Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery series Box Set 1 Read online

  ----

  A few minutes later, an unmarked cop car crunched over the gravel path leading to the barn and parked about ten feet away. The car was free of the bubble letters that ruined the other police cruisers, and a small police light on the dash was the only way I knew there might have been a cop inside.

  The car idled for a few seconds. Then the engine turned off, the door opened, and out stepped…Detective Wayne Hudson.

  I can’t remember the first thing that struck me about Wayne, but the moment I saw him, his presence was all-encompassing. Like his whole aura washed over me in an instant.

  Day-old stubble shaded his jaw and cheeks. Dark, shiny hair fell in a perfect swoop over his forehead. His sharp green eyes sparkled under thick, brooding eyebrows. And he had a commanding authority, like a cowboy or a military general.

  When Wayne got out of his car, I thought about how easy it would be for him to pick me up. Not like, pick me up with a line in a bar. I mean, lift me from the ground. That was not normally something I wanted or needed in the opposite sex, but I found it incredibly appealing in Wayne.

  I watched as Wayne talked to the other cops. Broad as he was, and at least a few inches over six feet tall, he made the other officers seem tiny.

  Then Wayne turned and approached Miss May and me. For the first time in my life, I understood the concept of “temporary insanity.” My jaw fell open. My vision blurred. My mouth got dry. I realized maybe this was what people called love at first sight. Get it together, Chels! Now’s not the time for romance. Love at first sight? Girl, please.

  Whatever was happening, it made me dizzy.

  “Do I have something on my face?” Wayne spoke with the same light Bronx accent that many people had in Pine Grove.

  “Huh?” I said, snapping out of my momentary lunacy. I realized I might be drooling. Oh man, I hoped I wasn't drooling. I wiped my mouth just in case.

  “You were staring at my face,” Wayne said.

  “Was not,” I said. Great retort. Very fifth grade.

  Wayne shrugged like, “Whatever you say, lady.” And Miss May jumped into the conversation, bailing me out as usual.

  “Your face is just fine,” she said. “All good.”

  “OK,” Wayne said. “Terrific.”

  Up close, I spotted a few grays in Wayne's hair and stubble. He looked to be somewhere in his mid-30s, and the grays gave him a distinguished air that only made him more handsome.

  Wayne looked around the orchard before turning back to Miss May. “My officers tell me you own this farm.”

  “That’s right,” Miss May swept her arm out across the orchard. “Family owned and operated for over a hundred years. My grandfather Tom Thomas founded the farm in—”

  “Alright. You don’t have to sell me on it. I’m not here to buy apples.”

  I bristled at Wayne’s terse response to Miss May and considered giving him a piece of my mind. But then Wayne turned those green eyes on me.

  “And you found the body?”

  “Guh…” I said. Guh? Say something else, Chelsea! But I had nothing to say. Months of meditating and I had never been able to clear my head, but one direct question from Wayne Hudson and I couldn’t conjure a single thought if my life depended on it.

  Ten seconds passed. Had time stopped?

  “Chels,” Miss May nudged me. “The detective asked you about the body.”

  Miss May patted my back. “She’s still in shock, I think. The whole wedding has been hard on her. She had romantic troubles of her own earlier this year. Before she became single again.”

  I was both grateful and embarrassed that Miss May shoehorned the detail of my single-ness into the conversation.

  But Wayne was all business. “I’m just looking for confirmation that this young woman found the body.”

  Finally, I spoke. “Yeah, I found it!” My words came out loud and enthusiastic, like a kid on an Easter Egg hunt. I adjusted my tone to reflect the solemnity of the situation, cleared my throat, and tried again. “I found it.”

  “Alright. Then we’re going to need to have a conversation,” Detective Hudson said.

  “We’re happy to help in any way you need,” Miss May said. “Anything we can do to help get this farm back to normal.”

  “Not the three of us,” Wayne re-focused on me. “Just me and her.”

  Wayne walked away. I wiped my mouth one more time to check for drool, then I followed him over to his car. Definitely a little bit of drool on my sleeve. Great.

