The Bite-Sized Bakery Cozy Mysteries Box Set Page 4

  “You called?” The chef winked at me, and my heart did a little sputter-flip.

  What on earth was wrong with me? This was the second man who’d flirted in the last two days, and given what had happened to the first…

  “Hello,” I said.

  “And hello,” Bee put in. “I’m the blurry object in your peripheral vision.” She waved.

  I had to press my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing.

  “Hi,” the chef said, winking at her too.

  “Shameless.” Bee returned a cheeky wink. “I like that in a chef.”

  “What about in a man?”

  “Hmmm,” Bee said. “You’ll have to ask my ex-husband about that. If you can find him. He went missing, you know, off the coast of Costa Rica. After a long vacation with his mistress. I’ve always wondered what happened to him.”

  That drained the color from the chef’s face.

  I laughed out loud this time. I wasn’t sure if Bee was serious—though my insides had twisted when she’d said “missing”—but the chef’s reaction was priceless.

  “I’m kidding, of course.” Bee grinned. “Or am I?”

  “We called you out here because we wanted to meet the person who made us such a delicious meal.”

  “Oh.” That brightened the chef’s mood. He wore his hair short and neat and dark, and he was exceptionally tall. Strong too, if his wide-set shoulders had anything to say about it. “Well, that would be me.”

  “Really? It wasn’t another winking man in an identical outfit?”

  I nudged Bee under the table with the toe of my boot, and she grinned and raised her hands. “Fine, fine, I’ll leave him alone.”

  “Bee’s got quite the sense of humor,” I said, smiling up at the chef. “I’m Ruby, by the way.”

  “Miller,” he said. “First name. I know it’s strange, but that’s what my parents chose to call me. No use being mad about it.”

  “It could be worse.” Bee shifted to the edge of her seat, trying to get closer to the fire. “You could be named Sue.”

  “Sue?”

  “It’s a song. Johnny Cash. Oh, the youth of today,” Bee said. “Would you like to sit down, Chef Miller? I’m going to get closer to the fire, and I have the feeling that you and Ruby will have a lot to talk about.” She got up before I could protest or the chef could reply.

  Miller sat down in the spot she’d vacated and placed his hands atop the table. “Weird lady,” he said.

  “Nice,” I corrected. “And it’s also nice to meet you, Miller. The food you prepared tonight was delicious.” Now, to broach the topic of the murder. And the rumor of his disagreement with the victim. I was used to prying information out of people, thankfully. One couldn’t be a journalist without having the knack for a little “manipulation.” Not my finest quality, but it would help here.

  “It’s what I love to do.”

  “Even during such difficult times,” I said. “I admire that.”

  “Difficult times?” Miller scratched his forehead. “Oh right, yeah. The murder.”

  “The murder.” I pulled a face. “Terrible thing to happen. And what a way to go. A lobster mallet.”

  “Poisoning’s what I heard.” Miller shrugged, as if he didn’t much care which way it had happened. “Wasn’t like the guy was well-liked around here. Or anywhere in town.”

  “He wasn’t?” It would probably be a bad idea to ask him directly about him fighting with the victim. But I could press for information, nonetheless.

  “Naw. Owen had a knack for rubbing folks up the wrong way. And for landing himself in trouble.”

  Apparently, Owen and I shared that particular proclivity. “Oh. Well, what do you mean by that? There are all types of trouble. Most types shouldn’t lead to murder.”

  “Right.” Miller shrugged a second time, the stiff starch in his shirt bringing the scrape of fabric as he moved. “What can I say? Guy was a lowlife. He’s part of the reason the restaurant’s been struggling like it has.”

  “How so?” I’d gotten Miller exactly where I wanted him—my comfort zone. With him talking. Telling me, naturally, all the things he probably wouldn’t tell a stranger. I might’ve been squeamish about blood and bodies and the whole lobster mallet fiasco, but this was easy. This was fun.

