A Burned Out Baker: Classic Diner Mystery #7 (The Classic Diner Mysteries) (11 page)

Moose whistled softly under his breath. “That man’s hiding something.”

“I agree, but what?”

“In the spirit of cooperation, you need to give the sheriff a call.”

“Why, to tell him about what Mindy said?” I asked.

“We need to find out if there’s an insurance policy the police don’t know about yet. It could be important, and besides, I’d really like to know.”

I smiled as I pulled out my phone. “I wouldn’t mind knowing that myself.” I got the sheriff right away. “We just found out that Barry might have had an insurance policy, and Mike’s the beneficiary.”

“Where did you hear that?” he asked.

“Some girl named Mindy told us,” I admitted. “Is it true?”

“Not that I’ve been able to uncover, and I’ve looked for one pretty hard,” he said. “Have you gotten anything else that might be useful?”

“Hey, we just got started here,” I said.

“Well, keep me in the loop,” he said, and then the sheriff hung up on me.

“What did he say?” Moose asked me.

“He’s not aware of any insurance policy Barry might have taken out, and he’s been investigating it pretty thoroughly.”

“So, was Mike telling Mindy the truth, or was he just trying to impress her?”

“I’ve got a hunch it was all for show,” Moose said.

“Why do you say that?”

“You saw her too, right?” Moose asked with a grin. “It wouldn’t be the first time a man lied to a pretty girl to gain favor with her.”

“Have you ever done that in your long and seedy past?” I asked him with a grin.

“As a matter of fact, I never had to,” Moose answered with a grin of his own. “So, should we talk to the famous Mrs. Rosebaum?”

“I don’t see why not,” I said as I moved over to her door and knocked.

Ten minutes later, we escaped with our lives. While Mrs. Rosebaum hadn’t noticed anything amiss about Mike Jackson, she did share a litany of her aches and pains with us. The only way we got out of there was when Moose suggested she get a full body scan at the hospital, which she readily believed was a great idea. Two other tenants weren’t home, or else they decided to ignore our knocks.

“Well, that was less than productive,” Moose said as we got back into his truck.

“Hey, you know as well as I do that’s what this business is about. You dig and dig, and most of what you uncover is worthless. That doesn’t mean that you still don’t have to do the legwork.”

“I know. It’s just that I had such high hopes for solving this case quickly. After all, we found all of the clues we’ve been going on early on in this investigation.”

“For all of the good that it’s done us,” I said. “Do you think the businesses we need to visit are open yet, or should we track down some leads about Cliff Pearson’s clients?”

“I don’t see why we can’t do both,” Moose said. “Why don’t you sit in the truck, and I’ll make a few phone calls out here.”

“Why can’t I hear who you’re going to call?” I asked. I hated being excluded from any part of our investigations.

“Because I don’t want you to think any less of the folks I need to call in order to get more information. There’s no reason in the world that you should think badly about any of our customers.”

“Moose, I’m not that judgmental,” I said.

“Victoria, I wish that I didn’t know everything I do about some of our diners. Trust me, you don’t want to know some of the sordid things that I know.”

“Okay, I can see that,” I said. He was right, too. I didn’t want to treat any of our customers any differently just because I knew things about what they’d done in the past, for whatever reason. Maybe when I got to be Moose’s age I’d be a little more forgiving than I was now. Besides, it was almost like a need-to-know basis, and I definitely didn’t need to know everything that my grandfather did.

Moose talked for ten minutes, and I was about to wonder if he was ever going to finish when he finally hung up and got into the truck beside me.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“I have a few feelers out,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”

I couldn’t get him to say anything more, though I tried.

“Then it’s on to the businesses beside the burned-out bakery, then,” I said. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll have a little more luck there than we have so far.”

“Where there’s life, there’s hope,” Moose said with a grin.

“You want to talk to me about Barry Jackson? Sorry, but I make it a habit not to speak ill of the dead,” Jasper Jenkins said when Moose and I asked the plumbing supply shop owner about his neighbor.

“How about Rob Bester, then?” Moose asked. He and Jasper had known each other forever, and we’d decided, or more appropriately, my grandfather had decided, that he be the one who did the talking with Jasper. I didn’t even fight him very hard on it. Jasper was on my bad side, and he had been since I’d been in the Girl Scouts. I could understand even then that not everybody liked our cookies, but when I saw him hiding inside as I rang his doorbell, he wouldn’t even get off the couch to talk to me. Moose had gone back with me later and Jasper had bought some cookies after all, but it had left a bad taste in my mouth ever since, and whenever I saw Jasper waddling around town, I called him Cookie Man under my breath. I knew that it wasn’t very mature of me. I was a grown woman, for goodness’ sake, and yet I still held that particular grudge.

“He’s as bad as Barry was,” Jasper said.

I couldn’t help myself. “Jasper, is there anybody in town that you like?”

“I can tolerate your grandfather in small doses,” Jasper said.

Moose shot me a look, and I decided to go back to my silence and let him continue. Otherwise, I knew that I was going to snipe at Jasper about those cookie sales long ago, and that wouldn’t do any of us any good at the moment.

