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  Mocha and Murder

  Christy Murphy

  Copyright © 2017 by Christy Murphy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  1. Brownies and a Body

  2. Roast Beef and Ridicule

  3. Coffee and Congratulations

  4. Surprises and Spaghetti

  5. Pork and the Po-po

  6. Sweets and Suspects

  7. Rangoon and Romance

  8. Fast Food and Fiasco

  9. Memories and Mushrooms

  10. Stakeouts and Suspense

  11. Specials and Celebration

  12. A Note from the Author (and her mom)

  Also by Christy Murphy

  1

  Brownies and a Body

  I parked our catering van at one of the available meters on Main Street. It only took six turns to parallel park. Improvement.

  It rarely rains in Los Angeles—even in Fletcher Canyon, a suburb deep on the outskirts of Los Angeles. But on this particular night, a slight smattering of rain fell on downtown. The weather matched the feeling in my heart—gloomy and a little cold.

  You'd think after spending the last six months catering parties with Mom, the idea of going to a party as a guest would be fun. But I dreaded it.

  I tried to cheer up by telling myself it wasn’t a real party. It was the grand opening celebration for the Mocha Muse, Fletcher Canyon's first coffeehouse.

  "We could have parked in the new lot across from the diner, kid," Mom said as we both got out of the van.

  "I didn't want to worry about not being able to fit," I said. The new lot seemed a little small, and although I'd been driving our van for six months, I still didn't like parking in tight spaces. "Should I bring the mocha brownies?"

  "We'll see if they need more first," Mom said, leading the way. The rain was so slight, Mom had opted to carry our umbrella instead of opening it. Our costumes both had hats, which protected us from the rain.

  Oh yeah. Did I mention this opening had a costume theme? Dar-dar, the son of one of Mom's old friends from the Philippines, had snagged the job managing the Mocha Muse and picked the theme because the coffee house was an extension of Fletcher Books. His name is pronounced like Jar Jar, as in Jar Jar Binks, by the way. It's short for Darwin. But back to the costumes.

  Let's just say I've barely been able to pull off going to parties as myself for thirty-five years. Dressing as someone else made a positive party experience all the less likely.

  Mom had dressed as Sherlock Holmes since she'd already bought the hat and pipe for a photo shoot we'd done for our town paper. We'd become somewhat famous in our small town for solving mysteries. Well, Mom solved the mysteries. My job seemed to be stumbling across dead bodies and driving the van.

  And, yes, I'll get to the dead body in a minute.

  Mom had wanted me to dress as Watson, but neither of us had more than a vague notion of what Watson looked like. All we could think up was a mustache and a brown clothes. So, I stuck with our sleuthing theme and dressed as Sam Spade.

  I thought it was a clever idea, but as I caught my reflection in the storefront window, I realized I looked more like a flasher than a cool, feminine version of a hard-boiled private eye.

  Mom opened the door to the Mocha Muse. "Hurry up, kid. We'll miss our free mochas."

  I didn't have the heart to tell mom that the first five hundred mochas were free, and the likelihood that our little coffeehouse would have five hundred customers in one three-hour grand opening party was slim. Fletcher Canyon only had a population of three thousand people, many of whom were retirees who considered coffee after dark—even a free, fancy coffee—a big no-no.

  The hope for the new coffeehouse was that it would attract more "young people" to "downtown" businesses. Al, the owner of the Fletcher Diner and now this coffeehouse, had made it his first act as mayor of Fletcher Canyon to route the bus that looked like a trolley car toward the local college to bring people to Main Street.

  Today was the first day I saw the trolley/bus make its first lap. But the only passenger I was able to see was Al himself.

  Mom and I entered the party. It was a good turnout. I wanted to spy around and see if a certain handsome police detective had opted to attend the opening, but I didn't know if I could handle what I might see. We'd been pretty flirty when I'd first moved to town six months ago, but lately, like the weather, things had cooled.

