by Fiona Grace
For any rational, normal person, Ali wouldn’t even entertain the thought. No one in their right mind would kill someone for a mere five hundred dollars, unless they were absolutely desperate. But that was just the thing. The expressionless hipster guy standing in front of her was clearly not in his right mind. If Ali’s hunch was right and he was indeed a sociopath, then he’d think nothing of dispatching with Brandon for his own gain.
Any publicity is good publicity, she heard Seth’s voice in her mind, as a shiver went up her spine. Those were Brandon’s own words to Seth. Words he’d uttered not long before he’d passed away. Had Donut Guy taken that sentiment to a murderous extreme? Had Brandon died at the hands of a cold, emotionless, sociopathic donut seller?
Her whole body now trembling, Ali attempted to play it cool and continue with her Valley Girl cover story.
“Weren’t you, like, totally mad when he licked all your donuts?” she asked, writing a fake name and fake address onto the page with a shaking hand.
“Nah,” the clerk continued in his same flippant manner. “Last year we were. But this year, we knew what to expect. I figured he wouldn’t come in again, because our reaction wouldn’t be genuine the second time around, but he said since the first video was so popular, he wanted to do a part two. Apparently YouTube automatically bumps a video up in the algorithm if it’s the second part of an already successful video.”
Ali shuddered. This was chilling. Too chilling to really comprehend.
Her mind raced, searching for a way to stretch her interrogation out. She was hit by sudden inspiration.
“I guess that won’t happen now, huh?” she said, handing the clipboard back over the counter.
“What do you mean?” he said, taking it.
“The whole part two algorithm thing,” Ali explained. “There’s no one to make the video now Brandon’s dead.”
The man gave her a look like she was the dumbest human on earth. “Brandon didn’t edit his own videos,” he said, arrogantly. “He hired people to do that sort of stuff. Jeez, I thought you said you were a Lennox-head.”
“But, like, Brandon was murdered,” Ali said rapidly, thinking on her feet before her cover was blown. “His camera was taken by the police as evidence. No one will see that footage now.”
Donut Guy paused. “It was?”
Ali nodded. She studied his expression as the news sunk in. For the first time, he showed emotion in relation to Brandon’s death, and it was clearly entirely self-serving. He didn’t care about a man dying at all. He cared only that his antics wouldn’t be drumming up yearly business for Just DoNuts anymore.
“You didn’t realize?” Ali pressed, her Valley Girl accent slipping slightly as detective Ali began taking over. “Did you really think his editors were just going to make the video as intended, as if nothing had ever happened?”
It was a classic sociopath move—lacking empathy came with a lack of understanding of how other people reacted to things. Of course he wouldn’t realize that a team of mourning staff members wouldn’t just carry on now their boss was dead.
He shrugged. “I figured they’d do a tribute video or something. One last hurrah. But I guess they don’t need the new footage for that, if they do one at all. It might not be cost-effective. That’s the problem with those online audiences. They’re young and fickle and have no attention span. Without the fart noises or barfing, only the die-hard ones will bother tuning in to a memoriam video.”
“The Lennox-heads,” Ali said, echoing the term he’d used to refer to her earlier, as she pondered what he was telling her.
Was Brandon’s star not quite as bright as his view count suggested? But what about the hundreds of thousands of so-called followers? The huge increase in footfall and extra business his appearance was meant to bring?
She thought of the group of kids following him in his entourage. There’d been what—a dozen of them? Two dozen at best? It wasn’t exactly a huge following.
“How many Lennox-heads do you think there actually are?” she asked.
The clerk scanned the sheet on his clipboard. “Well, there’s ten on here,” he said. “So I guess a couple dozen. I mean, that’s how many have visited so far, and the news of his death is literally everywhere.”
“Maybe they’ll come later?” Ali suggested.
“I doubt it,” he said. “They’re fickle, remember? Once there’s no more content coming from him, they’ll forget all about him.”
“But the algorithm…” Ali said.
