by Diana Orgain
I vowed on the drive over to Cassandra’s Cookies that I wouldn’t mention what I knew about her and Jim; it would only further complicate the case.
When we finally got to the shop, I sat Deb down by the window and told her to stay put. She waited while I ordered her a black coffee and a plate of chocolate cookies. I ordered myself a cup of coffee as well.
Cassandra sashayed over, putting the plate of cookies down in front of us as well as the two cups of coffee. “We’ll be here for at least another hour doing closing duties,” Cassandra said, nodding toward the two other employees who were still in the shop. The closed sign was already up. “Feel free to hang out at least that long, and we can chat more about Morgan’s case too.”
“I appreciate it, Cassandra,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth in her direction. Cassandra trotted off to go help her employees with closing duties while I forced Deb to drink her coffee.
“Thanks for helping me,” Deb muttered under her breath as she sipped on the coffee.
“Anytime,” I said, pulling out my phone. I called Jim, explaining to him that I was taking care of a friend who had gotten a little tipsy and that I had found myself at Cassandra’s shop.
“Why are you there?” he groaned.
“It’s for the case, babe,” I said. “But, I know you probably don’t want to come by here, but can you come pick up Laurie on your way home, so I can get Deb taken care of?”
“Of course,” Jim groaned into the phone. “I’m fifteen minutes out.”
“Sounds good,” I said, hanging up the phone. “Okay, Deb, finish up your coffee. You feeling any better?”
“I only see one of you now,” she groaned, rubbing her temples and shaking her head.
“Okay, next I’m going to make you drink some more coffee. After Jim gets here, I’ll take you home, and you can take a cold shower before you go into work,” I said.
“You’re a life saver,” Deb said, finishing off her cup of coffee.
I headed to the counter, ordering a final cup for Deb before they dumped out the coffee for the day.
Chapter Sixteen
Deb was just sobering up enough to where I didn’t feel like she was a danger to herself, so I set Laurie up in a high chair at the table with her while I ordered. The girl working behind the counter, a twenty-something woman named Trixie, told me the little muffin was on the house since they were going to be throwing them out that night anyway.
They were still soft, so I wasn’t too worried about letting Laurie nibble on some bits and pieces. By that point, Cassandra had wandered off somewhere around the shop – I think she was signing for a delivery.
Trixie hadn’t been at the bakery the last time I had come by to interview employees. So she and I chatted a bit.
I watched Deb from a safe distance as she crumbled up bits of muffin for Laurie. The woman was looking better as well as looking very thankful for my coming to her rescue.
I turned back to Trixie, bringing up Morgan. “Did you know her well?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Trixie said sadly. “We’re all pretty close here. I can’t imagine someone wanting to hurt Morgan or Cassandra… well…”
“Well?” I questioned, trying to pull something out of her that I could use.
“I mean, a lot of the women around here, Morgan and Cassandra included, have a thing for married men,” Trixie said. “Eventually someone was going to get really ticked, you know?”
“Yeah, but I cleared Morgan’s sugar daddy and his wife,” I said. “Were there any other men apart from Raymond she was seeing?”
“Not recently,” Trixie said.
“What about Cassandra?” I asked, and Trixie got a little timid.
“I’m going to level with you,” I said. “I know all about Cassandra attempting to seduce my husband.”
“Oh… so you knew about that,” Trixie said, looking embarrassed. “You know, Cassandra is actually a really awesome person. I don’t approve of that… lifestyle, but she’s not…”
“You don’t need to explain anything to me,” I said. “I’m a professional. I’m here to work. If there is anything more you could tell me, I’d appreciate it.”
“I guess maybe you could talk to Cassandra about other guys she or Morgan have been dating,” Trixie said. “But, I don’t know who would have had access to the back of the bakery. Cassandra keeps this place locked up pretty good.”
“I understand,” I said, and then from the corner of my eye I spotted a camera. “You have security cameras?” I questioned.
