Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery) (17 page)

B
y the time I returned to Running Stitch, the quilting class had ended. Mattie said good-bye to the members of the class as she packed up the leftover cookies. There weren’t many.

I held the door open for Shirley as she left the shop.

“I saw you run over and talk to Raymond Sacks.” Her eyes twinkled. “It seems I gave you what could be called a clue into this murder.”

“You might have.” I couldn’t help but smile.

She chuckled, enjoying herself just as much as Miss Marple would have, and headed for her car.

Oliver ran inside the shop to check on Dodger. I followed more slowly. Dodger, who had slept in Oliver’s dog bed through most of the class, stood up. Oliver bumped the cat with his nose. Dodger stretched and gave an enormous yawn. He scanned the shop. When he saw Mattie, his lips curved into a smile. That was a bad sign. I thought it was best not to bring it to Mattie’s attention.

Mattie grabbed a broom from the back corner of the
shop and began to sweep up the thread and tiny pieces of fabric the ladies dropped while in class. “Where did you run off to all of a sudden?”

I told her about seeing Raymond through the window and my conversation with Blane at the mercantile.

She gripped the broom a little more tightly. “Did you talk to Liam too?”

I shook my head. “He wasn’t there.”

She relaxed and began sweeping again.

“Can you mind the shop for a few hours? There are a couple of people that I need to talk to.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be involved with this, Angie. It sounds like that Griffin had a lot of enemies, some of them for good reason.”

“Which is all the more reason to talk to them,” I said.

She shook her head. “Just be careful.”

I promised her that I would.

I knew that Mallory would be relatively easy—or at least I hoped—to track down through her family’s furniture business. Rex Flagg was a different story. I didn’t even know where to begin in finding him. Blane might know where Rex might be because he’s a fellow electrician, but I didn’t think he’d tell me anything more, and I didn’t want to have another conversation with him, as he so clearly disregarded Linda.

Besides Blane—and Mitchell, whom I most definitely didn’t want to ask—the only other person in Holmes County that I knew who might know where to find Rex was Linda, and I had promised to drop in the Double Dime Diner for lunch anyway.

“Oliver, are you okay with eating a little bit early?” I asked the Frenchie at my feet.

He wiggled his stubby tail. I didn’t have to ask him twice.

I grabbed my bag, called for Oliver, and headed out of the door.

“What about Dodger?” Mattie called after me.

“You guys will be fine,” I reassured her.

She groaned, and I smiled as the door closed behind me.

I parked in a spot right in front of the diner. It was a good time for me to catch up with Linda between the breakfast and lunch rushes. Once noon hit, she would be on her feet until at least three.

I opened the glass door that led into the diner, and Oliver pranced up to Linda with his tongue hanging out in anticipation of the bacon to come.

She beamed at my little dog. “There’s my boy!”

Oliver dropped the front of his body into a bow. Linda beamed at his antics, and I shook my head. To Oliver, Linda was the source of bacon. Therefore, a respectful bow when he was in her presence was always warranted.

Linda studied Oliver’s face. “You look famished. Do you need a double order of bacon?”

He twirled in a tight circle.

Show-off.

“Linda, Oliver doesn’t need a double order of anything,” I protested. “The vet has already told me that if he puts on any more weight, I’ll have to put him on a diet.”

Oliver whimpered. He and my father had the same feelings toward diets.

“Pish,” was her response. “He’s perfectly healthy. Your vet doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Put sweet, lovable Oliver on a diet? It’s cruel, I tell you. Cruel.”

Oliver barked agreement. It was two against one.

I sighed. It was pointless to argue with the two of them when they ganged up on me like that. “Okay,” I said. “It has been a trying couple of days. Maybe one extra piece of bacon won’t hurt him.”

Linda grinned and yelled through the pass-through to the kitchen. “Hurry up on that double of bacon!”

The cook waved his spatula to acknowledge he’d heard her. The cook didn’t talk much, but he loved to spoil my Frenchie just as much as Linda did.

I shook my head. They were all hopeless.

Linda pointed at me with her pencil. “You go take your regular booth, and I’ll be over as soon as I get Oliver settled.”