  Wayne set his coffee down on the hood of his car and turned to me. “What were you doing when you found the body?”

  ”Uh….” I thought back to earlier. What was I doing when I found the body? Oh. That’s right. “I guess I was… talking to myself.”

  “Do you do that a lot?”

  “No! I’m not crazy. I’m not like a crazy killer or anything.”

  “Did I say you were a killer?” Wayne took a sip of coffee. For every ounce of calm and cool he had, I had two ounces of anxiety and sweat.

  I pushed my hair back, so it was out of my face. “No. Sorry. I just—I didn’t think you wanted to talk to me like, as a suspect.”

  “Suspects are the kind of people to whom detectives like to talk.” Wayne put his coffee back down. “Also, sorry to say it, but the individual who ‘finds the body,’ is often the guilty party.”

  I swallowed. I felt Wayne watching my reaction. And why did he say “finds the body” like he already thought I was guilty?

  “I’m not guilty!” There was that weird Easter Egg hunt intonation again. I adjusted my voice like I had before. “I’m not guilty.” This time I sounded like Jimmy Stewart. Not a good vibe for a single young woman.

  “You know what?” Wayne seemed a little amused, but he refused to full-on smile. Instead, he pulled out his little cop notebook and clicked open his pen. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Why don’t you tell me what happened? Anything you think might be pertinent from your experiences tonight.”

  At that point I thought, Should I get a lawyer? But that sounded like something a guilty person would say, so I just started talking. Babbling might be a better term for it.

  “I was just walking along, minding my business. Trying to center myself, I guess.”

  Wayne jumped right in. “Center yourself why? Are you a twitchy person?”

  Twitchy? Did I seem twitchy? I twitched. Dang it!

  “No, just—like my aunt said. This was a wedding and, uh, my fiancé…. my relationship just ended. Not in a positive, mutual way. So I was trying to appreciate the moment. Be present. Not stuck in the past.”

  “I see,” Wayne adopted a more familiar, sympathetic tone. “You know, I try to meditate sometimes, but it’s hard to focus.”

  “You just have to concentrate on your breathing.” I took a deep breath in, then let it out. “Go nice and slow. In through your nose, out through your nose.”

  Wayne took a breath through his nose, then let it out. I’m sure his heart rate dropped, but my heart beat a mile a minute. Holy snikey, that guy was a sexy breather.

  “Great.” I gulped. “You’re great at breathing.”

  Wayne smirked. I got dizzy again, so I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Following my own advice.

  “Is this a demonstration?” Wayne asked.

  I opened my eyes. I had forgotten he was looking right at me.

  “Yeah,” I lied. “Closing your eyes helps. Or if you’re walking and can’t close your eyes, you can ground yourself by focusing on what’s in front of you.”

  “I see,” Wayne looked around. “Like right now. I see an evergreen. I see a few cop cars. I see a pretty girl.”

  My cheeks flushed a bright red at Wayne’s compliment. I demurred, looking down at my hands. I was about to say thank you, but Wayne interrupted by yelling to another officer.

  “Flanagan! Long time no see!”

  A beautiful Irish-American police officer approached from out in the orchard. I deduced that
she must be Flanagan. And the pretty girl to whom Wayne was referring.

  Ugh. I hated her the instant I saw her. I scolded myself for not having a more feminist attitude toward Flanagan. Pine Grove didn’t have a lot of lady cops. But this woman’s legs were longer than my whole body. Come on!

  “Coffee break?” Flanagan said as she approached Wayne. When Flanagan smiled, she looked like the movie-star version of a lady cop. I bet she could do a pull-up. I couldn’t even reach the pull-up bar.

  “Five minutes. Just wrapping up with Chelsea.” Wayne winked at me. I felt a little better. Then he watched every inch of Flanagan as she walked away, and I felt a lot worse.

  “Anyway.” I tried to hide the shaky jealousy in my voice. Why was I jealous? I had just met this man, and he was questioning me as the suspect in a murder! I cleared my throat. “I was doing a walking meditation when I found the body. I noted the brook. And the trees. Then I noted the dead body.”

  “And what’d you think when you saw the body?”

