Batter Off Dead

Book 10: Country Store Mystery

by Maddie Day

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

In South Lick, Indiana, fine foods and classic cookware can be found at Robbie Jordan's Pans 'N Pancakes. Unfortunately, her country store also seems to stock up on murder . . .



Robbie and her new husband Abe O'Neill are enjoying a summer evening in the park with fellow townsfolk excited for some Friday night fireworks. In attendance are senior residents from Jupiter Springs Assisted Living, including Roy Bird, father to South Lick's very own Police Lieutenant Buck Bird. Despite his blindness, Roy is a member of his group home's knitting circle, spending quality time with some lovely ladies.



But when the lightshow ends, one of the knitters who sat with Roy is found dead, a puncture wound in her neck. The poor woman's death echoes that of Buck's mother and Roy's wife—an unsolved homicide. To help find the killer, Robbie's going to have to untangle the knotty relationships deep in the victim’s past . . .

Release date: February 22, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“This kind of weather could make anybody commit murder.”

“Abe, don’t say that.” I twisted my head to stare at my husband of six weeks, seated in the camp chair next to mine in Jupiter Park, waiting for the weekly Friday night South Lick fireworks.

“I hope it doesn’t, Robbie.” He blotted his brow with a folded handkerchief. “But you have to admit, it’s stinking hot, even now, at nine o’clock.”

“I know. And hot can lead to tempers.” This July had broken records for heat here in southern Indiana, and tonight, the temperature was not falling in tandem with the midsummer dusk. I patted my own forehead and neck with a turquoise bandanna. What made it worse was the humid air sitting as still as the water in the pond. Not a breath of breeze moved to alleviate the oppressive evening.

“With any luck, whoever gets mad will be too wiped by the temperature to do anything about it,” Abe said.

We’d set up our chairs at the edge of the park, which gave me a good vantage point to see who was there. “It looks like Buck is helping out with weapons checking.” I pointed toward the entrance, where tall, lanky Lieutenant Buck Bird in uniform stood with arms folded, shaking his head at a couple of young dudes. While it was legal for civilians to carry guns in the state, a town ordinance prohibited them from municipal gatherings like this one.

“Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” Abe asked. “The ordinance is posted right there at the gate.”

I glanced at my metal water bottle, which tonight held a refreshing white wine spritzer. Alcohol was off-limits, too. I gave a little mental shrug. I was a married woman of thirty with a handsome designated driver and no intentions of getting rowdy. Judging by the relaxed appearance of other spectators holding opaque water bottles, I might not be the only wrongdoer.

Buck sauntered over. “Howdy, there, Robbie. O’Neil.”

Abe stood and shook Buck’s hand. “Were those guys giving you trouble?” He gestured toward the entrance, where another officer now stood guard.

“Not really. I’ve knowed ’em since they were snotty-nosed tykes. They didn’t dare give me no lip. Say, my pop is over yonder. I wondered if y’all wanted to meet him.”

I set down my bottle and rose. “I’d love to, Buck. We still have half an hour until the fireworks, don’t we?”

“Yup.”

“I’ll stay and watch the chairs,” Abe said.

I expected he might have a quick catnap, too. We were both super-early risers. After I’d closed Pans ’N Pancakes, my country store restaurant, and finished breakfast prep for tomorrow, I had grabbed a little rest this afternoon. Abe, on the other hand, had helped his teenage son, Sean, pack to spend a week camping with his grandparents. Sean, now motherless, was a great kid, and I loved having him and his black Lab, Cocoa, live with us. Still, Abe and I both looked forward to having the house to ourselves for a bit. They’d taken the large and energetic pooch with them, so we didn’t have him to walk and feed.

As I left with Buck, a man’s voice said, “Abe, my man.” I glanced back to see Abe greet a petite man, the two exchanging a bent-elbow hand clasp. So much for Abe’s nap. I thought I might have seen the guy playing at a bluegrass concert last June.

I walked with Buck toward a line of chairs holding senior citizens at the rear of the crowd. They sat in front of the woods that formed part of the park, not far from the restroom building at the back. “Does your dad live around here?” I asked.

“He surely does, over to the Jupiter Springs Assisted Living place. Just so’s you know, he’s blind, but it don’t hold him back none. The man is adaptable as all get-out.”

We reached the group.

“Evenin’ there, Miz Vi,” Buck said to a tiny woman who sat knitting. “Hey, Pop. This here is my friend, Robbie Jordan. Robbie, please meet Grant Bird and Vi Perkell.”

