Murder Gone A-Rye (A Baker's Treat Mystery) (18 page)

“See for yourself.” Jessica opened a curtained area at the end of the hall.

Grandma was on a hospital bed with her eyes closed. Her arm and leg were splinted. She was dressed in a hospital gown. A big purple bruise rose up on her forehead. Her left-hand index finger was clamped into a plastic finger clip connected to a pulse and oxygen monitor. An IV bag was on her right and the sound of her heartbeat rang through the tiny room.

Aunt Phyllis sat in a chair beside the bed. She looked tired and worried. Someone had given her a warming blanket.

“How is she?” I asked in what felt like an appropriate whisper.

“I’m alive,” Grandma said in her gravelly voice. “I could use a cigarette.”

“Ruth, you know there’s no smoking in the hospital,” Phyllis chided her.

I took Grandma’s hand, and she opened her blue eyes and winked at me.

“Got myself in a real pickle this time,” she said with a wry smile. “Ow.”

“What were you thinking climbing up on that statue, anyway?” I was relieved and mad at the same time. It was hard to figure out what to do with the rush of emotion.

“I wanted to look at the crime scene from a different vantage point.” Grandma stuck out her bottom lip. “I didn’t know it would be slick.”

“What could you possibly learn from a higher vantage point?” I squeezed her hand. Her skin was warmer than usual. “Do you have a fever?” I put the back of my hand on her forehead.

“Her temperature is up due to the fall,” a female voice said behind me. I turned to see a tall brunette with light brown skin and tilted, exotic eyes. “Hi, I’m Doctor Nadir.” She held out her hand.

I shook it firmly. “Toni Holmes. Ruth is my grandmother. How is she?”

“She had a bad fall,” Doctor Nadir said. Her words held a slight accent. “Her right arm is broken and needs to be casted. Her right leg has a hairline fracture. We’ll cast that as well.”

“Okay.”

“Her CT scan shows a concussion, which is not good for a woman of her age. We’d like to keep her overnight for observation.”

“Fine.”

“No!” Grandma said in unison with my “fine.”

I turned to her. “Grandma, you will be here most of the night anyway while they cast you. You might as well stay in a comfortable room.”

“I agree,” Bill said behind me, and gently but firmly pushed me out of the way. “Ruth, what have you done to yourself?” He leaned over and planted a kiss on her frown. Then he took her free hand and patted it.

“I’m sorry, but she can only have one visitor at a time. The rest of you will have to go out to the waiting room.” This news came from a large woman in nurse’s scrubs. Her hair was steel gray and tightly curled, her nose prominent and hawklike, her chin set as she gave us the glare of a woman in charge.

“I’ll stay,” Bill said firmly. “She’ll listen to me,” he added, and I knew he was right.

“Come on, Aunt Phyllis. I’ll buy you a coffee.” I put my arm around her thin shoulders and walked her out. Sam had come in with Bill, and the three of us stepped out into the hall while the nurse closed the curtain on Bill and Grandma.

“How bad is it?” I asked Doctor Nadir.

“Not bad, considering all factors. She’s lucky. There is no bleeding on her brain,” the doctor said. “But, as I said, we’d like to keep an eye on her.”

“With her arm and her leg, she’ll need a wheelchair,” I noted.

“She may also need physical therapy.” Dr. Nadir wrote a note on a clipboard. “Six weeks in a chair will mean her muscles will be weak.”

“They weren’t that good to begin with,” I muttered, thinking about the scooter she used on a regular basis. The very scooter the police had in custody.

“I’ll write her a scrip for PT,” the doctor said. “She lists Dr. Procter as her internist. She’ll need to see him next week for a follow-up to see how she’s doing.”

“Of course—wait.” I remembered the float and the parade just a few days away. “She’s been excited to ride on my float for the Homer Everett Day festivities. Will she be okay to do that?”

“That depends. She certainly won’t be able to walk the parade route.”

“No, she’s going to be sitting,” I reassured the doctor.

“Then I don’t see a problem. But if I were you, I’d make sure she was strapped down. The last thing she needs is to take another fall.”

