Olaya looked at me and smiled. “You have come a long way, Ivy.”
Wasn’t that the truth. When I’d first met her, I’d been standing outside Yeast of Eden not knowing my future lay just inside. I’d been more than a little lost. Olaya, as they say, read me like an open book. She’d brought me into her kitchen, and I’d been by her side ever since. She’d introduced me to the tradition of long-rise bread baking; to the joy of digging my hands into a bowl of dough and kneading out the tension in my both my head and body; to the magic of bread.
I was forever changed.
“You’ve taught me well,” I said.
She handed me a loaf of lemon poppyseed bread. “For you,” she said. “Go home. It will all sort itself out.”
I hoped she was right.
Chapter 19
The blacktop at Chavez Elementary was pulsing with spring energy. Tables ran along the perimeter, at least half swathed with pastel tablecloths and ribbon. One section was devoted to food, with some of the tables piled high with cupcakes, brownie bites, and the like. Another section was for the town’s crafty people. Scented candles, fabric face masks, wooden handmade toys, and an array of other goods were being sold. The district had rented booth space as a way to fund the event, and the people of Santa Sofia had stepped up. Olaya had paid for the highest level of sponsorship, which meant the bread shop had a primo placement. There was not an empty spot by the time Maggie, who was close to graduating from Santa Sofia High School and worked most afternoons—and whenever else Olaya needed her—showed up.
Maggie brushed a strand of her dark hair from her face. She tightened her ponytail, then stood, hands on hips, waiting for me to direct her. We had an hour before the Spring Fling officially began, but moms, dads, and plenty of kids were already milling around.
Felix had come by earlier and set up the large rectangular table for our goods, but I’d sent him home. He’d been up since well before dawn. The rest of the day was in my charge. I’d draped the table with a pale green cloth and unwound a roll of wide burlap ribbon. Once the platters and stands of breads were set up, I’d arrange it artfully around the breads, placing a few decorative Easter eggs and Olaya’s requisite skull cookies as the finishing touches.
“I unloaded most of the stuff from the van,” I said to Maggie. “We just need to unpack it and set it all up.”
“Gotcha.” Maggie looked at me and did a double take. “Your hair.”
I had a hairband on my wrist to pull it into a topknot, but I’d been waiting till the last minute. Even after being slept on the night before, my hair still looked pretty good after Gretchen’s cut and style. “Oh yeah. I got it done yesterday. Trimmed.”
“More than that,” Maggie said. “It looks so good.” She stretched her hand out toward me like she wanted to touch it but dropped it again. “It looks so soft. Perfect curls. Who did it?”
Instinctively, I patted my ringlets. “Gretchen at Soho Salon.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s in the historic district near—”
“Did you say Gretchen did your hair?”
Maggie and I turned to see a smiling woman standing just behind us. She was tall—close to six feet, I’d venture—and had short naturally graying hair in a sassy, flippy style. She was fit—I assumed from the outdoor exercise that had given her her bronze color. “Yes. At Soho.”
“Pregnant? Cute as a button?”
“That’s her.”
She clapped her hands together. “I love her! She gets me. Gives me the short cut I want without making me look masculine.”
“I need to try this Gretchen,” Maggie said. “Sounds like my mom’ll love her.”
“Your mom’ll love who?”
Once again we turned, this time to see Taehyun Chu, Maggie’s boyfriend, walk up. He was a relatively new cameraman for a local TV station and the two had met when Yeast of Eden had been featured on a new food-centric show. Tae had dark hair, which he parted and swept to one side. His long sideburns and dark clothing made him look much older than he actually was. I’d placed him at twenty-five when I’d first met him, but he was only twenty. Still a few years older than I would have liked for Maggie, but Tae was a nice young man who treated her well.
Maggie lit up when she saw Tae, slipping her arm through his. “Ivy’s hairdresser.” She went up onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Hi, babe.”
A faint blush tinted Tae’s cheeks. If it was possible, it made him look even more handsome. He whispered something in her ear, and she giggled.
