Authors: Laura Childs
Bedeviled Eggs (6 page)
“Cripes, Suzanne,”
said Doogie, “where you been the
last few years? Mars? You can buy a thermonuclear bomb on
the World Wide Web if you search long enough.”
“Even I know how to
use Google,” said Toni, strolling by again. Then her head whipped around and
she added, “Or I should say ogle. Considering what just walked in.”
Four of Kindred’s
volunteer firemen strolled to a va
cant table, dressed in their navy blue uniforms.
Young and
hunky,
each of the guys looked good enough to pose for a
Playgirl
magazine calendar.
“You look awfully
busy, Suzanne,” said Toni, unbutton
ing the top button of her fitted yellow cowgirl
shirt “I’ll
take care of these beefcakes ... uh, breakfast customers.”
Toni scrambled toward
the front door, her hips twitching,
her stride morphing into a strut.
Suzanne turned her
attention back to the sheriff. He’d
managed to drip only a few splotches of syrup on
his shirt
A
good record for Doogie. “So what else can you tell me
about crossbows?” she asked.
Doogie chewed, then
swallowed. “They’re fairly easy
to use. You don’t need a lot of expertise or skill like
with a
regular bow and arrow.”
“How so?” Suzanne
questioned.
“You aim the crossbow
pretty much like a rifle,” said
Doogie. “The smaller draw and cocking mechanism doesn’t
require a terrific
amount of arm strength.” He held up his
hands, one near his chest, the
other outstretched in front of
him, as if he was actually brandishing the age-old
weapon.
“You
just cock the device and shoot.” He let out a swoosh
ing sound and rocked back on his
stool for emphasis.
“Interesting,” said
Suzanne.
“So even a woman could
have used one last night to kill
Peebler,” said Doogie. He bolted his last slurp of coffee
and swung
his bulk around. “Gotta go make the rounds of
the
area sporting goods stores now.
Then I’m going to drop by Darlington College and have a talk with Jane Buckley.”
“You think Jane snuck
back here and shot Peebler?” Su
zanne snorted. “That’s just plain ludicrous. While you’re
out
chasing down a
middle-aged museum registrar, the real
killer is probably laughing at you.”
“Gotta start
somewhere.”
“Not there,” said
Suzanne.
Doogie hesitated. “Then
where, smarty-pants?’
Suzanne thought for a
minute. “That key card you
found? Maybe you should take a drive out to the prison
and
talk
to Lester Drumrnond.”
Drummond was the warden of
the
newly established, for-profit Jasper Creek Prison that
hunkered like an evil
empire on the outskirts of town. With
its gray concrete and miles of razor wire, Suzanne
consid
ered
the place an architectural eyesore of un-redeeming pro
portion. She’d lobbied hard
against it, but Mayor Mobley
had
gotten his way, as he usually did.
“You
want me to talk to the warden?” Doogie asked,
frowning at her. “Be serious.”
“It’s a start,” said
Suzanne.
“You
know what your problem is?” said Doogie. “You
just don’t like Drummond.”
“You got
that right,” Suzanne answered, feeling no need
to explain her dislike.
“Besides,” Doogie
continued, “they probably got better
security out there than just key cards.”
Let’s hope so,
was Suzanne’s final
thought.
The
breakfast rush at the Cackleberry Club ended at 10:42
a.m.
on the dot, leaving Suzanne, Toni,
and Petra less than
twenty minutes to regroup and get the cafe ready for the
next wave of famished townsfolk.
“At other cafes,”
said Toni, as she wrapped knives,
forks, and spoons in blue-and-white-checked
napkins,
“lunchtime
begins at noon. Our customers come galumph
ing in at eleven.”
Suzanne
placed the silverware rolls on the tables as she
aligned chairs and checked sugar
bowls. “They line up
early for breakfast, too. Especially
this
morning.”
Toni nodded her head
in agreement as she pushed her
Fleetwood Mac T-shirt into the waistband of her jeans.
