A Sampling of Murder: Cupcake Truck Mysteries

by Emily James

  Just when I thought this couldn’t get worse, it did. I was in trouble.

  The officer pulled out a pad of paper. “Give me your names and contact information, and I’ll let the detective know you’ll meet her at the station in a half hour.”

  My last hope of wriggling out of it vanished with the use of the female pronoun. Dan wasn’t the detective assigned to this case. It was a female detective.

  Claire rattled off our information before I could stop her. She gave my name as Isabel Addington.

  The officer even took down our truck’s license plate number. My fingers felt numb. He’d only need to take that precaution if he thought there was a chance, however small, that we’d done this and might try to skip town. To him, we might have shot Mr. Jenner, run away when we heard the sirens, and then come back to make ourselves look innocent.

  Claire pivoted on her heel. I trailed in her wake.

  As soon as we were far enough away that I was sure no one would hear us, I came up beside her.

  “You just lied to the police about my name. That’s a crime.”

  Claire gave me an I’m not stupid look. “It’s only a crime if you give the police a false name. I gave them the name I know you as. Whatever other names you might go by aren’t any of my business.”

  I had no doubt Claire could sell that story, too, if anyone ever called her on it.

  She picked up her pace. “Now call Dan and make sure he’ll be there to run interference for you with the actual detective on this case. Because she’s going to want you to state your name for the record, and we both know you can’t do that.”

  3

  Dan met us inside the door of the police station twenty minutes later. “I spoke to Detective Austen. She understands the situation. For now, she’s going to take notes from your interview by hand, and they won’t be entered into the system.”

  All kinds of questions bubbled up inside. What exactly had he told her? What would happen once those notes did need to be logged? Or would they simply be shredded if what I had to say wasn’t important to the case?

  But I’d learned over the past few months that if there was one person in the world I could trust, it was Dan. His explanation had probably included that I’m a key witness in an upcoming murder trial, and that my real identity couldn’t go in the system without putting my life in jeopardy right now. He may or may not have made it sound like the two things were connected rather than that I’d be in danger from my abusive husband, not the killer I was scheduled to testify against. Hopefully, if it were the latter, this would all be over before the investigating detective decided to ask more questions.

  Dan squeezed my hand, quick and soft. Warmth shot through my body at the touch.

  “It’ll be okay,” he whispered. “I promise.”

  Claire rolled her eyes. “Let’s get this over with. We have too much work to do to spend all day here. Besides, I’m hoping they’ll say this was all a mistake and that dead man isn’t our brand-new landlord.”

  All day was almost exactly what we did spend.

  Detective Austen had dusky smears under her eyes, and her lips looked dry from all the interviews by the time she brought me back in the third time.

  She didn’t have the notepad with her this time. That could mean anything. I didn’t know her well enough to guess.

  I did know that bringing me back in a third time was all about trying to trip me up. They weren’t convinced that Claire and I were telling the truth, even though I was sure we were saying the same thing. We’d been together and on our way to the bakery around the time the gunshots had been fired. At least, we had based on the time Detective Austen had asked me about twice now.

  She leaned back in her chair and eyed me. Her look felt a bit like she was saying what is it about you that justifies Dan Holmes sticking his neck out for you?

  I could have answered that for her if she’d asked it out loud—nothing. And yet, he kept doing it.

  Not for the first time I wished Dan was the detective in charge of this case. He couldn’t be because it was a conflict of interest given his relationship to Claire and me. If he had been, I wouldn’t be here, bracing to answer questions I’d already answered twice before.

  “We weren’t able to confirm your alibi with the seller of your food truck. He can’t remember the exact time you left.”

  Great. Last time she’d questioned me, she’d said that as soon as he confirmed when Claire and I finished with him, we’d be able to leave. Given the distance from there to our bakery, we wouldn’t have been able to get there in time to shoot Mr. Jenner.

  Now that the seller couldn’t confirm our timeline, I apparently had to answer things again.

  Her expression softened, but her eyes didn’t. “I hope you can understand why that’s a problem. We can’t be sure where you and Ms. Cartwright were, and you can’t give your real name.”

  I didn’t react. She’d obviously been looking for a reaction with that low blow. If Dan had told her why I couldn’t have my real name in the system, she either wasn’t sympathetic or she didn’t believe I was telling the truth. Jarrod had told me for years that no one would believe me if I accused him of abuse—especially not other officers of the law. He’d convinced me to the point where it’d kept me from leaving for a lot longer than it should have. Even when I did leave, I hadn’t gone to the police. I’d walked to the nearest church, and I’d avoided police officers up until Dan broke down my defenses.

  I stayed perfectly still in my seat. “Detective Holmes has run a background check on my real name. He knows my reasons for wanting to withhold my real name are because I’m a victim, not because I’ve committed a crime.”

  She looked like she wanted to humph but was too self-controlled. “And you’d never met Robert Jenner? You signed a business deal with a man you’d never met?”

