Death by Chocolate Snickerdoodle, page 26
Out of this life, that is. I looked up questioningly again.
“Getting the confession recorded,” Bob explained, “was Devon’s idea.”
“Huh,” I said, not quite sure how to process this. “So the murdering jerk had a nice little moment for himself at the end?”
And now someone was going to have to go and tell his mother that he was dead.
Bob shrugged exhaustedly. “I really couldn’t say what kind of moment it was, Jake. I mean, who knows what people think when they’re dying?”
Just then George and Ellie peered in through the tent flap, looking for me, and Bob took this as his cue to leave.
“All right, we’ll sort this all out tomorrow. State cops’ll no doubt be wanting to talk to you both,” he said.
Yeah, no doubt. I tossed my emptied water bottle into the recycling bag by the tent’s exit. Outside, the flames had mostly been beaten down at last, leaving a smoking swath of blackened grass with the skeletal shapes of burned trees sticking up from it.
Then the cars on the road began creeping forward; the shapes of men in the near darkness were hauling aside the sawhorses, too.
Nearer by, silhouetted against the last gleams of light in the west, Devon Sipp’s pickup truck hung on the tow-truck hook: beaten and battered, its glass all smashed. It was about to be hauled up onto the tow truck’s flatbed. But then . . .
“Hey,” I said, remembering suddenly. “Someone’s in the . . .”
Just then the tied-up bundle that was Clifton Ferrier sat up as well as he could and began bellowing through the bandanna that gagged him.
I figured that meant that Clifton was (a) alive and (b) somebody else’s problem now. Relieved, I turned away to climb into George Valentine’s vehicle.
After sliding behind the wheel next to me, George thrust his phone at me. “Call Bella. She’s been blowing up my phone for half an hour.”
“Oh, gosh,” I breathed guiltily. In all the commotion I’d completely forgotten about her. She had not, however, forgotten me, and she answered on the first ring.
“Bella, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”
“Of course I am,” she replied briskly. “I’m still here at the hospital. The surgeons took the bullet out of Perry Wilson, and no one’s tried putting any more of them into him.”
Phew. I felt myself relaxing.
“How,” she went on, “are you? What’s going on, and why is George not answering his phone?
She’d already tried calling our house, but no one there knew where I was. So she’d kept calling people all over Eastport, at last fixing on George as likeliest to learn my whereabouts if he didn’t already know them.
And now here I was, so that had worked out for her, and she sounded pleased. She wasn’t always efficient, our Bella, but, by God, sooner or later she got the job done.
Yet another thing lifted my spirits, too: her tone. Crisp, confident. . . as if being given a serious, potentially dangerous job had rejuvenated her. This was the Bella we knew and loved.
A job, I mean, that depended more on smarts and courage than on actual, laboriously physical derring-do. . . .
George turned on the windshield wipers. They smeared across the glass, blurring oncoming headlights to spangled flares. But I didn’t understand why this was happening until I realized it was raining. Not just drizzling or spitting, but really letting loose with a lot of cold, wet drops, big ones.
With the fires fading behind us and the lights of downtown Eastport glimmering ahead, I turned to whisper the good news to Ellie.
“Sounds like Bella’s got her groove back,” I said.
But Ellie was already sound asleep.
Fourteen
“It all started when that housekeeper, Mary Sipp, told her son, Devon, that Alvin Carter was on a will-making kick,” said Bob Arnold.
As I’d suspected when I saw him rising from the bed of Devon Sipp’s wrecked pickup truck, Clifton Ferrier knew a lot, and he’d been happy to discuss it in return for not getting charged with being an accomplice in Alvin’s murder himself.
“And then what happened?” I asked Bob.
In the few days since Devon Sipp’s death by accidental gunshot, Ellie and I had made progress on getting our households, our families, and our business back into working order, and had even made preparations for the cookie-baking contest.
Now Bob sat beside me at one of the long tables in the Unitarian church hall as the long-awaited judging for the annual competition was about to begin.
“Nice turnout,” he remarked appreciatively. “Decorations are nice, too.”
