A TREACHEROUS TART

by Fiona Grace

“What do you think, Scruff?” Ali said aloud, when she realized she’d been silently ruminating over it alone for an unhealthily long amount of time.

  The sound of silence met her, and she glanced over to the passenger seat to see the pup was fast asleep.

  She smiled. Poor Scruff. He was really doing his absolute most to protect her during her investigation, and he’d completely tuckered himself out. She’d have to reward him with the world’s best Jumbo bone when this was all over.

  It was dark by the time she pulled up outside the bakery. But not dark enough to hide the scene of utter chaos. There were police cars everywhere, flashing blue and white lights for all to see. Conspicuous white CSI vans gleamed in the moonlight, their logos emblazoned on the side in bold writing. To anyone passing by, this would look like the most incriminating set-up ever, and Ali couldn’t help but suspect that Detective Elton had specifically chosen to cause as much fanfare as possible.

  Just then, Ali spotted a bunch of furniture piled up outside.

  “Don’t tell me Elton already started the search!” she yelled aloud, waking Scruff in the process.

  The dog raised his sleepy head, growled, then leapt to his feet at the sight of all the mayhem. He started to bark loudly.

  “That’s what I thought,” Ali told him.

  She shoved open the driver’s side door, and marched toward the chaos, Scruff scurrying along behind her to keep up.

  Ali was just about to give the closest police officer a piece of her mind, when she stopped in her tracks. The furniture piled up outside was not hers. It had not come from inside Seaside Sweets. In fact, she didn’t recognize any of the things stacked haphazardly around the place.

  “What the…?” she mused aloud, glancing about her with confusion.

  Then it all suddenly fell into place in her mind, and Ali’s stomach plummeted.

  The police had conducted a search during her absence, just not of the bakery. They’d searched Emilio’s pizzeria, thoroughly by the looks of things. Their thorough search had torn the place apart until it looked like a disaster zone. And now the same fate awaited her poor bakery!

  Ali looked around for Detective Callihan. But just then, she heard a strange sound and became distracted. Among the general hubbub of the cops as they conducted their searches, Ali picked out what sounded like muffled tears. Someone was crying.

  She looked around trying to see who it may be. There was no one around, so she followed where the noise was coming from. She discovered Maria, Emilio’s beautiful fiancée, sitting in a heap surrounded by chairs, weeping.

  “Maria?” Ali asked, gently.

  Maria looked up, her chocolate brown eyes swimming with tears. She pulled herself to her feet and threw an arm in the direction of the cops standing outside the pizzeria. “La polizia? La polizia?”

  “I know,” Ali said, sympathetically. “Where is Emilio?”

  “Emilio!” she bellowed, angrily, and wiped the tears from her eyes, before beginning a long monologue in Italian.

  Ali did not understand the words she was saying, but she didn’t need to because the sentiment was very clear. Maria was devastated by what was happening. She’d come to California under the impression that she’d been returning to Italy with her fiancé to get married and live happily ever after. Instead, she’d found herself embroiled in a murder mystery, stuck with a pizzeria no one wanted and a load of equipment no one would buy. And now the police were tearing her fiancé’s premises apart while Emilio was MIA. She had every right to be furious and Ali’s heart went out to her.

  “I’m sorry, Maria,” she said once the woman’s monologue was finished.

  She patted her hand. And though the two women didn’t speak the same language, Maria’s tears began to slow.

  She sniffed, wiped the tears away with the back of her hands, then shook her head of thick, black hair. She kissed Ali’s cheeks, and, head held high, marched away.

  Just then, Detective Elton stepped out of the pizzeria, as if drawn out by the sound of their voices. Even in the nighttime she wore her sunglasses, and she tipped them down the bridge of her nose as her gaze fixed right on Ali.

  “At last,” she commented, marching over and thrusting a document at Ali. “This is a search warrant for Seaside Sweets. Unlock your premises. Please.”

  “Where’s Sebastian?” Ali asked.

  “Detective Callihan,” Detective Elton corrected, “is in the middle of police business. And it has nothing to do with you.”

