A Nip of Murder Read online

  Finally, Brenda raised her bulging eyes from the man to Daisy.

  “I—I think I killed him,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  2

  “Have you noticed any strangers around the premises lately?”

  Daisy blinked at the deputy sheriff sitting before her in his starched brown uniform with gold trim. “You mean other than the dead man and his two friends who Brenda saw run off?”

  Deputy Johnson—according to the shiny little badge pinned to his shirt—didn’t look up from the stack of forms that he was thumbing through. “I mean strangers around the premises this week or last. Strangers are the number-one suspect when it comes to crime, ma’am.”

  “Doesn’t it depend on the type of crime?”

  “Crime is crime, ma’am. And strangers are strangers.”

  That didn’t seem particularly helpful or even logical to Daisy, but she didn’t argue the point. “Okay. Except we’re a bakery, and we’re open to the public. So strangers are always going to be around the premises. They have to be around the premises if they want to buy anything from us.”

  Having apparently located the correct form, Deputy Johnson pulled it from the stack and began filling in the blanks with a stubby blue pencil. “Incident date. Saturday, October fourteenth. Incident location. Bakery called—”

  “Sweetie Pies,” Daisy supplied.

  “I’m aware of that, ma’am,” the deputy returned.

  His tone was sharp enough that Daisy raised a tetchy eyebrow at him. If he was going to take that sort of attitude with her, then she didn’t need to volunteer any further information. He could figure it all out for himself. She shifted in her seat toward Brenda. They were sitting on the tan plastic folding chairs that were ordinarily stacked in the far back corner of the kitchen. The chairs had once belonged to the diner for use at the semiannual barbecue held out in the parking lot. As far as Daisy knew, this was the first time that they had been set up at a crime scene around the refrigerator.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked Brenda.

  Brenda answered with a gurgle. Although her hands and arms had been scrubbed clean, her bulging eyes had yet to retreat. They were locked on the spot where the man had lain at her feet only a short while earlier. His lifeless body was now gone from the room, but traces of his blood remained. The crimson puddle that had surrounded him on the floor was replaced by dried mahogany smudges and streaks.

  Daisy gave Brenda’s knee a supportive squeeze. “Try not to think about it. I know it’s hard, but just keep reminding yourself it’s over. Focus on that. It’s over, and nothing so awful like it will ever happen again.”

  “Oh, Ducky. I pray you’re right. I pray that it is over.”

  “Of course it’s over.” Daisy squeezed her knee once more. “The sheriff’s office is here now. Sheriff Lowell will take care of everything. He always does.”

  “But…” Brenda swallowed hard. “But what if they come back? The other men who were here. What if they come back later? Or tomorrow? Or the day after that?”

  “Don’t worry. They won’t come back.”

  “How do you know?”

  Daisy didn’t know. She could only guess, and hope that she was guessing correctly. But she couldn’t think of any reason why the two men would return to the bakery.

  “It doesn’t make a bit of sense for them to come back here,” she told Brenda. “They got what they wanted. Or at least we have to assume that it’s what they wanted. Odd as it is. They wouldn’t have taken it otherwise.”

  “You’re sure that it’s the only thing they took?” Deputy Johnson interjected.

  Brenda squeaked in the affirmative.

  “There’s no money missing? No checks or bank card receipts?”

  “No,” Daisy replied.

  “You’re positive?”

  She nodded. “I was standing next to the cash register the whole time. They never came out of the kitchen. And we don’t keep any money back here.”

  The deputy sniffed. “So they didn’t take anything of value?”

  “Well, it does have value—”

  “Real value,” he cut her off brusquely. “Usable, salable value. At a pawnshop or on the local black market.”

  Beulah chortled. Up until that point, she had been sitting peaceably in her folding chair, flipping through one of the tattered, yellowed cookbooks that was stacked on the bottom shelf of the wire storage rack next to the refrigerator. “I can’t imagine there’s much of a black market in Pittsylvania County for stolen cream cheese,” she drawled.

  Daisy couldn’t keep from chuckling with her. Even Brenda had to crack a slight smile. Deputy Johnson, however, didn’t share in the amusement. He sniffed once more and scribbled some notes on his form with a grim expression.

