A Fatal Finale

by Stacey Alabaster

  I glanced at Pippa. “I think it will still be a week or so until we’re open again,” I tried to explain gently. “And when we do open again, I don’t think we will be that busy.” Maybe I could break the lack of shifts to him slowly, over time. I could cut them back slowly. Give him a chance to advertise a room to rent out. I noticed there was a room laying empty just off the kitchen, though Bronson had placed a few bits of exercise equipment in there.

  He seemed confused about something. “But without Rogan, there will be a lot more shifts to offer, right? Don’t tell me you are going to hire another baker?”

  I could feel Pippa’s eyes burning into my skull. “Not-not at this stage,” I said, taking the coffee from him. “It is something I will need to discuss with Blake, for one thing.”

  I caught Bronson rolling his eyes, which was something I had never seen him do before. “Of course you do,” he muttered. “You used to have a mind of your own, Rachael. It never used to be like this. It’s like having a stepdad that we have to run everything by.”

  I was a little shocked to hear him speaking to me in this way. “I’m sorry, Bronson, but things change.”

  That pretty much killed the mood. Bronson completely shut down and after a few minutes, I couldn’t stand the awkward silence.

  I finished my coffee, picked my bag up, and left.

  5

  Pippa yawned and told me that Lolly had gotten her up at 4am. “It’s her new sleep schedule,” she said. “She likes to be up with the cows.” Pippa had cows on her property, so I figured that Lolly was just doing the smart thing and adjusting. After the last few days, and severe lack of sleep, we both desperately needed a coffee. “I feel like I could drink a thousand cups,” I grumbled as I stepped out of the car in front of our local coffee shop, a small, locally-run shop that only used coffee beans from a local supplier.

  “You might want to take it a bit easier than that,” Pippa said with a laugh.

  Yes, a thousand might be too much, but I was definitely going to ask for a triple shot when I ordered.

  I squinted in front of the shop. Was that still a bit of yellow paint there in the corner? I moved forward for a closer look. It seemed that the new coat of paint had worn off a little. I poked it with the toe of my boot.

  “Do you remember what used to be here?” I asked, taking my sunglasses off and shading my eyes as I looked up at the tall building, memories flooding back.

  Pippa frowned. Was she seriously forgetting? “Oh,” she said, slapping her forehead. “Right. Bakermatic,” she murmured, staring up at where the large neon sign had once been. “I don’t miss that bright yellow eyesore.”

  Bakermatic was a large chain store that offered baked goods and had stores nationwide. Very popular, in spite of the fact that none of their food was actually baked fresh in the store—it all came wrapped in plastic and the staff members would just microwave up anything that needed it when the customer ordered. But most of the customers weren’t even aware that this was the way that Bakermatic did it. They had a cozy interior, a rustic ‘look,’ to the franchise that made it look like it was all eco-friendly. Most people didn’t care about that anyway—they just liked the low prices that Bakermatic offered.

  A bit of a sore point for me.

  There had once been one in Belldale, right where we were standing, which was down the street from my own bakery. Very hard to compete with a chain store that could sell pastries for a third of the price that I could. And they had done everything to try and put me out of business. But I had won in the end, in a David vs Goliath sort of victory.

  But that was how I had originally met Simona. And how she had originally come to work for me. She had been a manager at Bakermatic during its heyday in Belldale and when the place had shut down, I’d taken pity on her and offered her a job. Not that she had ever been particularly grateful. She always had the attitude that she was doing us a favor, not the other way around.

  But she’d once been a fixture at Bakermatic. Her long, black ponytail had once been the first thing to greet you when you walked through the doors. “What do you think Simona is doing today?” I asked. “Do you think she is as cut up about Rogan’s death as Bronson was?”

  Pippa laughed a little bit. “I think the only thing Simona is concerned about these days is Blake.”

