Dough or Die

by Winnie Archer

  “He was in my room there, do you know that?” She paled. “I got back one day after work and he was in my room.”

  “Who was in your room?”

  “Ben Nader.”

  A memory of the first day of filming at Yeast of Eden came to me. “Esmé, is that why you were upset when you came out of the interview room that first day at the bread shop?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you tell me why? What happened?”

  “I did not expect to see him . . . there. Crosby House, it is a safe haven. Protected. It was . . . was strange to see him somewhere else.”

  “Why was he in your room?”

  “He was painting, but not my room, so I do not know. He played it off like it was a mistake, but it felt wrong.”

  Every nerve in my body zinged. It sounded like maybe Ben Nader wasn’t quite as squeaky-clean as he came across.

  “No one should be able to come into my bedroom without my permission,” Esmé said.

  The statement was directed at me as much as at Ben, and I couldn’t blame her. She was right. Crosby House was supposed to be a space for the women and children who were there. We’d both violated that rule.

  I held my hands up to stop her. She knew something, but she seemed scared. Of what? Or of who? “Wait—”

  She stood abruptly, her chair nearly toppling over from the force of her shoving it back. “I have to go.”

  She grabbed the key ring from the table and without a backward glance, she disappeared.

  Chapter 20

  After my encounter with Esmé at the Shrimp Shack, I’d gone home to shower, change, and let Agatha out. I couldn’t shake the fear that had clearly coursed through her and her abrupt departure. I needed to give her time. Hopefully she’d come around and be willing to tell me what had her so spooked.

  A text from Emmaline came in just as I was leaving for dinner at my dad’s. Ben Nader is awake.

  Okay! If I couldn’t get Esmé to give me anything more, maybe Ben could fill in the gaps. I took Agatha with me in the car, calling Billy along the way. It wasn’t hot out, but I didn’t like to leave Agatha alone in the car for longer than five minutes or so, and I didn’t know how long I’d be inside with Ben. He agreed to meet me so he could take Agatha and I’d be free to visit Ben.

  I stopped at a florist to pick up a small arrangement, then hightailed it to the hospital. Mercy Hospital of Santa Sofia was located inland on the north side of town. Billy was already there waiting for me when I arrived. “I’ll be at Dad’s in a little while,” I told him as we transferred the pug from my car to his arms.

  Billy took after our father, with gentle waves in his dark hair, his fit stature, and nary a freckle in sight. I was the spitting image of my mother. The topknot was currently my best friend.

  Billy was five eleven and with his broad shoulders, Agatha looked a lot smaller than she was as he cradled her. “Why are you going to the hospital?” he asked.

  “That hit-and-run that happened outside Yeast of Eden? The man is here at Mercy. I want to check on him.”

  He cocked a brow at me. “The case Em’s working?”

  “Well, yeah. One of them.” Emmaline was the sheriff, so technically she worked every case.

  “Why do you need to see the guy?” he asked, tucking Agatha into the extended cab of his truck.

  “Em asked me to keep my eyes and ears open. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Did she deputize you or something?”

  “Or something,” I said. “There’s not a single lead and, I don’t know, there’s something off about him and a woman I know from the bread shop. I just want to talk to him.”

  He didn’t ask any more questions and a minute later, he’d driven off with a wave of his hand and I was heading to the information desk inside the hospital. The volunteer directed me to the elevator that would lead me up to the fourth floor. Since I wasn’t family, I’d have to ask at the nurse’s station about Ben Nader and whether or not I could see him.

  Turns out there was not a nurse in sight. I waited for a few minutes before registering what was going on. Someone was in crisis. Nurses and doctors streamed in and out of a room down the hall, each focused on their specific task. Everything else could wait.

  Visiting Ben Nader in his room was not the same as looking in Esmé’s room without her knowledge. Presumably Ben could tell me to leave if he wanted to. A huge whiteboard hung in the nurse’s station with columns for the last names of patients, abbreviations for what ailed each one, the attending doctor . . . and the room number. That was convenient.

