He looked up suddenly. “The police questioned me, you know. Freaked me out.”
“It’s standard procedure, I’m sure. They’d want to talk to anyone who was close to her.”
“Like I could have had anything to do with her death? Completely absurd.”
“You knew her well, though.”
“And it’s usually the boyfriend—which I wasn’t, by the way. What we had ended a while ago. I wished her well.”
My brain zigzagged to my recent close-calls on the road and in my house, and the jealous-woman scenario. “But she wanted you back?”
Mack scraped his fingers through his carefully mussed hair. “No, not really. I don’t think so.”
I arched a brow. Was he seeing things clearly? There was no question about Sandra’s tenseness around and toward Mack. “She seemed pretty angry at you,” I said.
His lips twisted as he shrugged. “She was, but we were over. She knew that.” We sat in silence again for a few seconds before he said, “You wanted to ask me something?”
Emmaline had checked Mack’s alibi. He could have been the one to run down Ben Nader, and he could have been back to Santa Sofia from San Francisco early enough to meet up with and kill Sandra. But why would he do either of those things? “Do you know Ben very well? He’s awake and doing pretty well, I think.”
I watched Mack carefully to gauge his reaction. He lifted his eyebrows slightly as an acknowledgment. “That’s great news,” he said, but that was it. I didn’t detect a single trace of concern that Ben was still alive and could reveal something about his would-be killer.
“Did Ben or Sandra mention the roof ladder to you, by any chance?” I asked.
Mack sat up straighter. “No, they didn’t. Why?”
“It’s just that only Ben knew about the ladder. I’m so baffled about how Sandra ended up on the roof.”
“This is starting to feel like an interrogation.” He gave me a withering look as he stood. “I’m going to go now.”
And he did, without a backward glance.
Chapter 24
I spent the next morning working on the Yeast of Eden website, starting with the history of the bread shop. Olaya’s speech the night before had given me the inspiration I needed. It had shown Olaya’s vision and passion, so all I had to do was refine it.
The end result, after some editing and fine-tuning, communicated everything Olaya had said succinctly to Mack Hebron, and was in her voice. I moved on to a section about the Bread for Life program, then to the profiles of the core people at the bread shop, starting with Olaya, Felix, Maggie, and myself, as well as the rest of the morning baking crew who worked tirelessly with Olaya to bake every loaf to her standard.
I edited in real time, which allowed me to flip back and forth between the dashboard and the site itself, adjusting spacing, headings, and other style choices as needed. I set up the blog, but skipped doing an entry in favor of focusing on the Bread tab and all the core offerings at Yeast of Eden. Olaya had given me a list of the breads she wanted featured. We’d also spent hours setting up cutting boards, condiments, and knives so I could shoot photos of each variety. The next step was creating hierarchical pages for all the bread, each main page designated by the photos I’d taken. From there, I needed to create connecting pages for each individual loaf, which would include a brief description of it and the photo. It wasn’t hard work, but it was tedious and time-consuming.
I started with loaves, adding them one by one. I moved on to petite loaves, then to flat loaves, baguettes, and bâtards, rolls, rounds, and sliced breads. I was just entering the two gluten-friendly options Olaya wanted added. She’d spent six months baking and perfecting them and now she was ready for them to join the weekly menu. We couldn’t say gluten-free, since cross-contamination was a thing, and flour powder abounded in the kitchen, but we baked them in a separate section so they were as free of gluten as they could reasonably be in a gluten-filled bread bakery.
My cell phone rang just as I uploaded the last photo. I grabbed it, my stomach instantly clenching as I saw the Unknown Number note on the screen. I debated with myself. I didn’t have to answer.
So I didn’t.
I hit Decline and set the phone back down. It rang again three seconds later. Once again, I declined the call. We played the game three more times before I gave up and answered with an annoyed, “Hello?”
Nothing. No heavy breathing. No creepy voice. No threat. Just silence.
My hackles were up so I went with my gut. “Heather, you need to back the hell off.”
