Murder at Stake Read online

  Murder at Stake

  An Old School Diner Cozy Mystery

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Murder at Stake (Old School Diner Mystery Series)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Epilogue

  by

  Constance Barker

  Copyright 2017 Barker

  All rights reserved.

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  “I’ll need a spoon with that, sweetheart.” The old farmer smiled at the tall, slender waitress as she set his bowl of split pea and ham soup on the counter.

  “The name is Deloris, you old coot.” She had a stern but regal look, remnants of her youthful beauty still evident in her 62-year-old face. Deloris took a step toward the silverware bin behind her as she raised an eyebrow at her daily sparring partner. “And you’re starting to look more and more like that old floppy-eared hound dog of yours, Red, so I thought you might just want to lap it up with your tongue.”

  “Hah! She got you with a good one there, Red,” chuckled Jake Carter, the burly, middle-aged owner of Carter & Son Construction Company. “Where’s my Five-Alarm chili, Deloris? I ordered the same time as old Red.”

  No sooner had he said the words than the smoke alarm sounded and billows of smoke started rolling out of the kitchen through the pass-through window.

  “Looks like it should be just about ready, Jake,” I said as I walked toward the swinging doors behind the counter. “Smoke! What’s going on in there?”

  My cook, Jerry Kowalski (aka “Smoke” for obvious reasons) came out of the swinging doors waving his tall chef hat to get the smoke out of his face. His young apprentice, Zack, was right behind him.

  “Aw, it’s nothing, Mercy. I was just teaching Zack here how to make my shepherd’s pie, and I forgot all about a grilled cheese sandwich I had on the grill for his lunch.”

  “Ya, and it caught on fire,” Zack added, to Smoke’s disapproving glare.

  “That’s what you get for using lighter fluid instead of butter, Smoke,” Red kidded, making Smoke’s scowl even more intense. That comment wasn’t really fair, since Smoke’s cooking was always delicious.

  “But it’s out now, and everything is cool, ma’am,” Zack added quickly. “I’ll go get your chili, Mr. Carter.”

  The smoke dissipated, and everyone went back to their conversations. Another day in Paradise, here at the Old School Diner. I sat down in the corner booth with my inventory sheet and smiled at the minor disruption. I’m the proprietor, Mercy Howard, and this is my world. My Grandfather opened this little diner in 1964, and I just left a bad relationship and a life-consuming job as an emergency room nurse in Louisville to get back to my roots here in Paint Creek, Kentucky. Life always seemed to make sense here, so I came back last summer and bought the diner back from a city couple who decided they preferred the rat race in the big city. I guess the idyllic small town life of western Kentucky isn’t for everyone.

  Then suddenly the sky outside my big plate glass windows went dark, as if night had fallen in the middle of the afternoon.

  “Must be one of them city-sized flying saucers hovering over Paint Creek, Jake,” Red said with a grin to his conspiracy-minded friend.

  “That’s real funny, Red. I’m not crazy, you know. Junior’s the one with all those wild ideas. Probably the government just turned on its weather-control machine. They’ve got satellites that can whip up hurricanes and all kinds of storms – even cause earthquakes and volcanoes, you know. Thanks, Deloris,” he said as she put a large spoon down next to his bowl of chili. “I hope you didn’t pull that spoon out of that beehive hairdo of yours.” He smirked and kept his head down to avoid the daggers he knew would be shooting from the waitress’s baby blue eyes.

  “My hair is cleaner than those mitts you hold your spoon with to shovel good food into your chubby round pie hole, Jake Carter.”

  “I don’t know,” Jake dared to say. “It’s been up in that same beehive since 1956. You probably got a whole family of racoons living in there.”

  I had to hold back a chuckle. Deloris always kept her pen in her lofty hairdo, and was known for pulling everything from lipstick to pictures of her grandkids out of her tower of blonde hair.

