Gingerbread and a Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

I was shocked. Natalie wasn’t the sort of girl that would try to humiliate anybody.

  “What do you mean she tried to humiliate her in front of their class?” Stormy asked. She sounded as shocked as I was.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t bring it up,” Carol said, looking down at her hands. “But they had a science class together, and they were all doing projects. Chrissy and her partner had used a tri-fold poster board to show the steps to making a battery. They actually made one and hooked it up to a little car to make it work. On the day they were supposed to demonstrate their project, they opened up the poster board and Natalie had written in red felt marker that Chrissy was sleeping with one of the boys in the class.” She looked up at us. “My Chrissy wasn’t that kind of girl.”

  I stared at her wide-eyed. I was certain she had to be wrong. “Are you sure?” I asked her. “That doesn’t sound like Natalie.”

  She nodded. “I wanted to go to the principal and complain about what happened, but Chrissy wouldn’t let me. She said the teacher had already dealt with the problem and she didn’t want to make it a bigger deal than it already was. She was humiliated. I understand the two had a falling out, but you would have thought that by two years later, Natalie would have gotten over it.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Stormy said. “This is the first I’ve heard of this. I’ve never known Natalie to behave that way.”

  “I’m sure it’s a shock,” Carol said. “And I shouldn’t even be bringing it up, but when Rainey said Natalie was in the gingerbread competition, it just brought back that memory.” She laughed sadly. “How stupid for something like that to come to me now, right?”

  I sat back on the sofa and took this in. Was that why Natalie didn’t want to come with us to speak to Carol and Roger? I couldn’t reconcile what Carol had just told us with what I knew of Natalie.

  “Did Natalie confess to the teacher that she did it?” I asked her. Natalie had said it was Jenna that sabotaged Chrissy’s project.

  “Yes, the teacher said she confessed to it,” Carol said, nodding. “But let’s forget about that. I’m so sorry I brought it up. It really doesn’t make any difference now, does it?”

  I shook my head slowly. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  “If you want to know the truth, the only person I can think of that might have wanted to harm my Chrissy,” she said, “was her partner in the gingerbread decorating contest. Jenna Dennison. But even so, I still can’t imagine her actually doing something like killing her.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “The only person that hated Chrissy more than Natalie,” she said, “was Jenna. They were rivals all through junior high and high school and I can’t tell you the number of times Chrissy came home crying about something Jenna had done.”

  “Then why did they become partners?” I asked her. Natalie had said the same thing about Chrissy and Jenna. They hated each other. But why would Carol think Natalie had written something ugly on her science project?

  She shrugged. “I asked Chrissy that several times. But all she would say is that she and Jenna had put their differences behind them and Jenna was excellent at decorating cakes and cookies. She said she intended to win the contest. I still can’t get over the fact that she’s gone. She never even got to enter the Miss America pageant. We were so looking forward to that. She would have won. I know she would have.” She sniffed and reached for a tissue from the box on the coffee table.

  I looked at Carol. It seemed odd that Chrissy had wanted to win the gingerbread decorating contest badly enough that she partnered with someone she didn’t like. I had to wonder what her motivation was.

  We stayed and talked to Carol a while longer and then excused ourselves.

  “The only person that hated Chrissy more than Natalie?” Stormy said once we got back into my car. “Natalie doesn’t hate Chrissy! She was over their breakup years ago.” Stormy harrumphed as she fastened her seatbelt. “Natalie was at home all evening after the gingerbread house contest, and she stayed there until we went shopping the following evening. Even if she had wanted to kill chrissy, she was at home. She couldn’t have done it.”

  “I know, right? I didn’t expect this visit to go the direction it did. You and I both know there’s no way Natalie could have done anything to hurt Chrissy.”

  She nodded and stared out the window. “I know my girl. She would never have written something like that on Chrissy’s project poster board and embarrassed her like that, either. And why would Carol bring that up now?”

  I started my car and pulled away from the curb. “I don’t know. I think Carol isn’t thinking straight because of the tragedy she’s just suffered.”

  Chapter Six

  When we left Carol’s house, we headed back to Stormy’s to talk to Natalie. I didn’t believe for one minute that she could have done what Carol said she did back in the ninth grade. And the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me that she had even brought it up. What difference did it make at this point?

  Before I got to Stormy's, I realized the reason it bothered me was that Carol had been stewing over who had killed Chrissy. I didn’t want anyone looking at Natalie. Natalie wasn’t capable of murder. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that Carol was dealing with a personal nightmare at that moment and her thinking wasn’t clear.

  “Natalie,” Stormy said striding into the kitchen. Natalie was pouring cereal into a bowl. “Is it true you sabotaged Chrissy’s science project in the ninth grade?”

  Natalie looked at both of us, her forehead wrinkled in confusion. “No. Jenna Dennison did that. Chrissy stole her boyfriend and Jenna was furious. She wrote some nasty things about Chrissy on the poster board she had made for her project. I told you that.”

