Crepe Expectations, page 3
“Thanks,” Theresa said. “It was nice to meet you.”
He nodded and made a motion as if he was tipping an invisible hat at her, gave a small wave goodbye to Clare, then stopped by the front counter to drop off the deli’s mail. Theresa turned back to her cousin, raising her eyebrows.
“Do you know everyone in town?”
Clare laughed. “Not quite everyone, but I make a point of saying hi to people when I can. It’s good for business. Plus, these are good folks.”
Despite having asked her multiple times over the years, Theresa still wasn’t exactly sure what it was Clare did for a living. She knew palm readings and other fortuneteller-type stuff was involved, and she thought at one point Clare had mentioned being a life coach, and there had been a phase where she’d painted pictures of people’s pets, but it all seemed very eclectic. She supposed being a known and well-liked face around town would help to get her clients regardless of what her business actually was.
“I’m looking forward to getting to know them,” Theresa said, honestly. She might spend the rest of her life in this town. She wanted to make friends.
Theresa ordered the deli’s namesake club sandwich and got a container of beef and barley stew to go. She and Clare spent the next half hour talking about Theresa’s plans for the crêperie. She was feeling a little overwhelmed, and while Clare did have a tendency to run off on wild goose chases, she was a smart woman who gave good advice and tended to think outside the box. That was ingenious for working around some of Theresa’s problems, like figuring out a menu.
“I think you’re trying to do too much,” Clare said when Theresa showed her the list of things she wanted to serve. “First of all, you’re opening a crêperie. You can cut out all this other stuff—” She gestured at the list of desserts and other food ideas Theresa had written down, “For now. You don’t need all these drinks either. Sure, people like smoothies, but they aren’t going to your crêperie for a smoothie. You can get away with just serving some good coffee and having a fridge full of other drinks. Just focus on your crêpes. And speaking of focusing, I don’t think you need a million different crêpes to start out with. Just have, like, three sweet ones and three savory ones. Get those down pat, figure out what people like, and experiment with different ones from there. I can guarantee you the people in Crooked Bay aren’t expecting a huge, multipage menu. You’re probably going to find that most people order the same one or two things anyway.”
“You’re right,” Theresa said, taking her phone back. “I’m just so excited. I want everything to go perfectly.”
“Terra, dear cousin, I have horrible news for you,” Clare said, taking her hand and squeezing it as she gazed into her eyes. “There isn’t the tiniest chance in the world that this is going to go perfectly. You’ve lost that battle before you even started. The sooner you come to terms with that, the happier you’ll be.”
Theresa rolled her eyes and pulled her hand away, but she knew her cousin had a point. What she was envisioning in her head—a smooth grand opening and a packed restaurant every day after, with every review five stars—was a fantasy. She was going to make mistakes, and probably a lot of them. She had to be prepared for that.
She finished her sandwich—which was probably one of the best club sandwiches she had ever had—and got a bag for her container of soup before they left the deli. Clare checked the time on her phone. “I’ve got to meet a client in about an hour and a half, but I’ve got a little bit of time to kill if you want to get coffee before I head out.”
“At Ridiculous Beans?” Theresa asked. “I haven’t been there for years. Nicolas used to love that place, because of the name.”
“Well, it’s the only coffee shop in town now, so, yeah. It’s just down the block from here.”
“Let’s go,” Theresa said. She knew getting coffee there would give her a wave of nostalgia, but she thought she might be ready to start trying to find reasons to smile at these old memories instead of avoiding them whenever possible. Besides, the reminder of the fact that her little building had been a coffee shop not too long ago served as a good distraction from memories of her late husband.
Had buying a building with such a sordid history been a mistake? She hoped not. There was no going back now, and besides, she liked the little brick building with its crooked door and old floors. It had character.
Ridiculous Beans wasn’t as busy as the deli had been. There was only one person in line in front of them. She and Clare waited until it was their turn, then stepped up to the counter. Instead of ordering, Clare said, “Is your boss in? Alyson? I’ve got someone I want to introduce her to.”
The young woman blinked. “Um, yeah, I think she is. Do you want me to go get her?”
“I’d love that, thanks,” Clare said. The woman ducked into the back, and Clare turned to Theresa. “Alyson is great, she’s been a client for years. If you’ve got questions about coffee, she could point you towards some good machines.”
“Does she do palm readings with you?” Theresa asked, trying to figure out just what her cousin was known for.
“Sorry, I keep all that stuff confidential. My clients take it all very seriously, and I try to respect that.”
Theresa wondered if Clare took her palm readings and psychic business seriously. Despite all of the trouble she got into when she was younger, and her occasional poorly thought-out ideas, Clare had never seemed very superstitious or into new age beliefs, at least not until she started whatever her current career path was. She wanted to ask, but now wasn’t the time. The employee came back with a woman who looked to be around Clare’s age. Alyson beamed as soon as she saw Clare.
“It’s been a while since you stopped in.” She came around the counter to give Clare a quick hug. “What brings you here today?”
