by Maymee Bell
“Things are going great.” I folded the slip back up and put it in the pocket, noticing I’d put on the jacket that had CHEF embroidered on the right side.
“I didn’t think they wouldn’t be. Thank you so much. I love how you just pitch right on in.” I wanted to pay him as many compliments as I could so he’d just consider the job. “And it’s exactly how a head chef behaves, and I’m sure the job could be yours,” I said over my shoulder on the way to the walk-in refrigerator.
“No.” He returned to what looked like mashed potatoes.
“Fine.” I sighed and mentally went down the list of ingredients I needed to make the cream puffs.
The creative mood for figuring out exactly what fillings I wanted wasn’t happening. There was no doubt in my mind that once I got my hands in the dough and the smell of the freshly baked puffs was surrounding me, my creative juices would flow.
In the meantime, I grabbed the eggs and the butter. When I grabbed the butter tub, something fell to the ground. I tilted my head to the side and looked past the tub of butter and eggs. It looked like a pack of Juicy Tart gum.
“The strangest thing just happened to me.” I made idle conversation with Nick as I put the ingredients down on the island near the electric mixer.
“What was that?” Nick stopped stirring the cream in the pot and looked over at me.
“Evelyn asked me to make my famous Surprise Puffs.” I cackled at the name.
I’d made all my pastry names up as a teen, and now they all sounded so silly. After all this time, they’d stuck. These names would never fly at The Manhattan.
“That’s the strange thing that happened to you?” He seemed a bit confused but went back to stirring the cream into the potatoes.
“Oh, no.” My mind was going from one thing to another, I was so distracted. I grabbed the dry ingredients from the dry shelf. “When I took the butter off the shelf, a pack of gum fell to the ground.”
“Pack of gum?” Nick dropped the spoon in the big pot. “Did you say gum?”
“As in chew-chew.” I had the flour bag tucked in the crook of my elbow and the salt container in my grip. I set them down next to the mixer.
Nick let out a loud sigh and dragged the paper hat off his head. He leaned on the island, visibly shaken up by what I’d said.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I was afraid I was right.” His words were hushed.
“About what?” I wasn’t following him. “Right about what?” I asked again to get his attention.
He blinked a few times, shook his head, and sucked in his bottom lip.
“Patrick,” he muttered. “I’ve been thinking about this whole murder thing. Evelyn is too easy to point a finger at since Emile was obviously intimidated by her.”
“You’re saying Patrick killed Emile?” I asked, a bit confused.
“I’m afraid so. He comes in real early to do some of the extra duties Evelyn had him doing, like the table linens, gathering the towels from the tennis court locker rooms, cleaning up the spa’s water glasses and plates of food the members have while in their treatment from the day before, things like that. Patrick’s parents rely on his income to help pay the bills, with his mom sick and all. Patrick is hoping for a college baseball scholarship, because without it, he’ll be the RCC dishwasher the rest of his life.” Nick walked over to the refrigerator. He looked down at the pack of gum. “When he has night practice, he comes in early to make up the hours he misses. Emile teased him so much and called him names. Emile was so mad that Evelyn had Patrick come in early because he never did anything right. Emile said that he’d have to come in each morning and have to redo everything Patrick had done. And he let Patrick know it too.”
“How does a pack of gum make you think that Patrick did it?” I asked, and made mental notes of everything he was telling me.
“Patrick didn’t have refrigerator duties. The refrigerator was one of the first places Emile went, and Patrick knew it. It’d be a perfect place for him to hide until Emile got here.” Nick crouched in the corner of the refrigerator toward the door to show me what he was talking about. He lifted his left arm in the air. “When Emile opened the door”—Nick’s arm came down as if he were hitting something—“whack!”
I jumped. My eyes popped open.
“He must’ve hit Emile over the head and killed him.” He pointed to the pack of gum. “That’s proof he was in here. He’s always chomping on gum. Another thing Emile hated about Patrick.”