  Ali huffed. There was nothing she could do about this. “Are you turning my bakery upside down like you did Emilio’s pizzeria?”

  “If we have to.”

  Ali sighed and went over to the bakery to unlock it.

  “It’s all yours,” she told the formidable female detective as she pushed open the door.

  Detective Elton beckoned for her team. Ali tensed as she watched dozens of crime scene operatives and police officers file inside to tear the place apart.

  Now what? she thought.

  Her investigations had been interrupted prematurely in the middle of questioning her prime suspect, and there was no chance now of speaking to him again. If he had any sense, Scott Brown would lawyer up. She may have cleared Seth, Mad Frank, Bottomless Pit Bob, and the rest of the competitive eaters off her list of suspects, but there was still a question mark next to Scott Brown’s name.

  Just then, Ali spotted a figure on the boardwalk approaching. She recognized her straight away. Eunbi. The woman was so small and slight, she was instantly recognizable.

  Ali waved to get her attention, and Eunbi spotted her and waved back. But as she drew closer, Ali felt something in her mind shift.

  Had she cleared all the competitive eaters off her list of suspects?

  When she’d gone door to door with Bob questioning them all back at the inn, they’d been each other’s alibis. But now she turned it over in her mind again, she realized one crucial person had been left off the list. She’d never actually gone back to Eunbi and tested her alibi! And none of the others had named her specifically. No one had explicitly given her an alibi. Could the killer be… Eunbi?

  Suddenly, she was there, materializing before Ali and standing in the bright lights of the flashing police car.

  “Hey,” she said, looking nervous. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Ali’s throat suddenly became very dry. “You have? Why?”

  Eunbi’s gaze darted left then right, before settling on Ali. “Because I need to tell you something. And I don’t know what you’ll think of me after I do.” She looked over at the beach. “Can we talk?”

  Ali nodded. “I think that would be a very good idea…”

  She followed Eunbi toward the black, churning sea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Ali sat on the beach, knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, a pit of dread in her guts. To one side sat Scruff, her confidant and partner. To the other, Eunbi Choi, the woman she thought was becoming a friend, but now suspected may in fact be a murderer…

  The competitive eater was gazing out at the sea, ruefully, her morose profile lit by the moonlight. She looked like a woman burdened by a heavy secret.

  “What did you want to tell me?” Ali asked, cautiously. Part of her didn’t want to hear what Eunbi had to say. She wanted to remain blissfully unaware, for there to be some other answer, something different. But she knew at the same time, wishing was a useless pursuit. Whatever Eunbi had to tell her, she would have to accept it. Gilbert deserved the truth.

  Eunbi kept her gaze on the ocean. “Your call confused me. When you were asking questions about the family. It made me think that you might be looking into Scott Brown.” She turned and fixed her eyes on Ali. “Is he a suspect?”

  “He might be.”

  “Why? What makes you think it was him?”

  Ali felt a flutter of apprehension in her chest. She hadn’t been expecting Eunbi to start questioning her about Scott Brown and it was throwing her for a l
oop.

  “He has the most motive,” she explained. “He’s a trust fund kid. The sole inheritor of his dad’s substantial fortune. He also had the means, because as a direct relative of Gilbert’s he’d have been privy to the information about his allergy. Finally, he had the opportunity. He was at the contest. I saw him there. And his family pass gave him access to the backstage area, but no one has provided him with an alibi.”

  “I can,” Eunbi blurted. “I’m his alibi.”

  Ali frowned. “You?”

  “We were together before the contest. I can prove it.”

  Something in her tone unsettled Ali. She sounded sinister. Ali suddenly had a thought. If Eunbi and Scott were together before the contest, had they committed the crime together? Had they both betrayed Gilbert?

  Suddenly, Eunbi shoved her cell phone into Ali’s hand.

  Ali frowned. “What is this?”

  “Proof.”

  Ali glanced down at the screen. She was looking at a photo, time stamped the morning of the contest, of Eunbi Choi and Scott Brown posing together with big grins on their faces and a silly cartoon filter on top.

  Ali looked at Eunbi and frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “Keep scrolling,” she said. “There’s more.”

