A Slice of Disaster

by Jessica Lancaster

  Sarah appeared from the kitchen. “Sell everything?”

  “Not quite. You never know,” she said. “Some days, people only want meat and potato, the next, people want steak, there’s no pleasing everyone, is there.”

  She chuckled back, turning her wrist over to see her watch. “When’s the electrician coming?” Sarah asked. “We’ve got a small selection cooling for him.”

  Bree checked her wristwatch as well. The office phone hadn’t rung, and it was after noon. She shrugged. “Any time now, I guess.”

  “And how were the trio bars?”

  The plate to Bree’s left was empty, only crumbs and residue were left on the tray. “Think you should make two sheet pans next time,” she said. “Everyone seems to love them.”

  Sarah clapped with excitement. “They were both worried,” she said, nodding to the kitchen door. “Bit of an odd combo, but it works, and if we keep taking recipes from the book, I’m going to be coming out of here several pounds heavier, each day.”

  “Never trust a skinny baker,” Bree said.

  “Thought it was a skinny chef.” She looked over Bree’s body. “And weren’t you a chef?”

  The bell dinged, and in walked a man, dressed in a deep blue suit with an off-white shirt and a light blue tie. He was followed into the bakery by two police officers.

  The man approached the counter, placing his card down. “I’m detective Mark June with the Landale police,” he said. “Which one of you ladies is Bree Dalton?”

  They looked to each other.

  “What’s this about?” Sarah asked.

  “We need to ask her some questions.”

  Bree nodded. “I’m Bree.”

  “Bree Dalton, we need you to come down to the police station for questioning,” he said, his straight lips and squinting gaze focused on Bree’s face.

  “Am I under arrest?” Bree asked. “I have a business to run, I—”

  “If that’s what it takes,” he said. The two police officers stepped forward. A tall woman, PC Denning, and a wide muscular man, PC Vernon. “Bree Dalton, you’re under arrest for the intent to sell stolen jewellery.”

  SEVEN

  Wednesday 17th April 2019

  Sat outside the Landale City police station in her red Kia Ceed. Sarah glanced at her watch before looking into the wing mirror to see lights flash behind her. From the signage above the car, it was a taxi. The phone call she’d received said Bree was being released at 8 A.M. and from the timing on her watch, they were five minutes late.

  Finally, out of the modern glass doors, Bree made an appearance, followed by Detective Mark June, standing with his arms folded over his chest. He stood in wait at the door as he watched Bree head to Sarah.

  Bree’s hair was frizzy at both sides of her head, and loosely tied in a ponytail. She was still wearing the clothes she’d gone in yesterday, but her face gave away the most; a sad gravity pulled at her face.

  The sun was rising, and with it, people walking the streets heading to work for their day jobs. Something Bree should’ve been doing, and would’ve been doing if yesterday’s events hadn’t transpired.

  “What happened?” Sarah finally asked, starting the engine.

  In the passenger seat, Bree tugged the seat belt at the shoulder and wiggled under the constraints of it. “I—I—I—” she sighed, sniffling.

  Sarah glanced out of the window to see the man still watching them. She started to drive. “Don’t let them see you cry.”

  “I just want to go to bed and sleep.”

  “Yeah, let me take you home,” she said. “I’ve told Lucy and Jack we’re not opening today, but after what happened yesterday, we had a lot of people coming in, so maybe it was good for business.”

  Bree burst out into laughter. The pressure had built in her, it was either give in to tears or let it out all with a chuckle. “It’s so stupid,” she said.

  “I’m glad you called me.”

  “I just can’t begin to think of what I would do if they didn’t let me out, and just said, no, you had them, you stole them, and then threw the keys away.”

  Sarah clicked her tongue. “No, they wouldn’t.”

  “They only let me out because the jewels were stolen way before I was even born,” Bree said, turning in the belt against her body, confining her to the seat. “They accused me of still having some. And it’s no joke when they put cuffs on you either.” Her wrists were only slightly red, but she rubbed them anyway, almost feeling the tightness still firm around her.