He shook his head. “It only works if you upload consistently. YouTube will stop pushing his content really quickly. Everyone will move on. It’s the way it works.”
Ali felt a strange pang of grief for the dead prankster now. How long would it take for his star to fade? Would his fans really stick around, rewatching his old content over and over, putting down hundred-dollar bids for his disgusting licked donuts, or would they move on to greener pastures? His fame was, she suddenly realized, probably destined to be fleeting.
Ali mulled it over. Donut Guy had realized there would be no second part to Brandon’s original donut licking video, and that the publicity for his store would end. There’d be no more pilgrimages after this one. That meant there was less profit to be made in Brandon’s death than there’d been in his life. Beyond selling the donuts he’d licked to the Lennox-heads (while they still existed), the Brandon Lennox cash cow was about to run dry, and quickly. For Donut Guy to continue profiting off him, he needed Brandon alive and well and churning out content.
“It’s a total bummer,” Donut Guy added then. “We had this whole thing planned, where he would come each year. Like a special. Part three. Part four. That sort of thing. But, yeah, I guess that’s over with now.”
Ali decided this was not the place where Brandon ingested the poison that killed him. Donut Guy may well be a sociopath, but Brandon was worth more to him alive than dead, and that alone was reason enough for him not to be the killer.
But she was not quite done with him yet.
“Do you know who killed him?” Ali asked. “Like, it was a local, wasn’t it?”
Just as she’d predicted, Donut Guy’s eyes flashed with excitement. He leaned across the counter and whispered, “It was a guy called Fat Tony.”
Ali’s eyes widened at the mention of the pizzeria-empire-owning mobster she’d unwittingly fallen into favor with. She’d seen him order violence on another occasion firsthand. A member of his gang had killed a guy for insulting his grandmother’s pizza recipe. And she knew that Fat Tony sold pastry desserts as well, because he’d had some delivered to her bakery as a thank-you for exposing the rat in his gang. How had she not thought of him right away?
“What makes you say that?” Ali said.
“Brandon went into one of his pizzerias last year. He really pissed Fat Tony off.”
Ali cringed. She wasn’t surprised. Fat Tony didn’t handle criticism well, especially when it came to his nona’s special pizza dough recipe. Everyone in Willow Bay knew to stay on Fat Tony’s good side. Ali could very easily imagine Fat Tony seeking his revenge…
“What did he do to upset Fat Tony so much?” she asked Donut Guy.
“I think he threw a pizza on the floor.”
“Oh no,” Ali said, cringing. There was no way Fat Tony would let him get away with that! It would be an insult to his nona!
Donut Guy nodded confidently, like he was absolutely certain of himself. “Exactly. We all know what they do to people who insult them,” he added, conspiratorially.
Ali gulped. She’d been purposefully keeping her distance from Fat Tony and his cronies. She’d never intended to help him out in the first place, and certainly didn’t want to foster any kind of friendship with him.
But if she wanted to solve the case, she needed evidence. And the only way to get that was if she spoke to Fat Tony, exploiting his trust in her to get him to spill.
“Hey wait,” Donut Guy said, frowning. “How do you know who Fat
Tony is? I thought you were from out of town?”
Uh oh, Ali thought. I’ve been rumbled.
She quickly headed for the exit. “Gotta go!” she called as she went, pretending not to have heard his question. “Thanks for your help! Bye!”
She heaved open the door and hurried outside.
Scruff bounded up to her, yipping away.
“It wasn’t him,” Ali said, beckoning Scruff to follow her. She didn’t want to stop outside the donut store and give the guy a chance to realize she was faking it.
Scruff obeyed, trotting alongside her legs as she strode away.
She was going to need to be a lot braver than that if she wanted to complete the next stage of her investigation.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Through the window of Fat Tony’s pizzeria, Ali could see a bunch of greasy-haired, suit-wearing males, all congregated in a huddle around a central bistro table. The green leather booths that surrounded the perimeter of the pizzeria were empty. Fat Tony’s pizzeria didn’t exactly get many customers. He didn’t need their money.