  I took a deep breath. “Why would Chrissy’s mother think you were the one that did it?”

  She shrugged and a distinctly guilty look crossed her face. “It was a long time ago. Jenna and I hung out for a while in the ninth grade. Maybe we both discussed it, but I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Did you get into trouble for it?” Stormy asked her.

  She poured milk on her cereal and then picked up the bowl of cereal and took a bite, taking her time before answering us. “I did get blamed for it, but so did Jenna. We both received a failing grade for our project, but I never told you about it. It wasn’t fair, but I didn’t want to cause any problems so I didn’t say anything. I just did some extra credit work and brought my grade back up.” She shrugged and took another bite of her cereal.

  I was suddenly feeling confused. First Natalie didn’t want to go see Chrissy’s parents to offer her condolences, and now she was saying that even though she was innocent of what had happened in the ninth grade, she silently suffered the consequences of what someone else had done.

  “I can’t believe you lied to me,” Stormy said, crossing her arms in front of herself.

  “I didn’t lie to you. The subject never came up and besides that, it was five years ago. You’re getting mad about something I did five years ago?”

  “That’s not the point,” she said. “A girl is dead and you don’t seem very concerned.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry Chrissy’s dead. But it’s not as if we’d been friends for years. I don’t know who might have killed her, but like I said before, it was weird that she and Jenna teamed up.”

  Stormy took a deep breath. “Okay. You’re right. It was a long time ago and there’s no reason for me to get upset about it now.” She glanced over at me.

  “Where does Jenna work?” I asked Natalie.

  “She works at the drugstore on Main Street.”

  ***

  Stormy and I drove over to Sparrow drugs. The store was more deserted than I had expected with it being so close to Christmas. They had lots of cute gift items in the seasonal aisles and I decided I needed to come back and take a closer look when I wasn’t on a mission. Right now, I had someone I needed to interview. Someone that might just be a suspect.


  We found Jenna in the cosmetic department. There was a small sectioned off area where they kept the more expensive cosmetics locked up and she was back there straightening the displays of tester make up tubes and compacts.

  “Hi Jenna,” I said casually. “Congratulations on winning the gingerbread house decorating contest.”

  She turned around to look at me and smiled. “Thank you, Rainey,” she said. “I was surprised we won. I thought Natalie did a really good job on your gingerbread house.”

  “We would have done better if the gingerbread house wasn’t broken. I have a feeling you might know how that happened,” I said. I was trying not to sound like I was accusing her and I hoped that came through in my tone.

  She looked at me and bit her lower lip. “I guess I do. Chrissy broke your gingerbread house. I didn’t know that for sure at first, but I suspected it. She got back before I did after the break and she was in our kitchenette, smiling smugly. Later while we were decorating, I asked her about it and she said she may have slipped into your kitchenette and accidentally bumped into it. She laughed about it. I thought it was a really rotten thing to do, but I had nothing to do with it.”

  I nodded. It didn’t surprise me that Chrissy might have done something like that. “That was what I suspected,” I said. “You didn’t feel like you should mention it to the judges?”

  She looked away and straightened up the tubes of lipstick in front of her. “I should have. But I was afraid of what Chrissy would do if I did. I couldn’t bring myself to cross her. I’m sorry.”

  That wasn’t a shock, either. I glanced at Stormy and rolled my eyes. “It was kind of a surprise to see you and Chrissy teaming up for the competition. I didn’t know the two of you were such good friends.”

  Her eyes went wide. “We weren’t. I was as surprised as anybody when Chrissy asked me to be her partner. She paid the entrance fee for me and that was the only reason I did it. I had always wanted to be in the competition, but I live on my own. I don’t get paid a lot working here, so I couldn’t afford it.”

  Jenna was a slightly built girl, but she was tall. Her strawberry blond hair complemented her pale complexion and her blue eyes were the color of ice. She was pretty in an unconventional way. “I was led to believe that you and Chrissy really hated each other when you were in school. In fact, someone may have said that you sabotaged her science class project.”

  “Somebody might have said you tried to blame it on someone else,” Stormy interjected. Stormy was in mama bear mode at the moment, even though the situation had occurred years ago. I wondered if she felt someone might try to pin Chrissy’s death on her daughter.

  Jenna’s eyes went from me to Stormy. “Natalie and I kidded and laughed about doing something like that. But we had no intention of carrying it through until Chrissy cornered me in the girl’s bathroom and pushed my face into the sink. She had all of her friends behind her and there wasn’t anything I could do. I got angry, and I did it. I sabotaged her project. When I told Mr. White what happened, you can bet he didn’t believe me, and in my panic, I brought up Natalie’s name. I hoped to have her back up my story so that maybe he would believe me because he really liked her. But we both ended up with failed projects.”

