Mummified Meringues (3 page)

“Bad dog,” Lexy admonished Sprinkles half-heartedly. She had to admit she didn’t feel all that bad that the dog had gotten Davies all riled up. But her joy in angering Davies was short-lived when she noticed something was wrong with Sprinkles. The dog held her head down and emitted a muted bark through clenched teeth.

“What’s the matter, Sprinks?” Lexy bent down to get a closer look.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know. She’s acting kind of funny.” Lexy looked up at Jack with worried eyes. “I hope she didn’t catch some kind of mummy disease down there.”

Sprinkles whined and wagged her tail, then spit something out on the floor.

“What’s this?” Lexy picked up the small, dirty white piece of paper.
 

“Looks like a receipt,” Jack said.

Lexy frowned at the light purple print. It was barely legible, but she could make out the name at the top. “It’s from
The Elms Pub.
”

“The bar down the street?” Jack asked, referring to the neighborhood bar a couple of streets over. It was named after the section of town they lived in which had been dubbed “The Elms” because of the large elm trees that lined the streets. The bar had been there for decades. Lexy always thought of it as the unofficial marker where the suburban neighborhood met the more commercial section of town.

“Yes, and judging by the prices, it looks pretty old.” Lexy looked up at him. “Do you think we should give it to Davies?”

Jack shrugged. “Why? I’m sure Davies wouldn’t let Sprinkles near that room, so it has nothing to do with the mummy. Sprinkles could have snagged that from any part of the basement.”

“True. That place was pretty full.”

“Woof!” Sprinkles wagged her tail and looked at Lexy. Forgetting about the receipt, Lexy went back to inspecting the dog, a feeling of relief spreading over her when she realized Sprinkles seemed fine.

“I don’t even know how Sprinkles got in there, but I’m going to make sure she stays locked in here with us. I don’t want her getting into anything more serious than an old receipt over there.” Lexy gave the dog one final pat and stood holding the receipt up to Jack. “If you don’t think this is a clue or anything important, I guess I’ll just toss it out.”

Jack nodded and turned his attention back out the window. “I just hope Davies knows what to do with the real clues if she finds them.”

Lexy’s heart twisted at the concerned look in Jack’s eye.

“I’m sorry you can’t investigate,” she said, rubbing his back to soothe him.

Jack sighed. “Yeah, I hate that. I mean, Davies is okay, but I certainly don’t want to turn something as important as this over to her.”

“You don’t think she really thinks you did it, do you?”

“Nah. It’s logical that I would be the prime suspect now. The homeowner is exactly who I would suspect. I just hope she doesn’t screw up or take too long to investigate because it could hold up the sale of the house.”

“Oh.” Lexy nervously nibbled one of the cookies she’d rescued when Davies had kicked them out of the house. She was counting on the house sale to go through soon. She needed the money to pay back her parents who were traveling the country in an RV after selling their home. Though her parents hadn’t asked her to speed up the payments, she knew the RV needed repairs and she didn’t want her parents to break down on the road—especially since she knew they couldn’t afford to fix it because
she
owed them money.

“So, what are you going to do?” she asked.

“Oh, I can still investigate. I just might need a little help.” Jack smiled at her and slid his arm around her shoulder. “Lucky thing I have my own amateur sleuth and her grandmother who I’m sure will be willing to check things out for me.”

Lexy’s lips curled in a smile. Usually, Jack got mad when she tried to investigate murders, but the last couple of times he’d seemed a lot more laid back about it. And now he was giving her permission to go digging around in the investigation.
 

She bubbled with excitement, then felt a tug of uncertainty. She was getting almost as bad as Nans when it came to wanting to explore crimes, and this was a big responsibility considering Jack was the primary suspect. Jack was putting his trust in her.

What if she screwed up?

“So, what do you say? Are you with me?” Jack’s question pulled her out of her thoughts.

“Of course!” Lexy shook off her feelings of self-doubt. She could do this, especially with the help of her grandmother. Nans and her three friends, Ruth, Ida and Helen, were experienced amateur sleuths with a good track record. They’d solved several crimes and had worked with the police on a few cases. They were highly respected and even had a name for themselves,
The Ladies’ Detective Club
. People had even started to seek their counsel as private investigators. If anyone could figure out who put the mummy in Jack’s basement, it was Nans and the ladies.

“I’ll call Nans and get her working on this right away. I know she’ll want in on this.” Lexy grabbed her phone off the kitchen table and dialed.

“Lexy, dear, how are you?”
 

“Great! I have some exciting news.”

There was a moment of silence and then Nans ventured, “You’re pregnant?”

Lexy scrunched her face up. “No, something even better. There’s been a murder and we need to help Jack investigate it.”

“Oh, really?” Nans voice was infused with interest. “The ladies didn’t mention any new murders.” Nans, Ruth Ida and Helen always seemed to know when there was a new crime of interest in town.

“That’s because it just happened … well, sort of.” Lexy told her how they had discovered the mummy when cleaning out Jack’s basement. “Isn’t that great?”

Silence crackled in Lexy’s ear. She held the phone out and looked at the display. Still connected. “Nans?”

“Sorry, dear,” Nans said. “You were breaking up. Did you say something about your mother? I know she’s been having trouble with the RV.”

Lexy’s stomach twisted—another reason for her to find the killer and close the case so the house could be sold. “No. I said we found a mummified body sealed up in Jack’s basement.”

“Sorry …
crackle crackle
… nection … bad. We’ll have to talk tomorrow. I’m running out for the night and will be busy until tomorrow afternoon …
crackle
…
crackle
.”

And then the line went dead.

“What was that all about? Is she going to help?” Jack asked.

