How to Bake a Murder

by K. J. Emrick

  “So that’s your plan, Officer Stansted? You’re just going to arrest us like you arrested my assistant?”

  “Your assistant killed a man,” Cookie put in, hoping to help defuse the situation. “You have to understand that, Belvedere. He killed someone right here in my bakery.”

  “Sure, sure. The chief told me already.” The mayor waved a hand like it didn’t matter. “You sure you’re going to have enough handcuffs for everyone here, Jerry?”

  “Sweeney, your wife, and you. Yes. It’s going to be a busy night for me, but that’s the way it goes. You hit your wife, Mister Mayor. Not sure how that plays in the political arena, but in my world, I don’t let men just walk away from hitting a woman.”

  “Even a woman who tried to kill me with a knife?” Belvedere demanded, lifting up on thick eyebrow.

  “He hit me first!” Jessica screeched. “I was defending myself. He always beats on me! Whenever he gets like this I can’t stop him and it only got worse after—!”

  “You shut up!” Belvedere shouted.

  “Both of you be quiet.” Cookie was surprised at how easily Jerry’s voice cut through everything without having to shout. “We’re going down to the station. Right now. Mister Mayor you can drive yourself if you want. Jessica’s coming with me.”

  Belvedere looked down at the floor, shaking his head slowly back and forth. “Nope.”

  “Mayor Carson,” Jerry said. “You’re a public figure. You can’t get away with not obeying the law. This is what’s happening. You need to accept it.”

  The mayor nodded once, and then put his hands behind his back. Cookie breathed a sigh of relief. She really didn’t know what they would have done if the mayor had started a fight with Jerry or—

  She watched as he pulled a long-barreled revolver from the back of his waistband, from under his untucked shirt.

  —or if he pulled a gun.

  Belvedere pointed the barrel squarely at Jerry, and then he moved it a few inches to the side. Now, it was aiming at Jessica.

  “You aren’t arresting either of us, Officer Stansted. You’re going to let me bring my wife home, or I’m going to end this right here.”

  “Belvedere!” Shock leeched the warmth out of Cookie. This couldn’t be happening. “You can’t mean that!”

  “I’m going to count to five,” Belvedere kept speaking like Cookie hadn’t said anything at all. “By the time I reach five, this gun’s gonna go boom.”

  “Oh, damn,” Jessica moaned. “He means it. He means it!”

  “One.”

  Jerry pushed Jessica back further behind him. Cookie couldn’t stand this. “Don’t hurt them!”

  “Two. Three…”

  Jerry tried to talk the mayor down and Jessica babbled incoherently and Cookie wished to God she knew what to do. What could she do? There had to be something she could do!

  “Four…”

  Belvedere tensed his finger on the trigger.

  Outside in the night, red and blue lights flashed. Tires screeched to a halt. Two police cars pulled to a stop, crossways in front of the bakery, and spotlights mounted to the doors of the cars made the room as bright as day.

  Belvedere threw out a string of swear words and then let the gun slap down against his thigh. “Now who,” he said, “went and ruined my fun?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The 911 call. Cookie had left her phone back in the kitchen, with the call still going. How much had they heard?

  This was the scariest moment of Cookie’s life. Thank God Jerry was here with her. How did police officers stand being in the middle of situations like this?

  More to the point, how was she going to stand being a police officer’s girlfriend?

  “Now, this is just unfair.” The mayor turned his mouth down in a pinched frown. “Not fair at all. Why’d you have to go and involve somebody else, Jessica?”

  Cookie saw the way the mayor’s wife cringed back from him, throwing her arms up over her face and trying to press herself up tight against the wall behind Jerry. She felt sorry for the woman. She couldn’t help it. Whatever her reasons were for having Julien killed, she had obviously been abused by this man behind closed doors for a long, long time.

  Through the still open door of the bakery she saw Officer Jones, standing and staring, one hand on the grip of his gun in its holster. “Mister Mayor?”

  Belvedere had been trying to make Jerry back down with a hard stare. Now a wide grin broke over his face. His eyes were wild.

