Peaches and Scream Read online

  My interaction with Beth played on loop in my mind as I approached the shop. I saw her wild eyes. I heard her strange muttering. I cringed when I remembered her choking on the chocolate chip cookie. And accusing me of attempting to kill her…

  Steve started barking as soon as we reached the entrance to the bakeshop. “I know, buddy. We’re here. Shhh.”

  Steve barked three or four more times, which was unwonted of him. I squatted beside him. “Hey. What’s going on? Are you OK?”

  Steve scratched at the front door to the bakeshop. “You want to go inside? It’s cold. I know. Be patient.”

  I unlocked the door to the bakeshop, stepped inside and flicked on the light. There was Beth, propped up at a table with her deck of tarot cards laid out before her.

  And she looked pretty dead.

  5

  Murder, She Predicted

  “Hello. Is anyone in here? I know karate.” Maybe it wasn’t the smartest move to try and talk to a potential murderer, but I wanted to make my presence (and my martial arts skills) known. Also, a tiny part of me hoped Beth would start awake, and turn out to be not dead at all.

  I took a step into the bakeshop and scanned the room. Nothing seemed out of place. There were no signs of a struggle. But Beth didn’t move an inch. Her wide, scary eyes didn’t blink. A familiar feeling churned in my gut. It was the feeling I got whenever I discovered a dead body. And I’d discovered far too many dead bodies since moving back to Pine Grove.

  I took another careful step into the room. A floorboard groaned beneath my feet. Steve barked at the sound. I stumbled back and put my hand to my chest. Then I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself. I’d been in this situation before, and I knew what to do…I needed to take a look around, sniff around for some clues, then call the police.

  But I wasn’t about to investigate alone. I pulled out my phone and called Miss May. She answered with her groggy, sleepy, “why are you calling me right now?” voice.

  “Sorry. I know it’s late.”

  “It’s fine.” Miss May cleared her throat. “Is everything OK? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s not good.”

  Miss May groaned. “Don’t tell me…”

  I sighed. “It’s Beth. She’s back in the bakeshop.”

  Miss May answered quickly. “What? She broke in?”

  “I’m not sure how she got in. But she’s dead.”

  Miss May whistled, low and long. “Don’t touch anything. Be there in a minute.”

  Miss May ran to the bakeshop shortly thereafter and arrived more than a little out of breath. Her eyes were wide and panicked. “Have you checked to make sure the killer is not in here?”

  I gulped. After calling Miss May, I had just stood perfectly still, like a scared little statue. Finding a dead body is shocking, no matter how many times you have the experience. “I wanted to wait for you to come. But I haven’t heard anything. No one has attacked me. And when I asked if anyone else was in here, no one answered. I think we’re alone.” Steve barked. “Except for Steve,” I corrected.

  Over the next two or three minutes, Miss May and I conducted a careful search of the bakeshop. Looked behind the counters and under the tables and back in the storage closet. It turned out I was right. The killer was no longer in the building. He or she had escaped.

  “OK. I guess we’re safe. For the time being.” Miss May sat on the stool. “Did you touch anything when you came in here?”

  I shook my head. “Like I said. I was in shock. I still am in shock, I think.”

  “I know. Me too. We need to be observant. This isn’t a typical crime scene. It’s… staged.”

  I looked over at Beth, propped up and sitting before the tarot card spread. “I agree. This is odd.”

  “Tell me what you’ve noticed,” said Miss May.

  “Can you go first?” I asked. Miss May usually took the lead in our investigations, and I kind of preferred being her copilot.

  Miss May shook her head. “You’re a vital part of this investigation team. Tell me what you see and we’ll analyze it together.”

  I looked around and put my hand to my chin. “First of all, the door was locked when I arrived. And all the windows are locked as well.”

  Miss May nodded. “Yes. No signs of forced entry.”

  “So the killer must have had a key to get inside and to lock up behind themselves when they left. But I have your keys. And my keys are back at the house. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’ll text KP and make sure his keys are with him.” Miss May opened her phone and sent the text.

