Murder at the Taffy Shop Read online

  Chapter Three

  Uh-oh. Here came possible trouble. Beverly Ruchart wheeled her Diamondback hybrid bike through the door of the repair side of my shop at one o’clock that afternoon. Derrick was busy explaining our rental policy to a family of five. My mechanic, Orlean Brown, was deep in a bike tune-up in the repair shop. I’d finished showing our array of brightly colored shirts to a serious cyclist who explained he’d ridden down from Boston and wanted a souvenir of the Cape. Another group of tourists waited to rent bikes, and we had a big sign out front asking people to leave their bikes outside. Now was not a good time for an imperious customer who thought she was so entitled she didn’t have to follow the rules.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Ruchart.” I intercepted her. “Please leave the bike outside.” I smiled but blocked her way into the shop.

  Her nostrils flared. “I always bring it in. Ms. Brown never has a problem with me doing so. This is a valuable bike and someone could steal it out there.”

  It was a very nice bike, true, although not particularly valuable, and the customer should always be right. However, this was my shop, and procedure was procedure. “I’m sorry, we simply don’t have room in here. I’ll come out and give you a ticket, and then we’ll store it where we keep the other bikes waiting for repairs.” I glanced over at Orlean. Technically the areas of the shop were different rooms, but they were all open to the others, except my office and the bathroom, of course.

  She’d looked up from her work and now raised a blue-gloved hand black with grease. “Hey there, Bev. Come see me after Mac gets you all set.” She lowered her gaze to her work again.

  Bev? I’d never heard anyone call her anything other than Ms. Ruchart or Beverly.

  “Very well,” Beverly said to me. She wheeled the bike back outside and stood tapping her fingers on the handlebars.

  “I’ll be right there.” I hurried over to the desk and grabbed the repair book. “What do you need done?” I asked her once I’d joined her.

  “The front tire keeps going flat, and something’s rubbing the rear tire. I inadvertently ran over a big stick yesterday. It had fallen onto the trail during that windy night Friday, I believe. It must have knocked things out of alignment.”

  “The Shining Sea Trail?” The lovely, flat trail ran along the coast on the former rail bed and was a popular locale for walkers, runners, and cyclists. I jotted down her name and what she’d said on the ticket.

  “Yes, I ride it in its entirety every day. My cardiologist recommended vigorous daily exercise.”

  “The trail is a good place for it. And a twenty-one-mile round trip is a decent ride. Can I have your phone number, please?”

  After she told me, I added it and tied the ticket to the handlebar. “I’m not sure when it’ll be ready. Depends on how many are in front of you. I’ll get to it myself tomorrow if I can.”

  “I will need it as soon as possible.” She pursed her lips, which made a little row of lines appear above her top lip.

  “I understand. We do repairs in the order in which we receive them, however.” She had to already know this. She’d been a customer here ever since she’d moved in three summers ago.

  “Very well. Now, Ms. Almeida, I have another matter to bring up with you. I must say I am increasingly concerned about the riffraff who frequent that soup kitchen you all run at the church.”

  I stared at her. The riffraff? Despite the steady stream of tourists with money to burn and the affluent folks who summered here, Westham had local residents who were hungry and even homeless. The soup kitchen Pa ran out of the church basement several days a week, along with the food pantry he hosted, made all the difference to those down on their luck. I was a regular volunteer at both, as was Gin, who owned and ran Salty Taffy’s candy shop at the other end of the main drag from here.

  “They have left trash in my front yard and sometimes loiter about smoking cigarettes. I meant to speak to your father about it yesterday, but that dog had me too rattled to remember.”

  I did not have time for this. “Ms. Ruchart, we feed the desperately needy. Often it’s their only meal of the day. I’ll let my father know your views. If you’ll excuse me, I have customers waiting inside.” I turned to wheel the bike around to the back.

  She called after me. “Please call me as soon as my bicycle is ready.”

