I open the dean’s door without knocking and throw the letter at him. “What’s going on?” I demand.
Dean Jorgenson stands and tries to usher me to a seat. “Please, Dr. Muller take a seat so that we can discuss this like two rational beings.”
I’m not sitting anywhere. “Rational beings? Rational means exercising sound judgment or good sense. You put me on probation and threatened my job at the University. How is that rational?”
The dean looks embarrassed but doesn’t hesitate to reply. “We just can’t have people accused of murder teaching our students. We’ve already received some calls from concerned parents.”
Although Dolly’s murder has been widely publicized, I was only mentioned in one report as a ‘person of interest’. It’s not like my name and face has been plastered all over the news. “What about innocent until proven guilty?”
The dean looks slightly guilty but shakes his head. “I’m afraid that just won’t do. Not when we’re shaping tomorrow’s leaders.”
“I’m innocent! When I’m cleared, I’ll sue you and the University for false dismissal.” I have no idea if that’s something I can even do, but you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be checking out the possibilities.
The dean’s face turns red. Unfortunately, he’s not embarrassed. He’s enraged. “Who do you think you are?”
“I’m a woman who has been falsely accused of a crime and instead of my employer – who has known me for years – standing behind me, he’s threatening to fire me. That’s who I am.” Two can play at the enraged game. I take a deep breath. Yelling at each other is not going to solve anything. “Can’t we reach some sort of compromise?”
The red lightens somewhat on the dean’s face. “If you can prove – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that you are innocent before the semester starts, I will rescind the probation and delete it from your employment file.”
I start to protest. The semester starts in two weeks. How in the heck am I going to be cleared of any wrongdoing in such a short time? I know the wheels of justice are squeaky and rumble along at a pace slower than a grandma out for a Sunday drive, but one look at the dean squelches my protest. His face is set in stone. I’ve pushed him as far as I can. I nod.
“Okay. I’ll prove I’m innocent.” I turn on my heel and head out of his office. As I’m shutting the door, I can’t resist shouting in as cheery a voice as I can manage. “See you in two weeks!” I just hope I’m right.
Chapter 9
Keep Calm. There’s nothing a cupcake can’t solve.
As I rush to my bike, which I had thrown haphazardly on the grass in front of Bascom Hall, I text Ben and ask him to meet me at the bakery. Before I manage to straddle my ride, there’s a beep from my phone indicating a message. He’ll meet me at the bakery in ten minutes.
I peddle my butt off and make it to the bakery before Ben arrives. Fortunately, one of our part-timers is managing the bakery front while Anna bakes and sings off-key in the kitchen. She watches me enter with a scowl. No doubt angry that I took off when she was swamped, but one look at my flushed face has her stopping in her tracks.
“What’s going on?”
I shake my head. “I’m waiting for Ben and then we’ll talk.” I push through the swinging door into the café in time to see Ben enter. He immediately rushes to me.
“Are you okay?” He asks as he pulls me into a hug.
“We need to talk.” I take his hand and pull him though the kitchen into my office. Anna sees us and immediately washes her hands before joining us. I collapse in my office chair and take a deep breath before blurting out, “We need to find Dolly’s killer.”
“WHAT?” Ben explodes while Anna jumps up and down clapping.
“Please, let me explain.” I’m pleading with Ben while Anna is doing a victory dance of some sort. “Anna, you’re not helping.” She yelps and sits in a chair. Ben closes my office door but doesn’t relax. He stands with his back leaning against the door, and his arms crossed over his broad chest, which makes his biceps bulge and would be intimidating as all get out if I didn’t know the man is just a big teddy bear.
“I’m going to lose my position at the University if I can’t prove I’m innocent before the semester starts.” My eyes tear up at the idea, but I blink fast and manage to hold them back.
“Sweetheart,” Ben whispers, and somehow I’m in his arms. He’s sitting in my chair, and I’m cradled in his lap. “They can’t do that.” He kisses my forehead and cuddles me close.
