Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse (A Cape Bay Cafe Mystery Book 1) (9 page)

I
didn’t pursue
the investigation much more that weekend. I needed to think about how I was going to handle the next step. Since this Karl Richards fellow was new in town, I couldn’t rely on my prior knowledge as I had with Mary Ellen. I’d have to do some genuine sleuthing this time. I knew where he worked, but the store was closed on the weekends, so I couldn’t go over and poke around until Monday. Monday was when I would see Sammy again and could bring up Karl without seeming overly curious. Matt was the only one who knew I was investigating his father’s death, and it seemed best that I keep it that way, at least for the time being. So I lay low.

Matt and I went back to our respective houses after we left the beach on Saturday. Finding the owner of the phone number his dad had been calling had been our only purpose for getting together. It wasn’t as if we were dating or doing anything that required spending much time together. And I was absolutely not going to let him pay for a third meal in a row, so not eating together was an easy way to avoid that debate. I spent the rest of Saturday and most of the day Sunday going through my grandparents’ things in an effort to start my revamp of the house.

I started in their bedroom partly because that was the room I wanted to move into and partly because they’d been gone long enough that I didn’t think it would be as painful to sort out their belongings as it would be my mother’s. It was one thing to go into her room to borrow a shirt or some shoes, but to decide which items to throw out or donate to charity? That seemed nearly impossible. Her room still smelled like her. Most of her life had been spent sleeping in that bed and spraying her perfume between those walls. There was even still a stain on the carpet from where she’d spilled nail polish as a teenager. I had every intention of going through her room eventually, but for now, it seemed unbearable.

I started out with the plan to keep one box each of my grandmother’s and grandfather’s possessions, but as soon as I ran into joint belongings, like the sampler my grandmother had stitched with their names and wedding date, I decided on three boxes—one for her, one for him, and one for them together. Then I made a separate box for items I might want to use to decorate. I’d already decided that I’d never want to or be able to stop feeling their presence and that of my mother in the house, so I wanted to fill a whole wall in the living room with mementos—pictures, samplers, shelves with some particular favorite trinkets. My four-box system resulted in me keeping a bit more than I had planned, but my Donate and Trash piles were substantial enough that I didn’t judge myself too harshly.

Monday rolled around, and I headed into the café for my shift, reminding myself that I needed to find a way to casually bring Karl Richards up to Sammy before she left. I needed to do it in a way that didn’t seem too suspicious. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and not too hot, so the café wasn’t very busy. During the summer, rainy days mid- to late-week were the ones that got us really busy. By then, each week’s tourists had gotten comfortable enough with the town to know where they could go to escape the weather and their families at the same time.

“Hey! How was your weekend?” Sammy asked brightly as I came in.

“Pretty good, and yours?”

“It was good. My sister was in town with her kids, so I mostly hung out with them. Compared to where they live, this is the big city, so they had a pretty good time just wandering around town.”

“I bet!” I laughed. Sammy’s sister lived in the back woods of Maine with her lumberjack husband and their two kids. I couldn’t imagine being that far away and out of touch with civilization.

Sammy and I worked for the next hour or so. I kept on the lookout for opportunities to ask her about Karl Richards, but we were both working pretty steadily, and I didn’t get the chance until she was almost ready to leave. The café was quiet. No one was waiting for a drink, all the dishes had been washed, and all the counters were wiped down. Sammy was in the backroom folding some dish rags, so I walked in the back and helped her fold.

“Hey, do you know a guy named Karl Richards?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as I could. “I think he’s new in town? I was talking to Mary Ellen over at the souvenir shop the other day, and she mentioned she was dating him. She said he comes in here sometimes, but I couldn’t place him, so I thought I’d ask you.” A little white lie surely couldn’t hurt.

“Karl Richards,” she repeated thoughtfully. “I think he works at the electronics shop, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, Mary Ellen mentioned something about that.”

“I think he’s been in here once or twice. Older guy, kind of nice-looking actually. He looks like he’d be the distinguished older agent in some spy thriller or something. That’s about all I know about him. He doesn’t say too much, kind of keeps to himself. That’s probably why I think he looks like a spy.” She giggled as she said it.