Ali trembled with nerves as she hovered outside. She’d not seen the mobster in weeks, choosing to keep a wide berth. Coming face to face with him again was not something she relished. And first she had to overcome the hurdle of getting past his cronies…
She took a deep breath and pushed open the large glass door.
Silence fell like a blanket. The mobsters turned to look at her in unison, like some kind of many-headed monster. Ali swallowed nervously.
“Are you here for lunch?” one of the men said, mimicking the cadence of a waiter. Presumably to keep up the facade that the pizzeria was, first and foremost, a place that served food.
“Actually, I’m looking for Fat Tony,” Ali said, boldly.
The man who’d spoken frowned in confusion, as if unable to reconcile the sight of a young blond woman asking for a mob boss by name.
“Hey, don’t I know you?” another voice piped up, his Italian-American accent significantly stronger than the first speaker’s.
Ali turned her gaze to him. He was a short guy with a squat neck and upper torso shaped like a rectangle. The shoulders of his gray suit appeared completely square. Ali certainly recognized him from her last encounter with the mob.
“Yes, I think so,” she said, forcing out a confidence she did not feel. “I’m Ali. An associate of Fat Tony’s.”
“An associate, eh?” the squat man said. He looked over his shoulders at the other mobsters. “Does that mean you’re one of his broads? Does Fat Tony have a thing for blonds now?”
Ali felt shame burn in her cheeks at the thought. “I’m a friend,” she said, rapidly. “That’s all.”
“Fat Tony doesn’t have any friends,” the man shot back without missing a beat. “He has family. And he has foes. Which one are you?”
Ali felt tense all over. She could not believe the words that were about to come out of her mouth. “I’m family.”
There was a pregnant pause, but it seemed to stretch on for eternity, or at least long enough for Ali to think about what a terrible, dangerous thing she was doing. She felt pinned to the spot by the dark-eyed mobsters as they all scowled at her, sizing her up, judging her. The tension was unbearable.
Then, in the blink of an eye, everything changed. The mobsters suddenly all started to laugh, cackling like hyenas as they glanced around at one another for validation. The tenseness vanished into thin air.
“Come in, Ali, we know who you are!” the squat man exclaimed, jovially, leaping up from his seat. “How could we forget the famous pastry chef and her scruffy dog bringing down Giuseppe? Come in. We were only messing with you!”
He waddled over and took her face in his hands, bestowing a kiss on each squished cheek.
Ali, eyes wide with astonishment, barely reacted. Their “joke” had blindsided her, and she wasn’t actually sure which was worse—getting the third degree from them, or being welcomed into the fold like an old friend. Besides, she wasn’t entirely confident they wouldn’t flip the whole situation back around again and pull a gun on her or something—she’d never written a thank-you letter to Fat Tony for the cannelloni gift after all. The sooner this was over, the better.
“Heh. You got me,” she managed, forcing out an awkward chuckle.
The squat man let go of her face.
“So, is Fat Tony around?” Ali added, tentatively, when he didn’t say anything.
“Sure, sure,” the squat man said, waving a hand dismissively as if to say that summoning Fat Tony could wait. “Sit down. Have some pizza with us.” He took her by the shoulders, half-pushing her into a chair.
Ali thunked down onto the uncomfortable hard wood. The squat man took the seat opposite her, and the mobsters inched forward, forming a wall behind him.
Sharing a pizza with the mob was the last thing Ali really wanted to be doing. Especially now she was a suspect. What if word got around that she was hanging with the mob? What if the detective walked by and saw? She’d be done for!
She squirmed in her seat and tugged nervously at her collar.
“We’ve been expecting you,” the mobster said, before turning in his seat and clicking his fingers in the general direction of the kitchen.
Ali’s anxiety returned tenfold. What on earth did he mean by that? Why had they been expecting her?
Before she had a chance to say (or squeak, more likely) anything in response, a younger guy came scurrying out of the kitchen. He looked to be in his twenties, possibly younger; there were pimples on his chin.