“I’ll see she’s buckled in,” I said. “Thank you.” Then I took Aunt Phyllis and walked her toward the waiting room.

“I tried to stop her from climbing up there,” Aunt Phyllis said, her bright blonde hair mussed. “You know how she is. She gets an idea in her head and there’s no shaking it.”

“What was it that made her want to see the spot from a higher vantage point?” I asked. “It’s dark out there. What did she think she could see?”

“I have no idea.” Aunt Phyllis shrugged. “I thought she saw something on the statue. Sometimes she can be so closemouthed. Especially if she thinks she might be on to a good story.”

“It’s not like you were going to beat her to the story.” I was perturbed by Grandma’s behavior. I swear, sometimes she acted more like a teenager than a grandmother.

I got Aunt Phyllis ensconced in a comfortable chair and went to the coffee service and poured her a cup of coffee, careful to add the right amount of cream and sugar.

“It’s this whole Lois thing,” Aunt Phyllis said as she took the Styrofoam cup I offered her. She sipped briefly and wrapped her blue-tipped fingers around it. “We really need to solve this before Ruth gets herself killed.”

I sat down hard in the plastic seat across from her. “I know. What do you want me to do?”

Sam sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. “Is this still about Lois Striker’s murder?”

“I’m afraid so,” Aunt Phyllis said. “Ruth has been like a bloodhound on a trail with it. There’s no shaking her loose.”

“Aren’t the police looking into this?” Sam asked.

I turned and looked into his eyes. “Chief Blaylock says he is, but they aren’t releasing any information to the public. I swear they’re worried it will interfere with the Homer Everett Day proceedings. The police are biased. Chief Blaylock has to report to the City Council, and they all have a financial stake in the parade and the festival.”

“Blaylock may be feeling some pressure from the City Council,” Sam said, “but he also has to keep the community safe. If there’s a killer out there, then he needs to find them, and quick, or heads will roll—and trust me, his will be first.”

I’d forgotten that Sam came from a wealthy family with political connections in the county. His mother belonged to the country club crowd and often met with the most influential people in the state of Kansas. If anyone had insight into the politics of the region it was Sam.

“Lois’s memorial service is set for Tuesday at nine
A.M.
One of us should go. It might help to see who shows.” I chewed on my bottom lip.

“I’ll go,” Phyllis said. “Although I’m not all that sure I’ll be welcome. I didn’t exactly run with her group of friends.”

“I should go along,” I said. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”

“It’s Thanksgiving week,” Sam reminded me gently. “Will you need extra hands at the bakery?”

I frowned. “Probably.” I cupped my right elbow and drummed my fingers on my chin. “I’ll call my cousin Lucy and see if Kelsey and Kallie can work a few hours.” Kelsey and Kallie were Lucy’s twins. They turned twenty-one this summer and were always looking for work to help pay their cell phone bills. “As long as someone is covering the bakery counter, I can bake the orders. Meghan can deliver them. Thank goodness I cut off delivery time at ten
P.M.
on Wednesday.”

“They took Ruth off to her room,” Bill said as he came through the waiting room door. He looked ten years older than usual. His hair stood up and his shoulders sagged a bit. “She’s not hurting now; they have given her some powerful painkillers. But I imagine she’ll be a mess tomorrow.”

I stood. “Do you want some coffee?” I hated emotion-filled scenes, and the worry in the waiting room was palpable. My instinctive reaction was to feed everyone, but since my bakery was closed, the coffee machine was as close as I could get.

“No, thank you.” He gave me a small smile. “Ruth asked me to send you all home. She’s fine. Go home, get some rest.” He looked straight at me. “Especially you, Toni. We know you go to work in a few hours. You need your rest. She’s sorry for scaring everyone.”

“The doctor said she’ll need PT once her bones heal,” I told him.

“I’ll see she gets there and does her work.” His expression was grim. “I want to see her fully recover. Meanwhile, there is a nurse in our apartment complex. I’ll make sure they come in and check on her a few times a day.”