  KP was the groundskeeper at the orchard. He was like an uncle to me — an uncle with a curmudgeonly exterior but a kind heart. I almost laughed out loud, thinking of KP getting a random text in the middle of the night. KP loved his beauty rest, as he called it. And he wasn’t afraid to grumble when something made him unhappy.

  Miss May’s phone dinged with a reply from KP. I leaned forward. “What did he say?”

  Miss May read the text. “He said, ‘Do you know what time it is? I can’t stay gorgeous if you text me in the middle of my slumber. I was having a good dream, too. I had all the pizza in the world and I never got full or gained weight.’”

  I chuckled. Miss May shook her head. “I wish he’d answer the question about the keys.”

  Miss May’s phone dinged once more. “It’s another text from KP,” she said, opening her phone. “‘I’ve got my keys right here. You should know that because I’ve never lost anything in my entire life. Nighty-night.’ Alright, that answers that.”

  Miss May showed me the phone. There was a picture of KP holding up his keys with a scowl on his face.

  “Is there anything else missing in the bakeshop?” Miss May asked.

  I nodded. “When we locked up there were three peach pies left in the display case. Now there’s only two.”

  “That’s right,” Miss May said. “So technically two crimes have been committed here tonight. Murder and burglary. Although I’m not too upset about the loss of a single pie.”

  I looked over at Beth. Rigid and lifelike, her palms down on the table in front of her. “I want to say I’m surprised by this — and I suppose in some ways I am. Murder is always surprising. But Beth seemed convinced someone wanted to kill her.”

  “She seemed convinced everyone wanted to kill her.” Miss May climbed off the stool and crossed toward Beth. “Including you, Chelsea.”

  I shuddered at the thought. “Beth made a lot of enemies, even just in the past few hours. She yelled at half the people at the peach party.”

  “She was hostile and paranoid,” Miss May conceded. “And you’re right… She had plenty of enemies.”

  Miss May snapped a photo of the tarot cards spread out on the table in front of Beth. “You don’t know how to read these cards, do you?”

  “No.” I crossed over toward Miss May and took a look at the tarot cards. There was a skeleton man rowing a boat. There was a knight trudging into the distance carrying a sack of swords. And there was a skeleton riding a horse with the word DEATH scrawled ominously beneath it. “These images freak me out,” I said.

  Miss May nodded. “Everything about this crime scene freaks me out. The locked door. The missing pie. The tarot cards.”

  I scratched my leg. “Maybe…it’s possible… Could Beth have died of natural causes? I don’t see any evidence that she had been in a fight or resisted.”

  Miss May shrugged. “It’s possible. But I think she was poisoned. By our peach pie.”

  I gasped. “Our peach pie isn’t poisonous! What makes you say that?”

  Miss May pointed at a few crumbs on the table beside the tarot cards. “She definitely ate a slice before she died. Either that, or she was forced.”

  I backed away from the table. Miss May was right. There were crumbs on the floor by Beth’s feet as well. I’d recognize those buttery flakes anywhere. The last thing that Beth had ever eaten was a slice of our peach pie.
<
br />   Soft sunlight seeped into the bakeshop through the front windows. “Sun’s coming up.”

  Miss May walked over to me and put her arm around my shoulder. “Come on. We need to call the cops.”

  6

  Cops and Pie Robbers

  Detective Wayne Hudson was tall, broad, and fine, also handsome. His piercing green-blue eyes were hard to look away from, even if the conversation you were having with him was awkward or weird. And Wayne and I had plenty of awkward conversations.

  Yes, sometimes my chats with Wayne had a romantic undertone, but a lot of them also had a murderous undertone. Since I’d gotten together with Germany, Wayne had kept his distance. Part of me wondered if Wayne was still interested in dating me — and an even smaller part of me hoped he was.

  The morning that Miss May and I found Beth dead in the bakeshop, Wayne was the first to arrive on the scene. He pulled up in an unmarked car and although it was barely dawn, he wore a neat brown suit that looked like a custom fit.

