Chocolate Most Deadly (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (17 page)

CHAPTER
36

Around three-thirty that afternoon,
when Julia had gone home and the kitchen was spotless, I wandered into the
dining room with my clipboard for a quick inventory of supplies. The last two
customers sat talking over cappuccinos and slices of Toffee Tiramisu Tart as
Harper gazed at her reflection on the back of a large stainless-steel pie
server.

I eased up beside her. “Recognize
that face?”

She moaned. “I look positively
ancient
,
Kate.”

“You look adorable,” I countered.
“The new haircut is perfect. Those earrings are to die for. And the khakis
flatter your figure nicely.”

She gave me a mushy smile. “But
what about these?” She pointed at the corner of one eye. “I swear that I did
not
have any wrinkles yesterday. And then, this morning—
poof
! My face looks
like a Chinese Shar-Pei.”

I gingerly took the pie server from
her hand. “Okay, first of all, if you’re going to examine your appearance, try
a real mirror.” She nodded, gently tugging the skin away from her eyes with
both hands. “And, second, don’t freak out when you find a wrinkle. You should
celebrate! Throw a party for the little bugger! It’s a sign of wisdom gained,
memories made and laughs shared with friends and family.”

“But I’m getting so old, Kate.”

“Don’t you turn thirty this year?”

She shook her head. “Last birthday
I was thirty-one.” An impish smile blossomed on her face. “Although I feel like
I’m closer to my Aunt Ida’s age.”

“How old is she?”

“Let’s just say it involves triple digits,”
Harper mumbled. “And she could probably leave me in the dust if I challenged
her to run around the block.”

I laughed at the remark and dropped
the serving utensil into a bus tub under the counter. Then I glanced at my
clipboard to get back on track.

“Okay, enough about me feeling
pitiful,” Harper said. “I doubt if you came out here to talk about my wrinkly
skin. Were you looking for something?”

“Do you think we have enough
placemats for the rest of the week?”

She nodded.

“How about order pads?”

The nodding continued.

“And the last thing is straws,” I
said. “Do we need more?”

“Nope,” Harper answered. “I found
three extra boxes tucked inside a carton of paper towels in the back. We should
be good until next week.”

I felt a flicker of relief. The
operating budget that had seemed reasonable when I took over from my parents
was beginning to worry me. I hadn’t asked my mother or father yet, but I
suspected that maybe their approach to accounting was more laissez-faire than
mine. As the third generation of the Reed family to run Sky High Pies, I felt
pressure to keep costs as low as possible without sacrificing quality. Between
fretting about the cost of milk and eggs and worrying about Viveca’s brother, I
felt the noose of anxiety slowly tightening around my neck.

“Kate?” Harper asked, lightly
touching my arm. “Did I lose you?”

I swallowed the ripple of nerves
and told her I was just thinking about all of the paperwork stacked on my desk.

“I can finish up out here,” she
suggested. “I’ll come and let you know when I’m leaving for the day.”

“Thanks, gorgeous!” I gave her a
little wink. “I’ll see you in a few.”

After fixing a cup of herbal tea
and grabbing one oatmeal raisin cookie, I headed for the office determined to
either file or shred my way through at least one stack of invoices, order forms
and spreadsheets. A half hour later, I was making good progress when an
unexpected roadblock arose: my stomach growled loudly. I glanced at the empty
plate, decided that a second cookie would be advisable and got up from my desk.

“Oh, thank goodness!” Harper said,
suddenly rushing through the door. “I was afraid you might be on the phone.”

I held up the plate. “I’m just
going for reinforcements,” I said. “Are you getting ready to leave?”

She nodded. “I was, but then this
guy started banging on the door.”

The look on her face was more than
a little familiar. It was the same flushed cheeks, unsteady grin and telltale
twitch in her right eye that told the world Harper was anxious about something.

“Who is it?”

She shook her head and kneaded the
hem of her apron with trembling fingers. “I don’t know, but he scared the
stuffing out of me the way he banged on the door.”

