Murder at the Blue Plate Café (A Blue Plate Café Mystery) (18 page)

Next morning as I went toward the back door of the café, I glanced toward the nursery. It wasn’t boarded up, but the shades were all drawn on the clothing store and a huge sign, so big I could read it from across the highway, read, “For Sale.” Even though I was late, I ran across the road to the store and knocked on the door. No answer. Either Joanie was in there and not answering or she’d already left for Dallas, and how would I find her then? I needed to talk to her about Steve… and maybe send Steve my best wishes. Was that appropriate? I had no idea.

I made my way back to the café and began working on the sticky buns for the morning. The staff once again walked around me like I was fragile, just as they had after Donna’s arrest, and beyond muttered greetings, no one said a word to me until I exploded at Benny. “What do you think is wrong with me? Why isn’t anyone talking to me?” Then I felt like a kid who’d just thrown a temper tantrum.

Benny looked the other way then suddenly turned to face me. “What do you expect, Kate? We know Steve was a special friend of yours”—I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me short—”and we were trying to show some respect for your feelings.”

Shamed, that’s how I felt. But I managed a lighter answer. “Thanks. I liked Steve, but I don’t want you to misunderstand the nature of our friendship. It was not what you think. I’m sad, but I’m not devastated. And somehow I’m not even surprised. Now can we all get back to work?”

“You better hurry with those buns. You’re late,” Benny said and threw a wadded paper napkin at me. I lobbed it back at him, and we were back to our usual routine.

Rick came in—not unexpectedly—and his attitude was the same: wary. “I know you liked Steve,” he began, but I cut him off.

“Will everybody stop acting like I’m in mourning? I liked him but I also knew there was something wrong somewhere, and I’m not surprised. I think Gram knew too.”

Startled, he asked why.

“Something he said once about her getting on his case. Go sit at that corner table, and I’ll bring your eggs. I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t think I want to hear it,” but he went. “Don’t forget the sticky bun.”

“
Yessir
,” I said smartly.

I returned with bacon, eggs, and a sticky bun, then went back for the coffee pot and a cup for me. When I was settled and Rick was happily eating his breakfast, which I’m sure he’d much rather have had in peace and quiet, I said, “I think Steve killed Gram and poisoned the mayor.”

He didn’t choke or anything dramatic. He just went on chewing and left me hanging, waiting for his answer. Finally, “Doubt it.”

“Why? If she knew he was dealing…and it’s the mayor’s responsibility to know what’s going on in her town, so she would have known too.”

“And how do you tie Irv
Litman
into this? Kate, you’re a loose cannon, looking here, then there, for a suspect, any suspect. Would you leave my job to me?”

I wanted to say, “It’s my sister I’m worried about,” but I just picked up my coffee cup and retreated to the kitchen. You might say I took my huff and departed in it.
Marj
wasn’t in yet, so I asked one of the other waitresses to cover the front for me and busied myself making tuna and chicken salads. Yes, I was avoiding Rick Samuels. Probably because I knew he was right.

I admit it. I was a grouch all day, sad, sorry for Steve and sorry for myself, snapping at the work staff, barely civil to a citizen I knew well who had left his wallet at home and didn’t discover that until after he ate—any other time I would have cheerily put an IOU in the cash drawer and told him to see me next time he came in. And when Donna called to say the girls wanted to spend the night again, my caustic reply was, “I hate to take them away from you.” Then of course I called, apologized, and promised to get them for supper.

When I got there, she asked, “So who bit you today?”

I told her about Steve’s arrest and then it was her turn to be caustic: “You seem more upset about his arrest for dealing than mine for murder, sister dear.”

I stared at her and decided instantaneously it was time for a talk. “Want a glass of wine?” I asked.

“Yeah, I do.” She started to get up, but I said, “No, I’ll get it.”

I poured white
zin
for her, chardonnay for me, and told the girls I’d be with them shortly. Then I stormed into the living room and nearly threw that glass all over Donna. “Donna Bryson, would you think about someone other than yourself for a minute? I’ve been busting my butt to prove your innocence, even trying to persuade Rick Samuels that Steve was involved. I’ve been comforting your children and feeding them, and do I get any thanks? No, you order me around, fill yourself with self-pity, and don’t think of how this affects all the rest of us. Sure, you’ve been accused of murder, and that’s about as bad as it gets, but you’re not the only one who needs comfort—your kids, your husband, your sister. We all do. We need reassurance. And we need you to help us prove your innocence instead of just sitting there in a trance.” I paused for breath, and she said,

“How can I when I can’t leave the house?”

“You can make lists—possible suspects, suspicious things, write down anything you think of, no matter how crazy it seems. Think of everything you and Irv did together, every business connection, people he introduced you too.”

“Well…”

“And then get up out of that chair and start taking care of your family. Cook for them, read to the children, make love to your husband”—she winced at that and I knew I’d hit a nerve. “Clean your house, clean closets, do anything but sit there.”

“Well….”

“And as for Steve
Millican
, he spent yesterday building me a fence for the dog. It turned out to be his last free day, yet that was something he did willingly because we were friends. We weren’t related, just friends.” I wanted to ask what she’d done for me lately.

“He didn’t know it was his last day of freedom,” she protested weakly.

“He knew things were closing in on him, I guarantee you that. But he still had time to worry about his sister and build me a fence and be pleasant.” I marched into the den and asked Ava, “Do you have some blank notebook paper and a pen your mom could use.” She supplied them promptly, and I handed them to Donna wordlessly. Then I gathered up the girls and said I’d see her in the morning. I had no idea if I’d gotten through to her or just made her mad.