I folded some more towels. Quiet and nice-looking wasn’t much to go on.

“Oh!” Sammy said after a minute. “He plays chess in the park a lot! I’ve seen him there on my way home from work.”

That was something I could work with. My chess skills were rusty, but I’d be able to talk to him longer and get a better feel for the man from across the chess table than by trying to chat him up at work.

Sammy and I finished folding the towels, and she headed out for the day. The café stayed medium busy the rest of the day, enough so that I stayed on the move but didn’t feel frantic or fall behind on keeping things neat. As I walked home that night after closing up, I noticed that it was already getting dark. It always seems unfair that the summer equinox is in June, when the summer months are only just starting. By the end of the summer, it would be dark out long before I closed the café for the night.

That night, as I continued going through my grandparents’ things—there was a lot stuffed in that little bedroom!—I came up with my plan for how I would talk to Karl. In the back of my grandfather’s closet was an old radio that hadn’t worked for as long as I could remember. In the morning, I’d take that over to the electronics shop and talk to them about getting it fixed. Hopefully I’d run into Karl there and get a look at him. Then, later on, I’d just happen to run into him at the park and try to get myself into a game of chess with him. That would give me plenty of time to get him talking and ever-so-casually bring up Mr. Cardosi. With any luck, he’d slip up and give me some information I could use. It wasn’t a foolproof plan—lots of hoping and trying and lucking into things—but it seemed as though it had a decent chance of working. I put the radio by the front door, set my alarm for earlier than I would have liked, and went to bed.

The next morning, bright and early, I headed over to the electronics shop, ancient radio in hand. The door announced my presence with the customary jingle, but no one came out to greet me. I walked in and rested my grandfather’s radio on the counter while I waited. After a couple of minutes with no sign of life from the back, I leaned across the counter and looked around. I saw a bell tucked behind the register where it was virtually impossible for a customer to find it. I pulled it around toward me and tapped it rapidly three times.

From the back, I heard old men’s voices, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I could tell there were two of them though. I was getting ready to tap the bell again when an older man came out of the back. He had a thick shock of white hair carefully combed back, and he was wearing a neat black shirt tucked into his khaki pants. I noticed with pleasure that he was wearing a name tag with “Karl” printed on it. Sammy was right—he was pretty nice-looking for an older guy.

“Can I help you?” he asked. He didn’t sound as though he particularly wanted to help me, but he didn’t sound quite hostile about it either. It was the most neutral, perfunctory tone I could imagine. Certainly not the warm, inviting style of greeting my grandfather had drilled into me.

I smiled my biggest, friendliest smile. “Hi, um, Karl, is it?” I pretended I was just now reading his name tag. I thought I saw him give a brief nod, but it was clear that was all I would get. “I’m Francesca Amaro. I run Antonia’s Italian Café down the way.” I stuck out my hand.

He took it reluctantly and gave it one hesitant shake before letting go.

“Karl, my late grandfather—” I paused for effect, hoping my grandfather wouldn’t mind too much my invoking his memory this way. “Had this old radio in the back of his closet. For the life of me, I can’t get it to work, but I have such fond memories of listening to Red Sox games on it with him that I’d love to get it working again. Do you think you can help me?” I was banking on Karl not having relocated to Cape Bay from New York or some other rival baseball team’s territory. The one sentence he had uttered didn’t sound particularly “Noo Yawk-y,” so I thought I was safe.

He pulled the radio toward him and popped open the empty battery compartment. After closing it back up, he plugged the cord in under the counter. He punched a few buttons. As expected, nothing happened.

“We’ll take a look.” He scrawled out a ticket and handed it to me. He scribbled some more on another piece of paper and taped it onto the radio. He picked it up and turned to walk into the back.

Was that how they treated their customers?

“How much will it be?” I asked.

“Won’t know until we figure out what’s wrong,” he said.

“Well, how will you contact me to let me know?”

“You said you work at Antonia’s, right?”

