A Burned Out Baker: Classic Diner Mystery #7 (The Classic Diner Mysteries) (10 page)

“I need to talk to both of you right now,” he said sternly.

“Would you like a cup of coffee first?” I asked as I poured some in a cup and started to hand it to him.

“Victoria, I’m not here for your coffee,” he said. The sheriff glanced around the diner and spotted an empty booth that was a little isolated. “Over there should be fine.”

“I’m not sure I like the tone of your invitation,” Moose said. I put a hand on his arm and shook my head. This wasn’t the time for either one of us to be truculent.

“We’re happy to talk with you, though,” I said quickly before the sheriff could react to Moose’s comment. “Right, Moose?” I asked him pointedly.

“Right,” he said. “Sorry. I had a rough night.” There was a bit of hesitation in his voice as he said it, but I had the feeling that he’d understood the need to pull back some.

“You’re not the only one. I understand, though,” the sheriff said as the three of us took our places in the booth, my grandfather and me on one side and Sheriff Croft on the other.

“I’ve got to admit, that was cute what you two did,” the sheriff said as he looked hard at both of us.

“What exactly are you referring to?” I asked him.

“Don’t play coy with me, Victoria. I know that it was the two of you.”

Moose started to say something, but I pinched his leg a little before he spoke to remind him that we needed to cooperate, at least for the moment. When he did speak, his tone of voice was mollified. “Sheriff, we really are baffled about the subject matter. What exactly was it that we were supposed to have done?”

“The secret drawer in Barry Jackson’s office,” he said. “Tell me that wasn’t the two of you, poking and prying where you don’t belong.”

“I resent that,” Moose said flatly.

“Resent it all you’d like. Just tell me that it isn’t true.”

“Sheriff,” I said, “even if we did find this mysterious drawer you’re talking about, why are you so upset about it? Would you have been able to find it on your own if someone hadn’t left it open for you?”

He looked sharply at me. “I’ll take it that is a confession, then.”

“It’s nothing of the sort,” I replied, allowing a little snap in my voice as well. Sometimes I got a little defensive when I was accused of something, especially when the accusation was based on the truth.

He’d had enough of our verbal sparring. “I’m going to ask you both straight out right here and right now. Did you open that drawer?”

I was weighing the best way to answer when my dear sweet direct grandfather said simply, “We did.”

“How did you even know about it being there?” the sheriff asked, clearly a little surprised by my grandfather’s confession. “That wasn’t something you could just stumble across without having a clue that it was there in the first place.”

Moose grinned and mentioned the builder’s name who had disclosed the secret location to him.

The sheriff smiled a little as he shook his head. “Why am I not surprised? That man couldn’t keep a secret to save his own life.” The smile faded as he asked, “I need to know one more thing. Did you take anything from that drawer, anything at all?”

“No,” I said before Moose could. “Not a single thing.”

The sheriff frowned at his hands for a moment before he spoke again. “So, you’re trying to tell me that you stumbled across a pot of gold full of clues, and you didn’t do anything about it?”

“We took some photos, and I recorded the message Sandy left him,” I admitted.

“How did you manage to do that?” the sheriff asked, honestly interested in what I had to say.

“I took some photos with the camera in my phone,” I said.

“I suppose you recorded the answering machine message with it, too.”

I smiled at him. “I couldn’t figure out how to do that.”

“So then, what did you do?”

“I called my home answering machine and recorded it there,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ll give you credit. That was resourceful of you.”

“Sheriff, I assure you that Moose and I didn’t take a thing out of that drawer. We even left it open for you to find. Tell me you would have had a clue that it was there without us.”

“We might have found it,” the sheriff said grudgingly.

Moose wasn’t having that. “We all know that’s not true.”

“I guess what I’m really asking is why you didn’t call me when you found it,” the sheriff said, and it was clear there was a hint of hurt in his voice. So that was why he was angry. Sheriff Croft wasn’t necessarily upset that we’d found Barry Jackson’s stash.

He was unhappy that we hadn’t called him to tell him about it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was my fault.”

“Victoria, it was our decision,” Moose said, refusing to allow me to fall on my sword for the team.

“You should have called me,” the sheriff said softly.

“We thought you would find it faster than you did, but that’s no excuse,” I said as contritely as I could manage. “We’ll tell you everything in the future.”

He looked at Moose, and my grandfather nodded. “We will.”

That seemed to clear the air a little. “Good. Now tell me, what do you make of what you found there?”

He was actually asking us for our opinions on his case! I doubted he was just being polite; the sheriff wasn’t known for his manners. He was clearly just as overwhelmed by the flood of suspects as we were.

