Chapter 6
E
LATED TO HAVE
drummed up a suspect other than Lola, I rushed inside The Cookbook Nook to the sales counter, grabbed the telephone receiver, and dialed the precinct. At Taylor & Squibb, my boss had loved whenever I wore my creative hat and my juices were flowing. The most unique work, he said, was a result of inspiration and boldness. I asked for Chief Pritchett. When Cinnamon answered, I spewed out my discovery. Mitzi was a much better suspect, I told her. Her motive? To knock off the competition. I gave details of Mitzi sightings when the fire alarm had gone off.
“Jenna,” Cinnamon said sharply. “Stop.”
How I hated that tone. “No.” I refused to buckle. “Mitzi lost to Natalie for eight years in a row, and let’s not forget about last year’s YouTube fiasco. That could make anybody snap. And if Mitzi was already suspicious of her husband having an affair . . .”
“What are you talking about?”
“She was seen acting suspiciously outside the bank.” I filled her in about Mitzi’s spying adventure.
“You’ve been a busy girl.”
“Lola is innocent.” I crossed my heart and hoped to die, not that Cinnamon could see the gesture, but the move was something I had done since I was little. “By the way, did you track down the chef?”
“Yes. He is in Las Vegas, and he has a solid alibi.”
“Did you find out who will inherit Natalie’s estate?”
“Family members. All aboveboard. A standard will.”
“Members, as in plural?”
“Ellen Mumford has a sister.”
“Where is she?”
“On her way to town.”
“And Natalie’s ex-husband?”
“Have a good night.” Cinnamon hung up.
So much for our budding friendship. I would have to tread softly and remind her along the way that communication was becoming a lost art. I envisioned a tongue-in-cheek public service ad campaign that might convey the message. It involved a woman rapping her knuckles on her friend’s forehead, maybe like the V8 commercial.
Yoo-hoo, anybody home?
The bottom of the screen would be emblazoned with:
Talking. It’s good for the soul.
Thankful that my sense of humor had returned, I decided to get to work on straightening up the store. Aunt Vera was gone, but I had enough energy to power a thousand klieg lights. So did Bailey. She chose the children’s corner. I went straight to work on the displays. Tigger bounded between us.
A half hour later, Aunt Vera bustled in waving a piece of paper. “Yahoo,” she sang. “We’re set to reopen tomorrow. I decided to be proactive. I went to the precinct myself, and I begged and pleaded with Chief Pritchett. I told her that, seeing as the alarm could have been triggered from the alley and Katie had discarded the weapon the day before, our store should not be penalized. Cinnamon agreed. It probably helped that I offered her a single-card tarot reading.”
Harrumph. Couldn’t Cinnamon have told me when I called that she was allowing us to reopen? Granted, being cleared to open didn’t free me of the guilt I felt. Natalie had died on our watch, right outside our kitchen.
“You’ll never guess what card I turned over.” Aunt Vera winked. “The Lovers.”
The Lovers is the sixth trump or Major Arcana card in a tarot deck. It represents the obvious: a relationship or temptation.
“Cinnamon flushed pink,” Aunt Vera said.
“Do you think she’s in love?” Bailey asked.
“Or hopeful.”
I doubted that receiving a positive fortune had anything to do with Cinnamon’s decision to let us reopen, but why spoil my aunt’s lovely mood? She did a sultry cha-cha across the floor, her caftan swishing around her ankles. She once told me that in her younger years she had been quite a dancer. I’d taken a few ballroom dance lessons in college and had wanted to take more with David; we had never gotten around to it.
Aunt Vera said, “An officer is on the way over to remove the yellow crime-scene tape. I’ll tell Katie.”
“I’ll go,” Bailey said.
I bet she hoped to sneak a cup of coffee.
As Bailey headed down the hallway and my aunt retreated to the stockroom, Natalie’s daughter Ellen entered the shop with her adorable two-and-a-half-year-old daughter tucked into a stroller. The girl, who was sound asleep, had masses of curls and the longest eyelashes.
“Are you open?” Ellen said. Though the temperature hovered in the sixties, she was bundled in a mid-calf-length black coat and wore a cashmere scarf around her neck. Her cheeks were blotched with tears, her lips devoid of color. I didn’t have the courage to tell her to wait to enter until a policeman removed the tape in the café. She had to be curious about where her mother had died.
“Come on in.” Rather than pounce on Ellen and drub her with questions, I nestled onto a stool beside the counter and watched. As she always did, Ellen set the stroller in the rear near the children’s section, then she wandered through the store from display table to display table. “Sorry for the mess,” I said.
“Did the customers do this?”
“The fire alarm went off. The place was evacuated.”
“I heard,” she said in a monotone as she picked up a culinary mystery and flipped through it. “Oh, they have recipes.” She brought one to the checkout counter along with one of the featured cookbooks particular to this month’s local events. As she set down the pair, I noticed she had nearly chewed her fingernails down to the nubs.
“How are you doing?” I said.
“Okay.” She rubbed both arms above the elbows.
“Are you cold?”
“No. Sort of. A little off, I guess.”
“I’m sorry about your mother.”
Ellen pressed her lips together. Tears pooled in her eyes. “She died in the alley?”
I nodded. “I don’t know why she was out there.”
“Business, probably. A private phone call. Who knows?” Ellen sighed. “The police said they have suspects, but they wouldn’t name names.”
Neither would I.
