Breezy Spoon Diner Box Set Collection Read online

  “But, something important did happen while you were up there, Miss O'Shea,” said Jimmy excitedly. “Guess what? Charlene decided that when I join the military she's going to join, too! We can travel the world together and see all those beaches for free.”

  My head was whirling. “Beaches?”

  “Yeah, my grandfather was in the military and he used to talk about Normandy Beach which I think is in Hawaii ---”

  “France,” I said.

  “Oh, no, not France, Jimmy!” Charlene objected. “Georgine's daughter Pearl told me that there's a law that women have to go topless on French beaches. I can't do that! What would my mother say?”

  “Hey, Miss O'Shea, what happened to your eye?” Jimmy asked. “It's all swollen.”

  “Ooh, it might be an infection!” Charlene gasped. “Whatever caused your hair to be all weird must have spread to your eye! I saw on the internet that there's a Scandinavian monkey flu spreading across the country, but it's been covered up by the big Scandinavian corporations! You should see a doctor, Miss O'Shea!”

  “Let's go home before we all need to see a doctor,” I said, clenching my fists so I wouldn't strangle them both. Of course, given the circumstances, I felt that no judge would convict me.

  “Do you think we should turn the TV off first?” Jimmy asked.

  “The TV? What are you talking about? There's no TV here!”

  “No, I mean the one up in the apartment,” he said, pointing toward the alley.

  I turned and saw the flickering light from a TV screen reflected against the open door of Olivia's apartment. Who turned on the TV? It wasn't on when I walked into the room, and whoever knocked me down certainly didn't stop to channel surf before they ran away. Was there somebody else in Olivia's apartment?

  After what had just happened, I had a very strong urge to pull out my phone and call Bob to come and nab whoever was up there, but I stopped myself. I would get myself as well as Jimmy and Charlene in hot water if anyone found out what we were doing here, and even though Bob is my brother, he's still a sheriff's deputy. I took a deep breath to calm myself down. I could handle this myself. Maybe.

  “I'm going back up there,” I said. “Forget the making out; just watch this time! Got it?!”

  “You can count on us, Miss O'Shea,” Charlene said. “We won't take our eyes off that door.”

  An image came into my mind of Charlene and Jimmy staring at the door, completely oblivious to a police car pulling up right next to them. “One of you watch the door and the other keep an eye on the street,” I told them. “And remember to call me right away if you see anything.”

  I crossed the street and slipped into the alley. At the base of the stairs I waited for a moment, listening. There was no sound from the apartment, just the silent flickering of the light against the door. I was already second-guessing my decision as I climbed cautiously up the stairs, hugging the wall to try to keep the boards from creaking.

  When I reached the top I stopped again to listen for any sound inside. After hearing nothing, I slid forward against the door frame and took a peek inside the room. The apartment had been ransacked; papers and books were strewn around the floor and the cushions had been pulled off every chair and ripped apart. Dishes had been pulled out of every cabinet in the kitchen and the coffee machine and the toaster had been swept off the counter and lay in the corner. Flower pots had been overturned onto the carpet, and there on the floor right where I had hit the ground was the remote control for the TV. I must have landed on it when I was knocked down and turned the TV on by accident.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, I stepped into the room and picked up the remote. I was just about to turn the TV off when I glanced up at the screen. The images flickering on the TV were not a television show, but pictures of the salon! The screen was split into four frames, each showing a different side of the building; one above the front sidewalk, one by the back balcony of the apartment, one looking onto the parking lot and one by the door to Olivia's apartment that looked down the stairs to the alley. I could even see a blurry little Jimmy and a blurry little Charlene sitting on the blurry little bench across the street.

  So Olivia had hidden cameras mounted around the building! She was using her big screen as a monitor so that no one would know she was watching from up in her room. I turned on my flashlight and trained it on the cable box that sat on the shelf below the television. Sure enough, it was not a cable box at all; probably a device that controlled the cameras and sent the footage to the TV. Or maybe it recorded what was on the screen!