  Whirling around he fired off two quick shots without aiming. One of the lights in the ceiling shattered and went dark. Cookie couldn’t see where the other bullet went.

  Officer Jones ducked and sprinted back to the cover of his patrol car. Cookie could hear him shouting to the other officers to stay back.

  “Well,” Belvedere said, wagging the gun in his hand. “Looks like we got us a good old fashioned standoff.”

  He paced away from them, then back. Jerry was watching the cops outside, and she knew he was looking for some kind of signal to know what their plan was. Jessica was still trying to disappear into the wall. Cookie saw the blood dribbling down her chin in a thin line from where her busted lip had broken open again.

  Clenching her jaw, Cookie took some paper napkins from off the counter by the register and went to see what she could do for Jessica.

  “Now where do you think you’re going?” Belvedere asked, waving his gun at her.

  “Your wife is bleeding,” Cookie told him. “I’m going to help her.”

  She didn’t know where she found the nerve to talk to him like that. Maybe she was still in shock. Maybe she didn’t like bullies. Maybe she’d just had enough of everything over the past few days. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t just stand there and see another human being in pain and not try to help.

  “Cookie,” Jerry whispered to her, “that was not smart.”

  “I’ve never been blessed with an overabundance of brain power,” she told him. “Besides, wasn’t it you who told me people are dumb?”

  “I didn’t mean you.”

  “I’m not people?” she joked, pressing the napkins gently to Jessica’s lips.

  “No,” Jerry answered her. “You’re the woman I love.”

  Any other time, Cookie would have waved those words aside with some offhand remark about how love was for the young and she was too old to believe in second and third and fourth chances. Now, in the middle of a hostage situation in her own bakery, all she could manage was two words.

  “Oh, my.”

  Her heart was racing, and she wasn’t sure if it was from all the excitement or if it was because Jerry had just admitted his feelings to her. Leave it to a man to pick the worst possible time for such things.

  “Okay,” the mayor said to them. “This is nice and all, but would you kindly get away from my wife? Hello? Man with a gun speaking here.”

  Up close, Jessica’s injuries were worse than Cookie had realized. “Why did you have to beat her up?” Cookie asked bitterly.

  “Why? Why?” Belvedere was getting more and more agitated. “I’ll tell you why! Because this… woman cheated on me and I don’t stand for that.”

  That put a dead silence over the entire room. The only sounds were the muted voices from across the police radios outside. What were the officers waiting for, Cookie wondered. Why weren’t they coming in to put an end to this?

  Probably because they didn’t want to see anyone else get killed in the Kiss The Cook Bakery. Neither did Cookie. But things were getting way out of hand in here.

  Jessica had cheated on Belvedere? Several things were taking shape in the back of her mind. If it was true…

  She looked down into Jessica’s pleading brown eyes, and she knew it was. Jessica had been having an affair.

  And Cookie was pretty sure she knew with who.

  “Please,” Jessica said, her lips trembling as she took the wadded paper napkins from Cookie’s hand. “Don’t let him hurt me anymore.”


  Cookie wasn’t sure she could promise that, no matter how badly she wanted to. Things were all coming into place now, at least in her mind. She had to believe that Jerry was smarter about these things than she was. Had he figured it out yet?

  “Jessica,” Cookie said to her gently, “who were you having an affair with?”

  “Oh, go on and tell them,” Belvedere barked. “You know you want to! That scene at the funeral wasn’t bad enough, you have to go and air our dirty laundry to everyone! She was having an affair with Julien, of course! Ever since high school those two have wanted each other. Guess they finally got to have it!”

  “Shut up!” It was Jessica who yelled this time, surprising Cookie and Jerry both. They turned to stare at her as she pushed away from the wall and took a few steps closer to her husband, still using Jerry as a human shield. “You just shut up! I have put up with this from you for as long as I can and I can’t take it anymore! You beat me like this every other month and then tell all our friends that I’m sick and laid up in bed. No more! After what you did… I can’t take it anymore.”

