Murder with a Cherry on Top

by Cynthia Baxter

  Her eyes immediately filled with tears. “I’m still in shock,” she said. “Ashley and I have been best friends since, like, second grade. I haven’t yet realized what it means that she’s gone.”

  I nodded, fighting back the tears that were now welling up in my eyes.

  Somehow, I felt I could trust her.

  “Hayley,” I said slowly, “you’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but I’m going to do everything I can to find out who killed Ashley.”

  She cast me a look that said that she did, indeed, think I was crazy. “You?” she said. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve known her forever. Because she had a shop right across from mine. Because Ashley Winthrop is—was—as much a part of this town as the Hudson River.”

  She continued to look skeptical.

  “Because,” I finally said, “Ashley and I had a huge fight out on the street just a few hours before she was killed. And it seems that some people, including, uh, the police, think there’s a teensy-weensy possibility I had something to do with it.”

  “You? You?” Hayley started to laugh. “As if.”

  I wasn’t sure whether or not to be insulted.

  “I mean, let’s face it, Kate. You just don’t have it in you to do something like that. You’re much too . . . too nice!”

  Somehow, Hayley managed to make that word sound like an even worse insult than the crudest obscenity she could have ever come out with.

  “You don’t have it in you,” she went on, still chuckling. “Anyone who knows you knows there’s no way you could ever—”

  “Okay, got it,” I interrupted. “Thank you, Hayley. I’m glad you have so much confidence in my innocence.”

  “Of course I do!” Hayley said. Suddenly, she grew serious. “If you plan to help the police with the investigation, maybe there’s some way I can help.”

  “Anything,” I said breathlessly. “Any piece of information, anything you can tell me about Ashley or what was going on in her personal life or her business . . .”

  She shook her head. “I know so much about her that I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “In that case,” I suggested, “let’s start with Sweet Things. What do you know about her bakery?”

  “Let’s see.” She frowned. “She started it about five years ago because she’d just gotten divorced from that lowlife husband of hers, Billy. She needed money, of course, but she also needed something meaningful in her life. A new project that she could be excited about. So she came up with the idea of a baking co-op—”

  “Wait a second,” I interrupted. “Sweet Things was a baking cooperative?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What does that mean, exactly? I mean, how did it work?”

  Hayley shrugged. “It’s simple, really. Ashley found local women who were good at baking, and they supplied her with the pastries she sold.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “How come she didn’t advertise that? It’s really a fun idea.”

  “Maybe, but it’s not exactly legal, either,” Hayley said. “The health laws are very strict about the kitchens you can use to make food that’s sold to the public. You can’t use a kitchen that’s also used for personal cooking. Which means you need access to an industrial kitchen, like at a restaurant.”

  “I see,” I said. But I was less interested in the cleanliness of the cookies and cupcakes Ashley sold than I was in the women who made them.

  “Boy, if we could get hold of that list,” I mused, thinking aloud, “that might be a great place to start finding out more about what was going on in Ashley’s life that could have led to what happened. . . .”

  “I have a list,” Hayley said matter-of-factly.

  I blinked. “You do?”

  “Yes. A couple of weeks ago, I told Ashley that my business wasn’t doing that great. What I mean is”—she added hastily—“it wasn’t doing as great as I wanted.

  “The whole thing was kind of weird,” she said, speaking more to herself than she was to me. “At first, I got the feeling she didn’t really want to give me their names. But then I figured she didn’t want me promoting my design business to the people who worked for her, trying to sign them up as clients. Or maybe that she was, I don’t know, jealous of my career or something.

  “Ashley could be that way, you know.” Hayley glanced around Lickety Splits again. “You might not believe this, but she wasn’t always the nicest person in the world. She could be a little . . . competitive.”

  Y’think? I thought, resisting the urge to laugh out loud.

  “In fact, I think I may even have that list here with me,” she said, already rifling through her tote bag. “I’m pretty disorganized, so I try to keep everything related to my business in one place.... Here it is!”