“I wanted to introduce you to my cousin, Theresa,” Clare said, turning to her. “She bought that building that used to be Levi’s coffee shop. She’s going to turn it into a crêperie.”
Alyson looked at Theresa with an odd expression on her face. It only lasted for a moment, but it reminded Theresa of the other considering looks the people her cousin had introduced her to had given her. Were they expecting someone like Clare only to be disappointed by her own more subdued presence? Were they wondering why in the world she had bought the murder building? Or had Clare told them about Nicolas’s futile battle with pancreatic cancer? Were these looks of pity? She couldn’t help wondering what they knew about her. She’d wanted anonymity when she relocated, and hoped Clare hadn’t spread around too much information about her.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Alyson said. She gave Theresa’s hand a perfunctory shake, then retreated back around the counter. “What can I get the two of you? It’s on the house today.”
Theresa ordered an iced vanilla latte while Clare got a chai tea. As they waited for their drinks to be made, she couldn’t help but wonder just what her cousin had gotten her into. She hadn’t done much research on the murder that happened in her building, and now she was beginning to think that had been a mistake.
CHAPTER FOUR
Theresa found her laptop and charging cord when she got home that evening and settled down on her couch to try to find some answers to her questions. She didn’t have Wi-Fi yet—the installers were supposed to come tomorrow—so she had to use her phone’s hotspot to access the internet. She didn’t know the full name of the man who had been killed, so she typed, Levi, murder, coffee shop, Crooked Bay into the search bar. Thankfully, it came up with a handful of articles on the first try.
Owner of Local Coffee Shop, Levi Elwyn, Victim of Suspected Homicide
She clicked the article.
Police were called to a business on Lake Street in downtown Crooked Bay today, where an employee discovered his boss’s body when he arrived to open the coffee shop. The cause of death is currently unknown. More information will be forthcoming. If you know anything about this incident, please contact the number below.
Underneath that, there was an updated section, dated a few months later.
Employee Found Guilty in Murder of Boss
Ben Hughes, 21, was found guilty in the murder of his boss, Levi Elwyn, 53. Stabbed twice from behind, Levi died of blood loss after his assailant fled, only for Ben to return later that morning to pretend he found his boss’s body when he arrived to open the coffee shop. We ask for your respect toward the family of the deceased in this trying time. Ben’s sentencing will take place next Monday at 12 p.m..
All the other articles she found said pretty much the same things. They were all dated a few months ago at the newest. Further down the search page, she found a link to where the article had been posted to a social media site where people had commented below it.
No way did Ben kill him!
Ben’s a good guy. He didn’t do this.
I don’t believe it for a second. They have the wrong man.
Why on earth would Ben kill his boss? I was one of his best friends. He was leaving for college in a few weeks. He never complained about his boss once, he enjoyed his job at the coffee shop, and he said he was going to be leaving it. The evidence was planted. Free Ben.
Evidence? Theresa read through the article again, but she didn’t see any mention of evidence. There was frustratingly little on the case overall, and Theresa closed her computer with a sharp snap. None of the commenters seemed to think Ben had been involved with the murder, and Dora, the deli’s owner, had seemed skeptical that the killer had been caught too. Was Clare wrong? Was Levi’s killer still out there?
It was bad enough that the crêperie was the scene of a murder, but what if the killer came back when she finally had her grand opening?
Fighting back a surge of unease, Theresa rose to her feet to make sure the patio door and the apartment’s front door were both locked. Crooked Bay was supposed to be a safe town, but she wasn’t sure how true that was anymore.
She spent the first part of the next day at her apartment, unpacking and waiting on the internet installation. The installation crew didn’t get there until noon, but thankfully the install itself was easy; most of the equipment was already there, and they just had to give her a router and get her service started. By the time she left her apartment, it was looking more like a home, though it still didn’t feel like her home.
She drove into town and parked in the shared lot behind the crêperie. She was getting hungry, but she wanted to get a little cleaning done before she went out for lunch. When she did finally take her break, she wanted to do some shopping.
She unlocked the back door to the building and stepped inside. The entrance led directly into the kitchen, and she looked up at the high ceilings, smiling. Her apartment might not feel like home yet, but this place sure did.
She grabbed her cleaning supplies, which she had left in the storeroom, and went into the main room to get to work. She had just sprayed a few squirts of the cleaning solution onto the counter when she heard someone knock on the front door. Through the window set into it, she saw Martin Braddock waving at her. The mailman didn’t look as friendly and good natured as he had yesterday. Instead, he looked upset, almost frantic as he gestured for her to come out of the building.
Setting the cleaning spray aside, she walked over to the front door, unlocked it, and said, “How can I help you?”
“Have you seen it?” he asked.
She frowned. “Seen what?”
His gaze drifted upward. She stepped out of the building and onto the sidewalk beside him and looked where his eyes had been drawn. What she saw made her heart sink like a stone. Scrawled above the door in big white, spray-painted letters were the words, Go Away!