Grant also held a knitting project in his lap, his fingers deftly clicking the needles through forest-green yarn. He glanced up. “Forgive me if I don’t get up, Miz Jordan. Once I drop a stitch, it’s a lost cause.” He was an older version of Buck, with the same long limbs but way more lines in his face and thin gray hair that might or might not have been combed before he left his residence.

“Please don’t do either,” I said. “I’m happy to meet you both.”

Despite the heat, Vi wore a red cotton scarf wrapped around the neck of a pink-flowered blouse. She peered up at me. “Aren’t you the girl who runs the best restaurant in town?” Her high voice was as birdlike as the rest of her.

“People do seem to enjoy coming in for breakfast or lunch,” I said. “I’m happy you’ve heard good things about my place. Have you been in to eat?”

“Not yet,” Vi replied.

“Breakfast is the best meal of the day, I always said, didn’t I, Buckham?” Grant asked his son with a toothy smile.

“You did, Pop, and you’d be right. Jupiter Springs should oughta round up the crew of you and load up that bus of theirs, drive it over to Pans ’N Pancakes.”

A thin woman sitting beyond Grant piped up. “I put in a request for a lunchtime field trip to your country store, but they turned me down.” She jabbed a long needle into the elaborate needlework on her lap.

“Robbie, this is Nanette Russo,” Grant said.

“Good evening, Ms. Russo,” I said.

“Ms. Jordan.” She picked up a blue plastic water bottle with Jupiter Springs Assisted Living printed on it in white letters. She took a long swig and set it down with a satisfied look.

I could smell the whiskey from where I stood. I glanced at Buck, but he only gave a What can you do? shrug.

“Ten minutes, South Lick,” a loudspeaker blared. “Are you ready?”

A man in a wheelchair beyond Nanette began to sing in a loud voice, “I’m a Yankee Doodle dandy, a Yankee Doodle do or die, a real live—”

“Hush up, now, Horace,” Nanette growled. “Independence Day was a couple weeks ago.”

The man looked bewildered but stopped singing. Instead, he whistled the same tune in a beautiful warble.

“I’d better get back to my husband,” I said. “Enjoy the fireworks.”

“You’ll come visit us at the old folks’ home one day soon, won’t you?” Vi asked.

“I’d love to.”

“Bunch of characters, they are.” Buck walked me halfway back. “Poor old Horace. There’s a light on, but nobody’s home upstairs.” He pointed to his head. “He used to be a brilliant scientist over to the university. Dementia is a terrible thing, Robbie.”

“Let’s hope you and I don’t end up that way, but it comes with the territory of aging for some.”

“It surely does.”

“See you later, Buck.” I thought I might very much want to pay a visit to the old folks, as Vi put it. Including to dementia-plagued Horace, who nevertheless remembered all the words to a song he must have learned as a child.

The oohs and aahs at the fireworks grew louder with each colorful explosion. After a multitiered celestial flower in subsequent waves of red, white, and blue sprinkled away and faded to black, I held my breath. But no more stellar explosions filled the moonless sky, letting the actual stars twinkle at us. The air was finally cooling a bit, too.

“Looks like that’s it,” Abe said.

I drained the last swallow of my spritzer, then tucked the bottle into my bag. “I think the last one was a leftover from the Fourth, don’t you?”

“Could be.” He stood, chuckling.

“They were all pretty.” I covered my mouth as a yawn slipped out. “Sorry. It’s past my bedtime.” And it was, being at least ten o’clock by now. I would be opening my restaurant a scant nine hours from now.

“Come on, beautiful.” Abe extended his hand to me. “Let’s go home.”

I accepted it and stood. A man and a woman not far from us were collapsing their chairs.

“Don’t you want to go say good-bye to Mom?” The bald-headed man spoke in a louder voice than necessary.

“No. I need to get out of here.” The woman, about my height or shorter, spoke in a high voice that reminded me of Vi’s.

The two bustled away. Abe and I helped each other slide our camp chairs into their long cylindrical bags.

“Who was the dude who came up to you when I left with Buck?” I asked.

“He’s a guy who plays dulcimer and accordion. He lives right here in town.”

“I don’t think he’s ever been into the store.”

“Maybe not,” Abe said. “He only moved here last year from Bloomington, and he might be on a tight budget.”

