Read 3 Bodies and a Biscotti Online
Authors: Leighann Dobbs
Tags: #Mystery: Cozy - Bakery - Amateur Sleuths
3 Bodies and a Biscotti
This is a work of fiction.
None of it is real. All names, places, and events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real names, places, or events are purely coincidental, and should not be construed as being real.
3 Bodies and a Biscotti
Copyright © 2013
Leighann Dobbs
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner, except as allowable under “fair use,” without the express written permission of the author.
Lexy took a nibble of the pistachio biscotti. The crunch of the biscuit sounded like music to her ears. The sweet taste of the cookie combined with the contrasting creamy, soft bitterness of the dark chocolate coating created a riot of sensations in her mouth.
“Please take one, I’m trying out a new recipe and I’d love to know what you think,” she mumbled around a mouthful, shoving the tray of biscotti towards the three older women.
Ruth, Helen and Nans each picked up a biscuit, and bit into it noisily. They chewed tentatively at first and Lexy felt a pang of disappointment.
Didn’t they like them?
Nans swallowed, then blotted her lips with a napkin. “It’s delicious, dear." The two other women nodded in agreement.
Lexy felt her shoulders relax. Creating new recipes was a key to success for her bakery business and she loved trying them out on her grandmother, Nans, and the other ladies because they always provided an honest critique.
“Just the right scheetmess,” Ruth said, slurring the last word, before reaching into her mouth and pushing down on her bottom teeth. She glanced around the table, then shrugged. “Sorry, I have new dentures and they keep slipping out.”
Lexy looked around Nans’s condo while she chewed her biscotti. It was a good size for an “independent living” condo in a retirement complex. Nans had moved here a year ago when she stopped driving so she could be closer to her friends and “the action”. The facility provided a variety of activities and entertainment and had a decent dining room where the residents could get meals if they didn’t feel like cooking.
The large complex had living quarters for senior citizens in various different situations, such as the assisted living facility and the nursing care section. Nans and the other ladies were quite independent and all had their own condos.
They were seated around Nans’s dining room table, situated in between her kitchen and living room, with a view of the entire living area. The morning sun streamed in through the sliding glass door at the other end of the room. Lexy could see water dripping from the snow melting on the roof and hoped it meant winter would soon be releasing its cold grip on the area.
Lexy’s eyes landed on the empty chair across from her.
“Where’s Ida?” she asked, her brows wrinkling together. The four women were usually always together and Lexy found it odd that Ida wasn’t there this morning.
“Oh, she’ll be right along. She had an errand to run,” Nans said, then looking at the plate of biscotti she added, “we’ll save her a couple of biscotti. I’m sure she’ll love them.”
Lexy nodded and took another dainty bite. Normally she would have devoured most of the biscotti by now, but she’d noticed her jeans were fitting a little tight and figured it might be wise to cut down on the eating.
“Lets get down to business and talk about the Bertram Glumm murder,” Nans said.
Lexy rolled her eyes. Nans, Ruth, Ida and Helen were amateur detectives. Though they were all well past the age of seventy, they still kept active and had been successful in solving many cases. They even had a name for themselves — The Ladies Detective Club. The problem was, they saw murder everywhere.
“You don’t know he
was
murdered,” Lexy said.
Nans peered at Lexy over the top of her glasses. “Of course he was dear. I think the girls know a murder when they see one.”
Lexy felt a pang of guilt. Nans and the other ladies had been instrumental in helping her solve a few murders, including a couple where Lexy was the main suspect. She had just returned from a national bakery contest in Las Vegas with Nans, where she had managed to win second-prize despite having been one of the suspects in the murder of one of the judges in the contest.
The Ladies Detective Club had helped her solve the case by using old fashioned detective work and communicating on their iPads. Lexy owed it to them to at least listen.
“OK, what have you got?” Lexy grabbed another biscotti.
Had she eaten a whole one already?
Ruth pulled out her iPad, fingers at the ready apparently, to record their conversation.
“From what I know, Bertram went into nursing care when we were in Vegas, and passed away
suspiciously
the day before we came home,” Nans said.
“That’s right. Bertram was only seventy-one. He was healthy as a horse. In fact, he lived just two doors down from me,” Helen said, her eyes wide.
Lexy wrinkled her brow. “If he was healthy as a horse, what was he doing in the nursing care section? And why aren’t the police looking into his death?”
Ruth’s lips pressed together. “The police are just passing it off as another old person dying. They didn’t even do an autopsy!”
“Yeah, you know how they can be,” Nans said, then looking at Lexy, “not your Jack, of course. He’d listen to us…or to you.” She raised her eyebrows.
Lexy felt her cheeks grow warm at the mention of Jack. She’d been dating Detective Jack Perillo for almost a year now and, while he might listen to her about other things, he had made it clear that he took a dim view of her investigating murders. She felt her stomach clench, realizing that she’d be in hot water with him if he knew what they were discussing.
