Murder Gone A-Rye (A Baker's Treat Mystery) (12 page)

F
riday morning, there was a knock at the back door of the bakery. I peeked out the peephole, my right hand ready to grab the bat. Aunt Phyllis stood outside. I unlocked the two locks on the door.

“Auntie, it’s four in the morning. What are you doing here, again?”

“The same thing you’re doing here,” she said and stepped inside. The tip of her nose was blue and she had frost on her eyelashes. She wore her fringed leather jacket and a pair of blue pajama pants with white fluffy sheep scrawled on them in a random pattern. Her feet were covered in long, white, fluffy fur slippers with bunny ears on them.

“I’m making pies,” I said, and went to close the door while she rushed over to the coffeepot.

“Open the door.” Grandma Ruth’s grizzled voice barreled through the cold night air. Her big, square hand slapped on the door, pushing me and it aside. The woman was strong, considering she was in her nineties. I tried not to squeal as she brushed me aside like yesterday’s news.

“I told you she’d have coffee. Two pots, from the looks of it.” Grandma rolled her walker forward as if it were a battering ram. Today she wore a black stocking cap and a black hoodie with the word
HOODLUM
painted across the chest in yellow. Under that was a pair of men’s corduroy slacks in a dark green. Grandma wore Elmo slippers. Her hands and fingers were tipped with blue as well.

A quick glance at my indoor/outdoor thermometer told me it was a chilly thirty-two degrees outside. “How did you two get down here from the house?”

“Shank’s mare,” Grandma called over her shoulder, and took the thick mug of coffee Phyllis offered her.

“What?”

“We walked,” Aunt Phyllis said as she blew on her mug and took a sip of the thick brew.

“It’s too cold to be walking out there. With the wind chill it must be—”

“Freezing,” Grandma interrupted. “We know. Just like Kansas weather to sucker you in with eighty-degree weather one day and slam you with frost advisories the next morning.”

“It is the end of November,” Phyllis pointed out. “If you wanted better weather you’d have gotten out of the Midwest.”

“You walked?” I was shocked by the idea. “That had to have taken you—”

“Almost an hour with the walker.” Grandma grabbed a chair and lowered herself into it. “When we planned this excursion yesterday it was still seventy degrees out. I would have gotten Bill to bring us if I’d have known it was going to be this cold.”

I checked out the peephole for any lagging relatives before I locked the deadbolts. “Why did you plan this excursion?” I asked. “I know you like my gluten-free donuts, but there has to be a better reason.”

“We want to know what you found out when you dropped the box off at Brad’s office.” Phyllis said, and sipped some more. “A few pastries wouldn’t hurt now that we’re here and half frozen.”

I tried really hard not to roll my eyes. Leave it to my relatives to turn a grown woman into a teenager again. “I’ll get you some breakfast.”

They waited as I placed two white plates in front of them, added spoons and forks, then set a platter of pastries down on the table. Everything from donuts to sweet rolls to gluten-free Danish filled the platter. Half of them were day-old, but I knew Grandma wasn’t picky. She loved it all.

“Do you have any butter?”

“Hold on.” I went over to the small refrigerator and pulled out a stick of butter. As far as I knew, only my family put butter on sweet rolls and sticky buns. I’d never seen anyone else do it.

“I didn’t find out anything returning those journals—except that taking them in the first place was a very bad idea. Now, you two tell me what you’re plotting while I roll out pie dough. Please tell me you aren’t thinking of doing anything else illegal. Brad was not happy when I returned the box. I don’t want to lose him for a family lawyer.”

I pulled a new marble rolling surface out of the freezer and put the old one inside. Marble was a great surface for pastry. Soft dough didn’t stick to marble, and when the surface was cold it kept the butter from melting.

Before I could afford the marble, I had used parchment paper. Gluten-free dough tends to be a bit stickier than dough with gluten protein. Rolling it between pieces of parchment or wax paper is a good way to keep the work surface clean and not add extra “flour” to the dough.

