“Forced to what?”
She straightened herself up while Pippa trailed out of the barn, listening carefully.
“Forced to tell Blake that I’ve been putting corn syrup in the pastries,” Laura said, shaking her head. “Even though it was Alex that brought the jar of it in the first place. And it was Alex who…” She trailed off for a moment. She never finished the sentence.
But I was too caught up about the corn syrup. My mouth dropped open. “So that tin of corn syrup has been used then?” Aha. I had Blake caught! It hadn’t just been left there by the previous owner.
“We use it in almost everything,” Laura said glumly. “But Blake doesn’t know. If he finds out, I don’t know what he will do…”
I took a step toward her. “But is Blake really that scary that you need to keep things from him? That you need to lie and steal, just to keep him happy?”
Laura nodded. “There’s a lot of pressure working there. His standards are way too high.” She was starting to sound emotional. “I don’t want to lose my job, but I don’t know how much longer I can put up with all this.”
I sighed. “That’s why you were looking for a new job this afternoon.”
Laura shook her head, confused. “Huh? What are you talking about?”
“You were at Extreme Employment Solutions. Looking for a job.”
She eyed me carefully “How…how did you know I was there?” Okay, then, so she hadn’t spotted Pippa and I there, after all.
Pippa and I looked at each other. “We followed you,” Pippa said. “After we overheard your fight with Alex. It’s okay, Laura. We can’t blame you for looking for a new job after that.”
“I wasn’t looking for a new job,” she said, like it was obvious. “I was there to see Claudia…”
“Alex’s girlfriend?” I frowned. “But what did you need to see her for?”
Her voice was as grave as her face. “To warn her about what Alex did.”
Chapter 10
It dawned on me. As much as I hadn’t wanted to admit it, Pippa had been right from the start. She’d been right about the apples disappearing, she’d been right about the fact that there were no birds, and she’d been right to accuse Alex.
The four-gallon tub of insecticide was rolling around the back of the truck. I just hoped it wasn’t going to tip over and cover us both with insecticide. Even if it was organic, I didn’t want that stuff all over me.
“They are going to press tomorrow,” Pippa said, believing that we were headed toward the newspaper office at last. “This needs to be sorted out tonight, Rachael. The paper only goes to print once per week. If this story goes out, there will be no chance to retract it before the next farmer’s market on Saturday.”
But I turned the steering wheel in the opposite direction. Sorry, Pippa. This is just what I have to do.
“Oh, no, Rachael. No, you don’t. I can see what you are trying to do!” she cried out as we headed back toward the center of town.
“I promise,” I said. “We’ll just quickly run into Extreme Employment to ask Claudia a few questions, and then we can drive right over to the newspaper.” I checked the time. “It’s four p.m. and they don’t close until five. We have plenty of time. Trust me.”
She crossed her arms and refused to speak for a few minutes. “What do you think Claudia knows, exactly?”
I shot her a heavy look. “I think she knows exactly how her boyfriend killed Valerie. We just need to get her to tell us exactly how Alex did it.”
Pippa thought about it for a few more seconds. “Fine. If it means putting Alex behind bars, then I can wait a few minutes to clear my name—but it is going to be a few minutes, right?”
“I already told you. I promise.”
Seeing as I’d already blown my cover with Niles, this time, we were going to have to make sure no one spotted us. No more stories about babies and husbands being out of work. We waited until the receptionist had her head turned and made our way up to the fourth floor without signing in.
“There she is,” I whispered to Pippa as we crept in through the glass doors.
“Gosh, I am so tired,” Claudia said, rubbing her temples. “It has been a long couple of days, believe me.”
Niles walked over and handed her a candy bar. “This should give you a little energy.”
“No thanks,” Claudia said, shaking her head. “I can’t eat anything with corn syrup in it. I’m allergic.”
I stared at Pippa and felt my eyes go wide. “Did you hear that?” I asked, grabbing her arm.
We both slid out of the way, ducking behind an empty desk when Niles glanced in our direction. He and Claudia started heading toward the door, right toward where Pippa and I were hiding. We scurried around the other side of the desk and hid while they left.
It had suddenly gone very quiet in the office. And all the lights were out.
“Why is everyone leaving?” Pippa asked.
“Don’t worry, they will be coming back.”
But I hadn’t realized the closing time of the office was 4:30. They weren’t coming back. Not that evening.
I stood up and tried one of the glass doors. Locked. “Uh oh,” I said to Pippa. “I think we’re trapped in here.”
“We can’t be,” she said, pulling on every single glass door. “Help!” she screamed, banging on the door. “Someone let us out of here!” She banged again. Both of us had left our purses—and our phones—in the car. We were only supposed to be a few minutes. “I need to get out of here!” Pippa said desperately.
“There are phones,” I said, pointing around the office, trying to calm her down. “Plenty of them.”
Pippa sighed with relief. “Phew. Okay, I have Marcello’s number memorized. It’s the only one.”
“What about mine?” I asked in slight offense.
“I don’t really need to know yours…we are together most of the time,” she pointed out. Yeah. So everyone said.