  Jenna seemed sincere in what she was saying although she was leaving out the part where Chrissy stole her boyfriend. “Do you have any idea what might have happened to Chrissy?”

  She glanced over her shoulder and then looked at me again. “I really don’t know. But Chrissy told me that Susan Lang, the organizer of the event, tried to keep her out of the competition.”

  “Why would she want to do that?” I asked. Susan was not only the organizer of the event, but she had been one of the judges for the competition.

  “Chrissy said she didn’t know why, but when she first tried to register, Susan told her they already had twelve teams and she was too late. Susan said that Tara Black and Kelly Ortega were the last team to register. Chrissy didn’t believe her, so she went and asked Tara and Kelly when they had registered. Turns out we had submitted our registration form two days before they did and Chrissy went back and confronted Susan.”

  “What did Susan say?” I asked.

  “I guess Susan didn’t want to get caught in a lie, so she backed down and said another team had backed out and she let Chrissy and me in the competition. I think the truth was that there was still one more slot open, and she turned Chrissy down, hoping someone else would register. No one would know unless they asked around, and that’s what Chrissy did.”

  “And Chrissy never mentioned why Susan didn’t want her in the competition?” Stormy asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I really don’t know why. But I could tell when Susan was around us on the day of the competition, she didn’t like Chrissy. I just figured Susan is a snooty person, and she was mad that Chrissy checked up on her. But I don’t know why she didn’t want us in the competition to begin with.”

  It sounded plausible. I didn’t know Susan well, but I had always had the impression that she thought she was better than most people. She just had an air about her.

  “When was last time you saw Chrissy?” I asked her.

  “Right after the judging,” she said. “I had to get to work, and I left around 4:15.”

  I nodded. “And you didn’t speak to her again?”

  She shook her head. “No. When I saw what she had done to your gingerbread house, I realized I had made a mistake teaming up with her. I got my trophy, and I left. I expected to never speak to her again, and I guess I was right, but not for the reasons I thought.” She shrugged. “I didn’t like Chrissy when we were in school, and I decided I didn’t like her as an adult either.”

  I wasn’t sure if everything Jenna said was the truth, but it was all I had for now.

  Stormy and I left the drugstore without buying anything. I wondered what Susan Lang had against Chrissy. I agreed with Jenna though. Chrissy left a lot to be desired as a friend. She had gone out of her way to destroy our gingerbread house so she could win the contest. I had more questions than answers at this point, but I was going to find out who killed Chrissy Jones.

  Chapter Seven

  “Another murder?” Agatha asked me. Agatha owned the British Coffee and Tea Company and had been a good friend of mine for years.

  We were sitting in a corner booth at Sam’s Diner and she was enjoying her breakfast. The weather had gotten colder with snow arriving overnight. The diner was nearly deserted, so I slid into the booth across from her to rest my feet for a few minutes.

  I nodded. “It’s a terrible shame. A murder this close to Christmas,” I said. “Chrissy Jones.”

  “Chrissy Jones? Wasn’t she that girl that worked over at Michelle’s?” Agatha asked, eating a forkful of scrambled eggs. Michelle’s was one of the nicest dress shops in Sparrow.

  “Yes, I think she worked at Michelle’s for a couple of years. She was a friend of Natalie’s when they were young.” I left out the part where they had had a nasty breakup and now Natalie was behaving slightly out of character regarding Chrissy’s death.

  She nodded. “That’s what I thought. She was a beauty queen, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, she was supposed to compete in the Miss America pageant, but from what I hear, she never made it.”

  “Those poor beauty queens,” Agatha said and chuckled sadly. “They don’t seem to be able to catch a break around here.”

  I nodded. “I hate the things that have happened around here lately. Did you know her?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. She stopped in once in a while to get a coffee, and I shopped at Michelle’s occasionally. But I wouldn’t say that I really knew her. We exchanged pleasantries when we saw one another, but not much more than that.”

  “I just can’t imagine who would want to kill her. I mean, she could be kind of arrogant sometimes,” I said, remembering a conversation we had had several months earlier. Chrissy wasn’t the shy type. She frequently bragged on herself.
“But lots of people are arrogant and they don’t end up dead.”

  She nodded. “I suppose some people are overly confident in themselves. Still, I feel bad for her parents. What a terrible loss.”

  “You can say that again,” I said and looked up as Cade walked through the front door. He stopped and looked in our direction, then headed over to us.

  “So, I’ve caught you lazing about, have I?” he said with a grin and sat next to me on the booth seat.

  I scooted over to give him room. “I guess you have,” I said and gave him a quick kiss. “Don’t blame me though, blame the weather. It’s too cold for people to venture out, even for Sam’s cooking.”

  “I wouldn’t be out here either if I didn’t have to be,” he said. He looked at Agatha’s plate. “My Agatha, those scrambled eggs and white toast sure do look good.”