by Fiona Grace
She hurried to the kitchen, adrenaline coursing through her, as she frantically attempted to work out how much she should charge for the cupcake. She’d just been making them for herself, so she could wallow in her misery; pricing had been far from her mind. And what about the frosting? She hadn’t gotten around to frosting them yet. She couldn’t sell them without frosting, surely?
She slipped on her oven gloves and grabbed the tray, which was still warm from the oven, and hurried back into the bakery.
When the man saw them, his eyes practically sparkled with delight. He sniffed the air deeply.
“I—I’m afraid I haven’t frosted them yet,” she said.
The man dismissed her concern with a flap of the hand. “If it tastes as good as it smells, I suspect it doesn’t need frosting,” he said.
Ali handed one across the counter to him. He took a bite and his eyes pinged wide open.
“That’s incredible,” he said through his mouthful, crumbs coating his top lip. “Better than incredible. That’s phenomenal.”
Ali didn’t know how to react. Five minutes ago she’d been resigned to closing up shop forever and throwing all that training under Milo Baptiste out the window. Now there was a strange old-school Hollywood man standing in her bakery enthusing about the cupcake recipe she’d learned from her dad! Maybe it was a dream? Perhaps she’d dozed off in the kitchen and her semi-conscious brain had conjured up this moment? She pinched her arm just to be sure.
“Ow!”
Nope. Not a dream. The world’s most positive man really was standing in front of her mming and aahing with every bite he took of the cupcake.
“How did you come up with such a creative cupcake?” the man asked through his mouthfuls.
“It’s a family recipe,” Ali told him. “I jazzed it up a bit over the years.”
She’d actually jazzed it up a lot over the years, combining the skills she’d learned from Milo, as well as professional-grade equipment that hadn’t been available back when she was a kid and had whisked the whole damn thing by hand.
“Well, it’s hands down the best cupcake I’ve ever had in my life,” Mr. Positive said with a grin. He clapped his hands, his cupcake now finished. “I’ll take another.”
Ali’s eyes widened. “You want more?”
“I want more!” the man exclaimed.
Ali had never seen anyone look quite so excited by cupcakes. She started to question his sanity. But on the other hand, his positivity was infectious. He may well be a fruit loop, but Ali couldn’t help herself. She smiled widely and handed a second cupcake across the counter to him.
He seemed to enjoy this one just as much as the first. The whole while he ate, he shook his head in a hot damn gesture.
“This place,” he muttered happily under his breath before swirling out the door, pointing a finger at Ali, and exclaiming, “I’ll remember this place!”
He strolled out, and Ali watched him go.
The bizarre encounter had lit a fire in her belly. It had given her a taste of the dream life she’d come here chasing. She knew her food was amazing, and she knew she could make Seaside Sweets a success, if she was given a fair chance.
But the only way she’d ever get that chance was if she solved Preston’s murder and cleared her name.
Ali was ready to do anything. She was ready to throw herself into the investigation with fervor. It was time to reclaim her dream life.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Ali woke the next morning with a fire burning inside of her, and headed to her store to bake that morning’s offerings. As she went, she glanced left and right across the buzzing boardwalk, determined to keep calling it her home.
When she reached her store, she spotted some perfectly formed dog poop right on the doorstep.
“Scruff,” she muttered under her breath.
She hadn’t seen her furry companion since she’d gifted him a jumbo bone. Clearly, that was all he wanted her for.
She headed inside, the smell of yesterday’s coconut cupcakes still permeating the air, and set about making a selection of pastries on the off chance anyone popped in for breakfast. The selection she baked was growing smaller with every day that passed, not just because Ali knew no one would buy them, but because she was devoting more and more time to the murder investigation.
As predicted, no one came in to buy her breakfast croissants, and Ali locked up the store, heading out into the sunshine—carefully stepping over the poop—ready to begin another day of sleuthing.
