A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery Box Set Read online

  “What exactly are we looking for?” I asked. “This place has been wiped clean and I’m sure the police have been over and over it.”

  “I don’t know,” she said opening the door to the industrial-sized silver refrigerator.

  “Don’t you think the police would have found anything worth finding?” I asked, peering over her shoulder. The restaurant may have been spotless, but the food inside of the refrigerator hadn’t been touched and the stink of rotting food wafted out. “Pee-yew.”

  “Police don’t know everything. They might have missed a big clue,” she said. “I heard Henry’s widow was going to re-open the restaurant next week.”

  “Really,” I answered. “She better get this thing cleaned out then.” There was a package of rotting steak sitting front and center in the refrigerator. The milk looked curdled, the lettuce was forming a puddle of brown slime and the pink Pyrex bowl full of who knows what was still in there. This thing would need airing out if the restaurant was to open next week.

  Lucy slammed the door shut. “Disgusting.”

  Other than the interior of the refrigerator, the kitchen was spotless. I wondered if Martha had been called in to help clean. From the smell of it, it had been done earlier in the day. No, I thought. There’s no way Martha would come back in here after what she had seen. After what we had both seen. I was an idiot for being here now. It was giving me the willies, and I wanted to be done with this adventure. I hoped there was no such thing as ghosts and that Henry wouldn’t make an appearance.

  I opened and closed a few drawers, but all they had in them were a few kitchen utensils. Not nearly as many as I would have thought a restaurant kitchen would have. A cork bulletin board hung on one wall and I went over to investigate. I shined the light on the papers that were stuck on it. Mostly recipes and the gas bill. An employee schedule hung on a clipboard. The recipes were on yellowed and stained paper. Grandma’s old-fashioned oatmeal cookies were a print off from the local newspaper from 1974. I wondered whose grandma had supplied the recipe.

  “Where’s his office?” Lucy asked after she had searched all the cupboards.

  I led the way, shining the light on the floor, hoping it wasn’t visible from the outside. The door to Henry’s office was open and we stepped inside. Lucy flipped on the light and I protested.

  “There’s no window in here,” she said heading toward Henry’s makeshift desk.

  I closed the door. “The light might shine down the hallway and still be visible through the outer windows.” I headed toward a file cabinet and slid it open. As clean as Henry was, he sure had his paperwork in a mess. I riffled through the files. It looked like Henry held on to every receipt he had ever gotten.

  “Hmm,” I said when I found a file in the back with suspicious looking slips of paper.

  “What is it?” Lucy asked. She was digging through the small wastepaper basket near the desk.

  “I think these are, I don’t know, betting slips?” I said holding one up for inspection. “I’ve never seen one, but it has names and numbers on it. And I think that’s a race track name.” I had never bet on anything in my life, but from the size of the file, it looked like Henry had bet on a lot of things.

  “It is,” Lucy said, taking the slip of paper from me. “I wonder if he owed someone money?”

  I looked at her. “Maybe he did, and that’s why he couldn’t give Charles a raise. And maybe he couldn’t pay his bookie and he killed him over it.” That seemed like a fair explanation. No one in Sandy Harbor would just kill someone for no reason.

  “I think you’re on to something,” Lucy said. We looked at each other in silence, our minds working.

  “How do we find out who his bookie was?” I finally asked.

  “I dunno. How do you know where to place a bet if you wanted to do that? We need to be the bettor to figure this out,” she said.

  I stood up and accidentally knocked a heavy glass ashtray off the top of the filing cabinet. We both screamed and then looked at each other wide-eyed. “Shh,” I said and tried to listen to see if anyone had heard us.

  The ashtray was made of heavy amber glass and didn’t break when it hit the carpet. Who still had ashtrays around? I couldn’t remember ever smelling smoke on Henry. It looked like something from the 1970’s.

  “It’s a clue,” Lucy said, reading my mind.

  I narrowed my eyes at the ashtray. “Maybe Henry’s bookie smokes, and he kept it here for their meetings.”