  She pulled out an ordinary-looking piece of paper and handed it to me. “I made a few copies. Another way to save myself from my own disorganization. You can have one, if you think it might be helpful.”

  I glanced at it and saw that Ashley’s list consisted of twelve or fifteen names, all women’s names, running down one side. Next to each name was the pastry that particular woman supplied: “Lindsey Mather, Cheesecake. Allison Chibuzo, Blackberry Tart. Brandy DiNapoli, Licorice Twist.”

  “I have no idea if this will be helpful,” I said, “but thank you.”

  Hayley waved her hand in the air in a “don’t mention it” motion. “Good luck, Kate. I hope you—or the police—figure out what monster is responsible for what happened to Ashley.”

  Her eyes welling up with tears again, she added, “I know you and Ashley were never close. But she was my best friend. I’m going to miss her every day for the rest of my life.”

  * * *

  As soon as Hayley had gone, my eyes drifted across the street, to Sweet Things. My heart instantly grew heavy and a sick feeling came over me.

  While I’d been distressed by the hot pink sign Ashley had put in her store window only three days earlier, I was even more upset by the new one, stuck on the front door.

  CLOSED, it read.

  No explanation, no promise of a future reopening.

  “Emma,” I said, suddenly getting an idea, “can I borrow your laptop for a minute?”

  “Of course.” Emma whipped her computer out from behind the counter, opened it, and typed in whatever magic words were required to gain entry. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” I brought it over to a table, sat down, and Googled the words, “Sweet Things Pastry Palace Wolfert’s Roost.”

  The listing came up immediately, since apparently no one had thought to shut it down. I clicked on it, holding my breath.

  I was struck by the fact that it turned out to be just another Web site. No mention of what had happened to its owner, no clue about its uncertain future.

  No clues about its past, either. It was perfectly ordinary: a home page with a pink-and-white striped background, the same motif as Sweet Things’ awning. The swirly letters, spelling out the shop’s name, along with “Home of the Mile-High Cupcake,” also matched the lettering on the storefront.

  No clues there. Just a perfectly ordinary Web site.

  I clicked here and there, trying the tabs for “Hours” and “Directions” and “Contact Us.” Again, there wasn’t a word about Sweet Things being closed. I looked a little further and found only general information: possible goodies that might be available, a list of events that could be accommodated, including weddings, birthdays, showers, and corporate functions. There was nothing at all about Ashley, not even a section on “History” or “Our Story” or anything that revealed a single thing about the woman behind Sweet Things.

  After only a few minutes of playing around with it, I closed the computer and let out a loud sigh.

  I was already getting a sense that figuring out who had wanted Ashley permanently out of the picture was going to be tough.

  But thanks to Hayley—or to her list, to be more exact—at least I had a place to start.


  Chapter 8

  The Edy’s/Dreyer’s ice cream company insured the taste buds of their Master Ice Cream Taster, John Harrison, for one million dollars. (That’s $100 per taste bud.)

  —CookingLight.com

  The first thing I did with the list of Ashley’s home bakers was come up with ways of getting in touch with each one of them.

  That very evening, soon after Emma and I cleaned up, closed up, and went home, I got right to it.

  Or, to be more accurate, I put Emma on it.

  I waited until after dinner, when Grams and Emma and I had finished our meal and then savored our usual dessert of an ice cream treat—tonight, s’more ice cream sandwiches I’d made with Chocolate Marshmallow ice cream and graham crackers. While Grams went off to watch one of her favorite TV shows, Emma and I cleared the table, wrapped up the leftovers, and loaded the dishes into the dishwasher.

  But as she was about to head off to her bedroom, clutching her laptop as usual, I said, “Emma, could you come sit down with me in the dining room so I can talk to you about something?” I was doing my best to sound casual.