  “Can you give me a rough estimate as to how much cream cheese was taken?”

  “I can give you an exact amount,” Daisy said. “We had a delivery earlier this week. Three blocks. Thirty pounds apiece.”

  The deputy looked up at her. “That’s ninety pounds. What could you possibly need ninety pounds of cream cheese for?”

  “Frosting. Filling. And most obviously, cheesecake.” She frowned at him, annoyed by the inanity of the question. “Cream cheese is one of our staples. As you may recall, we’re a bakery. For a bakery, three blocks isn’t really very much.”

  “They took all three blocks?”

  “They did.”

  “And the blocks were kept in the refrigerator?”

  “They were. Cream cheese is perishable. It’s always in the refrigerator.”

  “Do you think they knew it was cream cheese?”

  Daisy sucked on her teeth, her irritation swelling. “I don’t see how they couldn’t have known. It says ‘cream cheese’ in big black letters right on the crates. On every side of the crates. The men could have been half comatose and still figured it out.”

  “Maybe they took it by mistake,” the deputy suggested.

  “Or maybe they eat a lot of bagels,” Beulah snapped. “Instead of talking like a fool and asking why Daisy and her bakery would have ninety pounds of cream cheese—which is pretty dang self-explanatory, if you stopped and thought about it for even half a second—you should be asking why anybody in their right mind would want to steal ninety pounds of cream cheese. That’s a heck of a pile of cheese to be hauling around the countryside.”

  It was Deputy Johnson’s turn to suck on his teeth. He glared at Beulah from behind the smeared lenses of his glasses. “Were you an accomplice to the theft, ma’am? Because only a co-conspirator would know why a criminal does what he does.”

  Beulah and her very short redheaded fuse slammed the cookbook on the floor. “You better not be accusing me of something—”

  Daisy grabbed Beulah’s elbow as she started to rise from her chair. “Of course he’s not accusing you of anything,” she responded swiftly, giving Beulah a stern glance. “He knows that you were with me in the front of the bakery and that we came back here to the kitchen within a minute of each other and saw what had happened.”

  There was a tense pause, during which Daisy kept a firm hand on Beulah’s elbow. She wasn’t any less irked than Beulah at the evident ineptitude of the deputy, but she was better able to remember that he was still a deputy. And they had called the sheriff’s office for a reason. Brenda did stab a man to death in front of the refrigerator with a chef’s knife. There was no doubt whatsoever about it being self-defense. Under normal circumstances, Brenda was about as aggressive as a pudgy slug snoozing under a shady leaf. But she had killed him. An official report couldn’t be avoided. The important thing at this point was making sure the report set forth the facts in the most favorable manner to Brenda. That was a lesson Daisy had learned from her estranged husband, Matt. Before Matt decided to drive off one morning nearly five years ago and never come home again, he had on occasion found himself in trouble with the local authorities. As a result, Daisy had a bit of experience with the law.
/>   She shot Beulah another stern glance. When Beulah finally sat back down, Daisy turned to the deputy with a feigned apologetic smile.

  “I’m sorry. As I’m sure you can understand, it’s been a stressful morning for all of us. I think the shock of it is beginning to catch up with everyone.”

  Although Deputy Johnson didn’t appear entirely appeased by Daisy’s syrupy tone, his glare did soften somewhat. Encouraged, she continued.

  “When we’ve had any problems here in the past, we’ve always talked to Sheriff Lowell. He knows us pretty well, and he’s used to our little quirks. So maybe it would be better if we talked to him now too.”

  “You can’t,” the deputy said.

  “We can’t?”

  “Sheriff Lowell is gone, ma’am. He’s on vacation and won’t return to duty until the beginning of next month.”

