Wedding Bell Blunders: A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery - Kathleen Suzette (parable of the sower read online TXT) 📗

it with me or Lisa. We talked about it between ourselves, though. We figured that he begged for his job back. He didn’t act the least bit sad about what he had done either. He acted like nothing happened. One day I asked him if he had been on vacation, and he just laughed.”

“Really? And Della wouldn’t even talk about why he’d been gone for three weeks? Were you there when she fired him?”

She nodded. “Sure. Me, Lisa, and a girl named Katie Reynolds who used to work with us were all there. We all knew that she had fired him. And then he just shows backup? It was crazy. We asked Richard about it, and he just shrugged and said he needed some time off for a little while.”

“Then what about the firing? If Della did it in front of everyone, did you ask her about that?” None of this made sense.

She nodded. “Katie asked her about that. And she told her that she needed to mind her own business. That was when Katie got worried about what was going on there at the catering shop. A few weeks later she gave her notice, and she left.”

“Wow,” I said, taking this in. “I guess I wouldn’t blame her for quitting over something like that. Did he go back to selling drugs in the back of the shop?”

She shook her head. “If he did, I never caught him at it. Lisa and I kept an eye on him every time he went out there to take a smoke break. He would take his cell phone with him, but he didn’t do any texting before he went outside. We’d look back there as often as we could without making it obvious, and we listened for cars, but we never heard anything back there. So maybe he quit doing it.”

“I’m stunned. I mean, if Della knew he was selling drugs back there, why on earth would she take him back? And why wouldn’t she call the police and let them know what he was doing?” This didn’t add up, and it made me wonder.

“That’s exactly what Lisa and I said. For a while, we talked about quitting too, but he had been on his best behavior, so we decided we would hang around for a while and see how things went.”

“I don’t think I could have stayed knowing what I knew about him. But I understand that you needed a job, so of course, you stayed as long as he wasn’t selling drugs there.”

“That was it exactly. We needed the job, so we both stayed. But I’ve never felt right about Della since then. She plays favorites, you know. Richard was definitely her favorite.” She shook her head. “I guess a lot of bosses do, though.”

“I suppose they do. I don’t blame you for sticking around though. Jobs are hard to come by.”

“There’s something else, too. Della is a diabetic. I’m not pointing fingers or anything. But I keep thinking about that.”

“Really,” I said. This was interesting. I didn’t blame Jodi and Lisa for continuing to work at the catering business, but it would worry me if I worked for an employer that wasn’t disturbed about an employee selling drugs out behind their shop. It would also worry me if an employee died of a drug overdose and my employer might be taking the same medication he had overdosed on.

Chapter Fourteen

“What are you doing with all of this?” Lucy asked me, looking over the pies and cakes on my countertop.

I smiled at her. “I thought I’d bake up an assortment of desserts and take some of them over to Della.”

Her brow furrowed. “Della? Why on earth would you do that?” Her eyes went back to the carrot cake on the counter.

“Because Della is a caterer. And every time she caters for an event, she needs desserts. I thought that maybe this was an opportunity to pick up some extra work for myself.”

She looked at me now with one eyebrow raised. “You mean you want to do the desserts for Sandy Harbor Catering? Why?”

I smiled. “To be honest, I don’t care one way or another if I can pick up some extra work through the catering business. But I have a hunch about something, and I want to see if I can get some answers.”

“Oh, that mind of yours is turning,” she said, nodding. “Can I have a piece of that carrot cake?”

I nodded. “Sure. When we get back. I’m going to cut each of these desserts in half, and we’re going to take them over there and see if Della will taste them and see what she thinks about them.”

I had baked a carrot cake, an Apple pie, a vanilla layer cake, and a blackberry torte. I cut each of them in half and placed them in separate containers, and then we put them into a shopping bag to carry them.

“Tell me what it is that you’re going to ask her,” she said as I wrapped up what was left of the carrot cake.

I glanced at her. “I ran into Jodi at the grocery store yesterday, and she happened to mention that Della was diabetic.”

Now both eyebrows shot up. “A diabetic? And are you going to ask her if she takes a sulfonylurea drug?”

I chuckled. “I don’t think I can actually come out and ask her that. I might, if the opportunity arises, but I want to see if she’ll eat my desserts. What if Jodi wasn’t telling me the truth? If she’s not supposed to eat sugar, will she taste them?”

“Some diabetics eat sugar anyway,” she said, crossing her arms in front of herself. “Asked me how I know.”

I chuckled. I already knew how she knew, but I asked anyway. “How do you know, Lucy?”

“Because Ed does it all