Cupcakes and Killing: A Cozy Mystery (Sweet Shoppe Mysteries - Book 2) (7 page)

“Good idea.”

***

Ted lived just down the road from me and we figured Amelia and Evie would be staying with him, so we headed over there and knocked on the door. Amelia answered, smiling as she saw us.

“Why, hello! You’re the candy and cupcake ladies!”

“Yes, we are,” I said, forcing a polite smile. “We were just wondering if we could talk to you and Evie about Ted.”

“Evie went out for a walk,” she replied. “What’s this about?”

“Errr…we were thinking of setting Ted up with someone we know,” Kaye hastily lied. “So we were wondering if you knew if he was actually seeing someone already.”

“Oh, I see. How lovely of you. Come in, come in. We’ll chat.”

She let us in and directed us into the lounge room. “Would any of you like some tea?”

“That’d be lovely,” Tori said.

Amelia bustled away, then returned from the kitchen a moment later with a floral-patterned teapot and four china cups. She smiled as she poured us all some tea. “So, you might know someone who would be interested in my Teddy Bear?”

“Er…yes,” Kaye said. “But like I said, we just wanted to make sure he wasn’t already seeing someone. Otherwise we’d just be wasting our friend’s time in introducing her to him.”

“Yes, of course. Well, I do know that he was dating a woman until quite recently. Very recently, in fact. But that’s over now.”

“Do you know who it was he was dating?” I asked.

She narrowed her eyes. “Why does that matter?” she asked, her voice noticeably cooler.

“Oh, it doesn’t,” I said breezily. “Just curious.”

“Was it Zara Keilson?” Tori asked, and Kaye and I glared at her.
Way to be subtle, Tori!
I thought.

Amelia’s hands started to shake, and she abruptly stood up. “I see what this is. You’re trying to accuse my Theodore of hurting that lady.”

“No, no!” I said, trying to defuse the situation. “It’s not like that.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” Amelia replied, grabbing her handbag. “I have a mind to go down to the station right now and tell him what you’re saying about him!”

“We aren’t saying anything about…” Kaye began to say before reaching out to catch Amelia. She’d taken two steps forward and tripped over the coffee table in her haste to leave.

“Amelia, are you all right?” Kaye asked, helping her to her feet.

“Here,” I said. “Let me get your bag for you. Then we’ll leave, okay?”

As she’d stumbled, Amelia had dropped her handbag and several items had flown out of it. I scooped them up in my hand, and she cried out.

“No, leave it!”

I was about to put the things down when I realized what I was holding in my right hand. A small, cylindrical plastic container filled with a dark grey powder.

“Oh….oh my…” Kaye stuttered. “It was you!”

Amelia snatched her bag away from me and reached into it, pulling out a small pistol which unfortunately hadn’t already fallen out.

“If you had behaved like proper ladies and minded your own business, then none of this would be happening,” she said, cold seeping into her eyes. “You should’ve left it alone. That woman deserved to die for hurting my Theodore.”

“How did she hurt him?” Tori asked, trying to buy time for us as we nervously backed away, our hands in the air.

“She refused to let anyone know they were dating. Sick of people gossiping about her, or so she said. Really, she just wanted to string my Theodore along. The other night he told her he was tired of the games, and he wanted her to commit to him or that was that…he’d be done with her. She said no, and my poor boy was brokenhearted. I couldn’t let her treat him like that! She had to die!”

“And I thought my mother was a bit crazy,” Kaye mumbled.

“
What
?” Amelia said, her voice shrill.

“Nothing…err, I was just saying, surely Ted must suspect what you did if he knows you heard the argument with Zara?”

“He has no idea,” she said stiffly. “They had the argument outside the house after dinner. He had no idea I overheard it all. He thought I was in the spare room with a headache.”

Goose bumps cropped up all over my arms as she continued to wave the gun at us, and my heart raced as I considered our next course of action. Or rather,
her
next course of action. Surely she couldn’t just shoot us all. She may have done a decent job at covering up the fact that she’d murdered Zara, but she couldn’t exactly cover up three more homicides right inside a policeman’s house…could she?

“Amelia,” I said softly. “Just put the gun down.”

“No,” she said, steeling herself and aiming it right at me. I squeezed my eyes shut, and suddenly a male voice rang out.

“Yes,” the voice said. “Drop it right now! I’ve got my own gun and a much better aim than you, Mom.”

My eyes flew open, and Amelia whirled around. Ted was standing in the doorway, his face etched with a mixture of grief and rage.

“Teddy Bear….you wouldn’t hurt your own mother!” Amelia said.

“I don’t want to, but I’ll be forced to if you hurt anyone else,” he said, his eyes fixed on her. “Drop. The. Gun.”

“Oh, Teddy…I was just trying to protect you!” she cried. “You have to understand!”

Seeing so much rage in her son’s expression must have finally made her realize the gravity of her actions, and she dropped the gun and crumpled to the sofa.

“I was just trying to help,” she sobbed, her faced buried in her hands. Ted picked the gun up to make sure she couldn’t touch it again, and he looked over at us.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through this, ladies,” he said. “I only just realized.”

“How did you realize?” Kaye asked. “And why didn’t you tell anyone you were seeing Zara?”

He shrugged. “It’s a long story. At first we kept it a secret because she thought her own reputation might harm mine, and she was tired of all the gossip. I kept telling her I didn’t care, but the more I did, the more I somehow pushed her away. She refused to commit. So the other night after dinner I told her I needed more, and if she wasn’t willing to give me that, then it was over. She said no and walked away.”