  Still frowning with bemusement, Ali scrolled through the images. One after the next after the next. There were thirty minutes’ worth of photos of the two of them posing together while trying out different silly filters.

  “This is where Scott and I were before I went on stage,” Eunbi explained. “We were doing this. Just the two of us.”

  Ali looked up from the phone and studied her face. “Why?”

  “Because he was supposed to come and see me the night before but he couldn’t get away, and we were making up for lost time, I guess…”

  Ali’s eyebrows flew up as it suddenly dawned on her what exactly Eunbi was confessing to. Her big secret was that she was Scott Brown’s lover! “You’re a couple?”

  Even in the moonlight, she could see the blush on Eunbi’s cheeks. Eunbi, who was at least the same age as Ali herself, was dating a university student who was a mere nineteen years old. It seemed that Nate and Carys weren’t the only mismatched couple in town.

  “We wanted to keep it a secret,” Eunbi explained. “We didn’t want anyone at Mad Frank’s to know. For obvious reasons.”

  “Because you’re tight-knit,” Ali said, filling in the blanks in her mind. “Like a family.”

  She thought of the photos Mad Frank had shown her at the hotel bar, of the Christmases and weddings. Scott’s christening had been one of them. How long had Eunbi known him for? Since he was a child? Their relationship certainly gave her the ick factor, and she could see why they’d both want to hide it.

  She scrolled through the pictures again, soaking in the irrefutable evidence that her friend Eunbi was not a killer. She had secretly been playing with a photo app with her young lover during the whole time they were unaccounted for, during that small window of opportunity the real killer had to plant the deadly oyster sauce. Eunbi was not a killer. And neither was Scott.

  She handed the phone back to Eunbi. “So that’s why Scott was so shifty when I spoke to him.”

  “Yes. And that’s also why I came to the bakery the night of the contest to help with the cooking. Scott was supposed to come to Willow Bay the night before to stay at the inn with me. He knows I don’t sleep the night of a contest, and was going to, you know… keep me company. But he couldn’t get away. Something to do with his roommates having a party. So I was at a loss and came to you to keep myself occupied. That’s why I left in the morning. He texted me to say he’d arrived and I left to meet him.”

  Ali nodded, recalling the phone call she’d received shortly after Joe the mobster had scared them in the alleyway.

  “I wish you’d told me this from the beginning,” she said. “It would have saved me a trip to Redwood City. I wasted a lot of time pursuing the wrong lead.”

  Eunbi looked regretful. “I’m sorry, Ali. Truly I am. I’m ashamed. People look down on women with younger boyfriends.”

  Ali thought of Scott, of his bad attitude when he’d spilled the soda on her, of the way he’d grabbed her arm and tugged her behind a tree at the harbor. Even Scruff hated the guy.

  “I have to ask,” she said. “What do you see in him?”

  Eunbi shrugged. “He’s fun. Young. Keeps me on my toes. And he gets what I do for a living. He’s been part of the competitive eating scene for years as well. Not many men are okay with my profession.”

  Ali nodded her understanding. Maybe such romantic pairings didn’t make sense to her, but considering the shambolic state of her own love life, perhaps she wasn’t the best judge.

  Up ahead, a wave broke on the shore. The tide was coming in.

  “Can we get out of here?” Ali asked her friend. She didn’t want to stand around all evening while her precious bakery got torn apart by the cops.

  “Sure,” Eunbi replied, standing and wiping the sand from her jeans. “Where do you want to go?”

  “How about a moonlit stroll along the boardwalk? Just you, me, and Scruff? I’m all out of leads to investigate. A walk might help spark my imagination.”

  “Sounds good,” Eunbi replied.

  She held her hand down for Ali. Ali took it, and Eunbi helped her to her feet. She was surprisingly strong.

  Must be all those spin classes, Ali thought.

  They headed off.

  The boardwalk was unusually quiet that evening. Normally there would be lots of tourists around making the most of the boardwalk’s different entertainment offerings, like LaZerZone, the bowling alley, and the myriad restaurants. But it seemed like a cloud of grief had descended over the whole place following Gilbert’s death, and now there was next to no one around.