“I own it, yes.”

“We’ll call you there,” he said, not unkindly but not exactly warmly either.

I opened my mouth to say something else, but I couldn’t quite figure out what that should be. “Well, thank you!” I gave him a big smile. If he couldn’t be polite, at least I could be. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you!”

He nodded and disappeared into the back. Mary Ellen certainly had unusual taste in men. For such an exuberant woman, she seemed to like her men quiet and a little grumpy.

There was nothing else I could do there, so I took myself for a walk. Sammy had said that she often saw Karl playing chess at the park in the early afternoons. I wasn’t sure what time he usually got there, but I guessed it might be after lunch, when I was supposed to be working. I pulled out my cell phone and called the café. Sammy answered on the second ring.

“Antonia’s Italian Café, this is Samantha. How may I help you?” she singsonged.

“Hey, Sammy, it’s Fran.”

“Oh hey!” she said, much less formally. “What’s up?”

“Do you think you could get somebody to cover for me if I took today off?”

Sammy only paused for a second. “Yeah, I’ll call Rhonda and see if she can come in.”

Rhonda was a little older than me, and she worked for us a few hours a week, mostly during the school year when her kids were out of the house. They were old enough now that she didn’t have to be home with them all the time, but she still liked to keep an eye on them when she could.

“Okay, that’s great,” I said. “Tell her I’ll put a little extra in her paycheck for the short notice.”

“Oh, you know that’ll get her in!” Sammy laughed.

I knew it would. Rhonda mainly worked to fund her occasional trips to Neiman Marcus. A couple hours’ work at the café didn’t go very far there, but I think she liked being able to buy something from the makeup counter and walk out with a Neiman Marcus bag for everyone to see.

I thanked Sammy and hung up, leaving myself a few hours to wander around town. It was actually fun. Thinking about that furry friend I wanted to get, I walked to the animal shelter across from the police station. I thought about popping in to see if Mike had made any progress on Mr. Cardosi’s case, but I figured he didn’t need to be bothered, and I didn’t have any solid leads of my own yet that I wanted to share.

I walked into the animal shelter and smiled at the girl behind the desk.

“Hello!” I said. “I was wondering if you had any adoptable pets I could look at?”

“Of course!” she replied. “Are you looking for a dog or a cat?”

“I’m not sure yet.” I shrugged. “I like both. It just depends on who I fall in love with.”

“Not a problem. Everyone’s through there,” she said, gesturing to a door behind her. “Dogs are on the right, and cats are on the left. Let me know if you have any questions about any of the animals or if you find someone you want to adopt!” She was an exceptionally chipper young woman.

I went into the cat room first. It was much nicer than I remembered. About five kitties shared two large spaces with scratching posts and places to climb and even a few toys. I stopped at each enclosure. They were adorable, but none of them really called out to me.

I went over to the dog space next. It was also much fancier than it had been. That was actually nice to see. I always felt bad for dogs locked in cages that seemed both sterile and filthy at the same time. If the dogs had still been kept that way, I might have adopted them all just out of pity. They all seemed comfortable and happy, but none of them quite made me feel like they were My Dog.

I walked back out into the lobby.

“Find anybody you liked?” she asked.

“No, not today,” I said, shaking my head. “But I’ll be back.”

“That’s great!” she replied. “We’ll look forward to seeing you!”

I walked outside. I was near the park, so I walked in that direction. I could see the chess tables from the road, so I would be able to see if Karl was there without seeming as though I was spying or lurking. Only two men were sitting at the tables, and neither one was Karl. I would have to wait to see if he’d show up later.

It was still on the early side, so I ate beach food and strolled around some streets I hadn’t been on since my return. I went past my old best friend’s house—her family had moved to California when we were in high school. We’d exchanged letters then emails on and off ever since. The new owners had repainted the house and completely changed the front garden, so I had to look at the house number to make sure I was looking at the right place. It reminded me that I should email her—I hadn’t told her about my mother’s death yet, let alone Mr. Cardosi’s. She had also played with Matt when we were kids, and she still asked about him every once in a while.