Apple Assassination

by Stacey Alabaster

  Apple Assassination

  A Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery

  Stacey Alabaster

  Fairfield Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Message to Readers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Copyright © 2017 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Thank you so much for buying my book. I am excited to share my stories with you and hope that you are just as thrilled to read them.

  If you would like to know about all my new releases and have the opportunity to get free books, make sure you sign up for our Cozy Mystery Newsletter.

  FairfieldPublishing.com/cozy-newsletter

  Chapter 1

  “Ow,” I called out as I felt the elbow dig into my ribs. My apprentice baker, Bronson, ducked out of the way, holding a knife he was using to cut dough balls with. “We need more room in this kitchen,” I commented as I moved to his other side, narrowly dodging the edge of the blade. Knives are always worse than elbows. I returned to the other side and wiped the sweat off my brow with my floury hand “Or someone is going to end up killed in here.”

  Perhaps there were some things I shouldn’t joke about. Murder was probably one of them. I returned to furiously rolling dough balls. Bronson had slept in and arrived at work an hour late, so we had nothing prepared. “Sorry,” Bronson mumbled as he just missed my fingers with the blade. I hadn’t docked his pay for being an hour late, but if he cut off a finger, I was going to have to reconsider.

  My assistant manager came swinging through the doors to the kitchen, a sour look on her face. Her long brown ponytail was swinging wildly.

  “It’s your twin on the phone for you,” Simona called out, holding a phone.

  “Twin?” I dodged Bronson’s knife again. “All right, that’s it,” I said, grabbing it from his hands. “You roll; I cut.”

  “Hello? The phone?” Simona asked impatiently. By ‘twin,’ she was referring to my best friend, Pippa. We don’t look alike, at all. I have mid-length brown hair, which I always style neatly, and Pippa’s is wild and always colored in some exotic variety of bubblegum. This week it was blue and purple. But Simona always said the two of us were joined at the hip like conjoined twins.

  My hands were sticky with dough and flour. “Can you tell her I’ll call her back, please.”

  She shook her head and held out the phone to me. “She is ranting and raving about something…” Simona said. “Yelling at me down the phone. I don’t want to deal with it.”

  “Oh. Geez.” Thinking it was an emergency, I picked up the phone and held it to my ear using my shoulder, so that my sticky, floury hands were still in the air.

  “Am I cutting or rolling?” Bronson asked. I told him to figure it out and walked out the back to the parking lot to take the call. Simona was right. Pippa was raving.

  From the sound of her voice, I was right about an emergency. I thought there might be something wrong with her one-year-old daughter, Lolly, so I told her to calm down. “Speak slowly, so I can understand. Is Marcello there with you?” Marcello is Pippa’s husband

  “Half the apples are gone!” Pippa screeched. “The branches have been stripped bare. And they are nowhere to be found, Rachael. I think we are dealing with an apple thief here.”

  “Apples?” I asked in disbelief. “Are you really talking about apples right now?” If I didn’t get back into the kitchen, we wouldn’t have anything to sell that day. I didn’t have time to worry about a few measly apples.

  “Missing?” I asked her. “What do you mean? They’ve fallen off the tree? Pippa, have you thought about checking the ground for these missing apples?” I was starting to wonder just what kind of farmer she was if she didn’t realize that fruit fell from trees once it got too ripe.

  “Yes, of course I looked at the ground.” I could hear the eye-roll in her voice. “They are not there. And the trees are half bare.”

  I paused. Why on earth would anyone want to steal apples? It’s not as though they were rare, or particularly valuable.

  I apologized to Bronson, and then to Simona, as I walked inside and handed the phone back to her. “I’ve got to go. There’s an apple thief on the loose. And it’s serious business, apparently.”

  Pippa’s farm was ten minutes out of town. At ten in the morning, it was an easy drive. It was painted purple and hard to miss, even without the apple orchard and the cows and goats in the back of it, which is where I pulled up. As I brought my car to a stop, I thought about how many murders Pippa and I had solved together. That was our game, our specialty, but I’d never caught an apple thief before.

  I climbed out and smiled to myself. Maybe this was just the kind of nice, slow change of pace I needed. I’d been thinking of getting out of the murder mystery game for a while now. This could be my opportunity.

  I’d expected Pippa to be a little annoyed, but not in full blown rage. She was kicking up dirt in her barn as she paced back and forth. It was dark inside, and I had to squint to find her. “I have to sell these apples down at the farmer’s market on Saturday,” she said, her face red and puffy, almost like she had been crying. “My regular customers will be expecting them, Rachael. We’ve got to catch the thief and get them all back.”

  I felt like I had to point something out to her. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get the apples back before then, Pippa.” Even if—if!—we managed to catch this so-called thief, I doubted the apples would be recoverable. If they’d been stolen, which I still didn’t believe they had been, they’d probably all gone through a blender or been fed to a horse by now.

