KILLER COCOA PIE Read online

  Bert leaned forward with her hands on her knees. “Maybe, since I wouldn’t give her an interview, she wanted to get some sort of inside scoop for her food blog, dig up some answers on her own.”

  Harry wrinkled his nose, clearly not satisfied with that explanation. “That seems pretty extreme just for a food blog. What could she possibly gain from breaking and entering?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she hoped to find some of my recipes to share online.”

  “Or maybe she really was there to sabotage your shop,” he pointed out. “We’ll know for sure once I get a chance to look around inside.”

  Bert tapped her fingers on her knees. “I know how this looks, but are we positive she works for Bradford and Bradford?”

  Harry was getting impatient waiting around, hoping that he could get to the bottom of things. He looked around the street for anyone who might be from the gas company. “Do we know when the building will be safe for us to enter and have a look at things?”

  “It’s safe now,” came an unfamiliar voice.

  Turning, all three of them spotted a man in a gas company uniform approach.

  “Are you in charge?” Harry asked.

  “I am. Fredericks is the name.”

  “I’m certainly glad to see you,” Harry admitted, shaking the man’s hand.

  Fredericks pointed back toward the building. “I’ve just finished doing my full inspection of the premises.”

  “We’re clear to go inside, then?” the detective insisted, wanting to get inside and figure out just what was going on.

  “I’d say you are. We’ve finished airing the place out.”

  “You fixed the leak?” Bert asked.

  “If there had been one, I would have,” he admitted.

  Bert, Pen, and Harry all looked on with furrowed brows. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, there wasn’t a leak. The valve on the oven had just been left open.”

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  “The valve on the oven was open?” Bert demanded, certain there had to have been a mistake.

  “There was methane gas present that we had to pump out, but not very much. Honestly, if the windows had been open, it would have aired itself out in a matter of a few minutes. Besides that, everything is A-Okay.”

  “So, the hissing sound I heard?” she asked.

  “It was the oven.”

  “How is that possible?” she gasped.

  The man tilted his head and stared right into Bert’s eyes. “Perhaps you left it running,” he accused her in an all too impolite tone. He was clearly irritated to be called out so early in the morning. “That would have caused a methane buildup. Did you get up in the night to use it?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “Don’t you think I would have remembered something like that?” she asked

  “In any case, the valve was letting out gas and the door on the oven was even open.”

  “I can’t believe this.” Bert realized she had been foolish and should have checked the oven first thing. However, she’d been so preoccupied with the beeping alarm that she had simply run out of the building.

  Even more confusing than that was how the gas had reached the stock room and filled it up. Could someone even die from methane gas? Bert wasn’t sure.

  “In any case, you need to be more careful. If we hadn’t realized that it was running, then it could have caused an explosion,” the man pointed out, continuing along with the same condescending tone.

  “I didn’t leave the valve open!” she snapped.

  “Maybe you got flustered and forgot you did it.”

  “Hold on, buddy,” the detective interrupted, putting up both hands for him to be quiet. He’d grown irritated by this man’s rude tone of voice and demeaning attitude, even though those were the same traits Harry used when investigating a murder.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, a feigned innocence in his voice.

  “Excuse me, but just how would the gas from the stove end up killing a poor young girl? You said there wasn’t very much in the building in the first place?” He was looking for some sort of clarification to this confusing situation.

  Fredericks blinked a few times, confused. “I’m sorry, did the girl who passed out die?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all. The amount of methane in there wouldn’t have killed her,” he pointed out, jabbing the pen in his hand toward them like it was obvious.

  “But my carbon monoxide alarm was beeping,” Bert noted, confused about why it would be going off.

  He flipped a paper over on his clipboard. “Yes, we checked that. It turns out your battery was low. That’s why it was beeping.”

  “So, you’re saying there wasn’t any carbon monoxide in the building?” Harry demanded.

  “We picked up a few very trace amounts.”

  Harry whistled through his teeth in frustration. “This doesn’t look good, then. We have a dead girl. How did she die?”

  “Not by carbon monoxide poisoning,” Fredericks noted. “And not by methane suffocation either.”

  The detective turned his gaze on the coroner. “Pen?”

  “I won’t be sure until I get the body back to the lab for a full autopsy and run some tests, but it has all the signs of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  If there was no carbon monoxide poisoning, then what had happened? Bert sensed a bitter taste raise up into her mouth. She had a sneaking suspicion that this was no accident. This was murder.

  “Explain it for me, again, please,” Harry requested with a hiss through his teeth. “You found no signs of carbon monoxide in the building?”

  The man rolled his eyes. “Only minor traces, if any. Natural gas from an open pipe on the stove doesn’t create carbon monoxide, only methane.”

  “It doesn’t?” Harry pressed for clarification.

  “Nope. That’s an old myth. Carbon monoxide is created when natural gas is burned for fuel, like in a car or for a gas furnace. When you have a leak somewhere in that line or a flue is malfunctioning, it can send out poisonous gas into the house. Heck, if you had the fire actually running in the oven, it would have created carbon monoxide, but you didn’t. The valve was just open.”