  I sighed, still staring at that chipped yellow paint in the corner. “Maybe her sudden interest in Blake was just to create a diversion. It did seem to come on pretty hard and strong right after the murder,” I pointed out. “Maybe Blake is an alibi for Simona.”

  We walked into the coffee shop in silence, and Pippa seemed to be literally biting her tongue.

  The tension between Pippa and I seemed to be growing, though I couldn’t really tell where it was coming from. She was sure that Bronson was the killer, I knew that, but I kept leading her away from that theory, and back to Simona, who seemed the far more likely suspect as far as I was concerned. Simona had tried to put me out of business once before. How could I know if she was loyal to me or the bakery now?

  “What’s wrong?” I asked Pippa as we waited for our orders to be made.

  “You haven’t even seriously considered Bronson as a suspect,” she said quietly, like I had completely dismissed her idea and it had hurt her feelings. She was sulking.

  Well, that was because I didn’t think that Bronson had a very strong motive. He had no idea that I was going to change the schedule, and he got along with Rogan far better than Simona did. I’d been willing to go to his house to talk to him, but I thought investigating him was a bit of dead end.

  “Simona has always been trouble,” I said to Pippa, trying to keep my voice light and reasonable, and to soothe the tension between us. “She would probably kill you if she thought that was going to get her somewhere.”

  Pippa did manage to laugh a little at that. Good. She didn’t totally hate me then. And I could tell she was starting to come around to my way of thinking.

  “I think we need to get together with Simona and Blake,” Pippa said. “Witness their new so-called relationship for ourselves.”

  The only social thing I had ever really done with Simona was work parties, and even those had been few and far between, so seeing her out of that context was a little strange when we met at Star Bar two nights later. She was dressed up to the nines, her usually straight hair in waves like she had just come from the salon, and she fit in better with the other bar patrons than either Pippa or I did. “I didn’t know we needed professional hair and makeup to drink here,” Pippa said, touching her own faded lavender hair.

  Simona gave us both a hug, towering over us in the heels she was wearing.

  She leaned over the bar and shouted in the bartender’s ear. “Can I get a bottle of your best white?” she asked him. “We’re celebrating here tonight!”

  We were? I looked over at Pippa for an answer or some kind of help, but she only shrugged. Seemed like a very strange week to be celebrating.

  Surely, I must have misheard. She must have said “commiserating.”

  “What are you celebrating?” I asked, leaning forward to try and hear her over the music.

  “Our four-day anniversary!” She dragged the bottle out of the ice bucket and popped it open.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw Blake walking toward us. He also looked like he fit in well at the bar in his shiny pants and expensive dress shirt. His dark hair was still slicked back and with the designer beard he was sporting, well, to be honest, he kind of looked like every other guy in there.

  At least Blake had the decency to look slightly embarrassed as Simona popped open the cork and began to fill all our glasses. “Haha. Is this really necessary?” he asked, glancing around.

  “Of course it is,” she said, placing an arm around his shoulders. “Why shouldn’t we celebrate our love?”

  I thought it was a little distasteful after what we had all just been through, to be honest. From the uncomfortable look on Blake’s face, I could tel
l he thought the same.

  A hostess came over and told us our table was free, and she showed us to our booth in the corner. It wound up with me sitting next to Blake with Simona directly across from him and Pippa by Simona’s side.

  The wine didn’t sit too well in my stomach. In fact, I didn’t have much of an appetite at all, so I ordered a garden salad with a side of fries and nothing else.

  Blake was eating his risotto and I was forced to make conversation with him. “So, you really like Simona, huh?” I asked as I tossed the salad. With the music so loud, as well as the fact that Simona and Pippa were deep in conversation on the other side of the table, we were able to talk without anyone overhearing us.

  Blake sighed. “I knew you would have a problem with it, Rachael.”

  I was a little offended. “Why would I have a problem with it?” What was he suggesting? I was perfectly happy being single. Well, for the most part. Anyway, I certainly had no interest in Blake myself.

