Twice Baked

by J. C. Kilgrave

  “I will slap you in handcuffs quicker than you can blink, ma’am,” he said, but his voice shook a little. Bless his heart. He didn’t want to arrest me, but he also didn’t want me hurting myself. If I knew Edgar, he wanted nothing more than to get home, slide onto the couch, and enjoy whatever game Channel Six was willing to show him tonight.

  Unfortunately for both of us, I couldn’t quite let that happen right yet.

  “You might,” I answered. “But you’ll have to do it from the road. “

  I lunged forward, pretending to throw myself out of the car. Edgar had already slammed on brakes, skidding to a stop right in front of Dwight's old speed trap when he realized I was bluffing.

  “Thanks Edgar,” I answered, hopping daintily out of the car once it had come to a safe stop.

  I darted toward the parked police car, sure of who I would find inside of it.

  “You come back here!” Edgar shouted, working his way out of his own police car.

  “Don’t bother Officer Dunberry,” Darrin said, sticking his head out the window. “ I’ll “I’ll deal with her myself. “

  “She about near threw herself out of the car, Sheriff,” he answered, explaining himself.

  “It’s a pity that you stopped her,” Darrin said, looking me up and down. “Just get on home. I hear the Colts are on.”

  “Sure are, and I’m late,” he answered, sneering at me as h e r made his way to the car and drove away.

  “I can’t wait to hear what’s so important that you felt the need to throw yourself from a moving vehicle just to chat with me. How’d you know it was me anyway?” he asked. “There's no way you could have made me out from that far away.”

  “Process of elimination,” I answered, walking toward his squad car like he hadn’t just ordered me out of town. “The only other cop in this town that would be out this time of night without provocation is Dwight. And you fired him.”

  A sly smile, almost like pride, flickered across his face. “And you know that because you’re the magical reincarnation of the old sheriff’s dead daughter?”

  “Honestly I have no idea whether magic has anything to do with it or not, “ I admitted. “All I know is that I was me and now I’m not.” I shrugged. “I hope this isn’t going to become a sticking point between us.”

  “Of course it won’t,” Darrin answered. “Because, after tomorrow, you’re leaving town and never coming back.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “In that case,” I sighed. “I’m going to have to pull out all the stops tomorrow.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Darrin said.

  “Then you’ll absolutely hate the next part,” I answered. “Because I need your help. “

  He started chuckling loud and hearty. “And what on earth makes you think you could get that?”

  “Because we both want the same thing.” I was at his window now and I leaned down to meet him. “You want to get to the bottom of these murders. Well, so do I. And I have a plan to get that done. You said I had one day left. That’s all I need.” I bit my lip. “That, and for you to issue an order moving the Peach Festival to tomorrow night “

  “Oh, is that all you need? For me to upend the plans of the entire community at a moment’s notice “

  “I know it isn’t ideal,” I said. “But I promise you that this won’t fail. After tomorrow night, you’ll have your culprit. And, if not, I’ll leave without a word. You’ll never hear from me again. “

  “Tomorrow night?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “ If “If I agree to this, you’ll be on a short leash.”

  “I wouldn’t know any other kind,” I answered.

  He looked me up and down. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “You better not be wrong.” Leaning a bit further out the window toward me, he said, “Now tell me about this plan of yours.”

  Chapter 20

  After filling Darrin in on the details of my (admittedly self-proclaimed) brilliant plan, I started back toward my new apartment behind the pie shop.

  The Sheriff offered me a ride back, given how late it was now. He practically insisted actually. But I needed some time to clear my head and besides, this was Second Springs. What sort of harm would come to me in a town like this?

  …a town where a series of murders was- even at this very moment- currently being committed.

  …a town where I myself had actually been murdered.

  …on a night just like this one actually.

  Okay, so this hadn’t been my best idea, but the pie shop was only a couple of blocks away, and what was the worst that could happen to me?

  After all, I was already dead. Could I even die again if I wanted to?

  My heart had nestled squarely into my throat by the time I made it to the pie shop. I probably should have drug my body right back to the twin sized bed in my closet sized new apartment.

  Given that Mayor McConnell caught a ride back from Dalton with Dwight, he had almost certainly made it back before me and was probably stretched across my bed, greedily taking the covers.

  But I didn’t have time to sleep. I had successfully convinced the Sheriff to move the Peach Festival to tomorrow, which was good for my plan but absolutely horrible for business.

  Peggy was already killing herself trying to get prep ready for the weekend and, after bailing on her today, I couldn’t let her wake up to an even closer deadline.

  So, pulling the spare key from the place I had left it two years ago under the ceramic frog by the front porch, I slid it into the front door of the pie shop and opened the door.

  But the door was already open…

  My heart jumped even further up my throat. Someone was here. Someone had broken into this place and was waiting for me.

  My mind raced. There was a bat in the far closet, Peggy and I’s idea of a security system back when we opened. All I needed to do was rush back there and get it.

  I just had to run all the way across the front room to get it.

