Burned At The Bake

by Ashley Cain

  “Shouldn’t provide too much competition for you when you reopen” Hope said on this her latest visit, “unless of course you don’t bother reopening and become his best customer instead”. She looked pointedly at the glass of wine that April had just poured herself.

  “Hmmm” said April non-committedly, determined not to rise to the insult that was just below the surface of Hope’s tongue. She really wasn’t at all sure what her plans were. If she was going to have lunch and dinner competition from Connor, then maybe she should concentrate more on the bakery side. The cake business was really taking off, and if she concentrated on freshly made pastries, waffles and pancakes in a morning, sandwiches at lunchtime made with homemade bread, and coffee and cakes in the afternoon maybe the café could survive with just her, Rachel and Hope working there. It would mean there was no job for James and she would have to pay him notice but maybe Miguel could offer him a job. Or Connor. She sighed. She didn’t want to have to ask Connor for anything. The spark of optimism she felt every time she considered the bakery always flickered and died when she thought about it too deeply. But the insurers had almost finished their investigation and the police could not find any leads and had all but given up. She would have to make plans soon.

  Chapter 22

  The white envelope was waiting for her on the mat when she opened the door to the cabin. She let Rachel follow her in before picking it up and looking at it. It looked expensive, her name in stylised italics and the back flap sealed with wax showing an impression of a sailing boat.

  She opened it as Rachel settled herself on to the couch and pulled out a thick postcard sized invitation. The back was a deep blue with stylised white writing. The calligraphy writing on the front invited her to the grand opening of the Bay Harbour Grill, where champagne and canapes would be served. Looking at the date April realised it was tomorrow.

  “You’ve been invited as well have you?” Rachel asked as she looked up at the invitation. “Miguel and I have been invited, the card was posted through our letterbox last night”.

  “Are you going?” April asked. She had no intention of going herself but was interested in what Connor had done to the old teashop. It would be good if Rachel was going and could then let her know how he had renovated the place and what his menu looked like.

  “No. Miguel is working again”. She pulled a face and April felt for her. Miguel always seemed to be working. “I’m not really bothered anyway; I want to make those steak pies tomorrow night. We are attending the Christmas Fair at St Agnes on Saturday remember and it would be good to try out the hot pie and mash there, see how popular it is”.

  It had been Rachel’s idea to add savoury pies as well as pastries, cakes and flans to the bakery products that they produced. April had talked through with Rachel her idea to just concentrate on the bakery side, with light meals and cakes fresh from the oven the only meals that would be served in the cafe. Rachel had thought it was brilliant and had come up with the idea of adding savoury pies in the winter to the lunchtime menu of sandwiches in case someone wanted a hot meal. They were planning on trying out the pies and cakes at the handful of Christmas markets in Jersey throughout December to see which were the most popular, and also use this as the opportunity to publicise their own date for re-opening.

  April planned to open in early January, once her stepfather had cleared away what was left of the old wooden structure that had been Ruby’s café and built a permanent wall at the end of the café with French doors opening outside. Later in the year he would construct a large patio that would hold around a dozen tables. Inside he was going to enlarge the kitchen over the Christmas and new year period to create a much larger space for baking. She would be left with space for about 24 people to eat inside. The Bluewater Bakery, as it would be known, would be less than a third of the size of the old Bluewater café, but she hoped the sale of their products to local shops and businesses, and the reduced costs with less staff, would mean her income going forward would be about the same. As she often reminded herself when she had doubts, her grandmother had made a reasonable living for over fifty years with just six tables and a seed cake recipe, so she should certainly be able to make a living out of the bakery.

  “How is Miguel finding his new job?” April had thrown the invitation on the kitchen worktop and had grabbed a couple of glasses and a chilled bottle of white wine from the fridge. “Is he enjoying it?”

  “He is regretting taking it if I am honest and I think he was hoping that you would reopen the café exactly as it was and he would be able to have his old job back. It is long hours and it isn’t exactly what Mr Fletcher had promised”.

  “How so?” April was interested. “I know you don’t like Ivan Fletcher and, to be honest he was never my favourite customer, but I always thought he was a good employer if a little demanding”.

  “I’m sure he is” Rachel said taking the first sip of wine appreciatively. “But Miguel never sees him. How Mr Fletcher had described the job, Miguel was going to be head chef running the restaurant and making all the decisions, but there is an executive chef who has come over from one of Mr Fletcher’s restaurants in London. He makes all the decisions and Miguel does all the work. Doesn’t listen to Miguel’s suggestions at all, and goes absolutely crazy if Miguel varies his dishes by one little thing. He screamed at Miguel the other day because Miguel had put the mushroom foam to the right of the piece of fish and not the left”.

