Cupid's Corpse: A Cozy Mystery (Gemma Stone Cozy Mystery Book 3) (9 page)

“No, you’re staying here. We’ve got another crime scene to investigate, this one involving kidnapping and blackmail. I don’t need a civilian in the way.”

G
emma knew there was no way she was going to change Sheriff Burton’s mind, so she simply stood there and watched her walk out of the office. After a few moments, Gemma followed, again not sure where she was headed. She stood in the lobby, looking through the old journals and the pictures on the table.

“He was such a romantic,” Joel said.

Gemma jumped at the sound of his voice and almost dropped the journal she had been leafing through. He had come up on her so quietly she hadn’t heard him. “Oh, you scared me.”

“Sorry. It seems so empty here, now that almost everyone has left. It wasn’t the way this weekend was supposed to turn out at all,” he said, a faraway look in his eyes.

“I’m sure Mr. Muzak had the whole weekend planned perfectly, didn’t he?”

“He usually did. He planned everything down to the last second. If you think I’m a stickler for that, you should have seen him at work. Spreadsheets, logs. Lists on top of lists. Everything.”

“Did he have an office?” Gemma asked.

“He had an office out in the old theater. That was one of his favorite places on the property. Said he just loved the romance of the old place,” Joel told her.

“Joel, I need your help out here.” That was Missy and she didn’t sound happy. In fact, it was almost like she was blaming Joel for whatever was going on.

“Excuse me,” he said, politely.

Gemma thought he just looked tired and somewhat defeated. He certainly didn’t look like a man who had just killed his longtime friend.

She decided to go back out to the old theater and, if she could get inside, look around for Muzak’s office. There might be a clue the police overlooked, even though she was sure they’d scoured the place the night before. This time, instead of going outside and around to the theater the way she and Nick had gone that first morning, she saw an exit sign and knew it probably led to the back of the lodge.

What she didn’t realize was that she would pass directly by the kitchen. The door was open and a slender man in a white apron and chef’s hat was pulling a huge pan of cinnamon rolls out of the oven. He was having trouble maneuvering the large pan and closing the oven door at the same time. Gemma’s natural instinct to help kicked in, and the next thing she knew, she was in the kitchen and taking charge of the heavy oven door so the chef wouldn’t drop those fabulous cinnamon rolls on the floor.

“Got it?” she asked as the chef slid the heavenly smelling rolls onto a cooling rack on a huge prep island in the center of the kitchen.

“
Oui. Merci, beaucoup
,” he said, bowing slightly.

He was much older than she had first imagined him to be, with a solid white, neatly trimmed mustache and laugh lines framing his pale blue eyes.

“You, are welcome,” Gemma said, wondering if he could speak English.

“You like?” he asked, motioning toward the rolls.

Gemma took one look at the delicately browned rolls with butter, sugar and cinnamon bubbling up out of the center and nodded. The chef motioned for her to sit on one of the stools at the island. Then he grabbed a small plate, placed a steaming roll in the middle and drizzled frosting over the top. Before she took her first bite, he poured coffee for her.

“Thank you,” Gemma said, taking a small bite of the piping hot, tempting dessert. “Um, this is amazing!”

The chef bowed again just slightly. “They were Mr. Boris’s favorite,” he said with a sad little smile. “I make them in his honor.”

“You’ve outdone yourself, Chef,” Gemma assured him. “I’m sure you’re going to miss him.”

He nodded. “Poor Natasha. Poor Joel. They will miss him most of all.”

Obviously the older man was oblivious to the rumors about Joel and Natasha, and Gemma saw no reason to sully his memories.

“So you knew Mr. Muzak well?” Gemma asked.

He made a motion with his hand. “So, so. I mostly knew what he liked to eat and what he did not.”

“Cinnamon rolls were his favorite,” Gemma said.

The Chef nodded, smiling happily.

“I’m guessing venison or turkey was his next favorite, since he went hunting with Joel,” Gemma said.

The Chef looked immediately distressed and began waving his hands frantically. “No, no, no,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Gemma said, realizing she had upset the man. “I didn’t mean anything...”

“Mr. Boris was a, how you say, vegetarian,” he said.

