A Berry Murderous Kitten_A Laugh-Out-Loud Kylie Berry Mystery Read online

  “What do you think of Max?” I asked.

  The bridge of Agatha’s nose crinkled like she was smelling something bad. “He’s a showboat. A magician. He’s all sleight of hand. Look here while I do this over there. He distracts, then he manipulates.” She shrugged. “I suppose that’s part of what makes him such a good sports agent. He knows people, and he’s very observant.”

  I shuffled my weight from one foot to the other. I didn’t want to ask my next question, but I needed to. “You think he’s trying to manipulate Zoey by coming back into her life?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think he does anything that doesn’t serve his purposes first and foremost.”

  Chapter 9

  Sorry I missed lunch yesterday. I meant to be here,” Brad said, taking off his hat and setting it on the stool next to him as he sat down. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “A butter toasted bagel topped with a sunny side up egg.”

  “You ever think of serving cereal? Hard to mess up cereal. Can be healthy, too.”

  “You mean the type of cereal that tastes like cardboard or the kind that’s like chewing gravel?”

  “The gravel stuff can be softened if you pour warm milk over it, and the cardboard stuff can be sweetened with some fresh berries and honey.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Despite yesterday’s conversation and the overpowering rage that followed, Brad had me smiling. I fixed him a split butter toasted bagel and eggs while he made a pot of coffee.

  Without a barbed word or an angry glare between us, Brad finished his breakfast and was out the door at the same time that Max walked in. My happy mood turned immediately dour. He took a seat at the grill’s bar, and my space felt violated. I was so used to only my regulars sitting at the bar. Without realizing it, it had become an extension of my personal space.

  “Can I get you some breakfast?”

  “Sure. I’ll have pancakes and sausage.”

  “Sorry.” I pointed to the Oops board. It contained a description of the breakfast I’d given Brad. “I’m still learning, so I only offer one or two types of dishes at a time.”

  “Oh, sure! Bring it on. Whatever works for you.”

  I poured him a cup of coffee, set out the chilled cream and sugar cubes, and then made him breakfast. Putting it before him, I admired the eggs. I’d gotten them almost right. As for the bagel halves, they were what I’d call well-done with a touch of char.

  Using a fork and knife, Max sawed his way through the egg-topped bagel and then took a bite. His eyes opened wide. “This is better than I was expecting. You wouldn’t believe how few places use real butter. I’ve eaten at diners from coast to coast. Real butter, real ingredients, always make a difference.”

  I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. Max’s compliment felt so genuine, so honest. I liked him. The guy sitting in front of me didn’t feel like the same guy I’d talked to yesterday.

  “Heard from Zoey?” he asked.

  “No, ‘fraid not.” It wasn’t even a lie.

  Max shrugged. “She needs time. I get that. I made her wait. It’s only fair that it’s my turn to wait.” He ate every bite of his breakfast, and did so without complaint. “You mind if I meet with a client here in about an hour?”

  “Is it anything that would disturb the other customers?”

  “No, we’d just be talking business at one of the tables.”

  “That sounds fine.” Opportunity to expose yet another person to my café. Win-win. “Say, did you know Cam?”

  “Who?”

  “Cam, the guy who was killed and left outside my café a couple of nights back.”

  Max snapped his fingers. “Was he a waiter at some restaurant?”

  “Bouche.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’d met him a few times. Great guy. Nice guy. Real shame.”

  I wanted to frown at Max’s description, but I fought to maintain my poker face. Everyone else I’d heard speak about Cam had had nothing good to say about him. But maybe Cam had appreciated a man’s man, and had treated him with something other than outright disdain. Max was one of those people who others instinctively wanted to be liked by. He was charismatic and handsome. One of the cool kids in school. Maybe Cam had been different around him… or maybe Max was lying. I needed to know which.

  Before I managed to come up with the perfect reply to say to ferret out the truth, Max excused himself from the grill’s bar and sat down at the same table I’d seen him sit at the day before. He pulled out his phone and studied while absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck.

