After the lunch service was done, and I had received the first portion of my fee from Mia Cruz’s mother, I borrowed my grandmother’s Mini-Cooper and set off. I was excited for a new case, but nervous as well, and a little worried about Gamma. She was missing in action, lately, and while I wasn’t the type of person who pried into people’s business—maybe that was why I’d failed as a spy—I still worried, no matter how much I told Lauren not to.
The Cruz family home was a double-story, located in one of the middle-class neighborhoods of Gossip. It had a big front yard, a flat, concrete pathway that led up to a simple porch with a merry green front door.
The upstairs window on the right, a sash window, was open despite the chill in the air, the curtains in it hanging limply.
I parked the Mini-Cooper on the verge and got out of the car, sweeping fingers through my short blonde hair, and studying the scene.
The house looked… well, frankly, like it would be easy to break into. The upstairs window was open, the front door ajar, and no fences or gates guarding the property. The road was also wide and open, and the houses on either side had plenty of trees and bushes for a potential attacker to hide in.
“Miss Smith?” A woman appeared on the porch. She was slim and gorgeous, with her dark hair in a bun atop her head. “Hello.”
“Mrs. Cruz?” This had to be Mia’s mother. They looked awfully similar.
“That’s me.” She came down the stairs and shook my hand. “Thank you so much for coming out today. This has been a tragedy for Mia. And it’s only getting worse. I can’t believe that idiot Detective’s nerve to come out here and…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter right now. We’ve got you to help us.”
I forced a smile.
Whenever anyone referred to Detective Goode, my stomach would erupt into butterflies. I couldn’t help thinking about him romantically, even though he had the ability to make me mad beyond belief.
“I’m happy to help,” I said. “But I’ll need more details than I’ve already received.”
“Right, of course. One second.” She retreated back toward the house, poked her head around the front door and yelled. “Mia! Mia, the fixer is here to see us. Hurry up!”
A crash came from inside, and Mia rattled out of the house a few seconds later. Both women joined me. They stood next to each other, but with a fair amount of space between them. Interesting.
My grandmother would’ve told me to read into the behavioral cues that people gave out without even realizing it, and so, I made a mental note of the gap between them. Did they not get along?
Mia had told me that her mother didn’t approve of her relationship with Donny. Could that be the problem?
I brought my small pad and stubby pencil, a habit I’d formed when investigating cases like this, and smiled at the women. “OK, so I have a few questions.”
“Fire away,” Mrs. Cruz said.
Mia cast a sidelong glance at her mother.
“First, where did you find Mr. Braxton’s body?” I asked.
“Right there.” Mrs. Cruz pointed to a patch of grass that was directly beneath the open window on the second floor. “He was sort of half in and out of the flowerbed.”
Mia covered her mouth and took deep, huffing breaths.
“About what time was this?” I asked.
“It must have been 06:00 a.m. because that’s when I leave for work,” Mrs. Cruz said.
I paused, making a note of that. “And you last saw him at what time, Mia?”
“10:00 p.m., just before I went to bed,” Mia squeaked.
Another quick note. I hesitated. How to word this delicately? The last thing I wanted was for Mia to throw herself onto the ground again and roll around, wailing. “You didn’t see the body, did you Mia?”
She shook her head.
“Then, Mrs. Cruz, would you be so kind as to tell me exactly what you saw? In as much detail as possible. Sorry.” I grimaced.
“That’s fine,” Mrs. Cruz said, apparently unfazed by the whole event. “I’ll do what I can to help clear Mia’s name.”
But not to help figure out who committed the crime? Mrs. Cruz hadn’t liked Donny Braxton one bit, was my wager. I’d have to find out more about him. Could there be a specific reason she hadn’t liked him?
“I came out just before work, and I saw him just lying there in the yard. At first I thought he had passed out after making all that noise the night before, but yeah, he was dead. Knife in the back.”
“I can’t handle this!” Mia screamed, then turned on her heel and fled back into the house.
Mrs. Cruz rolled her eyes so hard, her eyelashes fluttered. “You’ll have to forgive my daughter. She’s dramatic even when her friend hasn’t been murdered.”
“Friend? I thought he was Mia’s boyfriend?”
Mrs. Cruz pursed her lips. “I doubt he could commit to being her boyfriend. Mr. Braxton was… not the type of man who settled down. Let me put it that way. And he certainly wasn’t good enough for my Mia.”
Upstairs the sash window slammed shut, and a furious and pale Mia stared down at us from above.