  She broke down in tears, all her anger spent, all her bravery melting away. “That’s why I cut him. I needed to get away. This was the only place I could think to come that would be safe for me. You’re the only one who ever took the time to listen to me, Cookie.”

  Cookie reached out and patted Jessica on the shoulder. She wasn’t a monster. She was a battered woman, and from everything Cookie had ever read about that sort of thing, a woman being beaten could be brought to the edge of her sanity very quickly, if someone wasn’t there to help her.

  “Oh, sure,” Belvedere snarled sarcastically. “Take her side. Sure. Why not? You know she paid for Sweeney to kill Julien, don’t you?”

  Jessica’s head swung up, tears in her eyes, her lips trying to form words that wouldn’t come out. “I… I…”

  “Mayor Carson,” a voice called in to them, aided by the use of a megaphone. “We need you to come out to us, Mister Mayor.”

  It was Officer Jones. Cookie knew that voice. She couldn’t see him out there past the glare of the spotlights, and she supposed that was the point, so that the mayor couldn’t see what they were doing out there, either.

  “You can go to Hell!” Belvedere yelled back, pointing his gun behind him and squeezing off another two shots. The window to the side of the door shattered this time.

  Great, Cookie thought, another pane of glass to replace. As if that mattered right now.

  Then she wondered to herself, how many bullets does an automatic handgun hold? There was four less in that gun now. How many more before it was empty?

  “Mayor, think,” Jerry said to him, raising his hands out to his sides as he took a step in Belvedere’s direction. “Think about what you’re doing here. What’s the exit strategy? You’ve fired on police officers. You beat your wife. You’ve taken us hostage. No one is going to just let you walk away from this.”

  “Think I don’t know that? This woman,” Belvedere punctuated the word by stabbing his gun in the air at Jessica, “has taken everything from me. Everything! I won’t be mayor anymore when this is done, but I won’t go to jail, either. You’re going to see to that, Jerry. I want you to get on the phone to your chief and tell him that he either lets me out of here, gives me a car with a full tank of gas and lets me go, or people are going to start dying.”

  Cookie didn’t think she could get any more scared than she already had been. She was wrong.

  “That’s not necessary,” Jerry told the mayor. “We can work this out. Right here.”

  “Really? You’re gonna use the hostage negotiator handbook on me? I was Military Police. I know all the plays. We can’t work this out any more than I could work out my marriage.” His eyes found Jessica again with a hard glare. “Just tell me. You tell me why it had to be Julien.”

  “Because he still loved me,” Jessica said in a small voice. “All these years, ever since we knew each other in high school. He backed off so you could have me only because I asked him to! What a joke. All these years. He never married. Then you started beating me, and I went to him to cry on his shoulder and he… and he…”

  She swallowed, and summed everything up with a small sob. “He loved me.”

  “What’s love got to do with it?” the mayor asked. “I gave you everything you ever wanted! All I ever asked was to have a good wife who obeyed me!”

  “And all I wanted,” Jessica told him, sinking into a chair, “was a man who treated me like a woman and not a possession.”

  “Oh, and you think you got that from Julien?”

  Cookie cold feel the ice in the stare Jessica levelled on her husband. “I know I got love from him. More than I ever got from you. He was a better man than you’ll ever be.”

  “Let me tell you something, woman. Julien never was half the man I am! I will always be better than him. I’m the mayor of this town, for God’s sake! He was a nobody. A nothing! He didn’t deserve you!”

  “Is that why you killed him?”

  “Yes!”

  Belvedere choked, spitting and sputtering, the admission still ringing in the air.

  “You,” Cookie said, finally understanding. “It was you who paid for Sweeney to kill Julien. You used your wife’s bank account—”

  “So no one would find out, blah blah,” the mayor grumbled. He began pacing back and forth again, kicking a few more chairs out of his way, rubbing his temple with the hand that held the gun. “Damn it. Well. No sense in going back on it now. In for a penny, in for a pound.”