  At least she’d said please. I stashed the Diamondback in the walk-in shipping container serving as repair storage. The space wasn’t great, but acquiring it had been a lot cheaper than adding on to the building after I’d bought the business last year. I’d run electricity into the container and painted the inside white so we could see which bike was where. Customers not picking up their repaired or tuned-up bikes promptly were a real problem and meant we provided free storage for them. I was thinking of a way to penalize anyone who left it more than a week unless they had extenuating circumstances.

  I hurried back into the shop. Beverly had, in fact, gone back in to talk with Orlean on the repair side. My mechanic was a normally taciturn employee, stopping a few millimeters short of being dysfunctional. She was so talented at fixing bikes, though, I forgave her almost anything. Since Derrick was now helping the second group of renters, I moseyed over and straightened the nearest merchandise so I could listen in on Orlean and Beverly’s conversation.

  “I got a nibble on my Colby line,” Orlean said. “Found the town records for 1903.” She hung a blue-handled wrench on the hook in the middle of the set, arranged in order of size. She kept her work bench tidy, a sight dear to my neat-freak heart. Tired straw-colored hair peeked out of the Orleans Firebirds ball cap she wore every day.

  “Good work,” Beverly said. “And I might have unearthed that missing aunt on your maternal line we were talking about.”

  Orlean nodded. “We’re meeting again Tuesday night, right?” She grabbed the curly blue air hose hanging from the ceiling. It hissed as she half inflated the tube she was checking.

  “You can count on it.” Beverly smiled at my no-nonsense mechanic.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Beverly smile. Also—town records for 1903? A missing aunt? It sounded like they were talking historical research. Or . . . of course. Beverly Ruchart was a professional genealogist. I’d known her occupation, but it had slipped my mind. What I hadn’t known was that Orlean was interested, too, and apparently good at finding old records. Beverly’s expertise must have been the trigger to get Orlean to open up, as well as their mutual love of bicycles. Beverly sounded polite and respectful speaking to Orlean, quite a change from my interactions with her this weekend. But I was a staunch attender at the church of Live and Learn, and happy to witness Beverly’s good side.

  Chapter Four

  I’d finished my closing checklist at five o’clock and had locked the door to the shop when I spied Gin hurrying down Main Street toward me. I waved and waited for her to reach me, which took a minute as she dodged tourists and a friendly pair of dogs on leashes.

  “What’s cooking?” I asked, smiling.

  “I’m going out tonight, so I thought I’d check in with you about tomorrow.” She was breathless from her fast walk, and her thick brownish-red hair was straggling loose from its ponytail.

  “Do you have time for a beer?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. Today was nuts at the shop.” She shook her head.

  “Same here.” I led the way through the yard behind the shop, past the picnic table under a big tree where I often ate lunch, and through a break in the low hedge to my 350-square-foot tiny house. Once inside, my African gray parrot, Belle, started talking.

  “Hi, Mac. It’s about time. Belle’s a good girl. Belle wants a treat. Hi, Mac.”

  I stepped out of my sneakers and padded to her cage. “Hi, Belle.” I opened the door, scritching her head before she hopped out.

  Belle cocked her head at Gin. “Hi, gorgeous. Give Belle a treat?” She let out a perfect wolf whistle. “Belle’s a good girl. Grapes?”

  Gin laughed. “Does she ever shut up?” She took off her own shoes and came in.

  I liked to have a no-shoes policy in the house. It kept the floors clean, and I had a basket with a few pairs of spare slippers for the wintertime. “Sometimes. But not when I first come in.” I pulled out Belle’s cherished frozen grapes and put a few in her cage before opening two cold Pilsners for the humans. I handed Gin a full glass and clinked mine with hers. “Cheers.” I sank onto the two-seater couch and pointed to the small upholstered chair opposite. “Take a load off.”

  “I know we can’t complain about great business, but boy, it’s exhausting,” she said after sipping the beer. “My best high school employee had asked for the day off and the other one, well, she’s not very good at retail.”

  “I ran my tush off today, too.” I took a long sip from my glass. “Mmm. Beer sure goes down right. So what are you doing tonight?”

  “Date with Eli.” Her cheeks pinkened.

