The Grisly Grocery: The Sally and Sherlock Mysteries, #3

By Chynna Pace

Sally Holmes and her trusty sidekick Sherlock are solving their strangest case yet. When a trip to the grocery store leads to her finding a pair of hands hidden in a fruit bin, Sally knows she has to find out where they came from. She goes on a wild goose chase to try to find clues, and ends up stumbling on a completely different mystery along the way. Can a feud between two local theaters have anything to do with the creepy hands? Sally's determined to find out. Join her and her friends as she explores a farm, investigates an actress, and sleuths her way to the culprit, one grisly clue at a time. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chynna Pace
• Release date: Jun 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223806950

Book preview

Chapter 1

Come on, Sally. Stop staring at your phone. If that Shapiro man was going to contact you, he would’ve done it already.

I glared at my mom, a really venomous evil-wizard stare, but she just laughed and shook her head and grabbed her purse off the edge of the coffee table in the living room. She playfully thwacked my ankle on her way out and said, It’s fall break, and a nice day outside. Why don’t you go hang out with Gordon?

I sighed and pulled myself up into a sitting position on the couch. Instead of scowling at my phone, I pocketed it in the back of my jeans.

It was the weirdest thing. I’d never been able to understand silly lovesick girls who could waste their lives away, waiting for some dude they liked to call them. It seemed so utterly ridiculous. But all of a sudden, I’d become one of those silly girls.

It wasn’t a typical situation though. This wasn’t a boyfriend, or a guy from school I had a crush on. My career was at stake here. A whole ten days had passed since I solved the mystery of the Funfair Fiasco, and found the evidence needed to put a whole family of con artists and freaky mad scientists in jail.

It had definitely been one of my finest moments as an eleven-year-old detective. My best friend Gordon Emerson, a journalist-in-training who had befriended the chief editor of the local newspaper and earned a spot writing weekly articles for the paper every Saturday, even posted a story about me in the Jackson Progress-Argus after it happened. Not only that, but I’d actually had a talk with Detective Shapiro at the scene of the crime—he’d even bought me a hot chocolate!

So where did it all go wrong? How come he still hadn’t offered me an internship yet? I mean, how many amazing cases did I have to solve before I proved myself to this guy?

My biggest dream on earth was to be a professional detective, like Adrian Monk or Nancy Drew or Sherlock Holmes. I’d even named my pet corgi Sherlock!

But part of that big dream was a smaller dream—the stepping stone to the big thing, kinda like how kids who dream of being scientists also dream of getting a scholarship to their dream college, the one with the really good science program.

My stepping stone dream was working with Detective Shapiro. He was my real-world detective role model, and I’d do anything to score an internship with him.

But for some reason, he kept overlooking me.

Gordon’s busy today, I told my mom. He’s shadowing the chief editor at the paper. See, that guy is so eager to take Gordon under his wing. Why can’t Detective Shapiro do the same thing with me?

Mom sighed. She grabbed her keys and then ran her hand through her hair, dragging metal through her unruly brown curls. As always, being the main chef at her catering company, she smelled good, like yummy things roasting away in ovens. I don’t know, honey, but there’s no use waiting around. Why don’t you come grocery shopping with me? I’ve got a big catering order to buy for, and you can help me with the ingredient list.

I cringed. Groceries? When I could be fighting crime with Detective Shapiro? If he’d only call…

Mom rolled her eyes and grabbed my hand. And without waiting for an answer, she hauled me to my feet and out the door into the breezy autumn sunshine.

It really was a nice day…

Plus, you never know, Mom said with a little chuckle, as she backed out of the driveway. You may stumble upon an incredible mystery to solve while we’re there!

In the grocery store? Oh brother. I rolled my eyes. Not a chance…

Chapter 2

Here’s a mystery for you, Sally. Find out what they’ve done with the rice wine vinegar. It used to be right here, with the soy sauce and the wasabi. Now it’s disappeared under some extremely suspicious circumstances.

I wanted to roll my eyes at my mom, but I ended up grinning instead. I gotta hand it to her. She knows how to get me excited about something even as lame as grocery shopping. The moment she mentioned a hunt for something, something out of place, my mystery radar instantly kicked in.