  It was time to figure out what to serve for lunch. I headed into the pantry, stood, and stared. My other waiter, Sam, had the floor today and Melanie was due in before lunch. I’d have plenty of help, so there was no reason for me to pick a lunch option that allowed me to work both the floor and the kitchen. The lunch could require more last-minute preparation time.

  Five minutes passed. Ten. My feet started to hurt, then my head. “How do other people do this?”

  “Kylie?” It was Joel’s voice.

  “Back here,” I called. I couldn’t put him to work through another lunch. He’d start avoiding the café and me. I didn’t want that. I liked him. His presence was like a lighthouse in a storm. I always felt safer and more secure with him near.

  He appeared in the pantry’s doorway and filled the entire space, from shoulder to shoulder and top to bottom. “What’cha doin’?”

  “Trying to figure out what to make for lunch.”

  He stepped inside, and suddenly there was barely room for the two of us. Together, we stood and stared.

  “How about we see what you have in the walk-in cooler?” Joel suggested.

  Standing in the cooler was much the same as standing in the pantry. There was barely room for the two of us, and we were once more standing and staring at all the options.

  “How are you with hamburger?”

  “I undercook it. A lot.”

  We stood and stared some more.

  “How about stuffed baked potatoes? Put more in the oven than you think you’ll need and use the leftovers to make something else tomorrow.”

  I could do that. I could use my phone to Google how to bake them. “What would I stuff them with?”

  Back to staring at the shelves.

  “Ground beef. You could brown the ground beef loose, like taco meat. That way you’d know for sure that you weren’t undercooking it. As it cooks, add in some diced onions. You got any canned chili?”

  I thought a moment. “I think I saw some frozen chili that Sarah must have made in the walk-in freezer.”

  “Ohhh,” Joel said with reverence. “She made a good chili. I’d add that in to the beef and onions. Then when somebody orders a loaded potato, you cut it open, put on some of the beef and chili mixture, and then top the whole thing off with shredded cheddar cheese. Ask them if they want a dollop of sour cream, too.” Joel was making my mouth water.

  “I think I can do that.” Little by little, my confidence was growing.

  Joel leaned down, kissed me on the cheek, and then called out that he’d be back in an hour and a half for lunch.

  I Googled. I baked. I singed off an inch of my hair.

  I made an appointment at the beauty salon on Brunt Street.

  I did everything that Joel had said to do, but I should have drained the fat from the browned ground beef. Despite that, lunch looked good. When I added it to the Oops board, I was bold. I marked it at almost the same price as what you could buy a burger for.

  For dessert, I listed lemon bar ice cream. It was vanilla ice cream with yesterday’s lemon bars folded in.

  People began trundling in. I was ecstatic. There were twenty-two heads. The plates were easy and fast to make. Proud of my creation, I delivered the dishes myself while Melanie and Sam put the plates together and readied a few chilled cups of ice cream so that they would be ready to go if anyone ordered one.

  True to his word, Joel returned for lunch, which
I gave him on the house with an extra-large serving of ice cream. He ate at the grill’s bar while I delivered plates to the diners scattered throughout the rest of the café.

  “You’re getting so much better at this!” exclaimed Fred Jerkins.

  “I agree. I was sure we’d be having spaghetti with meatballs again.” Sally, Fred’s wife, said, giving me a wink.

  I didn’t mind their teasing. They’d been good to me. They were members of Joel’s Saturday morning walking group, and they had faced down my ex-Aunt Dorothy when she had been at her worst. They had supported me when most people in town were turning their backs.

  “It’s so good to have you here again,” I said. The words but we want him to go to college reached my ears. They came from a woman sitting with Max and another man at the table next to the Jerkins. I assumed that the other man was the woman’s husband.

  “He’ll have plenty of time to go to college later,” Max said.

  “Our boy’s got the chance to go to college when nobody else in the family ever has. He’s going to be the first. We won’t let him give that up.”