  My friend had been divorced for years, and her daughter was grown and lived elsewhere. I was happy to help her love life along. A few months earlier I’d tried to get her and my brother together, since they were both in their early forties and single, but he was raising Cokey and Gin was all done with child-rearing. She and Derrick went out once but seemed to have agreed not to take it any further.

  Gin went on. “Eli is taking me to some fancy dinner party he was invited to.”

  “At a restaurant?”

  “No, at some lady’s house. She’s the one who owns the really nice property just beyond the rectory.”

  “Beverly Ruchart? Interesting. I’ve seen her twice this weekend.”

  Belle hopped up on the arm of the couch and to the back near my head. I reached up and stroked her. She started humming the tune to “Happy,” bobbing her
head with the rhythm.

  “Beverly summers here, and she’s been bringing her bicycle into the shop for service since I opened,” I said.

  “That’s her. She’s Eli’s former mother-in-law.”

  “I didn’t know she had children. She doesn’t seem particularly maternal.”

  “Well, it takes all types, right?” Gin took another sip of beer.

  “Is Eli divorced?”

  “No, his wife died some years ago. He has a stepson a little older than my Lucy. I haven’t met him yet, but he’ll be at the dinner. The kid, Ron, is apparently living with his grandmother this summer.”

  “Is Eli over his wife’s death?” I asked.

  “He seems to be. It’s been a while. Remember the rich guy who stayed in my Airbnb in June? He’s going to be at the dinner, too.”

  “Wesley somebody.” I couldn’t remember his last name.

  “Farnham. He bought a property in Pocasset and is having it renovated. I guess he’s living there during the construction.”

  “So what are you wearing tonight?” I wasn’t much of a clothes horse, but Gin loved both clothes and the shopping required to obtain them.

  She smiled. “I got a really sweet hand-painted silk tunic at the consignment shop last week. It goes perfect with my white rough-silk capris.”

  “Cute.”

  Belle flapped up to the roost on top of her cage. “Really sweet. Really sweet,” she muttered in an uncanny imitation of Gin’s voice. “Really sweet.”

  “By the way, I wouldn’t bring up the soup kitchen in your dinner conversation tonight,” I said. “Ms. Ruchart called the people we serve riffraff. She as much as said they’re driving down property values.”

  Gin’s mouth dropped open. “Hungry and homeless residents of our sweet town are riffraff? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No joke. Her words. I know, it’s disgusting.”

  “Ugh.” She drained her glass and set it down. “We’re walking tomorrow, right?” She and I walked every weekday morning at seven, rain or shine. Not if it was too cold or icy out, but at this time of year, we were as regular as a metronome in the Cape Symphony’s rehearsal room.

  “Absolutely.”

  Belle laughed to herself.

  Gin tilted her head. “Was that the parrot?”

  Belle laughed softly. “Okay, love you, see you soon, bye,” Belle murmured and laughed some more.

  “Exactly.” I pointed at the bird. “She has a recording of my phone calls in her brain.”

  Gin snorted. “She’s amazing. So, have you finished the book yet?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I have time to read tonight. And we’re not meeting until Thursday.” We were both charter members of the Cozy Capers book group. The collection of local shop owners and others read one cozy mystery per week and met to discuss the book on Thursday nights, often in the lighthouse where my brother was caretaker. We took turns making a recipe from the foodie cozies. This week’s book was Liz Mugavero’s The Icing on the Corpse, one of her delightful Pawsitively Organic pet food mysteries. The recipes were all for animals, but we’d found they tasted delicious for humans, too. This summer we were working our way through the calendar year, each week’s book moving ahead a month, and had selected Icing because it was set in February.

  “I haven’t finished it, either. I’ll tell you, it’s awfully nice to be reading about February New England temperatures when it’s hot out. I think the AC in my shop is about to go. As if I need a big expense like a new appliance.” Gin grimaced as she stood. “Thanks for the drink. I’m off to get cleaned up so I can brave the rich and not-so-famous.”

  “Have fun. You’ll have your new man at your side. How bad can it be?”