“You have no idea what it’s like dealing with a daughter who won’t see sense. She wouldn’t listen to me about him. She didn’t care about the rumors in town. That he was a player. That he was dating multiple young women her age. There was nothing I could do, and now he’s dead, and I’m stuck worrying about Mia’s future. That low-life didn’t even have the decency to—” She stopped talking, abruptly, as if realizing she’d said a little too much.
OK. So she hated the guy. “Tell me more about the crime scene, please.” My stubby pencil hovered over the page of my notebook. The more details I got, the better. I’d be able to take them back to Gamma and discuss them with her at length.
My grandmother was always looking for a side project—it was difficult to feel fulfilled after living the life of a spy—and she often took part in my cases.
My cases. It was strange to think of them that way, but I had reached that point now. I spent more time thinking about mysteries than I did dusting. And dusting happened to be my favorite thing to do at the Gossip Inn.
“The crime scene,” Mrs. Cruz said, and pulled a face. “There was blood, and he was stabbed, but I didn’t see a knife or anything. Oh, and there was a box of shortcake next to the body.”
“That’s a lie!” The sash window above had been opened again. Mia clasped the sill and leaned out, glaring down at us. “There’s no way he brought me shortcake.”
“What’s wrong with shortcake?” I asked.
“Nothing. Shortcake is delicious,” Mrs. Cruz said. “Usually. I mean the box was… well, you wouldn’t want to eat shortcake that had been sitting next to a corpse.”
“You’re disgusting, mother,” Mia cried. “Disgusting.”
“Why wouldn’t Donny have brought you shortcake, Mia?” I called up to her.
She chewed on her bottom lip. “Because I hate shortcake. It’s gross. He wouldn’t have come all the way out here to sing to me and apologize with a box of shortcake.”
“Maybe the shortcake wasn’t for you, honey,” her mother said, pointedly.
The window slapped shut again.
“OK,” I said. “OK, where were we?” I noted down the lack of murder weapon, the shortcake, and the cause of death.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Cruz said. “Things have been so complicated lately. The detective keeps coming by to talk to us. You see, they found one of Mia’s shoes in the flowerbed and they think she’s involved because of it. If only they knew how pathetically obsessed she was with the man. She would never have killed him.”
People had murdered in the name of “love.” Obsession was easy to mistake for it. “She mentioned she threw a shoe down at him because she was mad about an argument they had.”
“Right.” But the shifty-eyed glance up at the window told me she hadn’t known that particular detail.
What was going on here between mother and daughter. Could the mother have wanted to get rid of Donny so badly she’d killed him?
“Did you hear anything last night?” I wagered that Donny had to have been stabbed shortly after Mia had shut her window. The fact that he had been found below her window had to mean he hadn’t gotten the chance to walk off.
The trouble was, the street was completely open as was the yard. It would’ve been easy for a potential attacker to sneak up on the victim, stab him, and then run off never to be seen again.
“No, not really. I don’t think so. I heard Donny singing. I heard my daughter’s window slam, and then there was a strange bang and silence. I don’t know what the bang was. It sounded like something hitting the wall. Maybe it was Donny falling over?”
She’s so calm about this. “And where were you last night?”
“Here,” she said, stiffly. “At the house.”
“And your daughter?”
“She was here too. She went to bed after she closed her window. That’s what she told me,” Mrs. Cruz said.
“You didn’t say goodnight to her?”
“I was busy.”
Smell that? Steaming, hot lies. I couldn’t wait to talk to Gamma. This case was complicated. Without having seen the crime scene or the body, I was short on clues or leads.
“And do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Donny?” I asked.
Mrs. Cruz licked her lips, a little flick of the tongue over them, like a snake. “I don’t know. I guess any one of his many girlfriends or their parents.”
I made a note of it. I’d have to find out more about that. I studied what I’d written down so far. “Two more questions, Mrs. Cruz, if you’ll bear with me?”
“Sure. Go ahead. Whatever I can do to help,” she said.
“First, do you know if any of your neighbors have a door cam? Do you?”
“No, sorry. We don’t have cameras in this street. It’s a privacy issue.”
Because privacy is more of a concern than security. “And then, lastly, do you know where the shortbread came from? You said it was in a box. Did it come from a specific bakery in town, maybe?” This year, I’d spent a lot of time working on a case that revolved around the many bakeries in Gossip. One of them was run by Lauren’s sister, who happened to be a real pain in the neck.
Please don’t say the Little Cake Shop. Please don’t say the Little Cake Shop.
“Yeah, it was from the Little Cake Shop.”
Just my luck. I shoved my pad and pencil into my pocket again. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Cruz. I’ll let you know how things go.”