“We have some theories,” I admitted.

“There are plenty of those floating around,” the sheriff said. “Would you care to be a little more specific than that?”

I looked at Moose, who nodded slightly, and I started to tell Sheriff Croft everything that we’d been thinking, including my latest theory that whoever had killed Barry Jackson had wanted his body to be discovered, the quicker the better.

“Who knew that a baker could cause that many folks to want to see him dead?” the sheriff asked after Moose and I finished filling him in on our theories.

“He seemed to have more than his share of enemies, didn’t he?” I asked.

“It’s hard to believe,” the sheriff said. “So, what’s next on your agendas?”

I wasn’t about to hold back, not after the scolding we’d just received. I just hoped that my grandfather was okay with my disclosure. “We’re going to talk to Mike Jackson, Rob Bester, and Cliff Pearson,” I said. “Unless you’d rather we didn’t.”

“No, go ahead,” the sheriff said.

“Seriously?” Moose asked.

“Why not?” Sheriff Croft asked. “I’ve already spoken with them all this morning, and no one was in the mood to talk to me at all. Maybe you’ll be able to get something out of one of them that I can’t.”

I was about to say something when Moose cut me off. “We appreciate your confidence in us.”

“One thing, though,” the sheriff said seriously. “If you find out anything, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem to you, you share it with me, and I don’t mean tomorrow or the next day, either. Got it?”

“We do,” I said, and Moose nodded.

“Good. I’m glad we cleared the air,” Sheriff Croft said as he stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a pair of ladies to interview this morning.”

“Good luck with them,” I said, and then the sheriff left The Charming Moose.

My grandfather and I continued to sit there after he was gone.

“Can you believe what just happened?” Moose asked.

“Which part, the scolding or his willingness to let us dig into Barry’s murder?”

“The scolding was expected, and don’t think he’s giving us a green light out of the goodness of his heart. He’s stumped, Victoria. That’s the only reason we’re getting some room to operate here.”

“I don’t care why he’s doing it, I’m just glad that we can dig without worrying about running afoul of the law.”

Moose grinned at me. “Afoul of the law? Have you been reading Nancy Drew again?”

I laughed and swatted at him playfully. “Move over, you big lug. I need to take care of a few things here before we start interviewing suspects again.”

“Happy to do it,” he said as he stood. “Don’t worry about coverage at the front. Martha’s already on her way.”

I smiled at my grandfather as I headed back to the kitchen to tell Mom what we were up to. Once my grandmother showed up, we could start digging into the murder a little more.

Hopefully this time we’d have a little more luck than we had so far.

But that was the thing about our investigations. No one could predict what the final trigger was that revealed the killer’s identity.

Until that moment came, we just had to do our best to ask as many questions as we could, follow every lead that came our way, and more important than anything, to stay alive.

“I have an idea,” Moose said as we left the diner half an hour later. “Since the sheriff has already spoken with the men we want to talk to today, why don’t we approach our investigation from another angle?”

“I’m listening,” I said. Sometimes Moose had great ideas that were just a little too unorthodox for ordinary law enforcement officers, but they almost always paid off whenever we pursued them ourselves.

“We need to speak with the people closest to our suspects before we tackle them again,” Moose said.

“Do you mean like their family members?” I wasn’t exactly sure how that was going to work, since, as far as we knew, Mike Jackson had lost his last remaining relative when Barry had died in the fire.

“No, I was thinking more along the lines of proximity,” Moose explained. “We can try interviewing the business owners around Rob Bester’s business, folks who live near Mike Jackson, and anybody we can come up with who might be doing business with Cliff Pearson.”

“Moose, do you honestly believe that we could know anybody who might have anything to do with Cliff’s business?”

“Victoria, people get in financial trouble all of the time. I’ve got a hunch that at least a few of our customers here at the diner owe Cliff money.”

A sudden thought occurred to me. “You never borrowed money from him, did you?”

“Never,” he said flatly. “I’m surprised you even had to ask.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said, quickly apologizing.

“Don’t let it bother you,” my grandfather said as he patted my hand. “As a matter of fact, I got into a tight spot when I first opened this place, and I’m ashamed to admit that I had to borrow from someone a lot worse than Cliff Pearson.”

“Moose, you didn’t,” I said.

“I’m afraid that I did. Believe me, I was desperate when I went to Martha’s dad and asked him for a short-term loan. It was one of the worst things I ever had to do in my life.”

“Seriously? Why was that so bad? My great-grandfather was a warm and fuzzy puppy, at least what I remember about him.”