  Chapter Five

  My leaving-home ritual took a little longer than usual the next morning. I always felt compelled to leave everything clean and in its place before I left the house. One could argue that doing so was a near necessity for someone who lived in such a small space. Or, as others had pointed out, my obsession with cleanliness and order was borderline clinical. I’d earned my Neat Freak badge several times over. Mom had attributed it to my having both my sun and my moon in Virgo, of course.

  Regardless of the diagnosis or the cause, I was a few minutes late to meet Gin for our walk. I grabbed my EpiPen bag and slung it across my chest. After a near-fatal meet-up with a wasp a few years earlier, I never left home without a double dose of the lifesaving medicine. I locked the door, stuck the house key in my shorts pocket, and headed out.

  The day had dawned sunny and cloudless again. Good for those of us in the tourism business, not so good for local farmers. I hurried down the length of Main Street. I passed the fragrant smells of baking emitting from Tim’s bakery and the blessedly quiet Westham police station. Only two cars passed me on my way to where Gin lived above Salty Taffy’s at the other end. A quick shudder rippled through me at the memory of our close call with death in the shop’s kitchen in June, but I shook it off.

  Apparently, Gin was running late, too. She wasn’t stretching her hamstrings in front of the shop. I glanced up at her windows but didn’t see a light on, not that she would need one almost an hour and a half after sunrise. I checked down her driveway on the right side of the building, but she wasn’t there. The back of her small yard abutted the municipal parking lot, and on the far side of the shop was a new walk-in health clinic.

  I headed around the front of the shop to the clinic side. The owners had planted a particularly lovely flower garden facing the street, and both Gin and I always liked to check out what was newly in bloom. I had a brown thumb, myself, but that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate others’ talents in the plant department.

  But when I cleared the shop, I gasped and froze in place. Gin knelt on the walkway between the buildings. Next to her lay the crumpled figure of Beverly Ruchart.

  “Gin, what . . . ?” I hurried to her side.

  She gazed up at me, her eyes as wide as saucers. “She’s dead.” Her whisper was barely audible.

  “Are you sure?” I asked even as I took in Beverly’s open and unseeing eyes, her skin devoid of pink, and the way her lips stretched back from her teeth. I brought my hand to my mouth. The poor, poor woman. Her heart issues must have caught up with her.

  “I’m sure. Her skin is cold, Mac.” Gin’s eyes welled with tears. “I can’t believe it. I was at her house. I ate dinner at her table only twelve hours ago. She was alive, and now she’s not.”

  And poor Gin. I doubted she’d ever seen a dead body before, at least not like this. “Did she seem well during dinner?”

  Gin opened her mouth to speak, but I held up a hand. “Wait.” What was I doing asking about dinner? First things first. “Did you call the police?”

  “No.” Gin sniffed. “I just found her a minute ago.”

  “We have to let someone know. You know, like we’ve read about so many times? It’s an unattended death. The police need to be informed.” I hauled my phone out of my back pocket and pressed 9-1-1. When the dispatcher answered, I said, “This is Mackenzie Almeida in Westham. We, um, found a dead body next to the walk-in clinic on Main Street.”

  “Is someone else with you?”

  “Yes, Gin Malloy. She owns the taffy shop we’re next to.”

  “When did you encounter the deceased?” the dispatcher asked next.

  “Just now. A couple of minutes ago.”

  “Do you feel safe?”

  I checked with Gin. “Do you feel safe?”

  “Of course,” she whispered, staring at Beverly.

  “Yes, we feel safe,” I told the dispatcher.

  “Someone will be there shortly.”

  “Thank you.” I disconnected and sank down to sit next to Gin, who had wrapped her arms around her knees. The walkway was cool and hard under my rear, and the taffy shop blocked the morning sun. I shivered, then put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

  “Yesterday Beverly said she was seeing a cardiologist,” I murmured. “She said that was why she biked so much. I’ll bet her heart just gave out on her.”

  “You asked how she was at dinner last night. She seemed like she was getting really drunk, and by the end of the night she said she didn’t feel well.”