A Game of Cones Read online

  “How could this already be happening and none of us knew about it?” someone stood and asked.

  My eyes went over to Amelia Hargrove again. I couldn’t help but think that Amelia knew something about all of this—the buildings, the land being sold, or rather this company wanting to buy them. She had come in and made a beeline to her seat. A seat, now that I thought about it, that oddly seemed to have been waiting for her. I scanned the seat next to her. An older guy, maybe midfifties, dressed in a suit and a bow tie. He must have saved it for her. I didn’t know who he was, but I had to wonder, was he in on it, too?

  But why?

  Her bookshop had been in Chagrin Falls as long as I could remember. Books stuffed in every nook and cranny, piled onto display cases and filling up bookracks, a family business like our ice cream shop. And as far as I knew, business was good.

  “Look, I am not the one buying up the buildings.” Zeke’s face was flushed. He was getting weary of the jeers, it seemed. “I’m here because—”

  “You work for the company.” The interjector cut him off before he could finish. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. Now you go back and tell them for us that we’re not interested.”

  “I do,” he said, licking his lips. “I do work for them. For Rhys Enterprises. A smart and innovative company located in Dallas. And even though they’re a good piece down the road, you’ll find that they are the neighborly kind of folk and committed to keeping Chagrin Falls the quaint little village that it is.”

  “With a shopping mall right smack in the middle of it?” That woman’s voice was so strained it squeaked.

  “You’re not proposing anything good for our little village!” Another dissenter squawked.

  “On the contrary,” Zeke said. “Urban revitalization is a good thing. Even I’d agree with that.”

  “We don’t need revitalization,” someone yelled from the audience. “There’s nothing wrong with Chagrin Falls.”

  “It’s not revitalization,” someone else yelled out. “It’s gentrification.”

  “We’re not a blighted area.”

  I knew that voice. I swiveled from the waist and cast my eyes toward the rear of the room. Standing near where Miss Green-Eyed Junior Associate Veronica had just vacated was my brother Bobby. The activist. Standing next to him was my grandfather.

  Someone must have spread the word because neither of them had been there when the meeting first started. Now, the back of the room, since the last time I looked, had become standing room only.

  “We’ve been named Tree City USA for twenty-five years running,” PopPop said. “We’ve got the falls, the trees and our shops. We don’t need anything else.”

  “That’s right,” I heard several people say. “Yes! We don’t need anything else,” came the chorus.

  “We’re not going to stand for this!” Ms. Devereaux said and stepped forward. Even dressed in a dainty pink summer sweater with three big bows down the back and a pair of loose-fitting jeans, she seemed ready for a fight. Though she was usually glittery and gem encrusted, the only sparkle I noticed now was the one in her eye that I was afraid would flicker into a flame. At nearly seventy, I hoped she wasn’t thinking of forcibly ushering the man out of her shop. She was known to be a little feisty.

  “You’re coming here trying to mess up things that aren’t broken.” It was Squeaky Voice speaking again—she seemed willing to join in the fight if that was what Ms. Devereaux had planned. I didn’t know which, if any, shop she owned.

  “I’m not—we’re not—” Zeke Reynolds stopped what he was trying to say and let out a nervous chuckle. “Please,” he said, raising his hands to control the crowd, “I’m just here to assess and send in a report. And”—he stopped to take a sip out of his bottled water—“keep you informed of how things are progressing.”

  “We don’t need your progress reports,” Ms. Devereaux said. “And we don’t need or want you here.”

  “That’s right!” Maisie pumped a fist in the air, choking out the words. “We don’t want you here.” The threat of tears emerging spilling out in her voice.

  “Get out!” Riya said and with that hurled her shoe.

  As it went spinning over the heads of the sitting shopkeepers and toward the podium and Zeke, a hush came over the room, and all heads turned toward Riya.

  “What are you doing?” I screeched, my mouth agape, my eyes big.