“Help!” A man’s call rose out of the din of people talking, laughing, and packing up blankets and the detritus of picnics. “Somebody find Lieutenant Buckham Bird, please.”

Nobody but Grant would call Buck by his formal given name. I whirled to peer toward the row of seniors. Because many in the crowd were now standing, I couldn’t see much except Grant’s head and torso as he waved his arm in the air. Buck headed toward them at a lope.

“There’s trouble.” I grasped Abe’s arm. “Something bad has happened.”

“How do you know?”

I shook my head. “I don’t, really. Grant is apparently fine, but one of the other seniors must have had a serious health incident.”

Some of the crowd noise quieted, as people watched. Uh-oh. A siren wailed to life in the distance. I couldn’t see Buck’s or Grant’s heads anymore above the people milling about, but I kept watching.

“Is anyone a doctor?” Buck’s voice rang out, urgent, anguished.

I looked with alarm at Abe, who had been a medic in the service. “Go!”

He nodded, dropping the chairs, and jogged toward Buck. After I stashed the chairs in the car, I wove my way across the park as fast as I could. Bumping a few elbows on my way, I didn’t stop to apologize.

I arrived to see Buck kneeling in front of Vi, who sat bent in half in her chair. Abe squatted next to him. Vi’s head lolled between her knees as if she were unconscious. Her hands dangled at the sides of her legs, the knitting project on the ground at her left hand, a lone plastic knitting needle below her right. Buck’s palm pressed against the scarf covering her neck. He held two fingers of his other hand against her wrist.

Grant was on his feet, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his breath coming fast, his fingers rubbing together. Nanette, Horace, and the rest of the seniors seemed to have already headed for the van.

“Help Pop, Robbie,” Buck said in a soft voice. “Please.”

I nodded, but I stared at dark drops staining the dirt under Vi’s head. And wondered where the other knitting needle was.

“Mr. Bird, please sit down.” I took his elbow. “Help is on the way. Your chair is right here.”

He shook off my hand. “I know where the . . . chair is.” He didn’t quite snarl, but he’d clearly held back an expletive. “What’s happened to my Vi?”

Buck looked at me and shook his head furiously as the siren strobed closer.

“I’m not sure,” I began. “She doesn’t seem well.”

“Buckham, tell me the truth, son. Is Vi dead?” Grant’s voice quavered, no longer strong.

Buck gazed up at his father. An ambulance roared up to the park entrance. A muscular young Hoosier in a blue polo shirt with the Jupiter Springs logo on his chest hurried toward us. Two EMTs carrying red bags jumped out of their vehicle.

Buck removed his hand and stood. As he did, the scarf fell away from Vi’s neck. But her skin was still red. Wet-looking, as if coated with blood.

“Yes, Pop,” Buck murmured, moving to his father’s side. “I’m afraid Vi has died.”

But the tiny old lady had more than died. Under cover of darkness and noisy, exploding lights, it appeared someone had killed her.

I was really dragging the next morning, between not getting enough sleep, thinking about the events of the night before, and feeling a back-burner sadness for the late Vi Perkell and for Grant. But work was work. I was a responsible business owner, and the posted Pans ’N Pancakes opening hour on Saturday mornings was seven. If my assistant chef, Danna Beedle, and I didn’t open on time, hungry fans would be peering in the windows and quite possibly rapping at the door.

Danna showed up ten minutes late, rubbing her eyes. “Sorry I didn’t make it in on time.”

“No worries. Is there anything I can do?”

She shook her head.

“If it makes you feel better, I’m not at my best, either.”

She pulled on an apron, washed her hands, and went about her share of our opening routine with nearly robotic movements.

“We’re quite the pair,” I said.

Those were our last words until, at six fifty-nine, I asked, “Ready for the starving hordes?”

Of course we were ready. Sausages and bacon sizzled, biscuits waited in the warming oven, with more baking, and pancake batter and beaten eggs filled their respective pitchers awaiting orders for flapjacks and omelets.

“Just do it,” she mumbled from the grill.

I did it, unlocking the door and turning the sign to Open. Sure enough, more than a dozen regulars and tourists eagerly poured in. I greeted them, telling them to sit anywhere. Until our newest employee, Len Perlman, showed up an hour later, I did nothing but pour coffee, relay orders to Danna, deliver food, and bus tables.

Vi’s death was the topic of the morning. No surprise there. My restaurant had become the community water-cooler, so to speak. Residents gravitated here to learn gossip, to share news, and sometimes to commiserate. All of that went on this morning.

