Ginny Gold - Early Bird Café 03 - Dead and Berried (9 page)

“Huh,” Holly said, regaining her composure.
“I guess not many people would know that about him.”

Kori wanted to call Zach right now but she didn’t have a confession. And she knew she wouldn’t get one in such a public place. To put everyone back at ease she asked, “Do you know what you’d like for breakfast?”

Holly was once again thrown off but quickly recovered and ordered the granola. Mel got a green smoothie.

Back in the kitchen, Kori couldn’t help texting Nora to tell her about the conversation with Holly. In response, Nora told her,
Police traced Dan’s cell phone GPS to Edwards and Greene Friday night before he was killed.

Maybe
Kori was barking up the wrong tree.

Kori couldn’t be done with work soon enough but the day seemed to just drag on, giving her even more inspiration to start looking for some help. Around nine thirty
, Jay and Lani came in. Jay was absolutely glowing, something she’d never seen from him before.

“Hey Kori,” he said, much more cheerful than usual. Lani smiled and gave a slight wave of her hand. She didn’t seem as into Jay as he was into her.

“Hi Jay. No work this morning?” she asked him as they took a seat at the counter in front of where she was working at the stove.

“Kyle’s covering for me. He had the early breakfast. I get brunch.”

“Not a bad deal.” Kori considered asking if he knew Jenna was pregnant but decided it wasn’t her news to tell so she kept her mouth shut. “Thanks again for your help on Sunday. It really made the day so much easier.” She hadn’t seen him yesterday to thank him again.

“Of course.”

Their conversation was suddenly cut short with the door opening. All eyes turned toward it to see who was there and Kori was surprised to see Mayor Devlin. Kori placed two cups of coffee in front of Lani and Jay and walked to the front door to greet him.

“Good morning Mayor,” she said as he continued to look around
, confused.

“You must be Kori Cooke. I heard all about this place on Saturday night,” he boomed and Kori’s face reddened. She knew he’d been at the fireworks with her mom but didn’t really want every patron to know that.

“There’s an empty seat at the counter, are you eating alone?” Kori asked, hoping to steer him toward a safer topic of conversation.

“No, no.” A young woman, at most half his age, entered and stood at his arm, beaming. “This is Misty. She’ll be joining me.”

Kori scanned the café but there were no empty tables or booths. “It’ll be a little while before a table is available. Can I get you something to drink while you wait? There are benches outside.”

“Two coffees. Thanks.”

Kori was relieved that they then turned and headed onto the sidewalk where there were two empty benches. She was also relieved that her mother hadn’t pursued any relationship with him. She was right when she’d told Kori that he had too many girlfriends.

Kori quickly got the coffees and brought them outside on a tray, cream and sugar in small containers in case they wanted some. Then she managed to return to the kitchen and continue cooking.

She didn’t have a chance to talk to Jay more, but she could tell that he was happy. Online dating had to be the least rewarding relationship he’d been in and being with Lani was the complete opposite.

Once Mayor Devlin and Misty were seated at a table, they stayed there until Kori closed at one. They caused longer wait times than usual but she didn’t feel it was appropriate to ask them to leave.

Finally, when they were the last customers, they paid their bill, left a measly tip for the amount of time they’d spent there, and were on their way. Kori barely cleaned up the kitchen, but did take the time to make sure the oven was off, before she called Ibis and they headed to Nora’s farm. They had to talk about Holly Barton and Arnold Greene.

***

“How did you even find out about Dan’s phone’s GPS?” Kori asked once they were both settled on the patio with a cup of tea and Kori’s paper with notes.

Nora smiled a devilish grin. “When my best friend is dating Lieutenant Zach Gulch, it’s easy to butter him up and get the information I need.”

“So you were flirting with my boyfriend?” Kori asked, mock betrayal in her voice.

“Hah. You wish. No. I just planted the idea of a vacation together where I would take Ibis and help cover the café so you two could get away together.”

