A Deadly Inside Scoop Read online

  “People always remember our ice cream.”

  “He remembered the whole family. Oh!” I said. “You’ll know who he is. He said he was part owner of Clawson’s Bike Shop.”

  “Dan Clawson didn’t have a partner.”

  “He was a silent partner. Along with Mr. Clawson’s wife.”

  My mother narrowed her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “What was this guy’s name?”

  “Steve.”

  “Steve what?”

  I shrugged. “He didn’t say. But he’s coming back to get ice cream. Mud pie ice cream, so I have to find the recipe.” I started to open the box, but she put her hand over it.

  “What did this guy look like?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I don’t know.” I hunched my shoulders. “He had graying hair. Deep blue eyes—”

  “And dimples!” Her words came out with fire.

  “Uhm . . . yeah. Dimples. Because why?”

  “Stephen Bayard! That’s who that was. That no-good scoundrel.”

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “His name is Stephen Bayard. He didn’t eat mud pie ice cream here. What he did was drag us through the mud!”

  “Who?”

  “The whole family.”

  She was breathing heavily through her nose. I could have sworn I saw fire. “And he wasn’t Dan Clawson’s partner either. What he did was partner up with his wife.”

  “I’m not following,” I said. “He seemed like a nice guy.”

  She didn’t even let me tell her the part about the puppy before she spat back, “He is not a nice guy!”

  “Okay,” I said. “Calm down.”

  “He is the one who preyed on your grandmother’s illness and had her sign over the store to him. We had to scramble to get into court to have her deemed incompetent, something that broke your grandfather’s heart, so the contract wouldn’t be legally binding. And before we could do anything about him, he disappeared! With Dan Clawson’s wife!”

  “Oh,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Maybe he wasn’t a nice guy . . .

  I was twelve when Grandma Kay took sick. When we were kids, we weren’t allowed in “grown folks’” business. They spoke in hushed tones around us or we were told to leave the room. That was probably why he didn’t seem familiar to me.

  “What did he want?” she asked.

  “Nothing, I guess.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. He had a dog with him and was looking for its owner,” I said. “He was just talking.”

  “What did he say?” Her words were quick and stern.

  “Nothing, Mom. Just that he remembered the store and all of us. That he was going to stop by and see PopPop.”

  “Oh, no, he’s not!” She turned from me and marched over to the wall rack where she’d hung her coat and purse. “I’m calling home right now to warn them about that scumbag,” she called over her shoulder. “Because if he shows up”—she yanked her purse down from the rack and started rummaging through it—“your father might just kill him.”

  chapter

  FIVE

  You girls are going to catch your death of cold down here.” Our family discussion was interrupted by Rivkah Solomon. She was a natural-born intruder.

  Rivkah was our store’s second-floor tenant, Maisie’s grandmother, the Jewish owner of the village’s only Chinese restaurant, and the only other person I knew of who could make my grandfather smile.

  She was thin and had long, slender hands—my grandmother used to say she had piano fingers. Now, like on her face, the skin that covered them was thin and wrinkled. She wore her all-gray hair pulled back, braided and wrapped around in a bun, but she always had strands that strayed.

  “Savta!” Maisie said, a big grin on her face. She wiped her hands on a towel, trotted over and planted a kiss on her grandmother’s cheek. “I was going to come up and see you.”

  Rivkah pulled her own sweater close around her, then held up her hands. Her fists were filled with outerwear. “I knew you girls wouldn’t be prepared for this morning’s weather.” She had a sweater for each of us.

  How she knew how many to bring, I didn’t know.

  “Morning, Savta,” I said, and followed Maisie’s lead. I planted my kiss on the other cheek.

  “Hi, Mrs. Solomon.” Riya muttered her greeting. She’d refused to call Rivkah the Hebrew word for grandmother. She’d said long ago that the family she had from both sides of her parents were more than enough relatives to keep up with without picking up any strays.

  “I’m going to turn the heat up,” Rivkah said, and headed over to the thermostat. “It’s not good for you not to be warm while you work.”

  “We’re making ice cream, Savta,” Maisie said. “It’s supposed to be a little cold.”

  “It’s not good to be overheated either,” Riya said. “I can tell you that to a medical certainty.”

  “Nonsense,” Rivkah said, and waved a hand. “Is that what they taught you at that medical school?” She spoke to Riya over her shoulder as she fiddled with the thermostat. Satisfied, she turned and looked at us, a gleam in her eye. “I have made you a little something to eat. Maisie, you help me bring it down.” She aimed a finger at her with her instructions. “You girls are too skinny, and you need all your energy to get this place going.

  “And let me tell you.” She waved her hand. “I’m so happy not to have to hear all that construction noise going on down here anymore. I can’t wait for the smell of ice cream.” She bunched up her shoulders and let her fingers waggle in front of her nose as she gave a sniff.

  “I don’t think ice cream has a smell,” Riya said in a low voice, looking at me.

  “Well, good morning, Felice,” my mother said, and we all looked toward the back steps from where Rivkah had emerged. And there she was, Rivkah’s cat. She should have been called Your Highness. Her white coat flowed as she pranced down the steps and across the kitchen floor with her short, chubby legs, her plume tail swaying. She disappeared into the front of the store without even throwing a “meow” our way.

