No Refund for Murder, part i

From the casebook of Beverly Sweet, owner and proprietor, Beverly Sweet: Cakes for all Occasions.

June 14

            I was piping a ring of fatuous little daisies around the base of a glossy white birthday cake for a spoiled little girl when I heard the bell on the front door ring.  I looked up and she was already walking into the shop: a slender woman in her late twenties, jet black hair down to her shoulders.  She was dressed all in black, in clothes that bespoke both refined taste and great big billowing piles of cash.  Her bearing was erect, almost prim, but something around her eyes suggested she might not always be so well-behaved.

            “Can I help you, madam?”

            “I need to speak with Ms. Sweet on a matter of great urgency.”

            “It’ll be a long wait; my mother’s dead and I’m not married.”

            She stopped, eyes narrowed.

            “I’m Beverly Sweet.”

            She took a moment to look me up and down.  Having used a mirror on occasion, I know roughly what she saw: a short, middle-aged man wearing a white apron, overweight, balding, with a small handlebar moustache.  There was just the slightest hint of a smile in her eyes when she looked back up.  “Don’t you think you’re a little butch for a Beverly?”

            “So I’ve been told.  Can I help you with something?”

            Her eyes went blank again.  “My name is Elise Sosland.  My brother, James Sosland, ordered a wedding cake from you establishment some time ago.  I’m here to cancel that order.”

            I went over to the accounts book, flipped through it until I found the correct page.  “That’s right, I remember your brother now; he came in here a month ago with his fiancée.  The cake was scheduled for delivery this Saturday, so we’ve already started production.  I’m afraid that means your brother will lose his deposit unless he’s got a really exceptional excuse.”

            “He’s dead.  Will that do?”

            There was no obvious emotion in her voice, maybe just a hint of something behind her eyes.  “Yeah, I suppose it will at that.”  She said nothing.  “I’m sorry for your loss, of course, and for his fiancée as well.”

            She stood silently for another moment, and her voice was tightly controlled when it finally came: “You may save your sympathy, Mr. Sweet.  That bitch of a fiancée is the one who killed him.”

To be continued...