Gluten for Punishment

by Nancy J. Parra

  Speaking of which, a crowd had formed around the cops outside my bakery. Rocky continued to eat up the photo opportunity and snapped shots right and left. Grandma Ruth was front and center in her scooter. Her brown fedora smashed down wisps of orange-and-white hair. She took careful notes of the action.

  “Hey,” I said to Candy, “looks like you have competition.” I pointed to Grandma, who was currently grilling a young kid in a cop uniform.

  “She may have the outside scoop,” Candy winked, “but I have the insider info. Right?”

  I did a quick head count of the crowd. There must be twenty people out there. It would be great if I could get them in here to buy baked goods or a cup of coffee at the least. I was certain the police wouldn’t mind. In a small town everyone knew everyone. It might even be better to have a wall between the crowd and their crime scene. I grabbed my cell phone off the counter and speed-dialed Grandma.

  “Hey, kiddo, I’m kind of busy here,” Grandma Ruth said.

  “I know, I can see. Listen, could you do me a favor?”

  “Will it interfere with my story?”

  “I don’t think it will,” I said.

  “Then name it.”

  “Could you mention to the crowd of lookie-loos that the view is better from inside the bakery? It’s also warmer in here and there’s coffee and baked goods?”

  “Oh, you’re inside?” Grandma scanned the windows. I waved when she spotted me. “Is that Candy with you?”

  “Yes, Candy got here when the police did.”

  Candy gave Grandma a thumbs-up.

  “Darn it,” Grandma muttered. “Okay. How do you plan on getting these folks inside?”

  “Tell them to come around back. I’ll have the door open.”

  “Will do, kiddo.” Grandma hung up and used her megaphone voice to announce the bakery was open for anyone who wanted coffee and a better view. All they had to do was go around to the back entrance.

  People surged toward the alley. I felt success bloom in my heart. “Candy can you watch the front for me while I open the back door?”

  “Sure.” Candy settled in on the stool behind the counter. I rushed to the back and opened the door, letting everyone in.

  By the time Officer Emry got done with John, the bakery was standing room only. I sold at least twenty coffees and several muffins and pastries.

  “You shouldn’t have let these people in,” Officer Emry chided while I boxed up a baker’s dozen apple cinnamon turnovers for John. “I’ve got no place quiet to question the remaining witnesses.”

  “This is a business,” I replied. “My bills don’t go away because you have to investigate a crime scene.”

  “Looks like my crime scene has brought you some good business. Sounds like motive to me.”

  I rolled my eyes for the second time that morning and handed John his change. “Thanks, John. Tell Sarah hi for me. The door to the back is through here.” John made his way through the kitchen. I turned my attention back to Officer Emry, who currently had narrowed eyes.

  “I’m sorry. Listen, you can take the nurses into my office. It’s the small alcove next to the back door.” I showed him the way. “Will this do?” I turned on the light of what used to be a utility closet but now held a tiny desk, two chairs, and my computer.

  “Fine. But don’t say anything about this morning until I talk to you,” Officer Emry said. “Or I’ll have to cite you for obstructing justice.”

  “No problem.” I closed the door on him and the first nurse, Judy, and smiled as Grandma Ruth came through the back door on her scooter.

  “How’s the coffee?” she asked as she scooted through the kitchen. “It’s cold out there, and the cops are slow as molasses in January.”

  “The coffee’s fresh, Grandma, come on in. Good luck getting a seat by the window.”

  “No worries.” Grandma grinned. “One of the advantages of being old is you can push your way through the crowd. If that doesn’t work, I’ll whack them with my cane.” She pulled the cane out of the back of the scooter and waved it.

  It was certainly going to be an interesting day.

  CHAPTER 7

  It seems death can be profitable.

  I had nearly sold out by the time they hauled the body off to the medical examiner’s office. But I had to close down when Officer Emry wanted to question me. Candy had left to file her story, muttering how circulation was going to soar and that she deserved a raise. Grandma had left to practice for her next Scrabble match and now there was no one to watch the front.

  Luckily, most people lost interest the moment the body was put in the black bag and onto a gurney. Morbid, I know, but even I tried to get a look at the guy’s face. The cops covered it so only they knew what he looked like and who he was.

  “All right, Ms. Holmes.” Officer Emry cleared his throat. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  I sat in my office chair, happy to be off my feet for a moment. Then my stomach started to clench. Funny, but you wouldn’t think a person could be nervous if they innocently spotted a dead body, but I was. “What beginning?” I asked. “Like I was born at Oiltop Mercy or when I opened my shop door and noticed a drunk guy sleeping it off in the horse trough?”

  From his expression, Officer Emry was not amused. “Let’s begin with what time you came to work this morning?”

  “I got to work at four. I take Central and pull into the back-alley parking.” Interestingly enough, for the first time, I really noticed my office was painted closet white and with no windows. It looked a bit stark, and it smelled like a combination of pine cleaner and printer toner.

  “You didn’t see anything?” He wrote something in his notebook.

  “I didn’t see anything.” I craned my neck to see if I could read his writing upside down. He tipped the notebook up and raised an eyebrow at me, and I continued. “I’m sure you know the streets are pretty much empty at four in the morning. You do patrol at that time, right?”

