I led the way into the dining room with Babette following behind. “Casey was here and Babette…I think he’s the killer.” I sank down onto a dining room chair and exhaled loudly.
She took the seat opposite me.
“What? Casey?” She frowned and shook her head. “No Doug is. ”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. I got up and grabbed my laptop. “But he’s not. Look. The killer is left handed.” I opened my computer and played the footage from the bakery for her. “See, the poisoner pulls the bottle out of his pocket with his left hand and puts in the frosting with his left hand too.”
Babette was leaning forward, watching the footage closely. “You’re right,” she said, surprised. “I never would have noticed that.”
She sat back and looked at me. “But maybe he just had it in his left pocket and that’s why he did it that way.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “But…I know it’s weird, but …earlier tonight. I just really got the sense that Doug was telling the truth. He honestly seemed too crazed to be lying.”
“Really?” Babette’s blue eyes looked huge. “Then you have to go to the police and tell them.” She was looking at me intently, winding her watch in that way she did when she was nervous. Then she stood up.
“Here let me make you some tea,” she said.
She went into the kitchen and put the hot water on, looking out at me over the counter. “What would Casey’s motive be?” she asked, watching me from the kitchen.
“The store. If he ruined your business through a poisoned cake, you’d have to sell. You’d have no choice. No chance to convince Doug to keep it open.”
She nodded. “Hmn…I suppose it could be possible,” she said, thinking about it. “But I mean, is that all you have on him? The fact that he’s left handed? After all, a lot of us are lefties, me, you, the detective…”
I shrugged and sat back, exhaling loudly. “I know. But Doug seemed to really think it was him. And who else had a motive? To set you up or to set Doug up that way.”
The teapot started shrieking and Babette went to the stove to turn it off. Then she pulled two mugs from the cabinet and put a teabag into each of them . She added water and carried the two mugs to the table. “It would be better if you had some proof, though. Like…maybe the other bottle of Bitter Almond Oil or something. I had two of them and they never found what happened to the second one.”
I sighed and shook my head. “I have nothing like that. Unfortunately.”
She seemed to be thinking it over. “Do you know where Casey would hide it?” She sat down and steeped her teabag, gently. “If he had it and kept it?
I thought about it. “Hmn. Probably not at home. He’s living in a hotel, so there’s probably a maid that cleans every day. Maybe in that little trailer. His office is on that building site up on Maple Street. I noticed he had a safe in there.”
She nodded, thinking about it. “That makes sense,” she said. “The whole thing could make sense. Possibly.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” I said miserably, sitting back in my chair, defeated. “I wish I’d just left it alone. I finally find a guy I like and now I have to figure out that he’s a murderer.”
She was nodding, considering me with wary eyes as she nervously wound the watch on her wrist. “You certainly are dogged,” she said, shaking her head, still winding her watch.
The watch on her right wrist.
That watch…
I looked into her eyes and my heart froze. I gasped.
Oh no! I’d made a terrible mistake. The scratching of the wrist I saw on the film. It wasn’t Casey’s tattoo. Or Doug’s itching. It was Babette! Nervously winding her watch.
I tried to breathe but found it hard to catch my breath.
“Figured it out?” she said, staring at me.
I stared, unmoving.
“Tsk tsk, now what are we going to do with you?” She frowned. “You were never going to give up on this case were you? Not until you found the real killer…”
I swallowed hard, trying to catch my breath. “But it couldn’t be you,” I said, still unable to believe it. “You left the bakery that night when you heard the cat…and then the killer came in and…”
She looked at me scornfully. “Yes, I left the bakery. But there was no cat. I pretended I heard a cat and I left through the back door. It was all an act for the camera. I knew that Doug’s stuped camera was filming me the whole time.”
“But…”
She ignored my interruption.. “I left the bakery through the back door, then I changed outside and came back in dressed in Doug’s hoodie. I put the Bitter Almond oil into the cake frosting. Then went outside again, took off the hoodie and came back in for the last time dressed as myself. It was all me…”
“I can’t believe it,” I said, covering my mouth with my hand. “I don’t even understand it. You were arrested. You could have gone to prison.”
Babette waved off the idea with a flick of her delicate hand. “I would never have let it go that far. I mean, I knew I’d be arrested. But I also knew that if I pushed you hard enough, you’d figure it out. You’d get the footage from Doug that would clear me. And if you didn’t…I would have somehow sent an anonymous note to tell the cops or you about it.” She smiled at me. “I didn’t hire an investigative reporter to work at my bakery for nothing. Especially one who can’t even bake.”