  “Being supportive,” she said, as if it were obvious.

  “Hey!” Zeke Reynolds shouted defensively, ducking out of the way of Riya’s projectile. “Don’t shoot the messenger!”

  chapter

  TWO

  Someone shot Zeke Reynolds!” Maisie hustled into the ice cream shop, out of breath. She wiggled into a cardigan to cover her bare arms—we kept it pretty cold in the kitchen of the ice cream shop—then put an apron over her head. “Can you believe it?” she asked, cheeks flushed, eyes wide.

  “Shot him?” My mother repeated her words. “Is he okay?” She’d grabbed the plastic bags Maisie had brought in with her, full of mint, and walked over to fetch a knife from the counter rack.

  “He’s dead,” Maisie said with a nod. She stood tying the apron strings behind her, shaking her head.

  “Oh my God,” my mother said. She dropped the knife and slapped her hands over her face. “Not again. This can’t be happening again.”

  “This isn’t the first time he’s been shot?” Maisie asked, her brows furrowed.

  “I’m sure she meant not another murder,” I said, shuddering at the memory of the first one our little village had seen. One that had had my father as the prime suspect and me caught up in the killer’s claws. “And how do you know something happened to him?”

  “Ms. Devereaux told me,” she said, as if it was an obvious answer.

  “When did she tell you that?” I asked, glancing up at the clock on the wall.

  “Just now. On my way in.” Maisie swung open the door to the commercial fridge and stuffed the crook of her elbow with cartons of cream. “He’d been staying at her sister’s bed-and-breakfast. He and Veronica.”

  “Together?” Riya asked.

  Maisie gave an exaggerated nod, waggling her eyebrows.

  “Is that where it happened?” my mother asked, covering her heart with her hand. “At Dell’s bed-and-breakfast?”

  “Nope.” Maisie shook her head, her curls flopping from side to side. “Ms. Devereaux told me they found him in the alley. Behind the shops.” She pointed, indicating the shops across the street from us.

  I inhaled hastily and wished I could cover my ears, blocking her out. It was five a.m. and much too early to hear the news she came bearing. I’d had enough of murder.

  “Who is this Zeke Reynolds, anyway?” my mother asked. She retrieved her knife, seemingly somewhat recovered, and rocked it back and forth over the mint leaves, mincing them, the aromatic fruity scent escaping and wafting through the room.

  My semiregular ice cream cooking crew—my mother and two best friends, Riya and Maisie, were making quick work of the morning. Out of the three of them, no one was on the payroll but Maisie. The other two showed up because this business had always been about family, even though I had staff. It was summer, and that meant we were going to need buckets and many, many scoops of ice cream. We had our work cut out for us.

  Today on the menu were drink-inspired ice cream concoctions: We were serving smooth cool mint mojito coffee, creamy churned buttermilk and peaches, and steeped black tea folded into buttery crumbs of shortbread. All three were going to have a vanilla bean ice cream base.

  “Zeke Reynolds was the guy at the shop owners’ meeting last night,” Maisie said. “Didn’t you hear? He was trying to take my community garden and my building.”

  “We don’t actually know which buildings he was trying to buy,” I said.

  “Oh,” my mother said with
a grunt. “PopPop came in last night talking about that guy. He was telling Graham the whole story. But I didn’t listen—I knew I had to get up early this morning so I went to bed.” She took the side of her knife and scooped the mint leaves into an aluminum bowl.

  It was surprising to me that my mother wouldn’t stay up a little later to hear what my grandfather was telling my dad, since she was always one to succumb to gossip. “He was the guy trying to turn Chagrin Falls into Michigan Avenue, right?” she said without lifting her head up from her work.

  “Right.” Maisie gave a nod.

  “Employee of Rhys Enterprises,” Riya said, her hands dripping with the juice from the peaches she was dicing. “But I guess now you don’t have to worry about them taking your life’s dream from you, Maisie.”