“As I was passing out flyers earlier,” I said, “I noticed that you didn’t close the Word.”
“We can’t. Food will go bad. The loss would be too great. And the regulars. They all want to pay their respects. I . . . well . . .” She shook her head. “I’m the acting owner, so I can’t let them down. I’ve got to do all the ordering and such.”
I recalled Bailey’s assertion that whoever inherited Natalie’s estate might be the killer, but I couldn’t believe Ellen had murdered her mother. She seemed so fragile. “You were at the diner when it happened, weren’t you?”
“No. Today’s my day off, so I took my daughter to the park at the south end of town.”
Huh. I could have sworn Natalie had said that her daughter and son-in-law couldn’t come to the competition because they were working. Perhaps she had lied because she was embarrassed to say she didn’t have her daughter’s support.
“The police questioned me,” Ellen said. “They asked for my alibi, like you did.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right. I don’t mind. In time, everyone will want to know. This town, like all small towns, thrives on gossip. I’m not sure the police believe me.” She moved to her daughter and tucked the blanket under the girl’s neck, then returned to me. “No one saw me at the park. It was empty.”
“Because it’s a school day.”
“Exactly. The park is loaded with kids and parents on the weekends.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t you come to the Grill Fest?”
“Mother’s wishes.” The words had bite to them. “She told me never to come to the first round of the competition. She thought I would bring her bad luck.” Ellen’s voice caught. “Bad luck,” she repeated. “I’d say being murdered is bad luck, wouldn’t you?” Tears trickled from her eyes. She brushed them away with a knuckle. “I always did what she said. Always. If only this time . . .” She surveyed the shop, letting the regret hang in the air.
“I’m so sorry. I heard she could be rigid.”
“Rigid?” Ellen blinked. “No. Firm. There’s a difference. I felt no animosity. Ever. None whatsoever.”
I remembered a line from Shakespeare:
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Something in Ellen’s words didn’t ring true. “Would your sister agree?”
“My sister? Who told you about her?”
“Chief Pritchett. I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“She’s older.”
“She’s on her way to town, right?”
Ellen bobbed her head once. “Why were you talking to the police?”
“I had a theory to share. About Mitzi Sykes.”
“Mitzi.” Ellen almost spit the name. “She hated Mother. She wanted her husband Sam to stop working for her. I think she envied my mother’s relationship with Sam. They were such good friends. I wouldn’t put it past Mitzi to have murdered Mother.”
“Ellen. Hon. There you are.” Ellen’s husband, Willie, strode into the shop wearing surfer shorts. His Hawaiian-style shirt flapped open, exposing his chiseled chest, slick with oil. A thatch of hair drooped across his forehead. I’d seen Willie at the beach on numerous occasions. Despite his slightly crooked nose, he had never appeared so rakishly handsome. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
He strode to her and draped an arm around her shoulders. How sweet that he cared so much, I mused, until Ellen whispered, “How worried could you have been? You went surfing.”
“A quick one.” He matched her hushed tone.
“Did you drop by Die Hard Fan, as well?” Ellen said, referring to a sports memorabilia shop in town. She attempted to fetch something from his back pocket. “Is that a receipt?”
Willie grabbed her wrist to prevent her. “Don’t.” He immediately released her.
“Who’s watching the diner with you gone?”
“It’s cool.”
“No, it’s not. We have obligations.”
“Chill.” Willie offered a quirked-up smile. “I put some servers in charge of the place. It does them good to have more responsibility. You know that.” He eyed the books on the counter and glanced at Ellen. He slipped his arm around her waist. “Are you planning on buying books, hon?”
A silent moment passed between them. Ellen flinched.
Then she said, “Jenna, I hope you didn’t expect me to buy books today. I don’t know what I was thinking bringing them to the register. I’m in a fog. I’m not myself, you understand.”
“Of course. I’ll keep them on hold.”
“No need to do that.”
“Okay. I can always reorder if we’re out of them the next time you stop in.”
Ellen picked up the books and returned them to their messy but rightful places. When she rejoined her husband, he said something more. She fetched the stroller with her daughter and gave me a little wave. “Bye, Jenna. Thanks for listening.”
As they exited, I heard Willie ask what we had talked about. Ellen gave a shrug with one shoulder.
Aunt Vera emerged from the stockroom. She gestured at the exiting couple. “That was interesting.”
“You heard?”
“Heard and saw. I was peeking through the split in the drapes.”
I said, “Granted, they lost their mother and mother-in-law, respectively, but the dynamic—” In frustration, I dinged the bell that sat on the counter. “I’m not imagining things, right? He pinched her to coerce her to put the books back.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you think they’re tight on cash? Ellen had been concerned about him visiting Die Hard Fan, as well.”
“Funerals can be costly.”
I couldn’t help revisiting Bailey’s theory that whoever stood to inherit Natalie Mumford’s wealth was the killer. Death would be mighty convenient if, say, a couple with a young daughter needed money. “Aunt Vera, what can you tell me about the Mumford family?”
“What do you want to know?”
She nestled into a chair at the vintage table. I ambled to a chair opposite her and sat as well. Tigger raced to my feet and pounced on them, backed up, and pounced again. I had taught him to play this game whenever I wore my fuzzy slippers at home. Because I was only wearing flip-flops on my feet, his sharp claws stung my bare toes like you-know-what.
I scooped him into my lap and kneaded his belly with my fingertips. “You served on a couple of Crystal Cove committees with Natalie, didn’t you?”