A million thoughts flashed through
my mind as I hurried out of the office. When I came around the corner into the
dining room, I saw Adam Caldwell reading the Sky High Pies menu. He glanced up
at the sound of my footsteps and put the list of options back on the counter.

“Afternoon, detective,” I said.
“You finally made it to Crescent Creek!”

He nodded and explained that he was
having dinner with Trent and Dina to discuss a workshop they were presenting at
an upcoming conference. Since Caldwell had never visited Crescent Creek and
Dina had a late afternoon court appearance, they’d agreed to meet in our
pastoral village instead of Denver.

“What’s the topic for your
presentation?” I asked.

“Suspect interrogations,” he
answered. “And we still need someone to play the perp in our demo, Kate. What
do you think?” He paused to smile. “I bet you’d make a great test subject.”

I shook my head. “I’ve got my hands
full around here, but thanks for the compliment.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “If your
hands really are full with the bakery, how do you find time to drive back and
forth to Denver so often?”

I squinted at him. “You keeping
tabs on me, detective?”

“Nope. But I know you’ve been there
at least twice in the last few days.”

I sighed. “Three times actually.”

“See?” he exclaimed triumphantly.
“I thought you were spending an awful lot of time away from home.”

I didn’t feel like discussing my
schedule with him, so I watched quietly as he pointed at the display case.
“What’s that little guy right there?”

“That’s a Cocoa Loco Cupcake,” I
said. “It’s made with a hint of chili powder to spice things up a bit. Want
one?”

He patted his stomach. “My
girlfriend told me to cut back on sugar.”

“How about something to drink
then?” I suggested. “I could make you a cappuccino.”

“She told me to cut back on
caffeine, too.”

“Sounds like she’s looking out for
your health, detective.”

He scowled. “We’re going to her
brother’s wedding next month. She wants me to be skinny and calm.”

“And how’s that working out for
you?”

Caldwell laughed. “It’s the worst,”
he complained. “I’m hungry all the time. And I’m learning to really loathe
unleaded coffee.”

I walked over to the cappuccino
maker on the back counter. “We’ve got decaf espresso,” I told him. “I could
have one ready for you in a flash. You might like it better than what you’ve
had so far.”

“That’s okay, Kate. I appreciate the
offer, but I just stopped by for a minute. I saw your place when I was driving
past and thought I’d see if you were around.”

We stood for a moment in silence
until Harper suddenly appeared from the back. She was trying to balance a tray
of Tequila Sunrise Mini Cheesecakes in one hand and adjust her purse with the
other. I hurried over to lend a hand.

“Don’t drop the precious cargo,” I
said, adjusting the strap. “Bobby would not be happy if you show up with a
bunch of crumbs and remnants.”

She giggled. “I know, I know. I’m
going to treat them like a newborn baby until I get home.”

Caldwell nodded at Harper. “Thanks
again for unlocking the door,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you by
knocking so loudly.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Harper said,
crossing the dining room. “I imagine my heartbeat will go back to normal at
some point.” She giggled again. “You all have a good night. I’ll see you in the
morning, Katie.”

CHAPTER
37

After Harper headed for home, I
offered Detective Caldwell a decaf cappuccino again.

“I’m okay,” he said. “But if you’ve
got the time, could we sit down and talk for a few minutes?”

I gestured at one of the nearby
tables. “Is this okay?”

Caldwell nodded, walked over and
pulled out two chairs. I sat in one and waited while he got comfortable.

“You’re being kind of mysterious
all of a sudden,” I said as he glanced around the room. “What’s going on?”

“I thought about calling you
earlier,” he answered in a hushed tone. “But since I was coming up to meet with
Trent and Dina, I decided to wait and talk to you face-to-face.”

His mood had cooled from
lighthearted to somber.

“Talk about what?”