“Anyway,” Nans continued, “Bertram slipped on the ice and broke his leg. He lives alone and couldn’t manage on his own. He was in immense pain, so they put him in the nursing section ’til he could care for himself. They had only planned to keep him there for a week.”
Lexy narrowed her eyes in thought. Nans
could
be right—she usually was.
“But
why
would someone want to kill him?” Lexy asked stating the obvious question.
Before anyone could answer, the door to Nans’s condo flew open and Ida tumbled inside.
“Ladies, grab your coats. There’s been another murder!”
The sound of chairs being scraped back filled the room as the four women scrambled to get up from the table.
“Hurry, before they clean out the room! We’ll take the quick route across the courtyard.” Ida motioned to them from the doorway.
“Helen, take your special glasses.” Nans gestured to the table beside the door where a pair of thick, black eyeglasses sat.
“Special glasses?” Lexy echoed.
“We’ll explain later when there’s time,” Nans said, tossing each of them their jackets from the coat rack beside the door.
They ran out behind Ida following her down the stairs to the door that led across the small courtyard, and into the nursing care section.
The nursing care section resembled a small hospital, complete with a central desk and several small rooms with hospital beds. Ida hustled down the wide hall; the women following like ducklings after a mother duck.
Ida stopped in front of one of the rooms, cast a look down the hallway and slid inside. Lexy and the others followed.
The room looked much like any other hospital room … except for the dead body in the bed.
“It’s Mavis Sanders!” Nans gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.
Lexy looked at the woman in the bed. White hair, clusters of wrinkles. She looked peaceful.
Could she have been murdered?
Lexy felt an icy finger trace its way up her spine. She quickly turned away from the bed to inspect the rest of the room.
Nothing looked out of place. Prescription bottles sat on the bedside table. The sheets were pulled up neatly. The pillows were placed under her head. It looked as if she had died peacefully in her sleep, which made Lexy wonder—just how was she murdered?
On the other side of the room, she could see Helen tilting her head at weird angles and fiddling with her glasses.
“Hurry upfff…” Ruth’s dentures flew out of her mouth, clattering onto the floor and sliding under the bed.
“Crapff,” she said, bending from the waist and peering under the bed.
“I’ll get them.” Lexy got down on her hands and knees, her butt up in the air and reached under the bed. The floor was squeaky clean. Remembering they mopped the floors in this section twice a day, she felt grateful she wouldn’t get any dirt on her off-white pants.
Tilting her head sideways to get a better view, she saw the dentures had slid all the way towards the head of the bed. She scootchied further under. Feeling a little creeped out about flailing around under the bed of a dead woman, she quickly swept her hand from side to side.
Her fingers encountered something small and round. Not the dentures, but she held onto it anyway. Another long sweep and her fingers hit the dentures. Grabbing on to them, she slid her front out from under the bed. On her hands and knees like an inchworm, she was just about stand up when a grating voice rasped loudly from the doorway.
“Just what the
hell
do you think you’re doing!”
###
Lexy swiveled her head towards the voice. Standing in the doorway was Nurse Bettina Rothschild, hands on hips, with a face puckered like she’d just devoured a sour lemon. Lexy’s stomach felt like lead and her heart raced.
“We were just paying our respects,” Nans said, head slightly bowed.
Rothschild’s scowl deepened as she directed her glare at Lexy. “What do you have there?”
“Oh, this? Ruth’s dentures slipped out. I was just retrieving them for her." Lexy held the dentures up while hiding the other object behind them in her hand.
Lexy tried to keep her hand from shaking as Rothschild took two steps towards her to get a better look.
“You’re not supposed to take anything from the room. Which one of you is Ruth?” She glared at each of them in turn.
“Herethh.” Ruth raised her hand, then opened her mouth to show the missing teeth. “Thsee.”
Rothschild bent her large frame slightly to peer into Ruth’s mouth. She looked around at the women, her eyebrows mashed together. A commotion out in the hallway stole her attention. She glanced at the door, then turned back to Lexy and Ruth.
“Fine, take the dentures and go. I don’t want to see you ladies messing around in
my
hospital again!” Her rubber-soled nurse shoes let out a loud squeak as she turned and rushed off towards the hall.
Lexy handed the dentures to Ruth, then mashed her index finger into her right eye in an attempt to control her nervous eye-tic.
“You still have that eye problem?” Helen asked Lexy as they started to head towards the door.
Lexy turned to look at Helen out of her good eye and nodded.
“You know I can fix that with hypnosis.”
“Yes…” Lexy’s answer was cut off when she walked into Nans, who had stopped abruptly just short of the doorway.
Looking around her grandmother, she could see the exit was blocked by a steel gurney accompanied by two large men in McGreevy Funeral Home tee-shirts. Lexy recognized one of the men as Barry McGreevy, who she’d gone to high school with.
