A Chili Death: A Classic Diner Mystery (9 page)

I didn’t like the sound of that.  “Did he say what it was about?”  I was afraid that he’d already heard about our digging this morning, and was going to shut us down before we got the chance to do any good with our investigation.

“No, but from his tone, I wouldn’t put it off any longer than you have to.”

“We’ll head over there right now.  Thanks for calling.”

“Let me know when you find out what this is all about,” he said.

“I promise,” I said, and then hung up.

“What was that all about?” Moose asked.

“Drive to the diner.  Sheriff Croft is looking for us.”

“Did he say why?” Moose asked.

“No, but I’ve got a feeling that we’re about to find out.”

Moose’s face clouded up.  “If he thinks we’re going to stop looking into this murder, he’s got another think coming.”

“Let me handle him, okay?”

Moose shot a quick look at me.  “Victoria, don’t you think I’m capable of dealing with him myself?”

“Sure you are, but let’s not jump the gun.  Maybe this is about something else entirely.”

“Granddaughter, do you believe that for one second?”

I had to admit, “No, but there’s a chance, isn’t there?  If we go into this meeting as though we did nothing wrong, we won’t blow whatever chance we have to keep at it.”

“I don’t like keeping my head down,” Moose said, one of the biggest understatements I’d ever heard him utter in his life.

“I’m not that big a fan of it either, but it doesn’t do us any good if we go in there protesting before we find out what this is all about.  We both need to hold our tongues until we hear what the man has to say.”

Moose grinned at me.  “I can do it if you can.”

“You don’t think that I can keep my mouth shut if I want to?”

“I think you probably can.  I’ve just never seen the circumstances where you felt as though you needed to.”

I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t.  I laughed as I said, “You got me.  Come on.  Let’s quit guessing and go find out what’s up.”

“There you are,” Sheriff Croft said when we walked into the diner a few minutes later.

“You wanted to see us?” I asked.

“I thought you might like to know that you can have your diner back early,” he said as he handed me my keys back.  He’d taken them the night before, promising to return them when he and his staff finished investigating the murder scene, but he’d led me to believe that I wouldn’t be getting them back any time soon.

“You’re really done with the place?” I asked as I glanced at my watch.  It was just a little after ten, and Moose and I had two more people left to interview.

“Why do I get the sense that you’re not happy about this?” the sheriff asked.  “I kept two men here all night examining the place from top to bottom.  I thought I was doing you a favor.”

“You did,” Moose said as he took my keys for me.  “Great job, Sheriff.  Did you find anything while you were searching the place?”

“Nothing that I’m ready to share with you,” he said, and then studied us both for a second or two before adding, “Should I ask you the same question?”

“We’ve barely had time to scratch the surface,” I said.  “You didn’t rush getting the diner back to us just so we couldn’t investigate, did you?”

“Would I do that?” he asked with a grin.  “Anyway, the place is yours.”

“Would you at least tell us what killed him?” Moose asked softly.

I thought for a second that he wasn’t going to answer, but after a brief moment, the sheriff said, “Somebody hit him the back of the head with a roll of frozen hamburger.”

“Wow, that must have taken a pretty good swing,” I said, trying not to imagine what had happened, but failing miserably.  It couldn’t have been the most pleasant way to die. 

“You’d be surprised how delicate the human skull is,” the sheriff said.

“Well, at least the killer had to be pretty tall to do it,” I said.

Moose and the sheriff both looked at me oddly, so I added quickly, “It just makes sense, doesn’t it?  Howard Lance wasn’t a short man by any means, so if someone hit him in the head, they had to be pretty tall themselves, wouldn’t they?”

The sheriff shook his head, so I asked, “Why are you acting that way?  Am I wrong?”

“Ordinarily I’d say no, but the thing is, from the angle of impact, Howard must have been leaning over to tie a loose shoelace when he got clobbered.  I’m sorry to say that anyone could have done it.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“What, the fact that someone murdered him, or that the circumstances haven’t eliminated anyone?” he asked.

I was about to answer when his radio went off.  He answered it, and I glanced at Moose, who was grinning at me.  I’d have to ask him what that was about after Sheriff Croft was gone.

“Sorry, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got to run,” he said.

“Is it about the case?” Moose asked.

“No, some idiot decided to try to beat a train to a crossing on the edge of town.  Nobody got hurt, but this fool’s car is totaled.”

After the sheriff was gone, I asked my grandfather, “What was that smile about?”

“I was just impressed with the way you figured that out,” he said.  “How did you do it?”

“Hey, read enough mysteries, and you too can be a crime solver.”

“Seriously, that’s good work,” Moose said.  “We chose our fearless leader wisely.”

“I appreciate the compliment, but we’re still no closer to finding the killer than we were before,” I said.

“That’s why we keep digging,” he said.

“What about the diner?” I asked.

“The rest of the family can pitch in today.  You and I have a murder to solve.”  He grinned again, and added, “Besides, I’ve got a hunch that Greg and your mother would jump at the chance to work together for awhile.  Why don’t you give Ellen a call and see if she’ll come in?  While you’re doing that, I’ll round up the rest of the troops, and then we can get back to our investigation.”

“That sounds like a plan to me,” I said as I called my morning server at home to give her the good news.

Moose and I left the diner in the capable hands of the rest of our family a little later, and we went off in search of a killer.

When we got to The Clothes Horse, though, we found the front door locked and the CLOSED sign in the window.