I shuffled to the booth by the front window. It was my favorite spot in the diner. I could see all the way up and down Jackson Street. A semi rolled up the road past the county courthouse followed by an Amish courting buggy. A young couple sat in the buggy closer together than they would’ve dared if their parents had been nearby.

Before I knew it, a plate stacked high with pancakes, eggs, and bacon—because Linda thought everyone needed bacon—appeared in front of me.

“You look like you need breakfast for lunch.” Linda glanced at the antique cat clock with the roving eyes
on the wall. “And since it’s too early for lunch, we’ll call it brunch.”

“Works for me,” I said as I unwrapped my flatware from a white paper napkin.

“Be back in a jiff,” Linda said. She returned before I could even wrestle my fork free from the napkin and set a full mug of coffee next to my plate. “I already put the cream and sugar in there how you like it.” She stepped away from the table to see to another diner patron and left me with the enormous breakfast.

My mouth watered. There were more calories on the plate than my diet—if I ever got around to sticking to one—would allow for a week. I should stick to the small portion of the eggs and the coffee.

Instead, I picked up my fork. I was in the middle of a murder investigation, so I needed my strength. I cut into one of the buttery pancakes and took a bite. I suppressed a moan. The pancakes didn’t even need maple syrup. They were that good. Of course I doused them with syrup anyway, because it was sugar, and sugar helped me think.

Linda returned as I was halfway through the stack of pancakes. Apparently, I ate pancakes by inhalation. I wasn’t proud of it. She had a full mug of black coffee in one hand and a coffeepot in the other. She sat across from me in the booth.

Behind her, I spotted Oliver crouched by the rotating pie case with his paws on either side of a plate of bacon. He held the plate in place with his paws so that it didn’t have the chance to run away. I ignored how many pieces of bacon were on that plate. The vet was going
to send me to bad dog–parent school. Oliver would be on tasteless dry kibble for the rest of the month.

Linda wrapped her hands around the white mug. Her fingernails were painted a bright pink that seemed to go well with her powder blue waitress outfit and beehive hairdo. Linda was a throwback. She lived a retro life before retro was a thing.

She cleared her throat. “I know you haven’t had much time to snoop, but have you learned anything yet about what may have happened to Griffin?”

I set down my fork. “I’ve spoken to a couple of people. Just this morning I spoke with Blane, and I met his son.”

Her expression softened. “Cameron. He’s a sweet boy, even if his head’s in the clouds.”

I added just a drop more syrup to my plate. “When I met him, he had a video camera in his hand. He said he was making a movie.”

She touched the handle of her coffee mug but made no move to pick it up. “He’s wanted to be in the movie business since he was a child.”

“Ohio might not be the best place for that,” I said, picking up my own mug.

“It’s not. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he ran off to Hollywood after college. He wanted to go to school in California as it was, but his father refused to help pay his tuition if he didn’t live at home.”

“There are loans and things he could have applied for if he really wanted to leave Ohio,” I said.

She shook her head. “His father was dead set against it. Blane is hard on the boy.”

From what I gathered during my brief conversation with him, Blane was hard on just about everyone, but I didn’t say that.

Linda went on. “You shouldn’t squash a child’s dreams while he has them or he’ll stop dreaming as an adult, and that will be a true tragedy. You should see some of the movies that he’s made; they are so creative. I would hate for a child like Cameron to stop dreaming, wouldn’t you?”

I nodded.

Her tone turned thoughtful. “If you don’t have dreams when you’re young, what are you going to live up to when you are older? I never had grand dreams like Cameron does, of going to Hollywood, but I always wanted to own my own diner.” She held her arms wide as if to encompass the entire room. “And here I am, living the dream over fifty years later. Every penny I have I put back into this diner and into a nice nest egg for when I retire. No idea when that will be, since I’m over retirement age and can’t seem to walk away from here just yet. In any case, I would say that I did all right.”

I smiled. “You did just fine.”

She dropped her arms. “I just wish I had done better by Griff and Blane.”

My heart went out to her.

“Linda, I could use a warm-up.” One of the older men in the back of the diner held up his mug.

“Hold on to your pants, Sal. I’m talking to Angie here,” she shouted back.