I listened intently. Was that a shallow gasp I’d just heard? Aha! “Heather. I don’t have any interest in Luke. You can have him. He’s all yours.”
Her voice came at me, frenetic and raspy. “I don’t believe you, Ivy. He came to see you. He told me you want him back.”
Luke Holden, that liar! I sucked in a steadying breath. “He showed up, that’s true, but I didn’t ask him to come, and I don’t want him back. I’m in a relationship with someone else. I have no interest in revisiting the past. With Luke,” I added, because I was revisiting the past with Miguel. He was my past, present, and future, whereas my ex-husband was just ancient history.
Heather didn’t say anything for a minute. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. Timid even. “Really? You don’t want him back?”
I exhaled quietly, but my chest felt tight, like a length of twine encircled it. “I don’t want him back, Heather. He’s all yours—if that’s what you both want. Please stop calling me and following me. And do not break into my house—”
“I didn’t break into your house.” She sounded indignant, like how dare I accuse her of such a thing, but her words didn’t ring true. Now I didn’t believe her. I decided not to push it with her, instead reviewing the stalking incidents in my mind. “Did you rear-end me?”
She sighed. “Don’t hate me.”
“So you did?”
“I followed Luke out there a while back. When he said you wanted him back, I lost it. It wrecked the rental car.”
“And the phone calls.”
“Yeah. You swear. You and Luke are over?”
“I swear, Heather.” At least she seemed relatively sane, as stalkers go. “No more calls then. You need to back off.”
“I will.”
“And I want my electric toothbrush back,” I said.
“Whatever, Ivy.”
My blood ran cold. She’d said she didn’t break into my house and I didn’t believe her, but what if? If she hadn’t, then who had? Like a Ping-Pong ball, my thoughts immediately bounced to Ben Nader and Sandra Mays. I’d witnessed the hit-and-run and I’d been asking around about him by the time I’d discovered Sandra’s body. Then there was the slow drive-by when I first went to Crosby House.
I shoved the thoughts away. Murder was getting under my skin.
“Leave me alone, okay?” I said to Heather.
“I said I would. Sheesh.”
She was getting attitude? “Bye, Heather,” I said, but she’d already hung up. Instantly, she was gone from my mind. I immediately opened a new tab on the computer, and typed in Ben Nader’s name. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but something. The most current listings were all about the hit-and-run and Ben’s recovery in the hospital. I skimmed each entry, looking for a clue of some sort. One reporter likened the accident to the fatal one Ben’s son had been in, mentioning that Ben and his wife, Tammy, were the guardians of their grandson, Kevin. I scrolled down through listing after listing of Ben and his work at the local news station, then on regional cable shows. Eventually, the listings became years old. I came to one that reported the accident that had killed his son. Like Em had said, the accident had taken place in Europe. London, specifically. They’d planned to be married there, then return to the United States as husband and wife. The accident had devastated Ben and Tammy Nader. The police had no clues and no one was ever charged in the manslaughter death of Grant Nader. Grant’s fiancée and the
mother of his child, Margaret Ryan, had survived the accident.
My brain slammed to a stop. I reread that part of the article, zeroing in on two points. Ben and Tammy were raising their grandson, but Margaret Ryan, the mother of the child, had survived. Why, I wondered, was the baby’s mother not raising her child? Had she been too severely injured? Had she died later? I typed in her name. The same article popped up, but nothing else.
I had one thought, and one thought alone. Could Margaret Ryan have changed her name?
The accident that had killed Kevin Nader’s father had happened close to ten years ago. He’d been an infant, so that put him at nine or ten years old now. I picked up my cell phone and searched the note I’d typed Mrs. Nader’s phone number on for Olaya. I dialed it now. Tammy Nader answered right away. “Ben is doing so much better,” she told me when I asked after him. She caught me up on his progress. He’ll be in a wheelchair for a while, but he’s able to get around a little bit. We’re so thankful.”
“I wanted to invite you and your grandson to the bread shop. Olaya makes these amazing cookies,” I said, talking about the skull cookies she hid amidst the loaves of bead for the children of Santa Sofia.
