How to Bake a Murder

by K. J. Emrick

  Jessica was just staring off into space, but she nodded to Cookie’s compliment. “Maybe… maybe we should have some more tea?” she said.

  “Right.” Cookie jumped at that opportunity. “I can do that.”

  She scurried off in the direction where she thought the kitchen would be before Jessica changed her mind. This was her chance to snoop.

  Cookie found the kettle on the stove and filled it from the tap and then set it to boil. She could hear Jessica and Jamie talking, just not what they were saying. As long as they were out in the living room, though, that gave her time to look around.

  The room off the kitchen was a den. Slipping in on quiet feet she held her breath and made as quick a search as she could. Magazines on the coffee table. Yesterday’s newspaper on the couch. Books up on the shelf. Wait. Not just books.

  There was a photo album on one end. Leafing through, she didn’t really see much. Pictures of the mayor, and Jessica, and what she assumed were relatives. A number of them had the same cheekbones as Jessica or strong jawline like Belvedere.

  Where was Belvedere, anyway? Shouldn’t he be home with his wife this early in the morning?

  Next to the photo album was a yearbook. There wasn’t much time left before the kettle boiled, she knew, but she couldn’t help her curiosity. In the section about the senior prom, there was a picture of a dark-skinned beauty, obviously a younger Jessica. The man on her right was easy to recognize as Belvedere. The man standing on the left in the photo took her a bit longer.

  Julien Benner.

  So. They had been friends for years. At least, they really had all known each other. Since high school.

  Interesting, to be sure, but Cookie didn’t see how it helped her to know that little tidbit of history. That still did not explain Jessica’s grief over Julien’s death. Even if she was the kind of woman who cried at sappy old movies, that reaction at the funeral home was over the top.

  When the kettle began to whistle she put the yearbook back in its place and rushed back to make tea. Finding ceramic cups and a sugar bowl and putting it all on a tray with a box of black tea and a box of green, it suddenly occurred to her that Jessica had drank a cup of tea already, back at the bakery. Why had she suggested another cup now?

  Unless, perhaps, she wanted to give Cookie time to see things for herself. Hmm. What was the woman up to?

  “Here’s the tea,” she said, coming into the living room with the tray and the steaming cups of water. “I found a bag of bagels, too. I hope that’s all right, Jessica?”

  “Thank you, Cookie.” She sat absently next to Jamie, and Cookie had to wonder what they’d been talking about all this time. There were fresh tears in Jessica’s eyes as she reached for her cup.

  Cookie settled her posterior in a chair with her cup in her lap. She thought of things to say, disregarded them, reworded them, and then just decided to be herself. She wasn’t a detective. She was a bakery owner with a problem that needed fixing.

  Direct approach it was. The worst Jessica could do was throw them out.

  “So Jessica, I know you and Belvedere were friends with Julien. Had you been friends awhile?”

  The phone rang, punctuating Cookie’s question. Jessica literally jumped out of her chair when it did, spilling her tea onto the ecru colored rug, leaving quite the stain. Mumbling an apology, her eyes darting left and right, she set her cup down and went out of the room to answer the call. It wasn’t a cell phone ringing, Cookie noticed. It was the house phone.

  Jamie, never one to miss a beat, whispered, “Did you find anything?” She knew exactly what Cookie had been up to.

  In the other room, Cookie heard Jessica speaking sharply into the phone before hanging up the receiver a little harder than necessary. “I’ll tell you about it on the walk home,” Cookie promised Jamie, just as Jessica came back in the room.

  “Someone begging for money,” Jessica said, although not very convincingly.

  “Of course,” Cookie sympathized. “I get ten of those calls a day.”

  “Me, too,” Jamie added. “I think my family would be broke if we gave money to everyone who asked.”

  “Julien had money, didn’t he?” Cookie asked, using the current topic to steer the conversation. “What kind of business was he in?”

  “Business? Oh, you mean his company.” Jessica stared out the window. “Something to do with investments.”