“What’s going on?” I asked as we got out of Moose’s truck.  I looked at the store hours posted by the door and saw that Hank should have been open for half an hour by now.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.  Let’s take a drive over to Hank’s place and see what’s going on.”

When we got there, though, there was no sign of life.

It appeared that Hank was gone.

“It doesn’t look good, him running like this.  Doesn’t he know that?” I asked Moose as he pounded on the front door for the fourth time.  I didn’t figure it would do him any good to keep trying, but on the other hand, it couldn’t hurt, either.

“The fool must have lost his mind,” Moose said, pausing for a moment.

“Do you think he might have killed Howard Lance?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to think at this point, to be honest with you.”

“You just said that he had to have lost his mind.”

“Victoria, I was talking about him leaving town.  Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean that he’s the killer.”

“Somebody murdered that man,” I said.  “Why couldn’t it have been Hank?  His wife started this store herself, and when she died, he took it over.  Maybe the thought of losing the last part he still had of her was too much for him to take.”

“It’s possible,” Moose admitted.

“Think about it.  What if your roles were reversed?  Wouldn’t you miss Martha at least that much?”

“Of course I would, but I’d like to think that I still wouldn’t kill somebody over it.”

I had my doubts myself.  Moose’s charm had a flipside, and that was his temper.  He liked to think of it as passion, but my family knew better.

“So, what do we do about this?  Do we call Sheriff Croft and tell him what we suspect, or keep it all to ourselves?”

“We could call Croft,” Moose said, “but let’s give Hank a chance to come back on his own before we do anything rash.”

“We aren’t holding anything back from him, though, remember?”

“Victoria, if Hank’s on his list of suspects, the sheriff most likely already knows about this.”

“And if he’s not?” I asked, refusing to give any ground.  We’d made a promise, and I meant to keep it.

“Tell you what.  We’ll go see Cynthia, and then we’ll try here again.  If he hasn’t popped up by then, I’ll call Croft myself.  Is that a deal?” he asked me as he stuck out his hand.

“It’s a deal,” I said, taking it and doing my best to give him a solid grip in return.  Moose had taught me as a small girl to give as good as I got, and I’d practiced on tennis balls until I had a grasp that came close to matching his own.

At least Cynthia was working in her hair salon when we got there.  Thankfully no customers were there at the moment, though I doubted she felt that way about it.  I didn’t want an audience for the conversation we were about to have.

“This isn’t good, is it?” she asked as Moose and I as we walked into A Cut Above.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“By all rights, you should be at the diner, Victoria, and Moose, you would most likely be out on a lake somewhere fishing if everything was all right.”

“It’s too cold for that,” Moose said.

“We both know better than that,” she said with a smile.  “Are you both here about the murder?”

“You’ve heard about it already, then?” I asked.

“Oh, yes.  As I was opening the doors for the day, Margie Collins came by and filled me in.  She embellished it all, of course, but the gist of it was that somebody killed that worm of a man Howard Lance in your diner.”

“Actually, it was the freezer, but that’s about right.”

“It must look bad on your family,” Cynthia said.

“That’s why we’re trying to find the killer,” Moose blurted out.

“You two?  What makes you think you’re capable of doing anything remotely like that?”

“We really don’t have much choice,” I said.  “You can help us, if you’re willing.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Cynthia said, “but it’s just like I told you before, Mom doesn’t remember much about buying the place.  If you’d like her number, I’ve got it here on my phone.”

“Evelyn never did have all that good a memory,” Moose said.  “Besides, it’s you we want to talk to about it.”

“What do you think I can tell you that you don’t already know, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Where were you yesterday between five and five thirty?” I asked.  “If you’ve got an alibi, we can mark your name off our list.”

“I’m not a suspect, am I?” she asked, her voice growing with confusion.  “Why would I kill Howard Lance?”

“To save your livelihood,” I said.  “He was threatening to take away all of our businesses.  We’re naturally the prime suspects.”

“I can see the police acting that way, but we shouldn’t be turning on each other,” she said.

“It’s not that hard a question, Cynthia,” Moose said as he took a step toward her.  He was a big man, and he hadn’t gotten that nickname for nothing.  My grandfather could be intimidating when he wanted to be, as I well knew from experience.

She was considering her options when the front door of her place opened.  I was ready to push through until we had an answer, but that plan changed almost immediately when I saw that it was Sheriff Croft walking in.

“Neither one of you look as though you’re getting a haircut,” the sheriff said.  “What brings you here?”

I was trying to come up with a safe answer that wouldn’t make the sheriff irritated with us when Cynthia stole the opportunity from me to spin it in our direction.  “They think I killed Howard Lance,” she blurted out.

“We never said anything of the sort,” I replied quickly.

“You asked me for my alibi,” Cynthia said, her tone of voice accusing us of far worse.

“I need to see you two outside.  Now,” the sheriff said as he pointed in our direction.

“We didn’t—” was all I got out.  The glare he shot at me was enough to stop a rushing bull, and I didn’t need to be scolded twice.

Once we were outside, Moose said, “Before you start lecturing us, Victoria was trying to tell you the truth.  We were just looking for an alibi so we could strike her name off our suspect list.”

“Why do you think I’m here?” the sheriff said.  “Believe it or not, I’ve been doing this for a long time, a great deal longer than the two of you when you decided to try to solve this case yourselves.  Let me guess.  She wouldn’t give you an answer, would she?”

“She was about to when you barged in,” Moose said.

“That’s not entirely the truth,” I said, and my grandfather glared at me.