For
some
reason, she’d changed shirts. Maybe because the day was getting warmer, maybe
because Toni considered her
self
a Stevie Nicks sort of gal.
“I’m not surprised at
our early eaters,” said Petra, carry
ing a tray of pumpkin oatmeal cookies into the
cafe. “We’re
midwestemers. Almost a farm community.” She slid open
the door to the glass
pastry case and placed the cookies,
almost as big as Frisbees, inside. “People just
have more
get-up-and-go.”
Suzanne responded with
a twinkle in her eyes. “If the
Cackleberry Club was located in New York City, folks
would still be banging on the door early in anticipation of
your cooking.”
“But I
wouldn’t be there.” Petra chuckled. “I like a small
town with small-town values.”
“With
the exception of last night,” Suzanne murmured,
as Petra retreated to the kitchen
with her empty tray.
Bang, bang
went the front door.
“Here come noisy
customers,” complained Toni, jab
bing her broom at a bit of crinkle-cut fried potato that
was
stubbornly hiding beneath
a chair.
“I think not,” said
Suzanne, just as the door burst open
and Ralph Reston stepped tentatively inside. Clad
in olive drab overalls, he carried a familiar large, square cardboard
box. “Hey, Ralph,” she called.
The gentle giant of a man ducked his head in
embar
rassment. “Sorry, Suzanne,” he
murmured, glancing down at his worn overalls and scruffy work boots. “I’m
really not dressed good enough to come in your front door, but there
was this yellow-and-black tape strung all around
...”
“Not to worry, Ralph,”
said Suzanne. “You look just
fine. Half of our male customers dress the same way you
do. Besides, a
working man’s uniform never goes out of
style.” She was chattering a bit,
nervous that Ralph might
inquire about the crime scene tape. Bless his soul, he
didn’t.
Ralph blushed and
said, “I’ve got the eggs you gals
ordered. This box and one more out in the truck.”
Ralph
started
for the kitchen, carrying the box filled with twelve
trays of jumbo brown eggs as if
they weighed no more man
a
monarch butterfly.
Ralph
and his wife, Matty, ran Calico Farm, the larg
est organic, cage-free poultry
farm in Logan County. Their
eggs were nest-laid
in comfy straw, not on an awful wire grid of an industrial farm. The hen’s
treasures were gathered by hand as well, and the chickens were free to roam
their yard or stay put
in their sparkling clean henhouse.
Suzanne had evolved
into a real stickler when it came to using the freshest, locally sourced
produce whenever
possible. Eggs from Ralph’s Calico Farm, cheeses from
Mullen’s Dairy, fruits
and vegetables from various local or
ganic farmers. She and Petra even hoped to get an
organic
farmer’s
market going in Founder’s Park next summer.
“Right this way,” said
Toni, holding open the swinging
door
for Ralph.
“Thank you, ma’am,”
said Ralph. .
Toni clapped a hand to
her chest “Yikes, Ralph. You just ma’amed me. A hit-and-run ma’aming. Please
try to remember I’m still young enough to be your girlfriend.” When Ralph’s
face turned beet red, she added, “Well,
somebody’s
girlfriend.” Ralph
looked greatly relieved
when
the door swung shut.
“You ride that man
something awful,” said Suzanne,
glancing
around.
“All in fun,” said
Toni.
“Plus you’re still
married to Junior,” Suzanne pointed
out although she wished that Toni would finally
make up
her mind and file for
divorce.
“Please don’t remind
me,” said Toni. Then she glanced
at her watch and said, “Jeez, I better refill ketchup
bottles”
In a
mumble meant more for herself than Toni, Suzanne
said, “You could just forget about—” .
Toni interrupted. “Not
on your life, Julia Child. And I’m
not having this discussion one more time. If it
were up to
you,
ketchup would be banned from the entire universe.
But most of our
old-timers adore it. They squirt it on their eggs, hash browns, even their
muffins. The same way ex-
navy
guys use Tabasco sauce.
“Agh,” said Suzanne,
making a face.