  “I still am a little confused,” Bert admitted, not wanting to give this guy an edge, but desperate for some sort of answers.

  “Basically, the amount of gas you had in the kitchen couldn’t have killed anyone, not unless it ignited. As far as I can tell, it didn’t,” he said in a scathingly sarcastic manner.

  “But that girl wasn’t in the kitchen. She was in the back storeroom,” Bert blurted out, frustrated by this whole odd situation.

  Fredericks suddenly stopped cold, blinking again in confusion. “Wait, the woman who was found passed out was in the storeroom?”

  “Yes, I thought that was made clear when your team arrived.”

  Desperately flipping through the pages of his pad, he shook his head harder and harder. “No, no. I was informed the girl was found in the kitchen. Even then, I can only conclude that she passed out for reasons not related to the gas leak.”

  “It was the stock room,” Harry and Bert reiterated at the same time.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why not?” the detective asked.

  “According to the blueprints we have on file for this building, there are no gas pipes at the back of the building.”

  * * *

  Carla stood next to Bert on the corner across the street, having walked over like she did on most mornings but finding emergency vehicles around. They waited together for more news on what had happened, and Bert finished her necessary round of oxygen at the insistence of the paramedic.

  Finally, they got some answers.

  As it turned out, the men from the gas company hadn’t even bothered doing any readings in the stock room, going off the assumption that a
gas leak could only be coming from the kitchen or other rooms with a gas line. They’d even checked the upstairs apartment for any leaks at the stove there.

  However, when they’d only found medium to low amounts of methane, they didn’t bother checking anywhere else.

  They’d found nothing that could cause death.

  However, after learning that the girl had been found in the back, they did some tests on the stock room. As it turned out, there were still hints of carbon monoxide in there. With the door closed, it had blocked off the spread of the poison to the rest of the building.

  “They can’t find any reason for there to be carbon monoxide in that room,” Harry noted after doing his talking to Fredericks again. She wondered if they’d skimped on some of the company’s normal protocols by not checking every room and were now trying to cover their mistake. “The building’s furnace doesn’t even run on gas, either. It’s only the stoves and ovens.”

  “Another dead body in your building. How could this happen?” Carla said, her arms folded and shaking her head in disbelief.

  “There is something awfully fishy about this whole situation,” Harry complained, looking up at the sky. A pink hue brushed the clouds, heralding the day’s early daylight hours.

  Bert hesitated, not wanting to say the next thought in her mind. Eventually, she couldn’t help it anymore. “Do you think it was murder?”

  “I don’t know. What I’m more interested in is why she was in your storeroom in the first place.”

  “Well, let’s go inside and find out,” Carla suggested with a newfound eagerness, patting Bert’s arm and starting across the cobblestone street.

  “No, now hold on. Neither of you ladies are going into that shop until my men can do a full walk-through. It’s bad enough we had to have the gas company go in first and make sure the building was safe.”

  “But, it’s Bert’s shop,” Carla argued.

  Bert wrapped her arm around her friend’s. “It’s okay, Carla. We have to let the detective do his job. I’ll just have to put out a notice on the shop’s social media pages that we’re closed for the day.”

  “Customers aren’t going to be happy about that.”

  “I don’t have much choice.”

  “Don’t worry, Bert. We’ll try and be in and out as fast as possible. If we dig up any new developments you need to know about, I’ll call you.”

  “In the meantime, you can stay at my place,” Carla offered.

  “Thanks.”

  “But don’t come asking questions. If this turns out to be a homicide, I won’t be able to share a lot of information with you.” Harry turned to head toward the building but stopped when he saw one of his officers running toward him, holding up a plastic evidence bag. “Detective. You should see this.”

  “What is it?” he asked, his eyes glancing back at Bert, silently asking her to move on from the scene.

  “Come on, Carla. Let’s go to your place,” she suggested, moving away from the building.

  Even as they walked, however, she could hear the men talking.

  “A rat?” Harry inquired, taking the bag.

  “Not only that but check out its ear. It’s clipped. This rat was tagged at some point.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It came from a lab.”

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  “I guess it’s about time I made you breakfast,” Carla laughed as she stood in the kitchenette of her apartment, stirring the cast iron pan of scrambled eggs. It was a much smaller food prep and cooking space than in Bert’s place, which was one reason they usually ate over there.

  “You’re probably right,” Bert agreed, sipping her cup of coffee as she sat at the round card table that had been dressed up with a holiday patterned cloth and a Christmas tree as a centerpiece. Sometimes, it seemed that Carla’s shop overflowed into the apartment.

  “Have you ever thought of maybe making a savory pie to sell at your shop?”

  “Not really. I’m not so sure they’d sell as well as the desserts.”

  Carla turned the sausage links in the next pan, browning them on both sides. “You never know. Maybe people would show up for a full course meal, like a restaurant. A savory pie followed by dessert.”