  Is it bad that I noticed the fit of his suit right after having found a dead body?

  I couldn’t help myself. It was a good suit. Brown went well with Wayne’s green-blue eyes. Then again, Wayne looked good in pretty much any color.

  OK. OK. Maybe I was noticing Wayne a little more than usual. Germany had been gone for a while at that point. Maybe I was a little excited to have an interaction with a single male. Even if the circumstances were bleak.

  I stepped out of the bakeshop and met Wayne halfway down the walk. I gave him a small smile but his face was serious. “Hi Wayne. Sorry to call you out here so early.”

  Wayne pulled out his little detective notebook without looking at me. “Not a problem. Here to do my job. Can you describe the scene of the crime? And tell me why you were out in the bakeshop in the middle of the night? You know the drill.”

  “Yeah. Of course I know the drill.” I leaned over to try and get a better look at Wayne’s face. He resisted looking at me. I felt an anxious lump right in the center of my throat. I was embarrassed about my momentary feelings toward Wayne…he seemed to be in a purely professional mode.

  Miss May and I had solved more murders than the Pine Grove Police Department by that point. Wayne had helped, sure. But the killers would’ve never been caught if it hadn’t been for me and my aunt and Teeny too, sort of.

  I took my time describing the scene of the crime. From prior experience, I knew I had to be careful with my words. I didn’t want to incriminate myself nor did I want to end up a suspect in this investigation. I’d learned many times that Wayne and the other members of the police force in Pine Grove subscribed to the belief that the person who finds the body is often the guilty culprit.

  I had discovered more than my fair share of bodies since moving back to Pine Grove, and I had never been the guilty culprit. But I didn’t trust the police and I really, really didn’t want to end up in jail for a crime I had not committed.

  After I finished with my story, Wayne asked me to bring him to the bakeshop so he could string up police tape and look for clues. At that point, Chief Flanagan, Deputy Hercules and a few others had arrived on the scene. So after I let Wayne into the bakeshop, they crowded inside and asked me to exit.

  I passed the next half hour or so sitting on the steps of the bakeshop beside Miss May. We were both tired and neither of us said much. I trusted Miss May’s brain wheels were turning or churning or doing whatever they did. I felt too tired to start solving the mystery. I knew that this moment might be our last little bit of peace and quiet until we caught the killer, so I tried to relish the silence.

  Wayne’s boots clacked as he stepped out of the bakeshop. “You ladies say there are only three sets of keys to this establishment?”

  Miss May nodded. “That’s right.”

  Wayne walked toward us. “Care to show me those keys?”

  Miss May dangled her keys at Wayne. “Mine are here.” She unlocked her phone to show Wayne the picture of KP from earlier in the night. “These are KP’s.”

  Wayne turned to me. “Chelsea. You have keys of your own?”

  “Yeah. They’re back in my room at the farmhouse.”

  Wayne just stood there. I looked over at Miss May and she shrugged. Wayne cleared his throat.

  “You need to see them?” I asked.

  “That would be nice.”

  I let out a deep breath and stood. “Alright. Let’s go.”

  We trudged slowly back toward the farmhouse. The journey, which had only taken Miss May thirty seconds in her panic earlier that night, took us closer to two minutes. We didn’t speak much as we walked. Then we got to the farmhouse and went inside.

  “I know exactly where they are,” I said. “In the left pocket of my jean jacket.”

  Wayne nodded. “I’ll stay down in the foyer with Miss May. Bring the keys down when you find them.”

  I plodded up the stairs and into my bedroom. I’ll be honest, the place was a mess. But I knew exactly where I’d left my jean jacket. On my chair, under three dresses, next to a pile of old diaries, between the window and my collection of books that I one day intended to read.

  I grabbed the jacket and reached into the left pocket. The keys were not in there. Weird. I reached into the right pocket. No keys. I began to sweat.

