Free A Killer Cake by Jessica Beck Page B

for
the tip, Victoria.”
    “You’re welcome.” I was about to ask him if
he’d made any real progress on the case, but he hung up before I
had the chance. Maybe he’d done that on purpose, just to stall my
inevitable questions that were sure to follow.
    After I hung up my phone and started to put
it away, Greg asked, “Aren’t you going to call Moose and tell him
what just happened?”
    “I suppose I’d better, but he’s not going to
be too pleased with me.”
    “Why not?” Greg asked. “You did everything
you could.”
    “You and I both know that, but I’m sure that
in Moose’s mind, he’s going to be disappointed that I didn’t lock
Loretta in the bathroom until he could get here so he could grill
her himself.”
    Greg smiled at that reference. “You still
need to call him.”
    I did as my husband suggested, and as
predicted, Moose was unhappy that I hadn’t been able to get more
out of Loretta, but mostly he took it in stride.
    “At the very least, we have another motivated
suspect to add to our list,” Moose said. “If she was telling you
the truth, greed might be a factor in her committing murder.”
    “But why now?” I asked. “Wouldn’t she want to
take the opportunity to meet the man who was her father before she
killed him?”
    “He might have been the biological
contributor, but from the sound of things, he did nothing to help
raise her, emotionally or financially. From the sound of this
woman, she must be pretty cold.”
    “Icy,” I agreed.
    “Don’t worry about a thing, Victoria. You did
the right thing calling the sheriff.”
    “Even despite her warning not to say
anything?” I asked.
    “Our family never lets threats keep us from
doing what we think is right,” Moose said. “We never have, and
we’re not about to start now.”
    “No matter what might happen because of
this?” I asked. For some reason, this petite woman’s threat had
unnerved me more than if it had been uttered by a two-hundred pound
madman.
    “No matter what,” Moose replied.
     
    The rest of the evening was fairly quiet, and
though we weren’t anywhere near our usual number of diners
throughout the remainder of our time open, the drop-off wasn’t so
large that a casual observer would notice it.
    I knew, though.
    We wouldn’t feel the losses much at the cash
register, but if this trend continued, The Charming Moose could be
in some serious trouble.
     
    “Are you ready to head home?” Greg asked me
as he came up front from the kitchen area. “Everything’s set back
in the back.”
    “Almost; I need one more second,” I said.
Since Martha had spent some time working the cash register, I was
running into a few discrepancies, nothing too large to worry about
too much, but enough to make me scratch my head and wonder how
she’d managed to come up with four dollars and twenty seven cents
more than the report showed we should have. I balanced out the tape
with the irregular entry, and then I did my best not to think about
it.
    After zipping the money, credit card
receipts, and our deposit slip into a bank bag, I turned to Greg
and said, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
    “How bad was it?” he asked with a grin as he
pointed to the night-deposit bag.
    “All I can say is that it could have been
worse,” I replied.
    “In the end, that’s the best we can hope for,
isn’t it?”
    “I suppose so,” I said. “I just wish that it
wasn’t necessary for Martha to pitch in so much around here. She’s
earned her retirement, and she should be able to enjoy it.”
    “You don’t see her when she’s working,” Greg
said. “I wouldn’t worry about your grandmother at all. She might
not be great with the register, but folks absolutely love her, and
it’s clear that the feeling is mutual.”
    I nodded absently, and Greg pressed me a bit.
“Victoria, you seem down. Is there anything I can do to help?”
    “Not unless you know the identity of who
killed Roy Thompson,” I said.
    Greg shrugged