The Walking Bread

by Winnie Archer

  He’d already decided it was murder, but I was glad that he wanted more information before making a proclamation like that public. I felt like a broken record, telling the same story over and over, but this time it really mattered. I recounted the details for them, beginning with my photographing the art cars, Agatha’s reaction as we approached the zombie rendition, the feet sticking out from the back of the throat, and my realization that those feet were actually attached to a real body.

  “You didn’t see anyone around?” Em asked when I was finished.

  I thought back, mentally scanning the road I’d taken to the hangar. Other than my dad, no one else had been around. I didn’t know why, but the one detail I omitted was that Billy had appeared suddenly, helping me pull the body from the car. “Not a soul,” I told her.

  The sheriff scanned the crowd, cupping his hand over his eyes, a scowl on his face. “He could be here,” he said. He wasn’t out in the field much—that’s why he had Emmaline—but his skin had the golden bronze of someone who spent hours in the sun. I’d made that comment to Em the first time I’d met Sheriff Lane. “Golf,” she’d said. “He spends a lot of time on the links.”

  Despite being out of practice, he stepped right into the lead role. “Start talking to people,” he said to Emmaline. “You take the left, I’ll take the right.”

  “Yes, sir.” As he headed into the gathering crowd, she took me by the arm. “This isn’t good, Ivy.”

  Fear seemed to tint her grimace. “I know.”

  She pulled me aside and out of earshot. “We found something.”

  The thinly veiled fear in her voice sent a chill down my spine. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I asked anyway. “What?”

  “Down in the back of the zombie’s throat we found a copy of—”

  She stopped suddenly, drawing in a deep breath through her nose. “Of what?” I asked, urging her to continue.

  “A copy of Through the Looking Glass,” she finished. She shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it. “Through the freaking Looking Glass, Ivy.”

  Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke, but her pointed look felt like a knife through my heart because I knew what her conclusion was. “And you think it’s Billy’s?”

  She bit her lower lip before answering. “I don’t think, Ivy, I know. It has the inscription from your mom.”

  I felt the heat leave my face. Oh God, oh God, oh God. This could not be happening. I racked my brain, trying to come up with a logical explanation for why Billy’s copy of Through the Looking Glass would be in Max Litman’s art car, but I was at a loss. I knew what Em was getting at and I understood the panic I could see rising in her because it swelled in me, too.

  She voiced what I already knew. “Billy’s going to be the prime suspect in Max Litman’s murder.”

  Chapter 4

  The news of Max Litman’s death had cast a pall over the very idea of the Art Car Show. The pervasive attitude was that the event should be canceled, but the planning committee disagreed. They’d acted quickly, meeting and discussing their options. The day after my discovery of the body, Penelope Branford, my sometimes partner-in-crime investigator, made the announcement at City Hall in front of a small crowd. Her basic wardrobe consisted of velour leisure sweat suits in every possible color. She was an octogenarian and adhered to her generation’s rules of propriety. For the announcement about the Art Car Show and Ball, she’d chosen a subdued dark gray ensemble. It was true to her style, but showed her respect for the dead at the same time.

  Mrs. Branford had long ago retired, but her years of teaching meant she was no stranger to public speaking, even if her oratory had typically been directed to teenagers. She hadn’t lost her poise or confidence. She clasped the wooden handle of her cane as she walked to the front of the crowd. Her walking stick was usually for show, but at this moment, I thought she actually needed it to help keep her steady. She spoke into the microphone, reading a prepared statement written by the committee. Despite the distress on her face, her voice rang out over the loud speakers. “The Art Car Show and Ball was Max Litman’s favorite Santa Sofia event. He gave everything he had to crafting his art car, and his time, effort, and creativity paid off. He’s won year after year after year. His trophies are displayed at the Litman Homes office. He took great pride in his success, and his creative entries in the event will be missed.”

