Kneaded to Death

by Winnie Archer

  That sounded just like my mom. “Err on the side of caution,” she’d always said. She would never throw someone under the proverbial bus if she wasn’t 100 percent positive about the situation. Still, I was disappointed not to get some nugget that might help.

  “When I heard she’d died, I thought, That’s it. There goes my last chance at finding out the truth.”

  “So you thought she really did know something?”

  Renee tapped her fingers absently on her wheels. “Hard to know. I thought maybe she’d somehow pony up the evidence against Jackie Makers that I needed.”

  “What did she ask you?”

  “Same as the police. Did I see the driver? Description of the car. License plate. Anything else I remembered. It all happened too fast. I’ve racked my brain. I’ve gone to therapy. Hell, I even tried hypnosis. I never saw it coming.”

  “Can I ask you one more thing?”

  “Ask me anything. Like I said, if it might lead to proof, then I’m there. I don’t care that the woman already died. I want her crucified for what she did to me.”

  “Do you think it was intentional?”

  “I’ve asked myself that over and over. I’m basically a good person. I don’t have enemies. I haven’t done anything to warrant . . . this. But how could it not be? Isn’t it too much of a coincidence that my one competitor in town is the person who ran me over?”

  Allegedly ran you over, I thought. She was ready to convict without a shred of proof, but I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t say why, but I felt there was something missing from the story. If Renee Ranson was right and Jackie had run her over, how did my mom know? What did any of it have to do with her? And why would my mom even get involved? Then again, she did go see Jackie, and shortly after that, she was run over. Coincidence?

  I couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so I stood, ready to leave. Renee stopped me.

  “You know . . .”

  I sat back down. “Yes?”

  “About a month ago I got a strange e-mail. It had a list of people and e-mail addresses. Some of them were city e-mail addresses, a few were school district, and there were others that were just Gmail or Yahoo or whatnot. Your mom was on there.”

  I let this information sink in. A list of random e-mails, including my mom’s. “You don’t know who sent it?”

  “No idea. I responded, but it bounced, saying the e-mail was not valid.”

  “Did you share this with the authorities?”

  “Not at all. Until this moment, I didn’t think there was a connection to anything, but now I’m wondering.”

  “There was no message?”

  “Nothing. Just the list.”

  “Could Jackie have sent it? A list of clients for you to—I don’t know—add to your mailing list?”

  “More retribution.” She nodded circumspectly. “Could be.”

  “Thank you for talking to me,” I said.

  “Ivy, right?”

  I nodded.

  “The not knowing is hard. It’s always in the back of my mind. Why me? I’m sure you feel the same about your mother. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  So did I.

  Chapter Thirty

  Next stop, Yeast of Eden. I barreled in, anxious to reread the essay Olaya and I had found among Jackie’s cookbooks and piles of papers, the one I thought was written by Jasmine Makers.

  Olaya greeted me with a smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners. She took one look at my face, reached under the counter for the single paper, and said, “It’s right here.”

  “Thank you!” I took it and sat at a little bistro table, not even taking the time to ask for a luscious popover or croissant. My mother and Jackie were both dead, and nothing I did was going to change that, but discovering the truth felt urgent, nonetheless.

  I read the essay through once, then again, more slowly, looking for any clues or evidence that the content might relate to Renee Ranson and what happened to her. If I worked under the assumption that this was, in fact, the essay my mom had taken to share with Josephine Jeffries, and then later with Jackie Makers, then it also made sense that it was also this essay that had led her to Renee Ranson.

  But if it was, I couldn’t find the obvious clues. There were parts that said things like I’ve always been hotheaded. I’m like my dad in that way. I react first, think later. It may be my greatest fault. And Sometimes my actions have horrible consequences. It’s like that butterfly effect. Something happens here, and then way down the line, somewhere else, something happens that you could never have predicted.

  The prompt had been about a lesson taught. I skipped to the last paragraph of the essay and stopped cold. I meant to teach a lesson, but really all I did was hurt everyone. Collateral damage. If I could take it back, I would. If only I could.

