The Case of the Waffling Warrants Read online

  I took it, carefully, and turned it over. Yep. It’s a pink glove, with a daisy embroidered on the front. Orange floral disc.

  “Thank you,” I said. “This is helpful. I wonder why Tina said it wasn’t her glove if these were made specially for her.”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t find the other one, so it must be her glove. Right? That’s why we were so shocked when she was arrested. Tina’s never let her gloves out of her sight. She takes them with her everywhere, even during the summer.”

  “Why?”

  “She has a special connection with them.” Mrs. Rogers’ smile was soft. “She had a special connection with them. Every time I asked why, she would dodge the question. She was… my eccentric little girl. Young woman.” She pinched her eyes closed and took a breath. “Sorry. I need a minute.”

  I examined the inside of the glove and the fabric, but it was like asking a brick wall for an omen. I tucked it into my purse for safe keeping.

  “Can you tell me anything about Tina’s friendships? Relationships, maybe? A boyfriend?”

  “Oh no. No. Tina was very business-focused. She didn’t have a boyfriend. And friends? She had a lot of them. She was sort of friends with Josie, but that’s kind of on and off. I don’t know, you know how women can be. Changeable. Especially Josie. I can’t believe she had my Tina arrested. That she’d even think Tina would try to vandalize her bakery… Tina was the one who suggested a joint venture with Josie. Why would she jeopardize that?”

  So, that’s two people who have disputed Josie’s account of their friendship. Interesting.

  I made a note of it. “This is an awkward question, but can you think of anyone who might’ve wanted to harm Tina? Is there anything or anyone that springs to mind as suspicious?”

  Mrs. Rogers turned her cup in a circle between her palms. “No,” she said. “Apart from the police arresting her and Josie’s change of heart, no. I can’t think of anything or anyone that was different this past week.”

  Not exactly the lead I had hoped for.

  So far, all the evidence pointed squarely at Josie. Lauren’s not going to be happy about this.

  8

  “That horrible creature at The Gossip Rag has been spreading rumors about you, Charlotte.” Gamma sat at the kitchen table, wearing a Gossip Inn apron, shelling peas into a silver bowl. Lauren was behind the stove, cooking up a storm.

  I had just gotten back from my meeting with Mrs. Rogers, a whirl of questions sweeping through my mind. “What do you mean?” I removed my apron from the hook next to the kitchen door and slipped it on. “What’s Jacinta saying now?”

  Jacinta Redgrave had the scruples of a starving carrion bird when it came to gossip and news. I didn’t blame her, what with printed news being a dying industry and all, but it was annoying that Gamma and I always got the short end of the stick.

  “You’re a suspect,” Gamma said. “According to public opinion, at least. I’m unsure of Detective Goode’s areas of investigation currently.” She pinged another pea from the pod into the bowl. “But I’ll find out. My grapes are listening.”

  I wasn’t about to stress out over Detective Goode’s investigation yet. If he came knocking, well, then I’d worry, but for now, I had bigger problems to fix.

  Lauren hummed a country song under her breath.

  “Where do you need me?” I asked her.

  “Finely chopped onions, please.” She gestured with her spoon.

  “Oh, joy.” I grabbed my onion goggles—a pair of repurposed ski goggles—from their drawer and put them on. The world got a little hazier. These things were old.

  Once I’d gotten the onions, chopping board, and knife onto the table and taken my seat, Gamma cleared her throat.

  “I found some information you might deem interesting,” she said, with another choice ping of a pea.

  “Lay it on me.” I brandished my knife, dreading the first cut into the onion. The goggles usually worked, but they had their limits, and Lauren had set out six onions for dicing.

  “I spoke to Mary-Ellen at the police station,” Gamma said. “She managed to, uh, procure that list you were looking for.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “How did you convince her to give you that information?”

  The list of people who had visited Tina Rogers. This would be helpful. I could fully furnish my suspect list at last! Investigations weren’t easy—I’d been a spy in my past life, not a detective, so I was following the path of least resistance here.

