What I found were the keyhole gardens completely weed-free, with the vegetables we’d planted already taking root and growing quickly, and the compost cylinders layered with kitchen scraps, cardboard, eggshells, coffee grounds, and grass clippings. “It’s going great,” a voice said from behind me.
I turned to see Angie wearing a pair of garden gloves, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’d spent a little time helping the day I’d been here to set up the gardens and had seemed mostly uninterested, but now it seemed she’d taken a robust interest in maintaining them. “I can see that! They look amazing. Everyone’s into the composting?”
She smushed her lips together in a strange, frowny expression. “They are. It gives them something to do. Everyone’s been out here pulling weeds or watering or bringing things to compost. It’s kinda cool to see.”
Giddiness washed over me. “It is! So cool.”
She gave a semblance of a smile, even though in reality it was closer to her lips being in a straight line. Was she so damaged by whatever traumas she’d endured that she might never be truly happy again? She looked proud, but she definitely didn’t share my visible enthusiasm.
“Meg told me you work at Yeast of Eden. The bread shop?”
“I do. I’m kind of an apprentice. Have you been?”
“No. Never had the chance.”
An idea cultivated in my mind. If the women at the shelter couldn’t—or hadn’t—come to Yeast of Eden, I’d bring Yeast of Eden to them. The entire idea behind Olaya’s Bread for Life program was to empower women from different backgrounds and income levels. To give them a marketable skill. To celebrate their cultures, their families, and to help them cultivate something real that belonged to them and could never be taken away.
What if, I thought, we expanded the Bread for Life program, bringing it to Crosby House? Zula, Claire, Amelie, and Esmé could volunteer, if they were interested, to teach the women how to bake. Many, I imagined, already knew how and had their own stories to share. They just needed permission.
The door from the house opened and Meg and Esmé came out to the yard. Esmé, I thought, looked normal—as if she hadn’t gone MIA for a few days or had the tense conversation we’d had at the Shrimp Shack.
“I didn’t know you were coming today, Ivy,” Meg said. She smiled in a way I didn’t think Angie could. It was genuine and bright and full of pride. “Can you believe these gardens? They look amazing. Everyone is so into it.”
“That’s what Angie was saying. I’m so glad.” I wriggled my fingers over a basil plant. It had to have nearly doubled in size in the few days it had been growing. “We did good.”
She held her arm out to me. I fist-bumped her and she grinned. “We did do good. So good.”
Esmé pulled a small basil leaf off, tore it in half, and put it to her nose. “I love this smell. The entire country of Italy must smell like basil, don’t you think?”
I’d never been, but it was a great image to have in my head. “If it doesn’t, it should.”
“Meg,” Angie said. “Did you talk to Vivian?”
Meg looked at her, shaking her head. “Was I supposed to?”
“She was looking for you earlier. Something about dinner tonight, I think.”
“Oh. Right. Okay.” Dinner was a long way off, but Vivian ran a tight ship and Meg scurried off to find her.
I’d been thinking about how to broach any topic with Esmé after the Shrimp Shack Friday night. I’d worried that she’d be put off by me, or, I don’t know, hostile. But she wasn’t. She acted normal, as if I’d never told her I’d snooped in her room uninvited. The three of us stood together around the keyhole gardens in an awkward silence. I was ready to head back inside to find Vivian Cantrell myself so she could direct me in other ways I could be helpful at Crosby House, but Angie’s voice stopped me. “I heard you were there when that guy was hit by a car.”
“I was,” I said just as Esmé spoke up.
“You know him, Angie. It was Ben Nader. He volunteers here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Angie said.
“You know Ben?” I asked. It shouldn’t have surprised me—after all, the guy had spent time here—but it did. I’d been so focused on everyone else.
Angie played with the loose fingers on her gloves, pinching the fabric, tugging at it, then letting it go. “Yeah, right. He did some painting. I had to leave my room when he came to work.”