Got it, Mom, I said. I’ll find the culprit.

Mom laughed. You do that, honey, she said, and then went back to scouring the shelves.

But as soon as I left the aisle she was on, I realized I had no idea what rice wine vinegar even was, let alone how to find it.

So I switched to my first step of investigation: interrogation.

And I got lucky—because as soon as I was off the aisle, I ran into someone to question.

Literally ran into him. Which wasn’t so lucky, at first, but it ended up being a good thing.

Oof! Smacking headfirst into a fluffy pile made up of stacks of bread loaves, I stumbled backwards, slipping on the loaves that had fallen to the ground, and just barely managed to catch myself on the edge of a display table full of fruit pies before I fell to the floor.

Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! A voice said. When I straightened up, I realized the voice was coming from behind the stacks of bread.

The guy holding the stacks leaned over to set his load down on the fruit pie table while annoyed customers huffed and veered their shopping carts around us. When the guy started to bend down to swipe up the fallen bread, I dropped down with him.

"No, I’m sorry, I said, hurrying to help him scoop up the now-squished loaves. Oh, geez. Sorry about the bread. I wasn’t watching where I was going."

Neither was I, the guy admitted sheepishly as we straightened up again. And don’t worry about it. This bread’s not very good anyway. It’s got like seven grains in it—nobody ever buys it.

Oh. I laughed, then looked at him for the first time. He was wearing the black shirt and khaki pants uniform all the other employees wore, but his looked about three sizes too big. He looked only a few years older than me, but he was extremely thin and bony, so the shirt and pants fit him like baggy sacks.

But he had a nice smile, and his name, which stretched across his nametag, was Lorenzo, which I thought was a totally cool name. I figured, if I was gonna pick anyone to interrogate, he would be the one.

I handed him the last loaf in my hand, the one I’d tripped on, which would definitely have to get thrown away now that it looked like a seven-grain pancake.

Then I asked, Hey, I’m guessing, since you were carrying the bread, that you work in the bakery, but…would you by any chance know where to find rice wine vinegar? My mom’s been freaking out because it’s not where the soy sauce is.

Lorenzo stepped out of the way of an incoming old lady bulldozing her shopping cart down the aisle at fifty miles an hour. It was a good two months before holiday season, but the intensity on her face was akin to the frantic Thanksgiving shoppers we saw every year in November. I quickly stepped out of the way too.

Lorenzo shook his longish black hair out of his eyes and said, Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s not with the soy sauce anymore. They moved a bunch of stuff around last week. Now the rice wine vinegar is considered a salad dressing ingredient, so it’s over there across from the produce—where the mustard and olive oil and stuff is.

Oh thanks, I said. Thanks a ton. You just saved me from looking all over the store.

Lorenzo grinned. No prob.

Mystery solved.

Spinning on my heel, I doubled back and headed for the front of the store, where the wide open produce area was boredered by shelves of salad-y things. Bags of croutons, bottles of ranch dressing, the works.

There was a guy in black standing in front of a bin of pineapples across the way, but aside from him, the rest of the produce department was deserted, and it kinda felt like I had the store to myself. I let my imagination run away with me, imagining myself as a character in a heist movie, on a top-secret mission in an abandoned grocery store.

I took off, clinging to the wall of shelves, crouching down so I could peer at the rows of labels on all the little bottles. Finally, it jumped out at me. A clear bottle filled with a light yellowish liquid.

Rice wine vinegar, I read from the label. A hundred percent organic. Cool! Bonus points for getting something healthy.

I snatched the bottle off the shelf, then straightened up and spun around.

It was a fast movement, a careless one. I honestly should’ve been more careful after the bread collision incident with Lorenzo. But I was eager to get the vinegar back to my mom and show her how awesome I’d done with the mystery—even one as lame as this one.

So I wasn’t watching where I was going. Again. I wasn’t even trying to be careful.

I was a whirlwind, spinning around like a top in a twirling dance. And just my luck, I couldn’t get away with it this time either. A man was right behind me, walking swiftly. It was the man who’d been looking at the pineapples. And the moment I was up and swiveling, I twirled straight into his chest, thudding hard enough to make us both grunt from the impact.

Hoping he would be as nice and cool about it as Lorenzo was, I immediately started apologizing for my klutziness.