  But Pippa was wild-eyed and in full denial. “Oh no, we have to get them back! That is non-negotiable.” She stomped her foot. Then, like a wired-up toddler, she pouted at me, turned on her heel, and stomped outside, stopping at the door to grab something long and heavy. Uh-oh. I hadn’t expected this to turn homicidal. That was that last thing I wanted.

  “What do you think you’re going to do with that, Pippa?”

  She grabbed a heavy shovel and struggled to pull it outside. “I am going to catch this apple thief,” she said. “And get those apples back. Every last one of them. I don’t care what I have to do to get them back.” There was a glint of insanity in her eye.

  I followed her to the apple orchard, keeping a careful eye on the rusty shovel she was dragging. With any luck, Pippa wouldn’t have the strength to pick it up and turn it into a weapon. She pointed up to the empty branches as evidence. “Look! You can’t tell me the last time you were here, there weren’t dozens more apples than this.”

  Well, I could. I never paid any attention to how much fruit was on the branches.

  “Why would anyone want to steal apples from you?” I asked as Pippa found a bush to hide behind and dragged the shovel in with her.

  She told me to crouch down so that I wouldn’t be seen and pulled me down when I didn’t immediately follow her direction. “We want to catch the thief in the act. Lure him or her in. Make them think they’re safe.

  “Because, these are the best, freshest, most organic apples in Belldale,” Pippa explained, in answer to my question. “That’s the way I advertise them at my farmer’s market
stand.” She shook her head before peering through a hole in the bushes. “Someone must have found out where I live. Someone who wants to get the best apples in Belldale—for free.”

  This all seemed entirely ridiculous to me. And so did the fact that I was hiding inside a bush with my knees in the mud. I thought it was far more likely that birds had been pecking away at the apples. “You ought to put nets around the top of them to keep the birds away,” I said.

  “What birds?” Pippa snapped at me.

  “The birds who are stealing your apples.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned away in an exaggerated fashion. “These are no birds, Rachael,” she said. “I’d like to see a bird big enough to take a whole apple in its mouth and fly off with it.” She pointed at the ground. “Where are the signs of leftover fruit or seeds, if it is birds?”

  “Maybe there are eagles,” I replied. “Or hawks. Or pelicans.”

  “There are no pelicans. We’re two hundred miles from the coast.”

  While we were arguing about birds, something—or someone—had crept into the trees. There was a rustling and I looked up, assuming I was right and that there would be a bunch of crows up there.

  But there was a man. His face was covered by branches, but he had a shaved head, was in his twenties, and with a medium build. And he was plucking apples from the branches and tossing them into a brown hessian bag.

  I gasped and grabbed Pippa’s arm. “Oh my goodness—you were right, Pippa.”

  She glared at me. “Please always remember you are saying that,” she said before leaping up, grabbing the shovel, and screaming like a banshee. But her sudden movement—not to mention her shrieks—spooked our thief and he leapt from the branches, dropping half the bag of apples as he fled to his car.

  The small truck screeched away while Pippa yelled at him, waving her straw hat in the air like a madwoman. “Hey! You!” she yelled as she ran down the empty backroad off of the property. “You get back here! Those are not your apples!”

  But he was long gone, leaving only dust.

  Pippa threw her farmer’s hat on the ground. “Now what?” she asked.

  I had an idea. He’d left half the apples behind. Anyone desperate enough to steal apples would be desperate enough to make another trip. “We wait for him to come back.”

  “But what if he’s not coming?” Pippa said, sulking as we sat on the porch and waited for the sun to set.

  “He’s coming,” I said firmly. “He might wait until it’s way after midnight, until it's totally dark, until he’s sure everyone is asleep, but he’s coming.”

  I told Pippa to turn off every light in the farmhouse to make it look like everyone was asleep. Marcello was inside with Lolly, and we’d made him promise not to disturb us and not to make a noise. The first part would be relatively easy for him to stick to. Not making a noise? That was slightly less likely.

  “Marcello is asleep,” Pippa whispered as she joined me back in the yard, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was shivering. “How long are we going to have to stay out here?”

  “Do you want your apples back or not?” I asked sternly.

  She looked a little glum. “I think you were right about the apples not coming back. I want this guy brought to justice, though. He can’t steal my apples and get away with it.” She looked at me sharply. “Should we phone Jackson?”

  I wasn’t sure the head detective of the Belldale Police department was going to be that interested in some missing apples. “I think we can handle this ourselves,” I said firmly. We’d always been able to before. I turned and made sure all the lights were off. We were both wearing black so we wouldn’t be spotted. The trap was set.

  Pippa was dozing off on the porch—and I wasn’t far behind her—when I finally heard tires on the gravel behind the orchard. I blinked a few times, then was blinded by truck headlights.

  I threw my blanket off and crept forward, but I had forgotten that the porch was a foot off the ground with no steps, and in the dark, I fell right off, landing awkwardly and twisting my ankle.