“What? We’re not ready for a vacation! And how do you plan on covering the café when you have a farm to run?”

“I have my ways.” They both laughed.

“Okay. Whatever
that
means. So what else did you learn from Zach when you weren’t flirting with him?” Kori asked, turning the conversation back to where it needed to be.

“He told me about Dan’s personal effects that were recovered—”

“Even those weird glasses?” Kori asked, remembering their encounter near the lake Friday afternoon.

Nora paused
, a contemplative look on her face. “No. He didn’t say anything about those glasses.” She looked serious and Kori waited for her to continue her train of thought. “I remember those glasses though. They were too big for his face. And they had a weird attachment on one side. But I don’t remember them on him when I found him on Saturday morning.” Nora looked up. “Do you think they fell off somewhere between Edwards and Greene and my farm?”

Kori was confident they had. “Let’s go check behind the barn and see if there’s anything there.
Maybe he left them intentionally as a clue to his killer. Or there could be fingerprints on them that the police could identify.”

The dogs had been dashing around the yard between the house and barn, but as soon as they saw Kori and Nora get up, they bounded over and jumped on them with their muddy paws. Then they sprinted ahead to the barn and behind it where the police tape used to
block off part of Nora’s property.

“Did you notice footprints when you found him?” Kori asked. She wanted to have a general direction in which to head.

“I didn’t pay attention to that. I was too shocked to notice any details. Good thing I’m a farmer and not a detective.”

Without a real clue of where Dan and the killer had come from, Kori headed into the woods and Nora started walking in circles around where the body had been found. Ibis followed Kori and acted as if they were playing some kind of game.

Eventually, Ibis put her nose to the ground like she’d picked up a scent and she started going in a different direction. Kori followed, knowing Ibis could be leading her on a wild goose chase or simply following the scent of a squirrel.

They’d been walking for several minutes when a flash of light caught Kori’s eye. She knelt down to see what it was. One lens was completely covered with leaves and the other was what she had seen, the sun hitting it at just the right angle to catch her attention.

Since Kori had stopped to investigate something, Ibis stopped following the trail she was on and came back. “Good girl,” Kori praised her, rubbing behind her ears. When she picked up the glasses, she could see that they were the same ones Dan had been wearing Friday afternoon. The right arm had several buttons on it that made Kori think of a smart phone. She didn’t want to do anything with it before Nora—and probably even Zach—saw it. She picked it up carefully with as little of her fingertips touching it as possible. She didn’t want to tamper with evidence—or become a suspect because her fingerprints showed up on the glasses.

Kori ran back to the barn where Nora was still walking circles and looking frustrated. Milo and Otis were following her and it was clear they were getting in her way. When Kori approached, Nora looked up. “Any luck?” Nora asked.

Kori was beaming. She didn’t say anything but just held the glasses up.

“You found them! I thought we were wasting our time. And then realized that finding glasses
might not even help us. I was ready to quit.”

“I think these will help us more than we realize. But I don’t know how to work them. Look at all these buttons on the arm. That’s why they looked so funny on his face and we even remembered that he was wearing glasses.”

“Oh my God. Those are Google Glass
TM
! I don’t know how to work them either. And they’re probably password protected. And I think they have to be connected to a smart phone for some things to work. Let’s call Zach. Maybe he knows more about them.”

Kori was on her phone immediately. She knew Zach had been busy—she’d barely seen him in days—but hoped that he’d pick up his phone when he saw that she was calling.

“Hey Kori,” he said, sounding rushed.

“Hi Zach. Are you busy?” Kori asked.

There was a pause. She knew she was kind of asking a trick question so she didn’t give him a chance to answer.

“I’m at Nora’s. We just found something in the woods that I think you need to see. Can you come over?”

“I’m on my way.”

Kori and Nora headed back to the patio to wait and study the glasses some more. Nora even brought out her laptop where the
y started Googling Google Glass to see how they worked. Even with the information online they weren’t able to figure it out with the glasses sitting right in front of them.