  Money. It all came down to money. Benjamin Roth was all about the money, too. And Jessica’s husband—the mayor—was awfully friendly with Roth these days. “Did your husband do business with Julien?” Cookie decided to ask. “In this investment business of his?”

  Now Jessica turned to look at her. “No. They both agreed not to mix business with friendship.”

  It was almost like Jessica wanted her to ask more, but didn’t want to be the one to say so. Cookie felt like she was on shaky ground, but still couldn’t help taking just one more step. “I just didn’t know much about Julien. It can’t be that easy to make a living off investments, I suppose. Did he always have a good business sense?”

  “No, not really. You can never get away from the mistakes you made in your youth.”

  For some reason, that statement didn’t really seem to answer the question. Was it important? She wished she knew for sure if Jessica was trying to tell her something, or if she was just a woman so distraught that she didn’t know what she was saying. Either way, Cookie tucked every word away to review them later.

  Jessica smiled at them, and then motioned toward the door. “Thank you for walking me home. I think it’s time for you to go.” Whatever message she had—or hadn’t—been trying to give Cookie, she was done talking now.

  When the front door closed behind them, Jamie looked at Cookie. “That was certainly interesting.”

  “Yes, I should say so.” She waited until they were down the driveway and on the sidewalk before she said anything else. “Why do you suppose she brought us here?”

  “We brought her, remember?” Jamie looked confused at Cookie’s question. “Anyway. What did you find? I know you, and I know you weren’t just in there making tea!”

  “I make very good tea, thank you very much.”

  “Sure, sure. But that’s not all you were up to.”

  “True. I found a yearbook photo.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s certainly breaking news.”

  Cookie smiled at her friend’s sarcasm. “It was a picture of Julien, Belvedere and Jessica. All three of them, together, at their senior prom.”

  “So they knew each other in high school. I wouldn’t even call that gossip, Cookie.”

  True enough. In a small town, the fact that people went to school together was just a given. But then, why was Jessica acting like she barely knew Julien?

  And why did she seek Cookie out this morning?

  “What did you two talk about while I was gone?” she asked Jamie.

  “Nothing. The weather. The tea. She really didn’t want to talk to me.”

  Hmm. So she only really talked when Cookie was in the room, just like back at the bakery. She went through everything Jessica had said again, and turned the words over in her mind like kneading dough. Until it started to come together, like a good recipe.

  There are some things a man will never understand.

  You can never get away from the mistakes you made in your youth.

  The thought that had formed might be half-baked, but it made sense. She didn’t have enough information, though. She needed more.

  Tonight, she’d do some research.

  Chapter Seven

  Clarissa moped all through dinner then went to her room. When Cookie checked on her, she was asleep with the light off.

  Getting into her pajamas she settled into bed, Cream jumping up beside her. It wasn’t long before he was snoring contentedly against her foot. He was such a good dog. Everyone in town could forsake her, if they felt like it, but Cream would always be there for her.

  When
she came back to the bakery from Jessica’s, she’d opened up again for a few hours, with only a few people coming and going. It could have been that she was closed earlier so everyone just assumed she’d be closed all day. It might have been that people were avoiding her even more now that Julien’s death had been officially labelled a homicide. The big write-up in the local paper—on page one, thank you very much—certainly wasn’t going to help business for her. But, she couldn’t let herself be bothered by it. She’d be here, selling her cupcakes and cookies, until the Grim Reaper himself came to get her.

  Careful what you wish for, she reminded herself.

  No, it wasn’t the decline in her customers that bothered her tonight. What did bother her, was that she hadn’t heard from Jerry all day.

  Men. Worm their way into your heart, and then disappear. Was he going to be just like her husband? Like every serious boyfriend she’d ever had? That thought soured her mood, but she shook that off, too. There were more important things to worry about now.

  Well, that wasn’t really true. Top of her list right now was finding out how Jerry really felt about her. The thing of it was, unless he appeared next to her in the bed right now that was one mystery she’d have to save for tomorrow.

