Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 7 - 9

by Stacey Alabaster

  "You think he sent them himself?"

  I nodded.

  Pippa leaned her head against the headrest and her eyes fell shut almost immediately. Was she already asleep? "Let's go home," I said. "We all need some sleep. Especially you, Pippa."

  I dropped the journal on my desk and flicked on the lamp, trying to keep the noise down so I didn’t wake Pippa. She was dead to the world anyway, a stampede couldn't have woken her at the moment. Still, quietly, I started to leaf through the pages. I figured I'd start at the back. Might give some clue as to where she and Callum had run off to. I wondered if the whole thing was still any of my business, though. Harrison had lied to me, and Angel wasn't in any real danger. She was eighteen, and allowed to go anywhere she pleased.

  No wonder Harrison hadn't been able to go to the police.

  Angel wasn't much of a writer, and her entries were short and nondescript. She seemed to just use the journal to keep short notes of what she'd done during the day, not to spill her heart onto the page in flowery prose.

  There were quite a few mentions of her father, though.

  Why does he still treat me like a child? He has no right to.

  I need to get out of this place. I'll be happy if I can just leave and be...with him. There was a little heart added at the end of the line.

  I shook my head. What we were dealing with here was a simple case of a girl running away with a guy she liked. A guy that her father didn't approve of. Nothing nefarious.

  I flicked through a few more pages, my eyes growing heavy.

  I can't believe how Anna is acting lately, she is being such a cow!

  My eyes sprung open a little. It was the first mention of Anna in a negative light that I'd noticed. Most of her adolescent rants had been about her father up until that point. I flicked back a few pages trying to find more. Had she and Anna had a fight? What about?

  My phone buzzed. A new text message.

  The kid's fine, Simona wrote, adding a smiley face to the end of the text. Took hours and hours in emergency though! Don't worry, the parents aren't blaming us.

  Oh, thank goodness.

  Still, I wasn't feeling like hosting any more children's birthday parties any time soon. With Bakermatic closed down, business was steady again and we could afford to cut back on the parties a little. Still, it was only a matter of time before another business sprung up in Bakermatic's place. The building had already sat empty for a month, so we couldn't get too complacent.

  I closed the journal and rubbed my eyes. I needed some sleep.

  My bedroom window was open so I went to close it, lest I freeze to death while sleeping. It was a clear night, no cloud cover and all the stars in the sky sat there, overlooking downtown Belldale. This house still didn't quite feel like home. I wondered if it ever would. It felt too big. I was used to the cramped feeling of my tiny apartment, and Pippa sleeping on the sofa, and us tripping over each other trying to move about the house. Bit strange that I could feel so nostalgic for that time in our lives.

  I supposed I would get used to the empty space sooner or later.

  I wondered about Angel, somewhere out there with Callum Jones, and shuddered. Kidnapped or not, she was still someone's kid. She'd just lost her mother and had been taken under the spell of a man who was almost old enough to be her father.

  And kidnapped or not, we still had to find her.

  I closed the window.

  Just as I was about to drop off to sleep, my phone rang. Ugh, not Harrison again, I thought, opening my eyes. I couldn't deal with him in that moment and he'd be lucky if I didn't give him a piece of my mind, right there and then.

  I didn't recognize the number, though it didn't mean it wasn't him. He clearly had a burner phone for sending those fake texts to himself.

  "Yes?" I answered, a little grumpily.

  "Is this Rachael Robinson?" the voice asked.

  "Yes? Who's this?" I sat up straight, more awake now. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it in my sleepy state.

  "It's Drew," he replied. "Your favorite security guard."

  "Drew?" How had he gotten this number? And why the heck was he calling me?

  "Just thought you might like to know. Your boyfriend just returned home."

  Chapter 6

  Drew let us straight in through the door the next morning. It was a glorious day and even Drew looked a little happy to be alive. He cast a skeptical look at me though as Pippa and I entered the lobby. "So, this guy is really your boyfriend then?"

  "Ha. Maybe not for much longer."

  I stopped and looked Drew up and down. "How did you get my number?"