  “I shouldn’t say.” Miller glanced back at Bee, who was out of earshot, standing by the dying embers in the grate, her palms out. “But, ah well, it won’t hurt, will it? Anyway, Owen works for the guy who supplies the lobster to most of the restaurants in town. Basically, he runs the wharf, right, so he chooses exactly who goes out on which ship and who the lobsters are sold to.”

  “Oh?” I frowned.

  “That guy, Mr. Dillington? Rumor has it that he won’t sell any lobster to the guy who owns the restaurant because he’s taken a particular dislike to Owen. And it’s Owen’s uncle, Benjamin, who runs the Lobster Shack.”

  “Wait, so Mr. Dillington won’t supply Benjamin with lobster because he doesn’t like Owen?”

  “Sounds crazy, don’t it?”

  “Yes.” It sounded unbelievable. I didn’t know much about lobster fishing, but as I understood it, the guy who owned the dock would buy from the fishing boats then sell to suppliers. Was Mr. Dillington not buying fish from Owen’s boat? Or did Dillington captain the boat himself? Perhaps he didn’t allow other businesses to fish at the dock?

  “It’s what I overheard. Benjamin arguing with Owen because Owen had messed up so badly at work that he’d compromised everything for the restaurant. Folks run in circles around here. You scratch my back, and I scratch yours, see? So Benjamin gets Owen the job down at the wharf, as a sternman on one of the boats, and then Owen steals lobster, and there you have it. No more lobster for the Shack.”

  “But if Owen had stolen lobster, surely his boss would have fired him?” I asked.

  The chef shrugged his broad shoulders. “Maybe they couldn’t prove it.”

  “Maybe.” It was confused, but it had definitely given me my next lead. I needed to talk to this boss of Owen’s at the wharf. He’d likely have more information about Owen’s last days, and if there was a feud ongoing, then either the boss or even Owen’s uncle might have had reason to take matters into their own hands.

  There were a few missing links, but I got the feeling that I was closer to solving the mystery.

  “You’re pretty.”

  The compliment had come out of left field.

  The chef wore a goofy grin and winked at me again. “Would you like to come to dinner with me some time?”

  I’d learned my lesson about this already. First, I’d been bitten by my fiancé leaving me in the lurch, and then I’d gone on a date with a man who’d wound up dead. “I think I’m all done with dating,” I said. “The last time didn’t work out so well. But thanks for the offer. And for talking to me.”

  Bee and I headed out of the restaurant and back home, our bellies full and our minds questioning. What would tomorrow bring?

  And who exactly had killed Owen Pelletier?

  8

  I had never had a lot of free time. Not when I had been engaged to Daniel, who’d always had a busy schedule as a business owner, or when I’d worked as a journalist. And now, the food truck was gone, and I was left feeling empty.

  That was how I would have felt if not for Bee.

  She hummed as she fixed us a pot of coffee in the corner of my room, setting out the mugs and insisting that I have a little sugar to sweeten my morning.

  “Today is going to be a big day,” Bee said. “You’ll need your strength.”

  “I’m sure sugar won’t provide me with strength.”

  “But it might make you hyperactive. And we’ll need all the energy, vim, and vigor we can get if we run into that shriveled walnut of a human being again.”

  “You’re referring to Detective Jones?” I asked, hiccupping a laugh.

  “The very same.” Bee brought a mug over to me. “Now, get the coffee down, and let’s
head out. That truck’s not going to drive itself out of the impound lot.”

  It was a horrible thought—my poor food truck with its colorful stripes sitting in a lot, surrounded by heaven alone knew which types of vehicles.

  Bee and I finished our coffees then headed out of the room and into the guesthouse proper, smiling at the host, Samantha, where she sat behind the reception desk with Trouble on her lap, purring. It was a scenic walk from there down to the wharf.

  The entrance was gated, but those gates were open, and most of the jetties and docking spots were empty. Crates were stacked neatly to one side of a low-slung wooden building to the right, its door shut, and a fine layer of grime coating the windows either side of it. Buoys hung off the walls, colorful or faded by the sun.

  A few cars were parked outside the entrance, some of them shimmering in the sunlight. One in particular stood out. It was weather-beaten and old, rust pitting the hood near the windshield.