  Heh. Her cheeks heated, thinking of him just popping into the bed with her. Hmm. That’d let her know how he felt for sure. If she were ten years younger…

  Ahem.

  Booting up her laptop, she opened up a search engine and then stared at the blinking cursor. Where to begin?

  The high school. Widow’s Rest did not have its own high school. It was too small a town and shared services like that with the towns nearby. Same with fire and ambulance services. The nearest hospital was three towns over, in Bridgefield.

  Morton Central School, in Mattysdale, was where the kids from Widow’s Rest had always gone. So Cookie typed in Morton High School. The home page came up with a picture of the red brick building and two smiling students standing in front of a row of adults who must be teachers. Yes. Just how she remembered it from when Madison had gone there.

  Cream snuffled in his sleep while she navigated the site until she found a tab that showed pictures from the previous years’ graduating classes. It took her a few tries to nail the right year, but when she found it, there was Julien, and Jessica, and Belvedere.

  In football uniforms.

  Julien and Belvedere looked fierce in their varsity uniforms. Jessica was beyond cute as a teenager in a cheerleader’s outfit, her long curly hair loose around her shoulders, pompoms up in the air, mugging for the camera between the two men.

  They were definitely better friends than Jessica had led on. At least, in high school they had been.

  Which she’d already figured out. That just didn’t mean much, although it might go a long way to explaining Jessica’s dramatic reaction to Julien’s death. It they’d been really, really good friends…

  Or more than friends?

  Hmm. Cookie frowned. That was the devious thought that had occurred to her after talking to Jessica this morning. She had nothing to base it on, except a woman’s intuition about these things. Who did you break down and cry for at their funeral?

  Not the guy who played tight end for the high school football team.

  Not the kid you graduated with.

  You only cried that hard for someone you had deep feelings for.

  Had Julien and Jessica been in love, once upon a time?

  Cookie yawned. It was an interesting theory that she’d spun, but it wouldn’t keep sleep at bay forever. No matter how hard it was for her to sleep the whole night through these days, she still needed to get at least a few hours a night. Knowing that Jessica and her husband and Julien all went to school together didn’t tell her why Julien had been killed in the present. She had a few boys she’d dated in high school whose graves she’d like to dance on, but that didn’t mean she’d kill them to see it happen.

  And what did all this have to do with Benjamin Roth?

  She didn’t know, and the answers weren’t coming, so she switched off the laptop and set it aside on the floor next to the bed. Time to let sleep take her away for a bit.

  Cookie reached over to turn off her bedside lamp and just as she was about to flip the switch… a noise. A loud noise. The clear, nerve-jarring tinkle of glass breaking. Cream was on his feet instantly, barking like he meant to wake up the whole neighborhood.

  The store. Someone was breaking into the store!

  She grabbed the baseball bat she kept under her bed as she rolled out and onto her feet, then went to check on Clarissa.

  Her granddaughter stared at her with bleary eyes. “What is going on? What’s Cream’s problem with all that barking?”

  “I think it was glass breaking. Downstairs. I’m going to check.”

  “Then I’m coming with you!” Clarissa had thrown the sheets back already, suddenly wide awake. “I don’t want to be left up here with just that mangy dog to protect me!”

  Ignoring the insult to her good and faithful dog, Cookie made sure Clarissa followed her closely down the stairs. Cream tried to follow them only to be shushed while Cookie closed the upstairs door on him. She didn’t want to put the little guy in danger, too.

  Bad enough she was letting her granddaughter walk into it with her, but there was no leaving Clarissa behind. Better to have her nearby, Cookie reasoned.

  They tiptoed down the steps, breathing slowly, the baseball bat heavy in Cookie’s hand. Carefully they made their way down to the first floor, into the kitchen. There was nothing there. Nothing moved in the gloomy shadows.

  “I’m scared, Gram,” Clarissa whispered.

