Murder Gone A-Rye (A Baker's Treat Mystery) (20 page)

“H
ow do I look?” Grandma Ruth’s voice was rougher than usual. “Pretty, aren’t I?” She laughed, low and rumbly. Her eyes were bright, and there was a big fat bruise on her cheek. Her arm was in a pink cast. Her leg was in a white cast. Instead of trying to get her in her float throne, we had created a makeshift ramp out of two boards and Bill had pushed her wheelchair up onto the float. The wheelchair was closer in appearance to the scooter than the throne was and more people would recognize her.

“You look lovely, Ruth,” Tasha said as she carefully combed Grandma’s orange curls back and pinned a white tissue flower behind Grandma’s left ear.

“Is it left for single and right for married, or vice versa?” Grandma asked.

“You mean the flowers? I think left for married and right for single, like your rings,” I said as I carefully tied her chair into place on the float. Grandma wore a red, white, and blue sweatshirt and a bright red skirt with white stripes. Bill tucked a blue throw blanket around Grandma’s knees. It was supposed to be a sunny day, but the high was only fifty degrees. Too chilly for a woman in her nineties who was still recovering from a concussion—but Grandma would not hear of wearing her coat.

“This little heater runs on a battery,” I said as I set the small area heater near Grandma’s feet. “That way even if it gets knocked over it won’t set anything on fire.”

“How about my tablet?” Grandma asked with a gleam in her blue eyes. “Will I be able to watch the Macy’s parade? I have a grandson marching in that parade, and I don’t want to miss it.”

“Lucy’s taping it, Grandma,” I said as I adjusted the final decorations on her part of the float.

“I don’t want to see it taped, I want to see it live. You said you would get me one of those new-fangled tablets to watch it stream online.”

“I didn’t have time to buy one,” I said with a sigh. “I had to make thirty dozen cookies to give away on the parade route.” Not to mention a chocolate display for the window.

“How am I going to give away anything strapped in this chair?” Grandma frowned at me.

I had to bite my tongue not to tell her that she should have thought of that before she tried climbing the statue. But I didn’t. “It’s okay, Grandma. Kip and Aubrey are going to do the giveaway for you.”

“Who’s Aubrey? Did I have another grandchild without knowing about it?”

“Aubrey is Kip’s puppy,” Tasha said. “Remember, Kip rescued him from a well in the park.”

“Oh, right. Cute sucker.” Grandma sat back. “Sorry. Must be the pain meds going to my head. Did you say you had one of the tablets for me to stream the Macy’s parade?”

“Are you okay to ride in the parade?” I asked and put the back of my hand to her forehead.

She pushed my hand away. “Of course I’m okay.”

I put my hands on my hips and tightened my lips into a straight line. Grandma crossed her arms and glared at me. Tasha stepped in to break the tension.

“I have your Gluten-Freedom sash, Ruth,” she said as she gently pulled the sash over Grandma’s head and adjusted it around her.

“How do I look?” Grandma asked and posed.

“You look lovely,” I said, my worry dissipating.

“I bet someone has a smartphone and you can stream the parade on that,” Tasha suggested. They both looked at me.

I raised up both hands. “Don’t look at me. I don’t have an unlimited data plan.” Truth was I didn’t have time to go online and figure out which plan was best for me. I simply bought the least expensive phone from Walmart and still didn’t know how to use half the features.

“I have a phone you can use.” Sam stepped up onto the float. “Hello, Ms. Nathers. You look fetching today.” He brushed a kiss on grandma’s dry, freckled cheek.

Grandma blushed, then sat up straight. “See, Sam understands how important it is for a grandma to see her grandson on television.” She took the phone Sam handed her. “How does this work?”

There was a tap on my shoulder, and I turned to see Aunt Phyllis. She looked better today. The color had returned to her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled and her bright hair swung around her jawline. “Oh, Aunt Phyllis, you look good.” I hugged her. She hugged me back and then, with a glance at Grandma, pulled me behind a nearby pillar.

“So what did you learn?”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you went to the Everett house. Did you confront Hutch Everett? Did he know anything about his father murdering Champ?”

“Shhh.” I glanced around to see if anyone heard her excitement. Lucky for us they had opened up the side of the building and people and floats had started the slow procession out to the parade route. “Yes, I talked to Hutch. Yes, he knew that Lois was his mother, but he told me that we had it wrong.”

“What did we have wrong?” Aunt Phyllis frowned.

“Homer wasn’t his father.”

“What? Why did he adopt the boy if he wasn’t the father?”

“Because Champ was Hutch’s father. It’s in his name: Hutchinson Champ Everett.”

“Oh.” Aunt Phyllis’s eyes grew wide. “Of course. That makes perfect sense.”