I gulped, adding yet another suspect to my mental list. At the rate I was going, everyone was going to be a suspect. It seemed as if Emile hadn’t gotten along with anyone.
“Doesn’t that make sense?” he asked, and looked around the refrigerator before he bent down and picked up the pack of gum.
“No!” I screamed. “Too late,” I groaned.
“Crap.” He dropped the gum after he realized he’d just tainted evidence. “Crap, crap, crap. I’ll call that cop.”
He headed out of the refrigerator and down toward Emile’s office. I left the gum on the floor and decided to start on the Surprise Puffs. I’d question Patrick when he came in, or at the very least, Carter would. Everything Nick had said made sense, but every reason someone on my list had to kill off Emile made sense. But whose motive was the real one?
Plus, the thought of the skillet used to whack Emile was still unsettled in my head. Whoever did it, I was sure, had brought in their own skillet to make it look like it was Emile’s. I knew in my bones that Emile hadn’t used an unseasoned skillet. That would be something a teenager like Patrick probably wouldn’t know. I doubt that Natalie ever cooked, so she probably wouldn’t know, either. Or her swanky husband. Plus, I still needed to get in front of Ella. My heart thundered in my chest.
The more I thought about the case, the more ingredients I added to the electric mixer. Before I knew it, I’d made enough batter to feed the entire Rumford community.
“How’s it going?” Evelyn called after me when she saw me walk by her office door.
“Good.” I snapped my head inside the door and looked around, trying to find her.
“Over here.” An arm shot up in the corner of the room from behind a few stacked boxes.
“How on earth do you find anything in here?” I asked, and stepped inside.
I could have sworn it was messier today than it had been yesterday.
“It’s a chaotic filing system only I understand.” She got to her feet and brushed her hands down her shirt. “I’m collecting all the written notices and warnings I’d given Emile over the years. This way Carter will see that he had plenty of warnings and I still managed to work with him.”
She held a bunch of papers in her hand and waved them in the air. Right next to her was a box with food inventory printed in black Sharpie marker on the side.
“Anything at this point can only help.” I pointed to the box on the floor. “What’s in there?”
She lifted the lid and showed me that it was filled with more ledgers that looked like the one I’d found in Emile’s office.
“Emile’s past ledgers.” She put the lid back on. “I don’t even know why I keep them. It’s not like we deviate too much from what we make each season, but now that he’s”—she paused and gulped—“gone…” Her voice cracked. “I guess it’s good I’ve got them, so in a pinch, we can see what he did order.”
“Do you mind if I take the box and look through them?” I asked.
“Have at it. It might help if I get this junk out of here and into the storage unit.” She pushed the boxes toward me.
“I found his current ledger in his office, and there appears to be a different handwriting in a couple of places.” It might’ve been nothing, but it struck me as odd given that Emile was such a stickler about his menus, ordering, and control of the kitchen.
“He was having a bout with carpel tunnel over the past month and had a hard time writing. He even used a computer for a little bit because he said he cou
ld hunt and peck with a finger.” She laughed as she recalled the memory. “We might’ve had our differences, but we had a friendship too.”
She was the second person to tell me about Emile’s carpal tunnel, which would make sense.
“I wanted to ask you about Patrick. The busboy.” I picked up the box and gripped it on both sides.
“What about him?” She moved a couple of the boxes out of both of the seats and gestured for me to sit down on one chair while she sat in the other one.
“It’s been brought to my attention that he’s been doing some extra work around the RCC in the mornings. Was he here the morning Emile was killed?” I asked.
“About that.” She hesitated for a second. “I’m sorta paying him under the table. I know it looks bad and all, but he’s a really great kid who needs the money.”
So she was telling me that she was illegally cooking the books to be able to pay him … this didn’t look good. It would just prove that she had something to hide, calling her character into question. I’d seen it done a bunch of times on those television crime shows.
“How?” I asked.
“He isn’t able to work every day now that he’s in practice. To help make up for the lost hours, I let him come in for the morning and do odds and ends.” Abruptly she stopped. Her eyes grew; her jaw dropped. She lifted her hand to her mouth.