  Mrs. Jenkins’ hand touched mine, and I refocused. “How have things been going? It looks like you have a decent crowd today.”

  It was true. The lunch crowd had been growing, but it made up the bulk of my customers for the day. I was lucky to get ten other people throughout the rest of the day. “Things have been improving. Slowly. Business is picking up.”

  “I am so glad to hear that.” She patted my hand. “I want to try this.” She took a bite of her potato, and I waited for her judgment, but my ear traveled once more to the table next to me.

  “I know that you’re good parents,” Max said. “Bryan is seventeen. He needs your help with this next big step. Don’t steal this opportunity from him. I know I don’t need to tell you how much resentment can build up in a person who feels that they’ve been cheated of the future they were meant to have by their parents, well-meaning or not.”

  Ohh, that was a low blow. I stared at the couple. They were looking at each other, their profiles turned toward me. Worry and uncertainty blanketed their faces. That’s when Max swooped in for the kill.

  “Sign here,” he said. “It will be the best thing you’ve ever done for your son. He wants this, and he’ll never forget how much you believed in him.”

  Max was playing every emotional chord that kid’s parent’s had. The kid wasn’t even here to put in his two cents worth. I was once again liking Max a little less.

  “This is delicious!” Fred’s voice pulled me back to the table I was standing in front of.

  “It is. And do I taste Sarah’s chili in there? She would never give that recipe to anyone. How did you get it out of her? And more importantly, will you share it with me?” Sally’s eyes were full of hope.

  Confession time. “I, uh, found some of her chili in the freezer.”

  “Oh poo,” Sally said, slumping back in her chair.

  “Sally’s tried to replicate Sarah’s chili no less than twenty times.”

  “Always a fail. I never get it right.”

  Note to self. Try to get Sarah’s chili recipe. If other’s liked it as well as Sally did, it could help to bring in more customers.

  With everyone fed, I escaped back to the grill’s bar.

  “Going well?” Joel asked.

  “Going great,” I answered honestly. “Do you by any chance know anything about Sarah’s chili?”

  “Only that she’d chew off her own arm before giving the recipe to anyone.”

  I bit the inside of my lip. There had to be a way. “Did you ever see her using a recipe book? Maybe one that she made up herself?”

  Joel thought a moment. “I did see her reference a little notepad sometimes, not very often.”

  My eyes scanned the counter on their own. I wondered if there was a chance that Sarah had left that notebook behind. She had packed up and left in such a hurry, after all.

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I checked it. A text from Zoey. My place. Fifteen minutes.

  I glanced in Max’s direction. He was still busy with his woe begotten clients. Holding the phone low in hopes that Max wouldn’t see what I was doing if he happened to look my way, I texted Zoey back. Can’t. Lunch rush.

  Zoey: Leave it with Melanie and Sam. Fifteen minutes. Don’t make me circulate your sophomore high school yearbook photo.

  With her hacking skills, I had no doubt that she’d managed to find it. She had me backed into a corner. I had no choice.

  Still, I smiled. I was going to get to investigate another murder.

  Chapter 10

  The moment my knuckles touched wood, Zoey yanked her apartment door open. She pulled me in then stuck her head back out into the hall, looking each way. She was behaving more “uniquely” than usual.

  “I didn’t see anyone when I came up the stairs,” I said.

  Zoey closed the door. Her glossy black hair was pulled back into a thick French braid. It was a very stealthy look compared to her usual wild, free-flowing mane. And her eyes didn’t sport the Cleopatra look tonight. They were more raccoon-light. Dressed from head to toe in dark colors, she looked like a cat burglar.

  “We doing some breaking and entering that I don’t know about? ‘Cause I’m not dressed for it.” I waved a hand at my ensemble of hip-hugging light blue pants with a tucked in white t-shirt. My princess-style coat was blood red, so at least it provided a little bit of camouflage. But given that it was daylight, I didn’t think any of that mattered.

  “Oh, the breaking and entering has already been done. Sit.” She waved at the chairs in front of her computer and her half-moon wall of computer screens.