“Yes, Joe?” the boy asked, a crack in his voice betraying his nerves.
“Bring Miss Sweet a pizza,” the mobster, Joe, announced. His eyes never left Ali. “She likes margherita with plenty of fresh basil leaves.”
Ali felt the tension inside of her mounting. This man whose name she’d only just learned seemed to have committed a lot of things about her to his memory—her first name, her surname, even her favorite pizza topping. She wondered if her attempts to steer clear of the mob had been a fool’s errand. It seemed as if they’d been keeping tabs on her the whole time without her knowing.
“Yes, Joe,” the pimply boy said, and he scurried out of sight.
Joe steepled his hands on the table. “So, how can we help you today, Ali?”
“I—” Ali began, before realizing her throat had gone bone dry. She swallowed what little saliva she had and tried again. “I was hoping to speak to Fat Tony.”
She didn’t trust any of the mob, but at least she’d formed something of a rapport with the boss. She’d helped him out of a tricky situation with Giuseppe, after all.
“Is it about the dead kid with the camera?” Joe asked.
Ali’s heart skipped a beat. Him bringing Brandon up immediately was very disconcerting. It made her suspicion that the mobsters had something to do with his killing even stronger.
“Uh-huh,” she confessed, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Yeah. Too bad about that whole thing. I heard your bakery got shut up because of it?” He sucked air between his teeth, making an unpleasant noise that made Ali cringe. “So what do you need?” he added. “Bacon?”
His question caught her off guard. Ali frowned, perplexed. “Bacon?”
“Cheese?” Joe amended. “Dough? Moolah?”
“He’s asking if you’re here for a loan,” one of the men behind Joe translated.
“Oh!” Ali exclaimed, surprised. She shook her head. While a bit of relief from her financial worry would be nice, the last people she’d take a loan from was the mob!
“No?” Joe asked, looking surprised. “Well, what is it then?” He lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “You need us to disappear someone?”
Ali sat back in her chair, stunned. “No!” she exclaimed.
Joe sat back in his seat, too, looking equally confused. “Then what is it? Why else would you come to Fat Tony after poisoning that kid?”
Ali’s mouth dropped open. “Poison
—you think I—I didn’t kill Brandon!”
“You didn’t?” Joe said, rubbing a stubby-fingered hand across his chin. “Huh. Word on the street is you slipped him a poisoned macaron for insulting your famous French recipe.”
Ali couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Not only had the mob just offered to kill someone for her, but it turned out the rumors flying around about her were far more detailed than she’d realized.
“Who told you that?” she asked.
Joe merely shrugged. “We always have an ear to the ground.”
Ali knew immediately what that meant. They were watching her. Joe or one of Fat Tony’s other cronies had seen the whole thing, watching through the window.
With a terrifying feeling of dread, Ali realized she must’ve been under surveillance the whole time she’d been in Willow Bay.
“Then hear this,” Ali said, firmly. “I didn’t kill Brandon Lennox. All I’m trying to do is find out who did so I can get my bakery back.”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Joe said, waving his hands in front of him, in and out of cross formation. “So you didn’t kill a kid. And you’re not here for money, or help.” His eyebrows started to slowly inch upward. “Then what are you here for?”
Ali realized she’d put her foot right in there.
“To interrogate us?” Joe continued. “Because you think we were the ones who killed him?”
Ali gulped. She’d been caught, and there was no point lying. These guys were trained to sniff out a fib, and besides, her pale skin always betrayed her. She could feel the blush coming on.
“I thought he might’ve played a prank on you and taken it too far,” she said, hurriedly. “Like he did with the others. And I remember what Guiseppe did when Preston Lockley insulted nona’s pizza recipe…”
“But poison?” Joe interrupted. “Ali, come on! We don’t poison people! That’s a woman’s way of killing. If we’d wanted the kid dead, we would’ve dumped him with the fishes like we did the last guy.” He shook his head, looking offended. “Poison him? Jeez! What do you think we are? Sissies?”