  Owen’s first words to me rang through my mind, as we stepped onto the wooden boards that led to multiple jetties, holding neatly stacked lobster traps or lengths of rope.

  “Have you heard about the ghost on Springs Wharf?”

  It was past time we got to the bottom of the confusing issue regarding Owen, the lobster boat, and the owner of the wharf. And the murder. Heavens, there was too much to investigate here.

  We knocked on the office door before entering, me first, followed by Bee.

  A man with graying hair and a vast belly sat behind a desk underneath the window, tapping his fingers on a laptop’s keyboard. He looked up. “Sorry,” he said, “we don’t do private fishing tours.”

  “Oh. No, that’s not what we came here for,” I said, tucking my hands into the pockets of my woolen dress. “We wanted to speak to Mr. Dillington?”

  “What about?”

  “Owen Pelletier.”

  The man narrowed sea-green eyes at me. “Why?”

  “We’re interested,” Bee said. “Apparently.”

  “Do you know where he is?” I asked. “It’s pretty important.”

  The man sniffed. “You’re looking at him.”

  “You’re the owner of the wharf? Owen’s boss?”

  “Owner of the wharf, yeah. Boss, not really. Owen’s boss was the owner of the boat he worked on. This wharf is privately owned, but we operate like a co-op. Folks come to fish here, I buy from ‘em and sell to local restaurants or companies.”

  “Oh.” I blinked. “Oh, so you didn’t want to fire Owen?”

  “No?” Dillington ruffled his gray hair. “Where you getting this from?”

  I paused. I’d had a feeling that the chef at the restaurant had given me a garbled version of the truth. It seemed that gut instinct had been right. Dillington hadn’t had it out for Owen, or, he didn’t have the power to fire him, short of kicking the company Owen had worked for out of the wharf entirely. Why had Miller lied?

  Or did he just not know the truth himself?

  “We were at the Lobster Shack last night,” I said, slowly. “And we overheard that you didn’t want to supply lobster to the restaurant because of, well, of Owen.”

  “Firstly,” Dillington said, raising a fat finger, “I don’t see how that’s any of your business nor why you think it’s a good idea to question me about Owen and the Lobster Shack.” He said the word “idea” with a hard “r.” “And secondly, the Lobster Shack is run by an idiot.”

  “Owen’s uncle.”

  “Still an idiot. Always trying to make a deal, looking to buy lobster at reduced prices, sweeping in at the last moment to annoy us all with questions about why the lobsters seem smaller than usual this year.” Dillington huffed out a breath. “Idiot. I’m not the only one who won’t sell to ‘im either. Most of every wharf don’t want nothing do with the man.”

  So, Dillington hadn’t hated Owen. Or he was pretending otherwise.

  “You still haven’t explained why you interrupted my working hours to talk to me about the Lobster Shack.”

  Bee and I looked at each other. “We’re interested in Owen,” I said, at last.

  “You’re interested in Owen.” Dillington’s eyes grew even narrower then widened. “You! I know who you are. You’re the woman he was meant to go on a date with. He bragged about it all morning before the boat went out. A beautiful brunette from out of town. That right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was the one who, uh, found him.”

  “Oh. Sorry about that. Can’t have been a nice sight.”

  I shook my head. “We want to find out what happened to him, you know? It seems the right thing to do. Do you know anyone who might’ve…”

  “What, wanted to kill the guy? Can’t say that I do. Owen wasn’t well-liked, but he wasn’t a bad fisherman. He did right by his captain, and he worked hard.” A frown wrinkled Dillington’s brow. “Though, hmmm.”

  “‘Though, hmmm?’ Care to elaborate?” Bee asked.

  “Well, see, Owen had been sick a lot, lately. Day before he was murdered, he had to go home instead of going out on the boat, and that’s a big deal in this business.”

  “What kind of sickness did he have?”

  “No idea. Didn’t ask. But my guess was it had something to do with his stomach.”

  Poisoning? Could it be that Owen had been poisoned before I even met him?