Before Zach showed up—Kori didn’t know what was taking so long—there was a noise from the barn that had both Nora and Kori look up in panic. “Where are the dogs?” Nora asked, looking around.

Kori realized she hadn’t seen them since they sat down with the computer. “Maybe that’s just them making noise in the barn.”

“I keep the doors closed. They wouldn’t have been able to get in there.” As if on cue, the dogs ran
out of the woods and toward the barn, barking like crazy.

At the same time, Zach’s police car drove in and parked next to Kori’s Subaru
and the two women walked out to the front of the house. The dogs didn’t even notice that a new car was there and continued barking at the barn door. Kori thought something serious must be going on in there if the dogs couldn’t be distracted.

As soon as Zach got out of the car he must have noticed the noise too. “What’s going on in there?” he asked.

“We don’t know. There was a loud noise and then the dogs went crazy just before you got here. I didn’t want to go in there,” Kori admitted.

“Me neither,” Nora agreed, and Kori was slightly relieved that she wasn’t the only one with reservations.

“Let’s go check it out and then you can show me what you found,” Zach said, leading the way to the back of the barn where the dogs were still going ballistic.

Kori and Nora hung back behind Zach as he opened the door. They held the dogs back. Nora’d had porcupines on her farm in the past and if that was all the noise had been she didn’t want three dogs with noses full of quills to deal with.

Once the door was fully opened, there was another crashing sound coming from an area where Nora kept tools.

“Hello?” Zach called out.

More crashing followed and Zach led the way inside. Kori and Nora managed to keep the dogs outside when they closed the door and followed Zach toward the noise.

“Do you think it’s a person?” Kori whispered.

Zach responded by holding up his hand for silence and pointing his gun toward the commotion.

Before they reached where the sounds were coming from,
two huge raccoons came charging out of the tool closet and headed up the stairs.

“Shoot,” Nora said, then thought better of her word choice. “I mean, don’t shoot. But, dang. I have a raccoon problem. I’m going to have to get AJ over here to get rid of them.”

Zach lowered his gun and they all laughed at how scared they’d been. The dogs still wanted to get in the barn, so Nora led the way back outside.

When they made it back to the patio,
Nora asked Zach, “Want some tea?”

He nodded and Nora headed inside to get more hot water.

“Why don’t you tell me what you found?” Zach asked before Nora came back.

Kori picked up the glasses carefully and handed them to Zach. “We think they’re Google Glass. I’m hoping that either Arnold or Holly shows up on them in a video. Those are our two suspects. But Arnold moved a lot higher after you told Nora that his phone GPS led you to the law office.”

Nora walked back outside before Zach could make any comment and asked him, “
You said Dan wasn’t poisoned. How
was
he killed?”

Without missing a beat, he answered,
“Suffocated. There were no external marks and he didn’t have any defensive wounds. It looks like Holly’s shovel was used to knock him out and then he was … well … you can figure it out from there.”

The women
both grimaced.

“
But back to the glasses,” Zach started, breaking the silence and bringing everyone back to the present.

“Oh yeah.
And what did you think of our two suspects?” Kori asked.

“
Your
two suspects,” Zach said, reminding them that the police were also conducting their own investigation.

“
Well, do you have any others?” Kori asked.

“You didn’t have Stanley Roche on your list?”

“We did. But Nora got out of him where he was Saturday night. So we crossed him off our list.”

Zach nodded. “Breaking into the high school?” Kori nodded. “We checked surveillance he never went there.”

Kori glanced at Nora and saw that she had paled. Kori wanted Stanley to be innocent even if just for Nora’s sake. But Nora had been lied to—about something pretty big. Could she still be interested in him after that?

“Well let’s see what’s on these glasses. I’m going to have to get Lani over here. She has a pair and will know how to see what’s stored on them.”