  While I wasn’t a naturally sarcastic person, she was pushing every button I had. Maybe she was a lovely person in real life, and this was her persona for interviewing persons of interest. That was possible. I was sure Dan wasn’t the same Dan I knew in real life when he was in the interview rooms.

  Still, I’d have a hard time putting this aside if I met her later under different circumstances.

  I bit back a sigh. If I let the sigh out, she’d no doubt take it as snotty. “That’s right. Claire is better at the business end than I am. She negotiated the contract, passed it by a lawyer, and then explained it to me. I trust her, so I signed.”

  Her eyebrows moved up together. She had to be intentionally baiting me, hoping she’d annoy me enough to lose my temper and admit to something.

  If I’d been guilty of anything, she might have succeeded. I was so tired at this point, and the clock felt like it ticked louder with every minute I spent here. “I know you’re just doing your job, and you want to do it well. I respect that because Mr. Jenner’s death could hurt the career I’ve fought to keep for years. We had a good deal with him.”

  Her gaze on me felt hard and heavy. “Your contract says that if he dies within the first year, you get your share of the business back.”

  Of course she’d been able to get our contract. Nothing in our defense turned up during her search, but the one clause in the contract that gave us a motive, she found easily.

  I took a deep breath. Claire had probably provided the contract for her, and she should have. It was the right move.

  “If you have the contract, you also know that we’re receiving a significant discount on the rental space. We couldn’t afford to open a physical location without this deal. Now, whoever inherits this property might not want to make the same deal, and we might have to close.”

  My stomach ached at the mere thought. If we went forward with the opening and that happened, we’d be in a hole we couldn’t dig ourselves out of. We’d be out of business for good.

  Detective Austen watched me for another ten seconds. She stood. “Thank you for spending your day here and for cooperating. We’re done for now. You�
��re free to head home.”

  Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I heard her emphasize for now.

  4

  Detective Austen escorted me out to where Claire waited.

  Claire planted her hands on her hips and tilted her chin up. “Dan had to call Blake and ask him if Caroline could pick Janie up at school.”

  Blake was another one of the many Cartwright cousins. I’d met him when I was trying to prove I hadn’t killed their grandfather, Harold. Initially, I’d tried to prove Blake had killed Harold for the inheritance until I found out there was no inheritance and Blake’s suspicious behavior was him trying to find a job so he could take care of his wife and kids.

  Janie would love going to their house to play until we could pick her up. But the tilt of Claire’s chin said that wasn’t the point. Everything about her said she’d expected better treatment from the police department because she was Dan’s cousin, and I was his…friend.

  “I’m sorry our murder investigation inconvenienced you,” Detective Austen said.

  I couldn’t tell from her voice or expression whether she was being genuine or sarcastic.

  Detective Austen turned on her heel. “I’ll try to keep it quick next time I need to bring you in for questioning.”

  She tossed the words back over her shoulder, refusing Claire the chance for a rebuttal.

  If Claire hadn’t been so self-controlled, I would have expected her to stick out her tongue at Detective Austen’s back. Maybe Detective Austen’s growing annoyance and hostility toward me hadn’t been about me at all. During our first interview, she’d seemed almost nice. But if Claire had been baiting her, it’d be no wonder if her mood went downhill.

  “Were you that passive-aggressive in your interviews?”

  Claire raised both eyebrows. “I’m an innocent person who wasn’t even there at the time of the murder. She has no right to waste my entire day.”

  Technically, I think she did, but this wasn’t a hill I wanted to die on with Claire. “We need to talk about what to do next. About the business.”

  Claire motioned for me to follow her. “My clipboard’s in the truck. I can check it while you drive. We obviously can’t get into the bakery now until the police release the scene and a cleaning crew comes in. Hopefully, I can adapt some things so we can get started. This has destroyed our timeline for opening day.”

  Normally, having to delay our opening by a few days wouldn’t have been a big deal, but we’d called in favors. Alan Brooksbank had an article slated to run in The Positivity Project about how a near tragedy when I saved Janie after she’d been stung by a bee had resulted in a “sweet” business partnership. He’d even promised not to run any pictures of me, only of Claire. My friend Eve had volunteered her marketing expertise to help promote the opening day. The date was out there everywhere. If people showed up and we weren’t open, it would cost us our momentum. Worse, they might never return.

  But that hadn’t been what I meant when I said we should talk about the business. “Can we still open at all now?”

  “What are you talking about?” Claire yanked the food truck’s passenger door and climbed in. “Of course we can.”

  She slammed the door as if that would be the end of the conversation.

  I climbed in the driver’s side.

  Claire didn’t look in my direction. “It’d be disastrous for the business if we pushed back the opening.”

  Confrontation wasn’t my strength, but part of our agreement when we became business partners was that I would speak up. What I’d said to Detective Austen had been stuck in my mind ever since. “I’m not sure if we should go forward with the opening at all now.”

  Claire shot me the kind of look I would have expected had I suggested we roast Janie’s cat Pirate for supper.