  Suddenly, Eunbi grabbed Ali’s arm.

  “Ow. What’s that—”

  “ Look! Up ahead. Is that someone trying to break into Seth’s?”

  Ali squinted ahead and her focus found a shadowy figure lurking around the hot dog store. Her thoughts immediately turned to Joe the mobster’s warning about the shadowy figure seen lurking around. Could it be him?

  “Hey!” she shouted ahead.

  The person jumped a mile, and turned to look at them with deer in the headlight eyes.

  Eunbi gasped. “I know who that is!”

  “Wait? What? Who?” Ali asked. Eunbi wasn’t even from Willow Bay. How was she able to recognize anyone?

  “It’s Porky Pete!”

  “Porky Pete?” Ali asked. “Who’s that?”

  “Hey!” Eunbi cried. “Pete!”

  And just like that, the man took off, running in the opposite direction. Ali had no idea what they’d just witnessed or stumbled upon, but it was certainly suspicious. Why else would the man run when he heard his name?

  Eunbi grabbed her arm again, so tightly her finger nails dug in.

  Ali winced. “Ow! Eunbi. Will you stop doing that?”

  “Pete killed Gilbert,” Eunbi cried, ignoring her protests. Her face had become drawn and a haunting look of painful defeat flickered behind her eyes.

  “What do you mean?” Ali asked.

  But it was too late. Eunbi let go of her arm and went off like a shot in hot pursuit of Porky Pete.

  Ali was left floundering on the boardwalk. She had no idea why this strange man had provoked such a strong reaction in Eunbi, but she trusted her new friend, and knew she would have a good reason to believe he was Gilbert’s killer.

  “Scruff, go with Eunbi,” Ali hurriedly told the dog. “Protect her.”

  Scruff went off like a rocket, looking like a blur of fur racing down the boardwalk at speed. Then Ali turned, cupped her hands either side of her mouth, and bellowed back in the direction of her bakery. “Sebastian! Sebastian!”

  A mere second later, Detective Callihan appeared at the other end of the boardwalk, responding to her calls as readily as Scruff did.


  “Ali?” he yelled back. “Is that you?”

  “We need backup!” Ali cried.

  “What? Why?”

  “Just trust me!”

  And with that, she turned, swallowed her fear, and took off after Scruff and Eunbi in pursuit of a man who very well may be a killer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Ali panted as her feet pounded the boardwalk. Two sprints in one day! Delaney would be proud.

  But there was no time for self-congratulations, because up ahead, she could just make out the silhouette of Eunbi Choi, dipping in and out of the beams from the streetlamps that lined the boardwalk. Scruff the dog zigzagged back and forth, barking feverishly. She couldn’t see Porky Pete from this far, but presumed Eunbi could, since she was still in hot pursuit.

  Ali didn’t know who Porky Pete was. But from the ridiculous name, she guessed he was someone from the competitive eating world, someone she’d not yet discovered during her research. And from Eunbi’s peculiar reaction to his presence on the boardwalk, she knew that one person, at least, was convinced he was the killer of Gilbert Brown.

  Still running as fast as she could, Ali stole a glance over her shoulder to the other end of the boardwalk, searching for Detective Callihan and the backup. There was nothing. No sign that any of the million cops in her bakery had stopped conducting their futile search to help chase down the real suspect.

  Suddenly, loud barking and groaning came from ahead. Ali’s pulse spiked with anxiety and she turned to face forward again. Eunbi and Scruff had disappeared from sight.

  “Eunbi?” she called desperately into the darkness. “Scruff? Where are you guys?”

  Finding energy from somewhere deep inside of her, Ali accelerated her run, her heart pounding from effort and fear of what she may be about to stumble upon. The noises were horrendous, thuds and whacks punctuating Scruff’s fevered barking, which had reached a pitch she’d never heard from him before.

  Then, suddenly, Ali’s gaze found a writhing mass of limbs on the boardwalk ahead. Eunbi was on top of Porky Pete wrestling him, while Scruff bounced around them on the tips of his paws, barking and growling.