  Whether or not they personally knew Max Litman, most everyone in town knew of him. He was a Santa Sofia fixture, a savvy businessman, and a cutthroat real-estate mini-mogul. I knew he’d screwed plenty of people over the years with his real-estate deals, so he wouldn’t be missed by everyone. Still, Mrs. Branford’s words were appropriate. She would honor the dead man by assigning him dignity and respect, whether it was deserved or not. She was not one to speak ill of the dead.

  The official statement continued. “We, the Art Car Planning Committee, believe Max would not have wanted the event canceled. In fact, we are certain he would have insisted it go on as planned. And so it shall.”

  The crowd stirred, a few people clapped, and others responded with a yes or a nod of a head. Mrs. Branford continued. “We are dedicating this year’s event to Maxwell Litman.” She looked to the sky, palm open. “Rest in peace.”

  The people around me mumbled, but it was more an acknowledgment that she’d spoken than an echoing of the sentiment. My gaze met Emmaline’s for a second. She broke the connection, her eyes finding her boss. He was not focusing on Mrs. Branford, but, once again, was focusing on the crowd. Emmaline backed away from me, focusing her attention in the same direction. I knew my old high school friend well. Like me, she was wondering if Max Litman’s murderer was still here, blending in with the people of Santa Sofia.

  * * *

  My childhood home on Pacific Grove Street sat atop a small hill. Billy and I had spent our youth playing kick the can with the neighborhood kids, riding bikes in a zigzag to get up the incline of the road, and later, when we were young adults, sitting in the backyard with our parents, our dad grilling, our mom pulling weeds or planting a flower or reading a book. The memories had turned bittersweet after my mom died. My dad had struggled to move on, but now, finally, he was starting to adjust to his new normal without the woman he’d spent the better part of his life with.

  I caught a glimpse of him standing at the living room window as I pulled up in front of the house. He held the door open for me as Agatha and I walked up the entry path. I gave him a peck on the cheek. “Hey, Dad.”

  He wrapped me in a quick hug, his arms tight for a beat before letting me go and leading me into the heart of the house. I let Agatha out of her harness before turning to Billy and Emmaline. They sat side by side on the sofa, their hands intertwined. Even in the dimly lit room, Emmaline’s beautiful coffee-colored skin was in sharp contrast to the ivory slipcover. My brother’s tanned face was still several shades lighter than her darker complexion, but somehow they almost blended together. Their children, if they ever tied the knot and went in that direction, would be exquisite.

  They both straightened up when they saw me. “Hey, sis,” Billy said. He smiled, but it was forced, any trace of mirth nonexistent. It hadn’t taken long for him to become a person of interest in Max Litman’s death. The book with the inscription found at the scene, the theme of Billy’s car, and the very public battle between the two men over their art cars had led the sheriff to the obvious conclusion. And now the pall of Max’s death and the community’s suspicion of Billy was taking its toll. Dark circles formed rings around his eyes and his cheeks seemed hollow. He was tall, handsome, and vibrant, so to see him looking so distraught made my heart sink. I knew he’d had nothing to do with Max’s death, yet the people of Santa Sofia were judging him, and they were falling on the side of guilt rather than presumed innocence.

  I sank down onto the couch on the other side of Billy and took his free hand in mine. I think we were afraid to look at each other for fear of the floodgates of our emotions br
eaking open, so we stared straight ahead. “We’ll figure this out,” I said.

  Emmaline echoed my words, but from my peripheral vision, I saw Billy shaking his head. “People already think I’m guilty. Even if you find who did this,” he said, turning his head toward Em, “my reputation is shot. What if I lose my business? Who’s going to contract with me now?” His voice turned bitter. “He’s dead, but he’s still screwing with me.”

  I squeezed his hand, trying to be reassuring. A businessperson’s reputation was everything, so his worry was justified. “Anyone who knows you knows that you could not have done this.”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he gave a halfhearted shrug. “But it’ll always be in the back of their minds.”

  Nothing I said would make him see things differently, so I changed the subject. “Look, someone killed Max, and it wasn’t you, so let’s think about this. Surely he had plenty of people who didn’t like him.”