The best part about gluten-free dough is there is no such thing as over-working it. So whenever I made a mistake, I’d simply put it all back in the bowl, remix it and start again.

I pulled a round blob of dough out of the refrigerator, placed it on the marble slab, and rolled it with my rolling pin. I turned it every few strokes to get a nice evenly round pie.

“We knew Brad wouldn’t be happy. We figured you’d read the journals and we wanted your take on them,” Grandma Ruth said with her mouth full of cinnamon roll.

“What do you mean?” I learned early on not to make assumptions with Grandma. She had a way of helping you feel stupid. It was always better to let her lead you through a conversation. Answer Grandma’s questions with a question and you learned a lot.

“What did you think of the handwriting?” Phyllis asked. “Meghan said you thought it was female.”

“You know, men our age had to have good handwriting, too, to get through school. It wasn’t like kids nowadays who learn to type before they can print.”

“Grandma, Kip has to learn to write as well as the next kid.” I placed a pie pan on top of the dough and nodded when it fit with two inches around the sides for edging. Setting the pie pan aside, I folded the dough in half, slipped the dough off the marble and into the pie pan, then trimmed and fluted the edges.

“They don’t teach cursive in schools anymore,” Phyllis said.

“What?” I shook my head. “Of course they do. Everyone has to learn to write their name.”

“Not on computers. All they need is a pin number.” Phyllis’s tone was one of disgrace. “The fine art of handwriting analysis is going to go away. Pretty soon we’ll all be into numerology.”

“No, I’m pretty sure they still learn cursive,” I contradicted her.

“Ask Tasha, she’ll tell you. If you want your kids to know cursive you’d better be prepared to teach it yourself.”

“My kids will know cursive,” I said. “And they’ll be able to tell feminine handwriting from masculine, too. Like you taught us, Grandma.”

“So you agree it was a woman who wrote those journals.” Grandma laughed at how she’d tricked me. I rolled my eyes and took out another round of dough.

“Who do you think wrote the journals?” Phyllis asked. She bit into one of my apple spice donuts and closed her eyes at the taste. “These taste like real donuts.”

“They are real,” I said. “They’re just gluten-free. And I have no idea who the author of the journals was. Whoever it was, was not only in love with Champ, but was pregnant at the beginning of 1959 about the same time Homer’s wife Susan was pregnant with Hutch. Which leads me to conclude that it was Susan who wrote Homer’s journals.”

“Not necessarily,” Grandma said as she forked up a piece of cinnamon roll and slathered it with butter. “We think Homer had a mistress and a wife.”

“Really?” I couldn’t let grandma know she was confirming my own suspicions so I played along.

“Yes,” Grandma said with her mouth full of roll. “We went to the nursing home and talked to Mrs. Henderson, Homer’s housekeeper at the time.”

“Seriously? How old is she?”

“Ninety-two, but her mind is still sharp as a tack—like me.” Grandma licked her fingers and picked up crumbs off the table and popped them into her mouth. “She said that Susan and Homer were married for nearly ten years before she got pregnant with Hutch. A lot of things happened that year—Champ was murdered, Susan had her first and only child, and Lois quit her job and became a friend of the family.”

“What does any of that have to do with Lois’s murder?” I turned and looked at Grandma, whose blue eyes twinkled. “What?”

“Everyone was surprised when Hutch came along. Susan never looked pregnant until
poof
, one day she was driving home from a Wichita hospital with a baby in her arms. Homer was deliriously happy, and back then no one was going to say anything bad about him or his wife.”

“You think his mistress had Hutch and Homer took him home as his own? What about Susan? Why would she stand for such a thing?”

“Maybe Susan couldn’t have kids of her own. You know how crazy some women get when it comes to wanting a baby. . . .”

I stabbed the air with my rolling pin. “You think Homer took up with a mistress to get her pregnant and to make Susan happy?”

“I think a lot of things,” Grandma answered cryptically.

“Another one of Homer’s secrets,” Phyllis said. “Not so secret if you read between the lines in the journals. Whoever wrote them was in love with Homer, chronicling his every movement and how wonderful he was.”