  “Listen, ladies, my advice is you leave this to the cops. They’ll figure out what really happened to Owen, and then we can put this behind us and get back to business. Murder’s bad for tourism. And lobster fishing.”

  And that was it. We wouldn’t get much more out of Dillington. But we had certainly gotten enough. As we walked back out of the wharf, I turned it over in my mind. The chef had lied. Dillington didn’t seem to care much about the murder other than how it would affect business in town.

  “Look at this,” Bee said.

  She stood next to the beat-up car in the street in front of the wharf, pointing to a slip of paper tucked beneath the windshield wiper.

  I extracted it, carefully, and turned it over, flattening it out.

  You’ll regret this, Owen. I’ll make it so you never forget me.

  “It must be his car,” Bee said, reading over my shoulder.

  “Do you think…?”

  “The note is from the murderer? It could be. It might be. Put it away, quick, before anyone sees. You give that to the walking walnut cop and he’ll only use it against you. Or he won’t believe you.”

  I folded the note and tucked it into my pocket. It might’ve been the wrong thing to do, but it was our first real clue.

  We hurried back down the road toward the guesthouse before anyone could stop us.

  9

  The guesthouse was usually full for dinner, but the murder had put a damper on spirits. The lovely couple I had met in the hallway this morning had been in a rush to pack their bags and leave the town behind, though they had still had the time to smile and share a few kind words with me.

  I sat at a table in the guesthouse’s open-plan living room and dining area, a fire crackling merrily in the grate nearby. Bee had ordered a burger, and I’d gone for a lobster roll—thankfully, Dillington down at the wharf had no qualms about selling to the Oceanside Guesthouse, and Samantha was an absolute whiz in the kitchen.

  The food hadn’t arrived yet, and we had a chance to scan the relatively empty room and to gossip, of course.

  “It’s interesting that the chef lied to you,” Bee said, as she drew her coffee cup from the table and took a sip. She had the odd habit of drinking coffee before bed and claimed that it relaxed her.

  “Interesting is one way of phrasing it.” I kept my voice low.

  A lone man sat in the corner next to the window, peering out at the ocean as the sun set, his chin balanced on his palm. We hadn’t been introduced, and he likely didn’t know anything about what had happened to Owen, but it was better to be cautious.

  Particularly since the folks in Carmel Springs hadn’t been friendly
since the confiscation of the truck.

  “Here we go!” Samantha swept out of the wooden swinging doors that led to the kitchen carrying two plates. “One chicken burger and one lobster roll.” She set them down in front of us.

  My mouth immediately started watering. The food smelled amazing, and Bee tucked in right away.

  “Thank you so much,” I said. “We’re starving.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Samantha lingered, her gaze sweeping to Bee then back to my face. “I heard about what happened to your food truck.”

  “Oh.” Oh no. Does she think I poisoned Owen too? “Right.”

  “I just wanted to say I’m real sorry about that. There have been a lot of rumors flying around in town, and I don’t want you to think that everyone has the same idea about you. That Detective Jones thinks he owns Carmel Springs. He’s always been a wretched man.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m hoping we’ll get the truck back soon.”

  “Me too. It’s nice seeing it parked out at the beach. I heard you were serving hot cocoa.”

  “We were,” Bee said, dabbing at the corners of her lips. “You know, before we were accused of being murderers.”

  The man at the window jerked and looked over at us.

  “She’s kidding,” I said, waving at him. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Bee giggled.

  “Enjoy your meal. You let me know if you need anything else. I’ve got a cheesecake in the fridge. I know it’s probably nothing compared to the stuff you serve on your truck, but it’s sweet, and it will fill the belly.”

  “I’ve always got a second stomach for dessert.” Bee smiled at her.

  And then we were left to eat our meal with the crackle of the fire for company—along with the occasional odd glance from the man at the window.

  “I bet he thinks we did it, now,” I whispered.

  Bee dragged a French fry through ketchup and grinned at me. “I’m struggling to care. Like I said, innocent until proven guilty. Opinions don’t matter, darling.”

  “They do when you’re in the food business.”

  “True. That’s why I stick mostly to baking.”