  “So we need to find someone that smokes and looks suspicious,” Lucy said.

  “I guess we could go around town smelling everyone that looks suspicious,” I said.

  “Thanks to the cigarette tax hardly anyone smokes anymore,” Lucy agreed. “It can’t be that hard to narrow it down.”

  Things were starting to get crazy. First, we had broken and entered and now we were going to go sniffing suspicious looking people.

  “We need to go,” I said. “And I’m taking this with me.” I picked up the file, and we headed out the back door, being careful to leave everything else the way it was when we got there.

  ***

  I lay in bed that night, going through the file we had taken. It looked like Henry loved to play the horses. And place football bets. Plus a few others that were so vague, I wasn’t sure what they were. Sometimes the bets were small, fifty or a hundred dollars, but on more than a few occasions, they were for several thousand dollars. Those were mostly horse racing bets.

  I came across one that had the initials RH on it in handwriting and a brief note that said pay 8/23 and the amount $10,899. Had Henry placed a large bet and lost? Or did someone owe him money? Maybe he was a bookie on the side and he had put pressure on RH to pay up and RH took exception to it.

  I sighed. There wasn’t a lot of information to go on. I wondered if the racetrack kept track of bets placed? It seemed like they would have to. But what difference did it make if they did? I was sure they wouldn’t just hand out information like that.

  Was it illegal to place bets through a bookie instead of directly at the track? I had no idea. I had lived a rather safe, mundane life and had no idea how to do illegal things. Well, up until this evening, anyway. Now I was officially a criminal. But I wasn’t going to spread that tidbit of information around.

  I would have to think on this and figure something out. Maybe Lucy would have some ideas.

  Chapter Twelve

  I had just stepped out of the shower and was in my bathrobe when the doorbell rang. I quickly wrapped a towel around my wet hair and trotted over to the door and peered through the peephole. I pushed air out between my teeth when I saw it was Detective Blanchard.

  “Who is it?” I said, annoyed.

  “I’m pretty sure you can see who it is,” he answered.

  “I’m not dressed, so I can’t open the door,” I called back. This guy was getting on my nerves.

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  I scowled. Who did he think he was? It was still early, and I had already answered all his questions. Then I remembered that Lucy and I broke into Henry’s Home Cooking Restaurant. My heart jumped in my chest and I pushed the thought away. We were careful and Henry was too cheap to put up cameras. There was no way he knew what we had done.

  “I’ll be right out,” I called and headed back to my bedroom.

  I quickly put on a bra and panties and then threw on a sweatshirt over a pair of jeans. I tried to drag my feet and make him wait, but the idea of an authority figure, albeit an annoying authority figure, standing on my front porch made me move faster. I took the towel off and ran my fingers through my hair. Darn him. I wasn’t company presentable, and he knew it.

  I returned to the front door and opened it for him. “Can I help you?” I said, trying to stay as neutral as I could.

  “May I come in?” he asked. He was dressed more casually today, in a pair of dress slacks and a pullover sweater that accented his broad shoulders. I could smell his aftershave and it gave me a pin
ch of emotion. My husband had always worn aftershave, regardless of whether he was going out or not. I had loved that about him. Even after a workout, he had always managed to smell good.

  I took a step back and let him in. Part of me wanted to refuse, but again, the thought of orange jumpsuits and silver bracelets danced through my mind.

  “Thank you. I appreciate your cooperation,” he said as I led him to the living room. I wondered if the threat of jail time was behind that word, cooperation.

  “Can I get you some coffee?” I reluctantly offered.

  “No, thank you, I just had a question for you,” he said and took a seat on the sofa. He narrowed his eyes at me and leaned toward me. “It seems that someone was snooping around Henry’s Home Cooking Restaurant last night. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you?”

  My heart stopped. When it started up again, it nearly exploded in my chest. There was no beating around the bush with this guy. I was pretty sure my face turned ghost white. “Well-well, why would you think I would know something about that?”

  “Just a hunch,” he said, staring me down.