  “I guess my first thought was that it was Vinny.”

  “Why would you think that?” Wayne asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess because I heard him yelling earlier.”

  “Yelling? What do you mean? Yelling at who?”

  “Uh… Maggie?”

  My eyes widened. Had I just implicated Maggie in her fiancé’s murder? Probably not, I tried to reassure myself.

  “Sounds like I should talk to Maggie then,” Wayne said.

  Crap.

  7

  Jumping to Confusions

  When I stumbled back into the barn, Miss May pulled me aside. “How’d it go? What’d he ask you?”

  I sighed and explained how I messed up and mentioned Maggie’s argument with Vinny.

  “Maggie’s been through enough tonight,” I said. “I don’t want her to have to go through questioning too.”

  “They would have questioned her anyway. She’ll be fine as long as she’s got nothing to hide.”

  Miss May grabbed a tray of fresh-baked, apple-cinnamon cookies from a nearby table.

  “Here,” she gave me the tray. “Hand these out.”

  I looked down and recognized the cookies as Miss May’s famous “Appie Oaters.”

  The cookies were light brown and four inches across. They had big chunks of visible apples and oats. As soon as I took a whiff, the smell transported me to Miss May’s kitchen twenty years earlier.

  Miss May had worked on her Appie Oater recipe for months, and I had gotten to be her taste-tester. I always loved every variant on the recipe, but Miss May strove for perfection, and she wouldn’t stop ‘til she got everything just right. Turns out, the secret to the Appie Oaters was to mix Jonagold and Granny Smith apples for a delicate blend of tart and sweet. Once Miss May figured that out, I understood why she had been such a stickler for perfection. Appie Oaters were the perfect cookie. Soft, sweet, and just a touch salty. My emotional eating impulses compelled me to stack every cookie on the tray and scarf them in one bite, but I resisted. I would have some from Miss May’s private stash later.

  “Give one to every guest,” Miss May gave me a little shove to get me moving. “And ask if they need a blanket, or coffee, or anything. This party may have turned into a police investigation, but we’re still hosting it.”

  I admired Miss May’s commitment. That night was terrible, but she still wanted to offer as many small comforts as she could.

  “Go!” Miss May said. And I hurried away.

  I approached the first table of guests, trying my hardest to offer a warm presence and a comforting smile to go with the Appie Oaters.

  “Would anyone here like a fresh-baked cookie?”

  Most of the guests at the table took a brief respite from their hushed speculation to grab a cookie. And I was about to move on to the next table, when I noticed an empty seat. I checked the place card. The seat belonged to Vinny’s business partner, Sudeer.

  Everything had gotten so crazy, I had forgotten about Sudeer. Last time I saw him, he was stomping around in the night, looking for cell service. And now his seat was empty?

  “Hey uh, have any of you seen Sudeer in the last couple hours?”

  A random guest spoke up. “The Indian guy?”

  I nodded. It felt politically incorrect to refer to Sudeer as “the Indian guy,” but it got the point across.

  “Haven’t seen him,” the guest said.

  Of course, my mind immediately jumped to the worst conclusion: Sudeer had murdered Vinny over their business disagreement.

  I felt like someone had pushed my panic button. I scanned the room for Sudeer, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. So I put the tray of Appie Oaters down and went to go find him.

  I tried to convince myself that this was a crazy idea. Sudeer was one of the quietest guys in school. But sometimes the quiet guys snap, I thought. And if Sudeer had killed Vinny, a murderer was on the loose. He might still be on the farm, or he might have already moved on to his next victim.

  I spotted Wayne at the far end of the barn talking to Maggie, and I made a bee-line over to him. I felt even guiltier as I hurried across the barn. Sudeer was obviously a more likely suspect than Maggie, and I should have never bothered telling Wayne about Maggie and Vinny's argument.

  I broke into a trot as I neared Maggie and Wayne, and by the time I made it over, my forehead was covered in a thick layer of flop sweat.

  Officer Flanagan eyed me as I dabbed the sweat and made my approach. I’m sure she was doing something official and important, but she looked more like she was modeling police uniforms. Her skin looked amazing under those market lights. Ugh.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Wayne? Uh, Detective Hudson?”