Her breath caught. A mixture of anger and hurt roiled inside her. What had she done to deserve this? How had she possibly gotten off on such a wrong foot with someone already? And how would she ever get that paint off of the bricks? She took a deep, shaky breath and reached for her phone. She didn’t know if there was anything the police could do about this, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.
CHAPTER FIVE
Martin couldn’t wait for the police to arrive; he had to keep walking his mail route, but he told her he would check in with her when he passed by on his way back through town. He seemed sympathetic, which helped a little bit, but Theresa was still upset. She knew this was probably the doing of just one person, but it hurt to think the town didn’t want her.
When the police did show up, it wasn’t in the shiny new SUV she was used to seeing back home. It was an old-fashioned police car, which looked at least as old as Jace was. The officer who stepped out of it looked about the same age as her son as well.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m Officer Fenwick. You had an issue with graffiti?”
She turned to gesture at the writing on the building behind her. “I found this when I got to work today. Can you, I don’t know, ask around to figure out who did it? If it was just some kids, I don’t care about pressing charges as long as they don’t do it again, but…” She trailed off, unable to express how unsettled reading about Levi’s murder had made her feel.
Officer Fenwick frowned as he gazed up at the graffiti. “I can ask around, but I doubt anyone will fess up. What I can do is take a report down, and if it happens again or they graffiti somewhere else and we catch the person, it will give added weight to any charges pressed against them. I’ve got to say, though, this isn’t the first time we’ve had trouble with this building.”
“Are you talking about the murder?”
He shook his head. “Well, there was that too, but we caught the guy behind that. It was a few months before then, when old Levi started having issues with people leaving graffiti on the windows and slipping nasty letters into the mailbox. We never caught the person responsible, but we sent out a PSA reminding people that interfering with a mailbox is a federal crime, and that stopped that. My guess is it’s the same people who were harassing him.”
“Do you think it’s just because I’m new? An easy target?”
He shrugged. “Could be. I’ll suggest to you the same thing I suggested to him; invest in some good security cameras. Put them up somewhere obvious. That should be enough to scare whoever’s doing this away.”
“Thanks,” she said, mentally adding yet another item to her shopping list. “I’ll do that. There’s nothing you can do now, though?”
“Like I said, I’ll take a report.” He eyed her, as if he was really taking her in for the first time. “You’re opening a new business here, right? What was it, pancakes?”
“Crêpes,” she said. “Sort of like French pancakes.”
“I know what crêpes are,” he said, sounding amused. “I’m looking forward to eating here once you’re open. We don’t have enough restaurants in this town. I’ll keep an eye out for you, maybe drive by a bit more often than I usually do. You just let me know if you have any more trouble, okay?”
“I will,” she said. “Thank you.”
He leaned against his car as he wrote his report and took some photos of the graffiti. She watched him from inside as she scrubbed the counter, and just as he finished up, she realized she had one last question for him. She opened the front door, stuck her head out, and said, “Wait, Officer Fenwick?”
“What do you need?” he asked, not sounding unfriendly, just a bit bored.
“Do you have any idea how I can clean that paint off?”
“I think Levi had some luck with paint thinner and rubbing alcohol. You should be able to get both at the hardware store.”
Even though the young police officer hadn’t actually done much, his visit had made her feel better. She finished cleaning the counter, then decided to take a break and go to the hardware store to buy a ladder and cleaning supplies for the graffiti. She would see if they had any security cameras too, otherwise she would have to make a trip into a bigger town or order some online. She didn’t want this to happen again.
She put the cleaning supplies away and was getting her list ready to go when someone else knocked on the door. This time when she looked out the window, she saw Clare waving at her. She waved back and walked over to unlock the door.
“I was just about to head out,” she said. “I’ve got to go to the hardware store.”
“Did you see what someone did to your building?” Clare asked, pointing up.
“Unfortunately, I did. I’ve already had the police out.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“No, but it sounds like the previous tenant had some issues with something similar.”
“I can’t believe someone would do this after everything that happened with Levi,” Clare said, glaring up at the graffiti as if her gaze could burn it away. “You’d think the fact that someone was murdered here would keep the kids away.”
Theresa hesitated, then pulled the door open further. “Can you come in, Clare? I want to talk to you about something.”
Her cousin raised an eyebrow but did as she was asked. Theresa shut the door behind her, then put her hands on her hips. “I’ve been doing more research into that murder, and it sounds like a lot of townspeople aren’t convinced that Ben guy had anything to do with it. It’s my fault for not doing more research before I bought the place, but you sounded pretty certain they’d caught the right guy, Clare. Is there any chance that the police were wrong, and the killer is still out there?”
“Why are you asking me?” Clare asked. “I didn’t know either of them that well. I was just going by what I read in the paper and what I heard people saying around town. The police found the knife Levi was stabbed with in the back of Ben’s car. It seems pretty open and shut to me.”
Clare had a point. Theresa wondered if she was just being paranoid. Coming to work to find the graffiti right after she’d spent an evening reading about the murder must have set her on edge.
“If I get killed because I bought this place on your advice, I’m definitely coming back to haunt you.”