“Talk to us, Jasper,” Moose said. “We won’t repeat what you say to anybody else.”

“What do I care who you tell?” Jasper snapped. A few folks inside the store were shopping for plumbing supplies, but after a quick glance in our direction, they went right back to their shopping. After all, nobody wanted to get on Jasper’s bad side, as big as it was.

“You want to know the truth?” Jasper finally asked, lowering the decibel level of his voice a little. “They were the worst neighbors a man could have.”

“Why is that?” Moose asked.

“When Barry first bought the bakery, he came around with a gift basket introducing himself. What a joke that was.”

“I think it sounds nice,” I said, despite Moose’s earlier warning.

“Yeah? Well, I hate all those sickeningly sweet treats, but especially cookies. I thought you already knew that, Victoria.”

I was about to respond when my grandfather reached out and grabbed my arm. After a moment to compose myself, I said, “It was still thoughtful of him.”

“Maybe, but it was the first and last time he tried to get on my good side. When his bakery started doing poorly, do you know who he blamed? Me, that’s who.”

“Why would he do that?” Moose asked.

“Because I wouldn’t let his overflow customers park in my lot. I even had one of them towed one time.” The malicious smile on his face was downright creepy. “That taught him a lesson, you can bet that it did.”

“So, what do you have against Rob Bester?”

“He thinks that he can buy my building just because he inherited some money from his grandpa. Well, I don’t mind telling you, he’s wrong!”

“He did?” Moose asked. “When did that happen?”

“Not more than a month ago,” Jasper said. “I told him when he came sniffing around that he’d have to kill me to get my place, and you know what the man said to me?”

“What did he say?” Moose asked him.

“He told me right where you’re standing that there were more ways to buy somebody out than going at them directly.”

“What did he mean by that?” I asked, forgetting myself for a moment.

“He had the nerve to tell me that if I wouldn’t sell, he knew someone who could give me a little nudge in the right direction,” Jasper said.

“I bet that went over real well with you,” Moose said.

“I told him that if he ever threatened me again, I’d make sure it was the last time he ever threatened anybody. I also told him that I don’t make threats; I just make promises that I always keep.”

“How did he take that?” Moose asked.

“How do you think he took it?” Jasper asked, that wicked smile reappearing for a moment. “That’s when he left me alone and started going after Barry.”

“How did the baker react to Rob’s proposal?” I asked.

Evidently I’d gone too far. Jasper stared at me for a full ten seconds, and then he said, “If you want to know the answer to that, you’re going to have to ask Rob. Now, if you two don’t mind, I have a store to run, and a customer waiting to pay.”

“That’s okay, Jasper,” Calvin Grishabor said. “Take your time. I’m in no hurry.”

“Did anyone ask you for your opinion, Calvin?” Jasper asked.

Moose and I got the not-so-subtle hint. “Thanks for your time, Jasper.”

“If I could think of a way to charge you for it, I would have done it a long time ago,” Jasper said. He must have thought that he was the wittiest man ever born, because he started cackling insanely at his own joke.

I happily followed Moose out of the store. “That guy is seriously nuts,” I said once we were on the sidewalk out front.

“He’s not nearly as crazy as he seems to be,” Moose said. “That always was his favorite act.”

“Then he deserves an award for it if he’s just pretending,” I said. “The real question is can we believe what he just told us?”

“Victoria, Jasper ended up buying your cookies in the end, remember? Don’t you think it’s time you dropped that particular grudge? It’s not very becoming.”

My grandfather had more beefs than the cattlemen’s association, so he had a lot of nerve chastising me for one of mine. Then again, he was probably right. “Okay, consider it dropped. I just have one question for you, though.”

“Fire away,” he said.

“How exactly did you persuade him to buy those cookies?”

Moose frowned. “It wasn’t my proudest moment, I’ll tell you that.”

“Now I want to know more than ever,” I said. “Come on, share.”

Moose sighed, and then he explained, “I told him that if he didn’t buy your cookies, I’d make sure he wouldn’t be eating anything that didn’t come through a straw for a good long time.”

“My hero,” I said as I grabbed my grandfather’s arm.

“I was a bully about it, and I’m not very proud of the way I behaved,” Moose said, “but nobody crosses my favorite granddaughter, not then and not now, either.”

I kissed his cheek as thanks, and then I pointed to Rob Bester, who was striding quickly toward us. “It looks like we’ve got some company.”

“Good. I wouldn’t mind chatting with Rob a little about all of this money he suddenly has.”

“Don’t you think he inherited it like he told Jasper?” I asked.

“I knew Rob’s grandpa. That man never had more than two nickels to rub together his entire life. Wherever Rob got that money, it wasn’t from Willie Monroe.”

“So, how should we handle this?” I asked as Rob neared us.

“Let’s just come out and ask him,” Moose said.

“Ask him what?” Rob asked when he got close enough to us to have a conversation.

“Where’d you get the money you were trying to buy Flour Power with, Rob? And don’t try to tell me that Willie left it to you. The man stayed dead broke all of his life.”