  “That’s a shame”, April said, and she meant it. She was sorry that Miguel’s new job wasn’t working out the way he had wanted. She would have loved to have had him back working for her in the café, and wished there was something that she could do to help. She had made her decision now though and was too enthusiastic about the bakery to change her mind.

  “It is what it is” Rachel said. “You know Miguel, he won’t stay down for long. If he really doesn’t like it, he can always look for something else, but of course we are a bit indebted to Mr Fletcher for our home and so it’s a bit awkward”.

  “Maybe it will get better” April said. It was difficult that Miguel and Rachel’s home and work were dependant on one person, and she hoped it would work out for them. For all her own recent woes she at least had the security of having her own home and business, and success and failure in life was down to her and her alone.

  “Anyway, never mind about Miguel’s work, are you going to go to the opening and see what Connor has done?” Rachel asked. “God help everyone if he has made the canapes himself. If his cooking here was anything to go by, he will poison everyone”.

  “No I’m not, and if I had been planning to go I am sure he would definitely try and poison me. I still think he is behind the fire because I sacked him. He is so arrogant; he has probably never had a woman say no to him before about anything”.

  “Are the police any closer to finding out what happened?” Rachel knew that April would have told her if anything definite had been discovered, but wondered if they had given any hints. The investigation appeared to have come to a standstill.

  “No” April shrugged. “Sergeant Tozier has been around a few times but has got nothing much to say. Apparently, Jerome and Sylvain left for France on the ferry on the evening before the café was set alight, so it was clearly not them. And according to the police Connor has a watertight alibi for the night in question”. She pulled a face.

  “So, Jerome and Sylvain were always planning on going to France, and they never gave you any indication that they were going? I can’t believe it”. Rachel sounded incredulous.

  “I can’t believe it either”. April shook her head sadly. “My grandmother apparently always said that I was a bad judge of character. Hope thinks they had been pilfering off me for years, just petty stuff, a tray of eggs here and there, a loaf of bread, a cake now and again. Items that would be unnoticeable at the time but could well have added up to hundreds if not thousands of pounds over a year. She thinks that when I mentioned the missing cake it put the wind up th
em and they realised that they couldn’t take anything more of me and decided to go and find someone else to rob”. She shrugged.

  “If it wasn’t Jerome and Sylvain because they weren’t here, and it wasn’t Connor because he had an alibi, then who could it be?” Rachel screwed her face up in confusion. “You haven’t got any other enemies, have you?”

  “As far as I knew I didn’t have any enemies at all. And that is what the police don’t understand. There is no motive and no leads. Nobody saw anything on the nights in question, there were no strange cars in the area, nobody walking around who shouldn’t have been here. It’s a complete mystery and I would imagine that when the bakery is up and running the police will soon forget all about it. The insurance company aren’t happy and I am sure deep down they suspect me of burning it down for the insurance, but there is no evidence of that either thank goodness. At least whoever did it didn’t try and frame me”. April shuddered with horror at the thought.

  “I wasn’t going to say this, but given what you have just said I feel I should”. Rachel hesitated and April turned to her.

  “What?”

  “Well, we met Connor in the carpark the other night. He was just pulling in to his space in that fancy convertible sports car that he has, and we were unloading some shopping out of the boot of our car. He stopped to talk and even though we tried to ignore him he was very persistent and we had no option but to listen”.

  “What did he say?” April was very interested. Had he let slip something that would put his alibi in to question?

  “You’re not going to like this, which is why I hadn’t mentioned it before”. Rachel hesitated again. April thought she looked very grim; her usual happy countenance set in a frown. She was clearly very uncomfortable with the information she was going to impart.

  “He suggested that you might have done it yourself to get the insurance money. He said it was clear that you were struggling financially living in this old wooden shed, his words not mine”, she said hurriedly as she saw the anger flash in April’s eyes, “and he wouldn’t have put it past you to get the money and do a runner. He said that he had suggested this to the police and they had acknowledged that was a possible line of enquiry and they would be keeping an eye on what you did next”.

  “He did, did he?” April was almost lost for words. It was bad enough her suspecting that the insurance may think she had done it herself, but hearing someone else suggest it was almost too much to bear. “As if, as if”. She couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t say the words that she wanted to say, that to burn down her grandmother’s legacy would be like killing her memory. Unbidden, tears of rage came to her eyes.

  “Hey, don’t let it upset you, I wish I hadn’t said anything now. Miguel soon put him straight, told him where to go and that if he heard him spreading malicious rumours like that again he would have him to answer to. Connor just smirked and sauntered in to the apartment block. Nobody thinks that April, nobody at all”.