“What?” I wondered what was going through her head.
“You don’t think?” She gasped between the cracks of her fingers. Her hand dropped; she closed her eyes. “They didn’t get along at all. Patrick told me that Emile bullied him. Emile told me it was to build character when I approached him about it. I did nothing to stop him.”
“I’m not sure what I think, but I know Patrick has a motive, just like you have a motive. Do you keep a record of him being here in the morning?” I asked.
“No. I trust Patrick and know he’s doing the extra work in the spa area as well as the tennis courts, because the managers there wouldn’t hesitate to let me know if he weren’t.” She slumped down in her chair. “Are you going to tell Carter?”
“I don’t know what else to do. I hate for the kid to go to jail for the rest of his life, but if he did it…” I waffled my hand in the other. “On the flip side, I’d hate for you to go to jail for a murder you didn’t commit.”
“The RCC will find out I’ve been lying on payroll.” Her voice was soft. “I’ll still lose my job.”
“How were you lying on payroll if he was doing the work?”
“All extra hours of help in the morning have to be approved by the committee. They didn’t approve Patrick’s new shift in the morning, saying the employees who work those areas the night before should already have the next day set up before they leave to go home. It should be included in their duties.” She gnawed her bottom lip. “That’s when I didn’t change his hours in the evening.”
“Did you tell my dad about Patrick and his hours?” I asked.
“Oh, Sophia,” she cried out. “I don’t think I can. If Arnold Devin found out that I didn’t take this to the board, he’ll use it against me in a campaign to fire me. Then he’d for sure replace me.”
Another character flaw for which Carter would rake her over the coals.
Chapter Thirteen
A late afternoon jog was a perfect way to work off all the Surprise Puffs I’d eaten. Especially since I’d made so many delicious fillings: vanilla cream, custard, coconut cream, lemon cream, chocolate cream, and strawberry cream. There wasn’t one that I didn’t taste, nor could I stop myself. These were the times I knew something was on my mind and stressing me out. A few weeks ago, it’d been the demise of my relationship, but today I had to blame it on Emile’s murder.
The pavement thumped underneath my shoes, thundering in my head, letting me escape from my thoughts—something that was much needed. The fresh country air filled my lungs and breathed new life into me, clearing out any blocks I was feeling. I’d been struggling with how to get Bryce’s Big Bird cake to stand up, and it weighed on me just as much as getting Evelyn off of Carter’s suspect list.
The keychain with my parents’ house key and the key Madison had given me for the old Ford’s Bakery jiggled in the small inside pocket of my running shorts. I’d seen on one of those crime shows that a key was a perfect stabbing weapon. Ever since then, I’d kept a key with me on my jogs through the city. New York City was actually very safe, but there were times when I’d get goose bumps rounding one of those big rocks in Central Park when no one was around and I’d take off in a sprint to get to civilization. I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it; I did feel a little nervous with a killer on the loose in Rumford, and I still couldn’t get Carter’s words out of my head when he’d told me to watch my own back.
It was funny how I knew what time it was by the position of the sun. That was something kids in Rumford instinctively knew. It had to be around four thirty, and Madison was going to pick me up around five to head on over to Natalie’s house. After that, we were going to the house listed in Charlotte’s neighborhood so I could bake the Crunchies for her late showing.
By the time I realized I needed to start running back, I was standing in front of the old bakery’s display window. The old red lettering that read FORD’S BAKERY in an arc across the window was mainly scraped off. There was an empty cake stand and a decorative tablecloth around it. Loving memories of standing there as a child salivating over the amazing pastries they’d made fresh that day flooded my memory, making me miss the simpler times in my life.
I took the keys out of my pocket and let myself in. The sun poured into the big room. The two-person café tables that dotted the café were still there. The two glass, dome-shaped display cases were empty, but the memories remained. There was even a hint of the sugar smell that I was sure was baked into the walls.
