Inherit the Word (The Cookbook Nook Series) by Daryl Wood Gerber Page A

either. Did Natalie’s daughter or son-in-law have an alibi? Neither had been in attendance at the Grill Fest.
    I said, “Who stands to inherit from Natalie’s death? She was pretty well-off, right?”
    Our illustrious chief of police peered at me with frustration. “We’re done here.”
    “But all I asked—”
    “Done.”
    She was wrong. The murder had happened outside my store. My best friend’s mother was a suspect. I was anything
but
done.

Chapter 5

    B AILEY AND I returned to The Cookbook Nook, both of us perplexed as to what we could do to help her mother. In the Fisherman’s Village parking lot, customers clustered in groups while Chief Pritchett’s dedicated staff questioned individuals. On the boardwalk, people gathered around a table adorned with plates of cookies and an urn of coffee. Katie must have set it up so the disenfranchised wouldn’t go hungry.
    I paused in the shop’s doorway and said, “Oh my.”
    Bailey said, “What the heck?”
    Although the bookshelves had been returned to their rightful spaces, the shop looked as unkempt and as out of sorts as I felt. Customers had abandoned cascades of books on tables. Aprons were flung on chairs. When the firemen said,
Get out,
the masses had dropped everything. Shoot.
    My aunt sat at the vintage kitchen table turning over tarot cards for no one but herself. She said, “You can feel the bad karma, can’t you?”
    I nodded. This time I could.
    “How’s your mother, Bailey?” Aunt Vera asked.
    “Fine, sort of.” She sucked back a sob. “I’m going to the stockroom if you want me.”
    “I’ve got coffee brewing,” my aunt said.
    “No, thanks.”
    “No?” Aunt Vera eyed me.
    I whispered, “She’s off caffeine, remember?”
    Bailey slogged through the shop, shoulders slumped, the spring gone from her step.
    “Poor dear,” Aunt Vera said as she stroked the amulet around her neck.
    “Say a special incantation for her.”
    “I’m not a witch.”
    “You know what I mean.” I surveyed the shop again. A little moan escaped my lips. It would take hours to clean up the mess.
    “Don’t worry, dear,” my aunt said. “We’ll get to it in time. It’s not like we’re opening again today.”
    “We’re not? Why not?”
    “Ask Katie.”
    “Where is she?”
    “In the kitchen. Where else?” Aunt Vera held up a finger. “By the way, that woman who owns the knitting shop down the street said she saw a UPS delivery person in the vicinity right before the fire alarm went off, but that’s not unusual.”
    I continued on toward the café and gasped when I reached the archway to the cooking area. Halfway across the room, someone had pinned up yellow crime-scene tape. My stomach wrenched at the sight.
Not again
, I thought. I’d had nightmares about yellow crime-scene tape—twisting, writhing, and suffocating nightmares—all because of the murder of my friend on opening day. And now Natalie Mumford had been killed at our first town-sponsored function. What was going on? Did some otherworldly spirit have it in for my aunt and me? I wasn’t sure either of our artistic souls could take the hit.
    Buck up, Jenna. You can get through this.
    “Katie, why is this tape here?” I said. “Natalie was killed outside.”
    She rushed to me, trying to placate me with hand gestures. “Don’t panic. The police merely determined this was the route Natalie took before she met her doom.”
    “Why do you think she came to the kitchen?”
    “I don’t have the foggiest. Maybe she stole in to grab some special ingredient for her Monte Cristo grilled cheese. The tape won’t stay up forever. No longer than a day, so I’ve been told.”
    I calculated the financial loss, not that it mattered. Aunt Vera wouldn’t mind. She hadn’t opened The Cookbook Nook and café to make a profit. Back in the seventies, she and the love of her life had planned to open the shop, but life had taken a sour turn. For no reason that she could fathom, he’d left her at the