  “What is she doing?” Riya asked.

  “I think she’s going to see how the window seat turned out,” I said.

  Riya raised an eyebrow.

  “She was here when the interior decorator came with samples for the covering, and she picked out the fabric.”

  Riya rolled her eyes at me.

  I held up my hands. “What? What can I say? The cat knows what she likes.”

  “Well, I’m going, too,” my mother said. “You can take the girls on your prescheduled tour later, if you want. I didn’t see it while it was under construction.” She jerked her head toward the cat. “I’m like Felice, I want to see it when I want to see it. I’ve waited long enough.” She looped her arm around Rivkah’s. “I’ll call your father”—she bowed her head at me—“and let him know about your visitor this morning.” She tugged on Rivkah. “C’mon, let’s see what your cat has contributed to the new store.”

  “Mom,” I said, and flapped my arms. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We get distracted and we won’t finish on schedule.”

  She paid no attention to me, and sashayed off on her short little cobby legs just as Felice had, dragging Rivkah beside her.

  I shook my head and gave Riya a look that asked, “Can you believe this?”

  “It’s a good thing you hired help,” Riya said. “This is a lot of work.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, glancing toward the front where my mother had disappeared. “I’ve got Candy Cook and Wilhelmina Stone coming in later today.”

  “Wait,” Maisie said, a spark in her eye. “You mean Miss Wilhelmina? The woman who was the greeter at the Mayland Heights Walmart?”

  “Yep, that’s her.” I nodded. “She’s working afternoons.”

  “Isn’t she like a hundred
and five?”

  “A hundred and four,” I jokingly corrected, “but she’s got years of customer service experience.”

  “I bet,” she said, and we all laughed.

  “You know how to pick ’em,” Riya said.

  “Candy, my other new staff member, seems real cool. She’s nineteen and says she’s a night owl, so she’ll work until close,” I said.

  “How do you know her?” Riya asked.

  “I don’t.” I shrugged. “She just came in and applied. She seemed friendly enough. Doesn’t know a thing about making ice cream, though. Actually, neither one of them did.”

  “Not a commonly found skill set, huh?” Riya said.

  “Go figure!” I said, and chuckled. “So I’m thinking with those two and my family’s help that should cover all the hours and foot traffic.”

  “I’ll quit Molta’s,” Maisie volunteered, “and work for you.”

  “You’re going to quit your job, Maisie?” Riya said. “Not again!”

  “That Ari is a micromanager,” Maisie said in her own defense. “He gives off bad energy. Crashes my mood and sends my always-twenty-percent-tip servicing skills into a nosedive.” She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t like him and I can’t work with that man. Plus, that restaurant is too fancy for our little village.”

  Did Maisie think that without her the restaurant would just go away?

  “The whole village is going upscale, you know, including this place,” Riya said.

  “No, we’re not,” I said, and scrunched up my nose. “We’re just the corner ice cream shop my grandparents started.”

  “Corner shops don’t sell ice cream with liqueur in it,” Riya said.

  “This place isn’t on a corner.” Maisie said it like it was the first time I was finding that out.

  “I mean we’re just like one. And between family and my two new employees, I think we’ll be good, at least until the weather breaks.”

  “See! You need me,” Maisie said. “You’re gonna need all the help you can find when all your customers start blowing through.”

  I couldn’t help but break out in a big grin. “You think so?” I asked. “They’re going to be blowing through?”

  “I know so,” Maisie said, her smile matching mine. “Like a high-speed train. Nothing can stop them.”

  But like in most cases, Maisie didn’t have a clue. We blew through the prep, and I knew the day’s ice cream flavors would’ve blown anyone away, if anyone had showed up.

  They didn’t.

  The only thing that blew up to our door was snow. More than a foot and a half of it. And it stopped anyone from coming through.

  chapter

  SIX

  I sat on the bench in front of the store. Grandma Kay’s bench. I needed to feel her arms around me.

  I drew in a breath, then watched it vaporize and swirl around when I blew it back out.

  My mother had a habit of sitting in parking lots. Whenever she was feeling low or depressed, if she was out, she’d pull the car over and sit there. She said that sometimes to get clarity you just had to be still.

  I didn’t need clarity. I knew exactly what had gone wrong. It was the blizzard that blustered in the day I opened a store that usually served the edible kind—on warm, sunny days . . .

  And even though I knew what went wrong, I didn’t want to move. My mind needed to be still and I was pretty sure my body was frozen in place.

  It was dark already and it was only a little past six. I had sent my mom and Maisie home way before the scheduled eleven p.m. closing and told my new employees not to come in. There wasn’t any reason to stay.

  I had walked there, and even though Maisie offered me a ride home, I didn’t want to take it. I felt like walking, only I didn’t get any farther than that bench.

  The deep snow crunched underfoot, the cold wind that bristled against my face felt prickly and my fingertips were numb. I pulled the hood of my puffy coat over my head, the fur falling down covering my eyes, stuffed my hands in my jacket pocket, slumped down in my seat and started clicking my nails.

