At that, Esmerelda snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s a lined ledger. They were only available like that in the sixties and seventies. Then they switched to cardboard. There’s no way your great-great-granny was jotting notes down on that.”
Holly jutted her jaw out, her teeth clenched together so hard she was surprised they didn’t shatter. After a struggle to keep her anger glowing in her chest where it was safest, she managed to say, “I didn’t mean the exact same book, but that has recipes in it that date back a century.”
Esmerelda tapped the table with a gnarled forefinger, the knuckles swollen and misshapen by arthritis. “That book contains mostly my recipes, almost all of them developed by me.”
“Don’t be silly,” Holly snapped. “What would my father want with your recipes? He had his own. My family has owned and operated a bakery in this township from the time before it could reasonably call itself that.”
Esmerelda shook her head, eyes glowing under the deep hood of their lids. “You may have had a shop, but you didn’t have those recipes. They’re mine, they’re my mothers. You’re not the only one with a family legacy that got handed down.” She sniffed, her long and lumpy nose putting on a great display of suction ability. “When I worked with your grandparents, they didn’t have a clue how to bake flavor into a cake. They turned out sodden lumps of dough and slathered frosting over it to hide how sunken it was.”
Holly opened her mouth to return a jibe, then closed it again. Her face pulled together in a deep frown of confusion. “You worked with my grandparents?”
Esmerelda nodded. “When your father decided he couldn’t be bothered to stick around here and took off to sow his wild oats.” She leaned forward, pointing at her chest. “I was the one who kept the family business going, and do you know what thanks I got for it?”
Holly shook her head, half closing her eyes against the expected answer.
“I got nothing. I set up my own place, trying to make a living out of doing the only thing I’d ever loved, and your father used the recipes I’d given your family to compete with me. He drove me out of business using my skills and my talent against me.” Esmerelda broke off for a second, panting. “Do you know what I ended up doing for the next forty years? I was a book-keeper. Counting numbers in columns and balancing them instead of building a life based on the one thing I was good at.”
Esmerelda broke off, standing up to pace back and forward in the kitchen’s confined space. Just when Holly thought that she should also rise to mount another fight on equal footing, the woman turned and stabbed her finger down onto the tabletop again. “Your father stole the one thing I was good at, so, yes. I used my great-niece to steal it back. You don’t have the right to use those recipes—they’re not yours. If you want to run a bakery in town, fine. But make up your own!”
There was nothing that Holly could say after that. Her head reeled with the new information. She wanted so badly to call Esmerelda out as a liar, but she couldn’t. Too many of the facts seemed to fit with what she knew of her father’s story.
And no matter what else, it was clear that Esmerelda believed the tale.
Holly gave Elvira a lift to her mom’s house, inviting her back to work the next day in case the girl had been worried. At the home, she briefly popped in to see Aidan and check that everything was still well.
“I’ll take you out somewhere nice this weekend,” Aidan promised as he took far more time than was necessary to see her to the door. “We haven’t seen nearly enough of each other lately.”
Holly agreed with that sentiment wholeheartedly and showed him the best way she knew how. When Aidan blushed and pulled back—citing the whole neighborhood watching them—Holly grinned at his flustered expression. Her step was much lighter as she walked back to the car.
It was only one turn away from Aidan’s house that Holly caught sight of a woman running. Her heart leaped into her throat as she took in the fancy pants suit and the high heels. Something was wrong. A woman dressed like that should not be running.
Unable to see anyone in pursuit, Holly pulled her car over just in front of her, leaning across to shove the passenger-side door open. “What’s wrong?” she shouted out as the woman saw and veered toward her. As she spilled into the seat, Holly recognized Susan, her face distorted with terror.
Chapter Sixteen
“Drive,” Susan shouted, pounding on the dashboard.
Instead of following the shouted directive, Holly turned to glance back up the street. She saw a very tired-looking Sergeant Matthewson in pursuit while further back Holly could just make out the figure of Susan’s husband and daughter standing outside of what must be their gate.
“What’s going on?”
“Just drive,” Susan said, stamping her foot down on top of Holly’s.
Holly jerked back, flinging the leg away from her. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
“They want to arrest me. They’re going to lock me up forever, and my daughter will grow up without me. I can’t go through that again. Drive.”
Holly pulled out, keeping the car running at the same pace as Matthewson. “Why are they arresting you?”
“Some nitwit told them that I poisoned everybody and then killed the German.” Susan turned from watching the road behind the car and stared Holly in the face. “I barely even knew the man, and he was going to bail me out of trouble. Why on earth would anybody think I killed him?”
“If you didn’t do anything wrong, then the police will sort it out in the end,” Holly said. She tried for a reassuring tone, but even to her own ears, she sounded patronizing.
Holly pulled the car back over to the curb. “I can’t keep driving you away—that’s aiding and abetting a fugitive. Why don’t you just let Matthewson catch up and explain yourself to him?”
“No.” Susan leaned over and wrenched the wheel from side to side, a pointless gesture since Holly had stopped the engine. “Please drive. I’ll give you anything you want. Money. Anything.”