“That’s because he
liked
you,” Moose said with a grimace.

“How could anyone not like you?” I asked with my broadest grin.

“I know, right? It never did make sense to me, either. After all, I’m a likeable fella.”

I knew some folks in Jasper Fork who might disagree with that assessment, but I wasn’t about to bring up any names. “Then again, you did marry the man’s only daughter.”

“True enough,” my grandfather said. “It was sin enough in his eyes, that’s for sure.” Moose slapped his hands together and added, “Let’s forget about my dark past and focus on our current investigation. What do you think of my idea?”

“I think it’s golden, and for what it’s worth, I fully approve of you,” I said as I kissed his cheek.

“It’s something I count on every day,” he said with a smile as we left the diner in pursuit of new information about our pool of suspects.

“So, who do we tackle first?” I asked Moose as we got into his pickup truck.

“Well, the business folks we need to talk to might not be open yet,” he said as he glanced at his watch, “and I’ll have to make a few calls before I know who to tackle about Cliff Pearson.”

“So Mike Jackson it is,” I said. “I can’t imagine anyone killing their own brother.”

“Unfortunately, it’s been happening since Cain and Abel,” he said wistfully.

“Are you talking about your own brother?” I asked him as he drove to Mike Jackson’s apartment complex. I had met my great uncle Martin only once, for my great-grandmother’s funeral. As a matter of fact, I’d been startled as a child to find out I even had a great uncle.

“He was a terror to me growing up, and I swore that I’d have nothing to do with him once I was out on my own.”

“What did he do to you?” I asked. Moose’s voice had gone cold at the memory of past events. It was a side I rarely saw of my grandfather.

He thought in silence for the longest time, and finally Moose shook his head, as though he were trying to dispel bad memories. “Let’s just say that my life has been a finer thing without him in it and leave it at that.”

I knew not to comment further. My grandfather was devoted to his wife, his son, and me. He often said we were all the family he’d ever needed or wanted, and I took him at his word. Prying into his life with Martin wouldn’t do anyone any good. “So, what are we going to do, just start knocking on doors and asking folks questions?”

“We have to be a little more subtle than that,” Moose said.

I glanced at him and laughed. “I didn’t think subtlety was ever your specialty.”

“I didn’t say that I knew how to go about it,” my grandfather conceded. “I just think we need to come up with a cover story. You’re good at that kind of thing. Do you have any ideas?”

“Let me think about it while we drive,” I said.

“Well, think fast. We’ll be at The Manor in a minute.”

I considered different possibilities, and by the time Moose parked near the eight-unit complex on the outskirts of town, I had a plan.

“So, what’s it going to be, granddaughter?”

“We’re doing a background check on him,” I said.

“For what purpose?”

“It seems that Mike Jackson has applied for a new job that requires a certain level of security.”

Moose looked at me skeptically. “You’ve met the man. What kind of job could that possibly be?”

“I don’t know, we’ll probably need to be kind of vague. Do you still have that clipboard under your seat with the crossword puzzles on it?”

My grandfather reached down under his seat and brought it out. I saw the newspaper crossword puzzle on top was halfway filled out. It amused me for some reason that my grandfather had used blue ink to work it. That fact alone proved just how much confidence he had in himself. “Are you going to ask them puzzle questions?” he asked as he handed it to me.

I pulled the puzzles out and then rooted around in his dashboard for a minute.

“If you tell me what you’re looking for, I might be able to help,” Moose offered.

“This should do nicely,” I said as I pulled out a few folded inspection sheets for the truck.

“How does that help?”

“These are going to be the forms we’re using for our questionnaire,” I said.

Moose laughed. “Okay. We can give it a try, but how are you going to explain our attire? We’re both dressed a little casually for a pair of government workers, don’t you think?”

“I’ll cover that once we knock on the first door,” I said, trying to show more confidence than I actually felt in my plan. I’d learned early on that if Moose and I acted as though we were entitled to do things, most folks went right along with us.

I just hoped that it worked this time.

“Hello, do you have a moment of time for us?” I asked as we knocked on the door beside Mike’s apartment. “We’re conducting personal interviews concerning your neighbor’s job application.”

The pretty young woman somewhere in her early twenties answered the door with a puzzled expression on her face. “Why would you care about Mrs. Rosebaum, and who in their right mind would ever hire her? She’s got to be eighty years old.”

“Actually, this is regarding Michael Jackson,” I said.

“The dead singer?” she asked, now even more puzzled than before.

“Your other neighbor,” I said patiently, pointing to his door.

