Cooking is Murder, A Myrtle Clover Mystery #11

Chapter Four

Myrtle said in a calm voice, "I can see that there actually isn't a phone in the classroom Miles, so if you wouldn't mind finding one?"

Miles, looking a little gray, disengaged himself from Louvenia and hurried off to find one.

Myrtle carefully entered the room to take the chance to find any clues she could by the time that Red arrived and shooed her away from the crime scene.

"Do you think you should go in there?" clucked Louvenia. "I mean, if we do, won't we leave evidence in there? Our DNA or something?"

"Pooh, Louvenia. We've left our DNA all over the place in here already—we were eating and drinking and cooking and carrying on all day long. That's why it was such a great place for the murderer to kill Chester." Myrtle walked as close to Chester as she dared to go. She did know that she wasn't supposed to mess with a body.

She could see that there appeared to be no fight whatsoever. There weren't signs of any bruises or cuts on Chester or any other sign of violence that she could see. And Chester, with his burly, outdoorsy build, could certainly have put up a fight if he were expecting one. It would appear that, despite his understanding that people in the classroom weren't fans of his, he hadn't been expecting the blow that killed him.

Louvenia was still making lots of nervous sounds, but was now walking into the room, herself, and heading rather swiftly to her desk in the corner. She was rustling through papers and chattering as she went: "To think we were all just in here! And someone came in off the street and killed this poor man!"

Myrtle scoffed. "That's extremely unlikely, isn't it? It's a lot more likely that someone here in this class did it. It's not as if the classroom was robbed."

Everything in the classroom appeared to be exactly where it was before. All except for the meat thermometer, that is.

Louvenia stopped rustling through her papers and walked away from her desk, holding a few. "I can't imagine that anyone in the class would have killed him."

"Can't you? Chester himself was telling me that he knew everyone in the class," said Myrtle.

Louvenia squeaked. "But that's only because Bradley is such a small town! Everyone knows everyone else. Besides, he was in construction and you couldn't get away from his television commercials or his face on the billboard." She said this last in a voice that expressed how distasteful she found his ads.

"There's nothing wrong with trying to brand yourself or your business. That's being smart. And it wasn't just that this is a small town, either. Chester told me that he had a real history with the other classmates and that he felt they were out to get him. Even you," said Myrtle, turning away from Chester to face Louvenia.

"Me? But how would I know Chester? I don't work in construction." Louvenia's eyes were huge.

"Don't you?" Myrtle's eyes narrowed. "I've known you for a while, Louvenia, and while I mostly think of you in terms of winning the peach cobbler contest at the fair, I also seem to remember that you were someone's secretary."