Lemon Larceny (The Donut Mysteries) (9 page)

“It’s a shame she
didn’t follow up on that,” I said as I finished reading the entry.

“How do we know
that she didn’t?” Momma asked.

I looked around
the living room, but if there was a camera there, I couldn’t see it.
 
That was kind of the whole point,
though, wasn’t it?
 
“Let’s add that
to our list of things we need to find out about,” I said.

“What do I put
down as a possible motive for murder in my notebook?” Momma asked me.

It was a fair
enough question.
 
The more I thought
about it, though, there was only one answer I could come up with.
 
“It sounds as though it has to be theft,
or more correctly, the fear of being exposed as a thief.”

“What exactly was
she stealing, though?
 
Even Jean
couldn’t put her finger on any one thing that Greta might have stolen.”

“I don’t know,” I
admitted, “but it’s the only motive that we have for.”
 
I started flipping through more pages as
I said, “Let’s see who the next person is to make it onto our list.”

I scanned the journal
for a minute until I came to the next name.
 
“
Adam
Jefferson clearly wants my land; not the house, that’s the Badger’s goal, but
the land I bought on a whim a few years ago
,” I read.
 
“
He
was polite at first, but lately he’s been more insistent.
 
I never should have bought that acreage
in the first place, and if he’d been a little nicer about everything, I might
even have sold it to him the first time that he asked.
 
That’s off the table now.
 
If Adam wants it, he’s going to have to
buy it off my heirs, because I’m never selling it to him, and I told him as
much today.
 
He got quite angry when
I told him, and I was glad that there were witnesses nearby, or I’m not sure
what he would have done.
 
I’ve got
to keep my eye on that man.”

“I didn’t know that
Jean owned any land other than what this house is sitting on,” Momma said.

“You may need to
start a separate page,” I told her.
 
“Head it with the words, Things We Need to Investigate.”

She did as I
suggested, and then Momma asked, “What do I list there?”

“Start with
whether or not Greta really was stealing from Aunt Jean, and then follow that
up with the true story about the land Adam wanted.
 
You might want to add that we need to
look for a hidden camera around here as we get the time.”

“Who’s next?”
Momma asked after she finished writing.

I leafed through
a few pages before I came to the next name.
 
I nearly dropped the book as I said, “I
don’t believe this.”

“What is it?”

“Aunt Jean listed
Chief Kessler as a possible suspect,” I said.

“The police
chief?
 
Why would he want to hurt
Jean?”

“I don’t
know.
 
Let’s see.”

“
The chief offered to work on my car today on
his day off.
 
He told me that at
heart he’s a shade-tree mechanic, whatever that is, but I declined his offer.
 
My choice of transportation might not be
much, but it gets me where I want to go.
 
Was it just a coincidence that two days later my brakes failed and I
almost died?
 
I wonder.
 
The chief has been up to something
lately, what exactly it is I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out.
 
He thinks he can hide in plain sight,
but I’m on to him.
 
All I need is a
little proof, and then, if he’s doing something wrong, then I’m going to make
sure that he’s going down.
 
He might
put on an ‘aw shucks ma’am’ demeanor with everyone around town, but there’s
more there than he lets on.
”

“So, it appears
that my little sister was playing Nancy Drew.”

“Much like her
niece does even to this day,” I said.

“Suzanne, I
didn’t mean anything disparaging by that,” Momma said.

“I didn’t take it
that way.
 
I just find it interesting
that Aunt Jean and I had more in common than just our DNA.”

“There was never
any doubt about that in mind,” Momma said with a smile.

“I wonder what
she suspected the police chief was up to?”

“I don’t know,
but it’s something else that we need to look into.
 
This is getting complicated, isn’t it?”

“Murder usually
is,” I said.
 

“Who’s next on
the list?”

It didn’t take me
long to find out.
 
“Hank Caldwell is
mentioned here,” I said, marveling that my aunt had so many suspicions about
the folks in her small town.

“What could Hank
possibly have wanted from her?”

Instead of
answering her directly, I started reading the passage aloud.
 
“
Hank
won’t get the message.
 
What we had
was fun, but when things started getting too serious, I tried to cool him
off.
 
He wouldn’t listen to me,
though.
 
Honestly, the man’s a bit
obsessed.
 
Last night, he hid in the
bushes in front of my house, and when I came outside, he jumped out and nearly
scared me to death.
 
I’m afraid that
I was a bit short with him, and I didn’t try to hide it.
 
He got furious, and before he stormed
off, he said, “If I can’t have you, then nobody can!”
 
It was honestly quite chilling, and I’m
beginning to regret ever going out with him in the first place.”

“It doesn’t sound
like an idle threat, does it?” I asked Momma.
 
“Did you know that Aunt Jean was seeing
the handyman?”

“My sister always
kept her personal life to herself, even when we were girls.
 
To be honest with you, I’m having a hard
time reconciling what she’s written about these people with the folks we’ve
met.
 
Is there a chance that she was
just being paranoid in the end?”

“I know what
you’re saying, and I suppose that it’s possible, but we have to go with Aunt
Jean’s instincts on this.
 
Everyone
has got to be a suspect until proven otherwise.”

“Agreed,” Momma
said.
 
“I hope that’s all,” she
added as she pointed to the journal.

“It seems to be,”
I said as I scanned the pages further, but then an underlined name caught my
eye.
 
“Well, at least this one is no
surprise.
 
Anna Albright made the list.
 
I was wondering if she was going to show
up.”