  Being the Sherlock that she is, Mom found him right away. "There's Detective Cooper," Mom said to me, pointing across the crowd. He was at the counter talking to Jenna, the new, very young, very blonde, very thin, barista. The two of them were already laughing about something. Just what I dreaded. Mom dragged me over to say hello and get our free mochas. I heard a bit of the conversation as I approached.

  "So how old are you?" DC asked Jenna.

  "I'm twenty-seven, but I look young for my age," she answered. Who needs to look young for twenty-seven?

  "Nice to see you," Mom said, and DC turned to us. He was wearing some kind of cowboy costume, complete with a leather fringe jacket, sexy stubble on his razor-sharp jawline, and a hat.

  "You look like John Wayne," I said to him.

  "John Wayne isn't a character from a book," Jenna said to me, her voice a little snide for my taste. Of course, she looked adorable dressed as Alice from Alice in Wonderland. She didn't even need a wig for the hair. It was that bouncy and blonde.

  "But," DC said, "he played Hondo in the movie."

  Cha-ching. Score one for me! Even though I had no idea who Hondo was.

  "What are you supposed to be? Inspector Gadget?" DC asked.

  Minus one more point for me. "Sam Spade," I answered.

  "She picked it, because of our crime-solving," Mom said.

  "That's right. Dar showed me the article in the paper about you two," Jenna said.

  "Where is Dar-dar?" Mom asked.

  "He's out back," Jenna said. "He keeps calling his old boss and coworkers from the motel, hoping they'll come."

  Mom and I traded a look. He and his boss had gotten into a fight and made up again. Had it continued?

  "Are there any free mochas left?" Mom said.

  "Oh, right, of course," Jenna said, not at all eager to work.

  "Hey guys!" DC said, calling out to the two police officers that entered. "Glad you could make it."

  Two police offers entered the coffeehouse. They looked familiar and waved to DC.

  "Nice to see you again," the shorter of the two officers said. I think his name was Officer Keller.

  "You're the po-po Dar-dar met at the motel, right?" Mom asked.

  The two officers laughed. "You could say that. Glad to see your nephew got a better place to work," the taller one said. I squinted to see his badge. It said "Reed."

  Dar wasn't really Mom's nephew, but he'd taken to calling Mom "Aunt Jo" since he'd moved in with us after losing his job at the motel.

  "Where is the new manager, anyway?" asked the short one.

  "He'll be back in a minute," Mom answered before Jenna could.

  "Jenna and I were just talking about hiking in these mountains," DC said.

  "I love hiking," Officer Keller said. "I just went up to the Bay Area and camped a bit. Living off the land is the best."

  I gave up any hope of participating in the conversation. As a plus-sized woman who sweats five steps outside of air-conditioning, hiking is not on my list of things I do. I stared into the dessert case. It looked like our mocha brownies were almost go
ne.

  "Christy knows all about that," Mom piped in. "She was a Pioneer Pal. She got a merit badge and everything."

  Oh no! Mom was bringing up the Pioneer Pals.

  "What's a Pioneer Pal?" DC said, amused at my embarrassment.

  "Imagine a gender-neutral scout program minus the cookies and funding," I said.

  "So you did a lot of hiking in these mountains?" DC asked.

  "She saved a girl from danger on a trip," Mom said. "That's how she got her merit badge."

  "Really?" DC said, looking impressed.

  "She almost fell into Pacific poison oak," I said. I hated being a Pioneer Pal. I was sure death awaited me on that camping trip. So I'd memorized every potential threat to my life that we might encounter.

  "She got a merit badge in outdoor safety. They invented it just for her," Mom said.

  "Did you know children can drown in under two inches of water? I asked.

  DC and the two officers laughed.

  "That little factoid scared the fellow pioneers around the campfire," I said.