  A moment later, I knocked on the door to the room in question. The response was a low sound—not exactly a come in, but I took it as one anyway. The man lay in his hospital bed hooked up to an IV drip, a steady beep coming from the monitor he was tethered to. “Mr. Nader?” I tiptoed in, keeping my voice low so as not to startle him. “Ben?”

  He slowly turned his head to me. Even with his head wrapped with bandaging, I could see that he had less hair than I’d realized. Not bald, but definitely headed in that direction. Without his signature ball cap on, he looked older. More frail. I supposed that was true for most people lying supine in a hospital bed. “Ivy?” he croaked as he tried to push himself up to elevate his head. He lay back, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Ivy.”

  “Let me help you.” I gently propped his shoulders up and fluffed up a pillow, helping him scoot backward slightly so his head was raised. He found the remote control and pressed a button. A motor kicked into gear and the head of the bed rose.

  A wooden chair with a blue padded-fabric seat and backrest sat between his bed and the window. A lightweight sweater was draped over the back of it. “Do you mind if I sit?”

  He gestured vaguely to it.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked once he’d gotten the bed where he wanted it and laid the remote down again.

  He managed a wry chuckle. “Like I’ve been hit by a car.”

  “We’re still trying to understand it,” I said. “Do you remember it happening?”

  “I remember talking to my wife on the phone. And waking up here. Today.”

  “Your wife was home with your—?”

  “Grandson,” he finished.

  Right. “You’ve been through a lot. I’m so sorry.”

  “And Sandy,” he said softly.

  I wasn’t sure he’d know about that yet. My surprise must have shown on my face because he said, “Tammy—my wife—told me. And the sheriff was here earlier.”

  “I’m so sorry. I know you had a long history with her.”

  His eyes glassed, but no tears materialized. I imagined he was in shock over everything that he’d awakened to. “A very long history. We started out in this business together when we were both pups.”

  “Your wife said your and Sandy’s kids were in a playgroup together.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “She came into the bread shop today. She said the doctors were cautiously optimistic. I’m so glad they were right.”

  He closed his eyes for a long second. “Me too.”

  “Did you help Sandra get her start at the station?” I asked, still trying to understand the complexities of the Naders’ relationship with Sandra Mays.

  “I didn’t get her an in, if that’s what you mean. I was brand-new myself. I had zero clout. But we grew up together there. Into seasoned old dogs. That’s what I liked to say. She hated that expression, though. I am not an old dog, she’d say. But really she was. We both were. Been around a long time and seen a lot of things.”

  I settled back, relieved he was in the mood to talk. “What kind of things?”

  “This business makes you jaded, Ivy. Cynical. It’s sad, but true. I was perfectly okay with finishing out my career here in Santa Sofia, but Sandy still felt like a little fish in a little pond.”

  “But she was a Santa Sofia icon. She was a big fish here.”

  “Preaching to the choir. She didn’t see it t
hat way. Tammy never wants to move from here, and why should she? Her friends are here. Our grandson’s life is here. To start over at our age . . . it’s not what Tammy wanted, and it’s not really what I wanted.”

  I understood that sentiment. The move back to California from Texas had been tough for me on a lot of levels, one of which was the starting-over part. “Tammy said she and Sandra had had a falling-out of some sort. Was it over that?”

  He looked surprised. “Sounds like she spilled her guts to you.”

  I shrugged. “I was a shoulder to cry on, so to speak.”

  I fell silent, waiting to see if he’d answer my question. It took an awkward minute before he spoke again. “Tammy always felt . . . judged . . . by Sandy. Sandy thought women like Tammy made the wrong choice by staying home—first with our son, and then with our grandson.”

  That was the same thing Tammy had said. “They fell out over that work-versus-mom philosophy? Seems extreme. Why did Sandra even care?”

  Ben thought for a moment about how to answer that question. “Sandy had a pretty big self-importance meter.”

  Yeah. I’d witnessed that firsthand. “Ah, like she was always right?”