  “What did they ask?”

  “Where I found them, and if I knew they were stolen. They seem to think my father had something to do with all this,” she continued. “I told them—” she broke off into laughter. “I told them if they wanted to speak with him, he’s in the Cranwell Crematorium.” She continued laughing, petering off into a sigh.

  “I doubt he stole them,” Sarah said in her attempt at reassurance. “I worked for your dad for ages, and trust me, he’s been through some hard times, financially.”

  “I know.”

  “Doesn’t make sense he’d be sitting on a small fortune of jewels then, does it?”

  As Sarah drove back into Cranwell, Bree leaned against the window, staring out into the farmlands lining the roads just outside of the city. It was a stark contrast. Bree had missed it while living in London and being back in Cranwell at least gave her lungs a chance to clear themselves out.

  “Did you speak to my mum?” Bree asked.

  She nodded. “I went to see if she’d heard from you, so I told her.”

  “What did she say?”

  “It’s your mother,” Sarah said.

  Bree raised her brows, as if what Sarah had said meant her mother would be loving and collected after being told her daughter was arrested. “Well?”

  “She swore a little, told me to drive her to the police station so she could give the officers an earful, and then told me her soaps were about to start.”

  A smirk formed on Bree’s lips. “Glad she didn’t come,” she said. “And that’s why I called you.”

  “What?” she laughed. “I thought it was because I had a car.”

  “That too.”

  Bree saw Sarah every-so-often when she was living in London, and being back was relief to both of them. Through school, the pair had been the best of friends, and while it might have appeared through distance they grew apart, they were coming together again.

  “Are you still a suspect?” Sarah asked, trying not to pry too much, Bree had only just come out of her interrogation with the officers.

  She threw her hands up. “Goodness knows,” Bree grumble. “I know what they told me; the theft was committed over forty years ago. My dad would’ve never have done that. But they said there’s still way more jewellery out there.”

  “And the jewels, you know, finders’ keepers.”

  They snickered together.

  “Evidence,” she said. “Probably being dusted for prints, probably help them find the real thieves.” She butted her lips. “I never told the officers, but what if my dad was keeping them, what if he was paid to keep them hidden.”

  “Highly doubt that,” Sarah mumbled, her eyes focused on the road ahead.

  “I’m surprised they didn’t come for my mother.” Bree placed a hand over her face. “I can’t imagine her being arrested. I told the officers my mum and Cleo both touched the jewels, so hopefully they’re both not hauled in on that.”

  They were almost at Bree’s mother’s house.

  “Your mum would’ve told you if she knew anything, and your father liked to gossip,” she said. “If he was keeping them for anyone, someone would’ve known.”

  “Like—”

  “Your mum,” she said, nodding to the curb.

  Helen Dalton, Bree’s mother stood at the post at the end of the path from her front door. Her eyes winced together as she watched Sarah park the car. Helen wore another one of her many animal print nightgowns, this one, zebra.<
br />
  As Bree stepped out of the car, her shoulders hunched, like a teen who’d been caught drinking underage and was being dropped off by a police officer, or worse, someone else’s concerned mother.

  “I’ve run you a bath,” she said.

  “Good morning,” Bree mumbled.

  As Bree walked past her mother, she was enveloped in a hug from behind.

  “Don’t you get arrested again,” she whispered. “I was worried sick.”

  Sarah poked her head out of the open window in the car. “I’ll come around later, maybe,” she said. “Call me.”

  Bree’s mother released her from the embrace.

  “I will,” Bree said.

  “Now, get inside and tell me what happened,” her mother said, swotting at her back with a hand. “Have you eaten? No? I’ll make breakfast.”

  Bree and Sarah waved their goodbye at each other.