  Cookie looked down at Jessica, who nodded her head, fresh tears running down her bruised face. Jerry had found the bank records showing the payment to Sweeney came from Jessica’s account, but of course her husband would have access to that account as well. Now it all made sense. Jessica’s emotional outburst at Julien’s funeral. What she had said about mistakes from her past. How scared she’d been to talk to Cookie at all. Even the superior way Sweeney had acted to the mayor and his wife.

  Jessica hadn’t killed the man she loved.

  Her husband did.

  “Enough of this,” Belvedere finally humphed.

  In two quick strides he was over by Cookie, grabbing her by the arm, pulling her tight to his chest almost knocking her glasses to the floor as he did. The gun was suddenly uncomfortably close in front of her face, held in a fierce grip in his fist. Did it matter how many bullets he had left now? She knew it would only take one to end her.

  Jerry started forward, his eyes intense. “Uh, uh, uh,” Belvedere warned him, waving the end of the gun like he was shaking a finger. “No closer, or I start the killing with this wonderful woman who has just been through so much already.”

  His back was to the front door, Cookie realized, a slim hope sprouting in her heart. Could Officer Jones and the other cops from outside rush in and take him now, before he did something that would cost her life?

  “Jessica,” Belvedere ordered. “Get up. We’re leaving. Don’t try to stop me, Jerry, or so help me God people are gonna die.”

  “One man already died,” Cookie reminded him, wanting to keep him distracted in case her rescue was even now sneaking in the front door. “Why did you have to kill Julien here, in my shop?”

  “Wasn’t my plan, Cookie. Not that I cared one way or the other but the finer details were all Sweeney’s doing. He figured out Julien’s schedule. Said the only place he went more regularly than my own wife,” he grumped bitterly, “was this bakery for one of those stupid crème puffs. You made the special cream for Julien’s order ahead of time, he said, and it was easy to poison the mix when you were off getting your granddaughter, he said.”

  “But what if someone else had come in wanting a lactose free crème puff? It happens you know. You could have poisoned someone else in town or someone passing through!” Cookie couldn’t help saying. “How could you!”

  “Eh. Wouldn’t be my fault if someone else died. Like I said, Sweeney was the
guy with the details. I even sent him to take care of a lousy, nosy, busybody,” Belvedere told her, shaking her by the arm so there was no doubt which nosy busybody he was referring to. “He came here and broke in, but then he said he got scared off by this goofy kid in a long coat hanging around in the shadows.”

  Hamish, Cookie realized with a start. Her granddaughter’s secret boyfriend had inadvertently saved her life, and maybe even Clarissa’s too, by hanging around outside the bakery.

  Well. What do you know about that?

  “Then,” Belvedere continued, “he was going to try poisoning you so that it looked like you did it to yourself, and he was going to use such-and-such a poison in such-and-such a food and he needed these ingredients to make it look like a mistake and on and on and on. The man will not stop talking once you get him started.”

  He wasn’t the only one, thank God. If she could just keep him distracted a little longer. She searched Jerry’s eyes. There was no hint that anyone was coming in, but then again he was a trained police officer. He wouldn’t give something like that away. Would he?

  “Jessica,” she said, hastily, “let’s do as the man says. Come on, now.”

  The mayor’s wife looked horrified. “I’m not going anywhere with that man!”

  A loud barking followed those words as Cream came trotting into the room, bracing his front feet against the floor, letting Belvedere have it like he was a dog five times his size. Belvedere looked at the dog sideways, then sneered. “Shut that yappy little dust mop up.”

  “Shh, Cream,” Cookie said, ignoring the insult to her little friend. She didn’t want Cream to get hurt. “Just, hush now.”

  He didn’t hush. He started barking louder.

  “I’m not going anywhere with him!” Jessica repeated, her eyes wide with terror.

  “I don’t think we have a choice, dear,” Cookie told her, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “After all, he has the gun.”

  “There, see?” Belvedere crowed. “Finally, a woman who understands her place. You oughta marry this one, Jerry.”