A Fatal Finale

by Stacey Alabaster

  I sighed. Carine was probably right, though I didn’t want to admit it. There was probably a perfectly innocent reason that Simona was driving cross-state regularly. And she probably only stopped at Bakermatic for coffee because it was familiar to her. Everything tasted the exact same every time you ordered it, after all.

  Carine was glancing around and looking at her purse. She wanted to get out of there. She sighed a little. “I really need to get back. My lunch break only goes for half an hour.”

  I was in danger of losing her. Not just to work, but all together. She might not want to stay friends if I was always this intense. And she was the only friend I had in Lakes Entrance who wasn’t Jackson.

  “Do you want to be one of my bridesmaids?” I blurted out just as she was standing up to leave.

  Carine sat down again slowly and stared at me in utter surprise. Great. She is definitely going to say no. Boy, is this going to be awkward. But then a beam lit up her face. “Of course I would. Wow. I would be honored, Rachael.” She had her hand against her chest.

  “Fantastic,” I said, following her out the door, my hand on her back. “I’ll see you this weekend for the dress fitting.”

  At least now I had two bridesmaids. Sue and Carine. Only one to go. But maybe I could talk to Jackson about it and get him to change his mind regarding the numbers. That would solve my problem. Surely he would understand. I asked him that night, whether he would cut his grooms party down from three to two.

  He shook his head as he turned the steak on the stovetop and it sizzled as the flesh hit the hot pan. “No, I can’t. Who would I cut? I can’t cut either of my brothers. One over the other? No. And I can’t cut Joe. We’ve been best friends since we were seven years old.”

  The problem was that it needed to be even on both sides. If I had two bridesmaids, he could only have two groomsmen. If he had three, then I also needed to have three.

  “I don’t have any friends here, though!” I said, exasperated as the steak sizzled and more and more smoke started to fill the kitchen. I waved my arm wildly, trying to clear it so that I could breathe a little.

  “Why don’t you ask your cousin Lacy?” Jackson suggested as he took the meat off the stovetop. “She only lives half an hour away from here, right? You said that the two of you were close growing up, right?”

  I bit my lip. Maybe I would have to do that. I still felt like Jackson was being a little unfair though—we could have asked Joe to be a speech-giver, or the MC for the night. Still given him a role in the wedding, but saved me the humiliation of having to stand there looking less popular than Jackson was.

  I ate my meat in silence, wondering why Jackson couldn’t budge on this issue, or see it my way.

  Jackson sliced his steak knife through his meat and stared at me the whole time, not breaking eye contact while he cut it and put it in his mouth to chew. It was like he wanted to say something but was holding it back.

  “What?” I asked, not wanting to leave the conversation like this, on such a sour note. “Please tell me what is going through your head.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I need to get ready for work. I’m helping out the emergency night vet tonight.”

  It was early morning and I was back at Bakermatic. This time, when Simona turned up, I was going to confront her. Ask her what she was doing in Lakes Entrance. And what her current relationship with Bakermatic really was. There was no way she was innocent.

  Because I didn’t care if Simona spotted me this time—in fact, I wanted her to—I didn’t bother wearing any concealing clothing. No sunglasses, no hoodie. Just me, plain shirt and jeans. Obvious.

  I was in a booth near the door, ready for her, when in walked someone I knew very well. But it was not Simona. It was Jackson.

  “Rachael?” he asked. There were dark rings under his eyes from working the night shift. I slunk back in the booth, but it was far too late. He’d spotted me.

  Great. At least we’d both been caught. He was just as guilty as I was. More. I’d never promised that I wouldn’t get coffee from Bakermatic. Though I was sure it would have been assumed from the way I had carried on. The truth was, I was spending about fifty dollars a week there, and justifying it all to myself as research.

  “There aren’t that many coffee shops in town,” I said sheepishly. “Bakermatic has cheaper prices as well. And we have been trying to save money.” I was rambling, trying to think of even more excuses for why I was there.

