How to Bake a Murder

by K. J. Emrick

  Hand on the knob, he stopped. He coughed. His face turned red.

  Having gone through several CPR courses as a requirement to get insurance for the bakery, Cookie immediately recognized the signs. She was rushing around the end of the display case immediately. In the back of her mind, a little thought was grumping about how Julien would probably sue her for choking on her food even though it would be his fault for eating too quickly and forgetting to swallow…

  Julien grabbed his neck, then made a gurgling sound as he fell onto the floor.

  Jerry was faster than she was. He got to Julien just as he collapsed and knelt down beside him, feeling for a pulse at the man’s neck and also at his wrist.

  “I can’t get a pulse. Cookie, call for an ambulance.”

  She raced back into the kitchen and dialed the phone. This could not be happening. Cream backed up on his little paws, probably wishing that he’d taken her advice and gone back upstairs while he still could.

  “Yes,” she said as the emergency dispatcher answered, “this is Cookie um… Karen Williams at the Kiss The Cook Bakery.” You were supposed to be formal with a 911 dispatcher, weren’t you? No nicknames. Just the facts. “We need an ambulance. A man. Choking. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  The dispatcher told her an ambulance was on the way and then asked her a slew of questions. How old was the victim? Was anyone there able to do CPR? Did the victim have any allergies?

  While Cookie answered—mostly with “I don’t know”—Jerry began compressions on Julien’s chest, followed at regular intervals with rescue breaths. He wasn’t doing it for long before she heard the wail of the ambulance siren coming up the street, but he already had sweat beading his forehead.

  Everything happened very quickly after that. The ambulance screeched to a stop in front of the store. Jerry sat back out of the way as the two paramedics in their white shirts took over doing CPR and a third brought a stretcher to the door of the bakery. Julien was loaded up and being wheeled out in a matter of seconds, and Cookie was left wondering if there was something she was supposed to be doing.

  People who would have been customers came to the doors and she very politely told them they were closed for the moment, open later, although she wasn’t overly sure about that last part. The ambulance wasn’t moving. One of the paramedics had come back out of the rig and was talking to Jerry. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the ambulance pulled away from the sidewalk, slowly, not using its lights or its siren.

  Jerry came back to the store and put his hand on Cookie’s shoulder. Any other time she would have welcomed that contact. Now it seemed like the very most wrong time for them to be touching.

  “They’re going to bring Julien to the hospital because it’s protocol,” Jerry explained to her, “but they say it’s not going to do any good. He’s gone. He’s dead.”

  While that sank in, he gently pushed her back inside, closed the door, and turned the sign over to say the bakery was closed for business, please come again.

  “This,” he said to her in his deep voice, “is officially a crime scene.”

  Chapter Three

  Her bakery had been called a lot of things over the years. Calling it a crime scene, that was something new.

  Jerry turned back to her. “A crime scene, Cookie. Julien died suspiciously. I have to call our investigator and close your shop.”

  She put a hand to her throat. “Close my shop? Jerry!” How would she make her money for the day? Those bills that she had put off… they only got paid if she stayed open. “For how long?”

  Before he answered, another black and white patrol car pulled up out front and two more police officers arrived. That would be every officer assigned to the dayshift, except for the chief of police himself. Widow’s Rest was a small town, and they would never have the kind of police response they had on that CSI show, even for a man dying under suspicious circumstances after eating one of her crème puffs.

  Oh, Lord…

  Clarissa came down into the middle of everything, in the same clothes she’d been wearing yesterday, her hair a tangled mess, her eyes bleary. She took one look at the three police officers standing there with her grandmother, let out a squeak, and ran back upstairs.

  “Who was that?” Jerry asked.

  “My granddaughter. I don’t think you’ve ever met her.”

  He looked off into the kitchen where Clarissa had disappeared. “She’s staying with you?”

  “As of last night, yes,” Cookie said with a frown. “Why?”

  “Is there another way out of here, Cookie? I mean, she’s not taking off, right? I need to question everyone who was here. That includes your customers and your granddaughter. Sorry.”

  Her heart sank. Was Clarissa a suspect? “Jerry, come on. Seriously?”

  He looked at her, and his expression showed he was quite serious.

  “Yes,” she answered him. “There’s a door at the back. You don’t trust me? She’s just a girl, Jerry.”

  “It’s not a matter of trusting you. I have to do a job now. A man is dead.”

  “And my granddaughter is upset.” She shook her head. “Her mom sent her to live with me for the summer. Things aren’t good at home, and now this… I need to go check on her.”

  “I can’t let you wander around,” he said, his voice suddenly very official.

  She gaped at him. “I’d like to see you try to stop me moving around my own home, Officer Stansted.”

  That actually made him smile, and Cookie was able to relax again. In small towns like this one, everyone knew everyone else. She even knew the other two police officers who had responded here, even if they were both young enough that she remembered when they were just babes in diapers.

  But this wasn’t the city, where everyone could be expected to lie and cheat and display the worst of human nature. This was Widow’s Rest, where people were kind and friendly and definitely did not drop dead at your doorstep.

  Or at least, it used to be.