  “Oh, a cake or two. And I gave her a coupon for a free ghost tour next month,” Gamma said. “We need to start testing the tours out properly. Come up with new information to lure in more takers.”

  “What did Mary-Ellen tell you?”

  “Tina Rogers had three visitors, excluding you, on the morning of her murder.”

  “So many. And Officer Miller let them all see her?”

  “Apparently,” Gamma replied. “It’s Gossip, Charlotte. Miller likely let a lot of things slip beneath the radar. Or under the table.”

  “Meaning we could pay him off with ghost tour tickets?”

  Gamma shot me a secretive smile.

  “So, who were the three visitors?”

  “This is where it gets interesting,” she said. “They were, in chronological order, Josie Carlson, Mandy Gilmore, and Bridget Willows.”

  “Mandy Gilmore. She’s staying at the inn.”

  “Indeed,” Gamma said, in her prim British accent. “Only recently returned after leaving for greener pastures.”

  I set down my knife and brought out my phone, blinking behind the ski goggles. I tapped through to my case notes and added the three names to the suspects list.

  “What do we know about Bridget Willows?” I asked.

  “She’s the head of the Gossip Sewing Club,” Lauren said, instantly. “She’s a lovely woman. When Josie and I were girls, she’d babysit for our momma when she needed to get out of the house to run errands. She was so patient with us too, even though Josie had the tendency to raise heck.”

  I had kept my opinions about Josie under wraps, but the fact that she’d visited Tina on the morning of the murder, after telling me that she hadn’t seen her for days, was beyond suspicious.

  But I wasn’t about to bring that up in front of Lauren.

  “OK, interesting. That’s the second time the Gossip Sewing Club has been mentioned to me today,” I replied, and briefly told my grandmother about what Mrs. Rogers had said. “I think I’ll have to talk to this Bridget Willows lady soon.”

  “You’ll love her,” Lauren said, brightly. “She’s an angel. Charlie, would you watch my sauce for a second? I’ve got to run to the ladies room.”

  “Sure. No problem.” I set my phone aside, pulled up my ski goggles, and walked over to the stovetop.

  Lauren rushed out, breezing past Cocoa Puff who lay across the doorway, drifting in and out of dreams.

  “Now that she’s gone,” Gamma said, immediately. “What about Josie?”

  “She’s a liar,” I replied. “She told me two lies. First, that she and Tina weren’t friends, and, second, that she hadn’t seen her for days before the murder.”

  “Perhaps, only one of those is a lie.”

  Given that we knew Josie had dropped by the station to see Tina, it was clear what my grandmother meant. Josie might not have been friends with Tina. Not anymore.

  I watched the sauce like a hawk. It simmered peacefully, no smoke in sight—but I didn’t trust it. Food tended to burn the minute I looked away, and I didn’t need a hormonal Lauren breathing down my neck because of it.

  “She’s my target,” I said. “Though, I might talk to Mandy Gilmore first because she’s, you know, right here in the inn.”

  Lauren re-entered the kitchen and bustled over. She stirred the sauce, tasted it, and eyed me. “Good,” she said. “You didn’t burn it this time.”

  “Not through my own doing,” I replied. “It was sheer luck.”

  I put
my goggles on then dropped into my chair and grabbed my knife. I had onions to chop and a killer to find. Especially, if Detective Goode had decided I was to blame for Tina’s death. Even if he didn’t, I wasn’t about to subject the people of Gossip to a murderer on the loose.

  “Careful, Charlotte, you’ll slice a finger off chopping like this.”

  “Excuse me,” I replied. “This is Gordon Ramsey’s technique. I watched a video and everything.”

  “He must look fetching in ski goggles.”

  I rolled my eyes at my grandmother and nearly sliced off my finger. “You’re distracting me, see?”

  Gamma returned to shelling her peas, a sneaky smile parting her lips. And me? Well, I returned to my rumination.