For my part, I claimed ignorance of the details. Which was mostly true. Abe and I had stayed last night until the county coroner had come. Until Detective Oscar Thompson with the Indiana State Police was summoned, South Lick being too small of a town to have its own homicide unit. Until Vi had been taken away in an ambulance with no lights flashing, no siren broadcasting urgency. And until Buck had helped his dad into the front seat of his cruiser.

The blood on Vi’s neck was the only clue to how she’d been killed. It hadn’t looked like a gunshot wound, and I hadn’t seen a line indicating she’d been garroted. Strangling didn’t produce blood, so I had to think she’d been stabbed in the neck.

Who would be brazen enough to kill a tiny older lady right there in public? Sure, it had been noisy and dark, with all attention on the fireworks. And the seniors had been sitting at the rear of the park with their backs to the woods. Still, it was an outrageous act of violence directly under the noses of half the town.

I poured coffee for two white-haired ladies who came for breakfast and a game of chess every Saturday morning. “Robbie, we heared little Vi Perkell was shot dead during the fireworks last night,” the rounder of the pair said. “Is it true?”

Shot? Where had she heard that? “I’m not the one to ask, ma’am.” I topped up her decaf and moved on.

I set a pancake special—three banana-walnut pancakes, a biscuit with sausage gravy, and three rashers of bacon—in front of a wiry local businessman who looked like his metabolism would have no problem handling that number of calories.

“There’s talk of a strangling last night in town,” he said. “Another homicide here in sleepy little South Lick?”

“I couldn’t say.” I smiled, loaded my arms with dirty dishes from a vacated two-top, and headed for the kitchen area. “Danna, the rumor mill is in high gear this morning.” I hadn’t yet had a minute to tell her what had happened last night.

“Mom said Ms. Perkell was murdered,” she whispered.

Of course she knew. Her mother was Corrine Beedle, mayor of South Lick. No news slipped unnoticed past Corrine.

“It’s true. Buck introduced me to his dad, Grant, before the fireworks started, and Vi Perkell, too. A whole group from Jupiter Springs had come in their van. Vi was apparently Grant’s special friend.”

“The poor man.” Danna folded over a Western omelet, flipped three pancakes, and turned a half dozen sausages.

“I’ll say. He was super upset.”

“How was she killed?” Danna murmured her question.

“Not sure.” I kept my voice equally quiet.

Across the room a man held up an empty mug, and a woman at the next table also waved for attention. The cowbell on the door jangled as four customers came in. The clock read seven fifty-five.

I gestured toward the room. “I’d better attend to some of these folks.”

“I hope Len isn’t late,” Danna said. “We’re nearly full.”

“I hope so, too, especially with Turner away for the weekend.” Our other assistant, Turner Rao, was as accomplished of a cook as Danna and a congenial Indiana University graduate with ambitions to become a chef.

“Those three orders are ready.” Danna pointed.

“Thanks.” I loaded up one arm and grabbed the coffeepot with the other hand. The bell jangled again, admitting Len, closely followed by Buck.

“Good timing,” Danna said.

I’d hired Len two months ago to help out on weekday mornings, but his schedule had changed. Now he filled in on weekends. My friend Lou’s younger brother, the tall twenty-year-old college student, was a fast learner and a great assistant, willing to do all the grunt work but slowly acquiring competence on the grill, too. This way, each of the rest of us could have the chance to take a weekend off without the others being stuck with only two working the restaurant on our busiest days.

Buck made his way to the two-top at the back, where he preferred to sit. After helping other diners, I poured the last of the coffee into Buck’s mug.

“We’re pretty busy,” I said. “You’re lucky your table was open. I’ll get back over here soon to get your order, unless you’re ready now, and have a little chat.”

He glanced at the Specials board. “Gimme the special, plus my usual, if you please.”

“You got it.” I smiled to myself as I bustled away. The lieutenant’s appetite was legendary. Today’s special was a bacon and cheese omelet with scrapple hash. Buck’s usual sides were pancakes, sausages, and biscuits with gravy. And he never gained an ounce. He tended to avoid our more exotic specials, like Turner’s Indian-spiced roasted potatoes. Buck had also turned down a Greek-flavored feta omelet with Kalamata olives, as well as any of the Cali-Mex foods I sometimes dreamed up, like breakfast burritos or a Southwestern quesadilla. Bu. . .