Banana Muffins & Mayhem - Culinary Competition Mystery #5

Chapter 12

(Amy)

Amy smiled when Geri opened her apartment door. The artist's usually eclectic, Bohemian clothing had been replaced with some other style that Amy could only describe as lumberjack chic. The long skirts and embroidered tunics had been swapped out for formfitting, boot cut jeans and a pink plaid shirt. Geri was also sporting one of the hairstyles Amy had come up with on the night of the Dumpster fire. A long, glistening gray braid was draped over one shoulder.

"Come on in," Geri said as she stepped aside. "I'm so glad you're up for a little excursion."

Where exactly the trip would be to had been left out of the phone conversation a few hours earlier, replaced with the declaration that "it would be interesting." Since just about everything Geri did was interesting in Amy's opinion, she had agreed to come along on the mysterious outing. It most likely wouldn't be boring, considering the instigator.

"So what are we doing?" Amy asked as she glanced around the one-bedroom apartment, looking for clues as to what lie ahead. The uncharacteristic outfit was the only thing that appeared different. So she took a stab at what might be a logical, at least to her, reason for the wardrobe change-up. "Scouting petting farms that you can take Macy to this summer?"

Geri frowned. "No, why would you think that?"

Amy pointed at the pink-, black-, and white-striped shirt. "Your clothes remind me of what someone would wear on a farm."

"I was going for a more rustic and rugged look, not farmhand. Maybe I should've gone with red plaid instead of pink."

"The shirt is cute. Think of it as a rugged feminine style." Amy tilted her head to the side. Was Geri purposely changing the subject to clothing? "So where are we going?"

"We are going to a farmhouse, but many of the fields around it have been sold off as lots for other homes."

That explanation was about as clear as the clay pottery Geri made.

She handed Amy a small plastic bottle. "We're going to visit Mick, to see if that stain on his workshop floor is blood. My gut tells me he isn't a killer, but my eyes saw something that says he could be. It's been driving me crazy thinking about it. I really like him. So I really don't want that stain to be blood."

Amy didn't think the adventure sounded very fun anymore. "I understand why you want to know what the stain is, but we aren't crime scene analysts. Are you just going to ask him what caused it? If you're wrong about him being innocent and it is Phoebe's blood, that could be a very bad thing. If he doesn't kill us, Shepler and Carla will. We will be in so much trouble if something goes wrong."

Geri pointed at the bottle Amy was holding. "I did some research. Peroxide, which is in that bottle, is supposed to bubble up just as well on dried blood as fresh. At least according to what I found on the internet. I'll show you where the stain is, distract Mick, and you can test it. He'll never know we even did anything, so my family won't have any reason to get their undies in a bunch."

"That sounds like a safe plan to me, but I'm sure your son-in-law would find fault in it."

"He can't criticize what he doesn't know about." Geri grabbed a set of keys from a raspberry-red ceramic bowl on the kitchen counter. "Let's go get this over with. I've been a nervous wreck ever since I found that stain."

A few minutes later, they settled into Geri's white minivan. As she pulled out of the parking lot, another thought wiggled into Amy's mind. "What if it is blood? How are we going to get Detective Foster to test it to see if it's a match to Phoebe's? My gut says she doesn't trust me enough to look into any leads I pass along to her. Every time I talk to her, she looks at me like I have kale stuck between my front teeth. But if we tell Shepler, having him relay the information could put him in a difficult position. She could think he's messing with her investigation and get bent out of shape about it."