  He didn't answer the question. "He's not in apartment 58 though," Drew said. "He's in apartment 32."

  "Oops," I said. "Must have gotten them mixed up."

  "Yeah, they're pretty similar," he said dryly.

  He didn't believe me. Didn't buy my story at all. But he wanted to help me. I narrowed my eyes questioningly at him. What was the deal here?

  But I decided not to push it. I could find out his motives later. "Can you buzz us up to the third floor then?" I asked.

  "Sure," he said before returning to his desk to press a button.

  "Thanks, Drew," Pippa said.

  Just before the elevator doors closed on us, Drew shot back, "Looks like your medical emergency turned out okay," he said to Pippa. She turned red.

  "Don't worry about it," I said as we headed down the hallway of the third floor. This was a super nice apartment building, with a view of the lake through the floor to ceiling windows in the hall. I looked at the row of doors and felt a little pang of jealousy towards everyone living behind them, jealous of the apartment lifestyle.

  "So what do we do?" Pippa whispered when we reached the door of a 32.

  "I guess we knock."

  I reached out to do just that but Pippa grabbed it before I could. "What if Angel is with him? Shouldn't we call Harrison? What are we going to do, drag her back home?"

  "Let's just knock. If Angel is with him, then this whole thing is over. We can go back to work. Forget we ever knew the Styles family." I kind of wished I had never heard of them. They had been the source of nothing but drama and stress in my life for the last few months.

  I knocked on the door but Pippa took a step backwards, shaking her head. Maybe I should have let her stay at home.

  There was no answer.

  "Cool, he's not home. I think we should just leave." Pippa was being uncharacteristically nervous.

  "We know he's home," I said. "Drew told us. Remember, he knows everyone who comes and goes in this place."

  I knocked harder this time.

  Footsteps walked quickly towards the door and within a few seconds, there was a blonde man standing there with an open beer in his hand. A little early, being nine in the morning. I tried not to judge. He was wearing a button-down shirt, no tie, and trousers.

  "Callum? Callum Jones?"

  He looked up at me sharply. He looked young for thirty-two and could have passed for almost a decade younger. Boyish. He wouldn't have looked so weird standing next to Angel and, with his boy-band good looks, I wasn't surprised that she would go for him. But still, he was fourteen years older than her. I had to remember that.

  "Who are you?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  "I'm a friend of Angel Styles," I said. "I'm looking for her."

  His eyes were still narrowed. "What are you doing here? Who let you up?"

  I stood my ground. "Do you know Angel Styles?"

  He blinked slowly. "Yeah, I know Angel Styles. She's Harrison Styles’ daughter," he said, almost choking on the name of his former employer. "What about her? Has something happened to Angel?"

  I tried to read the look in his eyes. To his credit, he did look genuinely confused.

  "Have you seen Angel lately?" I asked him, still trying to read his eyes for any flicker of guilt.

  He took a moment to respond. "No. I haven't seen her for weeks."


  I glanced at Pippa. She didn't look entirely convinced either. "Where have you been the last few days?" I asked him.

  He laughed a little. "That's none of your business."

  "So you haven't been with Angel Styles?"

  His mouth dropped open a little. "With Angel Styles?" He looked offended. "She's eighteen, for crying out loud! What do you take me for, some kind of creep?"

  Well, I had to wonder. "Just answer the question."

  "I don't have to answer any of your questions. But, no, I have not been with Angel Styles. That’s just ridiculous, quite frankly."

  Pippa shot me a look. It said, let's go. But what if Angel was there in his apartment with him? "Can I take a look inside?" I asked.

  He let out a sharp laugh. "No, you can't look around my apartment!" he said in disbelief. "I don't know you. I'm going to call Drew," he said, picking up a phone that was sitting just behind the front door. He pressed a button.

  "That's okay," I said quickly. "We're going. Thank you for your time, Callum."

  He just glared at us as we scurried away. It seemed to take an eternity for the door to close.

  As we exited the lobby, I said to Drew, "Did Callum go up there alone?"