“She wrote about their love,” I added thoughtfully. “Until something happened to make her angry. There was about six weeks of anger in the 1959 journal. Then the tone grew . . .”

“Scared,” Grandma added. “That’s what we thought, too.”

“You think the mistress wrote the journals. That she was in love until she gave Homer her child and he abandoned her.”

“Then something happened that scared her.” Aunt Phyllis turned toward me, her tone rising in excitement. “We think when Champ was murdered, the mistress saw it as a sign that even close friends couldn’t cross Homer.”

“She kept her head down and her secrets close after that.” Grandma reached for a muffin. “Until this week, when she was going to tell me the truth.”

“You think Homer’s mistress was Lois?” My eyes grew wide. “Hutch is really Lois Striker’s love child?” I had to work hard to contain the shiver that ran down my back.

“Have you taken a good look at Hutch’s kid? Harold looks every bit of Lois in her youth. I’m surprised more people haven’t put two and two together.” Grandma Ruth took a bite out of a chocolate chip pumpkin muffin.

“Lois always seemed so old to me,” I said and went back to rolling out pie dough. “No one my age or younger would even suspect she was anything but a strange old woman with a habit of spitting when she talked.”

“Whoever killed her, killed her in the heat of passion,” Grandma Ruth said. “I heard from my friends at the morgue that she had seven blows to the head. That, my darling granddaughter, is passion.”

“And Chief Blaylock knew it. He had no excuse to hold Ruth like he did. We think he wanted her to tell him what she saw when she was in the park that day. Tell him why her scooter marks were at the crime scene.”

“Now, why does that make sense to me?” I muttered, and pushed another crust-filled pie plate along the stainless steel counter. I stopped, straightened and turned to face the two ladies at my table. “Grandma, did you witness a murder and keep it to yourself?”

“M
aybe I did and maybe I didn’t.” Grandma’s chin grew stubborn and she closed her mouth tight.

“Grandma, if you saw something, you have an obligation to the police and Lois’s family to tell them what you saw.”

“I have an obligation to my investigation first.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Stumbling upon Lois’s body doesn’t necessarily mean I saw anything.”

I grabbed the countertop to keep from beaning Grandma over the head with my rolling pin. Or maybe it was to keep my legs from buckling. Was it possible to do both?

“I saw the picture Ruth snagged on her phone,” Aunt Phyllis piped in. “It was pretty awesome as far as news goes.”

“Grandma took pictures?” My eyes grew wide and I turned on Phyllis. “You knew and kept this from me? Out. Out!” I waved my hands, pulled Phyllis’s chair out, and practically tore the muffin from her hands. “You can’t keep me in the dark and feed me nonsense, then come in here and eat my baked goods. I won’t have it.”

Grandma got up in a huff. Phyllis flew out of her chair as I railed at them with my rolling pin in hand. “Get out!” I pointed at the door. Aunt Phyllis unlocked the door while Grandma grabbed her walker and pushed herself through the open door as if the dogs of hell were at her feet.

I was so mad I didn’t care. “Stay away from me today,” I shouted. “And I’d better not hear a peep about you from the police or Brad, do you hear me?”

Grandma’s mumbling was overtaken by the slamming of the back door. I twisted the locks in place and leaned against it, shaking. I slid down to the floor and hugged my knees as anger turned to laughter and then to despair.

Those two old women were going to be the death of me yet. Here I was working close to seventy hours a week between the bakery and the float. Then to be pulling them from jail—and for goodness’ sake, I broke into the courthouse and stole files!

All because I thought Grandma was being wrongfully accused. When it turns out she was rightfully accused. She had taken it upon herself to write about murder and madness and the end of a hero. In doing so, she had led me astray. This after I thought I was smarter than that.

No more. No more indeed. Grandma and her little investigation had gone far enough. From now on I was out of it. As far as I was concerned I was strictly a baker with a busy bakery to run. Heck, I might even do something crazy and start dating again before the year of divorce was up. That was the kind of thing normal forty-year-old women did. Right?

