DEATH BY CHOCOLATE CHIP CUPCAKE by GRAVES SARAH

Author:GRAVES, SARAH [GRAVES, SARAH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2022-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

Nine

“My great-grandfather built this house. He wanted a place where he could recover from the war. He had what they called shell shock, then.”

Ellie looked back over her shoulder at Tink. “So you came here as a child?”

He nodded. “Few times. He was very old by then. It wasn’t a childhood haven or anything like that.”

To judge by his face, the memories he had made here weren’t particularly happy, either.

He caught me looking. “What, you wanted a cozy bedtime story about sweet little Tinker and his beloved great-grandpa?”

Meanwhile, the tunnel went on; each time we got to where I thought it must be ending, it turned and another length of it stretched ahead.

“Almost there,” said Tink, seeming to sense my unease, and now at the far end of the section we were in I spied a door.

Then: “My grandparents came here, though,” he said. “And after my granddad died my parents inherited the place. Started fixing it up, found things he’d left behind. Not nice things.”

Tink sighed heavily. “And after their discoveries, all they wanted to do with Cliff House was get rid of it.”

We reached the door. Music played on the other side, a tune that I recognized from Sam’s car radio.

“What about the stories, though?” I asked quietly. “Is that what the not-nice things were from, the murders and so on?”

I put my ear to the door. I wanted to know who’d be out there when I emerged, just in case they weren’t friendly.

Tink laughed quietly, sounding less wise-ass than before. “Right, the murders,” he confirmed my suspicion about what his folks had found. “That’s what everyone wants to hear about.”

He sucked in a breath. “My parents found remains. And other things. My granddad just hadn’t been curious, I guess, or maybe he was just lazy. Left the place the way it had been.”

Another big sigh. “It wasn’t the war that damaged my great-grandfather, though, like people said. Even before, he’d been well known to girls in the movie business.”

“Maybe the girls hoped they’d end up being his girlfriend? Or his next wife?” Ellie theorized.

On the other side of the door someone turned off the radio. “Yeah, probably. Or that he’d put them in movies.”

“And your great-grandmother?” I asked.

“She took off from here, never heard from again.” A bitter chuckle escaped him. “I guess she’d decided to scram before she ended up dead, too.”

He shoved open the door and pushed through a curtain; I followed, emerging at the back of a pantry closet. Then Ellie and I stepped out of the closet into the pantry itself.

Morning light flooded through a small pantry window. Outside, dew glittered in the grass leading down to the bluff’s edge. Igor was out there, nosing around.

I didn’t see Bryan anywhere. “So,” I asked Tink as I went on out into the kitchen, “how’d your murderous ancestor finally croak, anyway?”

Yeah, Bob had told me the old guy had hung himself, but I wanted to hear what Tink said about it. I turned to where he had stood by the stove just a moment ago.

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