  April nodded and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. She wished it were true but she had a terrible suspicion that both the police and the insurance suspected her, and if Connor was spreading rumours some of her neighbours probably did as well. She thought that was the real reason why there had been little progress in the case. The police suspected there was nobody to look for but her.

  Chapter 23

  “You should go, at least you would find out what the competition is doing”.

  Rachel turned around from the batch of chicken and ham pies that she had just taken from the oven. The steak pies were ready to go in, enhanced with red wine and parsley, and the pot of vegetables in a blue cheese sauce was already cooked and cooling down ready for the vegetarian pie option. There was nothing left for April to do except help Rachel clear up.

  “I can’t leave you here on your own to clear up”. April knew that Rachel was more than capable of clearing up on her own, and the kitchen wasn’t that untidy, but it was a handy excuse. She really did not want to go to the opening of the Bay Harbour Grill.

  “You and I both know full well that you can” Rachel challenged. “All that is left for me to do is fill these pastry cases with the creamy vegetables and then wait for everything to finish cooking. There is nothing else to make and there is hardly any clearing up to do”. She looked around at the almost spotless kitchen.

  “You think we have enough pies for tomorrow?” April asked.

  “I think we have more than enough”. Rachel looked around her at the mound of pies covering almost every surface. “I will make sure that they are all chilling in the cold room before I go tonight. You may as well go April; it would be interesting to see what Connor has done with the place and find out what his plans are”.

  “Well, I might go for a bit but I am not going to stay long” One of the two minds that had been arguing in April’s brain for the last twenty-four hours was going to win shortly, and unexpectedly it appeared to be the one that was telling her to go that looked like it would emerge as the victor. One mind was telling her that she didn’t want to see Connor, and to attend would suggest to him that she was interested in what he was doing. The second mind however told her that if she was honest with herself, she did want to know what he had done to the place, and the closer the time got to the start of the party the more this mind told her she needed to find out. Stubbornness would do her no favours as she would no doubt spend a sleepless night wondering what he was doing and what she had missed. Surely it was better to find out for herself than rely on gossip. She untied her apron and placed it in the cupboard. “If you are sure you can manage, I will go and get ready”.

  “Of course, I can manage” Rachel smiled “I want to know all about it tomorrow”.

  April did not want to risk being one of the first to arrive and end up having to make small talk with people, or worse still answer questions about the fire and how it had started, and so timed her visit so that she arrived a fashionable fifteen minutes after the invite had said. Even so there were not that many people there when she arrived, and she was glad that she had made the effort to dress up given that there was nowhere to make herself inconspicuous. The light blue dress that she wore had a slight sparkle to the material and caught the light as she arrived, and she had unusually for her worn very high heels to give herself the ability to see around the room without appearing to.

  There was only about a dozen people in the room when she walked in, and disappointingly not a real housewife in sight. Connor was engaged by the bar talking to a man that she recognised from the local paper as being a local business man and didn’t notice her entrance. She nodded away the offer of a glass of champagne from the young woman by the door and looked around her in surprise. The room was decorated very similar in style to how the Bluewater café had been decorated before the fire, with blue and white rather than yellow and white striped fabric on the chairs and banquettes that lined both walls, and white marble tables. Old black and white photographs were displayed on the walls depicting fishing scenes of Jersey. The only additions that signalled this was a bar and not a smaller version of the Bluewater Café was the presence of the well-stocked bar at the back and oversized chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

  She was just wondering what Connor had hoped to gain from decorating it in such a similar style to the Bluewater café when she felt a presence at her side. It was Martha, carrying a silver tray on which was a bowl of creamy mayonnaise and some large prawns. “How are you April?” Martha asked softly, “I didn’t expect to see you here”.

  “I wasn’t going to come but curiosity got the better of me” she admitted. “How are you Martha?”

  Martha pulled a face. “I’m ok, Connor is a bit disorganised and if you ask me his heart isn’t really in it. He has left a lot of the decisions to Imelda Van Leeuwen, the woman over there. I think he has opened this place just to make money”.

  “Or to get back at me” April said. “It looks like a slightly more upmarket version of the Bluew
ater Café in here. I suppose I should be flattered, although I doubt that is the impression he wants me to have. I cannot imagine what I did to him that makes him hate me so much other than point out his failings as a cook. He must be incredibly thin skinned”.

  Martha moved closer to April’s head so she could speak in to her ear “I think he has a bit of a thing going with Imelda Van Leeuwen, and she is the one who has put up the money. She is Ivan Fletcher’s sister you know” She indicated with her head to the far side of the room where Ivan and Imelda were deep in conversation.