Chapter 28

Winnie moved between the stove and the cabinet in a sleep-deprived fog, grabbing cocoa instead of coffee and glasses instead of mugs. Once she finally got her act together, she reached for the kettle only to realize she’d never turned on the burner.

“Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!” She spun the dial to high, lifted her gaze to the ceiling, and released the groan she’d been holding back since the moment Renee arrived.

“Soooo are you just going to stand there and make me guess, or are you going to tell me what’s—”

Saved by the telephone . . .

Squaring her shoulders with the help of a calming breath, Winnie turned to see Renee pick up the phone.

“Emergency Dessert Squad, what’s your emergency?”

She had to admit, Renee’s greeting was cute. Fun, even.

“Sure, Winnie is here.” Renee pulled the phone away from her face and held it across the table in Winnie’s direction. “It’s a hot-sounding guy, and he’s asking for you.”

“Shhh,” she hissed as she crossed to the table and took the phone. “Good morning, this is Winnie. How can I help you?”

“Hi, Winnie. It’s Greg.”

She could feel the weight of Renee’s eyes and quickly removed herself from their path. Rounding the corner between the kitchen and her bedroom, she searched her brain for just the right way to rescind their date. But before she could select the perfect words, he filled in the awkward silence.

“How does six o’clock sound for dinner tonight? And is Italian okay? I figured we could check out that new place that went in on the other side of the street from your old bakery.”

Tell him, dummy . . .

“I—I . . . I love Italian.” The second she said it she longed for the ability to kick herself. Short of that she simply slapped herself on the side of the head.

“And six? Does that work for you? I checked that flyer you gave all of us at the school yesterday and noticed that your last rescue is at five o’clock.”

“Six works.”

“Should I pick you up?”

Her head snapped up. “No!” Then, softening her tone, she added, “I’ll meet you there.”

She could hear his smile through the phone and instantly hated herself for leading him on. Now, instead of getting it over with via phone, she’d have to do it over spaghetti and meatballs.

Nice going, Winnie . . .

“Great. I’ll see you then.”

She stifled the groan threatening to make its grand encore and closed her eyes instead. “I’ll see you then, Greg.”

A squeal from the other side of her bed had her opening her eyes and racing for the disconnect button before Renee’s overactive imagination morphed into words. “Geez, Renee, you scared me!”

“You’re going on a date with Master Sergeant Hottie, aren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, Renee headed straight for Winnie’s closet and began tossing dresses and skirts onto the bed. “You’re going to knock his socks—and maybe even some other stuff—off by the time I’m done with you.”

“Whoa. Slow down.” Gathering up as many of the items now heaped on her bed as she could, Winnie carried them back to the closet. “I don’t want to knock his socks off. In fact, the only thing I really plan on doing is telling him I’m not interested in dating anyone right now.”

Renee looked up from the wraparound dress Winnie had intentionally shoved to the back of the closet (impulse buy) eons earlier and stared at her as if she’d grown three heads. “Make sure you drink some coffee before you meet him so he doesn’t meet Miss Cranky Pants too early in the relationship. He needs to be at the can’t-live-without-you phase before you show him that side.”

“There isn’t going to be a can’t-live-without-you phase with Master Sergeant—with Greg,” she hissed. “Ain’t going to happen.”

Extending her arm outward, Renee held the dress up to Winnie and smiled. “He sees you in this thing and you’ll be eating those words. Trust me on this.”

“Renee, please. Stop!” She wrestled the dress from Renee’s hands and thrust it back into its aforementioned spot in the back of the closet. “I’m not interested in this guy. Not now. Not ever. He’s not the one, Renee.”

“Not the one,” Renee repeated. “What one?”

“The one.”

Renee stared at her, wide-eyed, and then reached back into the closet. “You can’t know that, Winnie, until after you go out with him.”

“Yes, I can, and I do.” She smacked Renee’s hand off the hanger toting the wraparound dress and pulled her friend out and away from the closet. “Please, Renee, I mean it. Stop.”