“Viveca England’s brother,” he
said. “I know you both think he’s innocent of any wrongdoing in the Delmar
Singer case.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “I’ve
never met him, but I trust Viveca implicitly.”

“Well, I’m beginning to suspect
that you’re right,” said Caldwell. “I took a look at the surveillance video
from the hospital. There’s no doubt that Tim England visited Singer’s room that
night. And after he left, a nurse checked on the guy and he was fine. A short
time later, however, another individual entered the room. When the nurse
returned in something like fifteen minutes, Singer was dead. He’d been
suffocated with a pillow. The poor guy was so weak from everything he’d been
through—the poison and medications and all the rest—I guess there was no way he
could fight back.”

Caldwell delivered the news in a
calm, straightforward manner. It sent a chill through my body—knowing that
someone had smothered Delmar Singer while he was helpless. The detective kept
his eyes on me as I shivered slightly before taking a deep breath.

“Who was it?” I asked finally.

“Good question.” He reached into
his pocket. “I’ve got the hospital video on my phone. Do you mind taking a
quick look? Since you’ve been doing some poking around into the situation, I
thought maybe there’s a chance you could identify the person.”

“I don’t know if I can help,” I
said. “I’ve never met Viveca’s brother or anyone in his life besides Delilah
and a couple of people from his AA meeting.”

Caldwell smiled. “It’s worth a
shot. You’ve got ten years of experience as a PI, Kate. There’s always a chance
you might notice something that I missed, especially since you haven’t been staring
at CCTV footage from three different cases like I have.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m happy to
help in any way possible.” I waited while he fiddled with his phone. “Do you
have any initial suspicions about who it might be?”

Caldwell shrugged. “Besides Delilah?”
he said. “I mean, she has a record. She knew the victim. And she’s gone
missing.”

“Oh, c’mon,” I scoffed. “You don’t
really think she’s the killer do you?”

Caldwell held my gaze for a few
seconds without answering the question. “Here’s what I do know for sure,” he
said finally. “After Tim England left Singer’s hospital room, a second
individual—we believe it was a woman—gained access. We have video of her, but
she keeps her head down so you can’t see her face. I just thought…” He paused
as the screen on his phone flared with a black-and-white burst of static and
the hospital corridor appeared. “Okay, this is about ten seconds before she
comes into view.”

We both watched as a hospital
attendant pushed an empty wheelchair across the screen. Then a set of elevator
doors opened in the distance.

“Here she comes,” Caldwell said.
“You can’t miss her.”

As I watched the footage, I saw the
distinct silhouette of someone step off the elevator. Squinting at the stark
contrast of the image—everything was dark, granular shapes against a shimmering
white background—I concentrated on the person’s attire. Then my hand
instinctively covered my mouth as I recognized the floppy hat and patchwork
coat from Delilah’s apartment.

“What is it?” asked the detective.

“That coat and hat were at
Delilah’s,” I whispered as the person on the screen walked toward the camera.
“And you’re right,” I said. “They keep their head down so you…” I stopped
talking while the individual turned into Delmar Singer’s hospital room. “It’s
like they knew where the surveillance camera was located,” I said. “The way
they kept their face turned to the right and…” I felt a faint flutter in the
back of my mind, like my subconscious had noticed something in the video. “Can
you rewind that and play it again?”

Caldwell nodded silently before
complying with my request.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes, go ahead.” I followed his
finger as it tapped the screen. “There were a couple of other things I wanted
to see a second time,” I explained. “I think maybe I recognized something
else.”

While the video played, I focused
even more intently on the flickering images: the hospital attendant, the empty
wheelchair, the elevator doors and then the person in the floppy hat and
patchwork coat.

“Okay!” I said. “Can you stop it
right there?”

Caldwell quickly tapped the screen
and the image froze with the person turning toward the room where Delmar
Singer—recovering from the first attempt on his life—was just seconds away from
being suffocated with a pillow.

“The Chuck Taylors,” I said,
squinting at the shoes on the shadowy figure’s feet. “I’ve seen those before,
too.”

