Burned At The Bake

by Ashley Cain

  Sergeant Tozier had returned and confirmed that they had no leads, but were pursuing it as a random burglary as opposed to an act of revenge. He had spoken to Connor who had an alibi as he had been, in Sergeant Tozier’s words, entertaining a lady all night. Hope who had been next to April had pointed out that he may have slipped out in the middle of the night when the lady in question was asleep, but Sergeant Tozier, a little pink in the face, hummed and hawed and eventually admitted that they had told him that they had not spent the night sleeping. April, remembering the conversation she had had with Connor’s neighbour, didn’t need much imagination to understand what that meant.

  “Well, that’s it then” April said when they all took a break for a coffee mid-afternoon. “It can’t have been Connor”.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure” Miguel said. “I know who the lady was, or at least I think I do. Marcy Brownlow, her and her husband have just split up and she is renting a flat down in the harbour. I saw her crossing the carpark last night about 10 just as I was shutting the curtains. She was carrying a couple of bottles of white wine and dressed in the tightest black dress I’ve ever seen”.

  “That trollop” Hope exclaimed in disgust. “I’m not surprised that her husband left her. She’s broken up two marriages in the last five years, it was only a matter of time before she broke up her own. She must be a good ten years older than Connor though”.

  “I’d say fifteen” Martha chimed in. “I went to school with two of her sisters and Marcy was the baby of the family but she must be close to forty now. There is hope for me yet”. She laughed when she saw the looks on their faces “I know he can’t be trusted, but damn, he’s good looking”. Martha shuddered as she took a bite of the hot double chocolate cookie that Rachel had taken out of the oven a few minutes earlier.

  “The point is” Miguel continued “she can’t be trusted. Lies fall out of her lips like snowflakes fall out of the sky on a winter’s day. If Connor left her for an hour in the night, then she is not going to tell Sergeant Tozier that if she thinks that she is on a good thing with Connor”.

  “I think you’re wrong” Hope said. “That woman is like a human Venus fly trap. It’s a wonder she released her clutches on him long enough for him to answer the door to Sergeant Tozier. I doubt she would have let him out of her sight for a moment. The pair deserve each other”.

  Marcy Brownlow had obviously released Connor by that evening, as April saw him as she sat on her terrace savouring a chilled glass of white wine and a small bowl of plump green olives. It was early evening and the sun was just dipping below the cliffs when she spotted him walking along the road that bordered the beach dressed in dark blue jeans, a pale blue button-down shirt and with a dark blue pullover thrown casually around his shoulders. She continued to watch as he walked past the café assuming that he was going down the road to the harbour and Marcy’s flat, but was surprised when he turned and made his way up the ramp to her cabin.

  He paused at the small gate that separated the ramp from the terrace and she was stunned how different he looked from the day before. There was still an air of confidence about him, a haughty look that prevented him from looking sexy, but the arrogance had gone replaced with something else entirely. Perhaps it was contrition she thought, if he had committed the crime after all in a spurt of rage and now felt bad about it.

  “Can I come in?” he said, his hand on the gate.

  “Whatever you’ve got to say you can say it from there” she answered, leaving her glass of the wine on the table in case her hand shook as she picked it up and betrayed her nerves.

  “I let you in to my apartment”, he protested spreading his arms wide, his palms upwards. “It’s only fair that you let me in rather than leave me to shout across at you from here”.

  He had a point and when she didn’t answer he took her silence as acceptance and opened the gate. Walking across the terrace he took the chair at the table directly opposite her.

  “What do you want?” she asked finally when it appeared that he was not going to be the first to speak. She had got her nerves under control now and took a sip of her wine. She was damned if she was going to offer him any.

  “I’ve come to tell you it wasn’t me, the burglary” he added almost as an afterthought as though she wouldn’t know what he had meant “The police came round yesterday, asked me loads of questions about where I had been, why I had been sacked, the threats”. He looked directly at April when he said the last word. “I didn’t make any threats, why did you lie?”

  “You don’t want to cross me”. April shot back. That is what you said as I was leaving. “That sounded very much like a threat to me”.

  “That wasn’t a threat, just a statement”. His voice became hard, the arrogance that had been missing for the last few minutes started to return to his face. “If I’d made a threat you would know about it” He shrugged. “But anyway, I had an alibi”.

  “Yes Marcy Brownlow, I heard” April took another sip of wine. “Classy lady, you have good taste”.

  Connor smirked. “She was available, and easy. Jealous?”

  “What, of Marcy Brownlow?” April was incredulous. “Why on earth would I be jealous?”

  Connor shrugged his shoulders looking non-plussed for a second. “Just wondered. Anyhow, I came to tell you that it wasn’t me so there is no need to think that I am out for revenge just because you sacked me. I wasn’t really that in to the job anyway, just wanted something to do until I open my own place”.