“That’s just what he wanted everyone to believe,” Rob said with a smile. “He salted away half a million dollars over the course of his life, and he left every penny of it to me.”

“Half a million? That’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t even buy his bread at the grocery store; it had to be at the outlet where they sold old cakes and pies.”

“How do you think he saved so much? He never spent a dime of what he made if he could help it.”

“I just don’t believe it,” Moose said.

“You can check with the courthouse if you don’t believe me.”

“Take it easy,” Moose said softly, a hint of the danger to come if there ever was one. “There’s no reason to get upset.”

“Come on, boys, you’re both pretty,” I said as I stepped in between them. While it was true that Rob was quite a bit younger than my grandfather, Moose was still pretty wiry, and I’d never known him to back away from a fight. “Okay, Rob, that’s wonderful that your grandfather was so thrifty, but that still doesn’t explain why you want to buy the businesses on either side of you.”

“So, you talked to Jasper about me, did you?” Rob asked me with a disgusted look on his face.

“It came up in our conversation,” I said. Moose had backed off a few paces, but he still wasn’t talking, which was maybe not all that bad a thing.

“I just bet it did,” Rob said.

“It still begs the question of why,” I asked him.

He waved a hand around him. “The honest truth is that I’m not satisfied with this little store,” he said. “I want to tear it all down and build something truly spectacular.”

“Just for selling tires?” Moose asked.

If Rob was offended by the question, he didn’t show it. “Not just tires. I’m talking service bays for automobile repairs, and a new car lot on the other side. I’d be a full-service place, something that really mattered.”

“Half a million wouldn’t be enough to build those dreams,” Moose said.

“Maybe not, but I could get a good start on them,” Rob said. “Once I get the land the bakery was on, I’ll be on my way.”

“There’s something else that you might not have considered,” Moose said. “Mike isn’t going to be able to sell you Barry’s land until the murder case is solved.”

“What makes you think that?” Rob asked my grandfather.

“Simple. It’s because you can’t profit from murder in this country,” Moose said.

“But I didn’t kill Barry Jackson,” Rob said.

“Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. Who knows? But what if Mike did it? That would still tie up the land for next to forever.”

“He didn’t do it, either,” Rob said, though he sounded a little less confident of it now.

“If he didn’t, then who did?” I asked.

Rob looked to the left and then to the right before he spoke again. “There’s someone else you haven’t taken into account, someone with dark ties around town.”

“Are you talking about the money Barry owed Cliff Pearson?” I asked sweetly.

Rob looked shocked that I already knew about his big revelation. “How did you know about that?”

Before I could answer, Moose said, “There’s a lot we know about what’s been going on around town lately, Rob.”

“Yeah? Like what?” He seemed keenly interested in what my grandfather had to say, but if that was the case, his wish was going to go unfulfilled.

“If I tell you that, I might hamper the official investigation.”

“Since when were you two official anything?” Rob said with a slight grin.

“As a matter of fact, we had a conference with Sheriff Croft at the diner about this case this morning,” Moose said with a smug little smile.

“Well, either way, I’m not going to let it stop my plans,” Rob said. “After all, I’ve done nothing wrong. If I can’t expand my business here, perhaps it’s time to pick up and move somewhere else.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Moose answered.

Rob looked around, and his gaze centered on the burned-out bakery. “You know what? The more I think about it, the better I like it. That could have just as easily been my shop burned to the ground.” Rob shivered a little as he said it, and then he added, “I don’t even want to think about that. Poor old Barry. He deserved better than what he got in the end.”

“We can at least all agree on that,” Moose said, and then he turned to me. “Come on, Victoria. We have more work to do.”

“It looks like we got a hit,” Moose said when he glanced at his phone as we got into his truck.

“What are you talking about?”

“One of my nibbles bit,” Moose explained. “I’ve got a message on my phone from Sam Brody.”

“What did he want?” I asked.

My grandfather looked at me before he started the engine. “Victoria, Sam borrowed money from Cliff Pearson, and he’s willing to talk to us about it.”

“Sam?” I asked incredulously. Sam Brody ran an ice cream place in town, and my husband, Greg, and I went there every now and then. I couldn’t imagine the benign old man needing to borrow money from someone like Cliff Pearson.

“Sam,” Moose confirmed. “Listen, he’s willing to talk to us, but we can’t be judgmental at all, okay?”

“Sure. That’s fine with me,” I said. “How did you know that he owed Cliff money?”

Moose tapped his temple. “It’s truly amazing all of the things I know, young lady.”

“I just bet it is,” I said, smiling ever so slightly.

Moose started the truck, and as he pulled out, I asked him, “Are we going to the ice cream shop?”

“No, he’s not open today. He told me that he’d meet us at his house.”

“What are we waiting for, then?”

As we drove to Sam’s place on the outskirts of town, I asked Moose, “Why do you think Sam needed to borrow money from Cliff? Does he gamble? Or is it worse than that?”

“Does it really matter?” Moose asked.

“It does to me,” I said.