But the only answer he gave me was a grunt and a rough push to my arm, shoving me off so hard it felt like I’d gotten punched in the shoulder. I winced—I didn’t even have time to look up and see what he looked like. He was already rushing past me, practically flying.

Once I got over my whiplash, I spun around, but it was a second too late. The black-clad figure was dashing out of the grocery store’s front doors, disappearing in a flash.

I never saw his face.

But I did see…something.

It was about a long minute after I got over my shock. I’d still been frozen in place, but now, like a melting ice sculpture, I moved. I turned, but instead of my body angling towards the rest of the aisle, to head back to my mom, my body angled towards the bin of pineapples.

Even after suffering from shock at the hands of a random stranger, my brain recognized something fishy like it recognized my own thoughts. It spun in that direction, and I took a step forward, wondering what he’d been looking at.

And I saw it, the moment I was standing at the pineapple bin.

There was a tiny red nugget poking out of the fruit. As gory as it sounds, It looked like a bloody french fry. It was buried deep inside the mound of piled up pineapples.

So naturally, I went to investigate. I moved the pineapples around, throwing aside the ones on top until…until…

I unearthed…them.

Hands. Two disembodied, bloody…hands. Buried right there. In the pineapples.

Chapter 3

I’m proud of myself. Even with the jarring shock of discovering a pair of human, blood-splattered hands buried inside a bin of grocery store pineapples, right after the jarring shock of being barreled into and shoved by a creepy black-clad figure who was probably the reason for the creepy hands…Even with all that, I didn’t scream. I pretended I was a grisly, seasoned detective like Detective Shapiro, instead of a squeamish eleven-year-old kid, like…well, me , Sally Holmes.

I piled the pineapples back on top of the hands, then raced away from the crime scene, begged a random cashier at a random register to let me have a plastic bag, then ran back to the produce section and tried, as cleverly as I could, while trying not to touch them or be seen, to scoop the hands into the bag.

I dunno how I managed it. I mean, they were hands! And they were covered in blood. I honestly don’t know how I didn’t puke. Not to mention the store was crowded as heck.

But somehow I got the hands in there and tied the bag and made it back to my mom in one piece. I even, amazingly, remembered the bottle of rice wine vinegar.

Mom looked more than a little annoyed. She was leaving the dairy aisle, pushing her cart toward the checkout lines. Her face was red like it always got when she’d been in the store for too long, and her cart was full to the brimming point with groceries. There you are! What took you so long? Did you even find the rice vinegar?

I forced a smile and held up the bottle, trying to act normal, even though my heart was beating like crazy. Got it! It was in the salad dressing aisle. I had to ask some worker guy. And there was an accident—I ran into him and spilled a bunch of bread.

Mom’s irritation was whisked away by a hearty laugh. No wonder you took so long! Goodness, Sally, you do always find trouble, don’t you? Oh—and you bought something? What is it?

I turned red and tried to hide the bag behind my back. If Mom looked close enough, she could probably see the hands through the thin plastic. Oh, this? Oh, it’s nothing. Just…something for a mystery.

And I got lucky, because since Mom was so stressed with shopping, she didn’t even pry. She just pushed the cart faster, trying to get to the closest checkout lane with the thinnest line, and tossed some bland remark over her shoulder like, ‘That’s nice, honey’, while I struggled to shove the reality from my mind that I was carrying a bag of hands, and that they may…

May even be real.

Chapter 4

Gordon Emerson, with his flop of shiny blond hair flying in the wind, came crashing into the room, his jacket a fluttering flag at his back, his face red, his eyes wide.

I came as soon as I got your text, he said. What’s going on? What’s the emergency?

I sat on my bed, running fingers through Sherlock’s soft, golden fur to try to calm myself. I’d never done anything like this in my life. With the last case I’d solved, I did some pretty reckless things. But I’d never stolen evidence from a crime scene.

Until now.

Gordon skidded to a stop a few feet away from running into the bed.

He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at me. "There is an emergency, right? I mean, there better be. Sally Holmes, if there isn’t an emergency, after I left in the of Mr. Frank showing me how to work the printing press…"

No, there is! I quickly said. It’s just… I