What are they watching?
The TV screen displayed a tape of some kind of… event? Yeah, there was a banner that read ‘Prattlebark Village Children’s Hospital Halloween Celebration 2020’ across the back of the stage. It looked as if it had happened in the local school hall, and the mayor himself was on the stage, dressed up as Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.
Why on earth are they watching this?
“Why are you making me watch this, Sara?” Arthur asked.
“I think it’s good for you to see the good you’ve done,” Sara replied, softly, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You know, you can’t keep blaming yourself for what happened to Gillian. The fact is, you being at the event on the night of… well, when it happened, that was for a good cause.”
“Sara.”
“I’m serious. By helping us host the event, you gave these children hope. The fundraiser was a success. The hospital can install a new wing for—”
“That doesn’t matter!” Arthur jerked away from her, flashing hot and angry. “None of that matters. I should never have left Gillian at the house alone. If I’d just stayed with her… she wouldn’t be dead. She’d be fine, right now. She’d be… I should never have gone to the stupid event. She told me not to, but I went anyway. She told me—” He broke off and buried his head in his hands, shoulders shaking.
“Oh, Arthur, you can’t keep blaming yourself. You tried to do something good. I just—I wanted to show you that. I wanted you to see that you gave these children hope, and if you hadn’t—”
“If I had stayed home, Gillian wouldn’t have been alone. She would’ve been alive. It’s my fault.”
“Stop it.” Sara turned off the TV. “Look, I shouldn’t have shown you this. Let’s just forget about it. Do you want some tea?”
“No. No, I just want to go home. I have to pack the rest of Gillian’s things. They need to go into storage.”
Bee and I crouched down, me with my hand over my mouth.
It wasn’t the mayor. He has a rock-solid alibi.
But if it hadn’t been him, then who? And why?
11
Working on the food truck usually cheered me up. I was never more refreshed and joyful than when I had cakes to serve and people to talk to. Especially, since break-times included delicious snacks from the truck and refreshing sodas or milkshakes. But today was different.
I was stumped. Bee was in a mood.
The mayor was innocent.
Then who?
The question had drifted through my mind continuously, and there were hardly any customers to distract me.
We’d had ten in the last three hours, and each fo them had been ready to bolt when a car had driven by or someone had exited one of the stores opposite the town square. We were parked in the busiest part of town, yet the Bite-sized Bakery food truck was ringed in an almost impenetrable circle of silence.
“Who could it be?” I asked, breaking the tension.
Bee sighed and opened the back of one of the glass cases. She removed two cake slices covered in rainbow sprinkles and handed one to me.
“I thought we weren’t eating on the truck,” I said, my mouth watering. Bee’s cakes were always perfectly moist and light, the frosting soft as spun sugar, and the sprinkles flavored and crunchy.
“We need a pick me up,” Bee replied, and took a bite of her cake. She chewed, eyes narrowed as she scanned the square, the stores, and the people passing by. Occasionally, one would spot us, flinch and then hurry away.
“You’d swear we were wearing scary costumes,” I said.
“Or holding blood-stained machetes.”
“Machetes? Why machetes?”
Bee took another bite of her cake. “It’s got to be Sara,” she said, around her mouthful of cake. “Think about it—she was the one who got the mayor out of the house and to that charity event.”
“But she’s so nice.”
“Nice people can be psychopaths.” Bee gestured with her half-eaten cake. “You know, there’s nice, and then there’s too nice. And there’s ‘smiling while you murder someone in cold blood’ nice.”
I shuddered. “What if she was at the charity event too? We could get a copy of that tape and find out if she was there. Then she’d have an alibi.”
“Sure, but I don’t trust her. She wasn’t the one on stage under scrutiny. She could’ve slipped out at any point and gone home. Prepared whatever murder weapon she had on hand, then killed Gillian and dumped her body in the creek.”
Which happened to run right by the mayor’s house.
“Maybe.”