  “If you are opening a café, I pity your customers if what I saw was an example of your cookery skills” Now it was April’s turn to smirk.

  “You never gave me a chance” Connor retorted. “Just listened to Miguel who obviously saw me as some kind of threat. What are you going to do now he is leaving you?” He studied his hands whilst he asked the question but April thought he was more interested in the answer than he was letting on. There was a stillness about him, an atmosphere that hadn’t been there before. She wondered if this was the real reason that he had paid her a visit.

  “I don’t know. Get someone else maybe, or just soldier on until James comes back in a few weeks. He is my other cook. The cakes are doing well so I might just concentrate on doing those during the day. And no, if you were asking, I am not going to offer the job to you”.

  The answer seemed to anger Connor in a way that she hadn’t expected. He got up from the table, pushing his chair back so violently that it fell on the floor behind him with a crash. “I don’t want your job. I’m going to be competition for you”. He pointed his finger down towards the harbour. “See the Peabody Tearoom over there, that’s my new place, signed on the dotted line yesterday afternoon. I’ll be opening in a week and I would imagine in a month you’ll be begging me for a job because I will have taken all of your customers”.

  “I doubt that very much” April stood up as well to confront him face to face across the table. She was not going to be intimidated by him in her own home. “You don’t scare me. Based on what I have seen you won’t threaten my business but if it is competition you want, bring it on, I don’t see you as a challenge”.

  Connor smiled “I love a challenge”. He let his look linger on her face a little longer than was necessary and then turned and strode across the terrace “Good night Ice Queen” he shouted from the gate “Be careful what you wish for, l would hate to see you get burned”. April shivered. Why did she get the feeling that he wasn’t referring to the café when he said those final few words?

  Chapter 19

  April woke with a start and a sense of foreboding. She was normally a heavy sleeper, but whether or not it was the events of the last couple of days that had unsettled her, or the conversation with Connor just before she had come to bed, she didn’t know. She had struggled to get to sleep and had tossed and turned throughout the night and now she had woken early, much earlier than usual.

  It was still dark outside but she knew that she wouldn’t sleep anymore. Despite the
lack of sleep she wasn’t remotely tired. Groping for her mobile phone on the bedside cabinet where it had been charging overnight, she looked at the time. Just after 5 in the morning. An hour before dawn. She would make a coffee, wrap up warm and take it out on to the terrace to watch the sunrise.

  Wrapping herself in her pink and white fluffy dressing gown, and putting her feet in to the warm white cat slippers that Hope had given her for Christmas the year before, she left the bedroom and headed for the kitchen. Putting coffee and water in to the machine she sat at the dining table waiting for it to go through the programme. She felt ill at ease on her own in the stillness and quietness of the cabin, the darkness made her feel alone. Her thoughts drifted to Archie, he had always been an early riser, in the few months that they were together she had often had to snuggle in to the duvet on her own on a cold morning whilst he had gone for a morning run. She wondered if he was out on a run now in Manchester, if his new girlfriend was under the duvet on her own. It made her think what she may have been doing and where she would have been if her grandmother hadn’t died when she had.

  The coffee machine gave its gurgle to signify her drink was ready which brought her out of her reminiscing of the past. What had made her think of Archie? She hadn’t been romantically involved with a man for four years and hadn’t missed it until now. She felt unsettled that it may have been her conversation yesterday evening with Connor. He was a very good-looking guy with a body to die for, but there was an arrogance that made him incredibly unattractive. He thought he could have any woman he wanted and if the evidence was anything to go by there must be so many notches on his bedpost it probably looked like it had woodworm.

  She opened the patio doors on to the terrace to let in some air and, as she did so, her nostrils flared at the smell of smoke. Damn, she must have spilt some coffee on the hot plate again. Walking back in to the kitchen area she went to wipe down the hotplate but there was nothing there. Odd, the smell of smoke had gone. It must have come from outside.

  April walked to the patio doors and again could smell smoke which was much stronger now. Walking out on to the terrace she looked around. It was too dark to see much other than a few shapes, the sky was cloudy blotting out the moon. She was going to have to turn on the terrace lights.

  Walking across the terrace to the railings she looked down at the café below her and across to the harbour. She could just make out a couple of boats heading out to sea, and she could hear the faint sound of fishermen in the harbour although she could not hear what they were saying. But she couldn’t see any smoke wisping up in to the sky from that direction. The smell was very strong though. Maybe one of the fishermen had been burning something down by the harbour.

  She was just about to turn away and go back inside when a flicker of light caught her eye. It came from the window on the far left of the café as she looked down at it, in what had been the old wooden structure that had been her grandmother’s original café. She looked intently to see if she could see the light again, hoped against hope that someone hadn’t broken in again. This was the morning that they were going to reopen.