  “Exactly. Anyone who deigned to disagree. Bam!” I jumped when he clapped his hands suddenly, the sound loud and echoing in the hospital room. “You were cut off.”

  “Do you think she was happy?”

  I don’t know why it mattered exactly, but she hadn’t seemed happy to me and it made me sad that she’d died the way she did—alone and on a rooftop, but Ben rejected that notion. “She’s been pissed at me for a year. She wanted to move on and I didn’t. But she finally got what she wanted, so yeah, she was happy now. At least as happy as her genetic makeup allowed her to be. The Best Bakeries in America show with Mack Hebron as her co-host was going to put her on the map.”

  “Was the show her idea?”

  “According to her it was. She said she pitched the idea and the network loved it. They’re always looking for the next big thing, and who doesn’t like baked goods? They got Mack onboard. Trouble was, in case you didn’t notice, Sandy and Mack were like oil and water. They did not gel.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that. Seemed like she couldn’t stand him, and he tolerated her.” I’d considered him as her possible killer. What I didn’t see so far was why he’d be behind Ben’s accident, and I was still operating under the theory that the two incidents were connected. I thought about the dynamic I’d observed between them, though. She pushed his buttons and defied his authority as the showrunner. Could he have had enough of her? Could he have been the one she’d met on the roof of the bread-shop building?

  “Here’s the thing I’m stumped about, Ben,” I said, deciding I just needed to cut to the chase. He looked at me expectantly. “You’d just rediscovered the ladder to the roof. How did Sandra know about it?”

  His chin dipped, and I thought I saw a wash of guilt slipping onto his face, but then he lifted it again, shook his head, and said, “I don’t know.”

  If I believed Ben, there hadn’t been much love lost between him and Sandra Mays. That supported the idea that he had no reason—or occasion—to have told her about his recent rediscovery of the ladder to the roof. So either he told someone else—presumably the killer—or someone else already knew about it. Either way, it made the most sense that Sandra was lured up to the roof for a private meeting that turned deadly.

  “Did you tell anyone else about the roof?” I asked.

  “My wife, of course, but that’s it.”

  Tammy hadn’t mentioned that Ben had told her about his rediscovery. Curious, I thought, but I let it go since she seemed to have an ironclad alibi. I moved back to Sandra and Mack. “The other day, Sandra said something to Mack about what happened in New York. What was that about?”

  He scoffed. “A love affair gone wrong. Mack is notorious for his little . . . dalliances, shall we say? Sandy thought she’d be more than that. When it turned out she wasn’t, she went a little Glenn Close on him. If he’d had a rabbit, I’d have told him to watch out for its safety.”

  Wow. That was an old reference. My mom had loved Michael Douglas, and Fatal Attraction had been one of her go-to rainy-day movies. “Could Mack . . .” I trailed off, unsure if I wanted to voice my question aloud.

  Ben snapped his gaze up at me. “Could Mack have killed Sandy, is that what you were going to ask?”

  Sandra Mays had done nothing to hide her frustration with Mack. I leaned forward, resting my forearms on my knees. “Do you think it’s possible?”

  Ben laid his head back against the pillows, letting his eyes drift closed. “You’re full of questions. Why are you so curious?”

  “First you were hit by a car outside the bread shop, then Sandra was killed on the roof. It doesn’t bode well for business. I care about Olaya and don’t want this to affect her.”

  He didn’t say anything for a beat. Finally he sighed. “I wouldn’t have pegged Mack Hebron as a murderer, but it sounds to me like it was a crime of passion. If they met up there on the roof and argued, maybe she got his goat. Maybe he snapped. Or maybe it was someone else.”

  Maybe. I wanted to explore the other thing that had been on my mind since my talk with Tammy Nader. There wasn’t a delicate way to ask him if he and Sandra had had an affair at any time during their working relationship, but it was something I needed to know. “You and Sandra were just . . . friends?”

  He gave a harsh laugh. “That’s right. Just. Friends. And barely that toward the end. I couldn’t help her get ahead the way Mack could.”