She braced herself for yet another round of protest but was pleasantly surprised when Renee refrained. “It’s that teacher guy, isn’t it? The one with the teenager?”

“Renee, I can’t do this right now. I just can’t.” Hooking her thumb in the direction of the kitchen, she led the way back to the stove and the mug of coffee capable of lifting the fog from her head once and for all.

Or, at least the sleep-deprived part . . .

“Do you want to talk about—”

She made a mental note to send an extra five bucks to the phone company as the ringing of the main phone cut Renee off mid-sentence. Again.

“Don’t you go anywhere,” Renee ordered before grabbing the phone and switching over to her continually changing dispatcher voice. “Emergency Dessert Squad. What’s your emergency?”

I’m going on a date with the wrong man?

I’m so tired I could fall over?

I have a horrible feeling my friend was murdered over a coin?

“Hmmm . . .” Renee sat down, quickly located the sheet of dessert options, and slowly ran her finger down the list. “She’s a worrier, you say?”

Shaking away her own emergencies, Winnie stepped in behind Renee and clamped a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “How about our Worry No s’More Bar?”

Renee looked up at Winnie, shook her head in amazement, and relayed the dessert option to the caller. “Okay, great. We can have that to her at”—again, Renee lifted her gaze to Winnie only to return it back to the order pad—“two o’clock. Will that work?”

Leaving Renee to nail down the particulars, Winnie crossed back to the stove, turned the oven to three hundred fifty degrees, and began pulling ingredients from the cabinet next to the refrigerator. She was just reaching for her mixing bowl and measuring spoons when Renee ended the call. “Worry No s’More Bar?”

“What?” She measured out the correct amount of brown sugar and poured it into the waiting bowl. “No good?”

“No, it’s adorable. I just don’t know how you can come up with something so perfect so fast.”

“It’s no different than you coming up with a plan for special time with Ty without even blinking an eye.” Winnie moved on to the white sugar and the baking soda. “It’s no different than Bridget knowing exactly what angle to take with a story. I mean, if it’s your passion, it’s a part of you.”

“I guess . . .” Renee pushed back her chair and wandered over to the center island. “Anything I can do?”

Winnie scooted a bag of chocolate bars across the counter to Renee. “Sure. Wash your hands, unwrap these, break them into tiny squares, and set them in a small bowl. Once they’re all in there, pop them in the freezer, will you?”

“Aye, aye, Captain!”

For the next few minutes, they worked side by side, Renee intent on her wrapper duty, and Winnie focused on the s’more bar coming together in her bowl. Once all the ingredients were mixed, she turned to the bag of graham crackers to her left and crushed them just shy of a dust consistency. In a separate bowl, she mixed the cracker base with melted butter and pressed it into her prepared pan. Once the crust was set, she scooped the cookie mixture on top, spread it around, and popped the pan in the oven while Renee put the bowl of chocolate pieces into the freezer to firm.

“How long?” Renee asked.

“Ten minutes.”

“It’ll be ready that fast?”

Winnie pointed to the remaining half cup of marshmallows that hadn’t made it into the mixture. “No. That’s just when I sprinkle these on top. Then it’ll be another ten minutes before it comes out and we scatter the chocolate pieces across the top.”

“I’m thinking maybe you need to give me some hazard pay,” Renee quipped, reaching for (and unwrapping) a single “missed” (yeah, right) chocolate bar. “Having a dessert like that within arm’s reach and not being able to eat it surely must qualify as hazard duty, don’t you think?”

She cracked a half smile and lifted her coffee mug off the table. “We need a lot more clients before I can cut much of a paycheck at all, let alone consider including hazard pay.”

“Is that why you’re so blah today? Because you’re worried about paying me?” Renee asked quickly. “Because I’m okay right now. Really. I’m here with you because I want to be.”

“That’s a worry, sure.” She took a sip of the lukewarm liquid and then wrapped both hands around the mug.