  This had to have been what alerted my mom. I went back to my assumption that Jasmine Makers had written the essay, and worked through a hypothesis. I tried to think like my mom would have. She had read it and got concerned that her student had done something, so she’d gone to Josephine first. There was no name on the essay, though, so my mom had been piecing things together, maybe through the process of elimination. If she’d scored all the other essays in the class and made her typical photocopies, she would have known which student the essay with no name belonged to. Assuming it was Jasmine’s, she would have met with her first to talk about it. If that hadn’t gone well, she would have met with Jasmine’s mother. She’d been taking the cooking classes, so she already had a relationship of sorts with Jackie. Knowing my mom, she wouldn’t have wanted to talk to Jackie at Well Done, with other people around. It was a private matter. So she’d gone over to Maple Street, expressed her concern about Jasmine, and given Jackie the essay.

  Then what? It seemed logical that Jasmine had reacted to the news of a half sister, but what then? What had she done? I racked my brain, trying to piece things together.

  Before I could make sense of anything, my cell phone rang.

  “Hi, Mrs. Branford,” I answered after I saw her name pop up on the screen.

  “Interesting things going on over here on Maple Street, my dear,” she said, skipping the greeting. “As always.”

  “Like what?”

  “Jasmine is holed up in her mother’s house, and Nanette and Buck Masterson are pounding on the door there.”

  I thought of my mother’s English lessons, her teaching about rising action and resolution and, most of all, turning points. This was it. It was all coming together. I could feel it. The climax of the story! Without a second thought, I grabbed my stuff, waved to Olaya, and raced to my car.

  “I’m on my way,” I said to Mrs. Branford before I ended the call.

  I made it to Maple Street in record time and parked down the street, a few houses from Jackie Makers’s Tudor. I was afraid whatever was going on would be resolved by the time I arrived, but I needn’t have worried. The Mastersons were right where Penny Branford had said they were, standing on the front porch, arms folded, sour expressions on their faces. Mrs. Branford waved at me from her front porch. I quickly crossed the street to meet her.

  “How long has the standoff been going on?”

  She frowned, the lines of her face deepening the farther her lips were pulled down. “At least thirty minutes. Maybe a smidgen more.”

  “What do they want with Jasmine?”

  “I wish I knew, dear.”

  I was done being subtle. I knew Jasmine had something to with this entire situation. Whatever Nanette and Buck Masterson’s game was didn’t concern me. I had bigger fish to fry. I slung my purse over my shoulder and marched across the street, determination coursing through me.

  “Out on bail?” I asked Buck, shouldering between the two of them and raising my fist to the door.

  “What the—” Buck tried to edge in front of me, but I blocked him.

  “Jasmine? It’s Ivy Culpepper.”

  I didn’t really expect her to open the door to me, but that
was what she did. It was just a crack, and suddenly an arm shot out, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me in. I felt like Alice slipping through the looking glass. From behind me, Buck and Nanette tried to push their way in, but I was barely through the door when Jasmine slammed it shut and turned the dead bolt.

  “What do they want?” I asked, practically out of breath, but feeling kind of tough.

  She threw up her hands. “Hell if I know. They did this to my mom, too. Harassed her until she could hardly take it anymore.”

  The pounding started on the door again, so she dragged me away from the entryway and into the kitchen.

  “What did they do to your mom?”

  She opened her mouth, ready to say something, but then she seemed to think better of it and closed her lips tight. The pounding started again, but this time it came from the other side of the house. “God, what is wrong with them?” Jasmine cursed under her breath. “Leave me alone!” she yelled.

  “We just need to talk, Jasmine. Come on. Let us in!” Buck yelled and their pounding grew stronger and more persistent.