She nodded, finally putting the information together. “What do you want to know about him? Who are you, anyway?”

“We’re with the government,” I said.

“Okayyy,” she replied, looking at my faded jeans and Moose’s workboots.

“You’ve noticed our clothing, haven’t you? Good. It’s a new policy we’re trying out to make people more receptive to speaking with us. On a scale of one to ten, one being completely uncomfortable and ten being happy to see us dressed this way, are you more or less at ease talking to us in casual clothing?”

“Five, I guess,” she said, frowning still.

“Very good,” I said as I pretended to note her response on the back of the truck’s inspection form. “Now, about Mr. Jackson.”

“What about him?” she asked.

“Is there anything you can tell us about him?” Moose asked, speaking for the first time.

“He hits on me a lot, if that’s what you mean. The man won’t take no for an answer.”

“Tell us more,” I said. If we could get her comfortable with us, we might be able to find out some things that Mike didn’t want us to know.

“I mean, I guess he’s cute enough, but he’s like thirty or something. Ewww.”

“Anything else?” Moose asked. I wasn’t sure the girl could hear it in his voice, but I knew that my grandfather was getting frustrated. It was time to push her a little harder.

“We understand that his brother just died,” I said.

The girl frowned again. “That’s what Mike told me this morning. He came over and said that he was going to be rich. As if that would change my mind about him. Well, maybe it would. A little, anyway. How rich do you think he’s going to be?”

“What made him think he was going to be rich?” I asked.

“He said he was inheriting a mint from his brother,” she said.

“Did he mean the land the bakery was on?” Moose asked.

“No, apparently Barry had something else that was worth more than that, and Mike can’t wait to cash it in.”

This was brand-new information. It amazed me what men would say to impress women sometimes. “Did he give you any idea what it might be?”

“He said it was his brother’s insurance policy, and now it was going to be his,” she said.

I wasn’t aware that Barry had carried any insurance. Was Mike just doing some hollow bragging, or was there something else that we didn’t know about? “Did he go into any more detail than that?”

“No,” she said. “I told him that I wasn’t interested, no matter how much money he had. Maybe that was a mistake. What do you think?”

“You need to follow your heart,” Moose said. “Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?”

She was about to speak when Mike Jackson’s door opened. I hadn’t counted on that, given all of the arrangements he had to make for his brother’s funeral. He was clearly on his way out, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw us. “What are you two doing here?”

Before I could come up with a quick lie, the girl said, “They’re here asking questions about you.”

He frowned as he looked at her. “What did they want, Mindy?”

“They said you were applying for some big-deal job,” she said.

“Well, they lied,” he said. “Mindy, do me a favor and give me a minute with them, would you?”

“I don’t mind at all.” She started to go inside, and then she must have been having second thoughts about writing him off just yet. “When you’re finished with them, I just made a fresh pot of coffee, Mike.”

“If I have time,” he said.

Instead of putting her off, that seemed to spark her interest in him, or his newly promised money, even more.

Once she was back inside, Mike said, “I don’t know what you two think you’re doing, but you’d better knock it off.”

“We’re trying to figure out who killed your brother,” Moose said, the iron hard in his voice. “We’d think you’d want that, too.”

“Of course I do,” he said. “That doesn’t explain why you’re both poking your noses around my business, though, does it?”

“Mike, the sooner we can eliminate you as a suspect, the sooner we can get on with the rest of our investigation,” I explained. “It’s as simple as that.”

“Well, let me save you both the trouble. I didn’t kill my brother. Now go talk to someone else.”

“But we’re not finished talking to you,” I said. “What’s this insurance policy we’re hearing about?”

He looked at the closed door of the apartment next to his. “Mindy often doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but that’s never stopped her before.”

“We weren’t aware that Barry had any insurance,” Moose said.

“I don’t know if he did or not,” Mike said flatly.

“That’s not what you told Mindy,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, well, I’ve said a lot of things to her over the past few months,” he said. “She acts like she’s not interested in me, but I know for a fact that she is. I thought if I hinted that I might be coming into some real money, she’d quit playing around.” Mike glanced at his watch, and then he added, “I don’t have time to stand around here talking to you. I’m late for an appointment.”

“With Rob Bester?” I asked, taking a stab in the dark.

“No, as a matter of fact, I’m headed over to the funeral home to make arrangements for Barry’s services.”

I felt a little bad asking him such accusatory questions when he was going on that kind of mission, but our investigation couldn’t wait.

“We won’t keep you, then,” I said.

Mike started to walk away when Moose called out, “We’ll talk again later.”

“I don’t think so,” he said as he disappeared.