I reached into the bin of the knickknacks I’d brought and fished out the Yeast of Eden sign. It was the final touch to finish decorating the table. I held out one end of the banner to Maggie, but the very tall gray-haired woman who was Gretchen the hairdresser’s biggest fan stepped up and took the other end, leaving Maggie to canoodle with Tae.
“How long have you been going to Gretchen?” I asked as we attached the banner to the front of the table. The Yeast of Eden logo was in the center of the banner. Artistic line drawings of a variety of breads were on either side of the logo.
“Oh, gosh, two and a half years, I guess?”
“So you must have crossed paths with a lot of her other clients,” I said. Possibly Nessa Renchrik?
“Sure. Gretchen’s a master at scheduling. Efficient with her time. She’ll wash and style one client while someone else’s color is processing.”
I made a deliberate show of pulling out the framed photograph of Nessa Renchrik that I’d printed off the Internet. It wasn’t the best quality, but it would serve its purpose. I found a spot on one end of the table and propped it up.
The woman, whose name I still did not know, watched me, then zeroed in on the picture. “What’s that about?”
“Do you know her?”
“Oh yeah. She was one of Gretchen’s clients. I saw her last week at the salon. I was coming in as she was leaving. You’d think she’d just run a marathon.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Her face was beet red. And Gretchen was worked up. She had to take a mini break before she did my hair. That is not like her.”
A red flag shot up. “What day was that?”
“Friday,” she said.
I pinched my eyes shut for a second. Friday. Nessa Renchrik had been to see Gretchen on Friday. Gretchen hadn’t said a word.
“Why do you have her picture there?” the woman asked instead of answering my question.
I turned to look at it, thinking again how Nessa had had a knack for making more enemies than friends. “We’re doing a little memorial for her today.”
She started to respond but stopped when someone called, “Carol. There you are!” Another tall gray-haired woman with a short cut came up beside the woman who I now knew was Carol. The resemblance between them, from the bumps in their noses to the bows of their top lips to their height and build, was uncanny. Sisters. Maybe even twins.
Carol pointed to the photo of Nessa Renchrik. The sister looked at it, then met Carol’s eyes in some sort of silent communiqué with raised eyebrows and dipped chins.
“There’s going to be a memorial for her,” Carol said.
The sister scoffed, derision dripping from her face. “Why?”
Carol turned to me, her eyebrows lifted now in a question.
I looked from one to the other. “We just thought it would be a nice thing to do for her kids.”
Carol spoke, the same disdain as on her sister’s face coloring her tone. “She didn’t care about our kids. I don’t even think she liked her own, so why should we care about them?”
Wow. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. Turns out I didn’t have to, because Carol’s sister flashed her a warning look.
Carol gave a nonchalant shrug. “Debbie has a little more compassion than I do.”
So now I had the names of both sisters. What I didn’t have was why they had so much contempt for the dead school board president. I looked at Carol. “
Evil?”
“Through and through,” she said. “She claimed to be about equity and support for all kids? No. Just no.”
“What do you mean she didn’t like her own kids?”
“The boy, at least.”
I closed my eyes and waggled my head like I was clearing out the dust. “I don’t understand.”
Carol looked down at me from her six-foot height. “I heard it from Gretchen. You know, hairdressers are like bartenders. They get all the good gossip.”
I remembered what Gretchen had said about there being no secrets in a hair salon.
“She never wanted another kid. Then came the boy. What’s his name?”
“Tate,” I said.
“Right. Well, according to what I’ve heard, she got pregnant, but of course, being an aspiring politician, she didn’t have any option but to keep the unwanted baby.”
Debbie shook her head. “Poor kid.”
I couldn’t take what these women were saying as one hundred percent truth, but I wanted to flesh out more gossip. I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial level. “I heard that Tate might not be her husband’s.”
“Of course he’s not. Have you seen him? That kid is Hispanic.”