I was still fuming, but at least now I had a target—Donna. “Aunt Kate, are you okay?” Ava’s voice came from the back seat.

“Yeah, sweetie, I am. It’s just been an upsetting few days.” She of course had no idea about Steve, and I planned to keep it that way.

A big sigh. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Me, too.”

“Me third,” Jess said in a tight little voice that brought those darn tears to my eyes.

Later, after I’d read to the girls, tucked them in, and wished them, “sweet dreams,” I decided it was time to do a load of aprons before I ran out of clean ones. Automatically emptying pockets, I came across the crumpled sheet of paper that Mr. Overton had given me with the bank balances on it. I smoothed the scrap of paper out and stared at it, wondering why it bothered me.

When the phone rang, I dropped everything and ran to get it before it wakened the girls. David wanted to know how things were going. I tried to give him a run-down on Steve
Millican’s
arrest, to which he said, “I feel sorry for the sister,” and I replied that I felt sorry for Steve. “You bleeding heart,” he accused. About my dressing-down of Donna, he asked if it did any good and I told him I couldn’t tell yet, maybe I’d learn something when I took the girls home mid-morning tomorrow.

“What about your meeting with Mr. Overton?”

“I guess it was okay. Everything seems to be in order. I asked him the bank balances, and he wrote them on a slip of paper for me.”

“Did he have bank books or something with him as verification?”

That’s what was hitting me in the head! He’d pulled those figures out of thin air. I had no idea how accurate they were—or weren’t.

When I confessed that, David said, “Kate, get to the bank first thing tomorrow morning. Verify the balances—and ask if Overton has an account there. They won’t tell you the balance, but I’d love to know that he’s not squirreling some of your money away in his account.”

My heart jumped into my mouth and then settled back down. “You think it’s a possibility?”

“I do.” Then with a chuckle he added, “I bet Gram does too.”

Dumbfounded I was silent so long, he said, “Kate, you still there?”

“Um—hmm. Just thinking over that comment about Gram. Actually, she keeps telling me to talk to the mayor.”

He didn’t comment on my implication that Gram had been talking to me. Either she’d been talking to him too or he decided there were too many more important things to worry about. “Looks like you have a busy morning. If things lead where I think they will, call Rick Samuels right away. He can watch Overton and maybe put a freeze on his bank account. I’ll check tomorrow night.”

I hung up the phone and stood like a statue, my hand still on it. Mr. Overton was stealing from me! It seemed crystal clear. Would he have the nerve to kill Gram? And what about the mayor—things began to come back to me. He’d been waiting to see the mayor when Tom delivered the lunch that made her sick—could he have put something in it? And the missing digitalis? Maybe he used the restroom, or pretended to, that day I left him with Don Davidson. Or he could have come back any time. Like Gram, I left the back door unlocked.

But what about Irv
Litman
? Irv wasn’t poisoned, and surely Mr. Overton had no reason to kill him. My mind was working overtime now, and I heard loud and clear Irv’s words to Donna, “It takes one to know one.” I had just found Gram’s killer and freed Donna—or had I? One thing was sure: I wasn’t going to Rick Samuels with this information. He’d just laugh at my latest witch-hunt.

“Go through my roll-top desk, Kate.” It was Gram’s voice. I wanted to protest that it was late and I had a lot to do tomorrow, but if she was listening, she knew that. I went to the desk, went through drawers, pulled everything out until I had papers scattered everywhere on the floor and the daybed in that room. Nothing. I stared at the empty desk and began poking and prying back into corners, pulling on the fronts of those little drawers above the writing area. There was a space with no drawer but it was much shallower than the others—I pulled out the drawer below and felt above it with my fingers. Something gave way, and I could push the bottom of that space back. A small notebook fell out. Gram had hidden something in a false bottom. Who knew she was that clever?

Above me, I heard a great, “Harrumph!” and then a chuckle.

Gram had been keeping a journal for about a year. Page after page recorded incidents that angered her or aroused her suspicions—some with Donna, many with the mayor, and some with Mr. Overton. In a few instances, I read with chagrin, she was at least mildly angry with me or disappointed in me. Silently, I apologized, but I heard nothing from her.

The journal stopped two days before Gram died, but the last entry was the telling one. She wrote,

I am quite sure William Overton is adjusting my bookkeeping in his favor, but I’m not sure what to do about it. I can’t go to Rick Samuels without proof, and I hate confrontation, so I must think this through. I never should have let Mayor Thompson talk me into using his services, but she seemed to think it would make such a difference to Wheeler to have a CPA. And I certainly can’t go to her now about it, what with the way things are between us.

There it was, in Gram’s own writing. The smoking gun or whatever they call it in detective fiction. I shoved the small notebook into my purse with Mr. Overton’s scrap of paper, vowing not to let it out of my sight. Then I put the desk to rights—well, not really. I just fixed the hidden drawer so it was hidden again and then shoved papers every which-way into the desk, swearing I’d go through them once this was all solved.
Huggles
got one brief potty trip to the yard, and it was well after midnight before I went to bed—to toss and turn with a thousand scenarios that tomorrow might bring playing out in my mind.

Next morning, I kissed the girls and suggested to a sleepy Ava that she call me when they woke up. She nodded, reached for a hug, and was back asleep before I was out the door. They called about nine, just when I was getting ready to head for the bank.

“Can you girls come over to the café by yourselves? Ava, you know how to lock the door.” I was never again leaving my back door unlocked, no matter what Gram said about people in Wheeler.

She assured me she did, and she would.