“So that’s why you kept wanting me to go into your house to feed Cupcake?”
She nodded. “I hate cats. And all dirty needy animals. I only got one last month, when I came up with this plan. After Dahlia hired me to cater the shower. After I hired you.”
She shook her head and took another sip of her tea. “Seriously, maybe if Doug weren’t so drunk all the time he would have been more careful, but I was constantly hearing that stupid cuckoo clock chirping in our den.” She rolled her eyes contemptuously. “Doug,” she spat the name out.
“You’re such an amazing liar,” I whispered.
She shrugged off my comment.
“I couldn’t just divorce him or I’d lose more than half of the store and wind up with nothing. While he would wind up with most of the money and with with Dahlia!” She paused and took a deep breath.
“I couldn’t just kill Doug or it would be too obvious. So this was my one opportunity to get rid of Doug and his tramp, once and for all. And to get even more money out of the Bundt Baby franchise. I put a sedative in his coq au vin so he’d fall asleep that night, that way he wouldn’t leave the house and have an alibi.”
“Wow, you thought of everything,” I said. I was shaking my head in disbelief. I thought about getting up and running out, but I was discouraged from the idea when her hand came out of her pocket holding a gun. Which was pointed at me.
“So no one took your two bottles of Bitter Almond oil,” I whispered. “You took them and planted one in the kitchen.”
“Absolutely. I was planning on planting the other one in Doug’s storage unit, just to cinch the case against him. But now I guess I’ll have to plant it in Casey’s office-trailer. Since I know exactly where to put it.”
“What? No,” I said. “No one will believe you.”
“Oh, but I’ll make sure they do. Thanks to you, I’ll have to set Casey up now, instead of Doug. After all, now that you’re going to die, someone on the outside has to be blamed.” Her eyes lit up. “Who knows maybe I’ll even have a big lawsuit against Baron real estate after this. For all my pain and suffering. Gosh, I love suing big companies.”
“You’ll never get away with this!” I screamed. I wanted nothing more than to strangle her then and there, but I didn’t dare act – the gun pointed at my head was keeping me glued in place.
Though I didn’t feel at all cold, I noticed that I was shivering and hugged my sweater around myself. I tried to think of some way out, but my mind wouldn’t cooperate. It just kept thinking, gun gun gun.
I hugged myself tightly and my hand knocked into my sweat
er pocket, feeling something hard inside it. My cell phone! I’d put it in my pocket when Babette arrived.
She would notice if I tried to reach my hand in to surreptitiously dial, but there had to be something I could do…before it was too late.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
I leaned forward and looked at Babette with a pleading expression on my face. “You can’t do this,” I begged. “Please. You can’t just say someone’s a murderer and have people believe you. You can’t just CALL CASEY a killer and have people believed you!” I screamed.
I really emphasized the words ‘call Casey’, hoping my technologically screwy phone would do what it had been doing to me the last several weeks—and ‘Call Casey.”
The only problem was, I had no clue if it worked or not. The phone was still in my pocket so I couldn’t see if it had dialed. And even if it did dial, I had no idea whether Casey would pick up.
My fervent prayer was that he’d answered and was now saying, “Hello, hello,” into the receiver right at that moment. But I had to admit it seemed unlikely after the way I’d treated him earlier.
Still…It was my only hope. So I decided to keep Babette talking—to give him time to get to me.
Which, surprisingly, didn’t seem to be a problem. Now that she was detailing her various murder plots, Babette seemed to have become quite the chatterbox. Completely unlike the quiet, soft-spoken Bundt baker that I thought I knew.
Maybe she found it to be a relief to reveal her true self to someone else. Even if it was just to me.
“Oh, I can set Casey up, all right. No problem. After all look around. You have this nice dinner here that he had catered by Madrilenos. And if the police find a little bit of bitter almond Oil in one of the glasses of champagne, who will they blame? Not me.”
“But Casey knew you were coming over! That’s why he left. I told him I had to interview you. He’ll tell the police it was you!”
“True,” Babette said, growing thoughtful. “But once I plant the almond oil bottle in his office safe, he’ll be the one that’s arrested. I, on the other hand, have already been cleared, thanks to that surveillance tape. Thanks to you.”
“It won’t work,” I told her, pushing my chair back. “I’m not going to drink any cyanide almond oil! You can’t make me!You’ll have to shoot me. And then your plan to frame Casey won’t work.”
“Please, she said, rolling her eyes. “I can easily plant the gun right next to the oil bottle in his safe. It’s not rocket science. Now drink up.”
She held the gun at me as I picked up the mug of hot tea.
“Go on,” she motioned with the gun.