  Blake stopped eating. “Well, I know it crosses an employer/employee line,” he said, sounding a little contrite. “But I promise this won’t affect anything down at the bakery, okay? We can keep our personal and professional lives separate.”

  Well. That was still yet to be seen. Not tested. From the way they were all over each other, I highly doubted it was true.

  Simona and Pippa excused themselves to go to the bar for another bottle of wine, even though there was table service. I was about to point that out and then realized it was better if they left, so I could say what I truly wanted to say without any danger of Simona hearing.

  I only just waited until she was out of earshot before turning back to Blake.

  “Have you ever wondered if Simona might have an ulterior motive for starting this little relationship?” I asked, almost regretting it as soon as the words had spilled out. But it was too late. I had spoken them.

  “What motive?” Blake asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin. Uh oh. He had that same blazing look in his eyes that he’d had when I’d suggested I might be leaving the bakery.

  I collected myself. “She knows that people’s shifts have been cut since the merger. Can’t do her any harm to get in good with the new boss,” I said pointedly. Especially if I was leaving. Blake would be the only boss then.

  Blake shook his head at me. “I can’t believe you just said that, Rachael.”

  I couldn’t believe I had said it either.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to undo the damage, but it was too late. As soon as Simona and Pippa returned to the table, Blake stood up and said he was leaving. “I have a headache,” he claimed.

  Simona left with him, while Pippa and I finished off the bottle of wine.

  Blake and I were not on the best of personal terms when I turned up at the bakery a few days later to try and get it ready for business again. The case was still open, dragging on far longer than I would have liked it to, or had expected it to.

  I hadn’t spoken to Blake since he’d stormed out of the bar that night. But now we had to work together, so I’d hoped we could be civil. That we could forget what I had said. Now that the police were done, we were allowed to go inside and clean up and get ready to open again. I just hoped that we would still have customers.

  I waited for Blake to turn up, leaning against the wall.

  “You could have started without me,” he said as he climbed out of the car and stomped toward the door. No ‘good morning’ or ‘how are you,’ then.

  “I don’t have my keys, sorry,” I mumbled. “I couldn’t find them before I left the house.”

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Blake said as he stuck the key in the lock and struggled to open it.

  “What is?” I asked

  “That party we threw was supposed to bring everyone together. Instead, it’s had the opposite effect.”

  I stepped inside. That was putting it mildly. He was more than right—at that point, the only two people still talking to each other were Blake and Simona. And they were less talking to each other and more sticking their tongues down each other’s throats. I still held out hope, however optimistic, that we could get everything back on track though. It wouldn’t take me long to figure out who had killed Rogan. And once I’d done that, and we were open again, we’d be able to work together and everything would be back to normal.

  But until we knew who was guilty, how could we all work together again when one of us was a murderer? We’d all be looking at each other, staring over our shoulders, jumping whenever someone walked into the room. We’d always be thinking, Was it you?

  The dining part of the bakery was a little musty but clean and otherwise ready to go. The kitchen was another matter. After Rogan’s death and the way the police had torn the place apart, it was a total mess.

  I gulped. “It’s going to be hard to come in here and bake now,” I said, shivering as I glanced around. Until that point, I hadn’t actually considered the logistics of the whole thing. Would we ever get it cleaned up? Would we always remember what had happened, every time we came in to bake a batch of bread or cupcakes? And how was Bronson going to feel about working in a crime scene?

  Blake and I glanced at each other. Were we thinking the same thing?

  “I don’t even know if this is worth salvaging,” Blake said as he looked around at the chaos, his eyes dazed. His hair looked less slicked back than usual. Then the dazed look in his eyes faded away and anger started to clarify there. “Do you know the financial risk I took, shutting down my own bakery and merging with yours?”