“Yeah,” Trixie said. “The police already skimmed through them, though, looking to see if anyone came into the back of the bakery the day those orange brownies were poisoned. But, no one other than the employees were back there, and they didn’t see anything suspicious. In fact, the only ones the police say they saw on the video near the poisoned brownies were Cassandra and Morgan.”
I nodded, thinking to myself for a moment. “Would you mind if I had a second glance? Maybe I can see something they missed?”
“Sure,” Trixie said. “The footage I think is still pulled out and sitting on Cassandra’s desk from when she let the police look at it.”
I turned toward Deb. It was a small bakery, so I felt okay leaving her gradually more sober self there with Laurie for a bit.
“You good?” I asked her. “If I go look in the back for a second.”
“I’m good enough to watch your kiddo while she nibbles on a muffin, yes,” Deb said, shaking her head. “If she starts crying, though, I’m bringing her straight to you.”
“Jim should be here any minute,” I said. “I’ll just be in the back for a second.” Deb nodded, and I headed to the back where Cassandra’s office was. I shivered a bit. Last time I had been in that office, I had found those ridiculous pictures she had sent Jim. I started feeling myself getting angry again, but I reminded myself that Jim had handled it well. He had told her to back off, confronted her about it, and had deleted her off his social media pages. She had gotten turned down; I didn’t have anything to worry about.
I started watching the video from Cassandra’s computer, and I specifically watched the video from the camera that was in the bakery’s kitchen. Sure enough, just as Trixie had said, the only ones in the back of the bakery that evening before the play were Morgan and Cassandra.
I watched as they frosted the brownies.
That didn’t make much sense.
When had they put the brownies in the oven? There seemed to be something missing from tape.
I froze.
Remembering Cassandra’s delete folder I clicked on it, only to find that it was empty. But wait! I’d copied it onto my thumb drive. I ran back to the lobby and startled Deb.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I whispered. “Give me a minute I need to check something out.” I dug into the pockets of Laurie’s stroller and located my key ring with the drive. “Don’t let anyone go back there, okay?”
Deb gave me a half salute, which wasn’t too confidence inspiring, but I decided to take my chances.
I rushed back to the office and stuffed the drive into the USB port. I located the video tape based on the time files and hit play.
Cassandra and her red hair filled the screen. She was mixing two different batches of brownies simultaneously.
Well, okay, maybe that was just due to volume… but ...
Then, I saw something odd. Morgan stepped out of the bakery for a minute, and Cassandra pulled something out of a cabinet down below. My eyes widened as she poured some sort of liquid into one of the brownie batters.
There’s no way, I thought to myself.
Cassandra wouldn’t have poisoned herself, right?
Surely, if she had been trying to kill Morgan for whatever reason, she wouldn’t have eaten the poisoned brownies herself.
I watched as she placed both batches of brownies into the oven and left the bakery. I continued watching the feed as Cassandra returned, and she a
nd Morgan worked on a few more dishes for the party. Cassandra pulled the brownies out of the oven, poisoned batch and non-poisoned batch, and sat them on the counter.
Another staff member opened the door and peeked in, and called Cassandra to the front of the bakery.
Then I watched as Morgan picked up one of the pans and moved it to the other side of the first one so that she could make room for another baking project. The brownies got switched! Morgan, of course, must not have known that Cassandra was planning on poisoning someone, right?
I kept watching as Cassandra returned and proceeded to decorate the first pan, the pan she believed to be the poisoned brownies, with purple icing.
Purple icing?
Chills ran up my spine and my mouth went dry.
Oh my Lord.
She wanted Jim. She wanted my husband. The person she was trying to eliminate was me.
I watched in stunned silence as Cassandra then decorated the other batch, the one that was actually the poisoned batch, with orange icing.
She didn’t know Morgan had switched the pans!
The two women has some sort of conversation, and Cassandra cut into the orange icing brownies, and the two women dug in – satisfying a sweet tooth craving, Morgan more so than Cassandra.