  I darted toward the far closet, half expecting to be tackled by some unseen assailant, maybe Amelia looking to put an end to the person digging into her past and her scheme.

  “Hey there,” a familiar voice sounded, stopping me in my tracks.

  Grinding to a halt, I looked over.

  Aiden stood behind the counter, pastry powder on his face and elbows deep in dough.

  “In a hurry?” He smiled.

  My heart somehow pulled even further up, though this time for a completely different reason.

  His jacket was thrown across the glass container and his sleeves were rolled up. He looked a little tired, but more than that, bright- the bright that only he had been for me.

  The bright that he now was for Peggy.

  “I’m just…” I stammered. “I- the Peach Festival is tomorrow now.”

  “I know,” he answered, kneading at the dough.

  “You do?”

  “Sheriff Dash called me a few minutes ago,” Aiden explained. “I guess he figured Peggy could use the heads up.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I answered, pulling at my fingers.

  “Is she here?” I asked, looking around the seemingly empty pie shop.

  “Peggy?” he asked. “No. She’s been asleep for hours and I couldn’t bring myself to wake her up. Besides, she’s worked herself into a stupor today as is. I figured I might as well help her out.”

  “That’s sweet of you,” I answered, instinctively moving closer. “Listen,” I said. “About me flaking today.”

  “It’s alright,” Aiden answered. “Sheriff Dash explained it to me.”

  “He did?” I gulped, wondering if he had explained everything I told him. Did Aiden now think that I thought I was the reincarnated version of his dead fiancé.

  Which, of course, I was. Not that I’d have likely had much luck convincing him of that.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Said you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Almost got yourself ran over in a police sting
.” He shook his head. “Sounds intense.”

  “You could say that,” I answered, looking to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” He asked, momentarily taking a break from the dough.

  “I’ll make it,” I answered.

  “Good, and don’t worry about Peggy. She was asleep by the time Darrin called, but she’ll totally understand. You don’t know it yet, but her bark is worse than her bite, and her bark-”

  “Isn’t really that bad,” I finished, quirking my mouth to the side. It was what we had always said about Peggy, since we were kids.

  Aiden looked at me for a beat too long, a familiar smile tugging at the ends of his mouth.

  “Well come help me then. That is, if you feel like you’re up to it.” He motioned for me to join him.

  My heart skipped at least a couple of beats as I made my way behind the counter.

  “I didn’t know you were into the baking thing,” I said, grabbing an apron and eyeing his work. His kneading was a bit rudimentary, but it would get the job done.

  “I’m not,” he answered, which was something I already knew. Aiden was about as comfortable in the kitchen as a turkey the day after Halloween. But he was here now, doing this. And that said a lot. “She needed help,” he said, shrugging. “And I figured, how hard could it be?”

  “A little harder than this,” I said, sliding the dough toward me and demonstrating how to knead it correctly. “You don’t have to be so gentle with it,” I said, pushing down into the mass that would soon be golden brown crust. “A little bit of pressure kind of forces it to take shape.”

  “It’s uncanny,” Aiden said, shaking his head and smiling at me.

  “What?” I asked, pressing the dough into a pie pan and glancing over at him.

  “How much you remind me of her,” he answered.

  “Your Rita?” I asked, but it wasn’t really a question. Of course I reminded him of her. I was her. And Aiden had known me better than almost anyone back then, back when I was me. It was the way he knew Peggy now. “So, when’s the wedding?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  “In two months,” he answered, grabbing a new mass of dough and going at it a bit harder than before. “The weather will have broken by then and there will be flowers. Peggy loves flowers.”

  “I know,” I answered absentmindedly. “I mean, she told me the other day. I think she said violets were her favorite.”

  “Yeah,” he smiled, looking off into the distance as I took a rolling pin to more dough. “Ever since we were kids, she’d been obsessed with those stupid things. They’re too beautiful. That’s why they never last. That’s what she always said about them. Beautiful things aren’t meant to last.” He shook his head again. “That’s what she said about Rita at her funeral too.”

  Suddenly my eyes were filled with tears. Luckily, when Aiden looked over at me, there was no need to explain them. What kind of person wouldn’t be brought to tears by this? A young woman cut down in the prime of her life and her best friend’s grief about it; it was surely devastating.

  I hadn’t thought much about the funeral, about what was or was not said, about what people wore or what kind of flowers were placed at my gravesite. It was too macabre, too trippy. And, though I was standing in front of them right now, too painful.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, blinking the moisture out of my eyes. “I wish I could have known her.”

  “Oh, she’d have hated you,” he answered without a bit of levity in his voice. “You’re too much alike. You’re both brash and outspoken. Both smart as a whip with an eye for trouble. I get the feeling my Rita would have seen you as a threat.” He looked me up and down. “Of course, you have a really good heart, and so did she. So maybe she’d have warmed to you after all.”

  “How do you know I have a good heart?” I asked, sliding a tin of prepared dough into the cooler. Now all that would be needed was to bake them.

  “Because I know how much Peggy pays you,” he answered. “And it’s not enough to justify you standing here in the dead of night forming pie crusts with me.”