  I had planned a grand opening, but after the place didn’t get finished until close to Halloween, I thought that I’d wait until then. People came from all around for our Pumpkin Roll. I’d flooded my social media accounts, though, passed out flyers and given my friend who owned a food truck samples to give away on Walnut Wednesdays—Walnut, a street in downtown Cleveland where food trucks gathered at lunchtime on that day each week. I thought all of that would bring people in.

  I had been just as wrong as Maisie.

  I wondered what my PopPop was going to say about all of this. I had to go and see him and tell him what happened. Let him know what a bust the day had been.

  And I wondered if he was going to feel let down about passing the reins over to me.

  Me and my big ideas. Maybe they’d been too much. My brothers had said it to me enough times.

  “Jasper! Come back!” A voice far off wafted my way. The noise jolted me out of my disappointment. I sat up straight and looked toward the voice. It came from down by the movie theater, marquee lights showing only a shadowy, ambiguous figure.

  Footsteps came crunching in the snow toward me, but in the haze of the night, blurry streetlights and the tears threatening to fall, I could only get a glance. And then the figure was out of my sight. The same high-pitched voice near the marquee called out again. “She’s not coming back!” it said.

  I chuckled. That would never have been one of us kids, running away after being called. I could just imagine what kind of trouble he’d be in when whoever was calling him caught up with him. My senses no longer dulled, I realized it probably wasn’t too smart to sit in the cold any longer.

  I stood up to go, pain coursing through my nearly frostbitten fingers as I pulled the knapsack over my shoulder.

  “I need gloves,” I mumbled. I remembered the ones my mother had given me. I reached inside my knapsack to get them and my nails hit the tin.

  Grandma Kay.

  I pulled it out and sat back down.

  I hadn’t ever taken the time to look through her recipe box. The morning had been so hectic and the rest of the day so harrowing. I had forgotten all about it.

  I opened it up and pulled out a card. The emotion that struck me when I saw which one it was almost choked me. The amber light from the lanterns revealed her little scribblings on the card, her side notes and the date she’d written it.

  The recipe? It was for ice cream made from snow.

  Snow, the one thing that right now was ruining the business she had started. Still, I had to smile. Snow was also one of the things that my grandma loved. Whenever it would snow, she’d round us kids up, we’d go out, get snow and she’d make ice cream just for us.

  My grandmother hadn’t ever seen snow before leaving the south and was fond of telling us grandkids the story of how her uncle had at one time traveled north. Once arriving back home, she said he couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful everything up here was—people living high, colored folks going wherever they wanted. They even, he had told her, had cotton falling from the sky. For a family of sharecroppers, that was just like equating snow to manna from heaven. And it was what made my grandmother always dream of moving north.

  “There has to be at least a foot of it,” she used to say about making snow ice cream. “And it has to be fresh-fallen snow. Otherwise it won’t taste as sweet.”

  I chuckled. There was nothing sweet about this newly fallen snow. I dug the toe of my UGG boot into it and gave it a kick. The white particles floated through the air.

  No. This snow had been a curse.

  But then I thought how my Grandma Kay always made the best out of everything, and she didn’t let much stop her. Not even the disease that finally took her from us.

  I decided I wasn’t going to let
this beat me either.

  I was going to make the best of it. I was going to make some ice cream. From snow.

  “You won’t defeat me. And you won’t stop me,” I said with a nod. I’d even take some to PopPop. It would probably be easier to face him if I came bearing gifts anyway. Especially when it was the kind of gift I knew he’d enjoy.

  I put the recipe box back in my knapsack. I stood up, walked around to the side door, pulled the key to the store out of my pocket and went back inside.

  I grabbed the top bowl from a stack of aluminum ones, then put it back. It was too small. I was going to make a big batch. I grabbed the bottom one, a scooper and the now-empty cardboard box the corn had been delivered in that morning. I laid my knapsack on one of the stainless-steel prep tables, fished the gloves out, put them on and headed back out the door.

  The Chagrin River’s two waterfalls bisected our little town. The twenty-foot-high waterfall that ran just out back of our family business was the larger. It had once powered nine different mills, and the industrialization of the early twentieth century that swept our little neck of the woods could be ascribed to it.

  On our side of the road, getting up close and personal to the falls wasn’t easy. Right next to the shop was a wooden-planked overlook that housed a seating area and a plaque with the village’s history, which gave way to a series of stairs and a boardwalk. The boardwalk was as close as you got to the falls. But any kid who grew up in Chagrin Falls could tell you that if you wanted to get to the falls, you didn’t use the stairs.

  And from being a kid, I knew that’s where you’d find the best unadulterated snow. At the bottom of the falls.

  I went around to the front of the shop, headed down North Main Street just past the overlook, and turned onto Bell Street. There was a lookout there just beyond a hill, covered sparsely with trees, the earth beneath uneven due to erosion. All of it now covered with snow.

  I tore the box I’d brought at one of the seams, tossed it on the ground and flattened out the top and the bottom of it with my feet. I was going to use it to get to the bottom, my own homemade sled. I could walk back up, but going down was tricky.