  “I’ve been known to take that shift.” His protruding Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Then what happened?”

  “I parked in the lot and didn’t hear anything. I mean, I’m a girl alone at four in the morning, I listen.”

  “You opened the back door . . .”

  “I unlocked the back, turned on the kitchen lights and locked the door behind me. The rest was the usual stuff.”

  “Like what, exactly?”

  I sighed. The metal office chair was not as comfortable as I remember. Maybe it was my nerves getting to me or maybe I didn’t want everyone in town to know how boring my life was. “I pulled out the dough I made the night before to get it warmed up. Then I came in here, turned on my computer, and did about thirty minutes of paperwork. Wait, I went out and made some coffee after I turned on my computer. Then I came back and did paperwork and checked my online orders.”

  “Let me see if I have this straight. You got here around four and were in your office until four-thirty.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “I worked in the kitchen from four-thirty until six. There’s actually a schedule hanging up on the kitchen wall if you want to look at it.”

  “A schedule?”

  “Sure, I plan out what I’m making the night before based on Internet orders and sales. Sometimes it changes if I get a rush online order but not this morning.”

  “Sounds exceedingly organized.”

  I narrowed my eyes and pursed my lips. Was he suspicious of my lists? Geez. “I not only bake but run the front. I need to know exactly how much time I can devote to each recipe.”

  “And while you were back here, you didn’t hear a thing . . .”

  I sent him a quick, closed-mouth smile. “I like to blast my music. It keeps me awake and from worrying about being alone.”

  “You Play loud music?”

  “It’s not like I’m bothering the neighbors.”

  “I see.” He wrote more things in his notepad. I tried not to roll my eyes. I hate it when people judge
me. In a small town, everyone judges you. It was one of the reasons I had left. Right now I was having second thoughts about coming back.

  He brought his gaze up. “Then what happened?”

  “I filled the display case around five-thirty. Made fresh coffee around six forty-five, and, at seven, I opened the shades, turned the sign around, and unlocked the front door. That’s when I noticed the guy in the horse trough.”

  “And all that time you heard nothing.”

  I scrunched my forehead and frowned. “Wait, no, I did hear something. It had to have been around five-thirty because I went out to get the display trays. I heard like a thump or something.”

  “A thump?” He sat up straighter.

  “I don’t know . . . it was like something hit the store window. I looked out but didn’t see anything. It was pretty dark. The streetlamps don’t exactly shine bright.”

  “Did you call 911?”

  My eyes widened for a second and I shrugged. “Why? It was only a thud. It certainly didn’t sound like a gun going off or a car backfiring. It could have been anything.”

  “What did you think it was?”

  “I don’t know, that a bird or something hit the front window. Like I said, I looked out and didn’t see anything. I went back to work.”

  “Did you hear anything else?”

  “Nothing. Seriously, I opened the front door and spotted the guy in the trough at seven. I might have said something like, ‘Hey, get off the sculpture.’ But he didn’t move. Then I noticed the paint can.”

  “The paint can?”

  “Yes, there was a can of spray paint on the ground next to the guy’s hand. That’s when I noticed the paint on the front of my store.”

  “How did that make you feel?” He looked down his long, thin nose at me.

  “What are you, a therapist?”

  “Answer the question.”

  It was hard not to get snarky. Seriously, what did it matter how I felt? “I guess I was mad someone would do that to my storefront.” He wrote my words down. My nerves picked up. Did he think I had killed the guy over spray paint? Crazy, I lived in Chicago. People tag stuff all the time. It’s expensive to clean up, but you don’t kill people over it.

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I called 911 and reported the drunk guy with the spray can.” I took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Sarah kept me on the line until you showed up.”

  “Did you touch the DB?”

  I sat up straight. “What’s a DB?”

  Officer Emry frowned. “The dead body . . .” He waved his hand dismissing my ignorance. “Did you touch it or anything near it?”

  “No and no. I wasn’t about to confront a drunk all by myself. Like I said, as soon as I saw the spray can I took a step back and called 911.”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t know he was dead?” Officer Emry’s eyes gleamed. I bet he was having fun with this.

  “How could I know? This is Oiltop; people don’t die on Main Street.”

  “Did you identify the body?”

  A queasy feeling washed over me. There had been an actual dead person in front of my store—as in smelly, squishy, creepy dead. “No, I didn’t see his face. The hat covered his face. You saw that. In fact, I thought he had his head turned to the side, like someone who sleeps on his stomach. Seriously, I figured he was a drunk sleeping off his bender.”

  Officer Emry stood and hitched up his gun belt. “We’ll need you to come down to the station and let us take your fingerprints. It’s procedure.”

  I rested my elbow on my desk and the side of my face in my hand and closed my eyes. “Candy told me.”

  “When can we expect you?” His tone was pushy—real pushy and grating on my last nerve.

  “When my help gets here, after school.” His pause and narrow-eyed stare caused me to be more precise. “I’ll be there at 3:30 P.M.” I stood, pushed in my chair, and glanced at my watch. It was nearly noon. “When will they take down the crime scene tape?”