The man grunted and lowered his mug. Everyone
knew that Linda ruled the Double Dime Diner, and the patrons there would receive their food and coffee when she was ready to serve it.

“I also learned that Griffin had replaced another electrician for the large job at the Eby Mercantile in Rolling Brook,” I said, bringing the conversation back to the investigation. “I was wondering if you knew anyone by the name of Rex Flagg.”

“Rex Flagg?” she asked. “I don’t know much of anything about his work ethic, but I can tell you that the man has a sour disposition. Whenever he comes into the diner, which isn’t often, he’s in a foul mood.” She pursed her lips. “He’s not a great tipper either.”

That was interesting.

“Do you know where I can find him?” I sipped from my coffee mug.

She frowned. “No, I can’t say that I do. I know who he is, of course, as he’s come in here from time to time, but he’s not a regular.”

My face fell. I had been counting on Linda knowing where I could find Rex. If I had to go to Mitchell about it, that would only mean trouble for me. I supposed that I could always go back to the mercantile and ask Blane. I would much rather do that than ask Mitchell.

Linda turned toward the man who’d wanted his coffee warmed up and yelled across the room, “Sal, do you know where Rex Flagg would be between jobs?”

The man looked up from the book he was reading. “What do you want with that old drunk? He’s a mean drunk too,” he said in an ominous tone.

“Angie here is looking for him,” Linda said.

Sal turned his watery eyes toward me. “If you are looking for an electrician, sweetheart, I can tell you names of half a dozen that have a better bedside manner than Rex Flagg. Ones that are better at their job too and won’t drink away your time.”

I picked up my nearly full coffee mug and slipped out of the booth. When I reached Sal’s table, I asked, “May I?”

“Sure, have a seat,” he grunted. “It’s not often I have the company of a pretty girl.”

Linda walked toward the table with the coffeepot in hand. She filled Sal’s mug with a practiced motion. “You don’t pay any attention to Sal’s flirting,” she advised.

I smiled. “I don’t mind.”

Sal grinned. “See, Linda, not every woman ignores me. I’m quite a catch. I’m glad Angie here sees that.”

Linda snorted. “Angie is Sheriff Mitchell’s girl.”

Sal appraised me. “You don’t say. I had heard that he’d taken up with someone new since his divorce. You couldn’t be more different from his first wife, could you?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

Linda smacked him lightly on the back of the head. “You quit that and answer sweet Angie’s questions about Rex.” She moved to the next table with her coffeepot.

Sal poured cream from a small pitcher into his coffee. “I still don’t know what you want with him. He’s a drunk, and a mean one at that.”

I thought it was best if I didn’t mention the murder
unless Sal brought it up. The fewer people who knew about my investigation, the better.

I cleared my throat. “He did some work at my friend’s store, and really made a mess of things.” This wasn’t technically a lie, although I didn’t know if Liam would consider me a friend. “I was hoping I could track him down so that I could talk to him about it.”

Sal nodded. “Your friend should look elsewhere for help.”

“He already has.” I paused. “But I still want to talk to Rex about it.”

Sal squinted. I could tell he didn’t buy my story. To be honest, I wouldn’t have either.

He held his mug up to me as if in a toast. “I like your spunk. It’s about time someone told Rex a thing or two about how to work and how to treat a lady. If you are looking for him, look no further than Eight Lanes.”

I frowned. “Eight Lanes? What’s that?”

“It’s a bowling alley in Millersburg,” Linda said as she walked effortlessly carrying two full trays of food. The food was meant for the men sitting in the corner of the room.

“Rex hangs out in a bowling alley?” I asked.

Sal shook his head. “He doesn’t hang out there. He lives there. There’s an apartment above the bowling alley. From what I heard, he gets a break on rent to keep up the maintenance of the place, which he needs since he can’t seem to hold down a job.”

I winced. “It must be hard to sleep.” I imagined bowling balls crashing into pins in the middle of the night. I
certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep in such a place. I frowned.

“Rex could sleep through a hurricane. A few balls crashing into bowling pins aren’t going to bother him.”

“Where is Eight Lanes located?” I asked.

“A couple of miles from here on the way to Berlin.” He rattled off the address.