Dying for Dinner Rolls Read online

  Dying for Dinner Rolls

  A Georgia Coast Cozy Mystery (Book 1)

  Lois Lavrisa

  Sunlake Press

  Copyright © 2018 by Lois Lavrisa.

  Published by Sunlake Press

  www.sunlakepress.com

  Graphics by Karen Phillips

  Edited by Amy at Blue Otter Editing

  Additional Editing by Clio Editing

  Proofreading by Alicia Street at IProofread & More

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, locations, places and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, organizations, locales is entirely coincidental. However, I’ve taken great pains to depict the location and descriptions of the many well-known locales in Savannah to the best of my ability. All Trademarks mentioned herein are respected. All quotes are intended as fair use and not intended to abridge copyright.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Join the Newsletter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Murderous Muffins (Book 2 Excerpt)

  Chapter 1

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Lois Lavrisa

  About the Author

  Dedication

  In memory of my “City Grandma” Anna Donna Siminuk Piwowar—a character in the tenth degree. When she dressed up, she would wear dyed fabric pumps to coordinate with her chiffon dresses—one in every color and always accessorized with rhinestone jewelry. For twenty years, she waitressed at the State Street Chicago Marshall Field’s restaurant, making friends with all who stopped by. Anna and her two sisters, Helen Olsen and Mary Schmaus, would lip sync and dance to the Andrews Sisters’ records. They were fabulous entertainment at parties. Anna believed that all men were frogs (no matter how much you kiss them, no prince would ever materialize), and a woman only had to pick the nicest frog. She never got a chance to meet my husband, Tom, but I know she would agree that I followed her advice.

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  loislavrisa.com/newsletter

  Chapter 1

  “When are you due, sweetie?” a petite gray-haired lady asked me as I bagged her groceries.

  “Um, I’m not…” I looked down at my shirted belly.

  Andrew, my husband, handed the customer her credit card slip and chuckled. “If she’s pregnant, she’s going to have some explaining to do.”

  The lady signed the slip and passed it back to Andrew. “Is that so?”

  “Cat’s my wife.” Andrew gave the grocery bag to her. “After two sets of twins, I visited the urologist.”

  I jabbed Andrew in his side. Sometimes he had no filter.

  “Cat?” the lady asked.

  “Catherine Alice Thomson,” I replied. “Everyone calls me Cat.”

  The lady took her bag and turned to me. “Sorry I implied you’re—”

  “Fat?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, dear. You couldn’t be more than a hundred pounds.” The lady waved her hand. “And I just love this health food store. It’s so lovely.”

  “Thank you,” I called after her as she exited the store. I smoothed down the poufs in the shirt. “That’s it. I have to stop wearing this billowy top even though it’s all the rage. This style only looks good on six-foot-tall, rail-thin models, not normal-sized people like me.”

  Andrew kissed the top of my head. “You’re glowing. That’s what I’m sure she meant. And tasty, too.”

  “Huh?” I asked.

  He grabbed a lettuce leaf stuck to my bright yellow apron with our store’s name on it: Sunshine Market. The name came from the song “You Are My Sunshine,” which was my parents’ wedding song.

  Andrew asked, “Cat, can you straighten that display while I put new register tape in?”

  “No problem.” I tucked my shoulder-length black hair behind my ears and got to work.

  A few moments later, a police officer walked past our store and nodded to Andrew and me.

  I turned to Andrew. “You know, the police still haven’t reopened the case about that night. And they just hired a few new officers. Maybe they could look into it. You know. New eyes on the case?”

  Andrew knew what “that night” meant—the night my dad was killed. Actually, all of my friends knew what I meant when I said “that night.” Two months ago, while my dad worked late and alone at the store, he’d been shot.

  After my father’s death, Andrew, knowing how much work there would be once my dad died, had decided to quit his job as an architect to help my mom and me run the family business. My mom still did the bookkeeping and accounting for our Savannah, Georgia, organic health food store.

  I’d worked at the store practically my entire life. Now, though, I found it difficult to spend a lot of time there. Memories of my dad were tucked away on every wooden shelf lining the walls and on every inch of the reclaimed heart pine floor. Sometimes I thought I smelled his Old Spice cologne lingering in the air.

  As an only child, I was hit hard by my dad’s death. My mom still grieved, saying she would never love another human being as much as she’d loved my father. Although she mourned, she rolled up her sleeves and got back to work. She said she had to honor her husband’s store by keeping it successful.

  Work distracted my mom from the loss of her husband. Whereas my grief manifested in the form of my determination to catch his killer.

  Andrew rang up a customer’s groceries, the beep sounding as each item crossed the scanner.

  A few moments later, the customer left.