  I spun around, looking at my messy room. Then, the search began. I threw clothes left, right and backwards, listening for the jangle of keys as I excavated. I got on my hands and knees and looked under the bed. I accidentally knocked the chair over as I crawled under my desk.

  Normally, I was very good at finding things. I had a proven search method, and I almost never came up empty-handed. But a combination of stress, fatigue, and feeling like I’d been cursed by a dead woman had me off of my game.

  “You OK in here?”

  I turned. Wayne and Miss May stood in the doorway to my bedroom.

  “Um…”

  “Your bedroom’s a mess,” said Wayne. How observant, Detective.

  “It’s not usually like this. I’ve been packing. Yeah. I’ve been packing for a trip to Morocco. I’m going there to learn how to make Moroccan rice. We’re going to start serving Moroccan rice in the bakeshop.”

  Wayne crossed his arms. “You can’t find the keys, can you?”

  I gave Wayne a tiny shake of the head, at most one millimeter left and one millimeter right.

  “And you said the door to the bakeshop was locked when you arrived?”

  I nodded, again with the slightest movements.

  “And the door can only be locked using a key?”

  Another tiny nod. Half a millimeter up, half a millimeter down.

  Miss May stepped forward. “You think the killer stole Chelsea’s keys and use them to infiltrate the bakeshop?”

  Wayne nodded. “That’s right. And as long as the potential killer is out there with those keys, it’s not safe for either of you to remain on this orchard.”

  7

  The Key to Happiness

  KP arrived at the farmhouse about ten minutes after the detectives left. He stepped through the front door and dragged his heavy work boots clean with a sigh.

  Miss May threw up her hands in confusion. “Where have you been? I texted, I called.”

  KP shrugged. “You woke me up about the keys and I sent you a picture. Then I went back to sleep and apparently all this kerfuffle went down. I woke up in the middle of my sleep cycle before — when that happens and I go back down, I go back down hard.”

  “The cops were knocking on your cabin door for five minutes straight. They want to question you.”

  “Like I said. I go down hard. Hard as an uncooked bean at the family reunion. I just broke a tooth biting into one of those beans.” KP groaned as he sat at the kitchen table. “Someone mind giving me all the details? You girls know I love the gossip.”

  Miss May and I exchanged a nervous glance. KP let out a long, slow whistle. “Don’t tell me we’ve got another corpse on the farm. I just got my peache
s fresh and juicy for picking. This is going to ruin business.”

  Miss May crossed her arms. “KP.” She stood and sounded like an angry Catholic school teacher.

  KP held up a hand in apology. “I know, I know. May the victim rest in peach, I mean peace. Rest In Peace. I got peaches on the mind, what can I say? Who was it, anyway?”

  Miss May set a cup of coffee down in front of KP then sat across the kitchen table. He sipped his coffee in silence as she told him every detail of what had occurred in the bakeshop. When she was finally done speaking, KP didn’t move or utter a single syllable for almost a full minute. Finally, he looked up. “What in the world is a tarot card?”

  Miss May shook her head. “That’s your question? You hear that entire story and you want to know what a tarot card is?”

  “Hey. I’m not the detective. I’m just a curious farmer who had his sleep disrupted. Forgive me if I’m not quite as sharp as I might typically be.” KP crossed to the counter and poured himself some more coffee. “You two want to be topped off?”

  I nodded. There was plenty of adrenaline in my system from all the excitement of the prior night, but I suspected that I was in for a long day, or even a long week. Extra coffee was always essential in times like those. That, and extra sugar. “I like my coffee—”

  KP sighed, cutting me off. “I know. Lots of sugar. Lots of cream. Barely any coffee.”

  “I’ll have mine black,” said Miss May. “To start, at least. Cream and sugar for dessert.”

  KP scoffed. “You two girls don’t think I know how you like your coffee yet?”

  Miss May grinned. “Our sleep was interrupted last night. Forgive us if we’re not as sharp as we typically might be.”

  KP put our coffee down on the table and plopped back into his seat. “So you say the cops suggested you vacate the premises? Just because of some missing keys?”