  Emmaline turned to face him, tucking one foot under her. She was in her deputy uniform with crisply pressed navy pants and collared shirt. She was a tough woman, fighting crime on a daily basis in Santa Sofia, but at the moment she looked so vulnerable. My heart was breaking for them both. “The department is already on it. I have people making the rounds. A team is digging into Litman’s business dealings. We’re doing everything we possibly can.”

  Billy’s hand tightened in mine. I glanced at him. His jaw pulsed with tension. “But nothing yet?”

  She shook her head. “Ivy, listen,” she said. “I need your help.”

  I’d known Emmaline longer than I’d known anyone in my life, with the exception of my family. She was the closest thing I had to a sister. I’d take a bullet for her. “Anything,” I said.

  “I need you to be my eyes and ears.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Billy pushed himself off the couch and turned to face Emmaline and me. “She means she wants your help catching a killer.”

  My dad was up on his feet and charging forward before I could react. “Now wait just a second,” he said. “One of my kids in trouble is enough. Ivy doesn’t need to be involved.”

  Billy was nodding alongside my dad. “Exactly what I’ve been saying,” he said with a pointed look at Emmaline.

  “You’re innocent, Billy. I know it. You know it. But I’m too close to this. Lane even said so. We need an objective view.”

  Billy scoffed. “And Ivy’s going to be objective?”

  Em threw her hands up. “She’s already in the thick of it. She’s documenting the cars and the event. She’s—”

  “I’m right here, you know,” I said, cutting her off. The three of them turned to me. Billy frowned. My dad’s forehead crinkled with concern. Emmaline’s eyes had turned glassy. I ignored them all. “I am perfectly capable of making my own decisions, and I am also perfectly capable of being objective, even where my brother is concerned.”

  This time Billy grimaced. “You mean the brother people think is capable of murder?”

  “One and the same.” I turned to Emmaline. “I’ll do everything I can.”

  Chapter 5

  I dug my hands into the bread dough, kneading, kneading, kneading. With each squeeze of my hands, I exhaled. I was waiting for a stroke of brilliance. For an idea about how to prove that Billy had nothing to do with Max’s death, but the aha moment didn’t come. I had to go about things with as much logic as I could muster, which wasn’t easy given my current desperate need to save my brother from the hell he was going through. I’d told Emmaline, my brother, and my father that I could be objective, but my emotions still flared. I muttered aloud, listing any and everything I could think of as a possible reason behind Max Litman’s death. “A shady business deal?” Seemed pretty likely. “Had one of his bevy of beautiful women turned on him?” Possible. There wasn’t a disgruntled ex-wife. A long-lost child come back for vengeance seemed overly melodramatic and unlikely. So what else? A mob hit? But I laughed that idea away. Organized crime in Santa Sofia was about as likely as the Loch Ness Monster emerging from the Pacific Ocean.

  There was no way to know the truth, at least not at this moment. I needed to do exactly what Emmaline had asked me to do. I needed to keep my eyes and ears open to see if anyone knew anything; then I had to dig deeper into his life. “What were you hiding, Max?” I plunged my hands deeper into the soft goop of dough. I repeated his name over and over and over, as if saying it would somehow give me answers.

  A hand gently touched my wrist. “M’ija,” Olaya Solis said, and I blinked. She stood beside me. She was a vibrant-color person, usually wearing bright pigments. Today was no exception. Her tunic was a floral pattern with a black background that she paired with dark pink leggings. The soft curls of her iron-gray hair were pulled back with a black cloth headband, and her gold-flecked green eyes were laced with compassion. “You are thinking too much.”

  I considered that. Over the last few months, Olaya had become my rock. Santa Sofia had always been a peaceful seaside town, but when crisis had recently overshadowed that peace, she’d been there to keep everyone even-keeled. She’d kept me grounded, even in the face of my mother’s untimely death. She was right! Was I overthinking things?

  “Ivy, Max Litman was not a well-loved man in Santa Sofia. The police, they will find who did this.”

  “But what if they can’t?” I asked. It was rhetorical. Of course Olaya couldn’t answer that any more than I could. But it seemed to reason that if Billy was the prime suspect and no other motive surfaced, then he’d take the fall.

