A Berry Cunning Conman_A Laugh-Out-Loud Cozy Mystery Read online

  “I have to serve something, Sage! What do I do?” She did a slow blink in answer and I snapped my fingers. “That’s it! Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

  Don’t ask me how I made the leap from aglio e olio to peanut butter and jelly, but I pulled out my cell phone and started scrolling through ideas of how to fancy it up. “Toast bread… I can do that. Ohhh, fresh fruit.” I stopped scrolling and stared. “Bacon?”

  While I hadn’t anticipated bacon as being one of the ways to make a PB&J yummier, I did have a lot of practice making bacon and bacon did always seem to make things better.

  I glanced at the pasta and considered sprinkling freshly crisped bacon over the top of it. “Naw,” I decided. It would be a waste of a good ingredient on an unsellable dish.

  Thirty-five minutes later, I was putting the finishing touches on my first PB&J. I’d made it on toasted slices of artisan bread with peanut butter on one side and raspberry jelly on the other. In between those two layers, I added finely diced fresh blueberries, bananas and strawberries plus a couple of pieces of thick-sliced smoked bacon.

  I looked from the finished PB&J to a single serving bowl of pasta. I’d nuked it to heat it back up. I didn’t generally like to nuke the food I served, but nobody was going to eat it anyway.

  I carried the two plates out to Agatha where she sat at the grill’s bar. Her face was framed by her signature white hair, styled in a fearlessly bold pixie haircut that emphasized her high cheekbones, and dark, laser sharp eyes. She wore a cascade of thin metal bracelets on her arm and dangling earrings from her ears that pulled an onlooker’s eye to her long, elegant neck. Her forest green wrap-around dress had a plunging neckline, and the tail of a pendant necklace disappeared out of sight behind the dress’s fabric.

  At over eighty years old, Agatha was still a stunning beauty. Her most recent beau had been thirty years her junior and had almost made the decision to make a permanent move to Camden Falls rather than go back home to Florida.

  “Sweetheart, are you okay?” Agatha asked before leaning forward and lowering her voice conspiratorially. “I almost came back when I heard you scream, but then the screaming stopped. Goodness knows I’ve had my moments. I didn’t want to interfere in one of yours.”

  “Agatha,” I said with a laugh, “what if someone had been trying to kill me?”

  “Then I’d get you a body bag, help you stash them somewhere and then be done with the whole mess.” She tsked. “Kill you… Please. We both know better by now. Fastest way possible for somebody to make it into the grave.”

  My mouth fell open. “Some of them go to prison,” I countered weakly. “They didn’t all die.”

  “Give them time,” she said and gave me a wink. “Now, what do you have for me?” She nodded toward the two plates of food still sitting on my side of the counter.

  I slid the bowl of pasta across to her. “Tell me what you think.”

  Agatha twirled some pasta onto a fork and took a bite. She just as quickly and discretely spit it back out into a napkin. “Sweetheart, what did I ever do to you?”

  “Mmmm, that bad?”

  “Worse.”

  “Good enough for the Oops board?”

  Agatha thought a moment. “Yes,” she said with great confidence. “With a price of negative ten cents.”

  “Negative? As in I should pay them to eat it?”

  Agatha did a slow nod, clearly in the middle of getting another idea. “You could add on the challenge of a free steak dinner for anyone who finishes a whole bowl… but make them sign a release form first, one freeing you of all responsibility for their continued well-being.”

  “Aggie, you’re breaking my heart.” I tried to keep the whine out of my voice and only slightly succeeded.

  “And you’re teasing my stomach. Show me what you have on the other plate. I’m hungry.”

  I slid the doctored up peanut butter and jelly across to her.

  She examined the sandwich, lifting the edge of the top slice of bread. Her brows arched a little, then they arched a lot.

  Not being dainty, she picked up the offered meal and took a big bite. “Mmmm!” she said, then swallowed. “Kylie, this is wonderful! You should add it to your menu.”

  My menu… My very non-existent menu. I tended to cook whatever was within my capabilities to make or whatever I had a lot of time to practice. I rarely offered more than one dish option at a time.

  “Ohhh, a glass of milk would be perfect with this,” Agatha added.

  “I’ll get you one.” I patted the counter and smiled. Easy requests always made me happy.

  I turned to go but the sound of the café’s door chiming drew my attention back the other way. It was a new customer! Someone who I had never seen before. He was heading for the grill’s bar.

  Not wanting the new customer to feel ignored, I waited for him to sit down. He chose the stool next to Agatha.

  “Can I get you some coffee or possibly my”—brand new—“house specialty, a gourmet PB&J?”

  He glanced at Agatha’s plate. “Looks good,” he said, then looking directly at Agatha, he said in a slightly altered, slightly lascivious tone, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

  I started to step away but did a double take because of his change in tone. I had no doubt that Agatha had the ability to turn the head of a man even as young as my new customer, but I wasn’t sure his interest was welcome. Agatha’s usually warm and approachable demeanor grew stiff and cold.

  “Maybe you would be—” I started to say with intentions of getting my brand new but less shiny customer to move to a different spot, but the café’s door chimed again. Glancing in its direction, all words left me. Standing in the middle of my café’s entryway was none other than my most evil archenemy.