  Jackson still hadn’t explained to me what he was doing there himself. “I’m exhausted,” he said, which was a way of explaining it, I supposed. “I just needed coffee.” He told me that he was only taking a short break between the night and the day shift. The assistant who was meant to work the day shift had come down with a flu, so he would be working twenty hours straight with only a short break in between. And it got worse, apparently.

  “My car’s been acting up,” Jackson said. “I don’t think it’s going to start again when I go back outside.”

  We’d bought that second car in the end. I was getting around in the new one and Jackson had been using his old one. At the time, it had seemed like a sensible solution to our travel woes. But now I was starting to worry about our finances if Jackson’s car had broken down.

  “It’s okay, I can drive you to work.”

  It was a slightly tense car ride to the vet clinic that morning. Jackson was still tired from the night before, even though every time I tried to point that out, he told me he was fine and that he wasn’t tired at all, but in a really short way that told me that he actually was tired and crabby.

  “I’ve decided that I am going to go back to college,” Jackson said, right before I pulled the car up at the clinic.

  “You decided?” I asked. I said it as calmly as I could, but what I was thinking was, without even discussing it with your fiancée?

  “But how can we afford that right now? Our car just broke down, Jackson… We both need to have jobs. I am looking, but in the meantime, I don’t think we can afford for one of us to go to school. And what about the wedding costs?” I could feel myself starting to panic. What had I gotten myself into? I stared up at the ceiling of the car. At least the sale of the bakery would be finalized soon. But we were still months away from getting that money. I wasn’t sure we could hang on till then.

  “Rachael, I need to ask you something.”

  I thought that Jackson might be angry or annoyed at me after the tense meeting in Bakermatic and the car ride. But instead, his voice just sounded sad.

  I turned the engine off completely and felt the silence in the car bear down on me. I nodded. “Sure. You can ask me anything you want.” A dozen potential questions flashed into my head, but none of them were the question he actually asked when he finally spat it out.

  “Did you agree to come to Lakes Entrance, to marry me, because this is what you actually want, or did you just want a way to escape?”

  I didn’t want to be having that conversation right then. Not while trapped in the car, and not while Jackson was traveling on zero hours of sleep.

  “Can we just talk about this when you get home later? I will pick you up at five and we can have a proper dinner—I’ll cook—and reset a bit.”

  He shook his head, making no move to get out of the car, even though his next shift was starting. “I want you to answer me now, Rachael. It is an easy enough question. Why can’t you just say yes or no? Do you actually want to marry me?”

  I couldn’t believe he was asking me that. “Of course I do.” And I meant it, with my entire heart. It was just that the question he had originally asked me was more complicated than that. Yes, I had wanted to escape Belldale. But that wasn’t the only reason I was there with him. Even if things had been going perfectly in Belldale—If Jackson had come to me and asked me to marry him, start a new life, I would have said yes.

  He couldn’t see that, though. “I just have to wonder. Would you have ever said yes if things were different.”

&
nbsp; I had to prove to him that I really did want to be in Lakes Entrance. This time, I really did have to stop my snooping. I made a vow that I would stop going to Bakermatic, and I would forget all about Simona and her strange trips to Lakes Entrance. None of that mattered now.

  “I do want to be here,” I said as I sat the vegetarian lasagna down in front of Jackson that evening. The steam was still rising from it. It was a recipe that I had gotten from Sue. She would be proud that I had done it such justice. The local produce in Lakes Entrance was so good that I had been able to get the best tasting goat cheese that I’d ever had.

  Jackson nodded and stuck a fork into the dish, twirling it around but not quite taking a bite. “And you will support me in my choice to go back to college?”

  I settled down in the seat across from him. I searched his eyes. “Is that what you really want? I just… I always thought that being a detective was in your blood?” I knew he had told me time and time again that he wanted to put all that in the past. I couldn’t help wondering if he was protesting too much. If being a detective was really what he was supposed to do, then he should be doing it. He couldn’t give it all up just because he had a case that was too difficult to crack.