  Not this again. I felt my entire body tense up. “I never forced you to do that, Blake,” I said, my jaw so tense it was difficult to talk. “And it made good financial sense, at the time. None of us could have foreseen this happening.” Blake’s tiny hole-in-the-wall bakery hadn’t even had seating inside, it was that tiny. There were two bench seats in the doorway, but that was it. He had always been a bit ‘exclusive,’ though. Everything he sold was organic, locally-sourced, and most of it was vegan. Ideally, he would have stayed small and organic forever. But he was only a human, and eventually, the lure of making more profit had gotten to him.

  But I knew why he was angry. He was the one who had made most of the sacrifices. And even though I hadn’t forced him to do anything, I had been the one to convince him it was a good idea.

  He wasn’t the only one with things at stake, though. I was staring at the wreckage of my dreams in that ruined kitchen.

  “We have to make this work, Blake,” I said finally as I walked over to a mess of trays on the floor and began to slowly pick them up and dust them off. “We can’t give up over this. It would be letting the killer win.”

  He was staring at me, his eyes lowered. “I am surprised to hear you say that, Rachael.”

  I spun around, dropping the tray. “Why would that surprise you?”

  “I didn’t think you would mind letting the killer win.” Was he going to expand on that? What was he getting at? He stared at me for a moment and then broke eye contact. “You had as good a reason as anyone else to want Rogan dead.”

  I stared back at him, stunned. “Why on earth would I want Rogan dead?” I asked, tripping over the trays as I struggled to my feet. I pointed at all of the chaos at my feet. “Why would I want any of this to happen?”

  Blake shrugged. “You wanted out of this place. You came to me that day and told me. But I wasn’t going to let you back out and get off the hook that easily. But a scandal like this, this is enough to close the bakery down for good. You got what you wanted, didn’t you, Rachael?”

  I stared back down at the trays, my blood running cold.

  Although…maybe he had some logic there. He just had it pointed at the wrong person. Whoever did this to Rogan might not have just wanted the poor guy dead, they might have wanted to get my bakery closed down in the meantime.

  I shook my head. “No, Blake. I haven’t gotten what I want yet. But I will soon.”

  6

  On
e Month Later

  She was about to run out. I had to stop her. “Er, never mind,” the poor nervous woman said, backing away from the counter where she had been looking at cream puffs. “I’m not feeling so hungry after all.”

  “We are offering two for the price of one,” I said, trying not to sound too desperate as I picked up a pair of metal tongs and began to throw the puffs into a paper bag. She kept looking out the door as though desperate to make an escape. I decided to up the offer. “Look, how about this? You can have half a dozen for the price of two. That is four for free!”

  Pippa glanced up at me with a wary expression. She was sitting in the middle of the empty dining room at a table all to herself, flipping through one of her new age lifestyle magazines.

  I was frantically placing cream puffs in the bag, but when I pulled my head up above the counter, the woman had escaped. I sighed and started to clear the rest of the puffs out of the display rack. “They are all going in the garbage anyway,” I said with a sigh, seeing as it was closing time. “I may as well have offered them all to her for free.”

  “I still doubt she would have taken them,” Pippa pointed out, before suggesting that we take them down to the homeless shelter instead. I nodded and put them all in a bag.

  There wasn’t much point staying open for another hour and a half, so I locked the front door. I’d had to cut a new pair of keys from Blake as mine had never turned up. I furiously turned the key in the lock and turned the sign around to ‘closed.’

  I added up the takings for the day, as painful as it was. And seeing as it was a Friday, I took a deep breath, steeling myself before I added up the profits and loss for the entire week. The losses were twice as much as the profits. We were hemorrhaging money.

  It wasn’t as though either myself or the bakery had always had a squeaky-clean reputation. We’d had customers die before. Both Pippa and I had been accused of being involved in crimes. And those things had always affected business—temporarily. But this time, things were different. We hadn’t bounced back from the scandal and rumors. It had been weeks and weeks—over a month now. And as word spread that one of us was a killer, our customer base and our earning had both taken a nose dive.