  “Aunt Dorothy,” I said, and then quickly corrected, “Dorothy.” She wasn’t my aunt-in-law anymore, yet that didn’t seem to make a difference to her. Her hatred of me was becoming legendary within the small town that I’d recently started calling home. It was only by a cruel twist of fate that my new home town was my ex-husband’s old home town. When I’d divorced him I’d thought that it would be politely understood that any future interactions with them would be cordial and fleeting, like those you have with your second half-cousin twice removed. But that either wasn’t the case or ex-Aunt Dorothy didn’t have the same definition of cordial and fleeting.

  “You think you’ve got your hooks back into him, don’t you, missy?” she sneered at me, standing like a wild west gun slinger ready to draw.

  Have I mentioned that my ex-Aunt Dorothy might have had an itsy bitsy, burning, I’d-die-for-you crush on my ex-husband… her nephew. I couldn’t think of any other reason she hung on his every word and treated me like a leper who just wouldn’t die.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Of course I knew what she meant, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of thinking I did.

  “Have you no shame? He divorced you. Move on already!”

  I’d divorced him, and moving on was what I was trying to do.

  “Aunt… I mean, Dorothy. Mind if we talk about this at another time?” Like, never. “I’m with customers.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my newest customer leaning closer to Agatha. Rather than lean away, Agatha was holding her ground with a ramrod back. There was nothing receptive about her body language, but the man next to her hadn’t seemed to notice.

  “You getting back together with him will happen over my dead body.”

  Oh, really… That felt a little bit like a dare, and I was considering taking her up on the challenge.

  Behind Dorothy, Dan’s parents, Bruce and Maryann Hibbert, rushed in. Before divorcing Dan, I’d never considered Dorothy a fast walker, but now I thought that she must be. Dan’s parents were always having to catch up to her, and it was always when she was ripping me a new one or trying to ruin my new career. She'd told the whole of Camden Falls that I didn’t know how to cook. That had been true. What hadn’t be
en true was that I’d given Dan food poisoning three times and that I’d give my customers food poisoning, too. Since taking over the café, I had not given one solitary soul food poisoning. Someone dying after allegedly eating my brownies didn’t count.

  As always, Bruce and Maryann took up positions on either side of Dorothy, each looping an arm through hers.

  “Sweetheart!” Maryann gushed, shining a bright smile my way. “It’s so good to see you!”

  “And you two are giving it another go,” Bruce said. He was absolutely beaming with pride. “I knew you two would work it out!”

  “Wait. What? Giving it another go… with Dan?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my new customer lean over and whisper something into Agatha’s ear. The look of revulsion that came over her had me ready to come across the counter to send the newcomer on his way. But, as always, Agatha had the situation in hand. She simply picked up the bowl of oily, wet noodles and dumped them in the new customer’s lap.

  “Hey!” he said, jumping up. Soggy noodles slopped off of him and onto the floor, leaving a big grease slick all over the front of his khaki pants. “What you gotta go and do that for? I was just being friendly!”

  That was my cue. “Go be friendly somewhere else… to someone else.”

  A small gasp drew my attention back to Maryann. She looked as though she’d just seen a big, brown, bumpy unidentifiable object float by in the swimming pool. With my attention back on her, she quickly regrouped, and soon her happy smile was back in full force.

  “I can see you’re busy, dear.”

  High five to my unwanted, newest customer! I’d be willing to give him a take-out container of all the pasta he could eat for saving me from my in-laws. Ex. Ex-in-laws. I really had to get better about remembering the ex.

  Dorothy, Bruce and Maryann shuffled out of the café just feet ahead of Agatha’s rebuked admirer as he stormed out the door.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Agatha.

  “Honey, I’m just fine. Clear communication is the cornerstone of all meaningful interactions in life. Now… where’s that glass of milk?”

  Agatha. My hero.

  Maybe I could use that wet noodle trick on Dan.

  Chapter 3

  “Why are we out here again?”

  Zoey had driven us out into the middle of nowhere. We’d taken Main Street out of town, then driven forty-five minutes on curving, turning paved roads, and then another twenty minutes on a series of gravel roads. We were now standing in the middle of a wet and soggy field surrounded by forest.

  A recent winter storm—the only one since I’d moved to Camden Falls—had left the ground covered in five inches of snow, yet it had almost already melted away. The day after it had fallen, the weather turned inviting and warm, just as it was now. The air was crisp, and the sun as gloriously as any spring day’s sun could ever be. Winter had given way so fast to the coming season that it made my aglio e olio fiasco feel like ancient history. In truth, it had only been seven days.

  But that was the only thing that had changed. Brenda still hadn’t come back to work, and I had made my special version of PB&J the café’s main dish on no less than three days.

  I was a pony in desperate need of a new trick.

  “I really should be getting back at the café,” I said.

  But instead of heading for the car, Zoey planted herself in front of me. “You’re my friend,” she said.

  That was very comforting to know. I suspected Zoey’s enemies rarely fared well. She had a way with a computer. She could make it dance and sing and empty your bank account into a not-for-profit charity, its contents never to be seen again.