He was right on both counts: a hundred or so people, mostly cookie contestants and their families, filled the hall, along with local and regional news reporters and even a Bangor TV camera.
And Prunia Devereaux’s table arrangements looked lovely, especially the bunches of cherry-red rose hips and glossy green leaves that she must have come early to arrange in their glass jugs.
“Attention! Attention, everyone!” Prunia was at the front of the hall now, wearing a flowered dress, a green sweater, a string of pearls, and a green silk pillbox hat.
“Thank you, all of you, and the news media here, too, for coming out this morning to support . . .” Once the crowd had settled, Prunia began delivering the carefully-crafted speech she had written.
I pulled my own sweater tighter around my shoulders; the old Unitarian meeting house had only electric space heaters now that the ancient oil furnace had finally gone kaput.
Then . . . “Bob,” I urged him. “I asked you . . .”
“What happened,” he finished for me. This was the first time we’d been able to get together socially since the night of the fire.
“Well,” he went on, “what happened then was that Devon thought up a plan for getting one of those wills of Alvin’s—the last one, as in last will and testament—to designate Devon himself as the only heir.”
So far, so fine. “Devon knew about Clifton because his mother also told him it’s who notarized Alvin’s documents,” I said.
“And about Perry Wilson,” Bob agreed. “Specifically, that Perry printed blank wills for Alvin, which he could fill in.”
At the front of the hall, Prunia spoke easily and well about the cookie-contest entrants, identifying a good quality belonging to each contestant and making a big deal of it: for instance, how helpful the person was to the library, the arts committee, the schools, or whatever. Running the contest each year was a sizable undertaking, but she did it and she was good at it.
“But why were Prunia and Alvin Carter such friends?” I asked. “You wouldn’t think . . .”
Bob took a small crustless white bread sandwich from a serving plate of them. Filled with a mixture of chopped Spam, pickles, grated raw carrot, and mayonnaise, they were an old Eastport delicacy called jitterbugs and were improbably delicious.
Bob ate his in a bite. He loved these ladies’-lunch finger foods, which was why I always invited him to events like this.
“She’d made,” Bob said simply, “a project of him.” He sipped tea, his little finger rising delicately. “Wife died, and Alvin retired and moved here. This was thirty years ago. He’s been alone all that time, and I guess Prunia felt sorry for him. You know how she is.”
Oh, did I ever. She’d never met a situation she couldn’t fix . . . in her own opinion, anyway.
Bob continued. “Wasn’t till recently his chain of clothing stores went bust, though, and he ran out of money.”
I turned slowly to Bob. “I beg your pardon?”
Bob nodded, as if everyone knew this. “Oh, yeah. Too bad for anyone who really thought they were going to inherit from him, but the state cops have been looking into Alvin’s finances, and when he died, poor old Alvin was as broke as a joke.”
“So it was all for . . .”
“Yup.” Bob ate another sandwich, while at the front of the hall, Prunia was winding down her thank-yous and acknowledgments.
“All that murder business, all for nothing. Devon got his will made by Perry, got it notarized by Clifton Ferrier, and had sneaked it into Alvin’s desk drawer after he killed Alvin,” Bob summed up.
“That’s why he was on the property that morning when Ellie and I were first there, and right there in the house, too, to finish the last step in his plan,” I said. “And with so many other wills that Alvin did make floating around, no one would suspect the one that named Devon was a fake.”
All this time, Ellie had been listening from where she sat on my left; now she leaned forward. “So then, once he knew what Devon was up to . . .”
Bob nodded. “Right, then Clifton did exactly the same thing as Devon had done, only with himself as beneficiary. When you ran into him that last night, he was there to take Devon’s will out of the desk drawer and put his own in.”
Ellie nodded comprehendingly. “And presto, now his will is the last one, and he’s Alvin’s sole heir.”
“Right,” said Bob, “but first you interrupted him and then Devon caught him. He popped a tiny chocolate éclair into his mouth, smiled happily around it, swallowed.
Ellie laughed, not entirely pleasantly. “Poor guy. His day sure went south fast, didn’t it?”