  Drew shrugged. "Can't say as I remember."

  What was this guy's game?

  I stood still and placed a hand on my hip. "I thought you knew everyone who came and went in this place," I said.

  He shrugged a little, slumped over his desk, reading a magazine. "I do."

  "So was Callum alone or not?" I snapped, growing frustrated with whatever game Drew was trying to play. He had an agenda and I had no idea what it was. I was starting to feel like I was being taken for a ride by more than one person.

  Drew stared at me blankly. "Are you going to tell me what it actually is that you want with Callum Jones?"

  I barely knew that myself. "I told you. I'm his jealous girlfriend," I said flatly.

  "And I'm the King of France," he shot back.

  "Rachael, let's just go," Pippa already had one foot out the door and she was eager for me to follow.

  I took a step closer to Drew's desk. He stopped flicking through the magazine. "He wasn't alone," Drew said. "He was with a girl."

  I felt my face redden as though Callum had actually betrayed me. I realized I'd actually believed him when he'd told me that Angel wasn't with him, that he barely knew her. Strange to feel so betrayed by someone I had only just met. So, she was up there.

  My heart was beating a little faster. "Are you sure, Drew? Are you sure that Callum came home this morning with a girl and that she went upstairs with him?"

  Drew nodded lazily. "Sure as I am of anything."

  I gulped. "And he was romantically involved with this girl?"

  He shot me another lazy look. "You can stop playing the part of the jealous girlfriend, missy." He shrugged a little again and returned to his magazine.

  "What did she look like, Drew?" I demanded. Pippa was back inside the door now, waiting breathlessly for Drew to answer.

  "Pretty," he said. "She looked young. Tall." He paused for a second. "Long blonde hair."

  My eyes grew wide and I quickly looked at Pippa, who had a worried expression. "Let's go," she whispered. She grabbed my arm and pulled me out while Drew looked up in surprise over our sudden rush to escape. "What's wrong? Don't you want to go back upstairs and confront the two of them?"

  Pippa and I just stood in the parking lot, staring at each other.

  I shook my head. "He's not with Angel. She really is missing," I said, bringing a hand to my mouth.

  "And do you think the girl that Callum is with is...?"

  I nodded. "Anna."

  "I think we'd better read over those transcripts," Pippa said, opening the passenger door.

  "I think that sounds like a very good idea."

  So Callum might have been a creep but he wasn't a kidnapper. And out there, somewhere, was a real one. One who had Angel Styles.

  I tried to push down the guilt. How much time had I wasted already, not believing Harrison?

  I had to remind myself that even though he might have been telling the truth about Angel's kidnapping, he HAD in fact sent me on a wild goose chase after Callum Jones. It wasn't Harrison's daughter Callum had been interested in. It was her best friend.

  Pippa had the pages and pages of chat transcripts open, sprawled across our kitchen table.

  There was a new text from Simona on my phone. "Are you coming in to work today at all?"

  I sighed a little. It was a Saturday and I usually tried to give myself Saturdays off. Small business owners do need a sense of structure and we do need weekends off like anybody else does at times! Usually the place was fine on a lazy Saturday morning with just Bronson and Pippa at work, but clearly Simona was struggling.

  I shot a text back at her. "Try and handle things on your own."

  I had more important things to worry about right at that moment other than Simona not being able to operate a cash register, or whatever her problem was that morning.

  I turned my attention back to Angel's chat transcripts.

  Most of it was pretty boring, but I still felt weird, like a stalker, reading through Angel's private conversations. But when I said as much to Pippa, she shot me a look. "Didn't you swipe her journal?"

  I felt my cheeks turning a little red. "How did you know about that?" I asked.

  "Saw it laying open on your desk." Her eyebrows were raised. "Were you going to tell me about that?"

  "I'm not sure," I had to admit. "I only did it because I thought Harrison was lying to us. Anyway, I felt guilty about reading that too. But she is missing, you know."

  "So you think those texts that Harrison got are real now?" Pippa asked.