  “You’re my friend, too,” I said. I hoped she wasn’t going to pull out a knife next and demand that we cut our pinkies and become blood sisters.

  “I heard about your little incident in the kitchen last week.”

  “The pasta? Yeah, the pasta was horrible.”

  “No. You screamed.”

  I had to think a moment. “Oh! Well… see, there was this fireball…”

  “Agatha said she’d thought that somebody could have been killing you—”

  That was true. She had said that.

  “—but that she hadn’t done anything because she hadn’t been sure that someone was killing you.”

  Again, true.

  “I need for people to be sure when someone’s killing you. I need for you to learn how to scream.”

  I thought back to Agatha’s noodles-in-the-lap moment with her unwanted suitor. She had certainly been very successful in communicating her desires clearly to him. But a girl didn’t always have a bowl of wet, oily noodles on hand when wanting to chase someone away.

  I guessed Zoey was right. If I wanted to be safe, I needed to use all the tools in my arsenal, and one of my best was my voice.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’m in. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to scream.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Feeling foolish and awkward, I did as Zoey bid. I opened my mouth and let loose with a holler. She didn’t look impressed.

  “What was that?”

  “It was a scream.”

  “That wasn’t a scream. That was a muskrat gargling. Do it again.”

  I scowled at her, but I was still willing to give this an honest go. Even if no one ever tried to kill me again, having the ability to scream for help could have many useful purposes. I might need help catching a mouse in the café’s kitchen. Not that it had mice. It didn’t. But if it did, they had a way of multiplying. I’d be overrun in no time and I’d get shut down.

  My mind filled with the image of the café’s kitchen turned into a giant playground for mice. Mice diving into soups. Mice falling from the ceilings. Mice having mice weddings in the cupboards.

  Zoey snapped her fingers. “Focus.”

  “Right,” I said, shaking my head. “You want me to scream.”

  “Yep.”

  I sucked in a breath, balled my fists, and released the loudest scream I could muster.

  “That was weak,” Zoey said. “You need to do better.”

  “Better?” My voice was already hoarse from the two tries she hadn’t liked. “How?”

  “Pace a bit. Get yourself worked up. Get mad. Get emotional. Then, let it out.”

  “Get emotional. Okay, I can do that.”

  I started to pace, back and forth across the forest-enclosed field. I thought about the night I learned that my ex-husband was cheating on me. And then I remembered the moment that I realized that he hadn’t cheated only once, he’d cheated throughout our entire marriage.

  I remembered when he cut me off from the bank account that had been in his name, leaving me with nothing to get by on.

  I remembered “our” friends refusing to take any of my phone calls, only to find out later that he’d poisoned the well against me by telling them lies about how awful I was and the horrible things I’d said about them and done.

  I remembered having to sleep one night under some bushes in the park before I figured out how, from whom, and where to ask for help.

  A growl made its way out of me. My nails bit into my palms.

  I yelled.

  “Again!” Zoey barked.

  I paced faster, harder. I stomped the slushy ground with my feet.

  I yelled.

  “That’s better. Again!”

  I turned blindly in a circle. I shook my fists in the air. And then I stopped…

  I screamed.

  “That’s it! Now back here. I’ll teach you how to groin kick.”

  But I stayed where I was, frozen. And the scream kept coming. It tore out of me until my lungs burned and I was ready to fall to my knees.

  Finally, I sucked in air. I found my words. I communicated. “A hand! It’s a severed hand!”

  I turned and looked at Zoey.

  She looked at me. “Again, Kylie? Really? Couldn’t you at least wait a month?”

&nbs
p; “This is not my fault!” I said, pointing a finger at the armless hand.

  “Mmmhmmm.”

  “Zoey!”

  “Just sayin’…”

  Chapter 4

  I wiped down the same spot of the café’s grill counter for what felt like the thousandth time. I couldn’t think straight. I’d try to hold a thought but it would slip away; it was like trying to catch a moth that was always just out of reach.

  Zoey and I had had to leave the spot where we’d found the severed hand in order to get back to somewhere with a cell phone signal. The further you got out into the countryside, the weaker cell phone signals became, and we’d been pretty far out into the countryside.

  Then we’d had to wait next to the road and signal the parade of police cars where the turn was before leading them to the field where I’d been getting my screaming lesson. Once we reached the field, we weren’t allowed to get out of Zoey’s car. Instead, we sat, waited and watched as a line of plastic-suit wearing policemen marked forward in a shoulder-to-shoulder line. Finally, a call rang out, all the cops stopped, and then an officer walked over to Zoey’s car and instructed us to go back to town… but not leave town.

  Once I got back to the café, I had to get to work. Me seeing a severed hand out in the middle of nowhere didn’t stop the fact that I had paying customers who wanted food.

  I’d tried to make spaghetti. God knew I’d watched Brenda make it enough times. I was confident that I’d figure it out, but as soon as I opened up that jar of chunky tomato sauce, I was done for. I couldn’t do that. The pale, tangled noodles had been hard enough to look at after seeing that poor hand.

  What was I thinking… that poor hand… that poor person!