“Not everybody lives
by your standards, Suzanne.”
“Sorry,” said
Suzanne. “Didn’t mean to foist my prefer
ences on anyone.”
“Sure you did.” Toni
grinned.
Fact is, that was
exactly the case when the Cackleberry
Club first opened and customers had been confused
by the
lack of deep-fried
dishes.
“They’d
eat fried butter if they could,” Suzanne had la
mented.
“At the Texas State
Fair I hear they do,” Toni declared.
But their customers
had nibbled, experimented, and in
the end, had been pretty much won over by Suzanne’s
com
mitment
to wholesome, fresh, good-for-you foods.
“You gonna do the
blackboard?” Toni asked. Every
day they listed their specials on the blackboard in
colored chalk. It was another Cackleberry Club tradition.
“Yup,” said Suzanne,
grabbing a piece of yellow chalk.
“Petra gave you the
menu?”
But Suzanne was
already printing chicken and peapod
stir-fry at the top of the board.
“All right!” enthused
Toni.
Suzanne added three
more entrees: chicken chili,
chicken divine, and a Tom T sandwich. Then she drew a
cartoon slice of pie on a plate, added a starburst next to it,
and wrote in sour
cream apple pie, two-ninety-five a slice.
“Gonna have me a
slice of that,” said Toni.
Just as Suzanne was
dusting chalk dust from her hands,
Dr. Sam Hazelet came rushing in. He was tall, in
his early
forties, and awfully
good-looking with tousled brown hair
and devastating blue eyes.
Suzanne saw Sam,
grinned, then grabbed his hand
and led him into the Book Nook where they could enjoy
a small amount of
privacy amid the narrow aisles of ro
mance novels, mystery novels, and cookbooks. For
the past
two
months Suzanne and the good doctor had been quietly
seeing each other. Dinners, an
occasional movie, walks in
Bluff Creek Park. Nothing terribly serious, but Suzanne
felt it certainly
could
turn into something serious. An al
together surprising turn of events, she’d decided
one night,
when
she’d caught herself humming away, to once again
find someone that she cared for.
Heartening, too. Proved
that
life does indeed go on.
“I just heard about
last night,” Sam said, his voice and face filled with concern. “Why didn’t you
call me?” He
placed a hand on her shoulder and kneaded it gently.
“Because by the time
Peebler’s body was zipped into
a body bag it was almost midnight?” she said, deadpan.
“Or how about this.
You’re a terrific doctor, but it never oc
curred to me you could actually
raise the dead?”
“No,” he said, “I
thought maybe you’d have called
me because you were scared.” He paused. “Weren’t you
scared?”
“For a couple of
minutes, sure. Until all the shootin’ was
over and Sheriff Doogie showed up.”
“And then?” asked Sam.
Suzanne gazed at him,
her heart warmed by his caring
and sincerity. No wonder people thought so highly of him
as the
town doctor. No wonder her heart skipped a beat
every time she saw him. Probably
screwed up her EKG
reading,
but it surely
felt
wonderful.
“You mean,” she asked, “did I
think the killer would trail me home and try to pop me?”
Sam nodded.
“Not really,” Suzanne answered, then
decided if she’d been a tad wiser, maybe she
should
have been worried.
“You weren’t scared all by yourself in that
great big house?”
“No,” said Suzanne. Then, “What are you
getting at?”
“What do you think?” Sam winked.
She led him back into the cafe and sat him
down at the table.
“Just lunch?” he asked, grabbing for her
hand.
“Just lunch. And no need to peruse our
blackboard, because I intend to order for you,” Suzanne told him.
“Who doesn’t love a surprise?” Sam replied,
a lazy smile creasing his handsome face.
Scooting across the floor, dodging tables,
Suzanne had to check her stride.
My hips are swinging just like Toni’s,
she
told herself, feeling a little startled.
Gotta watch that.
Then.
Oh
heck. But it feels good to be happy.
Then she
checked herself again.
As happy as one can be the morning
after
a murder.