I stared at her, horrified. Then without thinking I raised the mug towards my lips and… threw my hot tea right into her face.
“Ah! Ow!” She screamed and stood up.
I dove at her, trying to get the gun. We fell against the wall, then into the chair. Next thing I knew, we were on the floor, rolling around and struggling---but I couldn’t get the gun out of her hands.
Chairs were knocked over on top of us and Cupcake was cowering, scared, in the corner. For someone so thin, Babette. was surprisingly strong. She punched my face and then knocked my head onto the floor and next thing I knew she was on top of me. The gun was pointed at my face.
“Bye bye,” she said with a snarky smile.
Then there was a loud BANG.
Everything went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
When I opened my eyes, I saw Casey’s gorgeous face staring down at me, an angelic expression in his eyes.
“Am I in heaven?” I asked as he lifted me up and into his strong arms.
“No,” he said as he hugged me to his warm, hard chest. I could smell the cologne on his neck and I laid my head against it, feeling safe and secure.
Then I heard Babette moaning in pain. I looked down to see she was still alive. Detective Sanders, who’d arrived with Casey, had a smoking gun in his hand.
He went to Babette and checked her pulse. “We got ya this time,” he said. Then he called in for an ambulance.
“You got my call!” I whispered to Casey as he led me away from the carnage. “You came to save me!”
“I did,” he said, a worried expression in his eyes. “And thank goodness.”
Just then, Nana rushed into the room and put her arms around me. “Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked, hugging me so tightly that I could barely breathe.
We were joined by Birdie, who came over and patted my back. “Rosie! We were so worried about you. Thank goodness Mr. Baron got here in time!”
I looked at them confused. “But how did you even know I was in trouble?”
“We were at dinner,” Nana said. “And Birdie’s date, Barney…” Nana looked around the room and waved to an older gentleman who stood in the doorway. “ Barney!” she called out, “Come here.”
Barney, a sweet-looking older man with glasses and a beard, shuffled over, and with a gentle smile he shook my hand. “Nice to me you,” he said.
“You too, Barney. But I still don’t understand,” I said, looking from Birdie to Nana to Barney. “How did you all know I was in trouble?”
“Well,” Nana said. “At dinner, Barney mentioned to us that his son Victor was the one sold Doug the surveillance camera. Victor owns that electronics store near the new Whole Foods”
Barney nodded emphatically. “But Vic also told me, that a few weeks ago, Babette came in expressing an interest in the cameras. And though he didn’t tell her about the surveillance camera he sold Doug, he had a sense she knew about it.”
I looked at them, still slightly confused.
“Honey,” Nana put her arm around me. “If Babette knew about the ‘secret’ camera that was filming her--then her whole alibi was a performance for the camera. Or at least it could be.”
“That’s right,” Birdie said. “We tried calling you from the restaurant but you never answered. So your Nana called the police.”
“Well thank goodness you did. Thank goodness for all of you!” I hugged them all again.
I’d never felt so un-alone.
“Well, we’re going back to my place for dinner,” Nana said. “I’m going to whip up something good. Come in when you’re done here,” she smiled. Then she hugged me again, tightly. “I love you, hon,” she whispered.
“I love you too, Nana,” I said. And just then I saw a handsome older man with a thick head of silver hair, standing by the door.
“Who is that dashing combination of Clark Gable and Tyrone Power that is standing in my doorway,” I whispered to Nana. “Is that your date?”
“Yeah, not bad, huh?” she said, softly. “Birdie nailed it this time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
When all the excitement died down and everyone else had left the casita, Casey and I were alone in the living room.
“I’m so sorry about earlier,” I said. “I wasn’t really thinking straight.”
“Obviously,” he shrugged. “But you really thought I was the killer?”.
I nodded. “I did. I’m sorry. But I promise. That’s the last time I’ll you accuse of a crime. Really.”
He looked at my face closely and his eyes showed a combination of worry, affection, irritation and…something else. Something good.
“Fine,” he said, taking a deep breath and standing up. “Now, can we finally go on our dinner date? Even if it’s only next door to have Nana’s famous Chicken Paprikash.”
He put his hand out and I put my hand in his and stood up.“You still want to?” I asked, teary eyed. “Why?”
He studied my face as if considering it, then he sighed. “I think you’re like this delicious dessert I once had…” He frowned as if deep in though. “You—much like this dessert—are a concoction made of all the things I dislike—murder accusations, a dreadful English accent, danger at every turn. But somehow, when you put it all together…it’s magic.
And with that his lips covered mine and we kissed. And kissed
and kissed.
THE END
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