  Was she being sarcastic? I gave her a stern look. She shrugged and mouthed, “I’m being nice.”

  I was beginning to think that having Riya’s support might not be a good thing.

  I realized I’d gotten chilly, too, and plucked a sweater off the peg coatrack on my way to grab a couple of pots to fill with water for the tea and coffee.

  My family’s ice cream business had been around a long time. We’d been in the same spot for fifty-six years, built directly atop the Chagrin River falls in 1965 by my newly northern transplanted grandparents, Aloysius and the late Kaylene Crewse. My father’s parents had the only black-owned shop in a predominantly white neighborhood—it had been a personal as well as a business adjustment for them.

  Now, just one of a string of small boutiques and shops—some with awnings, some not, some new, some not so new, but all owner occupied—on North Main Street. Our village shopkeepers had always fought back against people like Zeke Reynolds and his employer, Rhys Enterprises. We’d been immune to the beckoning of strip malls, big stores, conglomerates and franchises.

  Well, until now . . .

  I found it hard to believe that anyone in our town was willing to sell out and let those high-end, upscale entrepreneurs move in.

  Sure, our shop had gone through transitions of its own—the riots of the sixties, inflation of the eighties, Grandma Kay getting sick—but we’d never been anywhere near the verge of selling it. Managed by different family members over the years, the last one being my father’s sister, Aunt Jack, who had put our business on thin ice. Our brand staple had taken the back burner and Crewse Creamery was slowly, but surely, becoming a novelty shop.

  Then Aunt Jack left, following her newfound internet love, and my grandfather turned the management of it over to me. Reopening with me at the helm had more bumps in it than a double dip of rocky road—building delays, then opening day coinciding with a snowstorm and a frozen body right outside our wall of windows. But everything eventually thawed—except for the ice cream, which, after people got a taste of our frozen creamy concoctions at the local university’s President’s Dinner and I helped solve the murder (and of course, the falls outside our window, a Chagrin Falls staple attraction), started selling like hotcakes.

  “Did I hear someone knocking on the door?” my mother asked.

  But even hotcakes didn’t start selling this early in the morning . . .

  I looked at my mother, who had her ear trained toward the front of the store, her eyes wide with concern. Then I looked toward the door.

  “Who’d be stopping by this early?” she asked, glancing my way. “It’s hours before we start serving.”

  “I don’t know,” I said and turned the eyes off on the stove. “Only one way to find out.” I swiped my hands down the front of my apron and headed toward the door.

  “Don’t go out there!” my mother yelled, startling me. “What’s wrong with you? There’s a murderer on the loose.”

  “I don’t think the murderer is going to knock,” I said.

  “You never know,” she warned.

  “Mom.”

  “Don’t ‘Mom’ me. You never know,” she repeated. “If you’re going to go, take a knife with you.” She thrust the one she’d been using to cut the mint in my direction.

  “According to Maisie, Zeke Reynolds’s killer used a gun,” I said. “Don’t think that”—I nodded my head at the twelve-inch chef’s knife she was holding—“will do me much good.”

  “Riya,” Maisie ordered, “you go with her.”

  Riya shook her head. “Even my black belt in tae kwon do can’t stop a .38.”

  “Oh good lord,” my mother said. “We’ll all go.” She blew out a breath and placed her knife on the stainless-steel countertop. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Hadn’t she been the one to start the whole killer-on-the-loose thingy . . .

  I glanced once more toward the front of the store before I ventured that way. The 1950s motif with cobalt-blue seating and a stainless-steel counter was partitioned off by a plexiglass wall. I had it installed when I remodeled the store. I wanted to see the customers and make it so they could see me. But with it being pitch-black in the front room of the shop and outside, I couldn’t make out who had come a-knocking.

  My mother flipped on the lights as we went to the front. I saw Felice, our resident white Persian cat, already perched in her usual spot on the window seat. I hadn’t even seen her come down. She usually made such a fanfare of her arrival in the morning from the upstairs apartment where she lived—acting like royalty prancing through the kitchen, waddling on her short chubby legs, her plumed tail swaying back and forth.