“Susan, I know you’re scared at the moment—”
“Get going.” Susan battered her hands against the dashboard. “He’s almost here.”
Holly just shook her head, glancing out the window to see Matthewson slowed to a walk, holding his side as though a stitch had formed. “I’m sure you can sort everything out with the police. You don’t want your daughter to see you behaving like this.”
Susan ducked her head into her hands, covering her face. She began to rock to and fro, bumping the top of her skull against the dash—gently at first then progressively harder. A moan started deep in her throat, rising to a wail.
“I’ve done such a terrible thing.”
Holly was glad when Elvira arrived at work the next morning. Although things were still a bit tense between them, Holly began to regale her with tales of Crystal’s attempts at baking a pumpkin spice cupcake that smelled or tasted anything like Zach’s fabulous soup.
Holly concluded that her sister definitely had not.
“What’s so great about the soup, anyway?” Elvira asked, wrinkling her nose. “Pumpkin doesn’t do a lot for me.”
“Nor me, usually,” Holly answered after a pause. “And I haven’t tasted it”—she remembered the pottle being zipped into a police evidence bag with regret—“but it smelled out of this world. If Crystal can get something close to that, it’ll be a hit, I can guarantee you that!”
Meggie arrived soon after for her morning break and Holly sat down with her.
“What’s happened with, you know…” Meggie jerked her head toward Elvira a few times, eyebrows raised.
“We’ve sorted things out. What’s the latest gossip from the blue hair brigade?”
“Too early in the day for that, but did you hear—” Meggie glanced both ways before leaning in close “—the police arrested Susan last night for the murder?”
Holly briefly tussled with herself over whether to admit how she knew that, but in the end, settled for a nod. “I�
�d heard that, yes.”
“Well?” Meggie’s eyes stretched wide. “Do you think that she did it?”
Holly thought of the woman sobbing and wailing in the passenger seat. “I’ve done a terrible thing.”
Considering what Holly had recently learned about the woman, that could apply to a number of different events, not necessarily the murder. “I don’t know,” she said after a long pause.
“Oh, look,” Meggie exclaimed as they were finishing up their coffees. “The police are taking down the tape. That must be a good sign that they’ve got their man.”
“Or woman.” Holly stood to clear the table and then returned to stand at the window, staring. “Look. There’s Zach.”
Her voice must have carried enough surprise that Meggie joined her side, peering through the glass. “He doesn’t appear well enough to be standing there.” Just as she finished her observation, Zach’s knees buckled, and he had to grab at a lamppost to keep on his feet.
“Mind the shop, Elvira,” Holly called out as she ran out and across the road.
Meggie started at her side, then dropped behind as Holly increased her pace. The policeman winding up the tape finally saw and ran to join her just as Zach’s legs gave out all the way.
“We’ve got you,” Holly said, panting as she helped the officer to move Zach to a public bench nearby. “What on earth are you doing out of bed? Just because the surgery discharged you doesn’t mean you’re well enough to go back to work.”
The police officer gave Holly a nod and jerked his head back at the shops. “I’m finished here. Do you need me to fetch the car to get him home?”
“No, you certainly do not.” Zach started to stand again, a display of his indignation perhaps, then his legs dictated otherwise. He slumped back on the bench again.
“I’m sure we can manage from here.” Holly sat down beside Zach and Meggie arrived, nodding since she appeared too out of breath to talk. “I’ve got my car just a few streets away if we need it.”
“I’m perfectly capable of walking home.”
“You’re not even capable of standing,” Holly said. “So just sit tight until you can at least do that without falling.”
“Is the shop okay with just Elvira in there?” Meggie asked worriedly. “You don’t think that something dreadful might happen?”
“No, I don’t. That girl’s very capable when she isn’t being talked into things by the relatives she depends on.” Holly glanced back across the street just in case the universe, in its irony, had decided to set the bakery on fire. Phew. It hadn’t.
Holly suddenly realized why her friend was shifting from foot to foot. “Head on back to the hairdresser. We’ll be fine here.”
“If you’re sure?”
Holly nodded, and Meggie waved goodbye as she walked back to her shop. Her pace increased slightly as she saw an elderly lady emerge from a car and frown at the closed door.
“Now, what are you doing out when you should be at home, recovering?”
“I need to get to work.” Zach started to struggle to his feet again, then gave up the effort with a disgusted sigh. “I can’t afford to have the restaurant closed at the moment. As soon as I heard the police had cleared the complex to reopen, I had to get down here.”
“I hate to break it to you,” Holly said, giving him a friendly bump with her shoulder, “but there’s no way that you’re working while you’re in this condition. Give yourself permission to take a week or two off.”
Zach’s face went so pale that Holly was afraid he’d made himself ill. Then color flashed back up in it, cheeks ruddy red with anger. “I can’t take a holiday or sick leave. I’m not an employer who has protections for all that stuff, I’m the sucker who actually owns the joint.”
Holly hesitated for a moment, before admitting, “Your friend Richard told me that you were having problems with the rent. Susan kept hiking it up.”
“Yeah, she did. The fine print in my contract absolutely sucks.” Zach held his arms out wide to either side. “I’m an object lesson in why you should always know exactly what you’re signing before you do the deed. If it hadn’t been for all of that, I wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“Is the rent that bad?”