“It does?”

“Yes. Champ was a known womanizer. It would make sense that he would knock up Lois.”

“Aunt Phyllis!”

“What? It’s what he did. He probably told Lois to get rid of it. It wouldn’t surprise me if she shot him.”

“Who shot who?” Sam stepped around the pillar.

“No one,” I said. “At least not in a long, long time. Thank you for taking care of Grandma. She’s on pain meds and I’m not at all certain I would have been able to calm her down.”

“Hey, Phyllis,” Grandma bellowed from her side of the pillar. “Did you see my sash?”

Aunt Phyllis stepped out from behind me. “Very nice, Ruth. You look like you won a beauty pageant. Do the wave thing. You know . . . elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wipe a tear, and blow a kiss.”

“Your aunt is a lot of fun, isn’t she?” Sam was dressed for the chilly morning in a jean jacket, a plaid snap-front shirt, tight-fitting cowboy jeans, and boots. He had a pair of leather gloves tucked in his back pocket and a black Stetson on his head. His gray eyes twinkled.

“Like I told you, there are a lot of characters in my family.”

“I like character.” He winked at me, and I blushed.

“Hey, Baker’s Treat, you’re next in line.” Chief Blaylock was in full uniform directing the floats.

“I have to go.” I headed to my brother’s red pickup. He’d let me borrow it when I had mentioned that I was going to use the bakery van to haul the float trailer. The men in my family proceeded to inform me that that was all wrong. Only a fool would do that.

Before I knew it, Tim had gotten a trailer hitch put on the back of his pickup and I was given keys. Tim would have driven it himself, but he worked the night before and didn’t think it was safe to drive in a parade on less than two hours’ sleep.

So it was me climbing up into the big cab of my brother’s pickup and slowly pulling Grandma on the back of a float out into the bright, cold sunshine. Tasha and Kip walked beside the float with boxes of cookies ready to give away to the parade watchers. Aunt Phyllis climbed up on the float to be with Grandma Ruth and ensure that she didn’t get so busy watching Sam’s phone streaming video that she forgot to smile and wave to the citizens of Oiltop.

In all the hustle and bustle of the morning, I forgot to ask Grandma Ruth what it was that she wanted to see so badly that she risked life and limb to climb up on Homer Everett’s statue.

At this point, nothing made sense to me. Would Homer have killed his best friend, then raised his son as his own? Wasn’t that a bit twisted? But if Homer didn’t kill Champ, who did? And more importantly, why did they do it?

Means, opportunity, and motive were the three parts of any murder investigation. What we had were two murders: Lois and Champ. The two had been lovers whose son was now the most prominent person in Oiltop. Who killed them, and why? Were the two deaths even connected?

Right now there was nothing to go on. Grandma was striking out. First strike: the police refused to dig into the courthouse wall and look for the murder weapon because Grandma Ruth’s evidence was weak. Second strike was investigating Homer’s journals for evidence of him killing Champ and not finding it. The third strike was thinking that Lois was Homer’s longtime mistress. Grandma had tried to bully Lois into telling her the truth about Champ, only for Lois to end up beaten to death near the foot of Homer’s bronze statue.

What I did know was that within months of Champ’s murder the courthouse was remodeled and one wall in the judge’s chambers was built out by a square foot. That was deep enough to hide not only a gun but a body. But we couldn’t get Chief Blaylock to even investigate the wall without any concrete proof.

Lois Striker was indeed Hutch Everett’s birth mother, but Champ, not Homer, was the father.

I was at a terrible dead end. I glanced in my rearview mirror. Grandma Ruth practiced her pageant wave on the kids along the parade route. Aunt Phyllis sat beside her, feet dangling off the float, eating cookies. I suppose I could let it go, let Chief Blaylock continue the investigation, except for one thing. I suspected that someone, perhaps Lois’s murderer, was out to get Grandma Ruth.

Why else would they kill Lois and leave her close to where Grandma was supposed to meet her? Why ensure that there were incriminating scooter marks at the scene?

And why silicone the statue? Surely it was too crazy to think Grandma would climb on it. So why do it?

While the fall didn’t kill Grandma, it did hurt her badly enough that she wouldn’t be investigating anything for the next couple of months.

Long enough for the case to grow cold.

Didn’t they say the best time to solve a murder is in the first forty-eight hours? It had been close to two weeks since Lois was killed. That meant the case was already cold. Sigh. Right now, Chief Blaylock led the parade in his slow-rolling squad car. The lights on the black-and-white flashed red and blue at the head of the parade.

Officer Bright wasn’t in a big hurry to do anything but date Tasha, and Officer Emry was . . . well, Officer Emry. That didn’t leave a lot of room for investigating.

