Even though she had managed to blur the word "Killer" a little, it was still clearly legible.
"I think too much of the paint has already dried. Maybe we should have come in sooner."
I turned my key in the lock and shoved the door open. "Come inside, Pippa." On any other day, I would have been at the bakery at the break of dawn, getting the pastry rolled and mixing the muffin mixtures for the day. But the shelves were still brimming with the previous day's bake and I didn't feel particularly inspired to flush even more money down the toilet. But if I'd just come in, maybe I would have seen the person who'd sprayed that on my window.
Once the inside of the store, I didn't even bother to turn on the lights. If my bad reputation hadn't already been keeping the customers away, that word across my windows would have done the trick nicely.
I looked down at my hands and noticed that they were shaking.
"Rach," Pippa said, placing a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, it's not that bad. We can call a window washer to come get rid of the blood...I mean, paint." She pulled her hand away and gasped an apology when she realized she'd left a red hand print there.
"Don't worry about it," I said, shrugging it off. "And don't worry about calling a window cleaner." I could hear the shake in my voice.
"It'll be okay."
I shook my head. "How? All I ever wanted to do was run this little bakery, make my own cakes and sell them to people. And I thought—just for a little while—that it was actually going to happen. But now, what's the point?"
Suddenly the door pushed open and a touristy looking woman with a large sun hat and sunglasses bustled in and began peering at the selection of cakes on offer. She nodded to herself with a look of appreciation on her face.
I straightened up. Perhaps she hadn't seen the paint on the windows. Racing behind the counter to tie my apron on, I asked her, "What can I do for you today, ma'am?"
She stood up straight. "I read online that this is the best boutique bakery in Belldale."
I nodded. At least the online reviews were still untarnished. I had the highest rated bakery in the area, with an average of 4.8 from over fifty reviewers. The kinds of tourists who check those sites always mentioned it when they came in.
"That's right,” I said, gesturing to the still-full shelves of cakes and slices. "The best in town."
"Far better than that mass produced place down the road," the woman murmured.
"Bakermatic," I said, nodding. "Yes, of course, far better than them! They get most of their cakes pre-packaged from a factory. They are so chock-full of preservatives that they can last in their plastic packaging for months—maybe even years."
"Not these, though," the woman said, nodding at a row of Vanilla Slice. "You bake everything right here every day, don't you?"
"Well." I swallowed and looked over her shoulder at Pippa. "Yes, ma'am, everything is baked right here, on the premises."
"Fresh today?"
"Well...I...er. No, not today," I had to admit finally, seeing the woman's face fall into a pit of disgust.
"What do you mean, not today? Are these cakes fresh or not?"
"They are! They are only from yesterday, ma'am. They've all been refrigerated..."
She screwed her nose up. "And why haven't you been baking today then? Why do you still have yesterday's cakes out for people to buy?"
I wanted to explain that, although not 100% ideal, that cakes baked only the day before were still fresh, and still a hundred times fresher than Bakermatic's atrocities. And more than that, I wanted to explain that I could hardly justify using hundreds of dollars of ingredients on cakes that were only going to end up in the trash. I hadn't even intended to open the bakery that day! But to explain all of that, I would have to explain why the store had been completely empty the day before.
Pippa stepped forward. "Rachael's just been a little sick, that's all."
I shook my head at her. I knew she was only trying to help, but that was the worst thing she could have said. Well, maybe the second worst.
The woman recoiled. "Well. I hardly wish to purchase cakes made by a sick woman, when those cakes aren't even fresh!" She cast an eye up towards the price list. "And at those prices! Why, miss, you have some nerve!" The woman turned on her heels and stormed out of the shop. She stopped as she saw the blurry blood red paint on the widows before hurrying away as though she'd seen a ghost.
I turned away. "There goes my good online rating."
"Come on," Pippa said, walking over to the door. "We're going to do something about this."
"Where are we going?"
She yanked the door open and stopped to stare at me. "Bakermatic."
* * *
The best thing we could come up with for disguises was the baseball visors and sunglasses that Pippa had in her bag.
"Pippa, if we get caught, there’s gonna be big problems!"
"What are they gonna do? Call the cops again?"
I thought about Jackson’s warning to me. "Yeah. They might."
"We better keep our heads down then," Pippa said as she pushed open the door into Bakermatic.
I cleared my throat. "Excuse me," I said to a young wisp of a woman with blonde hair who was stacking muffins onto a stand.
"Yes?" she said nervously. Her name tag told me her name was Anna and that she was a trainee.
"Can you tell me, dear, are these muffins fresh?"
She shifted nervously. "I'll have to check with my manager."
"I'll take that as a no then. And can you tell me anything about your kitchen practices? Do you throw food out when it past its used by date? Do you keep a good temperature log? Or do you pretty much make it up as you go?"
"Rachael!" Pippa hissed as she pulled me away, leaving the tiny blonde girl wide-eyed on the other side of the counter. "You're going to give us away. She clearly doesn't know anything! She only started yesterday with me, she was one of the new recruits."
"Well, we can't leave yet. I need to catch them in the act." I looked over my shoulder covertly, hoping to see one of the new young employees drop a muffin and put it back on the shelf or something.