I kept my eyes on the high-top
shoes with thunderbolts drawn on the toes.

“In Delilah’s apartment?” asked Caldwell.

I shook my head. “I saw them last night,”
I answered. “At Tick-Tock Donuts.”

Caldwell raised one eye. “Who do
they belong to?”

“I actually saw two different
pairs.”

“So?” He nodded. “Who was wearing
them?”

“Jake Breen,” I answered. “And I
saw the other pair in the women’s restroom, on somebody in a stall.”

“Okay,” Caldwell said. “Did you see
her face?”

I shook my head again. “No,” I
answered. “I don’t know who it was, although I think I know who it was.”

“Do I have to guess?” he asked.

“No, but I want to see if I can
confirm it before I tell you,” I said. “Can we get back to Jake Breen?”

Caldwell smiled. “Do we have to?”

“What’s his story?” I asked.

“Low level con man, occasional drug
dealer and well-known stooge around Aurora and Lakewood. He’s pretty much
avoided Denver proper until very recently.”

I listened as Caldwell described
Breen’s list of misdeeds. He was arrested for shoplifting at the age of twelve,
landed in juvie when he was sixteen and cooled his heels for a year at the Arrowhead
Correctional Center in Cañon City as an adult for selling stolen goods.

“That was the last time he
demonstrated sheer stupidity,” Caldwell explained. “It’s also where he met
Ambrose Winstead, a real piece of work who we suspect taught Breen a few things
about pulling bank jobs.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Are you telling
me that Breen has robbed banks but hasn’t been arrested?”

Caldwell frowned. “He’s a suspect
in three heists in the past two years. And the guy’s crafty; his alibis have
checked out so far, but it’s only a matter of time. He’ll get sloppy at some
point and we’ll be there to punch his card.”

“How recent was the last robbery
you think he pulled?”

“Very recent,” Caldwell answered.
“Remember the ten grand we found in the freezer at Delilah’s apartment?”

I smiled. “It came from a bank
robbery?”

“A town called La Junta,” he said.
“South of Colorado Springs.”

“I know La Junta. My nana had
friends there. I went down once during summer vacation when I was a little
girl.”

“Well, we’re pretty sure Jake Breen
took the same drive,” Caldwell said. “Although he didn’t go with his
grandmother. We believe that he went with Anton Hall, Toby Wurlitzer and Delmar
Singer.”

As Caldwell described his theory
about Breen and the other men robbing the bank in La Junta, I imagined a few
possible reasons that Viveca’s brother might have been targeted with the
poisoned cupcakes. When Caldwell finished, I shared a couple of my theories.

“Maybe Tim England overheard
something in the hall outside his apartment,” I suggested. “Or maybe he saw
them carrying the loot from the bank into Delmar’s place.”

Caldwell shrugged. “Or maybe it’s
unrelated,” he said. “Jealous lover, workplace grudge, bad-tempered loan shark.
There are plenty of reasons for sending a box of poisoned cupcakes to someone.”

“Okay, sure,” I said. “But you are
one-hundred percent certain that Tim wasn’t involved in the bank robbery,
right?”

“How about ninety-nine percent?” Caldwell
joked. “His band was in Minnesota when the La Junta bank was hit. There are
dozens of pictures online that show him with fans and club promoters all over Minneapolis.”

“In other words, he has an alibi?”

“Rock solid,” answered Caldwell.
“Between his Twitter feed, the band’s Instagram account and a series of panting
blog posts by one particular female fan, Tim England was nowhere near La Junta
when the Pueblo National Credit Union was relieved of two-hundred thousand in
crisp, marked bills.”

“But you suspect that Jake did the
job with Anton, Toby and Delmar?”

A thin smile appeared on Caldwell’s
face. “Look at you,” he said. “On a first name basis with four dangerous
criminals.”