As she spoke, those truck headlights of Devon’s probed the sky again in memory, as did the feeling of his knife’s tip aimed at my left ventricle.
“It sure did,” I agreed, not entirely pleasantly, either, because for one thing, picture me trying to explain it all to Wade, who hadn’t been a bit pleased.
Up on the podium, Prunia was thanking all the contest’s entrants again, plus the helpers for today’s judging ceremony, the ladies who’d picked rose hips, the sandwich makers and, of course, Unitarians, who’d so kindly, et cetera.
Meanwhile, the finalists sat nervously at the head table. I caught Mika’s eye and winked, You go, girl! She smiled shakily back.
“And now, without further ado!” Prunia exclaimed, and all the cookie contestants looked terrified.
“Here goes nothing,” Ellie breathed as Prunia began to read off the list of cookie-contest winners for this year.
“Bar cookies, Miriah Johnson!” Prunia announced, and a fair, freckled forty-year-old with red curls stood up proudly.
“Refrigerator cookies, Sandra Oates!” Polite applause rippled through the audience as Sandra got up and approached the podium.
“Everything really does look lovely,” whispered Ellie, and it did, too.
Up and down the tables gleamed the gold-scalloped edges of the white china cups and saucers, the antique silver teaspoons, and the hand-painted dessert plates brought over from France decades earlier by someone’s great-aunt Somebody-or-Other.
“Yes,” I agreed. “But, Bob,” I added, turning back to him, “what about Perry? I still don’t get who shot him and why.”
“Drop cookies!” Prunia enthused from up front.
“You took Perry up to the health center, didn’t you?” Bob said.
It was a statement, not a query. “Yes, but . . .”
“Clifton went there that same day to see the dentist,” said Bob, “about his bad tooth. And while he was there . . .”
Right. As I’d now already realized, that’s when Clifton decided that to be on the safe side, it was time to get rid of Perry.
So he shot him—once out in front of Perry’s house and once at the hospital. Good thing Clifton was no champion marksman, no more than Perry was himself....
But now Perry was home, and Billy Breyer was about to be let out of custody. It had taken a while to get hearings held and the paperwork completed, even with Mick Flaherty’s help.
And I’d had almost all my questions answered.
“And now for the most hotly contested cookie group, the one we’re all waiting for, the ‘invented or developed by contestant’ category!” announced Prunia.
“How do you suppose Mika’s going to do?” I asked Ellie nervously.
I had no idea what to expect. In the few days leading up to the event, Mika had gotten secretive about her cookie-contest entry, not even telling us what kind of cookie she was entering.
Ellie sighed. “I think she’s still going with a variety of snickerdoodle, but . . .”
But there was nothing we could do but wait and see; in the end, for all our big talk about rigging the contest, there had been no way to do it. Too many jurors would’ve had to be bribed, and word would’ve gotten out in about twelve seconds, anyway, if we had tried.
And besides, it wouldn’t have been sporting. So Mika was on her own, just as she’d have insisted on being. Hoping that it all turned out reasonably all right and oddly confident that it would, I looked happily around the hall, where the murmur of women’s voices filled the air, along with the mingled perfumes of brewing coffee and fresh baked goods.
“When are the girls getting home?” asked Ellie, choosing a miniature scone from a plate of them labeled OLIVES AND BRIE. “I’d have thought I’d be seeing them by now.”
Anna and Helen Breyer, she meant. With Billy on his way home, like Ellie, I’d thought his sisters would arrive soon, too. But I hadn’t seen them. Also, I wasn’t sure how an olive-and-cheese scone would taste, but I had my suspicions.
“Poor Perry,” I said. “Have his own two sisters been in touch at all since he was shot, do you know?”
Ellie shook her head. “I asked Prunia. She said she called them and left messages, but neither one called back.”
A heavy sigh rolled up out of me. “So I guess he must’ve burnt those bridges permanently,” I said.