“A worry.” Renee balled up the chocolate bar wrappers and tossed them in the trash, narrowly missing Winnie in the process. “So then what’s the worry?”

“I found out something last night that I can’t seem to shake from my mind.”

Leaning forward, Renee stared at her and waited.

“Bart had a coin he kept in a glass case on the center of his fireplace mantel.”

“The one his dad got from one of President Roosevelt’s Secret Service agents, right?”

Winnie recovered her gaped mouth and pulled her mug against her chest. “You knew about Bart’s coin?”

“Sure. He told me all about it at every block party you dragged me to.”

“Dragged you to?” She didn’t need a mirror to know her left brow had lifted further into her forehead. “Hmmm. I seem to remember you begging for an invite.”

Renee shrugged. “The food is always really good; the gossip, even better.”

She laughed, but it was short-lived. “Okay, so he told you about his coin.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did he ever happen to mention how much it was worth?” Slowly, she lowered the mug to the counter and trained her focus on the timer above the oven.

Forty-five more seconds . . .

She grabbed the remaining marshmallows, carried them over to the oven, set them down long enough to place a mitt on her hand, and then opened the door and pulled out the pan. Digging her free hand into the measuring cup of marshmallows, she held it over the pan, and sprinkled them across the top of the half-baked cookie bar. When they were in place, she popped the pan back in the oven and reset the timer for another ten minutes.

“That smells amazing,” Renee mused before turning her attention back to Winnie’s question. “No. He never said. I just know it meant a lot to him.”

Winnie spun around to face her friend. “According to Mr. Nelson and every site I found on the Internet last night, the 1933 gold double eagle coin is the rarest coin there is.”

“Okay . . .”

“Which means it’s worth a whole lot of money, Renee. And by a lot, I mean a lot.”

“What constitutes a lot?”

She walked to the window, looked across the street at Bart’s empty home, and then retraced her steps back to Renee. “Seven point five million dollars.”

“Ha-ha. You’re funny, Winnie.”

“I’m not being funny, Renee. According to a collector’s website I went to last night, the last one of these coins that surfaced sold for seven point five million dollars.”

Renee’s mouth rounded into a near-perfect O. “Wow. I had no idea you had such wealthy neighbors.”

“Neither did I. But in all the time I knew Bart and Ethel, he never talked about the monetary worth of that coin. He simply talked about its connection to a former president.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. Or maybe he didn’t care.” Renee shifted her weight from stiletto-clad foot to stiletto-clad foot. “Maybe it was really just about the sentimental value for him.”

“The coin is missing, Renee.”

“His kid doesn’t have it?”

Winnie shook her head.

“Mr. Nelson?”

Again she shook her head. “Mr. Nelson is actually the one who first noticed it was gone when we were trying to coax Lovey out of the house. He assumed Mark had buried it with Bart.”

“And we know that he didn’t?”

“Mark told me he didn’t.”

“Do you think that’s why he was murdered?” Renee asked.

It was the only answer that made sense now that Mark and Sissy had been eliminated from her personal list of suspects. “I do.”

“Did you tell the cops this?”

“I’m going to. I just want to think on it a little longer. In case I’m wrong. I mean, maybe he moved the coin somewhere else. Maybe he sent it off to be cleaned.”

“He polished it himself,” Renee offered. “He even showed me how he cleaned it two block parties ago.”

She felt the sag of her shoulders and glanced back at the oven.

Three minutes . . .

She didn’t know what to say.

Renee, of course, wasn’t afflicted with that problem. “Sounds like someone knew what Bart was sitting on.”

She returned her gaze to Renee. “So you think he was killed for the coin, too?”

“It’s missing, right?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s worth seven point five mil, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think it’s a no-brainer.”

“But who could possibly know what that thing was worth if Bart never told anyone?”

“That’s simple,” Renee said as the timer beeped and she made a beeline for the freezer and the chilled chocolate pieces. “A collector.”