Maple Ridge...Unsolved - Episode 5

Brittany Brinegar
2 hours ago
7 min read

A Great Day to be Alive

Murder, Mystery & Mom Season 3

Breakfast in an Airstream had no business smelling that good.

The Clue Cruiser’s tiny stove hissed and popped as Mattie flipped a pancake in a pan the size of a salad plate. The scent of butter and batter filled the cramped silver bullet, fighting valiantly against the lingering notes of snow-covered dog and road-trip coffee. Goldilocks sat directly under Mattie’s elbow, eyes wide, tail sweeping the floor in slow, hopeful arcs every time a drip of batter threatened to leap.

Wren was cocooned in a navy Snuggie patterned with tiny magnifying glasses and skulls—subtlety was not her brand. We have that in common. Her bare toes peeked out, nails painted black with tiny white pawprints. And that’s where we differ. As soon as the temperature dipped into the sixties, I instituted a mandatory fuzzy sock policy. In temperatures this frigid, I doubled up and stashed footwarmers in my boots.

She lounged on the bench seat, a tablet resting on her knees with a half-finished social media post blinking. She minimized that, flicking to a photo of my ominous bedtime hate mail.

She pinched to zoom in on the note. “Who do you think sent this?”

“Someone who clearly means business.” I slumped at the little dinette, clutching my coffee like it was an emotional support beverage—which it totally was.

The actual note lay on the table between us, safely contained in a plastic sandwich baggie Wren insisted on, ‘for evidence.’ I didn’t have the heart to repeat Mama’s spiel about fingerprints and exemplars, so I let her be.

Mattie didn’t turn from the stove, but one blonde eyebrow arched over the rim of the pan. “You’ve had all night to think on it, honey. You must suspect someone.”

“I thought about nothing else, Mama.” My forehead thunked against the table. “I slept with one eye open because of that.”

Wren’s eyes widened. “I’m impressed you slept at all.”

I sighed. “I don’t think I can do this. I’m not cut out for deep cover. I’m barely cut out for surface-level cover. Light concealment is more my speed.”

“You must,” Mattie said, flipping another pancake with surgical precision.

“These people are scary,” I muttered.

Mattie whipped the batter and poured another giant flapjack. “The old lady scares you?”

“Yes, old ladies can be scary, Mama.” I gave her a pointed look over my mug. “Present company very much included. But mostly I’m afraid of Zer. He’s the size of a Yeti. Then there’s the quiet thing.”

Wren snuggled her nose deeper into the fleece blanket. “The quiet thing?”

“He’s suspiciously silent until, wham, you’re in his crosshairs. He asked a bunch of questions about why I suddenly popped up from Florida.”

Wren lowered the tablet. She’d gone full teen sleuth today—messy bun, ‘Murder She Read’ T-shirt, and an intensity that would’ve made Agatha Christie check her locks at night. “And what did you say?”

“I thought I played it off.” I waved the bagged scrap of paper. “Now, not so much.”

Mattie slid a golden pancake onto a plate with the efficiency of a short-order cook and a Navy quartermaster combined. “Zer wouldn’t send a note,” she said. “He’d bust down your door.”

“Comforting thought,” I said. “Very soothing. I feel so much better knowing he prefers the direct murder approach.”

Goldilocks let out a hopeful whine. Mattie relented and flicked her a coin-sized bite of pancake, which she caught mid-air like a furry Venus flytrap.

Zer wasn’t the only one suspicious of me, though. The memory of the Tappington dinner room—chandelier glare, crystal clink, portrait eyes—slid back into my mind. I still felt Daphne’s scrutinizing gaze like a ring light turned up too bright.

“Zer wasn’t the only one giving me the third degree,” I said. “Daphne asked a bunch of questions, too.”

Wren perked right up. “Cisco’s sister.” She wriggled her toes out from under the Snuggie. “I’m super suspicious of her.”

“Really? Why?” I asked.

Mattie brought three plates to the table, each with a neat stack of pancakes. She moved with brisk grace, pink sweater sleeves pushed up, hair back in a no-nonsense ponytail. Even in a trailer, she looked like she could brief Congress between flipping batches. “Wren is helping me sift through information on the Tappington clan. But as I reminded her, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions until all the facts are in.”

“Hey, nobody’s jumping,” I said, reaching for the maple-leaf-shaped bottle of syrup. “At best, it’s a skip. A shuffle, really. But if you don’t follow your gut and start somewhere, the case never progresses. You can’t solve a murder by politely waiting for it to introduce itself.”

“You start by following clues,” Mattie said. “Not a twinge in the gut.”