My eyes closed as I sucked in a deep breath. I walked over to the left side of the room and opened the door that had a cheap peel-and-stick OFFICE sticker on it. Excitement bubbled up in me. Many times I’d wanted to open the door and see if there were little bakery elves back there. Now was my chance.
A little bit of me really did want to see little people baking delicious treats, but when I opened the door, it was just a regular office with a desk, a few filing cabinets, and some dust.
“Silly girl,” I whispered, and smiled.
It was strange being in the bakery as an adult and not hearing the sounds of the laughter it brought to so many people. Sadness washed over me as I walked through the rest of the building and into the kitchen. The hum of the walk-in freezer and the walk-in fridge filled the space as I walked around and noticed the two ovens, two stoves, three sinks, and one big long workstation in the middle.
I ran my hand along the island and silently took in the magnitude of all the wonderful things that had been made in that very spot. My phone chirped, bringing out of my nostalgia. I dragged it out of the waist of my jogging shorts.
Madison: ON MY WAY.
Me: PICK ME UP AT FORD’S BAKERY. ON A JOG AND NOT ENOUGH TIME TO RUN BACK.
Madison: OKAY. BE THERE SHORTLY.
I bent down and looked into the door of the stove. My reflection stared back at me. The ponytail was still in place, and though I didn’t look fit to be seen in public, there was nothing I was going to be able to do about it now. Besides, I was on a mission to find out about Natalie and Emile’s secret love affair and which one of the Devins had killed him. Not to mention I was going to be baking after that. Nothing a good handwashing couldn’t fix.
While I waited for Madison to pick me up, I headed out of the kitchen, through the front of the store, and into the office, not without noticing the sun was going down. I flipped the lights on and sat down in the chair behind the desk. It was a good time to give the laundry service from the RCC a call to see what I could find out.
“Hello, this is Sophia Cummings. I’m the new chef at the Rumford Country Club, and I’m trying to get my schedule straight. I know that
you service the RCC, but can you tell me what day and time?” I wasn’t lying; if only for a couple of days, I was in charge of the kitchen.
“Let me look at the calendar,” the lady on the other end of the phone said. There was some shuffling of papers. “The RCC is every Monday morning at seven AM.”
“Can you give me the name of the person who does the pickup and delivery? I need to put them on a list to get into the RCC.” I was surprising myself at how good I was at this sleuthing stuff.
“Danny Mischler. Is there a problem with the service that you’ve seen since you’ve been there?” she asked with a concerned voice.
“Oh, no. In fact, he’s done a great job and I’d like to tell him myself. Do you happen to know his phone number?” I asked and opened the top drawer of the desk.
I found a piece of paper and pencil.
She spouted off a number and we said our good-byes.
Immediately I dialed Danny, but when the answering machine picked up, I left a message.
I tapped the piece of paper with the pen. At the top I made two columns and wrote SUSPECT in one and MOTIVE in the other. One by one I began to list anyone I could think of who would’ve killed Emile.
It was sorta like looking at a recipe and seeing what ingredients fit and which ones to take out.
Evelyn was first on the list. The only motive I could think of was killing Emile over the fight they’d had, which didn’t seem like much of a reason, but I wrote it anyways.
Patrick was next. Not only had he been bullied, but he liked to cook, and was Emile bullying him about that and not being man enough to follow his dream? It’d be enough to send a young kid over the edge.
Had Emile told Patrick’s dad, and had Patrick’s dad killed Emile for poisoning his son’s mind, potentially hurting his baseball career?
I sucked in a deep breath and gnawed on the end of the pen before writing down Brett’s name. Charlotte sure would be mad if she saw me writing this one. Regardless, Brett was definitely upset about the thought of serving French food, which seemed to be Emile’s passion, at the wedding, not only because Brett couldn’t pronounce the names but because the cost was outrageous. It was enough to keep him on the list even though he did have an alibi. Yes! You never know. Besides, it was a silly list made by me. A baker, as Carter so liked to remind me.