  There was a high-backed chair that looked as though it would be at home on the bridge of a starship, then there was a low backed chair pushed to the side. I sat in the one that clearly wasn’t hers. No way was I going to claim being the captain of any trip she had planned.

  I got a good look at Zoey’s eyes when she sat down. They were bloodshot, and it didn’t look like it was because she’d been crying. “When’s the last time you slept?”

  She picked up a Red Bull and took a swig. “Recent enough. Now look at this.” Her fingers flew over her keyboard, and a file popped up. She clicked play. Every screen around me filled with the same image. It was at night. An empty sidewalk in front of buildings I didn’t recognize. There was a dark alleyway with a pile of garbage in the shadows.

  A man came into view. He was walking down the sidewalk. He was tall and lanky, and he wore a jacket. His hands were shoved into the jacket’s pockets. I leaned forward and stared at the largest, centermost screen. I was sure I was seeing Cam. Alive.

  “When was this? Does Cam have a brother or something? Was the wrong person IDed as being dead in front of the café?”

  Cam reached the end of one building and stepped off the curb onto the alley’s entryway. He got halfway across when the pile of garbage stacked behind him grew. It got taller, more defined, and then it struck out with shadowed arms to hook around Cam’s neck and drag him into the deeper darkness against the building.

  I screamed and sat back in my chair with my hand over my mouth. Tears flooded my eyes as I watched Cam’s feet kick into the subdued light past the shadows. They lost their sense of direction, then they lost their force. Then they stopped moving.

  “Oh my God, oh my God.” My hands flailed in the air. “Did we just see what I think we just saw? Was that Cam being murdered? Oh my God.” The image was frozen on Cam’s lifeless legs until Zoey minimized the screen. A puppy sniffing a daisy took its place.

  I felt as though my eyes were going to pop out of my head and I had both my hands clamped over my mouth. Zoey was watching me, worried.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I nodded, but my eyes stayed bulged and my hands stayed clamped over my mouth.

  “Breathe,” Zoey directed. “You’re not breathing. You’ll feel better once you breathe. Breathe deep.” She demon
strated, and I breathed with her. As promised, I felt better.

  I jabbed my finger at the screens. “That was Cam being killed.”

  “I know.”

  “Who did that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you do that?”

  Zoey didn’t look offended. Instead she brought up a still shot of the shadow creature standing against the building. She clicked some buttons and a small window with image contrast controls appeared. She made adjustments, and the building itself gained better definition even as its color became distorted.

  “This is a brick building,” Zoey said. “I’ve done some research, and the height of each of these bricks is a little over two and a half inches. The mortar between the bricks is four-tenths of an inch. Together, each brick represents almost three inches in height. This figure,” she pointed her finger at the screen, “this person, is at least twenty-two bricks in height. They are at least five feet six inches tall. I’m barely five foot one.”

  My gaze dropped to her shoes. She had on a pair of rugged, army-issue looking boots, except that these boots had platform soles and no less than a four-inch heel.

  Zoey followed my gaze and tucked her feet out of sight under her chair. “Kylie, look at me.” I did. “I didn’t do this. I don’t have the strength and I’m too light. Cam never got his feet back under him. If it had been me, he would have been able to stand up and pick me up with him. It wasn’t me.”

  I looked at the image. I studied it. The shadow was blurry, but wide. It was substantial; Zoey wasn’t substantial. She was wiry, a person who could crawl through a pet door. She wasn’t a person who could have easily achieved what I’d just seen on that video, but from what little I’d been able to see, the only person in the video struggling had been poor Cam, not his murderer. And yes, I said “poor” Cam. As vile as he’d been around me in life, seeing his death made it impossible for me to think of him in any way other than a victim.

  I looked at Zoey. I was ready to believe her. I knew that it was unfair of me to want any proof at all. She’d asked me for none, and she’d been unable to find any proof of my innocence herself. Yet she had stood by my side. “Okay. Whatever you need. Let’s get this guy.”