  I looked down at the remote control in my hand; it wasn't a standard cable remote, but how it worked I wasn't sure. I tried pressing different buttons with getting any result, but finally I got the hang of it and pulled up a menu on the screen. There was a log of recorded footage on the menu! It looked like only footage from the past week was saved, but that was all I needed! The murderer would have had to walk right by the camera at the top of the stairs!

  First things first; I went to the recording from this evening and started rewinding. Soon I saw myself coming into the alley and ascending the stairs. To my dismay, all I could make out was my silhouette as I moved toward the door. The light above the stairs was turned off, so there was nothing much to see; just the shadowy form of a not-thin woman who appeared to have a tumbleweed stuck to the back of her head. I kept rewinding just in case the person who ransacked the apartment would show up more clearly; maybe they had come earlier when there was still light in the sky. I saw the shadowy figure's back as they ran down the stairs, and then of course Miss Bush-Hair appeared in the alley again. More rewinding and I saw the person come into view at the mouth of the alley, maybe fifteen minutes before I had arrived. No luck. A bulky coat, the top of a hat and shadows; that was all I could make out. The fact that I could only really see out of one eye right now didn't help either.

  I went back to the menu and selected the day of the murder. Olivia was killed just after noon, so light would not be a problem there. The recording started at midnight so I fast-forwarded to lunch time. About noon I saw Jolene appear in the alley and climb the stairs, kale salad in hand. In the background I could see the blurry figure of who I assumed was Monsieur Rene sitting on the bench across the street with something that was probably his phone in his hand. A few minutes later Jolene left and turned out of sight. A few seconds later I picked her up on the parking lot camera, walking away from the salon in the direction of Ham Hamsky's office. I hadn't doubted her story, but I still felt a little relieved to see with my own eyes that she was telling the truth.

  Only a few minutes later, a figure appeared in the alley; a person wearing a black smock like Jolene wears, and with auburn hair just like Jolene's, and carrying Jolene's hair dryer. And yet, knowing Jolene, I could tell that it wasn't her; the person walked in a different way, and they seemed a little taller. I hoped to get a good look at the person's face as they reached the top of the stairs, but the hair was combed forward to obscure the face. Jolene never wore her hair like that, but it was clear that this person did not want anyone getting a good look at them; being seen from a distance by a distracted Monsieur Rene was perfect to establish Jolene as the killer, but they didn't want anyone to see more than that. It worked, too; all I could make out was a slightly blurry nose and chin. It didn't look like Jolene's nose and chin, but I couldn't say that it looked like anybody else's, either.

  Rats! Here I had the murderer caught on tape, and if I showed it to the sheriff it would only make Jolene look more guilty! My impression that the killer didn't walk like Jolene would hardly hold up in court. A gloomy feeling settled over me and my swollen eye was stinging; I felt like going home and moping.

  No, I had to keep looking; there had to be something I could find to prove Jolene was innocent. I went to the recording for the day before the murder and ran through it, but I didn't see anything unusual. I called up the video for the previous day and started skimming through it. It didn't look any more promisin
g than the last video, but suddenly near the end of the video something caught me eye. It was late afternoon, almost dusk, and I saw a couple of figures moving below the back balcony of Olivia's apartment. They stopped below the balcony and appeared to talk for a moment, then the bigger of the two men set his feet and boosted the smaller man up to the balcony. As the man grabbed onto the rail that surrounded the balcony and hoisted himself over it, I saw his shaved head and a dark patch on his neck; the horse tattoo!

  It was the two men I had seen leaving Molly's Yarns! Looking closely, I could make out the big guy's shaggy hair below the edge of the balcony. The bald guy made a quick search of the balcony, looking for things to steal, no doubt, and then slid open the door to Olivia's apartment and slipped inside. A moment later he rushed out onto the balcony again and climbed quickly over the rail and jumped down to the ground. Olivia appeared on the balcony just behind him with a golf club in her hand, shaking it over her head at the two men as they ran away and disappeared behind the side of the building.