  “Who’s there, Felice?” I asked as if she could answer. She didn’t, nor did she seemed interested in what I was asking. She stretched and yawned and, rolling over, snuggled down for another interval of beauty rest. Her Royal Highness didn’t seem alarmed, so I figured neither should we.

  I glanced back at the door. The figure peeking through the glass became recognizable.

  “Detective Liam Beverly,” I announced.

  My mother threw up her hands. “A face I don’t want to see or hear anything from.” She did an about-face and marched back into the kitchen. Riya and Maisie stuck close by.

  I flipped the lock on the door and pulled it open.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Good morning.” I smiled. “If you’ve come for ice cream, you’re a little early.” We stood in a half circle around him in the middle of the black-and-white-checkered floor.

  “A lot early,” Riya said.

  “Not here for ice cream, unless you need me to sample anything you got going.” He stepped inside and drew in a deep breath through his nostrils. “I can smell all that goodness already.”

  “Ice cream doesn’t have a smell,” Riya said, and she squinted her eyes. “I can’t understand why everyone says that.”

  “We’re still prepping,” I said.

  Liam Beverly had eyes the color of pistachio ice cream even down to the flecks of gold. This morning, though, they looked melted and tired. Still I could sense from them that his visit was all about business.

  I hadn’t seen him in a while. Thank goodness there hadn’t been a need to. The last time I’d seen him, it had been cold outside and each time he’d worn a leather jacket, more in line with a biker than a cop, and an apple cap—but today he wore a nice crisp light green shirt that matched his eyes and tan pants. I wondered was that the official summer uniform for the CFPD.

  “You come about Zeke Reynolds?” Maisie said, folding her arms across her chest. I guess she sensed the same thing. “Because we don’t know anything.”

  I looked at Detective Beverly and wondered would that statement appease him and send him on his way.

  I could only hope.

  He stepped closer into the little arch we’d formed around him, leaning back on his bowed legs. (I remembered that about him, too.) He was always invading other people’s space. “You know something?” he asked, one eyebrow arched.

  “She just said we didn’t,�
� I said.

  “I think you do.” He smiled as if he could charm an answer out of us. “You want to tell me what it is you know?”

  “He’s dead,” Maisie said, taking a step back from him and toward me. “Somebody shot him.”

  I elbowed Maisie. Sometimes she could be surprisingly gutsy.

  A lopsided grin crawled up one side of the detective’s face. “And what do you know about that, Ms. Solomon?” He took another step toward Maisie.

  She shook her head. “Nothing.” Her tone defiant.

  It was much too early in the morning for her to start trouble.

  “Is that why you stopped? To . . .” I didn’t finish my sentence. I thought I’d let him fill in the blank. I just needed to stop Maisie before she did any more talking.

  “I stopped by to let you know what happened.” He looked at the three of our faces. “And to see what you knew about it.”

  I saw from the corner of my eye Maisie start to speak. I jerked on her arm, wrapping my hand around her wrist, hoping she’d get the message to stay quiet. “Like Maisie said, we don’t know anything.”

  “How do you know he’d been shot?” he asked, turning to me.

  “I don’t know anything about that.” I probably should have added, Except for what Maisie told me. But I wasn’t volunteering any information. The last murder had family members involved. This one I was sure had nothing to do with me.

  “Ms. Solomon?” He turned to Maisie.

  Maisie pursed her lips and looked at him as if deciding whether she was going to share what she knew.

  “Ms. Devereaux told her,” Riya volunteered, being helpful again, I guess. “Maisie saw her when she came in this morning.”

  He nodded, but the spark that came into his eye said he was filled with more questions. “And what can you tell me about what happened last night?” he asked. “At the shop owners’ meeting. I understand the three of you were there?”