I walked back to the counter and, while Anna wasn't looking, I gently nudged one of the muffins onto the bench, cursing to myself when it teetered on the end of the counter without falling.
Anna spun around and cried out "Oh no!" before picking the muffin up.
"Oh, that's all right, just put it back on the stand," I said casually. "That's what you usually do, right?"
Anna shook her head. "No, they were very strict about this in training. If a cake falls off its stand, it goes straight in the trash. No risks get taken here, not when the health of our customers is at stake!"
"Right." My mouth was a thin line as Pippa pulled me away.
"I think we've stretched our luck far enough," she said. "Let's get out of here."
"Hey!" a loud voice bellowed. I recognized that one. "Not you two again! I'm calling the cops…again!"
There were murmurs and gasps from the full store as Pippa and I raced out the door before Simona could pull her phone out. She chased us and, just as I thought we were going to make it clear out the door, Simona reached out and slammed the door shut. "Uh-uh. You two aren't going anywhere."
Her hand still pressed the door shut above my head. That's when I saw it. The palm of her hand, streaked with blood-red paint, faded in a clear attempt to get rid of it.
I turned slowly to Pippa. She'd seen it too.
"Go ahead, call the cops," I said, reaching up to pull Simona's hand away from the door. "But you're going to have to explain how this paint got on your hand."
Simona's cheeks turned as red as her hands. "I burned my palms on the oven," she muttered, pulling her sleeves down.
"Really? You want to tell the cops that when they arrest you for defacing property?"
Simona glared at us as Pippa yanked the door back, now that Simona had dropped her guard. "Come on, Rach, let's go!"
We sprinted the en
tire way back to the bakery, doubling over when we finally got through the doors. "I can't believe Simona did that to the window," Pippa said, breathless. "Why is she so hell bent on making sure you take the blame for Colleen's death?"
"Because, Pippa," I said, turning to look at her slowly. "I think Simona did it. That's why she doesn't want us snooping around, and that's why she is doing every thing she can to frame me. Now, all we've got to do is prove it."
Chapter 5
I told Pippa to go home and get some rest while I chucked all of yesterday’s baked goods into the trash. It was a depressing enough task without a witness to add to my indignity.
Still, there was a little ray of hope beginning to dance in my stomach. Now I had a strong suspect. I was certain Simona had done it—the way her face had turned so red, the fact that she hadn't chased us, and the fact that the cops hadn’t shown up at my door. Now, all I had to do was prove she was to blame and I could finally restore my reputation. I looked down at the rapidly filling bags of trash. This is the last time I will ever throw out a day's work, I vowed, dusting off my hands. Things were about to turn around; I could just feel it.
After filling four entire trash bangs with cakes, slices of pie, donuts and pastries, I pulled the bags out into the alley, passing my stack of unopened mail from the day before. I'd been so distracted by Gavin that I hadn't actually finished opening the envelopes he'd passed me.
I dropped the trash bags and rummaged through the pile. My heart did a little flip when I saw that one of them was from the real estate company I leased the shop from.
I knew I was a little behind on the rent, but surely it couldn't be that bad. I ripped the envelope open and digested the contents of the letter.
My heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach and the room began to spin.
"EVICTION NOTICE."
"No... No..." I said, frantically reading the rest of the letter. I had one week to come up with the back rent or I was out of there.
"But I'm only a few weeks behind!" I wailed, throwing the letter down on the counter as I pulled my apron off, the straps suddenly so tight they felt as though they were blocking my air flow. But I knew the real estate company wouldn't care that I was only a few weeks behind. This was a high traffic street, prime real estate, and they'd have no problem finding a new business owner to take over the lease.
"I just hope they're not planning on opening a bakery here," I said bitterly, trying to fight back the tears. So much for things turning around. How was I going to find the back rent in just one week? Even if I could get Simona convicted before that and restore my reputation, it seemed totally impossible.
I glanced out the window. The lights at Bakermatic finally turned off for the night, and I could see Simona and her long dark ponytail creeping out into the night.
One week. One week to prove she did it and save my bakery.
* * *
Pippa was still dead to the world as I pulled my sneakers on the following morning. To be fair to her, I was up at the crack of dawn, my body still set to baker's hours even though I didn't have a bakery to attend to.
I smiled down at Pippa's sprawled out body as I passed her on the sofa. It would have been nice to have her on board for the day's task, but I knew that I could handle it myself.
The flyer from the street fair dangled from my hand. On it, a list of every single food vendor from the day that Colleen had died. If the cops weren't going to investigate thoroughly, then it was going to be up to me to speak to every last one of them.
There were fourteen different restaurants and cafes that had stalls that day at the Belldale street fair. I decided to start with the one closest to my own bakery, a sandwich place called "Deena's Deli" run by a woman, called—you guessed it—Deena.
"Hey there, Rach," she said with a jolly grin. Deena was in her mid-forties with a golden blonde bob and somehow always managed to have flour on her shirt despite the fact that I wasn't sure what she actually baked with flour in her sandwich store. "What can I do for you today? Are you after a sandwich?"