“Why maybe? She’s the most solid lead we have,” Bee said.
“What about the chef? Remember the purple stain on his collar?” I asked. “It could’ve been him.”
“I don’t know about—who on earth is that?”
A young woman dressed all in pink—tube top, short shorts, and a pair of glittering stilettos—trotted toward the food truck. A shock of familiarity passed over me. It was the pink-haired lady I’d bumped into in the bathroom at the Diggin’ It Diner.
What was her name again?
She stopped in front of the food truck and studied our selection. “Do these have carbs?” she asked.
Bee choked on her bite of cake.
“Hello,” I said.
“Yeah, hi. Do these have carbs?”
“You’re Francesca, right?” I tried for a bright smile. “We met in the bathrooms the other day.”
“It’s Franscecan,” she replied. “Francescan. What is so hard to remember about that? Like, people just don’t get it and it’s so friggin’ annoying.”
This was the girl who’d said she was so popular everybody followed her around. An idea formed in my mind.
“Now, is someone going to answer my question? Do. These. Have. Carbs?” She bumped her head left and then right with every word.
Bee’s barbed tongue was ready to strike.
“Yes, they do,” I said, before my baking buddy could snap her head off. “They have carbs. But, every girl needs a cheat day, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so. And I have been eating like… nothing for the past week. Don’t I look amazing?” She turned in a circle gesturing to herself.
“You look great.”
Bee gave me a disgusted look. She wasn’t a people person, and women who were shallow and cared about ‘not eating any carbs’ were her anti-Bee.
“Fransecan,” I said, inwardly cringing at saying that name. “You’re pretty popular, right?”
“The most popular,” she replied. “Like, in the whole town. Everybody wants to spend time with me. You’re lucky you caught me between meetings with friends.”
I blew past the fact that she was the one who’d approached the truck. “Does that mean you know a lot about the people in this town?”
“Oh, yeah, totally. I know everything. People tell me their business all the time.”
Bee’s disgust faded.
“Right, so,” I continued, “what do you think about what happened to Gillian?” I removed a slice of Sprinkle Cake from the glass case as we spoke and packaged it in a box for her.
“What do I think? Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” Francescan said, tapping long pink nails on the countertop. “I think, and, like, this is going to blow your mind, I think that someone killed her.”
Bee released a noise that sounded like a toy mouse being stepped on.
“But who could’ve done it?” I asked, conversationally.
“Gillian was a horrible person. Like, hated by everyone. The opposite of me,” Francescan said. “So anyone could’ve done it, but I’m pretty sure that it was the chef guy who worked there. I heard a rumor that he was super poor.” She pulled a face. “And that he was planning on stealing from the restaurant.”
Bee perked up. Hopefully, the information drop would make up for having to endure Franscescan’s liberal use of the word ‘like’.
“But you know what? I wouldn’t blame him
,” Fransecan continued. “If he got rid of her, he should get, like, an award or something. Gillian was evil. She spread mean rumors about everyone. I heard the mayor couldn’t even stand her, and, like, wanted a divorce and stuff.”
“We heard that too,” I said. “And she was mean to us.”
“Oh yeah? She was the meanest to me.” Francescan puffed out her chest. “She spread all these rumors about me and my boyfriend before he left for college. Like, horrible stuff.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” I handed over the box. “Here’s your cake. Free of charge.”
“That’s awesome. Thank you, a bunch. Like, I can’t believe I’ve finally found a bakery that sells carb-free cakes!” She pranced off before I could point out the mistake.
Bee blew out a breath. “Literally felt my IQ dip by a hundred points.”
“But we found out something knew.”
“Yes, that some women shouldn’t be allowed to name their children,” Bee replied.
“Tank might’ve wanted Gillian dead.”
“Or that girl has no idea what she’s talking about.” Bee untied her apron and removed it. “She could hardly tell which way she was coming or going.”
“So, what, we just ignore the lead?”