  “Let’s compromise,” Jerry offered. “You go up to check on your granddaughter, and I’ll come up with you. That way I can talk to her and you at the same time and we’ll be out of your way that much quicker.”

  She sighed, and how she wished that he’d put his hand back on her shoulder now. It had felt nice, truth be told. “Then come on up.”

  She mounted the steps with Jerry right behind her. He stood in her living room while she checked on Clarissa in her room.

  “Grandma,” Clarissa said immediately, “you have police officers standing in your bakery. You could’ve warned me!”

  The girl had changed clothes and was frantically brushing a styling comb through her long hair, biting at her lower lip. “Is this a thing with you? Because if you have police officers showing up here all the time then maybe this place will be more interesting than I thought.”

  “No, dear,” Cookie said. “The police… well, I mean, Jerry comes here every morning but that’s different. The police don’t usually show up in force to my shop. Ambulances, either. I’m afraid… I’m afraid something bad has happened.”

  Hair back into a semblance of order, Clarissa turned wide eyes to her grandmother. “Really? What?”

  “A man we know from town died. Down there in my shop.”

  Clarissa’s eyes grew eager. “No way! Cool! How’d he die?”

  “Young lady, I will not have that,” Cookie nearly snapped. “A man dying is not cool, or hot, or whatever it is you kids say these days. It is a terrible, tragic thing.”

  With an eye roll, Clarissa sat down heavily on the edge of her bed. “I know that. Geez. Look, I was just saying that it was interesting, okay?”

  She pulled out her phone and began texting.

  “Please don’t talk about this to anyone,” Cookie told her.

  Clarissa groaned, but tossed the phone aside. “So, what’s the deal? Am I going to be stuck up here all day?”

  “I hope not. For both our sakes. The police w
ill tell us when they’re done. In the meantime, yes, please stay up here.”

  She left her granddaughter there in the bedroom, closing the door behind her, wondering if she would have been wiser to just take the phone away. Oh, well. It wasn’t like the rumors weren’t going to fly as it was.

  “How is she?” Jerry asked.

  Cookie shrugged. “As okay as she can be, I suppose. Although I must say, I think I’m very out of touch with teenagers these days.”

  That earned her a chuckle. “Me too. My brother’s kids look at me as the enemy. Anyway. I’m going to just poke my head in and ask her a few questions. She’s decent, right?”

  “Jerry, she was up here all morning. She was asleep when I went downstairs. Can we just leave it at that for now?”

  He chewed on the inside of his cheek while he considered her request. Finally, he nodded. “I suppose I can write it up like that for now. Somehow I doubt she had anything to do with killing a man she’s never met before.”

  “What about me?” Cookie asked directly.

  “Well, you knew him,” was the cryptic reply.

  Which wasn’t very comforting to Cookie.

  On the way down the stairs, Jerry cleared his throat. “How are you doing?”

  It warmed her heart to have him ask. “As okay as I can be,” she told him truthfully.

  She was watching her life’s work go to ruins. Bills to pay. A shark named Benjamin Roth circling the waters with an attractive offer at just the wrong moment. Now a dead man, in her shop. Cookie wasn’t stupid. She’d watched enough television to know how this would go. The dead man had been eating her food. The dead man was now, well, dead.

  Where did that put her?

  “Let’s talk here in the kitchen,” Jerry suggested at the bottom of the stairs. “The guys are going to stay out there and make sure no one comes in the store until the detective gets here.”

  “How long will that take?” she asked, trying to add up in her head how much business she would lose for every hour she stayed closed. It would get worse come lunchtime, and she finally stopped counting because the imaginary figure in her head was getting too depressing. “Not too long, I hope?”

  “Hard to say.” He pulled out a stool for her at the center island, where she kneaded dough or stirred batches of muffin mix on the stainless steel surface. “It’s his day off, and Mason can be, um, hard to reach on his days off.”

  Cookie snorted as she sat her keister in the stool. “You mean he gets drunk at the big poker game every night he isn’t working and then he can’t get himself out of bed come morning.”

  Jerry spread his hands with an apologetic look. Not like it was a big secret in town. The poker game over at Bob Sanford’s place had been going on for generations. Men would be men, she supposed. As long as they weren’t hurting anyone or getting behind a wheel after their drinking session she usually wouldn’t care. Except now, Detective Mason Kent’s hangover was costing her business. The longer it took for him to get here, the longer her doors had to stay closed.

  “Well, then I suppose we wait.” Cookie looked around the kitchen. The ovens were still warming. She could turn them off, but for now she was holding out hope that she could bake another loaf or two to sell today. “Can I offer you something to eat, Jerry? Maybe a coffee?”

  “Uh, well,” he said, leaning his palms against the edge of the shiny counter. “Here’s the thing…”

  With a sudden flash she understood what he wasn’t saying. “You think the food might be poisoned.”

  “It’s just, the way Julien died—”

  “Jerry, you ate a cupcake earlier! My other customers haven’t dropped dead, have they?”

  Thankfully, he shook his head. “I checked before we went upstairs. Nobody else has died this morning. Just Julien.”

  “But you still think something in my food killed him.”