  I forced myself to breathe. He had no proof it was Lucy and I, or he would have arrested me first thing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you accusing me of breaking and entering?” There. That would put him on the defensive.

  “No, I am not accusing you,” he said, sitting back a tiny bit.

  “Why would you even ask me?” I said, feeling more confident. “I’m not capable of breaking into a building. Was there damage done to the building? I wouldn’t know the first thing about breaking into a building.” I bit my lip to make myself stop talking.

  His lips pressed together tightly. “No, no damage was done to the building. But there were some things moved around. Possibly some missing items. That sort of thing.”

  It was my turn to be suspicious. Lucy and I had been careful, and we hadn’t taken anything that would have been noticeable. If the police knew about the betting slips, then they would have taken them, assuming they were actually evidence. But if they weren’t evidence, then why would they notice they were gone? “What kind of missing things?” I had to know.

  “Oh maybe a file or two,” he said, sitting all the way back on the couch. “And there was something knocked on the floor that hadn’t been there before. Back in Henry’s office.”

  The ashtray! I tried to keep my eyes from opening wide, but I was pretty sure I failed. “Well, it could have been the cleaning lady. I heard Henry’s widow is going to reopen the restaurant next week. Surely she had cleaning people in there.”

  He nodded slowly. “I suppose that could have happened. But the cleaning people came in first thing yesterday morning and I was in there yesterday afternoon. I also spoke with Charles Allen again and he said you accused him of being the killer. But he thinks you’re the killer.”

  “What? He said what? That liar! I only wanted to make sure he was okay after our traumatizing experience, and of course, I wondered if he knew of anyone that might have something against Henry. Being his employee, I would think he would have noticed something,” I defended myself.

  “I see,” he said and leaned forward again. “Allie, it’s a really big mistake for you to get involved in this investigation in any way. You need to leave it to the professionals. If you did decide to break into the restaurant, I’m not saying that you did mind you, but if you did, then you could go to jail. And you’re too pretty for jail.”

  I swallowed hard, taking this in, and then opened my mouth to speak. Wait. What? Did he say I was pretty? I felt color go to my cheeks. “I assure you, Detective, I am not investigating anything.”

  He looked at me a few moments before speaking. “Good. I don’t want to have to arrest you or your friend. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get going.” With that, he got up and showed himself to the door. I followed him out and watched him drive away.

  What was it with that man? First, he practically accuses me of murder, and then he calls me pretty. Last week someone had told him that I had an argument with Henry the night before he died. I had assumed it was Charles. Maybe I was wrong, but if I was, who else could it have been? And why didn’t he accuse me of murder then, assuming it was Charles he had spoken to?

  Chapter Thirteen

  The more I thought about it, the madder I got as I pushed my buggy down the cereal aisle of Shaw’s Market. The nerve of Detective Blanchard thinking I would break into Henry’s Home Cooking Restaurant! Never mind that I had. I did not have the face of a criminal. And it’s not like I did it for personal gain. No. I was helping him solve the case. I should have been getting more recognition than I was. When I found the killer, I was going to demand an apology.

  I picked up a box of raisin bran, on sale for $2.50, and tossed it in the buggy. I needed to talk to Lucy about this. We needed to be more careful. And who notices one ashtray on the floor, anyway? And the files? Had he counted the files to know how many there were? That file cabinet had been in a mess and I couldn’t imagine anyone knowing that a file was missing unless they had counted.

  By the time I turned the corner and headed down the bread aisle, I was steaming. I looked up and saw Charles Allen looking over the English muffins and I headed right for him.

  “Charles Allen, you are a despicable human being!” I said, stopping the cart just short of his sizable backside.

  “What?” he said, looking over his shoulder. His eyes got big when he saw me.

  “You told Detective Blanchard that I accused you of murder and I did no such thing! Lucy did. Now he thinks I’m a suspicious person. And after I baked you that pie. Why, you should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “What? No, I didn’t do that, I swear, Allie,” he said and turned around to face me. My buggy was so close to him, it was difficult for him to do and so he took tiny steps and eased his large body around.