  “In a day or two.”

  Really? They were going to block off the entrance to my bakery for a day or two? “Why so long?”

  Officer Emry stepped out into the kitchen. It smelled better here, like rising yeast dough and sugar. “Depending on what the county ME finds, we may need to come back and look for more evidence.”

  “Like what kind of evidence?” I went over to the sink and washed my hands.

  “Bullets and the like.”

  “Bullets?” I leaned back against the deep stainless steel and felt the blood rush from my head. “Are you telling me the guy was shot outside my bakery?” Thoughts of bullets flying through the windows and walls had me shaking. I’d heard of plenty of innocent people shot in the safety of their own living rooms. My gaze went to the front wall. The storefront was brick, but there was no way of telling if it was decorative or real.

  “I can’t say if the victim was shot or not.” Officer Emry shrugged. “But it’s a possibility.”

  “A possibility? There was a possibility I could have been killed by a stray bullet in my own shop in Nowhere, Kansas?” I grabbed a work stool and sat down, hoping the action of drying my hands on a clean white towel would distract from my distress. I guess it worked because Officer Emry didn’t seem to notice.

  “Is there anyone who can verify you were inside the bakery all morning?”

  My eyes widened. “Um, no. I told you, I work alone.” Just me and Bon Jovi. “Why does it matter if I work alone or not?”

  “The way I see it, Ms. Holmes, you’d better hope you don’t have a motive, because your alibi is a bit thin.”

  My right eye started to twitch as Officer Emry jangled his way toward the front door of the bakery.

  “You’d better lock this behind me,” he said. “If anyone comes through the taped off area and goes through this door we might have to charge you with aidin’ and abettin’ the destruction of a crime scene.”

  I got up and locked the door behind him. I almost stuck out my tongue at the skinny runt of a man, but then I realized my mama was probably looking down at me from heaven and would disapprove. I leaned my back against the glass door and stared at my empty bakery. I wasn’t going to ask if the day could get any worse. That would be asking for trouble, now wouldn’t it?

  CHAPTER 8

  "Oh, my God, are you all right?” Tasha’s eyes were wide as she rushed into the back of the store. It was close to six P.M. and I hadn’t had a new customer since I came back from the police station. “I got here as soon as I could. Kip had two doctor’s appointments today.”

  I kneaded dough. It was great to have something to slap around. It had taken me fifteen minutes of hard scrubbing to get the ink off my fingertips. “You know, I don’t know.” I rolled the yeasty dough and pushed in with all my strength, turned, rolled, pushed. “A man died outside my door.” I waved toward the front of the store. “The front door is locked because it’s taped off with crime scene tape and I have exactly no customers coming in through the back. Even though I posted a big sign in the window announcing I was open.”

  Tasha hugged me tight. I couldn’t hug her back because my hands were covered in sweet rice flour. “You must have been very scared.”

  My shoulder muscles relaxed. Here was someone who cared about me and what I had gone through. Tears sprang to my eyes and I fought them back. “It’s silly to feel sorry for myself.” I sniffed. “I mean, the poor man died. His family will be devastated. What if he left little kids behind?”

  Tasha stepped back, straightened her arms while keeping her hands on my upper arms and studied me. “Of course you get to feel sorry for yourself. First the flour vandalism the other day and now this.” She shook her head. Today she wore a long sleeved tee shirt, stylish jeans, and a smart tweed jacket. Her hair was pulled back but looked like a movie star’s hair, not tumbled about in a messy ponytail like mine. “I saw the paint on the front of the building. The sight of it scared the tar out of me. He vandalized
you while you were alone in the building.”

  I slumped down onto a nearby kitchen stool. “You make it sound as if he might have hurt me.”

  Her generous mouth thinned. “He could have. Then I would have had to kill him myself.”

  I blinked back the tears. I guess I was more emotional than I thought. Or maybe I was tired. I’d used today’s free time to tear apart and clean my kitchen. I was currently on my fourth batch of backup dough. “Officer Emry told me my alibi was weak and I’d better hope the ME declared this an accident.”

  “What?” Tasha was aghast. “What an idiot. Don’t let him get to you. He’s a bumbling fool. Reminds me of Barney Fife from the old Andy Griffith Show. Don’t you think?” She pulled another stool around and sat down, then reached out to rub my arm. “Now, really, how are you doing?”

  “The kitchen is clean.” I waved my hand at the spotless, sparkling tiles and countertops. Even the sink shone to within an inch of its life. Tasha knew me long enough to know I worked when I was upset.

  “Darn it, I tried to get here sooner.” She frowned at me. “How many extra batches of cookies have you made?”

  “Not too many.” I shrugged. “I had to go down to the police station and get my fingerprints taken.” It had been a bit humiliating. Half the guys at the station had gone to school with me. I had no idea what they were thinking, but I’d felt their gaze on my back when I walked through the building.

  “Why on Earth . . .” Tasha’s blue eyes flashed.

  “They said it was to rule me out.” I stared at my fingers.

  “That’s it. Come on.” She grabbed my arm and stood.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to buy you dinner and a drink. A really big drink.” She tugged me toward the door.