  Dar-dar entered from the back of the coffee house. "Hello roomies!" he shouted when he came out. Dar-dar had decided to dress as Pinocchio for the opening party. His red shorts revealed his Rockette-long legs. Dar-dar was a former Miss-Mister Cebu Beauty Pageant winner, and he enjoyed dressing up. Cebu is the big island next to his home island in the Philippines. He told me he picked Pinocchio because he was still trying to fit in here at Fletcher Canyon.

  I must say the short red shorts and the tight Pinocchio shirt was demure for Dar-dar, but risqué for a small town like Fletcher Canyon.

  "It looks like the party is going great," Mom said.

  Before Dar-dar could answer Mom, screams came from the front of the coffee house. "I'm here!" said a woman who looked to be about ten years older than me dressed as Pippi Longstocking, or perhaps it was Raggedy Ann. She was wearing a red wig in pigtails made of yarn. The pigtails made me lean toward Pippi Longstocking.

  "You made it!" Dar-dar said. He introduced her as Lisa Pravel from the motel. She was the other maid.

  "Are the others are coming," she said.

  "Adam's on his way, and Madonna said she'd come."

  "Burt too?" Dar-dar said.

  "I'm not sure," she said. "Madonna says he's had a cold."

  Dar-dar tried to hide his disappointment. A few minutes later, Burt's wife, Madonna, came dressed as what I think was Lydia from Beetlejuice.

  "What are you?" I asked.

  "What do you mean?" she asked.

  "Your costume. It's so original," I said.

  "I'm not wearing a costume," she said.

  Dar-dar whispered into my ear, "She's a goth. She always looks like that."

  I wasn't winning friends and influencing people at this party. I was surprised at how young Burt's wife was. She looked like she was just a few years younger than Dar-dar. Suddenly I felt very old. Lisa Pravel's son showed up wearing a Dr. Seuss hat.

  "We're running low on those chocolate mocha brownies you guys made," Dar-dar said to Mom.

  "We brought more in the van," Mom answered.

  We were excited to get the gig providing desserts for the café. We already provided desserts for the Lucky Dragon restaurant down the street. So Mom made it a point to make desserts that we didn't serve at the Chinese restaurant.

  I volunteered to go and retrieve the brownies.

  It'd gotten darker while I was embarrassing myself in the party, and of course, the rain had beat down a lot harder as well. I debated going back inside to get Mom's umbrella, but I decided to just get wet. I figured my hat and trench coat would at least protect me, and if I got too wet, I could just take off my costume and wear my jeans and T-shirt that I had underneath.

  I walked down Main Street. The lamp posts, a very nice old-fashioned touch on our tree-lined street, had come on, and they made the street look quaint.

  As I neared our van, I thought I saw a giant bag of garbage in the gutter. As I came closer, what I thought was just the outlined shadow of the big bag of garbage turned out to be a very big man. I ran over to see who it was, and I came upon a very large man face-down in the gutter.

  "Are you okay?" I asked.

  The man didn't move. I don't know what made me ask such a stupid question. Typically large men face-down in a gutter filled with the rain aren't doing well.

  I rushed over to turn the man's face up, but it took me a while. His scarf was pinned somehow, so I had to unwrap it before I could turn him over. I flipped him over, and he looked familiar. The yellow from the street lamps gave him a jaundiced type of appearance. He was wearing elf-like tips on his ears and a corduroy jacket. The jacket looked to be a deep burgundy in color. His hands were way too hairy—like monster hairy.

  It took a moment, but my brain registered that I was staring at Dar-dar's boss, Burt, dressed as a portly Bilbo Baggins.

  I listened to his chest to see if he was breathing. Nothing. I checked his pulse. Nothing. I immediately dialed 911 and yelled for help as I tried to administer CPR.

  This was the fourth dead body I'd found since I moved to Fletcher Canyon. This time two police officers and Detective Cooper were on the scene in minutes. My first thought was that it had to be an accident, and I was relieved that our food was in no way involved like those other times.