  Andrew turned toward me. “Honey, I know how much this hurts you, but I keep telling you the police did all they could. What happened to your dad was a horrible tragedy.”

  “You know I can’t let go until I have answers.”

  “Do what you need to do. I’ll support you, no matter what. But I’m afraid you’ll just keep opening old wounds.”

  “It happened two months ago, not two years. The wounds are not that old. Plus, the killer could still be lurking around.”

  “You’re safe now,” Andrew said. “We’ll catch anyone doing anything with the new surveillance cameras and security system.”

  “I just wish we’d had all of that earlier. Maybe that night wouldn’t have happened. He’d still be alive.”

  Andrew gave me a hug. “I wish he were still here, too.”

  “I keep thinking that maybe if I’d stayed late and worked with him, rather than him closing the store by himself, it wouldn’t have happened.” I took a deep breath, replaying the what-ifs in my head as I had a million times already. Thinking that somehow I could undo the events of that night, and he’d still be alive.

  Andrew rang up another customer. Then he offered the customer a pen to sign the credit card slip, but the custome
r held up a purple pen that he already had.

  A purple-inked crossword puzzle had been found under my dad’s body. And there’d been no purple pen in sight in the store. Additionally, he never did the crossword. Several blocks had been filled in, spelling “sweet revenge,” which hadn’t seemed relevant to any clue.

  But that puzzle pointed to my dad’s murderer. I just knew it. Although the police had determined, after a brief investigation, that my father’s death was due to a burglary gone bad, I did not. I hung on to the crossword puzzle as the sole lead to the killer.

  After the customer left, I elbowed Andrew. “Purple pen.”

  Andrew shook his head and sighed. “See? You’re going to drive yourself and, for that matter, me crazy. Since that night, you’ve hovered over every person you see doing a crossword puzzle. You think that everyone with a purple pen is a suspect. You need to let it go.”

  But I couldn’t let it go. My sense of justice prevailed over reason. Not only because the killer had taken away my dad, but also because he might intend to harm other people in my life. I felt that I had to keep vigil to protect my loved ones.

  I glanced at the framed picture near the register. It showed my mom and dad, his arm over her shoulder, both of them smiling at the photographer. Their striking difference—my tall father’s light complexion and blond hair and my short mom’s dark, Asian coloring—never bothered them.

  My mom, Yunni, walked over to me and gave me a hug. “You restock produce now. We got new delivery.” Yunni tapped her thumb with mine.

  She still spoke in half-broken English, as she was born in Korea. My American dad had met her forty-five years ago while he was in the service. She stood about four feet ten inches tall in heels and had thick, black hair cut short in layers, big brown eyes, and a smile that took up half her face. My thick hair was like hers, but I looked more like my father, who was born to Welsh and Irish parents.

  Tapping our thumbs together was our private signal connecting us to my dad. My dad had two wedding bands that he’d alternated wearing, depending on his mood. When he was in his Sunday-best mood, his choice was the platinum band with the diamonds, which my mom now had on her thumb, and I wore the plain gold band that he'd favored when he felt casual. Since my dad had a much thicker ring finger than my mom and me, his wedding bands fit on our thumbs.

  I could’ve worn the ring on a chain around my neck, but I couldn’t stand necklaces or anything around my neck.

  “What happened to ‘Hi, honey, how are you?’” I kissed my mom on top of her head.

  She mumbled something in Korean and laughed. Sometimes I wished she’d taught me Korean, like she'd taught my children.

  “We too busy for that, you know. Have too much of the work to do.” Yunni waved her hands at me as if shooing away flies. “Go now. Get to work.”

  “This could be considered child abuse or could be breaking some sort of child labor law,” I joked.

  “You adult, no child. No law broke.” She steered me into the back room. “Oh, and remember, I take girls to Korea soon, right?”

  “That is still under discussion.”

  “Have tickets. All planned. They go like their brothers did at their age. Lots of family to see in my home country. Andrew and you come with, too. All worked out. You don’t worry about that now. Go to do your job.”

  I unloaded a crate of organic fruits and vegetables. Then my eighty-eight-year-old paternal Welsh grandfather, who we called Tadcu, entered the room. “Hey, chickadee, don’t you look like a peach today?”

  “Thanks, Tadcu, you’re looking mighty spiffy, too.”

  He wore a seersucker blazer over a white linen shirt and had on a navy-blue bow tie, which matched his slacks. His white leather shoes were without a scuff mark. He had thick white hair and deep blue eyes. It’d nearly killed him to lose his only child, my father. I imagined that, had my dad lived, he’d have aged as gracefully as his father.

  Tadcu now thought it was his responsibility to take care of Yunni and me.

  “Are you going anywhere special today?” Using a screwdriver, I pried a crate open.

