Twice the Crime This Time by Maggie Pill

Author:Maggie Pill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gwendolyn Books
Published: 2020-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ron (Ron & Julie) Saturday, 3:00 p.m.

One of the nice things about living in a community like B-Bird is that you can borrow almost anything you need. Since Saturday afternoon was cool and we’d finished off the last of the oatmeal cookies, Julie was struck with the urge to make an angel food cake. She doesn’t have one of those weird pans with the removable bottom and the cone in the middle here in Florida, but all it took was a request on the park’s Facebook page. Within an hour I was on my way to # 16 Bittern Street to get a loaner.

The guy who answered the door looked confused when I told him what I’d come for. His wife had gone somewhere and failed to mention I’d be stopping by. “Angel food cake pan, huh?” He opened a series of cabinets in the kitchen, revealing every kind of baking pan, tool, and device known to man, though in this case it would be known to woman. This man didn’t know an angel food cake pan from a soup pot.

“I think that’s it right there.” I pointed, and he got the two pieces out, frowned at them in consternation, and handed them to me. “Thanks. We’ll get it back to you by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Fine by me.” He started closing all the doors he’d opened. “My wife has plenty of other choices for baking, as you can see.”

“It’s a wonder you don’t weigh three hundred pounds.”

He chuckled and cupped his rounded belly. “I’m not getting any skinnier. Luckily, Dethel gives away a lot of what she makes. There’s always a bazaar in the works, and there’s my cousin Taffy, who doesn’t even know how to turn on her oven. Dethel sees that she and Matthew get half a cake or a dozen cookies every few days.”

“You’re Taffy Nowicki’s cousin?”

“We’re the reason they came to B-Bird. They visited us, liked the place, and decided to buy here.”

That wasn’t a red-letter day for the park in my opinion, but I kept my comment tactful. “Taffy seems like a sweet person.”

“She is.” A bit defensively he added, “Matthew can be kind of a pain, but he’s not bad once you get past the bragging and that ‘everybody’s out to get you’ stuff.”

“I have wondered why he’s so convinced there’s a plot around every corner.”

“His parents were kind of weird. They took him overseas when he was about two, and they preached a lot about how evil the world is. So he was isolated with two very paranoid people. It’s bound to make a kid scared.” The guy shrugged. “I think Matthew dealt with his fears by convincing himself he’s smarter than everyone else. Only he sees what’s ‘real.’ Only he understands how messed up society is.” He chuckled. “That’s my five cents’ worth of amateur psychology.”

Seeing a chance to check the information Wilma had submitted on Matthew, I said, “I suppose you know him pretty well. You’ve been around him for about fifty years, right?”

He did a quick calculation.

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