It didn’t help that Lois had been elderly and controlling. Most people spoke of her death as if she’d tripped and hit her head. “Oh, well,” and “too bad” and “bless her heart” were muttered. Then life went on. Parades were watched and turkeys served. Whatever undercurrent of murder and mayhem ran through Oiltop was ignored and soon forgotten.

But there was one thing the killer didn’t plan on . . . me. I refused to let anyone harm my family and get away with it. Some people might think Grandma Ruth was funny on pain pills, but every time I looked at her casts my blood boiled. I was determined now more than ever to find out who did this to her. The best part about Thanksgiving was that I had twenty-four hours free from the bakery to figure out who that was.

I scanned the crowd and the long line of floats. Someone in this very parade route was a killer, and it was up to me to figure out who and bring them to justice.

“C
ongratulations on your third-place finish in today’s parade.” My sister Rosa came in carrying her famous sweet potato casserole.

“Thanks.” I gave her a quick hug and cleared a space for her casserole dish on the old buffet in the formal dining room. “It was a collaboration. Tasha helped with the flowers and the decorating, and my friend Todd did a fabulous job of editing. But I think the real ace in the hole was Grandma Ruth and Aunt Phyllis. They were a real hit with people.”

“I know—the announcer called Grandma the Grand Dame of the parade.”

I giggled. “She was so high on painkillers she practically floated on top of the trailer.”

“Are Joan and Eleanor here yet?”

“Joan and her kids are in the den. Eleanor said that Rob got called into work so they’ll be late.”

“I don’t know how she puts up with Rob working like that. Sometimes your family should come first. Right?”

“Right.”

“What’s right?” My brother Rich stepped into the kitchen to snatch some cheese and crackers off the platter I planned to put out.

“It’s what’s not right,” Rosa said and smacked Rich’s hand.

“What? It’s pre-turkey food and this is pre-turkey time. . . .”

“Take that out to the den,” I said. “There are appetizer plates on the table near the wall.”

“Yes, Mom . . .” Rich teased as he grabbed up the giant platter. Rosa smacked him for his sassy comment as he left the kitchen through the swinging door.

“Two turkeys this year? Do you think that’s enough?”

“They are twenty pounds each.” I lifted the foil that was tented over the birds to show off their perfect golden skin.

“The rule of thumb is three pounds per person. That means there’s enough turkey for thirteen people.” Rosa pursed her lips. My sister’s hair was a lovely shade of auburn with the perfect skin and bright green eyes that came with the pretty red. “There are the six of us, plus spouses and kids. . . .” I could see her counting up everyone who was coming. “With Grandma Ruth and Bill—”

“Don’t forget Aunt Phyllis.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the gray granite countertop of my Victorian kitchen. “Then there’s Tasha and Kip.”

“I thought Tasha was going to her parents’ place today.”

“Her parents had the chance to take a last-minute cruise. So they celebrated on Sunday.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but I invited Calvin.” Tasha came in carrying a large pan covered in foil. “He had to work tonight and his family lives in Kansas City.”

“Calvin?” Rosa asked.

“Officer Bright,” I said and waved Tasha toward an appropriate-sized spot on the counter. “Tasha’s started dating again.”

Tasha put down the roaster. “I think this time I might have a real keeper.”

“Today will be the test,” Rosa said. “If he can hang with our family, then he’ll be okay. But if he takes one look at the bunch of us and runs the other way, then he wasn’t worth dating in the first place.”

Barking erupted down the hall, accompanied by the sound of multiple sneakered feet. Kip and my niece Leah and my nephew Joshua came screaming into the kitchen with Aubrey barking and jumping at their feet.

“Outside!” Rosa said with the commanding tone of a mom. She pointed at the back door. “Take that puppy with you.”

“Aw, but we’re hungry.”

“I wanted to see what the turkeys looked like.”

“Do you have any tofu?”

“Out!” my sister bellowed.

I grabbed a plate of cookies and handed them to Leah with a wink. The kids shot out the back door with a bang. The puppy, fast on their heels, barely made it out before the door slammed.

“As I was saying, two turkeys, even twenty-pound turkeys, are not enough to feed this bunch.” Rosa was thin as a rail. My sister Eleanor used to complain that Rosa could eat anything and never gain an ounce. Meanwhile Eleanor had that pleasant curviness that came from Grandma Ruth.

“That’s why I brought in roast beef.” Tasha lifted the foil on her roaster to show off thin slices of roast beef resting in au jus. “My boss gave me permission to use the hotel’s oven as long as I cooked up a pan for his family, too.”

“Looks fabulous,” I said and went over to the sink where I had been peeling potatoes before Rosa knocked at the back door for me to let her inside.