Zach shot her an amused expression. “Yes, it is, but I was talking about the poisoning. If it hadn’t been for me fighting with the Germans, I doubt Susan would have toppled off the edge of sanity like she did.”
“What were you fighting about?”
Zach sighed. “The guy—Will—he wanted to buy this place, lock, stock, and barrel.” He ran his hand through his hair, small clumps of it sticking up in response, possibly the opposite of what Zach intended. “I foolishly got the idea that if he did that, I could renegotiate my deal. What started off as a simple query, turned into an argument.”
Zach broke off and raised one eyebrow at Holly. “Well, I believe you heard the end of it.”
She laughed and nodded. “Yes, I did. And that was after you’d already refused to help us out with the stove.”
At that, Zach gave a shamefaced grin. “Yeah, well, I’m hardly likely to help Susan into the same situation that she caught me in. The poor bloke before you had to skip town to get out of her clutches.”
“You know, I used to be a lawyer before I came back to town and started working in the bakery,” Holly said.
Zach burst into surprised laughter. “Really?” He stared at her in astonishment. “The cupcake business must pay a lot more than I thought.”
Holly joined him in laughter, shaking her head. “It wasn’t the money that led me to change, there were a few other—” she paused, trying to think of the most delicate wording for her marital breakup and the complete breakdown she’d had at work “—complications. Anyway, I mainly did corporate work, and that involved reading over a lot of dry contracts with masses of very tiny small print. If you want me to have a look at your contract, I’d be happy to.”
Zach’s face brightened. “You’d really do that for me?”
“Of course. I may as well put all that training to good use.”
For a moment, Zach seemed to hesitate. “I can’t pay you anything.”
“Yes, you can,” Holly said, getting to her feet and offering an arm for Zach to do likewise. “You can tell me the secret spices that you use in your pumpkin soup. My sister is baking us out of house and home, trying to recreate it!”
Having already taken out her car to drive Zach back home, Holly offered Elvira a lift, as well, to save someone dropping by to pick her up.
Although Aidan seemed pleased at first to see her, Holly felt a sense of unease blossom as he stopped glancing in her direction part-way through her small-talk chatter with the family. When he pulled her aside just before she left to ask her to meet him later, that unease grew to dread.
All Holly could think was that during her outburst at Elvira, she’d stepped over some imaginary line. It wouldn’t be the first time—a few months earlier a similar thing had happened when she caught the girl skipping school.
Holly could feel herself growing defensive. How was it that she was the slighted party, but everyone seemed intent on treating her as though she were at fault?
After a few deep breaths, Holly pushed the entire upcoming event from her mind. Her overreactions were childish, so she wouldn’t indulge them any longer.
Crystal was having another go in the kitchen when she came home. This time, Alec was right beside her, being a good little helper and fetching and carrying at her sister’s direction. To see the two of them laughing drew a poignant comparison to the fear Holly held about her upcoming conversation. A tug at her chest that felt like she’d swallowed a fishhook.
“Let’s go out,” Holly announced when Aidan knocked on her door an hour later. She didn’t give him time to answer or add his opinion, just grabbed his hand, shouted goodbye, and slammed the door.
The cold night air immediately sent her lungs into retreat, and Holly gasped. She thrust her hands
deep into her pockets and walked quickly, never minding if Aidan caught up or not.
“Where are you going?” he asked eventually when she’d led him out of the town and halfway up Conical Hill. “Surely, you don’t want to climb all the way up there at night? The path will be completely muddy.
“I don’t know what I want,” Holly grumbled. “What did you want to talk to me about? Why don’t you tell me that, and then I’ll decide where I want to have that conversation?”
Aidan shifted from foot to foot, gazing up the steep mountainside in front of them as though he regretted opening his mouth.
“I guess…” Aidan said, then faltered to a stop. He stamped his feet, presumably to drive some warmth into them, though to Holly it appeared like he was taking out some past antipathy on the concrete.
“I want to talk to you about our relationship.”
Holly’s stomach dropped down to her frozen toes. She stared at him, then had to quickly jerk her head to look away as the tears started to form. The death knell to any relationship was talking about it. If you got to the point that you needed to discuss it, you were likely debating the fact it wasn’t there anymore.
“Let’s play some mini-golf,” Holly suddenly said, reaching out to drag Aidan along by his hand. “I’ve got the keys to the yard that Karen McCard runs. She lent them to me to keep an eye on when she was out of town last month.”
“I don’t think—”
Holly didn’t wait to hear what Aidan thought. She took off, almost at a run, and had the gate unlocked by the time that he got there. The putting sticks were just inside the door of the office, and she pulled out two plus a couple of fluorescent colored golf balls.
“But it’s dark,” Aidan said. He laughed, but it was a weak sound soon stolen away by the cutting breeze. “Holly, it’s freezing.”
“Then you’d better get your putt on,” she said, almost manic. After dropping one of the colored balls down onto the starting green, she took a shot, neatly scoring a hole in one.
The Sweet Baked Mystery Series - Books 1-6 Page 54