  She stared at the window. There it was again, a flash of light. Orange though, not yellow. Orange light, the smell of smoke. Her brain not yet fully awake because of the restless night that she endured started to slowly process the information. Flickering orange, smoke. It was a fire. Her café was on fire.

  With an anguished scream April raced across the terrace in to the cabin as fast as her cat slippers would allow and grabbed the small fire extinguisher that she kept in the cupboard under the sink for emergencies. Kicking off the slippers as they were impeding her progress she ran across the room, out the door and down the ramp, impervious to the rough ground and the cold. Racing to the back window of the café she realised with mounting horror that the fire had taken hold; a roaring wall of flame was licking hungrily at the wooden walls. Without thinking what she was doing she smashed the window with the bottom of the fire extinguisher and started to spray foam at the nearest flame.

  “Whoa, whoa” Strong arms grabbed her around the waist and shoulders as she was about to climb in through the hole in the window that she had made. Her scream had carried in the stillness of the night and the fishermen who had had been preparing their boats for a morning’s fishing had come running to see what the matter was. “Bloody hell” Eric, one of them said when confronted by the flames. “Call the fire brigade”

  There were two fire stations in Jersey, but even though the country roads were quiet so early in a morning, access to Gull Bay was difficult with a fire engine and it took almost fifteen minutes before they arrived. The fishermen had manhandled a screaming and sobbing April in to the safe keeping of Hope, who had already been awake and had come hurrying along the harbour when she had heard the commotion. They had tackled the fire as best they could, but it had taken hold too strongly and it took the firemen over an hour before they had got it under control. By the time the café should have been ready to open all that was left of the original café was a bonfire of burnt and broken beams.

  “You were fortunate” the lead fireman, Rod Foulard told her, which April, numb and traumatised as she was thought an interesting choice of words given the circumstance. The fire started at the far end and we managed to save most of it. You have just lost the old extension at the end, which after a while can probably be rebuilt”.

  He had no way of knowing, April thought, tears in her eyes, that the part of the café that had burned down wasn’t an extension but the original café. Her grandmother’s café. Where the history of the Bluewater café had started, her grandmother’s legacy, built over fifty years and entrusted to her, April, who had barely managed to keep it for a tenth of that time. She dissolved in to racking sobs whilst the fireman looked uncomfortably on and Hope patted her arms.

  “There, there April, it could be worse” Hope was ever practical. “Most of the café has survived by the looks of it. How bad is it inside?”

  “Some smoke damage, but we managed to save the structure and a lot of the furniture and fittings. And the kitchen is intact, the fire door meant that hasn’t been impacted at all. Which brings me to the question as to how it started, as it obviously didn’t start in the kitchen where you would have expected”. Rod looked at April keenly. “What attracted your attention to the fire?”

  “I smelt smoke, and when I looked out over the terrace balcony, I saw fire in the far-left window, the part that has been burned down” April sniffed trying to get her emotions under control.

  “Lucky for you that you were awake at that time” the fireman was looking at her suspiciously for some reason which April couldn’t quite understand. “Are you always up so early?”

  “Not as early as this, no” April admitted. “I didn’t sleep very well; the café had been broken in to a few days ago and it was on my mind. I woke up about 5. I’m not sure whether or not a noise woke me” she finished, thinking back to the sense of foreboding that she had felt when she first woke up, the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

  “You got up at 5, and you think a noise might have woken you?” The fireman paused. “The call came in at”, he looked at his notes. “5.19. That’s quite a gap from you noticing the fire and calling us”.

  April stood up. “I didn’t say I noticed the fire when I woke up. And I didn’t say I was definitely woken by a noise” She was tired, and emotional, and fed up and just wanted to go to bed but she knew she couldn’t. She didn’t want to answer these questions from the fireman who obviously thought she had burnt down her own café. She just wanted to walk away from all the problems and never come back. “I woke up, I made a coffee, I took it out on to the terrace and I smelt smoke. That’s all”

  Hope was more direct. “What are you getting at Officer?” she demanded. “Why all these questions about April’s movements this morning? Don’t you think it’s bad enough that her café has burnt down without being interrogated as well?”

  “We nee
d to start an investigation, I’m sorry”, he said looking at the pair of them with a look that suggested he was anything but sorry, “this fire was no accident. It was started deliberately. And we need to find out by who”.

  Chapter 20

  April could not believe how her fortunes had changed in less than a week. And not for the better. A week ago, she had been earning far more than she ever had in the autumn, she was taking on additional staff, she was becoming known as the “in place” for afternoon coffee and cake and was rushed off her feet every afternoon between two and four. She could not have imagined in her worst nightmares that within seven days she could have gone from there to here, a place where she had no café and appeared to be under suspicion of destroying it herself. She stared down from her terrace at the ruins of her café in despair. She was too numb to even cry.