I felt like a gong had sounded and was now reverberating in my head. “He painted your room?”
“Alabaster white,” she said, naming what had to be a designer paint store color. Took him two days.”
“Plus measurement and prep,” I said, raising the inflection of my voice at the end to pose it as a question. “I’m sure it’s hard to be put out of your space.”
Esmé drew in a sharp breath. Why? I wondered. Angie ignored her and asked me, “And you discovered that body? Sandra Mays?”
Once again, I nodded. “That was horrible.”
“Do they have any suspects?” she asked.
Esmé hadn’t said anything, but I heard her exhale. Sensed her anxiousness as she waited for my reply. “The police have a few leads,” I said vaguely. “Ben has come out of his coma, so that’s good, too.”
“He did?” Esmé’s voice rose an octave.
Meg came back out to join us. “Who did what?” she asked, bending over to pick a weed from the garden.
“Ben Nader,” I said, watching the nuances of Esmé’s reaction. “He’s awake.”
I thought Esmé flinched. She was seriously freaked out over Ben. I hadn’t really thought she could be a legitimate suspect, but maybe she was.
“That’s great,” Meg said. When she turned around, she held a bundle of basil like a bouquet. She handed Esmé some of the herbs.
Esmé smelled the basil, acting nonchalant. “He’s going to be okay then?”
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Are the police guarding him?” she asked.
Why did she want to know? I wondered. I spoke slowly. “The police have a guard outside his room.”
“A guard?” Angie perked up. “Why does he need a guard? Wasn’t it an accident?”
“I think the police aren’t quite sure about that. With Sandra Mays’s murder right on the heels of Ben’s accident, I think they don’t want to take any chances.”
“So there’s a murderer on the loose in Santa Sofia?” Angie’s asked. “Is there any news on what happened to Ms. Mays?”
All three of them swiveled to look at me. “There are people of interest,” I said, “but that’s all I know.”
Meg’s eyes grew wide. “Like who? The husband? It’s always the spouse, isn’t it?”
“She wasn’t married.”
“Oh my God!” For someone who’d been so shy and reserved when I’d first met her, she’d certainly blossomed—into a bit of hysteria at the moment. “Is Angie right? Should we be worried?”
“Sandra Mays’s murder was personal,” I said, disabusing her of the notion that there was a serial killer on the loose in town.
“She is right,” Esmé said. “Someone met her up on that roof. They should look at Mack Hebron. Those two, they did not get along.”
Meg gawked. “Really? The chef? You think he could be a killer?”
“Not getting along doesn’t mean you’re going to kill a person,” Angie said. “If it did, we’d all be guilty of murder.”
The three women fell silent, but met each other’s eyes. They’d escaped similar fates. What had brought them to Crosby House bound them together.
I left them at the keyhole gardens to go find Vivian Cantrell. It was a small thing, but so much about what had happened in the last week couldn’t be pieced together in a way that made sense. Confirming the truth of the small things felt like it mattered. “Do you have a minute?” I asked Vivian when I found her at her desk in her office.
She beckoned me in. “I do. Just a few, though.”
“I’ll b
e quick. I visited Ben Nader in the hospital the other night. He’s awake now.”
She’d been only half paying attention, but now her chin lifted and her eyes drilled into me. “I didn’t realize you knew Mr. Nader.”
“He’s actually the reason I came to Crosby House in the first place.” I’d left that direct connection out when I’d first spoken to her, but now I needed her to know about it. “He’s part of the team working on a reality show here in town. America’s Best Bakeries.”
Recognition dawned on her face. “I knew I knew you from somewhere. You work there. At Yeast of Eden, I mean.”
I thought back, trying to remember if I’d mentioned that fact on the application or during either of my first two meetings with Vivian. I guess I hadn’t. “I do. After Ben was hit by that car, I heard he volunteered here. That’s why—”
“It sparked an interest in you to give back to those who’ve been suffering,” she said, finishing my thought more eloquently than I’d have been able to.