 
“Yeah, I guess so. I think we just had a bad connection so I’m not sure she heard what I was saying.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure she’ll want to help. I can’t picture her not wanting to investigate a juicy crime that happened right in her backyard.”

“Right. Of course, she will. I’ll fill her in tomorrow when we have a better connection.” Lexy stared at the phone in her hand. Nans must not have been able to hear what she was saying, otherwise she was sure the older woman would have ditched all her plans and come straight over. But Nans had put her off until tomorrow afternoon.
 

The connection
must
have been bad—Lexy had even heard the crackling … except the crackling seemed oddly familiar. It sounded just like the ‘crackling’ that sometimes happened when Lexy wanted to cut the phone conversations with her mother short. The ones she manufactured by crinkling candy bar wrappers next to the phone and dropping words on purpose.

Lexy never realized how much that sounded like real static because the static on the phone call with Nans must have been real. Otherwise, that would mean that Nans was using the same trick Lexy used … and why would Nans want to crinkle candy bar wrappers to fake a bad connection?

***

“I don’t know why Nans isn’t answering.” Lexy frowned at her phone, then slipped it into the pocket of her vintage, rose pattern apron.

“Maybe she’s just busy,” her bakery assistant, Cassie, said without looking up from her task of frosting a three-tier wedding cake they’d been commissioned to bake for a local wedding. Lexy sighed, watching Cassie’s pink-tipped, blonde, spiked hair bob up and down with her efforts. The two girls had been best friends since high school and Nans was like a second grandmother to Cassie. She was probably right—Nans
did
have quite an active social life.
 

Looking around the kitchen of
The Cup and Cake
from her spot in the doorway, Lexy felt a swell of pride. The stainless steel appliances gleamed, the floors and counters were scrubbed clean and the air was spiced with the sweet smell of baking. It was her dream come true, thanks to her parents. They had loaned her a large sum of money to open the bakery when they’d sold their home and bought an RV to fulfill
their
dream of traveling the country.
 

Lexy’s swell of pride deflated into a gnawing of uneasiness as she remembered what Nans had said on the phone the night before. Her parents had been having trouble with the RV. They hadn’t mentioned anything to her, but of course they wouldn’t, because they wouldn’t want her to worry. This made it even more important for her to get cracking on this case, so they could put Jack’s house up for sale. Her parents had given her the ability to live out her dream and she didn’t want
their
dream to suffer because they needed RV repairs. She had to pay them back right away, which meant she’d have to start investigating today, whether Nans wanted to help or not.

But first, she needed to try a variation of her meringue recipe. She glanced out at the front of the shop. The cafe tables set up next to the large window were all empty, giving her a clear view to the waterfall across the street. The morning coffee crowd was gone and the lunch-timers hadn’t straggled in yet. She and Cassie usually used this time to bake, each girl taking turns to wait on any customers who wandered in.
 

Lexy caught a whiff of fresh-brewed coffee from the self-serve coffee stations as she turned her attention back to the kitchen. A pile of ingredients waited for her on the six-foot long butcher-block island that ran down the middle of the room.
 

The bells over the front door would alert them if a customer came in, so she made her way to the table and grabbed four eggs from the basket where she’d placed them hours ago so they could acclimate to room temperature.
 

“It’s strange that Nans isn’t jumping all over this. She must have heard about it through the grapevine by now, even if she didn’t understand my call last night,” Lexy said as she cracked the eggs, expertly separating the whites from the yolks. “Did John mention anything to you about it?”

Lexy often relied on Cassie to give her the scoop on various cases she was interested in because Jack was incredibly tight-lipped about police business. Luckily, Jack’s partner, John Darling, wasn’t as tight-lipped and, since he was married to Cassie, Lexy easily found out about the goings on down at the Brook Ridge Falls Police Department.

Cassie rolled her eyes. “He said Davies is acting like she found Jimmy Hoffa.”

“Jeez, I hope she doesn’t screw things up. She told Jack he was a suspect!”

“I know.” Cassie stuck a tiny silver ball into the center of a flower on the cake. “John said that was just standard procedure. He’s sure Jack will be cleared once they sift through the clues.”

Lexy added salt, cream of tartar and a little vanilla extract to the egg whites, set the hand mixer inside the bowl and turned it on.

“Anyway, I’m stopping over at Nans after I get this new recipe in the oven. Will you watch the shop for me?” Lexy yelled over the sound of the beater.

“Of course.” Cassie glanced up from her work. “So, tell me, what does a mummy look like, exactly, and how does a body get that way?”

“Brown and leathery … I was surprised, but it really did look a lot like an old Egyptian mummy. I guess that’s what happens when a body is sealed up with not a lot of air circulation.”

“You’d think it would have smelled all this time.”

“It probably did at first.” Lexy turned off the beater and stuck a spoon into the egg white mixture, pulled it out slowly and watched the resulting peak carefully. It stood straight up. Perfect. She checked her recipe notes, which she’d adjusted to use a pinch more sugar than the ones she’d made the day before. She measured the sugar into a cup. “Jack said it would be long past smelling by now.”

“It must have smelled at first, though … you’d think the neighbors would have noticed.”

Lexy poured a little of the sugar into the egg mixture and turned the beater on again. “Jack said he thought it might have been the builder that hid the body. I mean, I can’t imagine the nice couple that lived in his house being involved. I think all those houses were built around the same time, so there were probably no neighbors to notice the smell.”

“I guess that makes sense. It must have been scary finding that in the basement and then realizing it had been there the whole time. Was there anything else in there with the body?”

Lexy added a little more sugar and turned on the beater. “Just the clothes and the sachets.”

“Sachets?”

“Yeah, you know those little perfumed pouches you put in your drawers? These still smelled like lavender. I guess they never lose their smell, even after being sealed up with a mummy.”