They laughed and chatted like two co-workers for a moment before packing up the brownies and the other items.
I couldn’t believe this lunatic, this hussy, home wrecker had been planning to murder me!
And poor Morgan had been an innocent victim.
I grabbed the thumb drive and jammed it into my pocket. Rage pulsed out of me as if I were a cartoon. I headed straight for the kitchen. Trixie wasn’t back there, so I assumed she was doing closing duties on the floor. I opened up the bottom cabinet, where I’d seen Cassandra pull out the bottle, but found it empty.
Darn!
No smoking bottle of Chloroform.
Well, I guess, she’s not that stupid. She got rid of the evidence.
I rummaged around the cabinet and behind a box of sugar, I saw some strange brownish residue. I looked around and realized exactly what it was I was seeing. Tobacco residue. Someone had been chopping up tobacco to place in some of the food.
Why would someone put tobacco in bakery items, I wondered, and then I had a flashback to my doctor’s appointments. They had found nicotine in my system. Not only that, but the oxygen level in my blood had been low – a side effect of… of chloroform.
But, I hadn’t eaten any brownies at the party,
In fact, the oxygen thing had been a problem for a couple of weeks, but I had assumed it was from the incident a month ago when I had been exposed to carbon monoxide.
My breath hitched. It was all right there in front of me. Cassandra had been making me my own batches of brownies for weeks – filling it with traces of chloroform and plenty of nicotine.
She had been slowly poisoning me and getting me addicted to her brownies! No wonder I had eaten a whole plate of those one night!
But, she must have gotten impatient. I thought back to the video; she had totally doused that one batch – instead of trying to poison me slowly, she decided to try to take me out at the after party!
And, she hired me as her private investigator to throw me – and probably the police – off her trail! The whole time I had been thinking that Morgan or Cassandra had been the victim, but it had been me!
No wonder I didn’t like that brownie at the party; it’d been the wrong type of brownie and had just been coated in the icing that I liked!
I snapped a picture of the tobacco box, thinking maybe Deb might need it. I knew Cassandra was my client, but it was clear now that that had all been a ruse. She was the true culprit!
I spun around, and there she was.
Cassandra.
“Kate, what are you doing back here?” she asked innocently.
“Just seeing if I can find anything for the case,” I said. “So far, nothing.”
My heart raced. Laurie was here.
“Nothing?” she asked, and glared at me.
I suddenly recalled the feeling of being watched in my own house. It’d been Cassandra!
Now, her eyes fell toward my right hand where I was holding my phone. “What did you just take a picture of?” she asked.
We stared at each other, and I think she knew.
She was busted. Her little plan had failed. And, I was ticked. She was trying to kill me so that she could get with Jim! Not only had she been flirting with my husband, sending him naked pictures, and calling the police on him to make him look like the guilty party – but she’d been trying to kill me and my babies! My pregnancy was at risk because of this psychopath.
And she’d made me doubt my darling devoted husband.
Cassandra stepped toward me, but I darted out of her way and into the front of the shop.
“It’s Cassandra!” I shouted at Deb who was still sitting and feeding Laurie bits of muffin. “And, don’t feed Laurie anything from here!”
My shouts were not much of an explanation, but I suppose the freaked out look on my face was enough to get Deb up and moving. I’ve never seen anyone whip a kid out of a high chair so quick. As Deb was placing Laurie on her hip, Cassandra came bursting out of the kitchen wielding a kitchen knife.
“Duck!” Deb shouted at me, and I obeyed quickly. I’m glad I did because Deb’s half empty cup of hot coffee went flinging over my head and straight into Cassandra’s face. The thing busted against her forehead before sending her flying onto her back.
“Whoa!” I yelped. “What an arm!”
Cassandra scrambled to her feet again. With the adrenaline pumping through my system, I kicked at her arm, using one of my kick-boxing maneuvers and knocked the knife out of her hand.