My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t gotten a close enough look at Tate, but these women clearly had.
“Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, right?” Debbie said, bringing me back. “The woman never supported equity. Never cared about things being equal for all the kids in the district. I mean, a surfing club? How elitist is that, especially when this school doesn’t have some of the basic technology the other schools have.”
“She totally ignored Chavez,” Carol added. “I haven’t seen her here in forever.”
Something clicked into place. “Are you a teacher here?”
“Fifth grade going on twenty-five years now,” she said. She turned to her sister. “Debbie works at Richardson Elementary. Big difference in support, right?”
“Oh yeah. Nessa was at my school once a week like clockwork—”
“And here at Chavez maybe once a year. Maybe.”
I read between the lines. Chavez didn’t have the right kind of kids.
“As long as the kids that looked like her”—Carol wagged her finger between us—“like all of us, succeeded? That’s all she cared about. Forget about all the others.”
“But you said her son—”
“People get off on having something they shouldn’t.”
Debbie nodded. “I saw her once with a guy. God, so long ago, but I remember his face. She was so mad. I thought her head might explode, and he kept trying to calm her down. I could hear him. He was breaking up with her, and it was like she couldn’t believe he’d have the gall, you know? Like she was so much better than him, so how could he be the one dumping her?”
“When was this?” I asked after an exhalation.
Debbie looked up. Her lips moved and I knew she was counting back the years in her head. “Ten or eleven years ago?”
I swallowed down the nerves that flooded my system. Had it been Miguel Debbie had seen with Nessa? He had said he’d last seen Nessa—or Vanessa—when they’d gone to a bookstore. He hadn’t said they’d fought, though. Had he told me the truth? My mind went to Captain York and his focus on Miguel. He’d told me, in no uncertain terms, that Miguel was one of his primary suspects and that I should be cautious. My head fogged and suddenly I realized why he was so convinced Miguel was involved in Nessa Renchrik’s death. I did the math. Ten or eleven years ago Miguel had dated Nessa. Tate was around ten.
Was it possible . . . ?
Could Tate Renchrik be Miguel’s son?
* * *
My head felt hot and icy cold at the same time. I was going through the motions, but my mind was not on the booth at the Spring Fling. Olaya showed up, took one look at me, and pulled me aside. “What happened?”
If something had happened, it had been ten or eleven years ago, between Miguel and Nessa. But had it? Did Miguel have a son? And if he did, did he know about it? I couldn’t even say it aloud to Olaya, as if uttering the words would somehow make them a more real possibility.
“Nothing. I’m fine,” I said.
She looked at me with wide eyes and skepticism. “You forget, Ivy, that I can see into your heart. I know you, and something is wrong.”
I released the breath I’d been holding. She could, and she did. But that didn’t make me ready to share. “I’ll be fine.”
* * *
The Spring Fling had officially begun. Groups of kids and parents had started arriving fifteen minutes before the official start time. Now it was noon and the place was buzzing. Olaya and I went back behind the Yeast of Eden table to help Maggie. There was already a line of people wanting to buy a hot cross bun, a triangle of star bread, or a slice of the van Dough focaccias. Carol and Debbie had ambled away to check out other booths. “We’ll be back at one,” Carol had said.
I’d raised one eyebrow at her in an unspoken question. Why would she come back if she despised Nessa Renchrik so much?
“Curiosity,” she’d said.
Maggie and Olaya handled the sales at the table, using gloved hands and bakery sheets to pluck the bread from the table and placing the items in small brown bakery bags. They reminded people to take one of the leaflets or Yeast of Eden stickers I’d set out on the table. Marketing the bread shop had become one of my tasks. I’d spent a month photographing all the different breads, the interior of the bread shop, and the exterior with its awnings and cute bistro tables, editing the photos, and putting it all together into a trifold brochure telling the story of the bread shop. We brought the marketing materials to every special event featuring Yeast of Eden’s bread.