  Jackson returned the same questioning gaze. “And what about you, Rachael? Is it in your blood?”

  Carine looked ridiculously pale in the pink wedding dress. “I think I may have to go for a spray tan,” she said a little nervously. “I’ve never had one of those before.” I wasn’t that surprised to hear that.

  I was standing behind her in the dress shop, while she stood in front of a full-length mirror. Aside from the color, the cut of the dress fit her well. “Just be glad that it’s not yellow,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “Now that would make you look truly anemic. And it fits like a glove. The buttons went together seamlessly.”

  She tugged at it. “Will it hold?”

  “Of course it will!”

  But Carine still didn’t look too confident. She was a little overwhelmed by all the beauty preparation in front of her. We were only a few weeks away from the ceremony. She shook her head. “I’ve never even had my eyebrows done before,” she said, patting at them. “I don’t even know what to ask for.” They were looking a little bushy and overgrown.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to be one of those brides who acts like a drill sergeant and forces her bridesmaids to all conform and look identical.” I had once heard about a bride with blonde hair who had made all her blonde bridesmaids dye their hair brunette, just so that she could be the only blonde for the photographs. “Even if you had bright pink hair, I would allow it.”

  Carine looked shocked. “Why would I have bright pink hair?”

  I shook my head. “You wouldn’t. Don’t worry.”

  So far, on all of our friend dates, Carine and I had gone to Coffee Co, the small family-run cafe that I usually insisted that Jackson frequent as well. But after a long morning of dress fitting and adjustments, Carine just wanted to go to the closet place for a coffee. And that place just happened to be large and yellow.

  “I’ve been sort of avoiding this place,” I had to admit. “Very long story. They are sort of an old nemesis of mine.” She’d heard about the Simona story, but not the full extent of my feud with Bakermatic. In fact, Carine still didn’t know a lot about me. Such as the fact that I had investigated a dozen murder mysteries over the course of the last several years. Or that I’d come close to losing my life on several of those occasions.

  And she certainly didn’t know that back in my hometown, the one I had escaped from, that I was a suspected murderer. I was sure that poor, quiet unsuspecting Carine would not want to be associated with someone like that...someone like me.

  I told Carine I would wait outside while she went in to grab her latte. I had to stick to the vow I’d made not only to Jackson but to myself. I sighed and leaned against the wall a little, hoping that Carine wouldn’t take too long. I didn’t want to risk running into Simona.

  It was taking a while for her order to get made, so I started glancing around absentmindedly. I noticed some writing that had been etched onto the very bottom of the glass door entrance to Bakermatic. There was gold lettering, with the name of the store and the date it was opened, and a name or something underneath it.

  I frowned and leaned forward a little to read it. Akos Touring. Was that the name of the parent company? And why did that name seem familiar to me?

  I grabbed my phone out of my purse and found Blake’s number. We’d been keeping all our correspondence about the sale of the bakery to email; I hadn’t spoken to him on the phone in close to a month.

  The call went through to voice mail. I groaned and tried again, this time putting my number on private. I glanced inside Bakermatic to check that Carine was still waiting. This time, Blake picked up. “Way to ignore me,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “What is it, Rachael?” he asked impatiently. “I’m a little busy here trying to finalize the sale that you skipped out on and left me to take care of.”

  I stared at the gold lettering on the door of Bakermatic. “Blake, what is the name of the buyer who wants to buy our bakery? I know you emailed it. But can you just tell me again?”

  Blake sighed and I heard the shuffling of papers while he found it. Clearly, it was something that didn’t stick in his head either. “Abraham Butterworth. Also, trading as Akos Touring.”

  I gulped. “Blake,” I said, in a low but stern voice. “That is the name of the people who own the Bakermatic franchise. We cannot sell the bakery to these people. Do you understand me?”