  “I suppose, but there isn’t enough room for a proper sit-down dining experience. I mean, it’s more like a little café meets a bookstore, you know.”

  Carla continued on her train of thought without stopping, dreaming of all the tasty items Bert could possibly sell. “Pot pie, shepherd’s pie, quiche, a breakfast pie even with sausage and egg filling and a biscuit crust,” she pointed with the spatula at the food she was cooking.

  “Right now, I’m more worried about keeping dead bodies away from my store.”

  Scooping the eggs and sausage out onto the plates, she headed for the table and sat down. “So, do you think that girl was murdered?” she asked, going along with Bert’s change of topic.

  Stabbing her fork into a link, she shrugged. “I can’t honestly say. I mean, it is odd that she was in my shop at all. Who knows who else might have been there.”

  “Do you think she was there to sabotage the shop? I mean, that rat they found?”

  “I know, I know. It had a clip in its ear, meaning it wasn’t a wild animal. It was from a lab or shelter or something.”

  “So, did that girl you found plant it there? I mean, come on. We didn’t find any real sign of rodents of any kind when we looked yesterday morning.”

  Bert ran her finger along the handle of her mug, thinking. “I still am not convinced, Carla. I mean, could a young girl like that really be working for a huge company like Bradford and Bradford? More importantly, I know I’ve been the skeptical one up until this point, but is a business like that capable of such dishonesty? Maybe we should give them, and the girl, the benefit of the doubt.”

  Carla stabbed a fork into her eggs. “I’m not buying it. Detective Mannor said it was all a little fishy.”

  Sipping from her mug, Bert looked toward the window and at the rising sun over the snowy city. “He thinks this was a murder.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “No, but having been around him during these last few murder investigations, I kind of get this sense from him. His behavior and his irritable no-nonsense attitude crop up mostly while he’s on the job.” She drank from the coffee again, letting the bitter liquid invigorate her. “Trust me. He thinks this was murder.”

  Bert had dealt with her fair share of confusing mysteries, but this one had her baffled.

  “The only way I see Delila working with Bradford and Bradford is if she isn’t who she says she is.”

  Maybe it was time to get to the bottom of who Delila Brown truly was. Could she indeed simply be a blogger who’d found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was there something more to all this? Could she really be working for Bradford and Bradford, trying to plant evidence of rodents in her building to force her to sell?

  Bert knew of one way she might be able to find out.

  She was going to find that blog.

  Glancing across the table, Bert took a sip of her coffee. “Hey, Carla? Can I borrow your computer?”

  * * *

  First things first, Bert made sure to update her store’s social media to inform customers that they wouldn’t be open that day. She was increasingly grateful for the benefits of technology, such as reaching patrons via the internet.

  Once that was out of the way, it was time to face the more important matter at hand.

  “What are you looking for again?” Carla asked, bending and looking over Bert’s shoulder.

  “Greetings with Sweets. That was the name Delila gave me.”

  “Her blog, you mean?”

  “That’s the one.” Clicking on the search bar, she typed in the name and hit enter.

  Both women scanned over the search results. On the first page, there didn’t seem to be any matching websites or blogs. There were a few hits for a ba
kery in the UK, an Indian restaurant in New York City, but not much else.

  “Maybe it just isn’t popular enough to be on this main page.”

  “You’re probably right. She said she was trying to get it off the ground and doesn’t have many followers, is my guess.”

  “Try adding her name in.”

  “Good idea,” Bert agreed, typing Delila Browning onto the search and hitting enter.

  Scrolling through the new set of items, there were a few hits for random social media pages for girls named Delila, but not the blog or the blogger herself.

  “Darn,” Bert whispered.

  “Do you think she was lying after all?”

  Pursing her lips, Bert clicked over to the next page of results. “No, I don’t want to jump to that conclusion yet.”

  “I know you’re trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she was hiding out in your shop after hours. Not to mention the rat.” Raising her shoulders up, she let out a wild shiver of disgust. “Gross.”

  “I agree. That thing had to be planted, but I’m going to look at every option, just in case.”

  “What other explanations are there?” Carla pointed out, patting her friend on the shoulder knowingly.

  Bert turned slightly in the swivel chair to look up at her friend. She’d spent the entire morning, ever since she’d found the poor dead girl, formulating a theory. “At first, I was ready to jump to the conclusion that she was working for the Bradford brothers, just like you, but then I got to thinking.”

  “Thinking? Are you doing that again?” she joked.

  “Maybe she knew that the Bradford company was up to something, that they were going to try and sabotage my shop when I didn’t sell.”

  “How would she know that?” Carla asked, leaning on the desk.

  “Delila told me she was a fan of the pie shop. Maybe she was out to try and protect me.”

  “A fan? All the way from Maine? How did she hear about this place?”

  Bert shrugged. “How did the Bradford’s hear about it?”

  “It’s the Bradford’s job to know.”