“No way. I’ve had enough of the truck for one day,” Bee said. “Let’s go find this chef and ask him a few questions. Like why he had purple lipstick on his collar.”
“And what he was doing at the restaurant the night after Gillian died.” Now, we just had to find out where the chef lived and hope that we wouldn’t get caught in the act by Detective Snodgrass.
What a way to start our stay in Prattlebark Village.
12
We parked the food truck alongside the road that led out of Prattlebark Village, the afternoon sun affording us a view of the gravel path that led into the woods nearby. Bee and I exchanged a glance, and my stomach rumbled, loudly.
“Hungry?” Bee asked. “At a time like this?”
“It’s nerves. Whenever I get nervous, I’m either hungry or sick, and forgive me for saying it, but that pathway looks like it leads to a murder house.”
“We’ve been through worse. Remember the cabin in the woods at the campgrounds near Muffin?” Bee gestured to the pathway littered with brown and golden leaves. “This is way more open than that. Look, you can even see the house.”
It was a white clapboard home, perched further back along the trail. At least, it had been white once. It was cream now, the paint chipped in places, and the windows covered in a layer of dust. No car in sight—we’d found out that McKene’s had just reopened. The chef wasn’t home, but his number and address were listed in the phonebook. Man, those were coming in handy this week.
“So, what are we looking for?” I asked. “Because we went into the restaurant without a plan, and that didn’t end well.”
“A smoking gun?” Bee suggested. “Metaphorically speaking. Ah! The lipstick. We need to take a sample of the lipstick and prove that it matches the one Gillian was wearing.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“First, we get the lipstick from the jacket. Then we get the lipstick from, uh, the mayor’s house. We’ll figure out the second part later.”
“More breaking and entering?” I asked. “We’re practically on a crime spree.”
Bee removed a box of latex gloves from her hefty handbag and offered it to me. “Just in case.”
I took a pair and put them on, shaking my head at the situation. When I’d set out for adventure a year ago, I’d figured there’d be more cupcakes than murders. Heavens, I hadn’t even factored in that there might be multiple corpses to contend during our road trip.
I wasn’t sure whether that was naivety on my part or plain bad luck.
“Let’s go.” Bee had already snapped on her gloves.
We got out of the truck and strolled toward the gravel driveway. Once again, we didn’t want to take our food truck right up to the house because it was so obvious—on the off chance that there was anyone home, it was better not to be seen.
Dappled light filtered through the canopy above, the trees arching their branches over the path. A leaf dropped here or there, rustled by the breeze. The front of the house was quiet, the two windows either side of the front door watching us like empty eyes.
The place was in desperate need of a woman’s touch. Or an interior decorator. Maybe a contractor because the porch steps groaned underfoot.
Bee tried to the rusty doorknob then checked for a spare key in the empty flowerpot under the window. I lifted the welcome mat—its ‘welcome’ long since worn off—and let out a triumphant cry.
“Got it!” I lifted a silver key.
We let ourselves into our suspect’s house. It smelled of stale cigarettes and bourbon, and I scratched my nose. The entry hall was dark, but blue light flashed from a room further back. Tank had left his TV on.
“We need to find the bedroom.” Bee removed a plastic bag and a swab from her purse.
“Wait a second,” I said. “If he’s at work right now, wouldn’t he be wearing his chef’s whites?”
“We’re banking on him having more than one set of clothing.”
“I mean, he looked pretty dirty the last time we ran into him,” I said.
“Don’t crush my hopes, Ruby. Not until we’ve actually checked out the laundry hamper. Let’s move out!”
She was so enthusiastic, I didn’t bother complaining. Besides, we might find something of use. We searched the house and located the bedroom right near the back, opposite the kitchen. It was a mess and smelled worse than the rest of the house. The attached bathroom held the jackpot.
A laundry basket overflowing with clothes.