She punched a few numbers and then shouted out in frustration. “It requires a code to phone an outside line,” she said, slamming the phone down.
“What about the computers?” I said, checking the time. 4:45. If we could quickly email someone for help, then, well, there was a slight chance that we could make it to the newspaper office in time. Slight.
“Password protected.” She tried the one beside her while I kept trying all the doors. If only we weren’t four floors up, we could have made a jump for it. “This one too.” She threw her hands in the air. “I’m going to assume they all are.”
“Don’t give up yet,” I said. “We’ve still got ten minutes.”
“Let’s just face it,” Pippa said. “We’re stuck here. And my reputation is going to be ruined.”
This was all my fault.
“You can always turn your reputation around,” I said. “And if the paper prints the story without getting their facts straight, they are the ones who are going to sully their reputation, not you.”
I took a seat beside her. She didn’t believe me. I wasn’t sure I even believed it myself.
Two hours later, it had started to get dark. We’d missed the deadline by hours. The paper would be printed in the morning and Pippa would be falsely accused of being a scam artist.
“I can’t believe there’s not even a janitor here to clean the office after hours,” Pippa said, shivering once it had passed eight o’clock.
“Maybe they skip Tuesday nights,” I said. It was entirely possible. “Or maybe they come early in the morning.”
“Are we supposed to sleep in here?” Pippa asked, looking around in horror. The office wasn’t exactly fitted out with king-sized beds. The floors were hard and uncarpeted.
I walked over to the glass windows that faced the street and tried to wave at the people below, walking by at the end of a long day. The glass was tinted, though; there was no way they could see inside. They’d only see their own reflections if they looked up.
I banged on it anyway and shouted out.
“Help! We’re trapped in here!”
“Whoa,” I said slowly, squinting down. There was someone walking toward the building. Pippa glanced up from her makeshift bed on the floor—she had grabbed a coat off the back of someone’s chair to use as a pillow—to see what had grabbed my attention. “Is that Blake?”
She jumped up and ran over to the window. He was getting closer and closer. I turned to Pippa with shining eyes. “Looks like we’ve got a knight in shining armor after all.”
We ran to the front of the office and stood by the door waiting for him to come up to the fourth floor.
“We’re trapped in here,” we yelled at Blake through the glass doors when he finally reached us. He smiled and winked before looking around to make sure no one was watching him. Then he bent down and tipped back the large ficus tree that sat by the door. He reached under the potted tree and pulled out a key.
He beamed at us with the key glimmering in his hand.
“We’re starving in here!” Pippa yelled at him. “Would you hurry it up?”
Blake put the key in the lock and we heard a click. We were free!
“How did you know that was hidden under there?” Pippa asked when he opened the door.
Blake’s face turned red and he looked guilty. “Claudia used to leave a key for me so I could sneak in at night and meet her here…”
Pippa put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to know any more. I’m just glad you’re here!”
Blake leaned over and slipped the key back under the tree before stepping inside.
“How did you know we were here?” I asked him.
“Laura told me what you were up to,” he said. “When you weren’t answering your phone, I figured you’d gotten into trouble. I drove over and saw that your car was in the parking lot.” He looked overly smug. “Looks like I was right.”
Huh. What else had Laura told him?
The glass door behind Blake swung shut. “Oh, no,” I said, reaching for it. It wouldn’t move; it was locked again. I stared at Blake. “Please tell me you brought your phone.”
He looked startled and quickly patted his pockets down. Empty.
Pippa groaned and dropped back to the floor.
“Great,” I said. “Now we’re all stuck in here. Good work, Blake.”
Blake was making coffee in the corner with the Extreme Employment espresso machine. I figured we’d have a hard enough time sleeping on hard floors as it was without adding caffeine to the mix. But I took the opportunity to pull Pippa away, out of Blake’s earshot.
“I think we should get something to protect us during the night,” I whispered to Pippa.
“What are you talking about?” Pippa asked me.
I pointed at Blake. “We are trapped here with a potential killer. Or at least someone with a bit of a crazy side,” I said.
Pippa threw her hands up. “This night is just getting worse and worse.”
“Trust me, I didn’t want to be trapped inside here with you either,” Blake grumbled as he walked over to us, holding out cups of coffee. He always thought this was the way to smooth things over. It was all he knew. “I was trying to rescue you.”
“Yeah, good job you did of it too,” I said. “What kind of person comes to rescue someone and doesn’t even bring a phone?”
“Let’s just make the best of it,” he said, handing me a coffee.
It certainly wasn’t as good as the Dough Planet coffee. It was burnt and the beans tasted like they had been sitting there for weeks. I placed it down and tried another computer.
“What are you doing?” Blake called out.
“I’m checking all the computers,” I said. “In case someone has theirs not password protected.”
“And who are you going to email at one in the morning?” Blake asked with that smug look still on his face.
“My husband is going to be worried about me,” Pippa said, jumping in. “I’m sure he’ll have his phone on high alert all night.”
I wasn’t so sure. After all the trouble Pippa and I had been involved with in the past, Marcello might think that Pippa staying out till 1:00 am was no big deal.