“Did the rest of the police know?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “I admitted our relationship straight after she was murdered, just so they wouldn’t think I was trying to hide anything. But…I never thought my own mother would do this.”

“What made you figure it out?” Tori asked.

“Only half an hour ago, I was chatting to the maintenance guy at the station. He happened to ask how my garden was going and mentioned to me that last week my mother had asked to borrow some fertilizer from his supply, claiming she wanted to help out with my garden. But as you can see, I don’t even have a garden. From there I realized it must have been her, and she’d gotten the fertilizer from him so no one would see her buying any…to cover her tracks. I realized she must have overheard my argument with Zara the other night, and she must have slipped the poison into the drink when Evie, Bobby and I were engrossed in a conversation at the reception. I was right there….God, I feel like a complete idiot. I wanted to believe I was wrong, but when I walked in here just then and saw her pointing a gun at you three…well, I knew I was right.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Kaye said. “Who’d suspect their elderly mother as a murderer?”

“The worst part is…Zara probably thought it was me,” he said, his voice choking up. “As she lay there dying, she must have been thinking that I’d poisoned her out of revenge.”

None of us told him that he was probably right, considering Zara’s final words to us. He was really much better off not knowing.

Amelia continued to sob, and Ted glanced at her.

“Sorry, Mom. I’m going to have to take you in.”

***

It had been two weeks since Zara’s funeral, and the town was finally beginning to settle down after all the drama. Amelia was locked up and awaiting her trial, and Ted let us know that a psychiatrist had diagnosed her with an early form of dementia; one which was known to occasionally bring about severe personality changes and erratic behavior, which could have led to her psychotic actions.

Seeing as his own mother had been the murderer, he had offered to resign as Deputy, but the town had rallied around him with support, saying there was no one better for the job and that it wasn’t his fault.

Mrs. Barnaby had been upset that the whole event had spoiled her day, but she was more upset that poor Zara had been killed. Right now, she was off on her honeymoon with Mr. Armstrong, and I was happy to hear that it was going well with no one else dropping dead around them.

Right now, Kaye, Tori, Daniel, Chris and I were at the park. We’d decided to have a quiet picnic in memoriam of Zara, surrounded by gardens that she’d helped to grow with her renowned green thumb. We hadn’t been friends with her for very long, but in the time that we’d gotten to know her, we’d come to realize she was a perfectly nice lady. She hadn’t lived her life in a way that most would expect of a woman her age, but that didn’t mean she’d deserved what happened to her.

Chris held up a plastic cup filled with soda. “To Zara,” he said. “She was a lovely woman, taken from this town far too soon.”

“To Zara,” the rest of us repeated.

“Say, Chris,” I said a moment later. “How did you know Zara? When I saw you two in the flower shop together, you seemed rather…close.”

He looked slightly uncomfortable. “I was wondering when you’d bring this up,” he said.

Kaye shot a warning look at Daniel. “I think I may have left the stove on at home,” she said, hastily standing up. “We better go check.”

Tori threw her a strange look, and Kaye stared at her. “Also, Tori, didn’t you have that thing you needed to do?”

“What thing?”

“You know…that
thing.
”

A look of comprehension dawned on Tori’s face. “Oh, yes. The thing. Well, I better go.”

Kaye, Daniel and Tori sped away, and I stared after them. “Er…what just happened? Anyway, what were you saying?”

“I was going to tell you how I knew Zara. Since you asked, I suppose I have to tell you. Where do I begin… well, I know I’ve been acting strangely the last few weeks and missing our dates, but it was because I was busy planning something.”

“Planning what?”

“A surprise,” he said. “For you. Kaye and Tori knew about it, and so did Zara, seeing as I asked her to arrange all the flowers for you. When you walked in on us that day, we were in the middle of discussing it. That’s why I was so flustered when you caught us.”

“A surprise?”

“Yes. Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, so I suppose the candlelit restaurant filled with your favorite flowers will have to wait until another occasion.”

He got down on one knee, and my hand flew to my mouth. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small jewelry box and smiled up at me.

“Anne, being with you for the last year has been the happiest time of my life. I’d be honored if you said yes to marrying me.”

“Oh! Oh my God. Yes!” I cried, throwing my arms around him.

He squeezed me tightly and then slipped the ring onto my left hand. “I’m sorry I was acting so weirdly,” he said. “I was planning for it to be at Chez Pierre, where we had our first date, and it was taking a lot of time to sort out the details. Then Zara died and the whole thing was derailed.”

I hugged him again, my eyes filled with tears of joy. Of course Kaye and Tori had been in on it, those sneaky minxes. And Zara…she’d certainly been good at keeping a secret. I’d had no idea!

As spring ended, both of my shops continued to do well, and Tori and I came up with a new cupcake flavor with little fondant flowers on top. We named it the Zara cupcake, and our first batch sold out within half an hour. It turned out that despite the rumors, the people of York had been a lot fonder of Zara than she had ever known. She’d served the community for ten years with her beautiful flowers, and I hoped her death was a tragedy that would never be repeated.

Then again, that’s what I’d thought when Mr. Frobisher was murdered last year. I still hoped to God nothing bad would ever happen again, but if it did, then my friends and I were always up to help solve the mystery…

***

Thank you for reading my short mystery story! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review. I’d greatly appreciate it.