“He’ll like that. Kev’s been out of sorts since the . . . accident.”
“I can only imagine.” We agreed to meet at five o’clock. That gave me plenty of time to get Mrs. Branford to help me do a little legwork.
Chapter 25
Penelope Branford was my go-to partner in fighting crime. Today I needed her more than ever. I couldn’t shake the importance of the box in Esmé’s closet. I thought back to when I’d told her I’d been in her room. She’d said that KM, whose initials were on the box in her closet, had not been the reason she was at Crosby House. But there was something about her face. The way she’d stammered through that conversation.
I knew what I needed to do, and I needed Mrs. Branford to help me.
“It’s high time you came around, Ivy,” she said from the passenger seat of my car.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. With my new hours at the bread shop, the website and blog, and digging around about Ben Nader and Sandra Mays, I’d been neglecting our May-December friendship.
She’d rolled down the window, the ocean breeze not ruffling a single curl of her snowy-white hair. Mrs. Branford had leisure sweat suits in every color of the rainbow. It was a rare occasion to see her in something other than velour. Today she had on a periwinkle number with white stripes running up the side. Her pristine white orthotic shoes kept her balanced as she walked. “What is your plan?” she asked above the sound of traffic and wind.
“I need you to create a distraction.”
“And while I’m entertaining the women and children?” she asked.
“I’ll be doing something you shouldn’t know about.”
“Ah yes, plausible deniability.” She pressed a button on her door and her window zipped up, shutting out the sounds from outside. She patted her hair. Once she seemed satisfied that her curls were all still in place, she angled her body to the left, turning toward me. “Have you figured something out, then?”
I wish. “Not exactly. But there’s something Esmé’s not saying, and I feel like it’s important.”
“To intuit is an itch that must be scratched.”
I chuckled. “Is that you or Kevin Shakespeare?”
“Dead as a doornail. Good riddance. What’s done is done. Many of our idioms we owe to Kevin, but no, not that. That is all Penelope Lane Branford.”
I spun my head to look at her. “Your middle name is Lane?”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “It is. I spent a summer in Liverpool when I was a young girl.”
My jaw dropped and my heartbeat ratcheted up. Was she saying . . . did she meet . . . was she the inspiration for . . . “Mrs. Branford, oh my God. Are you telling me . . . you are Penny Lane?”
She chuckled. Or maybe it was a chortle. “For heaven’s sake, Ivy. For such a clever girl, you are far too gullible.”
My heart slipped from my throat back into my chest. I exhaled. “Wait. So you’re not?”
She had her cane resting on her thighs. She spun it absently. “My name is Penny Lane. Penelope Lane, technically, but everyone—except you, of course, calls me Penny.”
My head spun. “So you are . . .”
“I’m not. Of course I’m not, Ivy. Penny Lane is a road in Liverpool.”
“But the song . . . ?”
“The song is actually a reference to the Penny Lane bus station.”
I thought about the lyrics. Did that make sense? “A bus station?”
“The story goes that Paul was sitting at the station waiting for John. While he waited, he noted things around him. A barber shop. A girl selling poppies from a tray. As Paul was known to do, he turned those notes and scribblings into a song. No girl involved at all. I’ve just had the good fortune of having the same name.”
Which made for a good story. I slapped my hand against my chest. “If you’d met Paul McCartney and he wrote that song about you, I think I would have had a heart attack just now.”
She chortled again. “Buck up. Your heart is just fine. Now, back to the plan,” she said.
“Back to the plan,” I agreed.
I’d called ahead to ask Vivian Cantrell if I could bring Mrs. Branford. “It’s highly unusual,” she’d said, but after I explained Mrs. Branford’s background in education, she reluctantly agreed. I was glad Vivian was a bit loosey-goosey with her rules, but on the flip side, I wished she wasn’t. It was a bit concerning.