“Unfortunately, they can.” I take a deep breath and confess something I would never admit to Dean Jorgenson. “There’s a clause in my contract about impropriety.”
Anna jumps up from her chair and explodes. “You did nothing improper! You are accused of a murder you didn’t commit! This isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” I mumble.
My words enrage the pixie. She slams her tiny fist on my desk and shouts, “You’ve had enough unfairness in your life. You worked so hard for this. I’m going to hurt those German department jerks!”
Ben hugs me close at Anna’s reference to my less than stellar life story. It’s not really that horrible. It is what it is. My parents died in a car crash when I was a teenager. Although I had an aunt and uncle somewhere in the middle of nowhere Nebraska who were willing to take me in despite the fact that we had never met, I didn’t want to move. I was seventeen at the time and a senior in high school. I’d already secured early acceptance into the University where I now teach with an academic scholarship to boot. Unfortunately, my dad was at fault in the accident that killed him and my mom, and the insurance used his negligence as an excuse to not pay out. I ended up selling the house, Mom’s car, even the furniture to have enough money to pay for their hospital costs and funeral. I ended up working at Gretchen’s bakery to pay for the tiny apartment I had moved in to after being emancipated. Gretchen became my new family. She left me the bakery when she passed. In her will, she stated she wanted me to sell the bakery and use the money to pay for my living costs while I finished my doctorate, but I couldn’t do it. The bakery’s been in her family for three generations, and I couldn’t just throw that history away. Instead, with Anna’s baking genius, I’ve managed to make the bakery into a profitable business, which pays the bills while I’m waiting for a full-time professor position to open up at the University.
Naturally, Ben is the voice of reason. “It’s too dangerous for you to go off half-cocked looking for a killer. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
I lean away from Ben’s comforting arms and stare him down. “What choice do I have? The fall semester starts in two weeks. If I’m not cleared of any ‘impropriety’ before then, my current suspension will be made permanent.”
“Are they even looking for the real killer?” Anna pipes up. “I read somewhere that once someone decides a person is guilty, then it’s nearly impossible to convince them they’re wrong.” I roll my eyes at Anna. She loves pop psychology. Unfortunately, she gets most of her ‘information’ from women’s magazines and those ridiculous quizzes they always seem to be printing.
Ben wiggles beneath me. I tilt my head in question at him. What’s he hiding? His face turns a lovely shade of pink, but I continue to stare him down. Finally, he shakes his head and admits, “Duchamp and Smits are convinced Callie is the murderer. They’re focusing all their attention on her.”
“Why?” I thought I had poked some gigantic holes in their less than stellar case against me.
“Sweetheart, they’re new to the homicide squad, and you made fools out of them. The entire squad is laughing at them. They’re out to prove something now.”
“Men,” I huff. Ben just shrugs.
“Well, that just cinches it doesn’t it?” Anna jumps up from her chair and starts pacing my office. “We’re going to have to find the killer ourselves.” She stops and stares at Ben. “What do you know about the case?”
Ben shrugs. “Not much. Just what I told you before. D
olly was poisoned, and they assume it was the cupcake that killed her.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” I push my slipping glasses back up my nose. “How did they figure out it was poison so quickly? I’m not an expert or anything but doesn’t it take longer to do a tox screen or whatever it’s called?”
Ben smiles, and his dimple is visible. “I think they’re assuming.” Anna claps and starts to rant again, but Ben cuts her off. “But the circumstantial evidence is pretty damning. Dolly died while in the middle of eating the cupcake. A witness says she complained about the cupcake tasting ‘funky’ before she collapsed. It looked like she had a heart attack but with her age and fitness level…” He shrugs as his voice trails off.
“When was this supposed poisoning?” Anna asks, and I turn to her and nearly fall out of Ben’s lap in surprise. She’s sitting in a chair scratching away with a pen and paper. Where did my pixie go?
“Right after your pole dancing class last week Tuesday.”
Anna looks up and studies Ben. “Anything else you can tell us about the case?”