Just then, movement made her jump. Someone was lurking behind the trash cans. Her heart went into her throat as she thought of Preston’s murderer still on the loose, and feared she was the next victim on their hit list.
But instead of a knife-wielding maniac, a four-legged, furry creature slunk out toward her.
“Scruff!” Ali exclaimed. Relief swelled through every fiber of her being that she wasn’t about to get bludgeoned to death. She crouched down and cupped his furry face in her hands. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
Instead of responding to her with his usual head tip or bark, Scruff let out the saddest whimper Ali had ever heard. It wasn’t the sort of noise she’d heard him make when he wanted something; it was a whine of distress.
Ali’s heart clenched.
“What’s wrong, little dude?” she asked anxiously. “Are you okay? Sick? Hurt?”
Scruff whimpered again, even more loudly, and he let his head drop heavily into Ali’s hands. His eyes looked glassy. His tongue lolled.
Ali started panicking. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know where any of Willow Bay’s vets were. Even if she did manage to get Scruff to one, he was a stray. They’d impound him. Probably euthanize him. She couldn’t let that happen. Her sleuthing would have to wait—saving Scruff’s life was now her priority.
Ali sat down on the sidewalk and gently lowered the pup’s head into her lap. He lay against the fabric of her blue jeans, whining softly.
With shaking hands, Ali retrieved her cell phone from her pocket, desperately racking her brains about who might be able to help her in this situation.
But before she got the chance, Scruff started making a horrible wheezing noise.
“Oh no!” Ali squealed. “Scruff! Scruff!”
Was the dog about to die in her arms?
Scruff’s wheezing grew louder and raspier. His little body seemed to convulse in time with each gasp. Then suddenly, he threw up.
A huge pool of vomit splattered onto the sidewalk. Ali cried out and leapt out of the way just in time.
The dog looked up at her and wagged his tail. He appeared to be fully recovered from what Ali realized now had been retching, not convulsing.
“That was it?” Ali asked. “You just had to throw up!”
Scruff yipped at her happily and wagged his tail.
Ali was both disgusted and relieved. Scruff’s vomit on the sidewalk was bright red, and Ali remembered the moment the naughty dog had raced inside and snatched a Killer Kookie right off of Miriyam’s counter.
Ali folded her arms. “I think you’ve learned a very important lesson today,” she told him. “Cookies aren’t for dogs.”
Scruff just ran merry circles round her legs.
The puddle of lurid vomit was right outside Ali’s door, right next to the poop. She had some serious cleaning up to do if she didn’t want to risk getting a health code violation to add on top of all her current woes.
She quickly headed inside the store and filled the mop bucket with warm water and disinfectant, then went back outside to wash away all the mess. Scruff watched on curiously, as his puddle disappeared into the guttering and down the drain.
Suddenly, Ali was struck by a thought. The poop’s and vomit’s potential to get her a health code violation had caused a lightbulb to go on in her head.
She swirled on the spot and stared at the front of Seaside Sweets. She tried to picture it as it had been back when it was the town’s beloved pita
store owned by Pete. Everyone raved about the place. It must’ve had tons of customers streaming in and out of its doors. So then why had it closed?
Kerrigan hadn’t given her an explanation. All he’d said was that Pete’s Pitas had closed down suddenly. So Pete’s departure was totally unexpected. Completely out of the blue. Unimaginable even, given that Kerrigan was so confident in Pete continuing his lease forever that he’d even told Preston Lockley he’d be next in line for the store if it ever closed.
“Pete’s Pitas didn’t close voluntarily,” Ali told Scruff, gasping with the sudden realization.
Scruff barked with excitement.
Ali finished her thought. “He was forced out!”
Her mind raced a mile a second as she mulled over her theory. There was only one reason Ali could think of that might cause someone to pack up and close up shop at a moment’s notice, leaving their landlord in the lurch like that. Health inspectors.
With a surge of excitement, Ali fetched her cell phone and dialed Kerrigan. As the ring sounded in her ear, she peered up the hill at his canary-yellow house.
