her eyes and nodded. “So good. How does the food you make in your restaurant taste so much like home cooking? You’ve outdone yourself again, T. This soup is awesome.”
I laughed. “Wow. Not every day Miss May uses the word awesome. Totally cool, dude.”
Miss May laughed. “I call it like I see it.”
“The secret is small-batch cooking,” said Teeny. “Most restaurants sacrifice quality for quantity. They make two hundred gallons of soup at a time or something crazy like that. Somewhere in that industrial cooking process the love and attention squeaks out and never comes back. I make this soup one pot at a time, just as it should be.”
“You’ve got my vote in the Best of Pine Grove contest.” I took another bite of soup and smiled. “But only if I can have more soup.”
Teeny waved me away. “I don’t care about your vote. You already voted for me and you can only vote once.” Teeny gestured to the crowded restaurant. “I care about all of their votes. I need their votes or I’m not going to be happy for the rest of the month.”
Miss May hung her head. “You can’t preemptively declare you’re not going to be happy. That’s stressful for everyone.”
“It’s stressful for me, most of all,” Teeny said. “I hate being unhappy.”
With that, Miss May stood and clinked the side of her soup bowl with her spoon. “Attention, everyone. I have an important announcement to make. As you all may already know, voting for the best restaurant in Pine Grove closes this week. I’m sure most of you have already voted for Grandma’s, but if you haven’t I would encourage you to do so. Anyone who brings in a voting slip that proves they voted for Grandma’s will receive a free slice of apple pie at the Thomas Family Fruit and Fir Farm. That is all.”
Diners erupted with excited chatter as Miss May sat down back down in her seat. I leaned forward. “Miss May, you can’t do that. You just bribed people in exchange for their vote. Teeny wants to win fair and square.”
“No I don’t,” said Teeny. “I just want to win! Thank you, May.”
I shook my head. “Don’t you want to know people voted for you because they love your food and not because they want free pie?”
No Cone Unturned (Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery Book 12) Page 8