Tasha grabbed an apron hanging on the hook by the back door and wrapped it around her waist. “When is Grandma Ruth getting here?”

“She was happy but exhausted after the parade.” I handed Tasha a peeler and we stood side by side preparing a mountain of potatoes that would be boiled down, then whipped into fluffy mounds of mashed potatoes. “So Grandma went home to take a nap. Bill said he’d see she was up by four
P.M
. Dinner is set for an early five.”

A roar came from down the hall. “Somebody’s football team scored.” Rosa pulled up a stool, took our peeled potatoes, and cut them into cubes and placed them in a pot of cold water.

“Thanks for the hard work on the float,” I said to Tasha. “Third place is pretty decent for our first time.”

“Especially since you were over at Hutch Everett’s house poking around,” Rosa said. “Honestly, Toni, have you no sense of politics? The whole town thinks you bought your vote.”

I drew my brows together. “How did you know I went to the Everetts’ yesterday?”

“Oiltop is a small town,” she said smugly. “You’ve been in Chicago too long if you don’t remember how small towns work.”

“You live in Augusta,” I pointed out. “That’s twenty minutes from here.”

“Facebook is not just for kids, you know.” She raised an eyebrow at me.

“My visit was discussed on Facebook?” I was a bit appalled. The social media site was a trend I still expected to end any day.

“Sheila Hamm saw you take over a plate of cupcakes. She thought maybe you were buttering up the parade judge.”

I rolled my eyes. “I was not buttering up the judge. Hutch Everett lost his birth mother. I was simply extending my condolences.”

“And trying to find out if he knew who might have murdered Lois Striker,” Tasha said as she worked the peeler in short, even strokes.

“Tell me you did not go over there and accuse one of the most prominent men in Oiltop of murder.” Rosa’s face was pale with disbelief.

“I didn’t.” I sent Tasha a look of betrayal. “I went to extend my condolences.” I waited a heartbeat. “And to find out why Hutch’s middle name is Champ.”

“Maybe because Champ was his father’s best friend.” Rosa rolled her eyes at me.

“Grandma Ruth thought that Homer was the one who killed Champ,” Tasha said.

“What? That’s ridiculous. Homer was a hero.”

“A hero with secrets,” I said.

“That hasn’t been proven yet,” Tasha reminded me gently. “If he did have secrets, then Susan and Lois took them to the grave,” she added. “It’s all about family.”

“It’s all about family. . . .” It hit me then that family connections were usually made and kept by the women in the family. “When did Homer’s wife Susan die?”

“Gosh, I don’t know . . . a few years ago,” Tasha said.

I put down my peeler. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” Rosa called after me.

“Finish the potatoes,” I answered with a wave and headed up the stairs to my sitting room. I passed the den filled with men intent on the flat screen television and their football teams. The living room was filled with kids playing video games and board games.

I loved it when the house was full. I loved the noise of it, the ribbing, and even the fights that occasionally broke out. We were family, after all. At the end of the day we’d take a bullet for each other.

My study was not empty. My niece Michaela was curled up on the yellow-and-white settee reading a book.

“Hey,” I said as I entered. “Why aren’t you downstairs with the rest of the family?” My laptop was open on my desk, and I wiggled the mouse, waiting for the browser to pop up.

“It was too noisy,” Michaela said with a sigh. At twelve years old, she was the oldest and my sister Joan often worried that she was too reserved.

“What are you reading?” I asked as I typed into my search engine.

“
The Hound of the Baskervilles
,” she said without looking up.

“A classic.” I straightened. “Do you have to read it for school?”

“Naw,” she said and turned a page.

“Then you like mysteries?” I had my hands on my hips.

Michaela shrugged. “I like books. This one’s not bad.”

I turned my attention to the search engine and typed as I sat down. Susan Everett popped up several times in my search. “Huh.”

“What?” Michaela was beside me looking at my screen.

“Nothing,” I said and closed the browser.

“Why were you searching skeet shooting?” She blinked at me. Her hair was not the family red; instead she had her father’s black tresses. What she did inherit was our pale skin, freckles, and blue eyes. She was tall, already five foot seven, and gangly as a new colt.

“I wasn’t searching about skeet shooting. It came up in connection with my Homer Everett research.”

She rolled her eyes and plopped back on the settee. “If you ask me, this whole Homer Everett thing is for the birds.”

“Uncle Rich took out a plate of appetizers, if you’re hungry,” I said and stood.

“I’m fine.” Michaela curled up on the settee, becoming immediately engrossed in her book.

I barely remembered when life was so simple. Another roar echoed up the stairs and Michaela let out a long-suffering sigh. I grinned. Like I said, I loved a house full of family. One never knew what would happen next.