  Wayne didn't look up from his notebook. I wasn't even sure he heard me.

  I cleared my throat and tried again. “Wayne!”

  He looked up. Saw me standing there in all my damp glory.

  “Chelsea. How can I help you?”

  “There’s something I think you should know,” I said.

  “OK. What is it?”

  Just then, Sudeer emerged from the bathroom area, drying his hands.

  Oh.

  “Uh, never mind,” I watched as Sudeer took a seat back at his table. “I think I was wrong.”

  Wayne exchanged a look with Flanagan, like “This girl is nuts.” Flanagan smirked in agreement.

  Maggie shot me a pitying glance. I couldn’t believe it. The woman with the freshly dead fiancé felt sorry for me. I scrambled for a way to retain a modicum of my dwindling dignity.

  “Actually,” I said. “Have you questioned Sudeer, Vinny’s business partner?”

  “Yup.” Wayne flapped his notebook shut. “Questioned everybody. Waiting to get the autopsy for official word, but for now we've deemed this one an accident. Looks like the groom got a little tipsy. Fell. Hit his head. There are no murderers among us.”

  “OK. Thanks.” I glanced over at Maggie to see how she was taking this news. Her face was slack and swollen. She wasn’t even processing the information. And she was in no state to decide whether Vinny’s death had been a murder.

  I looked back at Wayne. He seemed convinced that he had solved the case.

  But I wasn’t so sure.

  8

  A Sleuth Is Born

  Teeny and Miss May sat side-by-side on the same side of a booth at Grandma's, each eating a slice of Miss May’s apple pie. I sat across from them, trying to enjoy my own slice, but it was my first ever “morning after discovering a dead body” so I didn’t have my usual appetite.

  Even if I were hungry, Teeny and Miss May asked so many questions that I wouldn’t have been able to get a bite in.

  “Back up, back up,” Teeny said. “Were his eyes blue-green or green-blue? Green has to be the most dominant color, otherwise it’s blah.”

  That’s right. Teeny’s questions weren’t about the dead body I’d found. They were about my interactions with Detective Wayne Hudson. Miss May had t
old Teeny that I had “chemistry” with Wayne. So at that moment I was under serious investigation for allegedly having a crush on a cop.

  “A man is dead,” I pushed my pie around on my plate. “You know that, right?”

  “I know, I know. That’s terrible,” Teeny said. “Even if he was a rude little you-know-what-for-brains. This helps me keep my mind off it.”

  “Well, either way. I don’t remember the color of the detective’s eyes.” I lied. They were definitely more of a blue-green than a green-blue.

  “You do too!” Miss May took a big bite of pie. “They were blue-green. Just how Teeny likes them.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” Teeny smiled. She subsisted on gossip, and my exaggerated encounter with Wayne would be enough to get her through the week. Never mind the dead groom. “Tell me more.”

  “There’s nothing more to tell. I promise.” I pushed my plate across the table and looked away. I did not want to talk about green eyes or blue eyes or anything. Maybe it was silly, but the dead body had me shaken up.

  Miss May took my hand. “You OK, Chels?”

  I shrugged. Miss May put her finger on my chin to turn my face toward hers. She was trying to read my facial expression.

  “You don’t think Vinny’s death was an accident, do you?” Miss May didn't wait for me to answer. “Neither do I.”

  Teeny gasped. “Hold up! You’re over here sitting on a theory for murder, and you let me spend the last twenty minutes talking about some green-blue-eyed detective that Chelsea loves?”

  “Blue-green,” I corrected. ”And lower your voice, please.”

  “Whatever!” Teeny took a big bite of pie and turned to Miss May with her mouth full. “I thought the cops said Vinny fell down or something.”

  “They did,” Miss May said. “But something about that doesn’t make sense.”

  “So who did it?” Teeny wiped her hands on her napkin, not taking her eyes off Miss May.

  “I don’t know,” Miss May said. “I don’t want to just blurt out accusations. And Chels is right. Lower your voice, for Pete’s sake. There are other people here.”