  Olaya removed her hand as I grabbed the pliable mass in my bowl and plopped it onto the floured counter. I patted the dough, folded one section over another, and pressed, adeptly turning it as I kneaded the flour in. After the remaining stickiness disappeared, I put the dough back into the bowl, turned it over, seam side down, brushed it lightly with oil, and then covered it with a towel.

  “M’ija,” Olaya prodded. She knew me well enough to sense I wasn’t telling her everything.

  I leaned against the counter, wiping my hands on one of the bakery’s standard Kelly-green dishtowels. “Emmaline asked me to dig around. I’m going to dig around, but . . .”

  She dipped her chin slightly, considering me. “But what?”

  “But I’m not a detective and I don’t work for the police department,” I said. My words were a rationale for my insecurities. I’d gotten involved in local mysteries before and neither one of those things had stopped me. This time, however, the stakes were higher. I couldn’t fail.

  “You have done it before. You will do it again,” Olaya said, echoing my thoughts. And I would. Somehow.

  Chapter 6

  The discovery of Max Litman’s body the day before had prevented me from finishing photographing the early art car entries. Given that the event was to go forth as planned, I needed to get back to it—with new eyes and a new perspective.

  I had no doubt that the police had scoured every bit of the hangar looking for clues. I didn’t hold out much hope that I’d find something the police hadn’t, but no stone unturned, and all that. My motivation, after all, was pretty strong. I called Emmaline, ready to convince her that I needed to finish taking pictures of the art cars. She wanted my help, but that didn’t mean she could easily let me into a crime scene. But she surprised me. “I’ll meet you there in an hour,” she said in a hurried whisper.

  I left Agatha at home this time, arriving at the hangar just as Emmaline pulled up. We moved in tandem, as if we were synchronized swimmers, stepping out of our cars, shutting our doors, circling to the fronts of our cars, then turning to face one another. “You look like I feel,” she said, working hard to control the shaking in her voice.

  Tossing and turning all night had left dark circles rimming my eyes, my loss of appetite had made my skin sallow, and I looked drawn and tired. Em’s eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, her chocolate-colored skin, usually dewy and fresh, had lost its luster, and she looked like she hadn’t slept i
n a week. “Ditto.”

  We both managed faint smiles and then gave up, falling into each other’s arms and giving in to our emotions. After a minute, she extracted herself, ran her fingertips along the edge of her hairline, and blinked back any more tears. “I’m off this case,” she said.

  I stared at her, my blood pounding in my ears. “What do you mean?”

  She threw her hands up, frustrated. “Lane says I’m too close to it, which is total bullshit. Everyone in town is too close to be objective. Even the city. Even our department, for God’s sake. Max had his hand in a lot of pies, and a lot of them were rotten.”

  Emmaline was Sheriff Lane’s right hand. His number one. The person he depended on most. For him to remove her from this murder investigation was serious, but I knew why. She was too close to it because of Billy. My voice dropped to a shattered whisper. “Lane really thinks Billy did this?”

  She turned and walked, her arms so tightly crossed in front of her that her body seemed to shrink from the force. And then she stopped. Her back expanded as she breathed in and she turned to face me. She opened her mouth to speak. To answer my question. To say whatever it was she needed to. But she couldn’t make the words come out. Even from where I stood, I could see her eyes fill, her lips part, her chin quaver. In the end she just nodded.

  And my heart broke. My brother was the furthest thing from a murderer. Suddenly my commitment to be Emmaline’s eyes and ears around the Art Car festivities hardly seemed enough. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I wouldn’t sleep until I found out the truth. We had to figure out who had killed Max in order to free Billy from the sheriff’s—and the town’s—condemnation.

  We managed to gather up all our emotions and tuck them away to deal with later, focusing instead on our scrutiny of the hangar. I retrieved my camera from my car as Emmaline dug a set of keys out of her pocket and headed for the hangar’s side office door. Something occurred to me, though, and I stopped her before she could unlock it. “Wait.”