  Babs, the feisty round waitress who covered the booths and tables while Deloris manned the counter and beverage stations, came to Jake’s defense. “You leave this sweet man alone, Deloris,” she said with a wink to her coworker. Babs was kind of sweet on Jake, and hugged the man’s neck and shoulders from behind.

  Jake blushed as the somewhat stocky and slightly older spinster gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “You two should start getting along and stop teasing each other so much.” She snapped her gum and brought some dirty dishes into the kitchen.

  Suddenly the wind began to howl, and rain began to come down in torrents. The door opened, and Carl Jones came in, already drenched.

  “Holy moly, it’s gonna be a doozy of a storm out there!”

  Carl, or “Jonesy” as we all called him, had a little hobby farm on the edge of town and brought me my eggs every day. He also ran the butcher shop and did some accounting during tax season. “Got nine dozen for you today, Mercy,” he said, setting the box on the counter.

  “That should hold me through the weekend, Jonesy. Thanks.” I went behind the counter and put my glasses on to look at the invoice and initial it for him. Jonesy liked to keep perfect records for his taxes and mine.

  “Here you go, Carl.” Deloris handed him a mug of coffee with two spoonsful of sugar and a few drops of vanilla in it.

  “Thank ya, pretty lady!” Jonesy said with his amazing and genuine smile. “Nobody makes coffee like you, Deloris.”

  He took a sip, and I waved for him to follow me over to my little booth.

  “Hey,” Jake groused, “How come Jonesy gets a free cup of coffee and Red and I have to pay. Aren’t we good friends too, Deloris?”

  Babs swatted him on the shoulder as she whizzed by to get the hot food in the window for another table of diners. “Delivery charge, you cheapskate. Carl made a special trip to bring those eggs here on short notice so we’d be able to make your Old School Special omelet in the morning, Jake. Coffee, Ronnie?” she asked as the owner of the hardware store walked in, wiping his feet on the mat and closing his umbrella. He nodded and sat at his usual table.

  Deloris already had it on the counter, and Babs ran it out to his table and delivered a club sandwich for Missy Daniels and pancakes for her two boys. These amazing ladies ran this place like clockwork.

  Chapter Two

  “So, Carl,” I asked him as we looked out at the heavy rain, “I need a really big and delicious roast for Sunday dinner, and I just plain forgot to ask you about it last week. Can you help me?”

  “Well, Mercy, it just so happens that I got a prime side of beef in this morning.”

  “Great! I’ll stop by the butcher shop in the morning.”

  “Well, it’s still in my big walk-in at the farm. I’ll be cutting all day today and then grinding burger and packaging all the steaks and roast
s in the morning, maybe till mid-afternoon. Why don’t you just stop by after the storm dies down, and I’ll carve out the tender front half of the loin for you. About 20 pounds sound about right?”

  “It sure does.” Carl was the sweetest man in the world, a real Paint Creek treasure, and everybody loved him. Well...almost. “How’s Josie doing, Carl?”

  His eyes grew concerned with a faraway look. He sighed. “Actually, that was another reason I wanted you to come out to the farm, Merse. “I was hoping you might talk to her. I don’t know if she’s sad or angry with me or if something happened that she won’t tell me. And now this morning she said she wanted to have a talk with me tonight...I’m really afraid about what she might have to say. If I knew what was bothering her I might be able to do something to make her happy again. She’s hardly ever home and stays out late doing who knows what. A couple of weeks ago she was talking about a divorce. She’s been staying home the past few days now, but I’m worried.” He paused to gather in his feelings and smiled at me. “She’s the sunshine of my life, Mercy...”

  The man looked broken, and hung his head. “My car is in the shop, Carl, but I’ll get one of the girls to run me out there.”

  There had been rumors for a couple of months now that Josie was having an affair, but nobody seemed to know who her love interest might be. Personally, I didn’t believe it. Josie Jones wasn’t one of those man-crazy middle-aged cougars, and she wasn’t obsessed with fashion or makeup. It’s probably just some kind of mid-life crisis she’s working her way through. I reached across the table and put my hand on Jonesy’s just as my phone rang.