  Why had Josie lied to me? What had Mandy Gilmore, the infamous returning gossip, been doing at the station on the morning of the murder? And why on earth was the Gossip Sewing Club involved in this?

  Inquiring spies deserved to know.

  9

  After lunch, I abandoned Lauren to her cleaning of the kitchen and exited into the hallway, heading for the closet that kept my favorite cleaning supply. The feather duster. Not only was the feather duster a fun way to keep Sunlight and Cocoa Puff entertained, but it was a low stress cleaning activity.

  Dusting trinkets and tables in the inn’s many nooks and crannies was a lot more fun than cleaning windows or vacuuming or polishing the floors. It was the perfect way to look busy without actually being busy.

  Gamma saw right through the ruse. But, eh, she let me get away with it. And I needed the time to think today.

  I dusted the crystal ball on the trinket table under my grandmother’s antique mirror, considering the evidence so far.

  Mandy Gilmore, newly returned, had visited Tina. Were they old friends, maybe? Or was there another, more wicked reason for the visit?

  And what about Josie and her lies? I didn’t want to put my friend, Lauren in a precarious and uncomfortable position, but I wouldn’t put murder past Josie. She had it in the eyes. Kind of. OK, not really, but she was bossy, mean, and wasn’t it true that just about everybody had the potential to be a killer?

  What about the Gossip Sewing Club and—?

  “Knock, knock.” The deep voice rumbled from the inn’s doors.

  I jolted then reprimanded myself. I’d quit being a spy about nine months ago. The time it took to gestate a human being had seen the loss of my usual sense of perpetual awareness. Disappointing.

  I turned to the door. “Oh. Hello.”

  Detective Goode, wearing a neat buttoned shirt and a pair of plain blue slacks, stood on the threshold. He straightened the lanyard that bore his badge. “How are you today, Miss Smith?” he asked, stiffly.

  Man, he’s cute.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” I replied. “How are you?” Internally, I measured that my tone was calm but not devoid of emotion, all the while trying to track his movements.

  Was he here to talk to me?

  “Good. Hot and busy, you could say.”

  “May I help you with something, Detective?” I twirled the feather duster then tucked it under my arm. “Do you not have a place to stay in town?”

  “I do, thank you, Miss Smith. I’m here to see one of your guests. I’ve been told that Miss Mandy Gilmore is staying here. That correct?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I replied. “I can get her for you, if you’d like.”

  “That would be peachy.”

  Peachy? Who even says peachy?

  “Please, take a seat in the dining room. I’ll go up and fetch her.” I gestured toward the dining area.

  “Sure, will do. Thank you.” He strolled past me, wafting cologne that was lemony and light, then took a seat at a center most table, his back to the door.

  Interrogation technique. He’s putting himself between the door and his target, once she sits down. But why wouldn’t he ask her to come down to the station then? Maybe, he was following up on a loose end that needed tying.

  I proceeded up to the second floor, where Mandy Gilmore was staying in the Rose Room, and knocked.

  A burst of complaints sounded, followed by footsteps and the creak of the door. “I don’t need my room cleaned, thank you,” Mandy said. “It was cleaned yesterday.” She gestured to the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging off the doorknob. “Can’t you read? I’m trying to take a nap here.”

  Don’t punch a guest. Never punch a guest, Charlie. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Miss Gilmore,” I said, trying the obsequious approach. “But Detective Goode is downstairs, and he’s asked to talk to you.”

  Mandy frowned. “Oh. Oh, OK. Well, why didn’t you say so?”

  I ignored the jibe and stepped back, allowing her to exit her room. I followed close on her heels, feather duster and all.

  Mandy tossed her dark curls, giving me the side-eye as we entered the dining room. “Hello, Detective. You wanted to see me?”

  “Please, take a seat.”

  “Can I get you guys anything to drink?” I asked. “Lemonade?”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Mandy said.

  “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  “Holler if you need anything.” And with that, I left them to it.

  Or so they thought.

  Really, I dipped around the corner and continued my dusting—faking my cleaning duties now more than ever. My ears would’ve been pricked up if I were a cat.