Ben shakes his head. “Not really. I’m not on the homicide squad, and they know that Callie’s my girlfriend. The detectives are being quite secretive.”
Girlfriend? When did that happen? We’ve been on one date. I look up at Ben in question, and he’s staring at me as if to dare me to contradict him. Do I want to contradict him? I give my head a little shake. “We’ll talk about that girlfriend comment later,” I whisper to him.
He leans down and gives me a quick kiss before moving his mouth to my ear to whisper, “Talk all you want, sweetheart. You’re mine and everyone knows it. Stop fighting it.”
I push my glasses back up and shake my head at his audacity. Where did my gentle giant go? Speaking of which, “You need to go.”
Ben startles in surprise. “You want me to go?”
“You can’t be involved, Ben,” answers Anna.
He looks at me for confirmation. “I won’t have you risking your job over this.”
He stares at me, and I want to squirm, but I have to stand firm. He loves his job. I can’t let him throw that away for me. I’m just not worth it. Finally, he nods. “Okay, I’ll go but only because you’re agreeing that you’re girlfriend.” I start to protest, but he just talks right over my protests. “And on two conditions.”
“Name them.” I glower at him.
“One, I have resources you can only dream of. If you need help, you come to me and I’ll see what I can do.” Easy enough. I nod. “And if things get dangerous, you’re done.”
“But...” I start to speak, and Ben cuts me off again.
“I’m not budging on this. It took me a year to get you. Now that I’ve got you, I’m not giving you up.”
Reluctantly, I nod. I don’t think there’s any chance of danger, anyway. Ben picks me up and sets me on my feet so he can stand. He pushes out of the chair and then grabs my hand. “Walk me out.” I follow him through the kitchen to the back door.
“Why are you going out the back way?”
He smirks at me and leans close. “So I can do this.” He crushes his mouth on mine, and I’m lost in a haze of pleasure. After a few minutes, he slows the kiss and pulls away. “Fight me all you want, Callie, but you’re mine.” He turns and quickly exits the bakery before I have a chance to catch my breath; let alone come up with some sort of reply to his declaration.
Chapter 10
“Wow, that Lean Cuisine really filled me up,” said no one, ever.
I wander through the kitchen in a bit of a fog. Anna grabs my arm and pulls me into my office. She sets me down on one of the chairs in front of my desk and grabs the other one. She pulls a notebook towards her. “Okay, where do we start?”
Where do we start? What’s she talking about? I shake my head to clear my Ben-fog. Oh yeah, Dolly’s murder. “I have no idea. I guess we need to find someone who would want to kill her.”
Anna clicks her pen on and off several times before responding. “I imagine there are a lot of people who hate her.”
I shake my head at her. “There’s a huge difference between hating someone and actually killing them.” I start to warm to the subject. “Think about it. Someone took the time and energy to come here and buy a cupcake and then poison it and give it to Dolly. And then they tried to frame me. This took time and premeditation. I doubt it’s just someone who doesn’t like her class.”
Anna slumps back in her chair. “I guess you’re right.”
“And the gym manager, Janet, told me that her classes are really popular. So I doubt it’s someone from one of her classes.”
“So, how are we going to find someone who wanted to kill her?”
“Hmmm…” I drum my fingers on the desk. “It has to be someone she knew well, right? Someone who knew when she was giving classes and knew about the incident with her car.” Anna nods eagerly. I sit up when an idea hits me. “We need her address book.”
“And how are we going to get her address book?”
“Hold on.” I hold up a finger and grab my phone from my desk. I quickly dial Ben’s number. “Hey Ben. Question for you. Do you know where Dolly’s phone is?” I listen to Ben’s answer before hanging up the phone and explaining to Anna. “No dice. Dolly’s phone was on her when she was murdered so it’s in evidence.”
“Shoot!”
I barely hear Anna’s shout. My eyes are focused on my laptop. “I wonder…”
“You wonder what?”