Not at six in the morning, no. Deena opened early to catch the tradesmen on their way to work, looking for breakfast sandwiches filled with greasy bacon, sausage, and eggs. But that kind of thing so early in the morning churned my stomach.
"No, Deena, not today. They all smell delicious, though," I said, nodding towards the sizzling bacon concoctions flattened beneath the iron of the sandwich press.
Deena sighed. "Business has been a little slow this week." She lowered her voice and looked around as though she was about to say something forbidden. "You know, since the 'incident' at the street fair."
Hmm, so it wasn't just my shop that had been affected, though I seemed to have been the worst hit. "Actually, Deena, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."
"You did?" Deena brushed her hands against her apron, leaving even more flour there. Where did it all come from? "Rachael, I know a lot of people are saying that you did it, but I just want to say, hand on my heart,” She placed her hand against her chest in another cloud of flour, "that I don't believe you did it."
"I didn't do it. Deena, that's what I'm trying to clear up. Tell me, that day, did you see anything suspicious at all?"
Deena screwed her face up in great concentration. "Not that I can remember, dear. Oh, and I do wish I could help you. It's an awful shame what that man did to your window."
"Woman," I corrected her. "I already know who did it."
"Oh." Deena looked confused. "My mistake then, dear. I'm sure you know what you're talking about."
"I do." I cleared my throat and smiled. "So you really can't remember anything strange happening that day? Did you see the woman—the victim—Colleen Batters at all?"
"Ha!" Deena shook her head as she let out a hollow laugh. "She never deigned to stop by my stand, just like she always turned her nose up at my shop. Yet people are still avoiding my food this week. Just goes to show that she can have a negative impact after her death! I don't like to speak ill of the dead, Rachael, but that Colleen Batters was a real snob—a real piece of work."
I glanced around and noticed that the bacon sandwiches were burning. "You might want to check those." As she hobbled over, I watched Deena carefully. "So you didn't like Colleen then?"
Deena laughed again as she pulled out a charcoal sandwich and threw it in the trash with a sigh. "No one did, dear. That's why I keep saying: anyone could have done it; any one of the people running those stands could have wanted her dead." She turned to me with a hand on her hip. "Don't tell me you're in here accusing me of having something to do with it?"
"Deena, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Eliminate suspects."
The jolly look had drained from her face. "What are you, a cop now?"
Although I already knew who had killed Coleen—or, at least, I was 99% sure—I still needed to make sure I was being thorough. Besides, I still needed the smoking gun, the proof that Simona had actually done it. And I could see that I was rubbing Deena the wrong way and if I didn't start to butter her up, she would likely kick me out of her store.
"Deena, I'm just trying to make my rent. You can appreciate that. I don't believe you killed Colleen. But can you remember seeing her eating anywhere in particular that day?"
Deena softened a little. She nodded. "Yes. She ate a fish pie from Carl's Fish Shop. I remember that clearly because she took joy in telling me how much better his savory selection was compared to mine."
"Sounds like Colleen." I patted the counter, sending flour flying. "Thanks, Deena. I'll let you get back to work."
* * *
"What are you talking about?" Carl said, pouring more water into his kitchen mixer. "Oh, darn!" he shouted. "Now I've gone and poured too much liquid into the darn pastry! You happy now?"
No! I certainly wasn't happy with the reception I'd gotten when I'd walked into Carl's Fish Shop. It seemed that he was another of the vendors who was hurting in the wake of Colleen's death, so I tri
ed not to take his grumpiness too personally.
"That day at the Belldale Street fair," I said again, walking along the other side of the counter to follow him as he turned and threw battered fish into a deep fryer. "Do you remember serving a woman named Colleen Batters?"
He spun around. "You talking about the woman who died? Obviously I'd remember a thing like that. She never ate any of our fish, if that's what you're suggesting! Don't you think I've lost enough business as it is without people speculating even further, and without you coming in here and sticking your nose into other people's business?"
"Carl," I said, as calmly as possible. "I have a witness who says she did see Colleen eating one of your products, a fish pie, on the day in question."
He shook his head. "There's no way that's possible."
"How can you know that for sure? Did you keep track of every single person who ate from your stall that day?"
"Of course I did. Do you think I'd forget serving a woman that died?"
I sighed. "Why would Deena make that up?"
"Deena?" Carl said, leaning over the counter. "Oh, she's just trying to pass the blame! It was probably one of her bacon and egg sandwiches that killed the woman! After all, her food made me sick as a dog a few days ago." He stopped short all of a sudden.
I frowned. "When was this, Carl? When were you sick?"
He shrugged. "I don’t know exactly," he muttered. "A few days ago." He picked up a washcloth and busied himself wiping a bench that was already sparkling clean.
"Three days ago?" I took a step closer to the counter. "Is that when you were sick?"
He shrugged. "I suppose so. It might have been."
"People don't forget getting food poisoning, Carl. Was it three days ago or not?"
He nodded.
"So, the day before the street fair." I raised an eyebrow and looked him up and down. "And yet, you were still able to get up in the morning and work a full shift at the Belldale street fair? A shift where you were so alert that you are able to remember every single customer you served?"
A Pie to Die For: A Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery Page 4