Petra glanced up from the stove where she
was sprinkling fresh ground pepper into a big pot of roasted corn
chowder. “You’re looking awfully chipper,” she
remarked.
“Sam’s here,” said Suzanne,
trying to sound nonchalant but not having much success.
“Aren’t you the lucky lady,” said Toni, who
was stand
ing at the butcher block table,
tossing a salad. Carrots, florets of broccoli, and bits of red pepper clunked
against the
sides of the large industrial-sized metal bowl.
“Let me guess,” said Petra, as she added
judicious
amounts of garlic paste, jalapeno
peppers, green chilies,
and fresh
cilantro to her soup, tasting and sniffing, as if she
was concocting a magic potion. “You want me to
whip up
an order of breakfast egg
pizza, even though it’s not on the
menu
today.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Could you?” answered
Suzanne. It was one of Pe
tra’s specials. A whizbang of a dish. Not completely
heart
healthy, but surely
heartwarming.
“And you’re requesting
this, let’s call it what it is,
spe
cial order,
even though I have a
dozen other orders to get
out?”
“Um ...
yes?” said Suzanne. She bounced lightly on
the balls of her feet in
anticipation of Petra’s answer.
Petra
looked up and gave Suzanne a cool, appraising
look. “Lord, that man better be
the best kisser in Kindred.”
Toni
stopped tossing the salad and moved closer, the
better to overhear.
“He is,” Suzanne said
in a small voice.
“Okay
then,” said Petra. “Far be it from me to stand in
the way of love.”
“Love?” said Toni,
looking supremely interested now. “Really? I never heard the L word mentioned
before.”
Suzanne slipped an arm
around Petra’s shoulders and gave
her a quick squeeze, then keeping her lips pressed
together in
a smile, slipped back out into the cafe. Toni’s remark could
be addressed at a more
appropriate time. Like... later. Once
she figured out where she and Sam were really
heading.
Much to
Suzanne’s surprise, the cafe was suddenly
buzzing with customers. Which
meant she had to hurry up
and seat four parties, dole out emergency cups of coffee
to two tired truckers,
and explain the concept of afternoon
tea to two farmers who’d apparently stuthed every
word
printed on the little
table tent that advertised the Cackle
berry Club’s afternoon tea.
“So the sandwiches are
small?” asked the first farmer.
Suzanne held out her
thumb and forefinger to show him.
“So-so.”
“And what kind?”
asked the second farmer.
“Chicken
salad, cream cheese with cucumber, smoked
salmon roll-ups, and sometimes we
do creamy goat cheese
with
crushed pineapple,” she explained.
“Can men come?” asked
the first farmer.
“Of course,” said
Suzanne, stifling a giggle. “There’s no
gender requirement for enjoying
tea. And we won’t even make you wear white gloves or a fancy hat”
Then she
and Toni started taking orders and the fun
began in earnest
‘Two bowls of chicken
chili and a Tom T,” Toni yelled
through the pass-through to Petra. A Tom T was a
Cackleberry Club concoction, a sandwich of sliced turkey breast
spread with homemade
apple butter, sprinkled with blue
cheese, and grilled on two slices of artisan
wheat bread.
Sometimes it was served with sweet potato crisps, today it
came with a salad.
A few
minutes later Petra slid the chilies through the
pass-through. “Suzanne,” she
called. “Your special’s up.”
Suzanne grabbed the
dish and hustled it over to Sam.
“Here you go,” she said, setting it down in front of him.
“Enjoy.”
“My goodness,” he
exclaimed. Then he took a bite. “Oh
joy,” he mumbled as he chewed. “This is
fantastic.” Only it
came
outfantashtic.
“This is ...
what
is this?”
“Our
special breakfast egg pizza,” said Suzanne. “With pork sausage, red pepper, and
cheddar cheese.”
“So much better than
hospital cafeteria food,” Sam
enthused.
“Don’t swoon over it
too much,” Suzanne advised. “Be
cause
we’ve also got pie for dessert.”