  “—follow up—a few things.” Detective Goode’s voice.

  Darn it, I needed to get closer. I shifted up, my breathing calm and practiced. The awareness I’d lacked earlier had resurged in force.

  “—what more there is to say. I wanted to come here and be with the family—”

  “—understand. Did Tina know him?”

  “Quite well.”

  “—and she was going to attend the funeral as well?” Detective Goode asked, lightly.

  “—chance to talk to her about that, specifically.”

  “Then what did you get the chance to—”

  “Mainly the past. Friend stuff.”

  A short silence from Detective Goode followed. “I think that’s all for now. But I’ll be in touch if anything comes up.” He talked louder, as if the tension between them had broken and he could talk more freely.

  “Thanks, Detective Goode. I appreciate you’re in a difficult position. I know you’re doing everything you can to find out the truth.” Mandy’s voice was louder too, and she simpered at the detective, as if that would help her.

  Maybe it would. I hadn’t sussed out what type of man Goode was yet.

  I retreated, stealthily, and dipped into the kitchen with my feather duster.

  Lauren sipped from a cup at the kitchen table. “I’ve been craving this stuff every day since the second trimester of my pregnancy started,” she said.

  “What is it?” I asked because talking to her and being heard would allay suspicions. Mandy and Detective Goode would hardly think I’d listened in if they knew I was in here with Lauren.

  “Boiling water with slices of cucumber and lemon, a sprinkle of cinnamon on top.”

  “Gross!”

  “I know,” Lauren said, and took another sip. “But the baby wants it. And what the baby wants, the baby gets.”

  “Excuse me.” Detective Goode spoke from the hall outside the kitchen.

  “Oh, hello, Detective,” Lauren said, happily. “Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?”

  “Boiled water with cucumber slices, lemon, and cinnamon?” I added in.

  Detective Goode pulled a face. “Hard pass. Thanks. Can I talk to you for a moment, Miss Smith?” He crooked a finger at me, and I was tempted to grab it and twist it around. Crooking a finger? Rude.

  “Sure. No problem.” More flies with honey. Remember that. More flies with honey.

  Not a chance had the detective caught me eavesdropping. I followed him out into the foyer of the inn.

  “Thanks for the hospitality,” Detective Goode said. “You doin
g all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked. “I mean, yeah. I’m doing great. You let me know if you need anything, all right?”

  “You’re not planning on leaving town any time soon, are you?” His tone was stern.

  So, the rumors are true. I’m a suspect. “Nope. Not any time soon. I’ll be sure to let you know if I plan on it, Detective.”

  “Sure. OK. You keep well, Miss Smith.”

  “You too, Detective Goode.”

  He gave me a final look, one I couldn’t place, then turned and walked out of the doors, letting them fall shut behind him.

  10

  That evening…

  * * *

  “I’m going to wring Billy’s skinny little neck!” Lauren proclaimed, from behind the stovetop in the inn’s kitchen. “I planned on doing waffle cupcakes the entire week, and now I can’t do anything.”

  “Still no flour?” I asked. “I asked you Lauren. Are you sure you don’t want me to check this out for you?”

  “I doubt there’s anything you can do, Charlie, though I appreciate the offer. I mean, this isn’t a case you can solve. It’s a lack of supply.” Lauren huffed and opened the oven door. She had a lasagna inside—one of her favorite dishes to make because she could load it with mushrooms from the “Shroom Shed” under the inn—Lauren’s side project where she grew fresh mushrooms for the inn’s meals.

  The scents of melted cheese and bubbling sauce filled the kitchen.

  We had everything set up for dinner—bread from The Bread Factory, fresh butter on the side—including the plates and cutlery. Lauren, Gamma, and I always ate after the guests and before the clean up, so it would be a while before I got to snack on Lauren’s lasagna.

  Thankfully, I had a distraction. The strange conversation that had taken place between Mandy and Detective Goode earlier played on my mind.

  A funeral. Were they talking about Tina’s funeral?