  I nodded, thinking about the way Harrison hadn't known how to email a chat conversation, or operate a printer. And how he'd thought that stopping Angel from having a computer in her room was going to stop her from chatting with people. He was hardly going to be able to figure out how to send private text messages to himself from a different phone.

  We pored over the chat messages. "If this isn't Callum Jones she's talking to, then who is it?"

  Pippa shrugged. "Someone who's an Aries, I guess."

  "Well, that's one in twelve people, isn't it?" Still, I supposed it was a start.

  There was a far more troubling thought in my head, though. "Pippa, if Callum Jones doesn't have Angel Styles, then who does?" When Callum had been the main suspect, it had been almost safe and comforting. Callum was someone that Harrison Styles actually knew, just a former disgruntled employee. And the motive had been clear enough: he'd just wanted to hurt Harrison, get back at him. It was nothing particularly sinister.

  Probably why Harrison had clung so dearly to the idea that Callum had his daughter. It was better than thinking of the alternative.

  But now... I shivered. Anyone could have Angel Styles. She might be in real danger.

  We had to find her.

  Chapter 7

  Harrison's voice was thick and heavy. "They said I have twenty-four hours to pay the ransom."

  I had to believe that whoever had Angel wouldn't really hurt her; that they were only bluffing, and would wait if Harrison didn't have the money. But I could understand that Harrison Styles couldn't afford to be quite so objective. It was his daughter.

  I took a deep breath. "We're working on it, Harrison. I haven't even gone into the bakery." I paused. "It's not Callum Jones, though."

  Harrison's silence said everything.

  "Really, Harrison, he's back. Back in his apartment. And he's not with Angel." I paused. "He's with a different girl. Not Angel."

  "That doesn't mean he hasn't got her somewhere else!"

  I took a deep breath. Surely he had to realize how ridiculous that sounded. "If you want to find Angel, you need to let go of this grudge that you've got against Callum Jones," I said as gently as I could. "He's not involved with your daughter."

&nb
sp; "But...but..." Harrison trailed off.

  "That's why you fired Callum, isn't it? Because you thought Angel was seeing him?"

  "That's none of your business," he said quietly. I could understand why he didn't want to admit that. Not only was that an ethical gray-area as far as firing employees went, it would also have to mean Harrison admitting a little responsibility for what had happened. He fires Callum for seeing his daughter, and then Callum takes her? He must have been eaten alive by guilt. That was why I had to make Harrison see that he was wrong. He had to let this go.

  It wasn't his fault.

  Callum didn't have Angel.

  But Harrison sounded frantic now. "If not Callum, then what kind of maniac is sending these text messages? Who has my daughter?"

  "That's what we're trying to figure out, Harrison."

  He hung up on me. I pulled the phone away from my ear, looking at it with an open mouth. "Well, that was rude," I said to Pippa. "Does he still want our help or not?"

  "Hey, look, I found something," Pippa said. Her voice was serious.

  "In the chats?" I walked back to the kitchen table.

  "Yes," she said. "Some of these conversations mention Anna."

  I frowned and sat down next to her. "Well, Anna is her best friend. It's kind of natural that she would talk about her with the guy she was seeing."

  "Are they best friends?" Pippa asked, sounding surprised.

  "Yes," I said. I thought about the photo on Angel's bookcase. About the way they'd been at Angel's high school graduation. (I'd been there. Long story.) They were as thick as thieves.

  Pippa raised her eyebrows. "She doesn't talk about her like they are best friends. She talks about her like they are worst enemies."

  I blinked at her. "Well, that's teenage girls for you, I suppose," I said a little uncertainly. "They love each other one second then hate each other the next. Hormones."

  "Seems like more than that," Pippa commented. "It seems like something happened." She paused for a second and turned the pages over. "About two weeks ago," she said with a frown. "As far as I can tell."

  "Hang on a second," I said, running to get the journal from my desk. I still wasn't proud about having it, but I needed to check something. "Here," I said, flicking back through the pages. "Two weeks ago was when Angel made this weird comment about Anna...calling her a cow!" I exclaimed. I hadn't thought too much of it at the time.