Too bad, but sometimes you really can’t go home again. Or sometimes, as in the case of Perry’s sisters . . . The hundreds of photographs of them that he’d wallpapered a whole room with rose up in my mind’s eye again, a chilling sight. Yeah, sometimes you just shouldn’t.
“And now . . .” Prunia was still at the podium. Mika went on waiting patiently but looked ready to dissolve with anxiety.
I took one of the olive-Brie scones to calm my own nerves. Something called honey butter had been provided to anoint the scones with, so I did that, and then hesitantly, I bit in.
Chewed. Swallowed. Took another smallish bite, just to make sure. And then . . .
“Oh, holy criminy, Ellie, these things are—”
Prunia said, “Of all the many wonderful varieties of cookies our excellent Eastport bakers entered, one batch stood out.”
“Fabulous!” I whispered. The mild yet smoky, creamy Brie, the toothsome bits of green olive, and the scone itself, its crumb rich and moist but not in the least gummy . . .
Meanwhile, the suspense was killing me.
“The winner is . . .”
Mika sat up straight, looking spiffy in white khaki pants, a sailor-striped T-shirt, and a navy cardigan draped over her shoulders, with the sleeves tied loosely around her neck.
When I try doing that, I always look like I’m about to be strangled by a renegade clothing item. But never mind . . .
“Ellie, what if she doesn’t win?”
Ellie shrugged in reply. In the past week, no appropriate child care had been found, and the job at the college had let Mika know they couldn’t wait for her decision much longer. So Mika badly needed some kind of good news, and ideally, she’d get it delivered by an experienced mother’s helper who worked for reasonable wages.
But we still didn’t even know if Mika’s cookie was any good, contest-winning good, I mean, until . . .
“Mika Tiptree! With her delightfully different drop cookie, the Snickerdoodle au Chocolat!”
Ellie and I looked at each other. Huh?
Neither of us had ever heard of it. But plates of them were being passed, so we each took one—well, I took two—and did our usual cookie test: break, sniff, bite, and finally taste it.
“Oh, my goodness,” Ellie breathed blissfully.
“Yeah,” I managed faintly, “this isn’t half bad.”
It was all the way good, was what it was, no question about it. The cookie was beige, round, flat, and crinkly on top, just like as regular snickerdoodle.
But across that crinkled top, Mika had drizzled the very thinnest swirls of chocolate glaze—not buttercream icing, mind you, but only melted chocolate, powdered sugar, and a little hot milk.
The stuff was barely there; she’d designed it that way. And yet...
“Wow,” I said, taking another.
“So,” Ellie sighed happily as around us, enthusiasm for Mika’s creation built. At the head table she was beamingly taking congratulations from the other contestants, and to judge by the way she was scribbling in a notebook, she was also taking cookie orders and appointments for media interviews.
“You know,” I said thoughtfully, “if I’m not mistaken, we may have created some competition for ourselves. Looks like a lot of people want chocolate snickerdoodles to take home.”
“Yes. Fine,” Ellie said impatiently, too good-hearted to care about that in the midst of Mika’s triumph.
Sam and the kids were up there with her now, along with my father. Bella was at the Chocolate Moose, because, as she’d said, she really couldn’t stand the suspense. I got up, caught Mika’s eye, and waved a happy See you back at the house at her. She nodded joyfully at Ellie and me and went back to her winner’s duties.
“Not that this solves all her problems,” I said as we moved toward the exit, past long tables loaded with trays full of every possible kind of cookie.
And sandwich and tart and petit four and . . .
“Oh, of course not.” We reached the hall’s big old arched double doors and went out through them. “But a little boost to the old self-confidence never hurt anyone.”
We paused on the flat granite slab that served as the hall’s doorstep. The noonday sun was warm, but now in the first week of October, the breeze had an unmistakable chilly edge on it, even in daytime.
We began walking. Just then Bob, who’d somehow gotten out ahead of us, came down the street in his squad car.
“You two take care,” he said as he slowed alongside us. “Stay,” he added meaningfully, “out of trouble.”
He pulled away as Ellie and I kept walking toward downtown and the Chocolate Moose, and when he was gone, she let a breath out in relief.