  I left the truck in park. I wasn’t sure I could get this all out coherently if I had to focus on traffic as well. “If we keep going forward with our plans and then we can’t open on time, we increase our chances of the business failing in the first year. And that’s not taking into account what happens if the new landlord refuses to cut us the same deal on the rent.”

  I didn’t need to spell out for Claire the way I had for Detective Austen that we couldn’t afford the full rent. That if we put everything we had into setting up the bakery and then couldn’t pay the rent, we’d lose it all. Claire knew it as well as I did. It was why she’d brokered the odd agreement in the first place.

  “We don’t have the space in this truck to make a full-time go of it, especially not once winter sets in.” Claire’s tone was matter of fact.

  She was right. We also couldn’t afford a bigger truck unless the previous owner of this one would take back the vehicle less than twenty-four hours after we bought it and if Mr. Wendt would return our money for the appliances. Unless we could get all that money back, and our first and last month’s rent from Mr. Jenner’s estate, we wouldn’t be able to buy a bigger food truck.

  And then we’d be giving up on what had become a shared dream.

  I could almost see Claire doing the same mental math I’d done. “Call the man and see if we can return this truck. If we can’t, it’s a moot point, and we have to go forward with the opening.”

  I nodded and dialed. “This is How Sweet It Is, the cupcake ladies.”

  He made a noise like he was only half listening.

  “We were wondering if we could return the truck for a full refund.”

  “Is there something wrong with it?”

  I could lie to him, and he’d take the truck back for sure. Well, maybe not for sure. He might offer to have it repaired on his dime. Since there wasn’t anything actually wrong, that wouldn’t work.

  Besides, lying about the truck felt wrong. I didn’t think God would look kindly on us lying for our own benefit, at the potential expense of someone else.

  “There’s nothing wrong. We’ve just decided we want to go a different route.”

  “No can do. Check your bill of sale. I wrote right on there that the sale was final.”

  Claire must have heard because she was already fishing around in the glove compartment for it. Her gaze skimmed over it, and she shoved it back in with enough force to tell me it said exactly that.

  We hadn’t paid any attention at the time to language like that because returning the truck hadn’t crossed either of our minds.

  “We’ve run into some problems with opening our business, and we need the money from this truck. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “I could give you half back. I’ll need to keep the rest as a storage fee. Who knows how long it’ll have to sit around before I can resell it.”

  Claire reached for my phone as if she were going to give him a tongue-lashing. I kept it away from her.

  “Half isn’t enough,” I said. “We need a full refund.”

  “You want the full amount back, you’ll have to resell the truck yourself to someone else.”

  He hung up on me.

  “We just have to make it work,” Claire said, as if it would be easy as long as we put our minds to it. “We’re strong. We’ve overcome bigger obstacles.”

  “We have overcome worse.” I wasn’t a natural optimist, but I forced myself to repeat the words. Words had power. “We’ll make it work.”

  5

  Claire burst into the house. The front door slammed against the wall in a way that she would have yelled at Janie for. “They released the scene. I already picked up the key from the police station.”

  I set aside the gum paste vegetables I’d been creating. One of our regular clients, philanthropist Elijah Wells, was meeting with the city councilors to get their approval to re-zone an area of Lakeshore. He wanted to build an allotment where people who didn’t have any space for vegetable gardens could grow some of their own food. He’d decided that meant he needed to woo them not only with cupcakes that included vegetables like carrot, zucchini, and beet, but also that the top of each cupcake needed to look like
a little vegetable patch. I’d been forming teeny tiny carrots, cabbages, watermelons, and eggplants all morning.

  At this point, I could barely see straight. “What about the trauma cleaners?”

  “I just got off the phone with them. They finished up late last night.”

  That was a good sign. It meant that the gunshot hadn’t created a lot of blood spatter. Either that, or the cleaners were exceptionally fast. Claire had said the space was basically empty except for the display cases and appliances, so that could have contributed as well.

  We might be able to make our opening day after all.

  “Let me grab my stuff.”

  Claire turned on her heel. “I’ll be waiting in the car.”

  Claire and I stood side by side, staring at the large front windows of the shop. Or, more specifically, at the red spray-painted words graffitied across them. They had to have been scrawled there sometime between last night and this morning since the trauma cleaners hadn’t cleaned them off or mentioned them.

  Claire tilted her head to the side. “I think the first two words are keep out and the last one is slut.”

  I wasn’t sure what was more surreal—hearing Claire say the word slut or staring at it written on our windows when we were already one headache away from missing our opening day.

  I mirrored her tilted head. Because what else was there to do. The words were smeared enough that I couldn’t be sure whether Claire was right or wrong. I couldn’t make out the third of the four words at all. Given the tone of the message it was probably a curse word.

  A crazy laugh bubbled up inside me. It was laugh or cry. “Maybe it’s just a gang tag and not words at all.”

  Claire tilted her head in the other direction. “You might be right.” She sighed. “You want to flip a coin to see who gets to search the internet for what takes spray paint off glass and who has to tell Detective Austen that her crime scene was vandalized.”