“Get Laurie out of here!” I shrieked, but it didn’t look like Deb – a cop – had any interest in leaving me alone with someone as loopy as Cassandra.
Cassandra, her face bloodied, held out her hands like they were claws. I wasn’t in the mood for a cat fight, but it looked like she sure was. She ran at me, grabbing my hair and punching at my belly.
I swiveled out of her grasp and punched her nose.
She yelped, but then suddenly flew backward through the air and landed on the floor.
I gasped. I knew my punch hadn’t flung her back like that.
A figure emerged and I realized it was Jim, eyes blazing. He blocked me from Cassandra and looked ready to murder her.
“All right, easy there, big guy,” Deb said, plopping Laurie into my arms. She immediately pressed her knee into Cassandra’s spine to immobilize her. “Shoot, I don’t have my cuffs,” Deb groaned. “Looks like I’m just going to have to sit on you until a uniformed officer gets here.”
“I told you she was crazy!” Jim snapped. “Did she attack you? What happened?”
“Cassandra killed Morgan,” I said, deciding not to give him the detail that I was the intended victim just yet. I’d wait until Cassandra was in the back of a cop car so Jim didn’t have the opportunity to go after her again.
Deb called in backup around the time Trixie wandered back inside from a smoke break. The woman looked very confused, and Cassandra just cussed when she questioned what was going on.
“Yeah, you might want to keep your mouth shut,” Deb warned, placing a hand on the back of Cassandra’s head and making her kiss the floor. “You tried to sock my girl in her gut. Not cool,” Deb said, winking up at me. She held out a hand toward Jim. “Deb, by the way. You must be Jim.”
Jim shook his head. “Yeah, nice to meet you…” he said, shaking her hand, but then he laughed slightly as he looked down at Deb who was so casual about detaining a very frantic woman.
Backup arrived at last, and Deb spoke with the officer as he placed a cuffed Cassandra into the back of his patrol car. Deb was sober enough now to give her statement without letting the other officer realize she’d been drinking only a few hours earlier. “You mind coming in early so you can see your
perp down to the station?” the officer asked.
“Actually, I think I need to go home and shower,” Deb said. “I’ll be there soon, though. Promise.” Deb then motioned in my direction. “We need to see what we can do for this girl. She solved this case for us.”
The officer agreed, shook my hand, and was about to drive off. I couldn’t help but to throw a snide comment Cassandra’s way. “I’ll bill you for the case,” I said.
Cassandra smirked angrily at me from the other side of the car window.
“What, you’re not going to pay me now?” I questioned, and she looked away.
Jim placed a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, baby?”
I smiled at him. “I am now.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was closing night of the play, and of course, I had come out to attend along with Jim and Paula and even Deb. We all sat together, shaking our heads at the disaster of a comedy/musical once more. Although, I have to say, now that I knew what to expect I enjoyed the play much more. There was going to be another after party for closing night – this time the director made the food for it himself.
No more chances, I guess.
After the play, the audience trickled out, and the cast and crew made their way to the lobby for the after party. The food wasn’t quite as elegant as it had been opening night, but the director was far too nervous to order food again. Fried chicken, refried beans, and rice. Honestly, it was a pregnant woman’s dream. “I can’t believe you’re eating food here,” Jim teased.
“I’m pregnant, and this is fried chicken,” I said. “Yeah, I’m eating.”
“How is your pregnancy going thus far?” Paula asked as Deb sat down with me to gobble up some food as well.
“A lot better now that I’m not slowly ingesting nicotine and chloroform,” I said.
“Yeah, that’ll do it,” Paula said, shaking her head. “Is what Cassandra did to you going to hurt the babies?”
I frowned. I really didn’t want to think about that. “Right now, everything is checking out okay. But, between the carbon monoxide poisoning last month, the high dosage of nicotine, and the chloroform, my doctor is keeping a very close eye on me. But, two healthy heart beats, and they have started to wiggle a little. It took me forever to start to feel Laurie moving around in there, but I started feeling these two pretty quickly.”