It was going to be hard to see my very active grandmother slowed down, but that is why she moved into assisted living. So that she could stay in her home should the time come when she needed extra care.

Grandma’d told me once, “No one wants to live in a nursing home if they don’t have to.” She was right, of course. My mind went to Lois Striker. She was Grandma Ruth’s age. So who had she counted on when she needed looking after?

T
wenty gluten-free pies later, I was showered and dressed in my only black dress. It was a wrap dress with long sleeves and a poufy skirt that landed below the knees. My black pumps were shiny and my unruly hair was pulled back in a tight no-nonsense bun.

“There aren’t very many people here,” Aunt Phyllis whispered.

“Maybe her family is still in the vestibule,” I whispered back. A glance around the funeral home chapel told me that five people besides Aunt Phyllis and me waited in the folding chairs that were carefully lined up in the small room to face the casket.

“She didn’t have any family,” Aunt Phyllis said low. “She never married, and her only sister died three years ago of cancer.”

Poor Lois; not only did she have to give up her only child, but she lacked the crazy love of my big family. While I would never have ten children like my aunt, there was something to be said about being related to literally hundreds of people. Surely a few more than five of them would attend my funeral service.

“Who took care of her when she got sick?” I asked, thinking about Grandma and her apartment in assisted living. My mind’s eye compared the apartment to Lois’s old bungalow. When the oil refineries came to town, they brought with them a population boom, and so rows of bungalows, like the two-bedroom one Lois had lived in, were built and occupied.

But as the oil boom slowly disappeared, so did the people in Oiltop, and those bungalows were left to the old and then young. The homes blistered and warped over the years of exposure to the heat of Kansas summers and the wild cold of the winters.

“Lois had a full-time nurse,” Aunt Phyllis said. “It was so odd, too, because everyone knew she didn’t have the money to pay for a nurse like that. One of the mysteries of life, I suppose.”

“I suppose.” I sat back. Or maybe it wasn’t such a mystery, I thought, as Hutch Everett and his wife and son walked into the room.

Hutch looked dignified in a charcoal-gray suit. His shirt was white and his tie a classic black-and-white. His wife, Aimee, wore a gray sheath dress with a fitted short jacket, hose, and gray shoes. Her hair was the champagne color that most women of a certain age and status had. It was carefully combed into a straight bob and sprayed to within an inch of its life.

Harold Everett was fourteen years old and heavyset, and he sulked as they came into the room. He grabbed the aisle seat in the very back and slouched with his hands in his pockets. It was pretty clear he didn’t want to be there. The kid pulled out his phone and began texting or something. What do kids do with their phones that their heads are always down and their noses in them?

I noted that the handful of people present didn’t include any of the nurses I knew. So if Lois had a nurse companion, the relationship had not extended into friendship. Hutch’s gaze landed on me, and I sent him a small smile. He gave me a short nod, then he put his hand on his wife’s back and guided her into a row across from us in the middle of the room. In my experience, no one ever liked to sit in the front seat of a church service. But sitting in the very back was rude and made it appear that you were ready to bolt at any second.

Aimee snapped her fingers, made eye contact with her son, and motioned to the empty seat beside her. She did it again but still the boy didn’t move. Finally she turned around and ignored his defiance.

That would not have happened in my family. If Mom or Dad didn’t come down and pinch your ear and drag you where they wanted you, then Grandma did. Trust me; it hurt more from Grandma Ruth—most likely because she would tell you how it hurts her more than you.

I turned my attention away from the sullen teen to the flowers that surrounded the casket. There was a black-and-white portrait of Lois that must have been shot in her twenties. She had been a pretty woman then, her hair dark and curled in a pageboy cut around her shoulders. Her face was thinner, her chin sharper, and her eyes sparkled as if she had a secret no one else knew. Maybe she did. Maybe she’d been pregnant with her lover’s child when the picture was snapped.

If there had ever been any doubt that Hutch Everett knew his birth mother, it was squashed the second he walked into the chapel. There was no reason for Hutch and his family to be there unless they had some deeper connection to Lois.