I smirked. “Is it possible that
Delmar Singer tried to pull a fast one on his buddies? Maybe take off with some
of the cash? But when they found out, they decided to kill him and frame my
neighbor’s brother for the murder.”

“Anything’s possible,” Caldwell
said. “But the plot you just described takes a certain kind of finesse that
Jake Breen doesn’t usually bother with. If he thought Delmar was trying to
pinch some of the robbery proceeds, he’d go over, knock on the door and plug
him with a single round right between the eyes.”

“Okay, but what if—”

“Besides,” Caldwell added, “we’ve
got a witness that saw Tim England pick up the box of cupcakes, look inside and
then offer them immediately to Delmar Singer.”

“A witness?”

He nodded. “An elderly woman who
lives on the same floor, Eleanor Sanderson. She was going out with her dog at
the same time that Tim scooped up the box of goodies. When he saw the cupcakes,
he first called out to the Sanderson woman. She declined the offer, but stayed
in the hallway long enough to see Tim knock on Singer’s door and give the box
to Delmar. Then both men went into their respective apartments and Eleanor took
Duke out for a walk.”

“Duke’s the dog?”

Caldwell smiled. “Your sleuthing
skills are, as always, first-class, Kate.”

“I knew a dog named Duke once,” I
said. “A former runway model in Chicago had an Airedale. She was a jazz
aficionado, especially Duke Ellington.”

“Got it,” he said. “I don’t know if
Eleanor Sanderson likes jazz, but I do know she’s an impeccable eyewitness.”

“And she gave a statement that
essentially lets Tim England off the hook for Delmar’s murder?”

“Part of it anyway,” Caldwell said.
“Between what she saw in the hallway at the apartment building and the time
frame for Tim’s visit to the hospital, he’s not involved with Delmar’s death.”

“How did Singer end up in the
hospital in the first place?” I asked. “If he took the cupcakes and went inside
his apartment, did he collapse there?”

Caldwell shook his head. “From what
we can piece together, Delmar ate one of the poisoned cupcakes right away.
During the next little bit, he consumed the others. There was so much of that
solvent stuff in the frosting that he started to feel the effects within eight
hours, which is when he stumbled across the hall in the middle of the night and
collapsed outside Tim England’s door.”

“And Tim heard the commotion?”

Caldwell smirked. “Have you heard a
description of Delmar Singer? The guy weighed close to three-hundred pounds. I
imagine half the people in the building heard him slam against Tim England’s
front door when he fell.”

“And you said only eight hours
passed between the last of the cupcakes and when he collapsed?”

Caldwell nodded.

“Doesn’t it usually take longer?” I
asked. “I remember reading about a case that involved a woman who tried to kill
herself with acetonitrile. Her husband found her eleven hours after she drank
the stuff. Lucky for her, they were able to remedy the poison before she died.”

“I imagine it depends on how much
you ingest and the usual factors like body size, gender, current health,
pre-existing conditions and—”

The sound of a quacking duck
suddenly erupted from his pocket.

“Sorry about that!” Caldwell’s face
flushed pink as he retrieved his phone again and silenced the noisy bird.
“That’s my reminder that I have a call with the district attorney’s office.” He
glanced at his watch. “I should go out to my car so I can check in with them.”

He got up and slid the phone back
into his pocket.

“Thanks for your time, Kate,” he
said. “I’m sorry if I disrupted your day by showing up unannounced.”

I waved away the apology. “After
the morning we had, an interruption is a welcome thing.”

“Well, maybe I’ll bring Madelyn to
Crescent Creek for a long weekend after we get back from her brother’s wedding.
Then we can both indulge in some of your baked goods and a cup of real coffee.”

“You’re welcome anytime,” I said.
“I’m glad you finally made it up to see our little slice of paradise.”

“You’ve got that right. When I took
the job in Denver, I wasn’t sure how I’d like Colorado after ten years in New
Orleans. But it’s even better than I expected.”

I followed him to the door and onto
the front porch. At the top of the stairs, he turned and the smile on his face
brightened.