  “But she did want you to go to New York with her, to bigger and better things.”

  “She did, but me not going wasn’t going to hold her back. I was just a familiar thing to her, nothing more. We were kids when we started out at the station. We didn’t know what we were doing and we grew up together there. But her aspirations were not my aspirations. I just want to stay here in Santa Sofia and raise my grandson with my wife. Sandra didn’t understand that.”

  “Could she have done this to you?” I asked, glancing at his bandaged and casted body, hating to even ask the question aloud.

  “Sandy? Try to run me down?” He laughed again, but this time it was decidedly amused. “No way. She took her anger out on me passive-aggressively. Sandy is not the kind of person—sorry, was. Was not the kind of person to get her hands dirty.”

  Ordinarily I would take that to mean that she’d have other people do the dirty work for her, but his meaning was that it was too much of a stretch to think she’d been involved in Ben’s accident. I switched directions. “I heard you volunteered at Crosby House.”

  His brows pinched together. “How did you hear that?”

  “You know the police. They had to gather all kinds of background information on you after the accident. Word just got around.”

  “But that place is off the record. Secure.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Not that secure. You inspired me, so I signed up to volunteer, was accepted, got the address in my confirmation email, and started this week.”

  He worked to sit up a little straighter, flexing his hand against the mattress, wincing as he tweaked the IV catheter taped into the vein on the top of his hand. “What?”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say Ben looked a little panicked. Interesting. I kept my voice nonchalant. “I started volunteering there. We set up keyhole gardens in the backyard so now the women can compost and grow vegetables.”

  “Oh,” he said, sinking back to his pillow again. “Oh, that sounds good.”

  “Everyone was really nice. I met a few of the women. Vivian Cantrell, of course. Mickey. Meg. A few others.” I paused for emphasis. “And then, of course, you know Esmé.”

  His skin turned sallow. “Who?” he asked, but I didn’t buy his innocent question.

  “You know, Esmé Adriá. From the Bread for Life classes at Yeast of Eden.”

  “Oh. Right. The Crosby House is a shelte
r. It’s private. It’s not for me to say I recognize someone. That’s part of the volunteer code, if you will.”

  He had a point. A good point, actually, but Esmé’s story about catching Ben in her room at the shelter and my memory of her leaving the little conference room at Yeast of Eden after she’d gone through one of her personal interviews with Mack, Sandra, and Ben told me that Ben had something to hide. Esmé’s face had drained of color and she’d looked spooked. Completely, entirely shaken. It had been an extreme reaction. I’d thought so then, but now, in retrospect, I felt it even more. There was something Ben wasn’t saying, but did it have to do with the hit-and-run, or with Sandra Mays’s death? “She said she caught you in her room.”

  Ben angled his head slightly, peering at me through his tired eyes. “I’m a volunteer there. The director wanted the bedrooms painted. I was measuring when the young woman came in.”

  He rattled off the response a little too easily, I thought. As if it had been well rehearsed.

  “Is there anything else, Ms. Culpepper?” Ben asked suddenly. “I’m tired. I need to rest.”

  Which meant my unofficial interview of the victim—who felt oddly like a suspect, but of what?—was over. “Of course. I’m so glad you’re doing better.”

  “If you see my wife, please ask her to bring me some water.”

  “Of course.” I didn’t see Tammy in the hallway, but I found a nurse and passed along the message. As I left, I focused on the fact that Ben had called me Ms. Culpepper at the end. That was a change from the way he’d greeted me initially, so something had definitely gotten his hackles up. Something, I was sure, that had to do with Esmé Adriá.

  Chapter 21

  The house where I’d grown up was at the top of a small hill on Pacific Grove Street. Billy and I had spent our summers outside playing with the other neighborhood kids. Whether we rode bikes, played hide-and-seek, or hiked down to the beach, we moved in a pack like a swarm of bees. When one turned, we all turned. They were good memories, if bittersweet without my mother around now, and I treasured them.