“It did. He did. I saw him Friday night. He’s come out of the coma he was in. He mentioned that he’d been doing some painting for you. Some of the bedrooms?”
Vivian went back to scanning the paper she held. “That’s right. He is the best kind of volunteer. He does the prep work, buys the paint, and does the work himself. I don’t know if he’ll still be able to do that after what happened, but hopefully. Eventually.”
“He was going to paint Esmé’s room?”
She pulled a file folder from a holder on her desk and flipped it open. She used her index finger as a guide as she scrolled down the information on the sheet. “Here it is. Ben painted Angie’s room. Esmé’s room. Mickey’s. Louise is next. Or, I guess we’ll see if he’s able to continue.”
He’d measured and painted. Come and gone. And, it seemed, his story of being caught by Esmé in her room checked out.
Chapter 23
A week had passed since Ben was run down outside the bread shop. A week, and I was no closer to the truth about why he’d been targeted or who was behind it than I’d been the moment it had happened.
Two more days, and it would be a week since the discovery of Sandra’s body. Same story. No real suspects. No closer to the truth. No closer to justice.
The one person I hadn’t had the chance to talk to, yet who had a solid link to the victims, and who seemed to have had to have some deep-seated feelings about Sandra Mays, was Mack Hebron. Thankfully, in true Hollywood fashion, the show had to go on. That became clear when Mack showed up with his crew Tuesday afternoon (minus Sandra Mays and Ben Nader) . “We have to retape the portions that had Sandra,” he informed us.
Esmé, Claire, Amelie, and Zula gathered around him, with Olaya and me slightly on the outside of the little circle. Maggie had sidled up next to Tae and whispered something in his ear. Ah, young love. It looked like they’d gone from zero to sixty in a matter of days.
“I’ll just redo the intros and transitions. We’ll edit it all together. It’ll be like Sandra was never part of it.”
That seemed like a coldhearted statement because she had, in fact, been here. She’d leaned over Zula’s station when she’d made the hembesha. She’d asked some of the interview questions when I’d been in the hot seat. Surely she had done the same when others had been in the hot seat, too. From their expressions, I could see everyone was turned off by Mack’s callous remark, but none of us said anything.
“Go ahead,” Olaya said, “but we will continue our session. Today Esmé is taking us through a traditional bread from the Jalisco region of Mexico. It is called tachigual.”
Of all the women, Esmé had been the most excited about sharing one of her country’s traditional breads with our group. “It’s unique there because not many people make it. They mix it by hand. It is stuffed with nuts and raisins. And it is baked in an open oven made of brick and clay, heated by a wood fire. No one else does it that way anymore,” she told us before Mack got here.
She’d prepared the starter at home the day before, which we’d all use. “It is a mixture of flour and water. That is all. It sat all of yesterday and for the night. Now it is ready to use. There is a whole-wheat version of this bread that is sweetened only with piloncillo.”
“Cones of brown sugar,” Olaya translated.
“But we will make the type that is made with white flour and white sugar, and then we blend in raisins and many toasted nuts.”
Esmé had been halfway through her instructions and we were elbow-deep in hand mixing our dough when Mack showed up unannounced. “I won’t disturb you at all,” he’d said after telling us what he needed, but he directed Tae to get some close-up shots of the contents of our bowls and the loaf Esmé had sitting at her station.
Meanwhile he tested his mic, someone fussed with his hair, he did a sound check, circled his finger in the air indicating to his crew that he was all set to go, and he was off. He said the same things he and Sandra had said together, ending his new intro with, “We’ve found it right here in Santa Sofia, California. It’s one of the best bakeries in America and is owned by the hardworking Olaya Solis. Today, we are visiting Yeast of Eden.”
Mack didn’t take long. Time is money, as they say. When he was done, he threw up his hand and turned toward us. “I think we have everything we need. Thank you, ladies. I appreciate your time and help with this.”