Let’s face it, no normal forty-year-old would start up a gluten-free bakery in the middle of wheat country. Or deal with an endless array of her family’s wild antics. I took a deep breath, stood, and peered out the peephole. Grandma was outside the door nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. Phyllis paced beside her, puffing out her breath and beating her arms against the cold.

I rolled my eyes and opened the door. “Why didn’t you two leave?”

“Where are we going to go?” Grandma asked. “It’s five
A.M
.”

Phyllis came up to the door and tried to look contrite. “Can we come back in? I was so enjoying my coffee.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” I opened the door wide and waved them through. “Don’t think that you are forgiven. You are going to take those photos to the
police
this morning. Is that clear?”

“As a bell, sweetie, as a bell.” Grandma rolled out her ashes, stuck the remaining bit of cigarette in her pocket, and patted me on the cheek as she came inside. Her hands were cold as ice and dry to the touch.

“Where are your gloves?” I locked the door behind them.

“I left them in my other coat.” Grandma shrugged.

“You need to make sure she has a pair of gloves for every coat.” Phyllis sat down and hugged her cooled coffee mug as if it would warm her.

I grabbed the pot of fresh coffee and poured them both cups full of the hot brew. “I can’t believe you witnessed Lois’s murder—took pictures—and didn’t tell anyone!”

“Technically, I took pictures of her dead body. I have no idea who killed her—yet,” Grandma said. “That’s where you come in. What are your thoughts on the journals?” Grandma asked. “We know you looked through them.”

“I thought you copied them.” I put the coffee back on the hot plate, washed my hands, tightened my apron, and returned to rolling piecrusts.

“We did copy them,” Grandma Ruth said as she slowly sat her body down on the chair. It creaked under her and I made a mental note to make sure all the screws were tightened. “But they don’t tell us what you think of them, now do they?”

“Fine, I agree with you. It does sound as if they were written by a scorned lover. I would need a copy of Lois’s handwriting before I could verify if she was the mistress or if it was someone else altogether.” I trimmed another pie shell and set it down on the counter. A quick count told me I had five pies ready to be filled. My recipe called for six. I planned on making pecan and chocolate chip sour cream pie.

When I first started baking I was terrible at piecrusts, until I learned that the secret to creating tender piecrust is to add a small amount of acid, such as vinegar, sour cream, or lemon juice. I varied the ingredient depending on which type of pie I made—lemon for fruit piecrusts, sour cream for cream piecrusts, and vinegar for chocolate piecrusts.

“I happen to have a sample of her handwriting in my purse.” Grandma reached over and pulled her quilted bag off her walker. She dug around in it for a few minutes, then gave up and pulled out the contents one by one. “Got it!” she said, waving a scrap of paper in the air.

“Let me see.” Phyllis grabbed the paper out of Grandma’s hand and studied it through her glasses. “Hmmm.”

“What does that mean?” Grandma bellowed.

“Did you get a recent sample or an old sample?”

“I got a recent sample, of course. What else could I get?”

“This is no good.” Phyllis gave the paper back to Grandma with a sigh. “It looks like an old person wrote this.”

“An old person did write this.” Grandma pouted and put on her glasses to look at the writing. “Huh, you’re right. You can’t tell anything from this.”

“Maybe if we could get ahold of some old documents from the time when she worked with Homer . . . like her property deeds,” I said. “Or even something she must have signed when she was Homer’s secretary.

“Public records!” Grandma and Phyllis said at the same time.

“Exactly.” I couldn’t help but feel a bit smug until I realized that the county records were stored in the courthouse. “Oh, no, you two are not going back inside that courthouse.”

“Why not?” Grandma asked. “We’re taxpayers.”

“Because Chief Blaylock will throw you back in jail, that’s why.” I trimmed my last pie, then washed my hands again. The room was silent for a few long moments until I turned back to the women. “What?”

“You can go into the courthouse,” Grandma said.

“Yes, no one knows you helped me steal that box in the first place. You didn’t tell Brad, did you?”