  But my relief was short-lived. The next day, Darwin was taken away from the coffeehouse in a police car. And when I thought back over the last few weeks with Dar-dar, I couldn't be sure he was innocent.

  What worried me? You know how they say in the movies and television shows, "it all started when," and then they told the story? We're going there now. It all started on the day I became legally single again.

  Cue dreamy flashback soundtrack…

  2

  Roast Beef and Ridicule

  We'd come to court to finalize the mediation of my divorce. The courtroom looked like the courtrooms on television. Except watching on television I'd imagined better air-conditioning.

  The judge had ordered the door closest to his bench to remain open to cool the room. He looked like the actor who played a dad on a sitcom I watched as a kid. Even Mom thought so. It being LA, he could've been that actor.

  A long time ago, on a romantic Valentine's Day that seemed far away, Robert and I wrote a song together. I wrote the words and a bit of the melody over a chord progression he'd strummed on his guitar. He'd been amazed when I started humming along to what he was playing and said it was a shame I didn't have words to go with.

  I told him I did have words, and I wrote them down. It was one of those moments where I felt content, happy, and comfortable in my own skin. I call those moments unicorn moments, because in our marriage they were that rare. It was before I found out about the affairs with the groupies. Before his band became popular on the local music scene.

  I stared at the wood paneling of the courtroom just behind the judge and feigned paying attention.

  He pounded the gavel, and the shuffling sound of chairs indicated I should stand. Mom nudged me and I came out of my haze. My lawyer had turned to me with his hand out. It took a split-second longer than it should have, but I realized he wanted to shake my hand.

  "Congratulations," he said. "You're a free woman and a co-songwriter."

  I smiled and gave him a polite thanks for his help. My daze kept me from absorbing the reality of the moment. I was divorced. There had been so much drama and heartache involved toward the end of Robert's and my marriage. This surreal and bureaucratic end seemed anti-climactic.

  My brain couldn't comprehend that I sat in a faux-wood-paneled room for half an hour, and now my marriage was over. Somehow I thought after my marriage ended, everything about my life—about me—would change. But it hadn't. Maybe it was weird to think one's life could change in a moment.

  I caught a glance of my ex-husband, Robert, with his new girlfriend standing up on the other side of the courtroom. He'd already moved on. His new partner was thirty p
ounds thinner and fifteen years younger than me.

  I was glad that I decided to dress up for the day. I bought a new flowing skirt that flattered my plus-sized figure, and I'd worn a heather-gray blouse to go with it. According to a video I saw on YouTube, I was a "winter," which meant that colors like gray, green, and red flattered my skin tone. Red seem too flashy for the occasion.

  I'd lost some weight since moving back in with Mom, and I'd opted to wear my expensive tummy-sucking underwear under my skirt. Right now all of my self-esteem rested in the power of that underwear.

  "Are you okay, kid?" Mom asked as we exited the courtroom and into the hall. Her voice was low so no one else would hear her.

  "Yeah," I said, deciding to be okay as I said it. "I'm just going to go to the restroom before we drive back."

  Mom opted to wait for me on a bench out in the hall, and I went to the restroom. I wrestled my way out of my control-top undergarments and thought about my new life. There was a certain handsome detective that I'd been flirting with since I'd moved back to Fletcher Canyon that I'd like to see soon.

  I washed my hands and smiled at myself in the mirror. I even touched up my makeup and adjusted the collar on my shirt until I felt pretty spiffy. Exiting the washroom, I felt lighter and happier. Even the air felt cooler. It was time to start a new life and ditch my I'm-not-thin-or-pretty-enough thinking.

  I held my chin up, pushed my shoulders back, and walked over to Mom who was talking to our lawyer. In my peripheral vision, I spotted my ex-husband just a few yards away by the water fountain. Why was he hanging around? Did he want to talk to me? Did he want to apologize for not initially giving me credit for the song?

  He caught me looking at him and smiled. It looked like he was going to walk over to say something, but then his girlfriend turned her head to see what he was looking at.