  I looked through the recordings of the previous days, but found nothing of any note. Still, at least I had found one lead; Olivia had caught those two sketchy characters breaking into her apartment, and maybe they were afraid she would get them arrested so they went back and killed her. The shorter guy would have been just about the right size to pass himself off as Jolene in that disguise. I needed to find out more about them. I had seen them at Molly's Yarns, so maybe Suze would know something about where I could find them. This would mean having a conversation with Suze, but there was a murder to solve, so I'd just have to do it.

  I looked at my watch; it was almost eleven. I had better get out of the crime scene before anyone saw me. Sooner or later someone might come by, and from what I could see on the cameras, Charlene and Jimmy were back to making out.

  When I got home I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My eye was red and swollen almost shut. I was glad that Mark was at the fire station tonight, but he wasn't going to stay there forever and when he saw me he was going to know I had been investigating the murder. I took some ice cubes out of the freezer and wrapped them in a washcloth and put them on my swollen eye. Maybe that would make the swelling go down and with a little makeup it wouldn't be noticeable. Yeah, right.

  I sat down on the bed and thought about what I had seen at Olivia's apartment. As much as I hated to poke holes in my new lead, I could see problems with my theory about those two shady guys murdering Olivia. How would they have known about her problems with Jolene, and where did they get the disguise? As far as I could tell they were strangers in town and there didn't seem to be any way they would know that much about Olivia's business. They could have heard about it somehow, but they didn't seem like the type to hang out and exchange gossip with the Needlework Club.

  Unless.... what if someone had told them all about Olivia because that person had hired them to murder her? It wouldn't be uncommon for guys like that to work temporary jobs like construction work, maybe for a contractor like Tony Powell. He could have told them everything they needed to know to kill Olivia and frame Jolene for it and then make sure he had a nice alibi all set up for the time of the murder. Of course, it could have been Chuck Bailey that hired them. Paying someone to kill Olivia would have been cheaper than paying her blackmail money in the long run.

  Suddenly I remembered what I had seen on Olivia's video recordings, or should I say, what I hadn't seen. I hadn't seen Chuck Bailey on any of the videos. Why didn't he come to pay Olivia his blackmail money this week? He had to know that Olivia would make good on her threats to tell his wife about the affair if he didn't pay. Maybe he knew that Olivia would never get the chance.

  One way or the other I had to find those two sketchy guys. And find a way to keep Mark from seeing my black eye. Not necessarily in that order.

  At five o'clock the next morning I called my best friend Tammy Hurley on the phone. Most people wouldn't stay best friends long if their friend called them that early in the morning, but Tammy owned a bakery and was always up before 5. She supplied the Breezy Spoon with the world's greatest fresh bread, danishes, English muffins, pies, cakes and cream puffs.

  Tammy married Brendan Hurley last month after making him wait over a year because her 21 year old daughter Shannon didn't approve. She finally gave up and said yes to Brendan which I had been urging her to do for months. Shannon was still holding out hope that Tammy would get back together with her father, a womanizing deadbeat that Tammy had stayed with too long before divorcing him, in my opinion. Shannon's main objections came because she hated her father's new girlfriend and saw her parents reconciling as a way to get the girlfriend out of the picture, but eventually she came around when she found out what a great guy Brendan is.

  “Hi, Dani, you must be on the morning shift today. What can I do for you? Do you need to change your order?”

  “No, I need a good excuse for a person to have a black eye. I mean a really, really plausible excuse. One so that certain people won't raise hell with certain other people all day for only being in the wrong place at the wrong time while that person was trying to help an innocent person who's in prison...”

  “In other words you were investigating Olivia's murder and someone, probably the murderer who didn't hesitate to kill Olivia, merely punched you in the eye instead of killing you.” She paused. “I assume that you were out all alone with no one to even know if you had been killed?”

  “I'm not stupid,” I protested.

  “Well, I can't believe that Mark went with you,” Tammy said. “Wait a minute; Jimmy and Charlene weren't --”

  “They're fine. They didn't see anyone and no one saw them. Apparently they weren't quite vertical when whoever it was dashed by. There's not a mark on them other than a ton of lipstick on Jimmy's face. I guess I should choose my look-outs more wisely.”