  Daisy sighed. She had known that the sheriff was planning on taking a cruise. It was to the Greek isles in celebration of his thirtieth wedding anniversary. Although his wife, Sue, had come into the bakery half a dozen times over the past few weeks to share all the exciting plans, Daisy had forgotten the exact dates. Talk about lousy timing. Sheriff Lowell was smart and reliable. He could have been counted on to clean up the whole mess quickly and efficiently, not only in relation to Brenda and the dead body, but also the underlying question as to why someone would want to steal ninety pounds of cream cheese from them. Unfortunately, if the sheriff was currently sipping ouzo seaside, then she and Brenda and Beulah were stuck with the clearly less smart—and probably equally less reliable—Deputy Johnson.

  As though he could sense Daisy’s skepticism regarding his abilities, the deputy cleared his throat, straightened his spine, and returned to business.

  “Can you give me any description of the two men who got away?” he asked Brenda.

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t see their faces. They were wearing baseball caps with the hoods of their sweatshirts pulled up over the top, just like … like him.” She gestured toward the bloodstains on the floor.

  “What about their height? And build?”

  “Are you sure they were men?” Beulah jumped in.

  “They had to be men,” Deputy Johnson said. “They carried out ninety pounds of weight between them. How many women could do that?”

  “Except they were only planning on carrying out thirty pounds apiece,” Beulah countered. “A lot of women can handle that.”

  “I can,” Daisy agreed. “I was the one who put the blocks in the refrigerator to begin with.”

  “Laurel can carry thirty pounds,” Bobby said.

  They all looked at him. It was the first time that he had participated in the proceedings since the law arrived on the scene. He was stretched out on two folding chairs, one arm hanging down to the ground, absently rubbing Blot’s portly belly, while both he and the cat dozed.

  “It wasn’t her, of course,” Bobby continued. “Laurel wouldn’t want a crate of cream cheese, and she’s up in the woods. But she could carry it.” He glanced over at Daisy before closing his eyes again.

  “Laurel?” Brenda asked in confusion.

  “Laurel is a mystery woman,” Beulah informed her with a titter. “Although if she’s keeping company with Bobby and that weaselly brother of his up in the woods, it’s not too hard to guess what kind of—”

  Daisy didn’t let her finish. She was still curious to learn who Laurel was, but not if it meant discussing Bobby’s brother. “Thirty pounds is manageable,” she remarked. “But sixty? The whole length of the kitchen, out the back door, and then loading it into a vehicle? It would have to be a heck of a farm girl to do that. There are plenty of guys around here who can’t carry sixty pounds all that way. It’s too much and too far.”

  “So it could have been a woman for the thirty and a man for the sixty,” Deputy Johnson mused.

  “Laurel and the weasel Rick, perhaps.”

  Still tittering, Beulah said it quietly enough so that Bobby couldn’t hear her, but Daisy did. She wrinkled her nose.

  “Don’t make that face at me,” Beulah retorted. “You ignore Rick like he’s been wallowing with the hogs whenever you see him. Maybe he was trying to get your attention.”

  “By stealing ninety pounds of cream cheese? You’ve lost your mind!”

  “I don’t think,” Brenda said, chewing on her lips thoughtfully, “there was a woman. They all moved like men.”

  “But you can’t describe them?” Deputy Johnson pressed her.

  Brenda went on thinking and chewing. After a minute, she mewed in frustration. “I don’t know. Everything happened so fast. I was at the mixer trying to get the dough for the shortcake to come together right. Ducky has shown me how to do it at least a hundred times, but somehow I still always make it too wet. So I turned to get a scoop of flour to dry it out, and all of a sudden, there they were. Three of ’em. With their caps and sweatshirts. Walking straight through the middle of the kitchen.” Brenda waved toward the center of the room. “I had the impression that they didn’t expect me to be here, because they stopped for a second, like they were just as surprised to see me as I was to see them. Then one of ’em signaled the others. He must have been the leader of the group, because they followed him to the refrigerator. He opened it and began looking around inside. I asked him what he was doing, but he didn’t answer me. I told him—I told all of ’em—to leave. Except they didn’t listen. They just started pulling out the cream cheese.”

  “Did they say anything?” Deputy Johnson asked. “Did they speak at all?”

  “Not at first. Not until Blot got underfoot.”

  “Huh?”

  “The cat,” Daisy explained, pointing at the heap of fur sprawled near Bobby.