  Emma, being Emma, was immediately anxious. “Did I do something wrong at Lickety Splits?” she asked. “Am I scooping out too much ice cream? Too little? Did I put too many nuts in the Cashew Brittle with Sea Salt this morning? I thought I might have gone overboard. . .”

  “Nothing like that,” I assured her. “Believe me, Em, you are already the Diva of the Double Dip. The Princess of the Pistachio Nut. The Queen of the . . .”

  “Kumquat!” she exclaimed. “Kumquat ice cream! Why not?”

  I was afraid that what I really wanted to talk to her about was going to be kind of a letdown.

  In fact, I was pretty nervous about telling Emma that I planned to do whatever I could to find out who had killed Ashley Winthrop. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to tell her about Pete Bonano coming to the house early in the morning or Detective Stoltz giving me the third degree . . . certainly not about Jake Pratt coming to my rescue.

  In the end, of course, I told her everything.

  “Kate, if there’s anything I can do,” she told me once I’d finished filling her in on the melodrama that my life had become, “I would love to help.”

  “I’m glad you said that,” I said, pulling out the list Hayley had given me earlier that day.

  Not surprisingly, Emma was an expert when it came to tracking down people online. With amazing speed, she came up with phone numbers or addresses or e-mail addresses—sometimes all three—for each one of the women on the list.

  At least as far as we knew. I wouldn’t know until I spoke with them if they were actually the same women named on Ashley’s list of suppliers.

  As for coming up with reasons for speaking with them, I needed assistance of a different sort.

  “Emma,” I told her, “I’m hoping you can help me in one more way. . . .”

  This was something I’d been thinking about ever since Hayley had given me that list. I wanted to question as many of the women on it as I could about Ashley’s business, their relationship with Ashley, anything personal they might have known about Ashley . . . which meant I needed to engage them in an actual conversation, one in which they’d open up to me.

  And I’d decided that my best shot was to use Lickety Splits to do it.

  “I’m going to need some professional-looking graphics,” I explained, “and from what you’ve told me, it sounds like you’re exactly the person I need.”

  Emma’s face lit up as if I’d just given her a present. “I’d love to help you with that!” she exclaimed. “Just tell me what you need.”

  “First of all, I’d like a flyer—you know, a little pamphlet or even a one-page handout—promoting kids’ parties at Lickety Splits. Here, I wrote up some information about different themes and what we’d include and what it would cost.” I handed her a sheet with the notes I’d jotted down over the past few weeks, while I was still planning the details of my new business. Promoting the children’s parties was something I really had intended to do, once my ice cream shop got going. Now, I needed those flyers ASAP.

  “This is going to be so much fun!” Emma explained. “I can get pictures of kids in party hats, eating ice cream, of course, off one of those Web sites with free photos . . . and I have a great idea for the font to use! There’s this loopy, cartoon-y one I know of that’ll be perfect. . . .”

  I gave her a few other projects, as well. Instead of acting overwhelmed, she looked positively thrilled.

  In fact, by the end of the evening, she’d printed out multiple copies of everything I’d asked for. They looked as good as anything I’d ever seen, even in my days in public relations in the city.

  The Lickety Splits Marketing Department had been launched.

  So had the Lickety Splits Detective Agency.

  * * *

  Playing detective, however, was turning out to be much scarier than selling ice cream.

  The next morning, as I told my GPS app to direct me to the home of the first woman on Ashley’s list, my stomach felt as if it were the training ground for the butterflies’ Olympic volleyball team. While working in PR had demanded that I put on a cheerful face pretty much all the time, this new endeavor I was embarking on brought the need to pretend to a whole new level.

  “Quiet down!” I commanded the butterflies as I turned off the ignition, right after the GPS voice informed me, “You have arrived at your destination.”

  My destination, the house at 25 Chestnut Street that belonged to Lindsey Mather, the first name on the list, was a modest bungalow. The low-slung building looked as if it had been designed by taking two shoe boxes and placing them at right angles to each other. The gray-blue shingles looked pretty shabby, as if they’d weathered a few too many New York winters. The glass on one of the windows appeared to have cracked, given the stripe of silver duct tape used to patch it.