Olaya acknowledged him with a curt nod of her head. I could tell that she was completely done opening up her bread shop to people who, in her opinion, did not appreciate or understand what she was about. “You never asked me about the history of Yeast of Eden,” she said, leaving Esmé to lead the others as they finished mixing their dough. I’d finished mine and had shaped it into the round just like Esmé’s. The others still had their hands deep in their dough and it looked like they loved every second of it. I had washed the dough from my hands and now I stood beside Olaya.
Mack rolled his hand at Tae, who immediately hoisted his camera onto his shoulder and began filming. I don’t think Olaya noticed. She was in a mood, ready to school the Mack Hebrons of the world about their casual interest in the bread that was her sole passion. “We live in a time of instant gratification and tasteless food. Government subsidizing and low nutrition. My passion for bread represents the opposite of all of that. Yeast of Eden is about taking the time for the long rise, developing taste that is subtle and complex at the same time. It is about farm-to-table quality and ingredients packed with nutrition.
“I started with just six types of artisan breads. The archetypes. Sourdough baguettes, whole wheat, Normandy rye, kalamata olive, rosemary olive oil, and country white sourdough. These breads are the foundation of everything we bake here. We use farm-to-table single origin wheat, all natural ingredients, and wild yeast from organic grape skins. This all results in our signature crusty bread. Every loaf is baked to the highest quality. It is not a mass production. It is a single kitchen filled with energy and love, and it is this energy and love that has given Yeast of Eden the reputation it now holds.”
For the first time ever, Mack looked nonplussed. He was startled, as if he’d been given a scolding by a nun at the convent school. He blinked, and just like that, his expression returned to its normal confidence. “And your bread truly is amazing, Olaya. Every loaf is a work of art. What you’ve created here in this little idyllic town is incredible.”
“Yes,” she said. “I think so. And it is thanks to women like Esmé and Claire, Zula and Amelie—and to my sisters and Maggie here, who runs the front of the store, and to Felix and Ivy, my apprentices who I am teaching so that the history of my bread goes on—it is thanks to these people that Yeast of Eden is what it is today. That it is here to be featured on your television show.”
She stopped, but the unspoken part of her sentence hung in the air. On your television show that rests on the laurels of someone else’s hard work.
Mack called “Cut.” Olaya spun around and returned to the kitchen. I watched her go, the
weight of her speech on my shoulders. I’d talked her into doing the show. Now we had an injured cameraman, a dead woman, and a host who didn’t seem to understand the significance of the bread shop Olaya poured her heart and soul into. I knew her well enough to understand that what happened to Ben and Sandra was taking a toll on her. She felt as if it had all happened on her watch, at her business. She couldn’t have stopped it, and it had nothing to do with her, but I was more determined than ever to get to the bottom of things.
Mack was halfway out the front door of the shop when I decided I wanted to ask him a question. Emmaline had already brought him in for questioning. His alibis were not airtight, and he clearly wasn’t in mourning for Sandra. But was he behind her death?
I chased after him. “Mack, do you have a minute?”
He stopped, but didn’t turn around until I caught up with him. He kept his head down and his eyes were closed. “Hang on,” he said, his voice thick. He shook his head, finally turning to me. His eyes were red. He swiped away a wayward tear. The man had been crying. “Sorry,” he said, swallowing hard.
“Are you okay?” I asked after a good thirty seconds. “Can I get you something?” Like a slice of rosemary olive loaf to give him comfort.
“I’m not heartless, you know.”
He’d certainly sounded heartless a little while ago, but he looked heartbroken now. I stayed quiet, hoping he’d elaborate. He did. “I actually cared about her. Sandy. Sandra. She wanted more than I did. She knew that upfront, but it still ended badly. I did care about her, though.”
“I can see that, Mack.”
I guided him to one of the outdoor bistro tables on the sidewalk outside Yeast of Eden and sat across from him. He sank down, propping his elbows on the metal gridded surface and resting his head in his hands. I let him be, giving him time to gather his emotions.
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