  “Maybe you shouldn't be doing things that require look-outs.”

  “Maybe I should have called someone else.”

  “Oh, you know me,” Tammy laughed, “melodrama at five o'clock in the morning is always welcome even when I haven't taken my shower yet or had a cup of coffee ”

  “I call my best friend hoping for sympathy and advice and all I get is attitude,” I said. “Fine, I'll get to the point; I need to camouflage a black eye and I wonder if you think that Dr. Parker would put a patch over it. Eye doctors have patches, don't they?”

  “Well, yes, Dr. Parker would have eye patches,” Tammy said. I heard Brendan's sleepy voice say something in the background. “Oh, that's right,” Tammy said. “Dr. Parker plays short-stop on the softball team with Mark and Bob.”

  “Rats!” I grumbled. “He'd blab --- men can't keep their mouths shut.”

  “Hmm, maybe Al would have one at the Emporium, you know, from some Halloween costume,” Tammy suggested. “He never gets rid of anything.”

  “No, he never gets rid of all the bed bugs he has from the used mattresses he sells either. That would be great, an eye patch that lets me watch bed bugs making nests out of my eyelashes. What are you thinking, Tammy?”

  “Okay, how about wearing your hair like Jennifer Aniston did on Friends? Remember how her hair swooped down and covered one side of her face?”

  “That's not a bad idea but I don't think I could bring it off. I had my hair done by Monsieur Rene and now it's about as manageable as steel wool. I guess I'll just use a ton of makeup and wear my sunglasses. If anyone notices anything, I'll just try the old 'I ran into the door' routine.”

  “Should I call Vegas and see what odds they're giving on an old wheeze like that fooling anyone?”

  “I won't let that snarky remark affect our friendship but I hope you're sending over something great to console me,” I replied.

  “Brendan, as you know, is making his four cheese lasagna so I'm sending over tons of garlic bread and several trays of tiramisu. Consolation enough?”

  “Totally,” I said. I was glad that I had paid for that extra si
lk. If my measurements become a little more “assertive” after lunch today Miss Pat could just let my new dress out a bit.

  As the lunch crowd was coming in at the Breezy Spoon, I saw Pearl and Jackie from the beauty parlor sitting at the counter. Pearl always twists back and forth on her stool in one direction and Jackie does the same only in the other direction. By time they left I usually felt sea sick. I walked up and started clearing away their lunch plates.

  “Why are you wearing shades inside, Miss O'Shea? Is it because of that big shiner that you've got?” asked Pearl, making that annoying slurping sound when there's just ice and no more soda in the bottom of the glass.

  “Yes, it doesn't look so great. Let me give you a refill on your soda,” I said.

  “I texted my mom about it 'cause I figured Mr. Adams had hit you,” said Jackie, “but she said probably you and Mr. Adams like the rough stuff, seeing as he had his arm in a sling, too. Terry Joe showed me an article about it in a magazine that he brought home from the library. I never finished it because it was in this itty-bitty Italian type and I got tired of squinting.”

  “Jackie, don't embarrass yourself,” Pearl cut in. “Miss O'Shea and Mr. Adams both been in the military. I guess they know all about the private rough stuff; they don't need no articles! Right, Miss O'Shea?”

  “Hey, young ladies, speaking of Italian here's a couple pieces of tiramisu,” Brendan said, coming out of the kitchen with two bowls in his hands. “It's a new kind of Italian dessert we have today. Kind of a cream cake with some chocolate and coffee flavor. Let me know if you like it.” They say that timing is everything, and his was great.

  While they were eating dessert, Pearl said, “It's a real bummer to work at the salon without Jolene there. There's no one to talk to but Lester, and that's no fun. Jolene always knows what's going on in town, like who's feuding about what and who's stepping out with who; all the important news. And I don't think she killed Olivia either. The sheriff should have arrested somebody else.”