It wasn’t that the bread shop needed the publicity. People already came from far and wide to experience the magic of Olaya’s bread. It could cure a broken heart, breathe confidence into a person, or calm anxiety. It had been known to be a love potion, bring serenity, and whisk away remnants of grief. Olaya infused the bread she baked with herbs, the combinations and whatever magic she had inside of her fulfilling needs people didn’t even know they had. Her reputation spanned California’s coast, from San Diego to San Francisco, and beyond. What I’d included on the brochure and website simply told Olaya’s story, focusing on her passion from a young age for traditional bread baking using the best possible ingredients and baking with love.
Once a person had Olaya’s bread, nothing else would do.
As the bread on the table was depleted, I replenished it, piling up more star bread triangles, more hot cross buns. More slices of van Dough focaccias.
“Oh my gosh, look, Nick!” A woman pointed to the focaccia we’d made to look like van Gogh’s Starry Night. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open. “I need to buy that.” She already had her wallet in hand and was handing over a pile of bills before Olaya had even told her the price, but their conversation faded away as I looked through the crowd. It was 12:55. The impromptu memorial I’d planned for Nessa Renchrik was five minutes away.
The blacktop teemed with people. Kids participated in a cakewalk. They skipped in a circle as music played, stopping when the song cut off. A man—a parent? A volunteer? —pulled a number from a plastic bowl he held and called out the number. A boy of about eight let out a whoop. He pumped his fist in the air and spun around, then did a victory dance by standing with his legs about two feet apart and bending his knees together, then out, together, then out. This kid was already hyped. He didn’t need the sugar from whatever cake he’d won, but I knew he’d enjoy every last bite of it.
A small crowd had gathered around the Yeast of Eden booth. They’d come for the memorial, attendance bolstered, I was sure, by my posting about it on social media. They were separate from the people lined up to buy bread. I glanced at Olaya, who gave me a nod.
I pulled off the purple nitrile gloves I’d been wearing, tossed them into the makeshift garbage box just under the table
, and stepped out from behind the bread table. I cleared my throat and held one arm up to gather everyone’s attention. “Thank you for coming,” I said. “I didn’t know Nessa Renchrik, but”—I gestured wide with my arm, encompassing Olaya, Maggie, and the table piled high with bread—“we wanted to do something to honor her for her service to the school district.”
A low murmur spread through the crowd. I took a deep breath and surveyed them. Cliff Renchrik stood in the back. So Rachel had gotten him to come. Candace Coffey stood next to him. On the other side of the crowd were Margaret Jenkins-Roe, Jerry Zenmark, and Katherine Candelli. Joseph Patrick and Lulu Sanchez-Patrick stood side by side but hung toward the back of the crowd. Carol and Debbie had been true to their word. They’d come back, each with a caramel apple in hand. Next to them was . . . Gretchen. I blinked, surprised to see her here.
My gaze traveled to Terry Masaki. He held Hana in one arm and Mei held on to his other. Next to them was Dr. Sharma. She wore a sleeveless cream dress and beige shoes. It wasn’t too professional and, at the same time, wasn’t too casual. Next to her was the principal of Chavez Elementary, Mr. Davies, and the school’s receptionist, Misty Jackson. People had come out in droves, but were they here to pay their respects to Nessa, or were they looky-loos, here because they couldn’t tear their eyes away from the drama?
Then I saw the kids. Rachel and Tate worked their way through the gathering of people until they were in front, looking at me with rapt attention. Rachel had a scarf wound around her neck, wore a gauzy skirt, and had a protective hand on her brother’s shoulder. They had each other, which was nice to see.
“I spent some time last night writing down all the things Nessa did for the students and district during her time on the school board.” It was true, I’d spent two hours hunting down information via Google and the Santa Sofia Daily website. The truth was, it had taken so long because her accomplishments were hard to find. It turns out there weren’t all that many. She’d been one of those politicians who had worked their way into their positions without a lot to show for it. Somehow, she’d convinced her constituents that she was working hard for them.
Death Gone A-Rye Page 17