I parked and led Mrs. Branford in, entering my code on the keyless entry system I’d been given access to. Inside, I gave Mrs. Branford a brief tour, then brought her to the living room. A few moms sat on the sofas while their children put together puzzles, watched Sesame Street, or drew at the table. It took all of five minutes for Mrs. Branford to command an audience. She began by picking up a book from a little stack on a side table. Before long, she was embellishing, and soon after that, she was telling a story about a little girl who’d stowed away on a pirate ship. The kids gathered round her, sitting cross-legged. They jumped when she pounded her cane against the floor, the sound mimicking the peg leg of the dastardly pirate ship captain. One of the mothers ran out to tell some of the other women to come listen. Slowly, they trickled in and before long, twelve of Crosby House’s residents were there. Meg and Angie both came in. Angie sat on one of the armchairs, while Meg perched on the arm. I hung back, half hiding in a corner, waiting for Esmé to come.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. There was no sign of her. Maybe she wasn’t here. I debated. Did I take the chance? The last thing I wanted was for her to walk in on me searching her room. But I had to follow my hunch.
I caught Mrs. Branford’s eye and nodded my head. I was going in. She nodded, knocked her cane against the floor again to keep the attention on her, and I slipped away, racing down the hallway to Esmé’s room.
I looked up and down the hallway. No one was in sight. I stepped up close to Esmé’s door and rapped my knuckles against it. Three quick knocks in rapid succession. Nothing. I tried again. No answer. The coast was clear. I turned the knob, registering the irony that I was breaking and entering just like someone—maybe Esmé—had done at my house. Did the fact that I was trying to solve a murder justify my actions? I wasn’t sure, but I also wasn’t going to stop to think about it right now.
I closed the door behind me, turned, and leaned back against it. For the second time in less than an hour, my heart was beating like a jackhammer. I surveyed the room. The bed was rumpled. The lamp on the nightstand was on and the blinds were open to the front. I remembered that Meg and Esmé had switched so that Esmé could avoid the angular shadows of the tree limbs in the backyard. That was a good friend. These women did look out for each other.
Something was different in the room. The books, I realized. They weren’t on the nightstand anymore. I opened up the drawer to take a quick pe
ek inside. No books on grieving, but there was a book on baking traditions in Mexico. I knew from being with her in the Bread for Life classes that Esmé was passionate about what she baked. I could see her taking the skills she already had, coupled with everything she was learning from Olaya, and going far with them. Maybe she’d decided her grieving was over. Or maybe she’d donated the books to the Crosby House library.
I’d come to get a closer look at the box in the closet. The one marked KM. I strode across the small room, slid open the closet door, and stared. There was no box. Clothes hung in the closet and several pairs of shoes, including the closed-toe black pair Esmé favored when working in the kitchen. Were these the same clothes that had been hanging here before? I rifled through the contents on the shelf above the rod of clothes. Nothing of interest. Poor Esmé had escaped her situation with—what was his name? I thought back. Eduardo. Right. She’d escaped from Eduardo with hardly anything.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the missing box. Where had she taken it? I was about to slip out the door again, but stopped at the last second at the dresser. The bottom drawer had held a baby blanket and some drawings. The drawer, when I pulled it open, however, was empty.
Empty. What in the world was going on?
I stood out in the hallway for a minute, trying to understand. Why would Esmé suddenly get rid of what seemed to be the only sentimental things she’d brought with her? I couldn’t make sense of it.
Chapter 26
Five o’clock came and went. No Tammy Nader. No Kevin Nader. The bread shop was long closed. Maggie had left a few minutes before five, and Olaya had followed just after that. Now it was just me and the plate of skull cookies. I’d had to go on a little Easter egg hunt earlier to find them to put out, but I’d managed—without alarming Maggie—and had set them aside with a note that I’d be back and not to touch the cookies. I’d taken the fun out of the hunt for some little boy or little girl this afternoon, but it had to be done. I hoped it hadn’t been for nothing.
By five fifteen I was beginning to wonder if I’ d been stood up. I went out onto the sidewalk and stood under the awning, looking up and down the street. A woman strode down the street holding the hand of a boy, dragging him along with her. I threw my arm up, waving. She hadn’t stood me up after all.
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