“Ali?” Kerrigan’s Irish accent said into her ear.
“I have a question,” Ali began, speaking to the yellow house. “About the store.”
“Oh? Is anything wrong?”
“No, I mean it’s about the store before I leased it. Back when it was Pete’s Pitas.”
A beat passed.
“Go on…” Kerrigan said, with a slightly wary tone.
“I’m wondering why it closed down in the first place,” Ali said. “From everything I’ve heard—from you and all the locals—Pete’s was a thriving business that was very well liked. You certainly weren’t expecting him to pack up shop, were you?”
There was silence on the line.
Finally, Kerrigan said, “I was wondering when you were going to ask that.”
He sounded nervous. Ali felt a sudden spark of intrigue in her chest. There was more to the story. She was right.
A warm breeze stirred the hairs at the back of her neck.
“Well?” she pressed.
“It was a health code violation,” Kerrigan said through an exhalation.
“I knew it,” Ali replied triumphantly.
“I’m so sorry,” Kerrigan said. “I should’ve told you. It might be one of the reasons your store is struggling right now.”
Ali paused, the celebration quickly ebbing out of her. “Wait. What?”
That hadn’t been Ali’s original intention for the phone call, but now the cat was out of the bag, she realized that, yes, Kerrigan should have told her the store had been closed down due to a health violation.
“They put big yellow and black hazard signs in the windows,” he continued. “It’s not the sort of image that fades particularly quickly from people’s memories.”
Ali’s jaw clenched. Suddenly, the deal Teddy had managed to wrangle for her made a whole lot more sense. Kerrigan had rented her a property with a completely tarnished reputation. He must’ve been thrilled when an out-of-towner expressed interest in the place, because it meant he’d found someone who had no idea about the store’s history.
Ali’s mind went straight to black mold. Rats under the floorboards. Broken sewer pipes. She shuddered at the thoughts.
“What kind of health violation are we talking about here?” she demanded. “Is there something wrong with the property?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Kerrigan said. “It was tainted meat.”
Ali grimaced. But at least it was a failing on Pete’s part, rather than a problem with the store itself.
“That’s gross,” she offered.
Kerrigan continued. “Yes. It was gross. A bunch of people got sick. It was such a shock. Everyone trusted Pete so they felt so betrayed when it turned out he wasn’t keeping up with health and safety protocols. He claimed it was a one-off but he knew no one would believe him, not after the posters had gone up in the window. He was forced to shut.”
Ali’s mind raced. Something didn’t add up. Anyone who worked in food preparation knew the importance of hygiene. It was drilled into them in culinary school, like how an army recruit is trained to make their bed perfectly every morning. Even if Pete hadn’t gone the formal culinary school route, it still would’ve been drilled into him once he was on the job. For most chefs, proper hygienic practices were second nature. They knew all the intricacies of proper food storage and proper utensil cleaning. They knew the color-coded systems to ensure separate chopping boards were used for meats and vegetables, and to use separate dishcloths to clean the surfaces they’d touched, like the back of their hand. Ali could still recite the mnemonic she’d learned in school to remember it all by. It just didn’t make sense to her that a thriving business owned by a beloved and trustworthy man would make such a mistake.
That’s when Ali had her eureka moment.
Preston had engineered the tainted meat scandal to force Pete to shut his doors and leave the premises, thinking Kerrigan would keep his word and he’d finally get the lease for his balloon store. And perhaps Pete had worked it out and killed Preston in revenge.
Ali felt suddenly enthused to have a new theory to pursue.
“Does Pete still live in town?” she asked Kerrigan.
“Oh yes,” her landlord replied. “He put so much work into that house of his, I doubt he’d ever be able to leave it. He probably couldn’t, either. An Andy Warhol–style door isn’t exactly the sort of thing that the general public wants.”