A movement in the back caught my eye. I turned to see the sullen teenager panning his phone as if he were videoing the affair. He pointed it right at me and studied the screen. Then he looked up, grinned, and put his phone down.

There was something creepy about being videotaped without your consent. If you didn’t know you were being filmed, how could you object?

The service was short and sweet. When the director asked if anyone wanted to come up and say a few words, no one budged. And so in fifteen short minutes, the funeral was over and Lois was carted off to the cemetery.

“Shoot me if my service is that awful,” Phyllis whispered to me as we stood to leave.

“Don’t worry.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “You’re a Nathers now. The one thing we love most after weddings and babies is a good funeral. I’m certain the room will be packed with grieving Natherses who can’t wait for the open bar at the luncheon after. Nothing like a good wake to bring the family together.”

She smiled at the thought, and so did I. The Everetts left without a word to anyone, and I wandered over to the guest book to see if anyone else suspicious had signed it.

That’s when it caught my eye. Hutch Everett had signed the book
Hutchinson Champ Everett
.

Why would Homer name his son after a man he’d murdered months before Hutch was born?

Maybe the answer was in Lois’s journals.

• • •

“H
ow was the funeral?” Meghan asked when I walked into the kitchen of the bakery.

“Short.” I hung my coat up on the hooks in the back, then reached for my apron. “There weren’t many people there, and it was done by the funeral director. Not in a church.”

“Funny, I would have thought Lois would have been active in her church.” Meghan consolidated the trays of donuts down to one colorful tray.

“She didn’t have any family to speak of.” I pulled down the ingredients for cupcakes. With everyone having pies for dessert on Thanksgiving, I had planned fresh cupcakes for the afternoon bakery rush. On today’s menu were apple cinnamon, carrot cake, and pumpkin spice. “There wasn’t anyone to coordinate a church service. When that happens they usually add it to the funeral expenses and keep it small.”

“Sad,” Meghan said, and took the full donut tray out to the front of the bakery.

It
was
sad, I thought. Family was the only real legacy you left in the world once you died. Maybe a good reason for me to reconsider the possibility of having a man in my life.

I followed her out to check on the number of baked goods and to help estimate what would be needed for the rest of the day.

A few small groups clustered about our black wrought iron tables. One was the usual group of knitters, undeterred by the impending holiday. I picked up the coffeepot and walked over to freshen their cups. “Good morning, ladies.” I poured the coffee. “What are your holiday plans? Do you have family coming?”

Francy glanced up from the pale blue baby blanket she was knitting. “Dinner is at my house this year,” she said. “I’m making the turkey, and everyone else is bringing sides and desserts.”

“You’re lucky to have family in the area,” Julie said with a sigh as she worked on a deep-green-and-white blanket. “My family is all in Wisconsin, and no one could make it down this year.”

“You should go up,” Mary said as she put down her pale pink angora blanket and picked up her coffee cup to sip.

“I would if I had the money, but things are tight this year, what with Sean having to take off work for six weeks after his neck surgery,” Julie said.

“How’s Sean doing?” I asked. He’d had cervical spine surgery, and I’d taken a plate of gluten-free cookies to her home.

“He’s good, back at work.” She didn’t miss a stitch as she spoke. “He said the pain went away the moment he woke up from surgery.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” I said and straightened. “I went to Lois Striker’s funeral service this morning.”

“Oh, dear, poor Lois.” Francy shook her head. “I’m surprised anyone went. She had a tendency to lord it over people.”

“Lois wasn’t nearly as bad as Aimee Everett,” Julie said. “I went to a Chamber of Commerce coffee once to promote my Mary Kay business, and Hutch’s wife acted as if she were the mayor’s wife or something. Her nose was all up in the air, and she practically sneered at my shoes. When I found out she was a regular at the coffees, I quit the Chamber and never looked back.”

“It didn’t hurt you any,” Mary said. “You still have your pink Cadillac parked in your driveway. Which reminds me, I need to order some of your mascara. I’m out.”

I decided I’d learned all I could learn from that group and moved on to the next. This table was a couple of ranchers who came in weekly and spent an hour or two playing checkers and enjoying the bottomless cups of coffee I offered.