“He didn’t eat meat at all?” Gemma asked.

The Chef shook his head. “Would not, could not eat a living thing. Could not harm a living thing either.”

Gemma popped the last bite of cinnamon roll into her mouth, her thoughts going a mile a minute. “Chef, thank you so much for my reward. I may be back later for another,” she teased.

“It will be my pleasure,” he said shyly.

As she dashed out the back door heading for the theater, she wondered why Muzak would go hunting with Joel. Vegetarians didn’t go hunting. Maybe there was some clue in his office.

The crime scene tape was tattered and torn, fluttering in the cold evening wind like forgotten birds. It would be dark soon and she needed to get back to the cabin before Nick and the sheriff returned. She hurried through the old dusty lobby and took the stairs that led to the closed door at the top. To her right was where the crossbow and timer had been set up, so she shied away from that and moved toward what she hoped had been Mr. Muzak’s office.

The door was made of wood, black with a white porcelain knob. She turned it, expecting it to be locked, but the door swung open quite easily, revealing a small room with a desk tucked under a long narrow window. An old leather office chair had been pushed out to the middle of the floor. There was a filing cabinet off to one side and a lumpy looking loveseat on the wall opposite the desk. The floor was bare wood.

“Muzak, what secrets do you have hidden in here?” Gemma whispered, as she closed the door behind her.

She knew the sheriff’s office had been through every square inch of the place. But what if there was a clue hidden in plain sight? A clue to Mr. Muzak’s murder that didn’t appear to be a clue? Where to start? A large desk calendar filled most of the top of the battered old desk. Valentine’s Day was marked with a red heart drawn in thick magic marker. Lots of notes were scrawled in the blocks before and after the date but they seemed to be just notes to himself about the events at the lodge for that weekend.

All around the edge Mr. Muzak had drawn hearts with arrows shooting through them. Some were just sketches. Some were in more detail but they were all obviously just doodling while he spoke on the phone or tried to get his thoughts together. Other than that, the top of the desk was empty. And down at the bottom of the calendar it looked like Mr. Muzak had signed his name in that same red marker.

“What did you expect, Gemma?” Gemma grumbled to herself. “That he would have his killer’s name written down here in code for you to find? You’re not Nancy Drew, you know.”

Gemma opened the top drawer and was somewhat surprised to find it neat and orderly, filled with general office supplies. The other drawers were just as neat and, for the most part, empty. She would have guessed that he was messy, with his head in the clouds all the time.

“Joel said you kept ledgers and spreadsheets,” Gemma said to the darkened room. “Where are they?”

She began combing through the file cabinet systematically, one drawer at a time, one folder at a time. At one point, she thought she heard footsteps on the stairs and tiptoed to the door to listen. She waited, holding her breath for what seemed like forever, but heard nothing else.

All the file cabinet held were documents, ledgers and spreadsheets just like Joel had described, but they all pertained to the running of the lodge. From what she could tell, he was precise and particular. And they were all signed by Boris Muzak with a beautiful flourish at the end of his name and little hearts tangled in that.

There was only one other place Gemma could think to look for clues and she had to hurry. It was going to be dark soon.

Missy loaned her the keys to the lodge’s SUV again, barely listening to the reason Gemma needed to borrow it. The short trip into the village was uneventful, even though Gemma pushed the speed limit to the max. Parking where she had that morning, Gemma rushed down the street just as the bearded owner of Valentine Sports was locking up for the day.

“I’m surprised to see you again, agent,” he said with an easy smile.

Gemma fought the urge to explain her true identity and simply said, “Could I have your permission to go out to the hunting shack that you leased to Mr. Muzak?”

“Why, yes, ma’am,” he said, stepping back into the shop. “I have an extra set of keys right here.”

Gemma took the keys and listened carefully as he told her how to find the place.

“You’d better hurry. It’s not far but it’s easy to get lost out there in the dark if you don’t know the area,” he warned.

“Thank you,” Gemma said, already moving toward her vehicle. “I’ll be careful.”

As it turned out the hunting shack was less than three miles from town. She was going too fast and almost missed the turnoff, which was nothing more than a rutted trail that wound upward through the woods. She was just thinking that she should have let someone know where she was going when she spotted the shack.