  Bree sighed a relief, but this wasn’t the end. She had a fire in her now, a fire which wasn’t going to be quelled quietly. She wanted answers to the questions the police had posed to her, question she herself couldn’t answer.

  Whose jewels were they? She rolled in her mind.

  And where were the rest of them?

  EIGHT

  After a bath and a quick breakfast. Bree filled her mother in on everything that had happened over night, and all the questions she’d heard from the police officers and detectives they’d brought in on what they considered a cold case.

  Bree soon retired to her room—the room from her adolescence.

  Moments after her head hit the pillow and she tugged her duvet above her shoulders, a knock rattled at the door. It was followed by a meek voice, but Bree couldn’t make out a single word.

  “Yea?” she let out, opening one eye.

  Elijah Porter pushed the door open ajar to peer inside. He was dressed in a sweater over a shirt, and over his shoulder, the strap of a bag. He continued inside with a smile on his face. “Don’t mean to bother you,” he said.

  She pushed herself up against the headboard, sitting in bed. “Who told you?”

  “Well, word gets around,” he smirked. “I just want to make sure you’re ok.”

  “I am,” she sighed. “They haven’t pressed charges or anything. They went through so much, conspiracy to sell stolen goods, theft.” Puffing her cheeks, she rubbed her hands down her face.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Sleep,” she snorted back. “I mean, I want to find out who stole them, because from the way they made it sound, they think my dad did it. And—and sure enough, if he was still around, he wouldn’t have been released after sixteen hours.”

  Elijah nodded. “When did it happen?”

  “The theft?” she puffed her cheeks as she tried to recall through sleeplessness. “Late sixties.”

  He smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” he continued. “If it was a huge deal at the time, and it was local, it’ll be in the archives at the library.”

  “Where you work?”

  He nodded, combing a hand through his slicked hair. “Yes. When I found out, I tried to look online, but I didn’t know when it happened.” His brows winced as his eyes pinched together. “But you know how many results came in,” he didn’t want for an answer, “hundreds of thousands, in the UK, alone.”

  Bree sighed. “They could’ve been stolen from anywhere,” she said. “They didn’t tell me anything about where they were stolen from, and—and—and when I mentioned my dad being dead, they thought I knew about the crime, and I was trying to sell them because I wouldn’t know it was still a crime.” She waved a hand at the comment before biting her teeth sharply, coming to a grind.

  “If you want to come and look at the newspaper archives, I can get them pulled at the library,” he said. “For some time around when they were stolen.”

  “Maybe after I’ve slept.”

  “And—” Elijah added with a snap of his fingers. “They can’t prove you were trying to sell them.”

  “I wasn’t—” she said, unsure of herself, because Bree was definitely open to selling after what she’d heard from the jeweller’s wife. She knew her mother definitely wanted to sell them, and that wasn’t someone she was willing to bring into this entire thing at all. Her mother wasn’t going to be put into the same shoes her father would if he was still alive. “But I’d like to come and look at the papers after I’ve slept.”

  “Sure, just call me,” he said. “I should be at the office in the library until this evening.”

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled. “Anything to help.”

  Elijah left, leaving Bree to sink back into her bed, pulling the duvet covers over her head as she finally closed her eyes and released herself to rest and sleep. It was a nicer surface to sleep on than what they’d given her after being arrested.

  * * *

  A patter roused Bree at the door. Startled by the sound, she sprung, kicking her duvet and gasping. Only to see her mother holding a cup of tea at the end of her bed.

  She chuckled. “Just me,” she said. “Brought you some tea.”

  “How long have I—” she looked to the alarm clock on the nightstand. “Six hours.”

  Her mother nodded. “I figured you wouldn’t sleep tonight if you got too much in.”

  Bree wasn’t even thinking about sleeping tonight, she only wanted to get back to sleep right now, and for a long time as well.

  She placed the cup of tea on the nightstand. “A little extra sugar in as well,” she said. “To help with the nerves, that always used to sort you out when you were nervous for school.”