  “Hello...Yup, he’s right here. Do you want to talk to him? ...Okay...Okay...Okay, bye.”

  “It was your wife, Jonesy,” I told him. “She wants you to get back out to the farmhouse right away and help her close up the barn before the storm gets here.”

  “Roger that, Merse.” He stood and gave a salute. “See you in a couple of hours.” Then he turned quickly to head back out to his car, bumping straight into Pastor D’Arnaud who was also heading out the door. The two men paused briefly to exchange glares, which struck me as a little odd for such a brief and unintentional bump. Just as the door closed behind the two men the Civil Defense sirens began to wail.

  “Geez, maybe Smoke started the whole town on fire this time,” Red joked.

  I was more alarmed, as the sound of the wind turned to a low bellow, and the heavy rain was almost horizontal. I looked at my watch to make sure it wasn’t one of those “first Wednesday” one o’clock test sirens, but it was twenty minutes after 1:00, and it was Thursday. I went into my ER nurse emergency mode.

  “That’s a tornado warning guys. You all know Bud – he wouldn’t turn that thing on unless they spotted a big twister coming our way. Everybody follow me into the cellar!” I opened the swinging doors and motioned for them to go through the kitchen to the dark narrow stairway by the back door.

  Smoke and Henry, the two oldest ones there, were the hardest to convince to get downstairs. “Let’s go, guys.”

  “A little episode of wind and rain never drove me into a cellar before, Mercy,” Red said stubbornly. “I’ll just ride out the storm right here on my stool.”

  “Me too,” said Smoke. “I’ve been through hurricanes at sea and tropical downpours in Nam. You get all the others downstairs, and Henry and I will man the fort here.”

  Red’s given name was Henry, and that’s how Smoke always referred to his friend. Red was about 72 and Smoke had just turned 66.

  I folded my arms and stood across the counter from the two men. Zack was poking his head out of the swinging doors. “Zack, you get all the rest of these folks downstairs and comfortable, and we’ll join you in a minute.” He nodded, and the dozen others huddling behind him gladly followed.

  “Listen, guys, I know you are both big strong brave men...” I tried not to let the sarcasm drip from my lips. “But everyone is going downstairs, or else you’re going outside into that little episode of wind and rain.”

  They raised their eyebrows and looked at each other. “She’s just joshing us, Henry. Mercy wouldn’t do that.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” I said sternly, walking to the door and grabbing the knob. “And I’m going right out there with you. There’s nothing to worry about, right?”

  Smoke grabbed my arm before I could pull the door open.

  “You know, Henry, the last time Bud sounded the siren was when the damn broke and the whole town got flooded. Maybe Mercy’s got a point.”

  I took the chance to build on Smoke’s words. “Besides, somebody’s got to be down there to protect and comfort Deloris and the others.”

  Slowly Red began to nod his head. I knew he had a serious crush on Deloris and wouldn’t mind putting his arm around her to offer a little comfort – not that she’d ever allow it, but it didn’t stop me from painting the picture. As if to add an exclamation point to my demand, an awning from across the street and some large tree branches flew by the window in front of us.

  “I guess we better get down there, Smoke – for the sake of the women and children.”

  Chapter Three

  “It’s about time you joined us down here, you bullheaded old fool,” Deloris chided Red with a look of relief in her eyes. “I thought you were going to get Mercy hurt with your stubbornness.”

  Zack and Jake had set out big Number 10 cans of beans and tomatoes for everyone to sit on, and I headed for a stack of rice and flour sacks, which looked a little more comfortable. Missy Daniels was down there with her two young, wide-eyed children, but most of the others were the older mid-afternoon crowd of seniors who drank coffee and tea there most days, just playing cribbage and gossiping. We sat in a circle away from the stairs as the wind continued to blow amid crashes of thunder and sounds that could have been trees snapping in two.