Sitting in the center of four gigantic trees, the shack was nothing more than a lean-to. Four walls with a snow covered roof made up the entire building. There were no windows that she could see as she eyed the small, wooden structure. The snow up close around the front had not been disturbed and she doubted anyone had been out here for weeks. She was surprised she’d even need a key to get inside. The wooden door was hung crookedly in the frame, the hinges rusted.

“Shack is right,” Gemma muttered to herself as she slid the key into the lock with shaking fingers. The door squealed as she pushed it open and she stared into the blackness for a moment before going back to the car and digging around for a tiny flashlight she kept there.

Inside was not what she expected to see either. It was just one small room, not much more than the size of Mr. Muzak’s office in the old theater. The floor was bare boards, warped and dusty. A single, narrow bed stood along one wall.

“Must have made for some cozy sleeping arrangements,” Gemma said to the shadows as she paced slowly around the room, aiming the light into every corner.

Much to her disappointment, she found little else. There were shelves attached to one wall which held a few canned goods, but she found nothing hidden there. Under the bed was nothing but dust. She stood there for a moment methodically going over everything but always coming back to one question: why would Mr. Muzak, a die-hard vegetarian, go hunting with Joel Cunningham? Was he oblivious to what was going on with Natasha? Maybe he loved her so much he couldn’t see what everyone else knew.

Disappointed, Gemma went back outside and circled the shack. She paused at the far corner and then stooped to look closer. Yes, just barely visible in the deepening twilight there were fresh footprints in the snow. Without another thought Gemma followed them around to the back of the shack and straight to a fire ring.

“Ah, but this isn’t just any fire ring,” Gemma muttered when she reached it.

The stones were arranged in the shape of a heart. That had to be the work of Mr. Muzak. No one else would even think of it. But why? Why make a fire ring shaped like a heart way out here in the woods? She sat down on a nearby log to gather her thoughts and was immediately back on her feet again as she let out a squeal that startled some animal hidden in the woods. The log was wet - and now the seat of her jeans were, too.

How disappointing. So far, all she had accomplished was getting a wet bottom and growing much, much colder. She turned to climb back up the slope to the SUV but something made her glance back over her shoulder one more time.

And that’s when she saw it.

The fire ring wasn’t just stones arranged in the shape of a heart. There were more stones. And from where she stood, they were not haphazardly arranged at all. Those stones looked like an arrow going through the heart.

Gemma stood there for a moment, looking down on what must have been Mr. Muzak’s last tribute to love, when her eye followed to where the tip of the arrow was aimed.

A tree. Maybe ten feet away and somewhat smaller than the others, with a hole in the bark about two feet off the ground.

Her cold, wet bottom forgotten now, Gemma half-ran, half-slid back down the bank, her sights on nothing but that tree. As she approached, she realized that the hole was deep and very, very dark inside. She stood there for a moment, reluctant to stick her hand into it. There might be a snake in there. She wasn’t too worried about that but she didn’t want to touch one, frozen or not. What else lived in trees? Rabbits? No. Squirrels? Did squirrels hibernate? What if one was in there sleeping with its squirrel family and she got bit? A bird would already have been alert to her presence.

She aimed the flashlight at the tree, but it was too weak to do much good. She stood there and chewed on her lip for a moment, trying to think.

Gemma knew one thing for sure; she could not leave until she was positive there was nothing of importance in that tree. While she was debating what to do next, she shoved her hands into her coat pockets. And there was her cell phone. It might be useless for making calls out here in the woods but that big screen was as bright as day.

Pressing the button on the side to active the screen, she aimed it at the hole in the tree. No birds. No snakes. No squirrels. But what she saw hidden inside there made her smile.

“O
h, Mr. Muzak,” Gemma said as she studied what had been revealed by the light of her phone. “What a hopeless romantic you were.”

She was still hesitant to reach into that tree, even though she could clearly see what was nestled in some pine needles inside there. If what she saw was evidence, and she was pretty sure it was, she didn’t want to be the one contaminating it. Still, she had to get it back to Sheriff Burton before someone else, possibly the killer, found it and destroyed it.