  Bree’s rubbed at her eyes, smiling at her mother’s comments. It had been a long while since she’d been at school, but being back in her old room, it was almost like she was headed straight for a Wednesday morning of double food technology.

  “And once you’re up, there’s some soup cooling on the stove,” she said. “But don’t take too long, it’ll only keep for a while, otherwise you’ll have to stick it in the microwave.”

  She nodded back at her mother.

  “It’s tomato,” she continued. “Oh, and Cleo is downstairs as well. I’ve already told her the bad news.” She sighed. “We won’t be going on that cruise.”

  Bree’s brow winced. It was truly the worst news to come out of the last twenty-four hours. She shrugged at the remark, pulling the mug of tea into her hands. “I’ll be down in ten.”

  “See you then.”

  After her mother left, Bree let out a huff.

  The rest she’d taken had been fleeting, there was nothing she could recall from it, not a single dream. She was out, and it appeared to have gone within a blink. She looked around the room, the posters tacked and taped to the walls, preserving what her room had been like, and in the weeks she’d been home, she hadn’t once attempted to change it. “I need to find my own place,” she said, as she had been saying since the day she decided she’d be taking over her father’s bakery.

  Downstairs, Helen and her best friend, Cleo, sat around watching the television while both simultaneously doing their crosswords puzzles and sudoku books. Switching them between each other as if some tag team relay sport.

  “Morning,” Bree said, entering the living room with a small bowl of soup on a plate with two slices of bread.

  “Morning,” Cleo laughed. “It’s the afternoon, sweetheart.”

  Bree hummed, taking a seat beside her mother.

  “Oo, let me put a cushion on your knees so you don’t scald yourself,” she said, fussing to grab a cushion to place on Bree’s knee. “There you go.”

  Bree mentally reiterated the comments back to herself about needing her own place. “Thank you.”

  On the television, reruns of an antique auction show played.

  “It’s awful, what they did to you,” Cleo said. “I mean, I don’t remember when it happened, but way before your time.”

  “1968,” Bree added. “Around then.”

  F
rom what she could remember, it was the tail end of the sixties, definitely before Bree was born.

  “That Elijah fella might know about when it happened,” her mother said. “He was telling me he works for the library; they’ve got all that history archive stuff there.”

  “He told me,” Bree said, pressing a torn-up piece of bread into her soup. “I want to know if there’s anything I can find out.”

  Cleo wafted a hand in Bree’s direction. “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “Let the police worry about it.”

  Bree’s eyes grew. “If I did that, they’re going to try me again for trying to sell them—which, I didn’t.”

  Her mother nodded. “You do what you need to do.”

  As much as she didn’t need her mother fussing over her, being encouraged to find out what had happened and who’d played any part in it was reassuring. “I’m not sure if I want to open the bakery tomorrow.”

  NINE

  After the light lunch and a grilling from Cleo, trying to get as much gossip about the events from Bree as she could, Bree stepped away into the kitchen. She slumped over one side of the kitchen counter as she placed her empty bowl into the kitchen sink.

  “I need to get out,” she mumbled to herself as she pulled her phone from her pocket. The first name to mind was Elijah, but even though he’d told her to call him, Bree didn’t want to call him—he couldn’t pick her up. She dialled in Sarah’s number and the connection was almost immediate.

  “Something happen?” she asked.

  “No, no,” Bree replied. “I want to know if you could drive me to the library, to see Elijah.”

  “Oh, yes, let me grab my coat.”

  Bree briefly looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. “I thought you’d be busy picking your son up.”

  Sarah scoffed. “He’s twelve.”

  Bree hadn’t been around long enough to remember Christopher’s age, or that he was now in attendance at a high school inside the city. “I forgot,” she chuckled it off.

  “He gets the bus back, and his dad is home,” she said. “I’ll pick you up in five. Oh, oh, actually I’ll nip into the bakery first and grab anything going out of date.”