Brownies & Betrayal (Sweet Bites Mysteries, Book 1) (8 page)

I brought up the conversations with Millie and Jeff, the tidbits I’d gleaned from Shawn—I hadn’t asked Shawn much about Friday, actually. I’d gotten a little caught up in his dancing eyes. But I didn’t need to pump everyone tonight, right? There was time to worry about it tomorrow. And as we had a date, there would be plenty of opportunities.

“Tad’s sister agreed they finished their girls’ night around eleven,” Honey reported. “She said no one left early, as far as she remembered, and they all headed for bed, but if the murder happened after that, it wouldn’t matter anyway.”

“Right. So that’s a bust as far as alibis go.” We were getting nowhere fast.

“And we’re more or less back at square one.”

“Dang it.” I eyed the chocolate cake, then reminded myself that I had the extra filling and cake tops at home, and it was totally unprofessional for me to eat at the party.

“Oh, I spoke to Nadine Frost, from the city council. She said they approved your business license in their Friday meeting.” Honey did a little celebration wiggle. “You’ll be getting the paperwork in the mail on Monday or Tuesday.”

It felt good that she was so excited I was really sticking around. I knew I’d need her support. “Well, good. I officially had a business license before I brought the brownies here on Friday. Now if my tax ID number and equipment will arrive, I can get moving for real.” The thought still gave me major butterflies, but I was starting to get used to the idea, however terrifying it might be.

Honey finished her slice, and disappeared back into the crowd to mingle again. Neither of us learned anything more that night, but as I toted all of my equipment out to my SUV, I knew there was still another day ahead of us. And lots of possibilities.

I still needed to go back into Prescott and see if I could find a good stand mixer and bowls.

And I needed to return to Chicago to take care of things there. I was not looking forward to clearing out my condo. It could take a while to sell, and while I was in town, I had the feeling I’d end up dealing with Bronson, who had sent several nasty messages about leaving him high and dry.

I did have one more cake I should return to decorate. The Goulds had booked the hotel because I worked there. My design had been the breaking point between the DeMille Hotel and the Four Seasons, and the Goulds had been such good customers in the past. I knew Lenny, my assistant, could probably handle it without me, but I’d take care of it myself anyway.

I’d have to call Bronson again before long. But I’d let him stew over what to do for another day or two before making arrangements to return to tie up loose ends. I figured I deserved that extra bit of retribution.

I set the pen down and picked up my phone, along with the business card Shawn had given me the previous evening. I could use his help to move things out of the kitchen.

His cell phone only rang twice before he answered. “This is Shawn.”

“Hey, this is Tess. How’re you doing?”

“Great. I hoped you’d call, and that you weren’t feeding me a line last night.” His voice switched from professional to soft, maybe a bit smooth. If he’d had a drawl, I had the feeling it would have thickened.

I smiled despite myself. It had been a while since I’d played this game. Bronson and I never went through this stage, we’d known each other so well before we started dating. Well, I’d thought I knew him. “I always keep my promises.” 

“So what time works for you tonight? Could I pick you up, say around six?”

“Six works for me.” I considered everything on my to-do list, but figured there would be time to clean before getting ready for the date. “I wondered, though, do you have a little free time in the next hour or two, and a friend or three who could help move some equipment around here? I need to get the fryer and grill out of the way so I can bring in my new oven when it arrives in a couple of days.” And as long as I had muscles available, maybe I’d have them do a little extra work.

“Sure. Hold on.” I heard a muffled voice, as if he’d covered the receiver. A moment later he came back. “I’ll bring Jeff with me. We can take care of it. Half an hour good for you?”

“Perfect.” I touched my hair. I definitely needed to do something about my appearance before he arrived. The morning had been busy already. We said goodbye as I made my way to the bathroom to primp.

The guys were prompt and both were dressed to work. Shawn and Jeff looked almost as good in T-shirts and jeans as they had in tuxes—not something just anyone can say. “Thanks, guys, I really appreciate this.” I told them which equipment to move where and grabbed some metal shelving, pulling it into the customer area. The whole restaurant needed a good scrubbing and a fresh coat of paint. Upstairs too, come to think of it, but there wasn’t time for that right now. I’d have to take a trip to the hardware store and look at paint samples, I decided, and made a mental note to squeeze it into my schedule.

“I expected you to be back in Prescott by now,” I said to Jeff. Though it was ‘out of town,’ I didn’t think the police would freak out about him returning to work when it was only eighteen miles away—in Chicago that was barely across town.

“I took an extra day off, thinking I’d do some hiking, but with the change of the wedding, things didn’t work out quite like I expected. I have to head back tonight.” He looked around. “So you’re going to turn this into some high-class bakery, huh?”

“Yeah. Honey insists business will be good, and I’d love to give it a shot. I’ve been working for other people for too long.” Way too long, no matter how overwhelmed starting my own business made me feel.

It was time to poke a little more, see if I could learn anything new from the guys. “So you’re going to go home, dive back into work and won’t have to worry about Valerie’s dirty tactics, right?”