Ali scanned the hillside for any doorways that resembled Andy Warhol’s iconic bright pop art. She had some questions to ask the famous Pete of Pete’s Pitas.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Ali checked her watch. She was itching to put her plan into action.
Ten a.m. was a socially acceptable time to knock on a stranger’s door and accuse him of murder, wasn’t it? She decided yes. And on the slim chance anyone did choose to venture into the bakery for post-lunch sweets, they wouldn’t do so until midday, which would give Ali a good two hours to try and squeeze a confession out of her new prime suspect…
She flipped the bakery’s sign to closed, locked the door securely, and headed into the hills behind her store. She took the long main street that stretched up into the hills, passing Kerrigan’s home on her way. As she followed the steeply inclined street upward, she scanned left and right at all the side roads, searching for an Andy Warhol–inspired front door.
Today, the California sunshine was unrelenting, and Ali puffed and panted beneath its powerful rays. As a jogger whizzed past her, she silently cursed herself for having such woefully weak leg muscles.
Once this is all over, I’m joining Irene’s power-walking gang, she resolved.
She was a few hundred meters up the hill when the muscle pain grew too much, forcing her to stop. She bent forward, hands on knees, legs like jelly, unsure whether she could even take another step. A couple of stars started to dance in her eyes, and when she looked up, she realized she was seeing double. No, quadruple! Four Marilyn Monroes wavered in her vision.
Hold on a second, Ali thought.
She was seeing four Marilyn Monroes because she was outside the Andy Warhol door! Pete’s house. She’d found it!
Ali straightened up with renewed vigor, pacing along the side street to get a better look. She stopped outside and scanned the building, waiting for her ragged breathing to even out.
Pete’s house looked flamboyant; even amongst the brightly colored townhouses of Willow Bay it was the brightest. There were faux marble pillars either side of the door, and Gaudi-inspired glass tiles forming a wave design beneath one of the windows, adding a dash of Barcelona to the already eclectic mix of styles.
On first glance, it didn’t seem like the sort of home a murderer would live in. But Ali reminded herself it was a fool’s errand to try and apply logic to the bizarre mind of a calculated killer. Besides, there were plenty of murderers known for their meticulous taste. The g
randeur could be a sign of a narcissistic personality.
With that chilling thought bouncing around her skull, Ali steeled herself and paced onto the doorstep. She rapped her knuckles against the door determinedly, right on Marilyn Monroe’s pouty lips. Then she stepped back and waited, her heart slamming against her rib cage.
A moment later, the door opened. Standing before Ali was a very tall, very well-built man. A man who was easily big enough to overpower Preston and shove him off the pier. He was holding a golden Chihuahua in his arms and the dog had a fancy, diamond-encrusted collar around its neck.
“Yes?” the man asked, looking down his large nose at Ali.
Ali wanted to shrink away from him, but she held her ground. Her whole future in Willow Bay was on the line. If there was any time to be brave, it was now.
“Are you Pete?” she asked, sounding a thousand percent more confident than she felt.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
By the look of his thinning dark hair streaked with silver, and slightly rubbery tanned skin, Ali guessed him to be in his fifties. And with his fancy house and pampered pedigree pooch, he clearly enjoyed a certain quality of life, one that may be proving difficult to maintain now his successful business had been stripped from him. His taste was clearly too expensive for the early retirement that had been forced upon him to be anything but a catastrophe.
Pete and his Chihuahua scanned Ali up and down with matching brown, beady eyes.
“Who are you?” Pete demanded.
“Ali Sweet,” she replied brightly. “I lease your old store.”
“Oh,” he said. There was a shift in his demeanor. “Is anything amiss? Did I leave an outstanding bill or something?”
Ali shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that. I actually came here for advice.”
Pete frowned. “Advice? What kind of advice?”
“Well, your store was very popular,” Ali explained, keeping her tone as conversational as she could. “Which is more than I can say for my bakery. I’ve barely sold a thing. So I was hoping you might be able to teach me some tricks of the trade. Impart your wisdom on me.”