As Momma wrote
the neighbor’s name down, I read aloud for the last time, “
The Badger is driving me crazy.
 
She is constantly after me to sell this rambling old place to her, even
after I told her it was part of our family history.
 
Why does she want it so badly?
 
She acts as though there’s buried
treasure under the floorboards.
 
Given the history of our family, I very much doubt that’s possible.
 
We clearly come from a long line of
hoarders, one look in our attic is enough to prove that, but why would anyone
want any of this junk?
 
It’s beyond
me.
 
I told her today that I was
never going to sell the place to her so she might as well stop asking, and she
seemed to accept that.
 
Maybe now
she’ll leave me alone.
 
Then again,
maybe she’s just given up on me and plans to get rid of me so she can try to
persuade Suzanne that it’s a good idea when I’m gone.
 
Who knows what’s on the Badger’s mind?”

 
“We
really
have to find the killer now,” I said.
 
“Whoever did this robbed of us both of who knows how many years with
Aunt Jean.
 
That’s something that
I’ll never be able to forgive.”

“Then let’s find the
killer, and make them accountable for what they’ve done,” Momma said solemnly.

“Agreed,” I
replied, determined more than ever to track down my beloved aunt’s murderer.

“I think we’ve
done all that we can tonight.
 
What
do you say?
 
Shall we get some sleep
and revisit this list in the morning?” Momma asked as she closed her notebook.

“Sounds good to
me,” I said as I gave into a yawn.
 
I really was tired, and it wasn’t all physical exhaustion.
 
Losing Aunt Jean had taken a toll on me,
and I was just beginning to feel it.
 

We went off to
bed, hoping that after a night’s rest, we might be better suited to finding my
aunt’s killer.

Chapter 9

The fact that I
was restless that night might have ended up saving our lives.

Chapter 10

I bolted wide-awake
at one AM, and it only had a little to do with the fact that I was sleeping in
a strange bed.
 
Momma and I had said
our goodnights around eight the previous evening, and I’d drifted off a few
times, only to jolt awake again a little later.
  
This was ridiculous.
 
I finally decided to put on my robe and headed
downstairs.
 
It would give me a
chance to read Aunt Jean’s journal a little more thoroughly and see if I’d
missed any other major clues while I’d been scanning it before.
 
I could easily understand my mother’s
reticence in reading her sister’s journal, but I had no such compunctions.
 
The parts that I’d sampled so far had
been pure Aunt Jean; funny, insightful, irreverent, and just a little skewed.

Once I got
downstairs, though, I forgot all about the journal.
 

As I was passing
by the basement door, I heard an obvious noise coming from below me, and I was
certain that this time it was no tree limb.

Grabbing the
closest flashlight, I opened the door and shined it down the steps.
 
In as loud and commanding a voice that I
could muster, I shouted, “Whoever you are, you need to get out of here right
now.
 
I’ve already called the
police, but I’m not going to wait around for them to get here.
 
I’ve got a gun, and I’m not afraid to use
it.”

Silence.

“I mean it,” I
said, knocking the flashlight against the handrail.
 
“You have two seconds to leave.
 
One.
 
Two.
 
That’s it.
 
I’m coming down.”

As my foot hit
the second step, I heard a loud banging sound coming from below.
 
I was about to go back up the steps when
I heard a voice behind me that nearly dropped me in my tracks.

“Suzanne, what on
earth are you yelling about this time of night?”

“We just had an
unwelcome visitor in the basement,” I said.

“Are you sure?”
she asked as she tried to look around me down the steps.

“I’m pretty
sure.
 
Should we investigate this
ourselves, or should we call the police chief?”

Momma
frowned.
 
“Ordinarily I’d say call
the police, but after what you read in Jean’s journal, I’m not sure we should
be asking that man for help.
 
Let’s
go check it out ourselves.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive,”
she said.

I nodded, and
then we slowly started walking down the steps, one by one, each step creaking
the entire way down.
 
Momma was
right on my heels, and by the time we both got to the bottom landing, it
appeared that no one was there.

“Are you positive
that it just wasn’t mice or something?” Momma asked as she shined her beam
around the dark space looking for a switch.
 
When she found a string pull-cord, she
tugged on it and we suddenly had light, if you could call it that.
 
The bulb was old, and it flickered as it
burned, but it was still loads better than the flashlights we’d been using.

“No mouse could
make the noises I just heard,” I said.
 

As I started toward
the overloaded shelves filled with canned fruits, camping gear, and odds and
ends beyond imagination, I said loudly, “If you’re still here, we’re coming for
you.”

Momma just rolled
her eyes a little, but I noticed that she still stayed behind me.

After searching
aisle after aisle, I was beginning to wonder if my mother might have been
right.
 
Had I heard a mouse knock
something over?
 
Or had it been more
ominous, as I’d imagined?
 
I was
about to give up when I noticed something out of place.
 

On the steps
leading down from bulkhead entrance were footprints, still wet from tracking in
through the damp grass.

“Check that out,”
I said as I pointed to the steps, and then to the hasp I discovered that had
been snapped off near the top tread.
 
“I told you that someone was down here.”

Momma’s face
paled a little as her mouth became set in a firm line.
 
“This is completely unacceptable.”

“I’d say that’s about
the nicest way that you could put it,” I said.
 
“The real question is what are we going
to do about it?”

She thought about
it, and then she nodded firmly.
 
“In
the morning, we’re going to call Hank Caldwell to replace the entire lock assembly.”