  “Pippa!” I shouted, too loudly. “He’s here!”

  She woke with a start and leapt off the porch, more nimbly than I had, but all our hard work of making the house and ourselves invisible had been ruined. The thief had spotted us and was already climbing back in his truck. Though, he had grabbed the bag of apples that we’d left out as bait.

  “Shoot!” Pippa said.

  “Get in the truck!” I shouted, scrambling after her as we ran to Pippa’s truck. My ankle was killing me but I managed to limp my way there and climb into the passenger seat.

  “Where is he headed?” Pippa asked, leaning forward as we made our way into town. His rear taillights were so bright, it was difficult to make anything out. The truck was small but it looked new.

  “Just keep following him,” I said, rubbing my ankle.

  “I think it’s dangerous to drive without my headlights on,” Pippa said. “Even if it does make us invisible.”

  “Just take it nice and slow,” I said. There was no one else on the road at two in the morning, and we wanted to be able to follow him without him knowing about it. We’d already blown enough chances. This time, we had to catch him.

  Who was this guy? And why was he desperate enough to steal apples in the middle of the night?

  He pulled right into the center of town, into the retail district, only a block away from our bakery.

  “This is where he lives?” Pippa asked, confused, as she kept her foot hovering over the brake. There were a few residential lodgings in town—mostly small apartments above shops—but not many.

  “I don’t think he’s leading us to his home,” I said slowly as I realized where we were. It was a very familiar street. “I think he is leading us to his work place.”

  Pippa slowed the truck down even more until we were crawling along the familiar road. “Please…” I said quietly to myself so that Pippa couldn’t hear me. “Don’t let him be going where I think I he’s going…”

  “No way. Is this…?” Pippa said, slamming her foot on the brakes.

  Our thief slowed and came to a stop on the other side of the street. He jumped out, pulled out his loot, and crept to the shop in the dark, keeping one eye over his shoulder as he unlocked the door.

  Every muscle in my body was clenched. I nodded, my jaw tight. “Yes. This is Dough Planet. Our apple thief works for Blake. He works for our biggest competition.”

  Chapter 2

  “Whoa, you look rough,” Sue commented as she placed the coffeepot down. Sue had been living with me for over four months, but sometimes I was still surprised to see her in the morning, dressed in her bright polka dot dresses and bright red lipstick. Before Sue had moved in, I’d lived with Pippa, for years. See—in THOSE days, I’ll admit that Pippa and I were joined at the hip. We worked together, lived together, and solved mysteries together. But these days, we were far from being twins. Pippa had thrown herself completely into the farm life and I had zero interest in the mud and the animals and milking of cows.

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically. I caught sight of my reflection in the glass of the cabinets. Even in the bad reflection, I could see the dark bags under my eyes. Sue was right. Rough was an understatement.

  I reached over and picked up one of the boxes of Sue’s sugary cereals. She always had her shelf lined with at least six different varieties at any one time. “Do you mind if I steal some of this one today?” I asked, settling on one with chocolate and mini-marshmallows. “I think I need the sugar hit to get through the morning.”

  “Go for it,” she replied cheerfully. But she eyed me a little suspiciously as I filled the bowl right up and slumped in my seat. “So, what time did you get in last night?”

  “Four a.m.…” I murmured, taking a hefty bite of the sweet cereal and munching on it as I stared into space. I’d only had two hours sleep. And the task ahead of me that morning was going to require a little more than my present dazed
state. I started shoveling the cereal into my mouth, hoping that the sugar might give me a lift.

  “Hot date?” Sue asked.

  I scoffed. “Hardly,” I said. “Pippa and I were…” I stopped myself. I was so tired I’d almost slipped up and told Sue what we had been doing. She knew nothing about my secret double life though. I mean, I’m not a superhero or anything, but I figured if Sue knew the truth, she might want to move out. Who wants to live with someone who solves murder mysteries?

  I had to remind myself that this was just an apple mystery. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she knew. But something made me hold back.

  “We were just hanging out, playing board games.”

  Sue raised an eyebrow. “Until four in the morning?”

  I nodded. “Got pretty intense. Monopoly. Neither of us wanted to concede. Went right down to the wire.”

  “Right,” Sue said.

  Dough Planet opened at 7:00 am, but Blake was already there at 6:45 when we pulled up. Blake was a young business owner, only twenty-four, and he’d started Dough Planet as a pop-up before he’d taken over the lease of the small shop. He looked cheery and far more rested than Pippa and I were. His dark hair was slicked back in a trendy undercut style and he was wearing a short black t-shirt that showed off a couple of his tattoos.

  It was at Pippa’s insistence that we arrived right after the sun rose. I didn’t see how giving it a few extra hours could possibly make any difference. I had told her that having a few more hours of sleep would actually help. We’d be able to confront Blake with clearer heads. But I suspected that Pippa actually wanted to keep hold of her rage. She didn’t want to sleep on it and let it settle. She wanted to keep it simmering.