“Hi guys,” I said. “Coffee?”

“Sure.” Mr. Andrews scooted his cup my way. He jumped three pieces and took them off the board.

“Drat,” Mr. Brooks muttered. “You can fill mine, too, while you’re at it, young lady.”

These two old guys had lived in Oiltop their entire lives. Surely they would know Lois, and might even be aware of her secrets. “Did either of you know Lois Striker very well?”

“No one like us knew Lois,” Mr. Brooks said as he studied the board. “That woman was after the rich and famous.”

“You know, for as hard as she worked to catch Homer Everett’s attention, she sure ended up alone and broke, didn’t she?” Mr. Andrews said.

“I thought she had a live-in nurse. If so, she must have had money. Live-in nurses are not cheap,” I pointed out.

“I can’t say as to where she got her money.” Mr. Brooks jumped his checker over two pieces. “But she and Everett were in cahoots over something. If she ever needed anything she got it. His wife didn’t complain either.”

“Makes me wonder if they were a threesome,” Mr. Andrews said with a cackle. “Although no one would believe it to look at her.”

“Right.” I walked away. So Grandma Ruth wasn’t the only one who hated Lois. Maybe she wasn’t killed because she was going to spill her secrets. Maybe she was killed because she had said the wrong thing to the wrong person one time too many. It was something to consider.

But who was it that greased up Homer Everett’s statue and almost killed my grandmother?

“Hey, Meghan, have you ever known kids to grease Homer Everett’s statue?”

“What? No, they might egg it. Heck, they’ve tried to tar and feather it. But why would they grease it?” She shrugged her shoulders. Today she wore a black peasant blouse under a black corset, with black pants and her customary thick-soled combat boots.

“Maybe it’s the Everetts that greased it,” Mr. Andrews said.

I spun on my heel. “Why?”

“To keep the blasted thing clean,” he stated. “Didn’t you hear the girl? The kids are always trying to deface the thing. I heard the Everetts were trying out this new silicone solution that would protect the bronze from damage and yet be invisible to the eye.”

“Didn’t they hire Charlie Handon to treat the statue with that stuff?” Mr. Brooks asked. He looked at me, his hazel eyes serious. “He said it was slick as snot, pardon my language.”

“They need to put a warning on it, then.” I frowned.

“There is,” Mr. Andrews said. “Got a sign right beside the statue that says, ‘Danger: Do not climb. Violators will be ticketed.’ I ought to know; I made the sign. Right nice. Poured brass. One of my best, if I say so myself.”

The bakery door opened with a jangle of bells. “Hi, Toni, how’s your grandma doing?” Brad pulled his sunglasses off his nose, revealing electric-blue eyes full of worry.

“She’s doing better.” I put the coffeepot back on the heater. “Bill is taking her home this afternoon.”

“What happened to Ruth?” Mr. Andrews said.

“She fell and broke her arm and her leg,” I said. “She bumped her head as well, so they kept her overnight at the hospital to keep an eye on her concussion.”

“Ouch,” Mr. Brooks said. “How’d she fall that bad?”

I shrugged, not wanting to admit she was climbing on Homer Everett. “You know how easy it is to fall at her age.”

“Don’t we know it.” Mr. Andrews went back to his checkers game.

“That’s what got my wife, Eliza,” Mr. Brooks said. “She fell in the bathroom and did all kinds of damage. You tell your grandma we’re pulling for her.”

“I will, thanks.” I walked behind the counter. “What can I get you, Brad?”

“How about a couple of those bear claws and some coffee?”

I plated two gluten-free bear claws and he poured his own coffee. “Why don’t you come on back?”

He followed me into the kitchen, where Meghan was boxing up the cooled pies. “Hey, Meghan.”

“Hi, Mr. Ridgeway.” She batted her eyes at him. I didn’t blame her. The man was gorgeous. Every female from one to ninety flirted with him. It was something to consider when I started dating again. I had a bit of a jealous nature. I’d have to be able to handle the fact that he could have anyone he wanted.