  13

  I paced back and forth, wondering how I was going to tell Jackson that I needed to go back to Belldale. This was a baking emergency. I had to stop the sale. Blake had refused to see reason over the phone. In person, I would be able to convince him that selling to Bakermatic would mean death to the entire town.

  “It’s just for this one last time,” I said. “I just need to do this.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t even tell me that you had found a buyer…” Jackson shook his head. “Is it because you don’t actually want to sell, Rachael? Is that it?”

  “I promise you that is not the reason. I just didn’t want to tell you until everything was finalized.” I walked over to where he was sitting and took his hand. “And I cannot finalize this sale. That’s why I have to go back to Belldale to stop it.”

  He told me that it would be one thing if I was going back to visit old friends, if I was just going back to visit Sue, for instance, but that this was a different matter entirely.

  “This is hardly leaving the past in the past, is it, Rachael?”

  I was starting to wish I’d just lied to him, that I had told him I was going back to visit Sue. This was what I got for being honest.

  “Jackson, I can’t let Bakermatic open another store in Belldale. I just can’t.”

  He shook his head and looked exasperated. “Why not?”

  “I—” I had thought I had a perfectly reasonable response to that. But now that he was making me actually answer… “I just can’t… It’s…” I was struggling to form a cohesive response that would make sense to him.

  “Rachael,” he said, standing up. “I think it’s time to let this go. They are making a good offer, aren’t they?”

  I shrugged a little and put my head down. “I guess…”

  “And you keep telling me that we need the money!” He was sounding more and more exasperated. I wasn’t sure I could blame him.

  Yes. We needed the money. But at what cost? We could wait a little longer, until we had a more reputable buyer.

  And if we never found another buyer… I gulped. We would just have to make do. I couldn’t sell my pride and integrity for all of the money in the world.

  “And what does it really matter if Bakermatic opens a store in a town that we are a hundred miles south of, anyway?” Jackson asked me.

  I still didn’t have an answer that would m
ake any sense to him. “It—it just doesn’t feel right. That’s the only way I can describe it, okay? And I have to do what feels right, don’t I?”

  He stared down at me and I could see the betrayal there. To him, the right thing to do was to let all of this go. To commit to our new lives.

  “Fine,” I said quietly. “I will call Blake this evening and tell him that we are taking the offer. I won’t go back to Belldale. You are right. It is only stirring up the past.”

  Jackson nodded and sighed with relief. “Good. I’m glad you can finally see things my way.” He gave me a hug and we made up, though there was still a teeny bit of tension.

  We left it at that and I tried to tell myself that I meant what I had said, that I wasn’t just telling Jackson what he wanted to hear. But when I pulled my phone out of my pocket later that evening to call Blake, I couldn’t do it. Instead, I used it to call Sue.

  “Can I sleep on the pull-out sofa for a couple of nights? I’m coming back.”

  I hung up. It was the right thing to do. I knew it was.

  If I went back to where this all started, I could set matters right. After all I had been through, I couldn’t let Bakermatic win.

  I was going to have to go back to Belldale.

  It felt strangely comforting to be back home, and I wanted to see the bakery. But when I went to the bakery to see Blake, he wouldn’t even let me through the front door, telling me that he was busy and to come back another time. “But this is my bakery,” I said to him. “My name is still on the sign.”

  “It hasn’t been yours in months, Rachael. I’ll talk to you when I can talk to you.” He closed the door and I was left outside in the rain.

  At least Sue was happy to see me.

  I placed my bags down and she showed me all the changes that Adele had made to the house.

  My room had been painted yellow, of all colors. You’ve got to be kidding me. I bit my tongue and just nodded and left. Just like with the bakery, this was no longer my house. I was going to have to be happy with the sofa, which Sue had already pulled out for me and fitted with sheets. Pink, not yellow.