Death of a Wedding Cake Baker
Page 20
“No,” AJ mumbled. “I had no idea about the wedding. I just thought he was cheating on my mother . . .”
“What about Nancy Malone? Did you know about her?”
AJ shifted in his seat, turning his body around to face Hayley, a genuinely confused look on his face. “Who?”
“She lives in the Boston area. And she’s also married to Sonny.”
“Sonny’s a—?”
“‘Polygamist’ is the official term.”
AJ’s mouth dropped open. It wasn’t an act. He was completely blindsided about the news of Sonny’s other wife.
“Liddy was going to be wife number three,” Hayley said quietly. “As far as we know. There could be more.”
AJ tried to speak, but no words came out.
He just gripped the gun tighter and shook his head, a pained expression on his face.
They drove in silence a few more minutes, cresting over a hill just past an entrance to Acadia National Park and then descending the other side. The car zipped around the last bend before reaching the outskirts of town.
AJ finally broke the silence. “My mother’s had a rough life. My father abandoned us when I was around five. He emptied the bank account and just disappeared. We struggled for a long time, my mother working double shifts at the chemical lab just to put enough food on the table for the two of us. And then Sonny came along, a handsome, slick, smooth-talking fancy lawyer with a seductive smile and a six-figure income. He was like a miracle. A gift from God. My mother fell for him instantly, and I guess, in a way, I did too. I didn’t have much of a male role model around when I was a kid, and suddenly this successful, big-time lawyer was marrying my mom and paying attention to me, attending all my ball games, buying me a bike . . .”
Hayley glanced over to see AJ nodding wistfully, remembering.
“The guy was like a superhero to me. He just swooped in and saved us. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d get to go to college, and then there was Sonny, offering to pay my tuition. He made me and Mom feel so safe and so happy . . . at least for a while . . .”
“And then you found out about Liddy . . .”
“Completely by accident. I was dating a girl at college, Chelsea, whose parents were buying a summer home up here in Bar Harbor, and they were using Liddy as their Realtor. Chelsea came here with her parents about a month ago to look at a few listings, and Liddy couldn’t stop talking about her engagement to a lawyer named Sonny Lipton. I told Chelsea there was no way it could be the same guy, but after checking him out, I discovered the awful truth.”
“Did you tell your mother?”
“God, no! It would’ve killed her. She had been so lonely and depressed after my dad left that I couldn’t bear the thought of her going through that again if Sonny did the same thing to her and bolted to Maine for another woman.”
“So you figured if you got Liddy out of the way, maybe you could convince Sonny to come home to Rhode Island and be a family again,” Hayley said, eyes fixed on the road ahead of them.
But then she peeked over at AJ, who was wiping a tear away from his cheek with the back of the same hand holding the gun.
Hayley worried he might accidentally pull the trigger and blow her face off, and she instinctively pressed her head against the headrest to get out of the line of fire.
The car came to a stop sign, and Hayley hit the brakes. At this point, they could go in three different directions.
“Which way?” Hayley asked.
“Keep going straight. Down Mount Desert Street.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” he said ominously.
Hayley continued driving.
Her phone buzzed again.
It was Sabrina, still back at Liddy’s house, confused and desperate, and probably still clutching Liddy’s wedding veil in her clenched fist.
AJ signaled Hayley to ignore the call.
“So what was your plan, AJ? How were you going to get rid of Liddy?”
“I hitchhiked up to Bar Harbor to get a summer job that would help pay for college expenses in the fall. It wasn’t a lie. I did need the money. It was a lucky coincidence Mona was hiring at her lobster shop. I had no idea she even knew Liddy, let alone was one of her best friends. Don’t you just love small towns?”
“And the plan was for you to stalk her and kill her?”
“No! I wasn’t thinking like that. I was just going to talk to her and try to reason with her, explain how things actually were, and show her that Sonny already had a family that cared about him. I thought maybe she’d feel bad and do the right thing and break it off . . . but then, Sonny spotted me . . .”
“You ran into Sonny?”
“Literally. Right on the street. He saw me coming out of the bank after using the ATM where I withdrew the last of my cash to pay for the room I was renting. So I confronted him. Right then and there. Man, did he freak out.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing at first. He was just so shocked to see me standing there. Then, after a few seconds, he managed to gather his wits. He started spewing out all kinds of excuses. How it wasn’t what I thought it was, how he and Liddy were just friends. But he knew I had him nailed to the wall, especially when I told him Liddy had been bragging about her upcoming wedding to my girlfriend’s parents . . . That shut him up real fast.”
“I’ll bet it did,” Hayley said, wanting to wring Sonny’s neck.
“Then he just wanted to get the hell away from me. He said he was late for an appointment and couldn’t talk . . . some kind of photo shoot . . .”
The wedding announcement photo.
Now Hayley knew why Sonny had unexpectedly been a no-show.
He was reeling from the reality that his stepson was in town and now fully aware of his double life. Or triple life, if you add in Nancy Malone from Revere.
There was no way he could just show up at the photo studio and act like nothing was wrong, so he blew it off and headed to Drinks Like a Fish to take the edge off and figure out what to do.