Of
course,
Sam didn’t get away completely free. A parade
of townsfolk stopped by to bid him hello.
“Hey, Doc, how ya
doing?” Clyde Hunsicker asked,
edging his large, jiggly frame close to the table.
“Fine, Clyde, and you?”
Sam responded.
“I got
this little crick in my back and my right knee
is...”
Overhearing this
little exchange, Suzanne shook her
head. She knew the drill. Her husband Walter had
been
constantly
pressed for free medical advice, too. Like he’d
always said, a small-town doctor
was never off the clock.
“We’re jammin’,” sang
out Toni, as she slid by Suzanne
with a tray full of soup bowls and a fresh pot of coffee.
“Gettin’ it done.”
“Has anybody asked
about the murder last night?” Su
zanne
asked Toni in a low voice.
Toni did a hasty
double-take and scrunched up her face
in amazement. “Are you kidding? That’s
all
they’ve
been
asking about.”
Suzanne pulled her
mouth into a lopsided frown.
“Maybe they’ve just been too polite to say anything to
me.”
“Maybe,” said Toni,
but she said it like she didn’t be
lieve it. Then she saw the look on Suzanne’s face
and said,
“Cheer
up, hon, they’ve also been asking when Petra’s
gonna make her pumpkin crème brule.”
And just when things
couldn’t get any crazier, Mazy
Goddard strolled in with a basket stacked with loaves of
homemade cranberry nut bread.
“Is this a bad time to
make a delivery?” Mazy asked.
She was a wiry sixty-something lady with a feathery cap
of white hair who
still managed to run the occasional half
marathon. She was also a baker
par excellence.
“Not a
problem,” Suzanne told her. “Just stack your
bread in the cooler, as usual.”
Just outside the
Knitting Nest, Suzanne had installed
a sputtering old cooler whose shelves were
continually
stocked with an array of homemade banana and cranberry
breads, jars of dill
pickles, canned jellies and jams, vege
tables, and organic blue and cheddar cheeses.
These were
items
that local producers brought in for the Cackleberry
Club to sell. It was really a
win-win situation for everyone.
Suzanne took a small percentage of retail sales and the
grow
ers
and producers got the lion’s share. She knew one woman
who’d helped finance her
daughter’s cosmetology classes on
what she made from selling her line of organic
baby foods.
“In fact,” said
Suzanne, grabbing one of Mazy’s loaves, “I’ll take one of these myself.” She
made her way to Sam’s
table, set the bread down, and said, “This is for you. A
take-
home goodie.”
His eyes crinkled. “That’s
it? There isn’t any more?”
“Sour cream apple pie?”
she asked.
“Mmm, I had something
else in mind.”
Suzanne
walked Sam to the door, didn’t kiss him though
she wanted to, and proceeded to
clear a few tables. This was the time she enjoyed most at the Cackleberry Club.
Lunch
practically over, sliding gracefully into an afternoon
of coffee, tea, and desserts.
Much easier to manage, no
body
in an all-fired rush.
She
carried the gray plastic bins to the counter and
stuck them in back. Then Suzanne
waved through the pass
through at Petra, and said, “Thanks for the special.”
Petra gave her a quick
grin, then her eyes shifted and her
smile froze on her face.
“What?” said Suzanne.
Then she realized Petra was
focused on something behind her. Spinning on her heels,
Suzanne caught sight
of Jane Buckley standing at the front
door. The woman’s shoulders were slumped; her face
seemed in turmoil.
Oh no,
thought Suzanne.
Doggone
Doogie.
Then
Jane was speeding across the cafe, wiping tears from her eyes as Petra came
careening out of the kitchen
to
meet her.
Jane
collapsed in Petra’s strong arms, her tears spilling
freely now. “Last night’s
murder...” she sobbed.
“What? What?” Petra
murmured in sympathetic tones.
Jane sniffled, rubbed
at her nose, then wailed, “Sheriff Doogie says I’m the number one suspect!”