  The deputy squinted at Brenda. “How did the cat get underfoot?”

  She squinted back at him. “The usual way, of course. Blot’s extremely friendly. He went over to the men to greet ’em—not knowing they were bad men—and one of them didn’t like it. He tried to shoo him away, but Blot didn’t understand. He’s a very sweet kitty and used to getting lots of love from everybody. Well, the man tripped over him, crashed into the rack next to the refrigerator, and started cursing up a storm. Blot naturally got scared and hightailed it out of the kitchen.”

  Beulah turned to Daisy with a grin. “That settles it then. The cat’s a genius. That’s why he kept coming to us. It wasn’t my sneakers or the snickerdoodles that he wanted. He was trying to warn us.”

  “Blot was trying to warn you?” Brenda’s bulging eyes stretched even wider. “You think so?”

  “You bet. He was afraid that if there wasn’t any more cream cheese, he wouldn’t be getting any more carrot cake.”

  Daisy had to clamp down on her tongue to keep from laughing.

  “Carrot cake?” The deputy squinted harder. “What does carrot cake have to do with this?”

  “Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.” Daisy looked at Brenda. “What happened next?”

  “I told ’em to leave again, Ducky. I reminded them that it wasn’t their bakery and the cream cheese didn’t belong to them. But by that time, they weren’t paying a lick of attention to me. It was like I wasn’t even there. I might as well have been a spatula hanging on the wall. They each had a block of cheese in their arms. The leader was already carrying his toward the door. They could have all just left without any fuss, except Blot came back into the kitchen. He was really upset—racing around on his little kitty paws like he was wearing motorized roller skates—and he did something he almost never does. He bit the man who had tripped over him before. The man tried to shove him away with his foot, and Blot bit him again.”

  Brenda paused, drawing a shaky breath. Her lips were almost raw from the intensity with which she had been chomping on them. “The man was awfully angry. He was cursing somethin’ fearful. And then he kicked Blot. It was so hard, Blot flew right up into the air! That’s when I got mad. I demanded he leave my cat alone. If he wanted the cream cheese so dang bad
, he could have it, but there was no need for violence against a defenseless kitty. Well, the other two men turned back from the door and were trying to get the third one—the cat kicker—to come with them. They didn’t talk, but they kept grunting and motioning at him, almost frantically after a minute.”

  “Standard criminal behavior, ma’am.” Glancing up from the notes that he was taking, Deputy Johnson nodded authoritatively. “They didn’t want you to be able to identify them later based on their voices.”

  “I would guess they were getting nervous,” Daisy told Brenda. “If you’re right about them not expecting you to be in the kitchen, then they were probably beginning to worry about how long it was taking them to get out of here. Somebody else could show up and surprise them. Like me or a customer or—”

  “Or Aunt Emily and her shotgun,” Beulah chimed in.

  There was a little whimper from Bobby. He was all too familiar with Aunt Emily’s Remington.

  “They also must have been getting tired,” Beulah added. “From holding the stupid cheese the whole time.”

  “The cat kicker put his block down on the rack,” Brenda said, “so he could chase after Blot. I still had that scoop of flour in my hand for the shortcake dough, and I threw it at him. Like flour does, it went everywhere. On the men, on me, on the floor. A bunch of it must have gotten into the kicker’s eyes, because he took up cursing again and went crazy rubbing his face. Then he slipped. I don’t know how exactly. He stumbled toward me and was yelling. The other men started yelling too. Blot jumped at him, trying to bite him again. The man grabbed my arm, and I grabbed the knife from the counter. Before I could really figure out what was happening, he fell against me, and the knife went into him.” She shuddered. “There was all this blood.”

  “And the other men?” Deputy Johnson asked. “What did they do?”

  Brenda shuddered once more. “They said something to each other. I can’t tell you what it was. I didn’t hear it. I was too busy looking at the blood. There was so much of it. It was all over me—and my hands—and the knife. And it kept coming. Gushing out of the man somethin’ terrible. Eventually, the other men took the cream cheese and left. I think they took his block from the rack too, because it was gone. Then Daisy walked in.”