Apples and Alibis by Gayle Leeson

Author:Gayle Leeson [Leeson, Gayle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Down South Cafe, Gayle Leeson, Down South Cafe Mystery, Cozy Culinary Mysteries, Cozy Mystery, Southern fiction, Cozy Culinary Mystery, Southern cafe mystery, Southern cafe, Amanda Lee, Gayle Trent, Comfort Food Mystery
ISBN: 9780996764773
Publisher: Gayle Leeson
Published: 2019-08-13T04:00:00+00:00

DRIVING TO THE FIRE station, I considered what Scott had told me. He hadn’t seen Malcolm Pridemore on the property, so was his shifting blame to Gladys’s brother-in-law merely a way of trying to cover his own tracks? After all, Scott readily admitted he was on the property. Had I made him nervous with my talk of Aunt Bess’s photos? Maybe he’d seen her there and had correctly guessed he’d show up in one or two of those captured images.

I parked the car in front of the firehouse, got out, and went around to the passenger side to get the cookies. A group of firefighters sat in a large open area reminiscent of a den or game room. There was a sectional sofa, a couple of mismatched chairs, a television, a ping pong table, and a jigsaw puzzle in progress on a coffee table.

When I approached the glass door, a man facing that direction hopped up from his chair and came to give me a hand.

He pushed open the door. “Hey, there. May I take that box?”

“Please.” I gratefully relinquished the package.

“Whatever is in here sure does smell good.”

I smiled. “It’s an assortment of cookies. My aunt crashed your work at Gladys Pridemore’s house yesterday evening, and I wanted to bring you a token of my appreciation for being so kind to her.”

“You’re Amy?” he asked.

I nodded. How in the world does he know who I am?

“Come on inside.” He called to the others. “Hey, everybody, Bess’s niece—the gal who owns the Down South Café—is here.”

They know Aunt Bess?

They ushered me into the kitchen and gathered around the long wooden table where the man who opened the door for me had deposited the box of cookies.

A tall, thin woman took a peanut butter cookie from the box. “We love Bess. Her Lord Have Mercy board is the best.”

“And...how do you know her?” I asked.

“She followed our Facebook page,” said the man who’d brought in the box, helping himself to a chocolate chip cookie. “She’d comment on our posts, message us to commend us on our service to the community...”

“Oh, and she ordered pizzas for us one evening,” the woman with the peanut butter cookie added.

“I’m glad she got some new pics for her Crime Scenes board,” a young man said. “It was awfully sparse before.”

I recognized him as the firefighter who’d taken a selfie with Aunt Bess.

“That photo of the two of you together is fantastic,” I told him. “She got another interesting shot or two as well.”

“Really?”

Although the selfie guy had asked the question, I noticed the entire group had stilled and was looking at me.

“Yeah. In one, you can see a man who appears to be running away from the house.”

They looked at each other and then left the kitchen. I trailed after them. One opened a laptop, and the others gathered around his chair for a closer look.

Like me, the laptop operator had Aunt Bess’s Pinterest page bookmarked. He clicked the Crime Scenes board and began examining the photographs.

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