Jeff smiled. “There is that one little upside to all this. Though I really am sorry it happened to her. No one deserves that.”

“Of course not. I heard she died between twelve and one a.m. Do you have any idea why she’d be running around the hotel then? Seems late to be getting back from her date. And why was she in the conference room? I’d have gone straight to bed.” I tried not to let on how big of a wimp I was as I lifted the old microwave from the counter and hauled it to one of the benches in the other room. The ancient appliance was way too heavy.

“No idea,” Shawn said. “Seems odd to me, too.”

“Maybe she was meeting someone there,” Jeff suggested as he and Shawn hefted the old fryer, sliding it through the door without having to remove one of the jams—barely—and setting it in the dining area. “I mean, she must have run into someone down there. Maybe it was planned.”

“A liaison?” I suggested. Was the theft an afterthought? Had she met a guy for a make-out session and ended up meeting with the wrong person? The front desk clerk hadn’t seen anyone, but did that mean anything? Maybe he’d stepped away from the desk for a while, or the guy could have come in the back way, like Honey and I hypothesized.

“Wouldn’t be the first time she had more than one date in a day,” Shawn agreed. “She had this thing about juggling several guys at once. I remember Millie and Ana talking about it.”

“Hmmm. Millie seemed a little jealous when she mentioned Valerie’s success in the dating department.” I tried to pretend I was only mildly curious, but since the topic had come up twice now, it had me searching for possibilities.

“She would be.” Shawn grabbed one of the paper towels sitting on the counter and wiped his hands. “From what I understand, Millie was dead gone on some guy in college. Valerie knew it, but chased after him anyway. Maybe she chased him
because
Millie was interested in him. There’s no way to know, but Millie seemed to think so. I don’t think she ever forgave Valerie.”

That didn’t jive at all with the way Millie had spoken the previous night about her
close friend
Valerie’s death. I decided to keep that tidbit to myself. “Huh. Doesn’t sound like Valerie was a very popular gal. Anyone else hate her?”

“Everyone on the planet?” Jeff suggested as they moved to the grill. “You’d barely met her and she insulted you, didn’t she? It took what, fifteen seconds?”

“Maybe seventeen,” I corrected. He flashed a grin at me. “Point taken, though. To be fair, as much as I’d have liked to knock her on the head with one of Roscoe’s dinner rolls, that might have been painful, but would hardly have been fatal. Someone else had a little more serious damage on their mind.”

“Depressing topic, if you ask me,” Shawn said. “I’d way rather talk about the Suns’ chances of making it to the finals.”

When Jeff took to the conversation change with alacrity, I figured they’d rather leave the not-so-pretty past where it was. That was fine; I had another angle to follow now. I wondered why Millie pretended she and Valerie were best buds.

After that, I decided some baking was in order. Baking had become a form of stress relief for me over the years—yet one more reason I should bake for others, since I could only eat so many pastries before I started to look like a whale. While I had a few extra pounds on my hips, I loathed working out, so it was imperative that someone else eat most of my creations.

I decided to work on the adjustments to the chocolate cheesecake recipe I’d been tweaking and made a run to the store for ingredients.

Humming, I started with my favorite shortbread crust, mixing, then spreading it in the pan to bake while I beat the filling.

The temperature needed to be nice and steady, so I checked the preheating oven, then whipped the cream cheese and sugar.

It had been a full two days since I found the body, and I didn’t feel like Honey and I had made much headway. Apparently, neither had the police, and I was certain they were devoting a great deal of time to the problem.

I finished mixing in the softened cream cheese and slowly stirred in the sugar, vanilla and eggs, one at a time. I took a break to make notes and conjectures about each of the players in this little drama, letting the KitchenAid do its job. I melted the bittersweet chocolate, cooled it and whipped it in with the cream. I added the two mixtures, and beat the whole thing until it was light and fluffy.

After I’d poured it all into my grandma’s old spring-form pan, I put the pan in a water bath in the oven and set the timer. I had more than an hour before the cheesecake would be done. Time for a ramble.

I decided to take a closer look at downtown Silver Springs and headed out. In the past couple of years, I hadn’t made it back to town as much as I did prior to Grandma’s death. A clothing boutique had closed, a pet store opened and the craft store had gotten a face lift—which was well overdue. Half a block down the road, I turned to my own storefront and considered it.

The building was on a corner lot, all brick and two stories. The large window beside the glass front door had a circular top—perfect for my planned vinyl-lettering sign. The upstairs windows were tall and let in a lot of evening sunlight during the summer.

The back side of the building had a quaint little courtyard, and the kitchen stuck out next to it. It had a flat roof and shingles down the sides that curved up at the bottom—very charming and European. A set of stairs led up onto the roof above this portion of the apartment, and I remember many July Fourths sitting up there to watch city fireworks. Thankfully, all the businesses shared a large parking lot out back, where we stashed the Dumpsters out of sight and where I entered the upstairs apartment.