  “Wait ‘til you see me candy the peaches,” I grinned.

  He chuckled. “You know the biggest difference between my Rita and you?” He asked. “I get the feeling you’re living exactly the way you want to.”

  I narrowed my eyes. What was that supposed to mean?

  “And your Rita wasn’t?” I asked.

  He took his hands out of the dough and turned to me.

  “If I’m being completely honest, it always felt like she was holding back to me.” He set his jaw.

  “I’m sure she loved you,” I answered, more sure of that than anything else in the world.

  “So am I,” he answered quickly. “That’s not what I meant at all. We loved each other, even if she was little more reserved about it than I’d have liked.”

  Again, my eyes narrowed. Had I been reserved about my feelings for Aiden? I just thought we were independent, that we weren’t the type of couple that needed to profess our love every day to prove it was true. What if I was wrong about that? What if I had been holding back? Why would I have done something like that?

  “I more so meant that it seemed like she wasn’t living the life she wanted to, the life she might have felt like she was meant to.”

  “I’m sorry. I was under the impression that she loved this pie shop, and that it was her idea even.” My tone might have been a bit more defensive than what made sense, but it felt like my life was on trial here, and I wanted to defend it properly.

  ‘She did. This place was her baby,” he answered. “But it wasn’t her passion.” He shrugged. “She could say what she wanted about baking. She was good at it. Very good. But she wasn’t great, not in the way she was great at other things.”

  “And what would those other things be?” I asked, feeling, for the first time since all of this happened, that I was outside of myself and looking in at what made the old me tick.

  “She was a born detective,” he answered flatly. “I guess that’s another thing the two of you have in common. She had an eye for detail, a nose for things that I had never seen the likes of before. And she’d have pursued it too, if not for her father.”

  I was about to open my mouth, to shout that I loved my father and that he never held me back a day in my life (which wouldn’t have made much sense given the body I was currently in), but Aiden spoke up.

  “He didn’t do it on purpose, and goodness knows he’d have never said or done anything that he thought might have taken her down a road that she didn’t need to be on. But, after losing her mother, Rita knew she was all he had. He thought the life of a police officer was too dangerous for her and, while he wouldn’t come out and say it, I think a part of her gleamed that he would rather she do anything else. And so that’s what she did.”

  “Sounds sad,” I said, looking at things from that angle. Was Aiden right? Had I been too afraid of leaving my father that I didn’t do what I was born for only to leave him in the end anyway?

  “Not really,” Aiden answered. “She lived a good life. It was too short and she might not have done everything she ever wanted to, but who does?”

  “And she had love?” I asked, very invested in the answer.

  He smiled at me again, that dazzling, brilliant smile. “So much love,” he answered.

  And suddenly, that was enough.

  “Let’s get back to work,” I said, grabbing the rolling pin again. “Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

  Chapter 21

  By the time Peggy got up (well before the sun), Aiden and I had done enough to make the newly adjusted Peach Festival’s workload manageable. By the time the shop opened for regular business hours, we had several dozen peach pies ready to go with a few dozen more almost finished as well as our daily stock of various treats.

  “You should take a break,” Peggy told me at a quarter to ten. Whatever passive aggressiveness she might have had toward me yesterday was comple
tely gone now, replaced by a comradery that reminded me of the days when we started this business. So much had changed since then. The entire store was different. Second Springs was different. And me, catching sight of a face I was just now beginning to recognize in the glare of the glass canopy, I was the most different of all.

  “I’m fine,” I answered, wiping stray baking powder off my cheek.

  “You’re not,” she answered. “You’ve been here all night, and while that’s appreciated, I’m going to need you to take a break.”

  “Peggy, there’s so much left to do,” I objected.

  “There is,” she admitted. “And there will continue to be more to do as the day presses on.” She shrugged. “This is a marathon, not a sprint. And I’m going to need you to be rested and on point tonight at the festival.” She patted me on the shoulder. “So please, go take a break. For me.”

  “You’re the boss,” I answered, tossing off my apron and heading out the back door toward my apartment.

  Of course, I had no intention of resting. Sleep might have been important, but so was being prepared. The festival tonight was important, for the reasons Peggy alluded to and reasons much more pressing as well. I did need to be on point, and that meant having as much information about who Darrin and I were dealing with as possible.

  I opened the door of my apartment to find Mayor McConnell on the floor, surrounded by pieces of egg rolls and beef and broccoli. It seemed he had nudged open the refrigerator and dug into my Chinese leftovers, completely disregarding the dog food I had left out for him.

  Typical.

  He glanced up at me nonchalantly before turning away just as quickly.

  “Nice to see you too,” I muttered.

  Mayor McConnell groaned through a belly full of my shrimp fried rice and I settled at the desk, powering on my laptop.

  I wasn’t sure what I needed to look for. I had hit a wall. I knew Amelia Hoover was the culprit here. She had hunted down and killed her family one by one, but I had no idea where she was hiding or what her motives were.