  “I think it’s a chance.” He shifted his feet. “There’s a chance he just died of natural causes while eating your crème puff, sure, but that’s a pretty big coincidence. Look, Cookie, I’m your friend. You know that I… I mean, you know we’re friends. But I’m also a police officer. I have to walk a fine line here. Do I think you killed anyone? Of course not. That doesn’t mean I can ignore the facts. We’ll have to test your food. All of it.”

  Her heart tried to twist itself into a knot in her chest. For a couple of reasons. One, if they had to test all of her food, that would mean losing more time out of her day. Not to mention the rumors that would start when a crime lab started testing her baked goods. Who would buy her food then?

  The other reason her heart was trying to shrink up into a raisin was a lot more personal. The way Jerry had said they were friends had almost sounded like he meant something else. Something more than friends. Of course he would pick now to try and express his feelings, in the midst of what was rapidly becoming the worst day of her life.

  Men.

  He coughed into his hand. “So, tell me this. You said you wanted to talk to me about something that happened last night. Let’s start with that.”

  Thinking back, she tried to remember every detail. “I was up in bed with Cream. He was fast asleep, then just like that he started barking. He wanted out of the apartment in the worst way. When I opened the door for him he came down here, and started barking at the front door, like there was something outside. I looked out the window but I couldn’t see anything. Just the dark.”

  She shivered, remembering how it had felt like someone was watching her when there was no one there. Rubbing her hands up and down her arms to still the goosebumps, she wondered how she could explain that to Jerry. Would he think she was crazy?

  He was writing things down on a notepad. He was Jerry the cop again, his stern face a mask of hard lines. If only she could find a way to get him to open up to her. Maybe she would have to make the first move, after all.

  Or not. She shook her head. She shouldn’t be thinking about moves with him when a man had just died on her bakery floor. Granted, she didn’t like Julien that much, but that didn’t change the facts, which is exactly what she imagined Jerry would say if she started talking about going out to get a bite to eat together sometime.

  Sigh.

  “Cream came down here and barked at the front door,” Jerry repeated as he wrote. “The door was still locked? You checked?”

  “Yes. It was locked. The back door, too.”

  “So no one had come into the bakery?”

  “Not that I could see. I keep everything in very specific places down here. I’ve been baking all morning. I’m sure I would have noticed if something had been moved around.”

  He nodded, writing that down, and suddenly Cookie wished she hadn’t said it that way.

  There had been someone outside, though. Just not when Cream had been barking his fool head off. Should she tell Jerry about the boy in his long black coat? If she did, would she be putting someone else in the same spot she was now, with people looking at her like she was guilty just because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  She was still undecided when a man stomped his way into the kitchen.

  Detective Mason Kent leaned in the entryway to the main room. He was a barrel of a man, with heavy hands and feet that he must have to special order boots for. His shaggy black hair was especially unruly this morning. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles, and Cookie wondered if the smell of his cologne was meant to mask the odor of last night’s drink. At least his brown suit looked clean and not slept in.

  “I feel awful,” he said by way of greeting. “Jerry, I thought we had a deal about not getting me out of bed this early on my days off?”

  Jerry’s smile was thin. “Sorry to bother you, Detective, but see… this man died, and I figured you’d be interested.”

  Mason scoffed. Then he turned his bleary eyes on Cookie.

  “I have a few questions for you.”

  “Just a few?” Cookie managed to keep the sarcasm out of her voic
e. Barely.

  “Look,” Mason said. “I know we both have places we’d rather be, but like Jerry here said, Julien up and died this morning. So let’s do this quick. How did you and Julien know each other?”

  “He was a regular customer.”

  “Was he good customer?”

  “He came in almost every day, if that’s what you mean.”

  “All right. Did he ever complain when he was in here almost every day?”

  She chuckled. She couldn’t help it. “Julien was not a happy man. He complained every morning. He complained I was too slow, he complained the crème puffs he always got were never soft or creamy enough, he complained when the sun was shining and when the clouds were raining. From what I understand he was single and knowing him from work like I did, I can understand why.”

  There was another bakery in town, but it wasn’t as big as hers. It did more of the high end items and was more expensive. The rare tourist that came to town would frequent it instead of hers. Still, for all of Julien’s complaints, he kept coming to her day after day for his morning pastry.

  “I see. You said the same crème puff? He got the same thing every morning?”

  “Well, sure. He was a man of habit, I suppose. And as he was lactose intolerant we had an arrangement where I would make his crème puff with lactose free cream and he would pay a little more for my trouble.”

  Mason and Jerry exchanged a look that went over Cookie’s head. What were they thinking?

  “Let me ask you this,” Mason continued, stifling a yawn. “Did you and Julien ever date?”

  “Mason!” Jerry snapped at him.

  “No,” Cookie said just as quickly. “I never dated him.”

  She saw the way Jerry’s hands curled into fists on the island counter. “Why would you even ask that?”

  “Come on, Jerry,” was Mason’s bored reply. “You know how this goes. A pretty, older woman like her, a somewhat good looking guy like Julien. Things happen.”

  “In a Lifetime movie, maybe,” Jerry said. “This is real life.”