“Maybe I could email Sue,” I said. But she was always in bed by ten. Suzy might be up, but she didn’t have the ability to read emails.
“Maybe I could message the police department. I think they let you do that these days,” I suggested, trying some more computers.
“I think this is Claudia’s desk,” I said, coming across one that had a framed photo of her and Alex placed beside the computer screen. I thought I caught a strange look flash over Blake’s face. He quickly tried to wipe it away while I started to go through Claudia’s desk.
“Maybe don’t add snooping through personal belongings to our list of crimes,” he called out.
List of crimes? That was an interesting way of putting it.
“I’m just looking for a password,” I said, pulling open the top drawer. “Maybe she keeps it in here—” I stopped, my heart beating when I saw a small jar shoved into the far right corner.
“Oh my goodness. What is this?”
Chapter 11
I tried to read the label, but there was a yelling noise coming from beside me and before I knew it, I was being bowled over by Blake.
“Give me that!”
Blake grabbed it out of my hands before I had a chance to stop him.
Pippa was frozen. “I saw it,” she said, her eyes all whites. “It was cyanide.”
“Blake!” I shouted, chasing after him. What did he think he was doing, taking off with the evidence? He was truly the worst detective assistant I ever had.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Blake said, pulling on the door again.
“Yeah, because we haven’t already tried that door thirty times,” I said, rolling my eyes as Blake ran to the window and opened it, the bottle of poison in his hands.
“You can’t just throw that out of the window!” I tried to grab him and shouted over my shoulder at Pippa for help. “Pippa, please, we’ve got to stop him!”
Together, we managed to drag him to the ground and Pippa tried to snatch the poison out of his hands, but he had it in a vice-like grip.
I stood over him with my hands on my hips.
“Blake, I think it’s time that you came clean with us. Just how well do you know Claudia?”
Pippa joined me in glowering down at him. “And Valerie.”
Blake had his head in his hands. “I had no idea that she was capable of this…honestly…”
I grabbed the bottle out of his hands. “So you were trying to protect her?”
“No! Of course not…” He looked up at me with sorry eyes. He didn’t sound so sure. “Well…”
Pippa shook her head. “He was trying to protect himself. Of course.” She stepped up toward him like she had figured it all out. “Weren’t you? Because you had a thing with Valerie as well.”
I felt myself go a little numb. Was Blake really that much of a player? How many women did he have on the go at one time?
“Not a thing,” he mumbled. “Not really. But Claudia might have gotten the wrong impression. Valerie was in the shop every day, and you know… I could get a little flirty, I suppose.” He gulped. “I guess Claudia was jealous of Valerie.”
Pippa gulped. “So she poisoned Valerie’s pie.” She let out a little laugh. “And she probably hoped to destroy your business as well, in the process.”
I had another thought. “Pippa… She was using Alex, setting him up. Trying to make him look guilty. Or at least hoping he would.” So much for true love.
Pippa shook her head and stared out onto the street. “We gotta get out of here,” she murmured. “There’s a killer out there, on the loose.”
She was right. But we still had a long night ahead of us.
The sun hit my eyelids, waking me. I rolled over and groaned when I realized where I was. Still trapped. I checked my watch. 6:00 am.
Pippa was already up, standing by the wind
ows. She called me over and pointed to the woman with the long blonde ponytail walking briskly toward the lobby.
“What is she doing here so early?” Pippa asked, looking frightened. “She knows.”
But this was no time to panic. We all had to stay cool, and not let on that we knew what she had been up to. There was no way that she could know what we knew. “Quick, put the cyanide back in the drawer,” I said. “She might have come in to grab it while she thinks no one is here.”
We were all on edge when she finally arrived on the fourth floor, but I was shocked to see her open the door with a warm, wide grin like she was greeting old friends.
“I saw your car in the parking lot,” she said, shaking her head. “I noticed it was here last night when I left and it was still here this morning.” She had a sugary sweet smile on her face like nothing was the matter. “You are a bunch of silly billies, getting yourselves trapped in here over night, aren’t you?”
She had a brown paper bag in her hands with croissants inside. There was chocolate, blueberry, and plain. My stomach rumbled. We’d all missed dinner the night before.
“Here you go, Rachael,” she said, passing me the chocolate one. “I know that you need to keep your strength up with a baby on the way…”
I was tired and exhausted from only half an hour’s sleep on the hard floor and too hungry to let my pride get in the way, so I took it and sat down on a desk to munch on it while Claudia spoke with Blake by the door.
“What the heck are you doing?” Pippa asked me, grabbing the pastry out of my hands.
“Sorry,” I said, still chewing. “I’ll share it with you if you like,” I offered, extending my hand.
She took it, then slapped the side of my face with the full force of her hand, causing me to spit the pastry out on the floor.
I shouted in pain. “What the heck, Pippa?” I grabbed the side of my face where my jaw was throbbing.
“Are you crazy?” she said. “Spit every last drop of that out, right now!”
I was coughing and spluttering, but my jaw was my biggest issue. “Why did you have to hit me?”
Apple Assassination Page 9