“Before he left, Sonny begged me to go back to Rhode Island. He promised me he would break it off with Liddy and come home to me and my mom, can you believe that?” AJ said, shaking his head. “For a split second, I actually believed him, so I agreed. But after he ran off, I knew he was lying. All he does is lie. So I stuck around. You know, I honestly thought Liddy was exaggerating when she told my girlfriend’s parents she was engaged to Sonny. I figured she was just imagining herself marrying him, that Sonny would never divorce my mom and marry her, but then, working for Mona, I got a front-row seat to all the wedding plans, and it steamed me up real bad.”
“To the point where you decided to take matters into your own hands . . .”
“Yes. I thought about going straight to Liddy and telling her everything, but I figured she would never believe me and she would still be around to marry Sonny . . . so I took a couple of days off from Mona’s and drove back down to Providence to see my mom. I surprised her by showing up at the chemical lab to take her to lunch—”
“Where you stole the poison you planned to use on Liddy. Mona must have been a fountain of information. Did she tell you Liddy wanted angel food cake with buttercream frosting?”
AJ nodded.
“And when you arrived at Lisa’s bakery pretending to be looking for a wedding cake for your sister Adele, who I assume doesn’t even really exist, you saw the cake Lisa had already made for Liddy and set aside for her to taste.”
“It was so easy. Lisa was such a chatterbox, bitching and moaning about Liddy the whole time I was there, she didn’t even see me inject the poison throughout the cake with a syringe, knowing Liddy would be coming into the shop soon for a taste test.”
“As well as her best friend and matron of honor who accompanied her! Me! I would’ve been poisoned too!”
“Collateral damage, I guess.” AJ shrugged, not seeming to care all that much.
“But what you didn’
t know was that Lisa had already decided after baking the angel food cake that she was going to try and show off her talents as a baker. She thought the angel food cake was too bland and uninspired. She blatantly ignored what Liddy wanted and made something that she personally liked better—a chocolate walnut cake with cocoa glaze. That’s what she tried to serve us!”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Liddy fired her on the spot, and then Lisa was left with the angel food cake with buttercream frosting, the original cake meant for Liddy. She probably didn’t want it going to waste, so she ate a piece, and thanks to you, it killed her.”
“I didn’t mean for her to die. She was really annoying and I hated her face, but I had nothing personally against her.”
“I’m sure she would be happy to hear that . . . if she was still alive!”
“I just wanted Liddy out of the way, and then everything got way out of hand when Lisa was the one who ate the poisoned cake . . .”
“AJ, this is nuts! You are never going to get away with this! You might as well turn yourself in!”
“Pull in here,” AJ ordered.
Hayley turned down a side street which led to the back of the Abbe Museum, a local attraction that explored and celebrated the history and culture of Maine’s native people, the Wabanaki tribe. The museum was filled with collections, including a large number of artifacts fashioned during prehistoric and historic times by Native Americans and by Europeans who began arriving in the area in the early seventeenth century. Stone artifacts included projectile (arrow and spear) points, bone artifices such as harpoons, hooks, combs, and a rare flute that might be as much as two thousand years old.
“Why did you bring me here? The museum isn’t even open. It’s been closed for renovations for the past two weeks . . .”
“Get out,” AJ hissed, shoving the gun into Hayley’s side.
She grappled for the car door latch and swung it open. She considered making a run for it, but she wasn’t sure what kind of aim AJ had, and so she wasn’t about to risk it.
AJ was out of the passenger’s side in a flash, and before she even had a chance to slam the car door shut, he was close behind her, the gun pressed firmly into the small of her back, ordering her in a low voice to head for the rear door of the museum.
AJ busted the lock open with the butt of his gun.
And then terror shot through Hayley as she realized why they were here. The Abbe Museum was located directly across the street from the Congregational church where the wedding ceremony was about to take place.
AJ was going to try and take out Liddy when she came out of the church right after Reverend Staples pronounced Sonny and Liddy husband and wife!
Chapter 39
Held at gunpoint, Hayley had no idea how she was going to warn anyone about AJ, who at the moment was busy texting someone on his phone. She assumed he was sending a message to Mary Beth while keeping his pistol trained on her.
“Calling Mommy for help?” Hayley asked.
The sarcasm in her voice was not lost on AJ, and he shot her an irritated look.
“I just let her know there’s been a complication,” he spat out. “She had no idea I stole the poison at her lab or that I was going to spike the wedding cake with it. She had nothing to do with it. She would have tried to stop me if she had.”
“But if she’s helping you now, then the cold hard fact is, AJ, your mother is an accessory. She’s going to go to prison too.”
“No one’s going to prison,” he said, more to himself than to Hayley.
“You can keep telling yourself that, but it will never make it true,” Hayley said.
AJ cocked the gun. “Just shut up, okay? This will all be over soon.”
Hayley kept her hands up and tried not to make a move that might spook him and cause AJ to pull the trigger.
She didn’t want to die today.