“My gut twinges have an excellent track record.” I drowned my pancakes instead of my sorrows—thick Tappington syrup pouring over the stack in a golden avalanche. Goldilocks’ nose twitched so hard she nearly vibrated.

Wren forked a precise bite of pancake and chewed thoughtfully. “The toxicology report confirmed Cisco was murdered.”

“Now we need the why,” Mattie said. “Who in the family stood to benefit from his death?”

“Whoever’s next in line to run the empire.” I shrugged. “This isn’t just a cozy little syrup company. It’s the whole ski resort. Town mascot. Economic overlord. The person inheriting that isn’t getting a gift basket; they’re getting a kingdom.”

“Ebenezer’s will ought to shed some light on that.” Mattie carefully carved into her stack. “Who it goes to, who gets cut out, who gets a consolation candlestick holder.”

“And lucky for us, you’re invited to the reading.” Wren shot me a sly look. “Well. Patrice Marie is.”

I stabbed a bit of pancake. “Yes, the glamorous Florida cousin with the high school tennis trophy and virtually no online footprint. She’s really living her best life.”

“Sitting in on the reading of the will could prove fruitful.” Mattie added a small dollop of syrup, which was immediately absorbed by the stack. “In the meantime, I suggest we focus on Zer and Barbara Rey.”

“That sounds an awful lot like jumping,” I said around a bite.

“The reason being,” she continued, ignoring me. “They were both skipped over in favor of the grandson. Convention suggests the old man’s children would take over the company.”

Wren nodded, tapping her fork against her plate. “We suspect that Cisco’s father was the golden boy,” she said. “Both Mom and Dad’s favorite. But he died young of the Tappington heart defect thing.” She made air quotes with her fork. “Which I suppose is why they so willingly accepted it for Cisco.”

“Right.” My head bobbed. “First tragedy: beloved son dies of family heart curse. Second tragedy: grandson allegedly dies of the same curse. Everyone shrugs and says, ‘That’s genetics.’ Only surprise: this time, it wasn’t genetics. It was foxglove and faking it.”

“Foxglove?” Mattie arched a brow. “Someone’s been Googling.”

“It’s easier to remember than the big words used on the tox report. Digit-a-telly or whatever.”

“Digitalis,” Wren corrected.

Goldie rested her chin on my knee, eyes tracking my fork like she was analyzing my argument and my breakfast with equal focus.

I pushed my plate back. “So, based on potential motive and the attitudes at dinner, Zer is our first target. Shall we go speak to him?”

“There’s no we this time, sweetheart,” Mattie said.

“Excuse me?” I blinked. “Did you just delete yourself from the mission?”

“To keep your cover intact, you must go alone,” she said. “Us poking around the resort with you will draw too much attention. You going to see your ‘cousin’ at his office? Natural.”

“Alone?” My voice came out in a squeak, and climbed further up the octaves.

“Try to be subtle, Aunt Patsy.” Wren leaned her arms on the table. “You can’t drill him with your usual podcaster questions. No, ‘Tell me about your childhood trauma, Zer, and don’t forget to like and subscribe.’”

“Great,” I said. “So I get to confront the Yeti all by my lonesome and pretend he doesn’t already know I’m an imposter. Why even keep up the ruse? I think I’ve gotten as much out of Patrice Marie as I possibly can. She’s outlived her usefulness, and I'm fresh out of any more tennis champ antidotes.”

“You said yourself, she has access,” Mattie said. “Patsy can’t attend the reading of the will. Patrice Marie can.”

“You’re sending me back in even though I could be burned?” The words were out of my mouth before I could corral them. “Some handler you are.”

Mattie’s gaze snapped to mine, sharp as a snapped wire. I felt the weight of it down to my socks.

Oops. Not supposed to talk about spy stuff in front of the impressionable teen. Civilians have not been read in, Patsy. This is how people ‘accidentally’ fall down staircases.

I forced a laugh and flapped a hand. “Handler as in…someone who handles my chaos on a regular basis. Totally normal term. Everyone’s using it.”

Wren narrowed her eyes, suspicious, but she also thought half the PTA were part-time assassins, so that didn’t narrow anything down.

“Fine,” I said, exhaling. “I’ll stay under. But only because the note was so vague. For now, I choose to believe that ‘not belonging here’ is a comment on a Florida cousin not deserving a piece of the inheritance. Which, frankly, is rude but not necessarily murderous.”

Goldilocks let out a soft woof, as if to say, You belong anywhere the pancakes are.

I scratched behind her ear. “You hear that, Goldie? We’re going back into the lion’s den.”

She wagged her tail, tongue lolling.

Of course, she was excited.

She thought ‘lion’s den’ meant ‘buffet.’