I hit the light—there wasn’t much of it, even in the afternoon thanks to the heavy curtains in the bedroom—and suppressed the urge to plug my nose.
“I’m so glad I’m wearing gloves,” Bee said, as she rifled through the laundry basket. “Ah-ha! We’re in luck.” She extracted a piece of clothing. The white—or not-so-white—chef’s jacket Tank had been wearing the day before, complete with the purple stain on the lapel. “Hold this. I need to take the sample.”
I took the chef’s jacket from her and held it out while Bee got the swab out of her handbag. It was one that came with a plastic tube.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“Drug store. You’d be surprised what you can buy if you know what to ask for. Hold it still, please.” Bee examined the stain closely, frowning, and slowly dragged the tip of the swab over it. “It’s not lifting. It’s gone kind of… hard.”
“Hard?” That didn’t sound like lipstick.
“Let me smell it.”
“Ew, what?”
Bee stuck the swab back in the handbag then took the chef’s jacket from me. She sniffed the stain while I pulled a face. “Jelly.”
“Huh?”
“It’s grape jelly. Like from a donut? It’s not lipstick, it’s grape jelly.”
“Shoot. Now, what do we—” A door slammed down the hall, and Bee and I went into wide-eyed shock. She threw the chef’s jacket at me, I threw it back at her, and she dumped it in the laundry basket. We stepped left, right, left at the same time, both panicking about which way to run. The bathroom didn’t have any windows.
But we were on the first floor this time.
I ran for the bedroom window, slipped behind the heavy curtain, and nearly sneezed at the cloud of dust rising from my disturbing it. Bee joined me. We heaved the window open together, tumbled out into the weeds in the garden, and scrambled through the dirt.
We were off, sprinting for the gravel pathway. A beat-up Ford sat out front. I half-expected the chef to erupt from the house and chase after us, but he didn’t appear.
Inside the food truck, Bee and I caught our breaths. I burst out laughing and Bee threw me an exhilarated grin.
“All part of being an investigator,” she said. “It’s just a pity we d
idn’t find anything.”
13
“Take a look at this,” Bee said, foisting a newspaper on me.
I nearly dropped my burger but managed to return it to its Styrofoam box before I lost the pickles and tomatoes. “What is it?”
“A magic wand,” Bee replied.
“Oof, moody.”
“I can’t help it.” Bee flopped onto the edge of her bed. We’d decided to take up residence in her room for the evening and were avoiding the beady eyes of the owner of the Oaken Branch Guesthouse. “We’ve got almost nothing.”
“We still have the wedding ring,” I said, opening the newspaper.
“Front page.”
I folded the newspaper again and inhaled sharply.
New Information Released in Ongoing Investigation of Mayor’s Wife’s Death
The impact of Gillian McKene’s death has been felt by many this week. Prattlebark Village, usually so quiet and peaceful, has been shaken to its bedrock by her murder. And while many feared the perpetrator may never be caught, inside information leaked from the police department indicates the team in charge of hunting down Gillian’s killer are close to solving the mystery.
According to anonymous sources, Gillian’s death was caused by blunt force trauma to the back of the head, and preliminary findings indicate that she may not have been killed at the spot where she was found.
The PBPD has yet to give comment on the leak but has confirmed that residents of the town should practice safety, move in groups, and report anything suspicious.
“Blunt force trauma,” I muttered. “That’s horrible.”
“Back of the head. So, whoever did it sneaked up on her. They didn’t want to give her the opportunity to identify them in case she survived.”
“But who? And why?” I set the newspaper aside and eyed my burger. I’d been hungry before the whole ‘blunt force trauma’ thing. Bee, as always undeterred by violence, murder and mystery, tucked into her cheese fries with gusto.
“That’s what we need to figure out,” she said, between chews. “We’ve got three main suspects. The husband, the possible mistress, and the disgruntled employee.”
Murder With Sprinkles: A Bite-sized Bakery Cozy Mystery Book 11 Page 5