“The only reason she found out about any of this was because there was an inventory at the lab and a security camera caught me swiping the vial. She begged her bosses to let her try and get it back before they called the police. She kept calling, but I didn’t pick up, so she left a bunch of frantic voice mail messages begging me not to do anything rash. But it was too late. I had already injected the chemical into the cake.”
“And poisoned the wrong person,” Hayley added.
AJ stared off into space, regret written all over his face, but he quickly snapped out of it and continued his impassioned defense of his dear, adored mother. “She was devastated. She was afraid I had just ruined my life.”
“And she was right.”
AJ raised the gun. Hayley squeezed her eyes shut, expecting the worst. But he didn’t fire a bullet at her.
After a few moments, when she popped her eyes back open, she found him standing a few feet away, scowling at her, silently suggesting with his narrowing eyes that she might want to just keep her mouth shut.
Hayley decided to comply.
“Mom was never going to allow me to go to prison for murder so she raced up here to Bar Harbor in order to help me cover my tracks . . .”
He seemed to half expect Hayley to comment, but she refrained, keeping her eyes trained on the gun pointing at her.
AJ shrugged and continued. “Which is why, when you started sticking your nose into everybody’s business and found out I had been in the Cake Walk the day Lisa was poisoned, I called my mother . . .”
“It was Mary Beth pretending to be your mythical sister Adele in order to give you a cover story as to why you were there that day. You gave your mother enough information so she could play along when I spoke to her.”
He paused, lost in thought, then, with a sad smile, he said, “She loves me so much and would do anything to protect me . . .”
Hayley couldn’t help herself. It was safer to stay quiet, but she was anxious to fill in some of the blanks that had been bugging her. “She posed as a tourist and showed up at Mona’s shop to see you, but it was your day off, so she pumped Mona for information about Liddy, pretending to be an old friend, hoping if she could find her, then she would find you and could stop you from committing another murder.”
AJ shrugged, his eyes downcast, angry with himself for dragging his dear mother into this whole ugly mess.
“But unfortunately you were already off on another attempted killing spree, cutting Liddy’s brake line, and then after she survived that, attacking her last night in her own front yard as she was on her way to her wedding rehearsal dinner. Despite your mother begging you to stop, you were hell-bent on getting the job done once and for all!”
Suddenly there was a loud bang as someone barreled through the back door of the Abbe Museum.
When AJ cranked his head to see who was coming, Hayley knew this was her only chance to save herself. She yelled at the top of her lungs, “Liddy Crawford, boy, am I glad to see you!”
AJ spun around, his eyes widened, distracted, waiting to see if Liddy was actually about to round the corner. Hayley seized the opportunity to grab his hand holding the gun and jerk it upward. The gun fired and a bullet shot into the ceiling, which caused some paint chips and dust to rain down upon them. Then, with her right shoulder, she shoved a startled AJ aside and made a run for it. By the time AJ managed to regain his senses and get control of his pistol again, she was gone.
Hayley ducked down among the display cases in the museum.
As Hayley had suspected, the person who had just entered through the back was not Liddy but Mary Beth. She heard her gruffly bark to her son, “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She was here a second ago . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Well, let’s find her!” Mary Beth screeched at her chastised boy before both of them set off to search the museum.
Hayley crawled on her hands and knees around one display case and behind another to avoid being seen by AJ, who was tiptoeing along on the other side, clutching his pistol tightly, eyes scanning the room for any sign of her.
Hayley held her breath and didn’t move a muscle.
“Just so you know, the front door is locked, your only escape is out the back, and we’re blocking the only exit, so why don’t you just come on out so we can talk about this like rational adults,” Mary Beth said in a soft, reassuring tone.
A sweet tone Hayley didn’t buy for a second.
Hayley knew if she gave away her position at any time, she would be signing her own death warrant.
She had to figure another way out of this.
“I don’t see her, Mom . . .”
“You go that way, I’ll go this way. Don’t worry, son, we’ll flush her out.”
They separated, heading off in different directions.
Hayley raised her head just slightly over one of the glass display cases to see AJ silently approaching in her direction. Within seconds, he would be right on top of her. That’s when she noticed an old bow and arrow set out in a weapons exhibit just a few feet away from her. She quickly scrambled over, and as quietly as she could, picked them up. She hooked the arrow to the bowstring and drew it back, aiming so the tip of the arrow lined up with her target, just as she had learned in archery as a Girl Scout. Hayley fired. The arrow pierced the left side of AJ’s chest. He howled in pain, grabbing at the shaft and screaming for his mother as he sank to his knees, sobbing.
Hayley heard the fast clicking of Mary Beth’s heels running across the room to her injured son, and poked her head up to see her kneeling down and hugging him as he tentatively tugged at the arrow, gently trying to extract it from his chest.
Hayley grabbed what looked like a rare flute, and clambered to her feet. AJ’s wailing and sobbing kept Mary Beth’s attention long enough for Hayley to sneak up behind her and whack her in the back of the head with the flute. Mary Beth flopped over, landing face-first in the lap of her son, who was still moaning after finally removing the arrow and tossing it to the floor next to him.