  Jasmine’s nostrils flared, and she yanked at the short strands of her black hair. Finally, she marched to a door off the kitchen, flung it open, and disappeared into the darkness. A few seconds later, there was a clicking sound, and then I heard the automatic garage door kick into gear. The chain rattled, and I wondered if the whole thing might collapse, but it managed to open all the way. A triangle of light came in through the slightly ajar door. I opened it a little more to spy on Jasmine and the Mastersons.

  They were behind the white Toyota Camry parked in the garage, but I could see the top of Jasmine’s head, Nanette Masterson’s brightly dyed red hair, and Buck Masterson’s stringy hair. Buck was wagging his finger at Jasmine, while Nanette nodded vehemently. Jasmine shook her head just as intensely, saying something I couldn’t hear.

  It was all extremely suspicious, but I had no idea what it was about. I edged into the garage and stood next to the hood of the car. I crouched down slightly. I didn’t want to broadcast my presence for fear they’d stop their heated argument. My hand rested in a small dent on the cool metal of the car. I craned my neck to listen, but before I could hear anything, Jasmine threw up her hands, turned around, and stormed back into the house.

  Buck Masterson looked at me with his dark, beady eyes but made no move to actually set foot inside the garage. Instead, I left the safety of the car and walked out of the garage.

  “What was that about?” I asked, cutting to the chase.

  His lips twisted in a muted sneer. “God Almighty, she’s stubborn, just like her mother was.”

  Nanette scoffed. “That’s not the word I’d use.”

  I swung my attention to her. “What word would you use?”

  “I could name several. Vindictive. Vengeful. Vile.” She had a corner on words beginning with the letter V.

  “Jackie? She seemed nice enough to me,” I said.

  “You didn’t know her like we did,” Nanette said.

  I didn’t know her at all, I thought, but I didn’t say so.

  Buck blew an exasperated raspberry. “She didn’t have anything against you. She wanted to destroy me.”

  “Right. With the letters and pictures,” I said, more snarkily than I’d planned, but he deserved it.

  “Us,” Nanette corrected again. “We could have destroyed her, you know. If she hadn’t died, we’d have crushed her.” The anger oozing from Nanette was palpable.

  “Crushed her?”

  “Destroyed. Ruined. Ended.”

  “Why was there such bad blood between you?”

  “Some people think they’re so much better than you.”

  “Why did Jackie think that?”

  “Because she was messed up in the head,” Buck snarled. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Right? She thought . . . Well, I don’t know what she thought, but let me tell you, she wasn’t an innocent.”

  “But what did she do?”

  Buck flapped his hand and turned on his heel. “I’m done. Ask Jasmine, why don’t you?”

  I looked over my shoulder, back toward the door to the kitchen. “I will—” I started to say, but as I turned back around, I stopped. All I could see were the backs of Buck and Nanette Masterson as they walked down the driveway and turned onto the sidewalk.

  Back inside the house, I searched everywhere, but Jasmine was gone. The Mastersons must have completely spooked her with their accusations about her mother. I didn’t know Jackie Makers, but I had gotten to know Olaya Solis over the past few weeks, and I found it hard to believe she could so dramatically misjudge a person. Mrs. Branford had thought Jackie was a good person, too.

  If I trusted my gut, which I did, then something wasn’t adding up. Renee Ranson and the Mastersons had to be missing something.

  But what was it?

  I hated leaving the house unlocked, but I had no choice. I turned the dead bolt on the front door and then went out the back. It was my first good look at the backyard. Whatever her faults might have been, Jackie Makers had had a knack for landscaping. Or she’d paid someone well. There was a flagstone patio right off the kitchen. A redwood trellis climbing with bright fuchsia bougainvillea shaded the area. A stone path crossed a small grassy area and led to raised flower beds and a small greenhouse tucked in a back corner. The blooming flowers created a kaleidoscope of color everywhere I looked.

  “Beautiful,” I murmured, taking a moment to look around. The beds were free flowing and looked like those in an English cottage garden. I was no expert, but I recognized lavender, sage, phlox, and purple coneflowers. Butterflies fluttered about and rested on the blooms.