  “I thought you made your own baked beans, Smoke, but it looks like you get them out of these big cans. I’m disappointed,” Ronnie Towns said. I’m sure he was kidding, and the remark did get some smiles and helped to lower the palpable tension in the musty cellar, dimly lit with one bulb over the base of the stairs.

  The light flickered as Smoke made his response. “I do make them myself. But who’s got time to soak beans all night? Plus there’s no room to do that in my little kitchen. I drain out all the tomato sauces and then add all the bacon and molasses and onions and secret ingredients that turn them into my own special baked beans, Ronnie. Do you make all the tools you sell at your hardware store from scratch?”

  That got a laugh from the crowd just as another bolt of lightning sounded like it struck something very near.

  “I hope the storm doesn’t wreck up the old library,” Red said. “It’s a shame the way the city is wanting to tear it down and build a new brick box with no character. I studied in that old library when I was a kid, and so has everyone else who grew up here in Paint Creek. That old building is a work of art, part of the history of Paint Creek. If they want some fancy schmancy digital media center they can just run a wire to the big old basement there and put in a bunch of computers. There’s lots of unused space there. Congressman Pattaway is just trying to buy our votes and get a library named after him before he bites the dust.”

  Babs nodded her head in agreement. “I hear you’re going to go to the town council meeting next Thursday night and give them a piece of your mind, Red.”

  “I’m sure thinking about it, Babs. Maybe some the rest of you can come and give me a little moral support so those council members know we’re serious about wanting to keep our library. Hey, Mercy, what do think about the new library idea? You’re part of the younger generation. What are you, 30? 35 now?”

  35! I hadn’t really stopped to think much about the years passing lately, but that was a wake-up call for me. I was just 33, but 35 sounded a lot like “going on 40” to my ears, even though it wasn’t that far around the corner for me.

  “I love the old library, Red. We used to go and pick cr
ab apples from the tree out back there...”

  “...and I caught you kissing Billy Robinson there under that tree once too, after your Prom,” Red added, much to my mortification. That got them all laughing out loud. Billy Robinson – I hadn’t thought about him in years. He was a District Attorney in Knoxville now.

  “All right, all right, guys. That was a long time ago.”

  We must have been down there for an hour, but the time passed quickly. We had forgotten all about the storm as everyone shared their memories of their time in Paint Creek.

  Then the howling above us started to fade away, and it sounded like the storm was letting up. I heard footsteps upstairs, and then I could hear someone hollering.

  “Mercy? Anybody here? Miss Howard? Is everybody all right?”

  “Sounds like Sheriff Hayes,” Zack said.

  “Oh, Mercy!” Babs said excitedly. “You go up and talk to that dreamy man. He’s the only man in Paint Creek under 40 who’s not fat or stupid.”

  All heads turned, eyebrows raised, toward the chubby waitress. She just shrugged. Her remark was close to the truth. Brody Hayes was the new Sheriff, though nobody really seemed to know much about him or where he came from. He was a man of few words, and I really didn’t know him – and I had no intention of getting involved with another man to mess up my new quiet life. A three-year engagement with a messy ending hadn’t really given me a mindset aimed at romance. Not now. Things were just starting to get back to normal and stress-free for me.

  “Anybody here?” the voice persisted.

  “We’re down here!” Smoke hollered back, starting up the stairs and waving for the rest of us to follow. I could hear the short “all-clear” bursts from the Civil Defense siren as we walked up the stairs to the kitchen.

  Deloris whispered to me on the way up the stairs, “Be careful of that dreamy drink of water, sweetie. The tall silent type are never what they appear to be...always hiding something. I just have an uncomfortable feeling about this one, Mercy. There’s gotta be a reason a man like that came to this little one-horse town. He’s running away from something, mark my words.” She gave me a knowing nod, and then went up ahead of me and into the dining room.