  But there were also some personal touches designed to give it a warm, homey feeling. The Mathers—presumable Lindsey—had hung a wreath of dried flowers on the front door. A somewhat scraggly row of petunias peaked out of a narrow flower bed that followed the L shape of the building, interspersed with enough weeds to indicate that these homeowners were not exactly passionate about gardening.

  But the most obvious signs that a young family lived here were in back. I spotted a plastic slide, a playhouse the size of a large doghouse, and a blue kiddie pool filled with just a few inches of water.

  The butterflies were not behaving. But I did my best to ignore them as I strode up the front walk and knocked on the door.

  The woman who answered was young, probably in her midtwenties. She looked tired, even though it wasn’t quite eleven in the morning. Stressed out, too. Her dark blond hair was pulled back thoughtlessly into a messy bun kind of thing, with some strands sticking up in the air and others hanging down around her neck. Her green eyes weren’t accented with makeup, but with red ridges that told me she hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

  She was dressed in sagging gray sweatpants and what looked like a men’s T-shirt, emblazoned with the logo of a local brewery. Despite her baggy clothes, I could see that she was small framed, but that there were definitely curves under all those clothes. But the roundness extended to her arms and her middle, as if, like me, the last decade had added a few pounds she probably wasn’t crazy about possessing.

  In one arm she held a squirmy little boy wearing a Batman T-shirt, his nose running and his pale blond hair sticking up all over the place. Her other hand grasped an identical little boy by the wrist. This one, who appeared to favor the Ninja Turtles, was also moving nonstop. His face was also moist, albeit from tears rather than snot.

  “I don’t want to!” he whined. “Ma-a-a-m-a-a, no-o-o-o-o!”

  She seemed amazingly calm. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Good morning!” I said brightly, speaking a little louder than usual. “My name is Kate McKay, and I’m the owner of a new ice cream sh
op in town called Lickety Splits. Maybe you’ve seen it . . . ?”

  Lindsey brightened. “I certainly have!” she exclaimed. “Your place is great!”

  Bingo, I thought. An ice cream lover.

  “I love the way you’ve transformed that boring old storefront,” she went on. “The colors you used, that bright pink and green, and that bench you put outside is so useful. I’ve already used it a couple of times. When you’ve got three little kids, all under the age of five, sometimes you need a place to sit down and sort things out.”

  “I can imagine,” I said, putting on my sympathetic voice.

  “M-a-a-a-a!” the Ninja Turtle-in-training shrieked. “Lemme go-o-o-o!”

  “But here I am, chattering away,” she said, bouncing Boy Number One up and down a bit, even though it was his clone who was having the meltdown. “What can I do for you?”

  I took a deep breath. I’d always been kind of a wimp when it came to playing the role of salesperson. That was one of the things I liked about being in the ice cream business. You didn’t have to work very hard to make people want to buy what you were selling.

  “One of the special services I’m offering at Lickety Splits is kids’ birthday parties,” I said.

  I pulled out one of the promotional flyers I’d had Emma whip up the night before as a way of getting me in the door at Lindsey’s. They were so good that I’d decided that I’d actually use them to promote real children’s parties at my shop.

  I was about to hand her one when I realized she didn’t have any spare hands.

  She chuckled. “As you can see, I’ve got my hands full at the moment. But if you have a minute, why don’t you come inside and tell me about how the parties work?”

  I thought you’d never ask, I thought, following her inside.

  As soon as I did, I let out a gasp.

  The Mathers’ small but charmingly decorated bungalow looked as if a hurricane had just struck. Toys were strewn everywhere—on the floor, all over the couch, even under the coffee table. The display of colors was positively mind blowing, every bright shade of red and blue and yellow imaginable. Some of them, like the giant-size Legos and the jigsaw puzzles, had become a form of confetti, their hundreds of pieces sprinkled about the room in random places.