  My cell phone rang. I grabbed for it, the sound loud and intrusive in the peacefulness of the garden.

  “Hey, Ivy.” It was Emmaline. “We know the cause of death for Jackie Makers.”

  “You said it was poison.” They’d suspected that almost from the beginning.

  “I mean specifically. It’s called ricin. Administered through cupcakes she had in her kitchen.”

  I remembered the pink bakery box, but there hadn’t been an identifying sticker on the box or a business noted on it.

  “It’s odorless and tasteless, and it can be concocted at home, in any ordinary kitchen, from castor beans.”

  My throat turned dry. “So someone really planned this.”

  “Looks like it. It affects the immune system and can take days before it actually kills, but it will. The cupcakes in Jackie’s kitchen were infused with ricin.”

  I went cold. “So she ate a cupcake, and it was just coincidence that she died at Yeast of Eden?” I asked, half to myself.

  “Looks that way,” Emmaline said before we ended the call.

  The peacefulness of the yard suddenly felt stifling. Reluctantly, I veered to the right, followed the flagstone pavers to the side gate, and let myself out. I went across the street to Mrs. Branford’s house, filled Mrs. Branford in on what Emmaline had told me, then drove back home to walk Agatha and shower.

  And to process.

  I was at a standstill. In my gut, I didn’t believe Jackie Makers could have run over Renee Ranson or my mom, because that didn’t answer the question of who had killed Jackie herself. But if it wasn’t her, then who had?

  Before I knew it, it was time to head back to Yeast of Eden. As I walked into the lobby, I noticed the fresh glass vases and sprigs of fresh flowers on the bistro tables; the fiesta Mexican garlands draped in the windows, each intricate, lacy rectangle in a different primary color; the sparkling floor; and the crystal clear display cases filled with the scattered crumbs of the day’s bread. I breathed in and instantly relaxed. This was like home away from home. I’d come to love the bread shop.

  I walked through the front and into the cocina. Everyone else was already there. Everyone except Nanette, that is. I wasn’t surprised. I couldn’t imagine her showing up after the combative confrontation at Jackie’s house.

  I waved to
Mrs. Branford.

  “Long time, no see, my dear,” she said, her snowy hair perfect, as usual, her lips rimmed with a bright pink lipstick. On anyone else, that color would have been too much; on Penelope Branford, with her fuchsia velour sweat suit and bright white sneakers, the lipstick was perfect.

  The chalkboard had today’s baking plan: Gruyère and black pepper popovers. I’d never actually had a popover, but if the illustration, with its muffin-shaped base and the billowy, full top, looked anything like it would taste, I knew it would become a favorite.

  “You don’t usually make popovers for the bread shop, do you?” I asked Olaya as I tied on my ruffled apron.

  “Popovers are a quick delight but are best when they are served warm. So no, I do not carry them normally. Cold popovers, not so good.”

  “Terrible, in fact,” Consuelo commented.

  We got right to work, mixing the eggs and milk, then whisking in the flour mixture in three separate stages. Olaya had given us each a popover pan.

  “It is special for popovers,” she said, pointing to the six individual nonstick popover cups. “The air can circulate around each cup, forcing the batter up, up, up until it pops over the top of the pan. Now, the trick is to fill to nearly the top. None of this ‘fill it halfway’ stuff.”

  She demonstrated at her own station, filling each of her six prepared cups to within a quarter inch of the top with the heavily peppered, thin batter. “Take the cubes of Gruyère and plop them in the center.” She fanned her hand across her pan like a game show host. “That is all. Now we bake.”

  While the popovers were in the high-heat oven, we washed our dirtied dishes. The women chattered on about life after college, baking successes and failures, and the spring weather at the beach.

  “Tourists are coming,” Consuelo said. “We get more and more each year. Does nobody stay home anymore?”

  “I need the tourists,” Olaya said. “They make my business.”

  After a few minutes, the conversation turned to Jackie Makers. “The police, they have found nothing about Jackie’s murder?” Martina asked her sister.