“No.”

“Then they won’t suspect you at all.” Aunt Phyllis nodded her head, her bright yellow bob swishing around her jawline.

“And who will watch the shop while I’m at the courthouse investigating?” I dried my hands on a towel and put them on my hips, hating where the conversation was going. “I told you, I will have nothing more to do with this investigation. As soon as the police chief gets into his office, you two are going down there, giving him those pictures on your phone, and telling him everything you know.”

“He won’t believe us,” Grandma said, her mouth turning down into a pout.

“It’s true, Toni, he won’t.”

“He’ll believe you when you give him those pictures.”

“It’s only two pictures, and he’ll charge me with hampering an investigation.”

“Then you deserve to be charged. Trust me, it will go far easier if you turn yourself in.”

“He never investigated the remodeled wall like you told him to. How could you expect him to understand this?” Grandma shrugged.

“He didn’t investigate the wall because he had no reason to investigate. The man follows the law, and the law says you have to have a warrant before you can bust down walls in judge’s chambers. In order to have a warrant you have to have just cause. Where is your just cause?”

“In the wall, of course.” Grandma crossed her arms over her chest.

I shook my head. The woman was as stubborn as she was smart. “It will take another remodel before they can open that wall.”

“That’s why we’ve started a petition to update the courthouse next year,” Aunt Phyllis said. “It’s clear they need better security.”

“And updated wiring,” Grandma said. “They have a lot of new gadgets that need to be plugged in, you know. We can’t have computers getting killed by spikes in the electricity, now can we? It is so much more energy efficient to replace the wiring and update the floor plan.”

“That’s thinking.” I had to give them props. It wasn’t like Grandma to hatch a plan and wait for it to happen. She said once you hit the age of seventy, delayed gratification went out the window. She wanted it all and she wanted it now. She could be dead tomorrow, you know.

“We thought you’d be pleased,” Aunt Phyllis said. “Now, the courthouse opens at nine
A.M.
, about the time your morning rush dies down. We’ll stay here and watch the shop while you go there and . . . oh, I don’t know, pay your property taxes or something?”

“My property taxes aren’t due.” I tilted my head. “And you can’t turn yourself in and watch my bakery.”

“Then you’d better hurry and make sure your divorce decree was finalized by a judge.” Grandma took a sip of her coffee. “You never know when things like that could come back to haunt you.”

“I signed my decree and I saw Eric sign his,” I said, trying my best not to let her rattle me.

“That doesn’t mean the judge signed them,” Grandma pointed out. “Why, last year MariJo Johnson had to postpone her second wedding moments before it started all because there had been a mix-up in her divorce paperwork.”

“There wasn’t any mix-up in my divorce.” I played with the edge of the terry cloth towel I had in my hands.

“Go down to the courthouse, dear,” Aunt Phyllis said and picked out another donut. “You’ll feel much better after you’ve checked that little fact out.”

“We promise we’ll turn ourselves in after you get a copy of Lois’s handwriting—preferably from 1959,” Grandma said. “Cross our hearts and hope to die.”

They both crossed their hearts and held up their hands to show they weren’t lying.

I blew out a deep breath. I hated that she was right. I hated that Grandma had put a little niggle of doubt in my head that would not be ignored. If I didn’t go down to the courthouse myself and get a copy of Lois’s signature, I wouldn’t sleep another wink.

“Fine. I’ll go—by myself,” I clarified. “You two have to promise to never keep anything from me ever again.”

“Not even a surprise party?” Grandma asked.

“Not even a surprise party,” I replied.

“Not even if it’s a surprise engagement party?” Aunt Phyllis asked.

“Even then,” I said firmly. As far as I was concerned I was never getting married again, so the last thing I needed to worry about was spoiling some surprise party for an engagement that would never happen.

“Fine,” Grandma said.

“Fine,” Aunt Phyllis agreed.

“Good.” I filled a new platter with pastries and set them on the table. “I’ll go down to the courthouse.” After all, how much trouble could I get into all by myself?