I turn to Anna who looks annoyed at my evasiveness. “I have my phone synced to my laptop. Just in case I lose my phone or something. Maybe Dolly has a computer or laptop at her house and…”
Anna is typing on my laptop before I can even manage to finish my thought. “Crud! Dolly’s address is unlisted.”
“But the gym must have her address. She’s an employee so they’d need it for their records and such.” I reach for my phone but then stop. “I can’t call and ask for Dolly’s address. I’m a suspect in her murder.”
“I’ll do it.” Anna grabs her phone and starts scrolling through her contacts. “What was that manager’s name?”
“Janet,” I whisper as Anna’s call is already being picked up.
“Can I talk to Janet, please?” Anna smiles and drums her fingers as she waits. “Hi Janet! This is Anna. I’m a member… I was just wondering if you have Dolly’s address. I want to send some flowers or something.”
I shake my head at Anna’s lame excuse.
“Oh, yeah, the funeral home would be better.” Anna grabs a pen and paper. She scribbles the name of the funeral home down. “Thanks, Janet!”
“Well, that sucks,” she says as she throws the phone on my desk. “What now?”
I shrug because I have no idea. It’s not like I’m an expert at criminal investigations. If you want to debate great German authors, I’m your girl. Solving murders? No clue.
Anna jumps and starts to clap. Uh oh. “Why don’t we get the information from the gym?”
“How?”
She waves her hand at my practical question. “No worries. I’ll just ask the receptionist. She likes me.” She stands and moves to the kitchen. “We’ll have to wait until closing, though. I need to get some baking done.”
♥♥♥
I’m really hoping that Anna changes her mind before closing time but no such luck. She doesn’t give me a chance to balk and rushes me out the back door pushing me towards the gym once the bakery is shut down. Just before we enter the gym, my phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s Ben wondering where I am. Shoot! He must be at the bakery to walk me to my apartment. I quickly type that I’m at the gym. There. That should satisfy him.
Anna and I walk into the gym, and she heads directly to the receptionist while I hang back. Access to the gym is via a gate for which you need a pass card. The receptionist sits at a curved desk next to the gate and can buzz people in if necessary. There’s a small seating area before the entry. I grab a magazine from the tab
le and hide behind it while Anna talks to the receptionist.
After a few moments of speaking Anna shakes her head and swipes her card for access to the gym. What’s she doing? My phone rings. It’s Anna.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“She wouldn’t give me Dolly’s address. We need to create a diversion, and then you can snoop in her computer.”
“Me?” I shout and then remember I’m supposed to be incognito. “Why can’t you snoop?”
“Because you can’t make a scene when you’re not supposed to be here. Duh. Don’t swipe your card either. They probably make records of that.”
I start to protest but Anna’s already hung up. Typical. And then I hear her screaming. “Oh my God. Somebody help! I think this lady in the locker room is having a heart attack!” And then she’s next to the receptionist pulling her to the locker room. “You’ve got to help me!” They turn a corner, and Anna looks back at me and winks before pointing to the desk and mouthing, GO.
It looks like I don’t have a choice. This is beyond stupid. Not that that stops me or anything. I walk to the desk and try to reach the computer, but I’m too short. Bugger. What now? I jump up and try to crawl over the desk only I end up jumping too far and going up and over the desk. I somehow manage to not crack my skull and land on my butt. I rub my sore bottom for a second before grabbing the keyboard and starting to search. Lucky for me, there’s an icon on the home page titled ‘employee contact information’. I click on it and find Dolly’s information. I grab a sticky note and scribble down her address.
I need to get out of here. I shove the sticky note in my back pocket and put the keyboard back. I get to my knees and slowly peek out from behind the desk. Fiddlesticks! Ben is standing there with his arms crossed over his chest staring down at me. He shakes his head before reaching over and hauling me over the desk. He places me on my feet before asking, “Where’s Anna?”
Never Trust a Skinny Cupcake Baker (Death by Cupcake Book 1) Page 5