  “I’m taking Miss Annie Mae out to lunch.” He winked. “I hope I get lucky.”

  “Jeez, you men are all the same. One-track minds.”

  “Two-track mind. Rugby is the other one.” He picked an apple from the crate I’d opened. “Better yet, if I can die while making love to a beautiful lady with rugby on the television in the bedroom, that would be heaven.”

  Picturing Tadcu making love, especially with Annie Mae—one of my closest friends—made my brain ache and eyes sting. But he’d been widowed over ten years, so I guessed he should be out there again dating. That still didn’t prevent it from feeling weird.

  I switched the topic. “Where are you taking her for lunch?”

  “The DeSoto Hilton. They have a nice little lunch buffet.” Tadcu pocketed the apple. “It’s a hotel, too, so if things go well, we can get a room. I better grab something for protection.”

  “Please tell me you’re getting an umbrella, since we’ve had so much rain, and not referring to anything else.”

  “Why, of course.” Tadcu slid the closet door open and pulled out an umbrella. “I’m feeling lucky.”

  “Enough.” I directed Tadcu out of the storeroom. I called out, half laughing, to my husband, “Can you please do something with him?”

  “Not my turn,” Andrew called back.

  After Tadcu left, I called José, my police officer friend.

  José answered his phone on the first ring. “Hey, Cat, what can I do for you?”

  “You know I hate to bother you. But can you see if one of your new hires would consider reopening the case about that night?” I asked. “If there are new eyes on it, maybe they’ll find something that everyone else missed. Please?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Catch ya later tonight.” He clicked off.

  I’d only have closure and feel that my family was safe if the killer was behind bars. Making sure this happened became my mission.

  Chapter 2

  Six-foot-four-inch José strode into Bezu’s dining room, the location for our meeting of the Chubby Chicks Club. José folded himself into a chair and then, without any greeting, said, “So I’m called to Ardsley Park because it’s flooded again. This lady thinks that her dog, Pup Diddy, is still in her car parked in front of her house. All I saw in the water was the car’s roof; I couldn’t see in any windows. So in my black wet suit, I dive under this murky, brown, debris-ridden filth, trying to smash the car window. After a few minutes, I emerge covered in Spanish moss and God knows what else, looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Just then, the lady, standing on her porch, screams over to me, ‘Pup Diddy is upstairs sleeping.’ So I guess you can say my day as one of Savannah’s finest went as usual.”

  Bezu shook her blond head and poured José a glass of iced tea. We all called her Bezu, which was short for Barbara Elizabeth Susan. “Y’all know that the flooding has been a problem for years. The city needs to take care of it once and for all.”

  “When pigs fly.” Annie Mae, a sixty-five-year-old African-American woman, shoved her eyeglasses up on her short, wide nose. Her brown eyes twinkled behind the glass. Her round face then filled with a smile accentuated by full red lips. “The city is like Armstrong University. In the three decades I taught there, no one knew what change meant. Except for the extra coins in one’s pocket.”

  “Maybe we don’t want to adjust too much for fear of losing our Savannah charm,” added Bezu, the Southern belle of the group.

  “Lose something, that’s for sure.” José resembled, and often was mistaken for, the wrestler/actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He was a bomb squad detective who never had fewer than a dozen female admirers pining for his attention. They didn’t stand a chance. José preferred males.

  My cell buzzed, indicating a message. I read it. “Lucy’s running a little late but will be here soon.”

  José sat up straight
. “So, what’s going on with the rest of you?”

  Annie Mae stirred a packet of raw sugar into her tea. “Trying to keep out of trouble now that I’ve reduced my work load. I’m planning to retire soon, so I’m testing the waters to see what life will be like when I don’t work anymore. If anyone’s interested in joining me, I just started taking water aerobics at the aquatic center Monday and Wednesday mornings at eight.”

  “No water aerobics for me,” José replied. “Gotta save the city.”

  “Me either. After the boys catch the bus, I take the girls to school, then help Andrew and my mom at the store,” I said. “Otherwise, it sounds like fun. I enjoy taking classes when I have time. They keep me well rounded.”

  “And I just loved the self-defense class we all met at a couple of years back. We need to do something like that again,” Bezu said.

  José pointed to his chest. “Next month I’m teaching another one, if you know anyone who might be interested.”

  “You taught me how to kick some butt, except I can barely move mine anymore. That’s why I’m doing the water aerobics.” Annie Mae patted her full figure and then reached for a chunk of cheese and a cracker from the doily-covered, silver platter set in the middle of the dining room table. “Got to get in shape. I’m a little too well rounded.”

  “Bless your heart, you always make me laugh,” Bezu said to Annie Mae. “You really are the life of this little group.”

  “Group of misfits.” José grinned.