  “He said you did, and I am inclined to believe him,” I said. “I have never done one thing wrong in my life, and now you accuse me of murder?” Okay, I had done one thing wrong. Well, a whole lot of things wrong, but that wasn’t the point.

  “No, no, see, I think he misunderstood. I said that we had a discussion, but I never said you were the murderer.” He shifted from one foot to the other and glanced to the right and then to the left.

  I gripped the buggy handle. “You had better not be going around pointing the finger of blame at me, Charles Allen.” I glanced over my shoulder. People were looking in our direction. I bumped the buggy up against his belly a couple of times for effect.

  “Oh I’m not, I swear,” he said holding his right hand up in a swearing motion. His black hair fell across his forehead and he pushed it back.

  “I think you know who did it and that’s why you’re trying to cast suspicion on me,” I hissed.

  “What? No, I have no idea who did it!” he said copying my whispered tone.

  “Then where were you on the night of the murder? Where were you really? Because I don’t believe for one minute you were visiting your mother. You don’t strike me as the sentimental type,” I said, lightly bumping the buggy against his belly again. “And where did you get the money to pay for such a nice house on a fry cook’s pay? Answer me that!”

  Charles’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again. His face turned red and I thought he was having a heart attack. “Chef! I am a chef! And for your information, I didn’t earn that money from my chef job,” he sputtered.

  “Oh? And where did you earn that money?” I could be mean when I wanted to be. I’m not proud of it, but the gift does come in handy.

  “I uh, well, it’s like this,” he said, looking to the right and then to the left again. People had wandered out of the bread aisle, most likely in search of a manager to break up something that could very possibly end up in a brawl.

  He leaned toward me and there was the faint smell of sweat. “I have this gig on the weekends,” he said and then took another look both ways down the ai
sle. “I sing on the weekends.”

  I took a step back, mostly from the smell, but partly from this tidbit of information. I had never heard that Charles was a singer. “You sing? Where?”

  He breathed out through his mouth. “At the Coastal Heights hotel over in Bangor. I’m an Elvis impersonator.” When he said Elvis impersonator, he looked quickly over each shoulder again. He sure was a nervous Nellie.

  I stared at him. Had I heard him right? “A what?”

  He rolled his eyes. “An Elvis impersonator,” he whispered.

  When that sunk in, I threw my head back and laughed. I couldn’t help it.

  “Yeah, you laugh it up, but I make good money doing it. And I’m good at it,” he said, turning redder.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Charles, but do you really expect me to believe that?” I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not, but it was a good joke, either way.

  “I don’t care if you believe it or not. I sing at the Coastal Heights hotel every weekend. That’s why I stayed at the restaurant. Henry was always good about allowing me to have weekends off. I got to use my cooking skills during the week and on weekends I got to use my singing skills. It was a win-win situation.”

  He looked like he was telling the truth, but murderers were probably good liars. I was almost sure of it.

  “Fine, Charles. Whatever. I’m sure Detective Blanchard will be checking out your alibi. But you better not tell him that I murdered Henry ever again!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I didn’t do it in the first place, but I won’t ever say it, I promise.”

  I stared him down a minute and then whipped the buggy around and headed for the checkout. I felt all eyes on me, but I didn’t care. I was innocent.

  ***

  When I got home, I Googled the Coastal Heights hotel. I clicked on the entertainment tab and read about all the shows they offered. There was an Elvis impersonator, and I clicked to enlarge the picture. I squinted my eyes and examined it, but it was hard to tell if it was Charles. This Elvis wore a white jumpsuit with sparkles all over it and it was hard to imagine Charles squeezing into that, but it could have been him. I slid my desk drawer open and pulled out a magnifying glass and took a closer look. It really did look like him. Charles certainly had the belly and the black hair for it. I sighed and put the magnifying glass down. I was sure that Detective Blanchard would be checking to make sure he was really there that night. I could call him and double check, but I was pretty sure I would get a lecture on not investigating the murder. It looked like it was back to the drawing board.