  Cookie was too, but saying so wouldn’t make either of them feel any better. Instead she patted her granddaughter’s arm and tried to put on a brave face. “Stay here by the steps. Yell if you see anything.”

  Out in the bakery everything looked the way it should. Tables with chairs placed upside down on them, the little refrigeration units in the glass display cases humming, and only the few lights on that she usually kept lit. Everything was fine…

  Except for the broken glass in the front door. It spilled across the floor, shattered into fragments. In the middle of the glass was a little rock.

  Tied on the rock was a yellow piece of paper with a happy face drawn in black sharpie.

  Anger welled up in Cookie. Someone had broken her front door, and then made a joke out of it. How dare they do such a thing? What was happening to this community?

  “Grandma?” she heard Clarissa call out to her. “Are you all right? Did you see anyone?

  “No,” she said. “Whoever it was must be gone.”

  She put down the bat across one of the tables and Clarissa came out of her hiding place, her eyes taking in the scene. She stared down at the happy face rock for a long moment. “Great town you live in, Grandma. What do we do now?”

  “Call the police.”

  “Fine. But I’m texting Mom to tell her about this.”

  It hit Cookie that she hadn’t called to tell her daughter about the man dying in the store. Surely, Madison had read about it in the papers by now? Perhaps not. She had her own issues she was working on with that new husband of hers, and if she had heard about the dead man then she would have called right away to ask how Clarissa was.

  She sighed. Madison was going to give her an earful once she heard the things that had been going on in this supposedly sleepy little town that Cookie had brought Clarissa to. This was supposed to be a good place for Clarissa to spend the summer. It wasn’t working out very well so far.

  Clarissa stayed by her side, while they waited for a patrol from the police department’s midnight shift. She could not blame the girl. Cookie was unnerved by it all herself. And, sure enough, Clarissa got a text from her mother. She showed it to Cookie with a little smirk. “Oh, you’re in trouble now.”

  Have your grandmother call me as soon as she gets this, we need to talk.

  “We’ll t
alk to the police first,” Cookie said. “I’ll call your mother afterward.”

  The teen nodded conspiratorially. Cookie didn’t want to form any kind of alliance with Clarissa against her mother. She just didn’t need one more thing to deal with right now.

  Cookie turned on the lights in the bakery so she could see. They made sure to steer clear of the broken glass. Did it matter what the glass looked like? Didn’t it matter on CSI and all those shows? Sure it did. Maybe they could tell if it was a right handed person or a left handed person who threw the rock, or something.

  The first officer arrived on the scene with the red lights flashing on his patrol car. She recognized Officer Jones when he stepped out of his car and came up to the front door. His flashlight reflected off the broken shards, making diamond patterns of light.

  “Cookie,” he said by way of greeting. “Had a bit of trouble, I see.”

  Cookie pointed to the rock on the floor.

  Officer Jones frowned. “Now, that’s just mean spirited.”

  He snapped a few pictures with his cell phone camera. The man looked tired. Cookie supposed that was what happened when you worked nights. She wasn’t sure how old Officer Thaddeus Jones was. He was one of the youngest men on the police force, which explained why he pulled night duty. Distant relative of Belvedere Carson too, she believed.

  Which gave her an idea.

  “Officer Jones,” she said, trying not to sound too obvious. “Did you know Julien Benner?"

  He shrugged, getting another angle on the glass on the floor. “Sorta. Uncle Belvedere and him were good friends, if I remember right. Went to school together or some such.”

  “Wasn’t Belvedere, I mean the mayor, wasn’t he doing a deal with Julien? For the town,” she added quickly. Jessica had said Julien was involved in making investments. If there was some kind of deal being put in place… especially if it involved her store…

  Officer Jones just shrugged again. “I’m not as close to Belvedere and Jessica as people think. Got this job on my own, you know.” Click, click went the cell phone. “But I doubt they were doing any kind of deal with Julien. The man primarily made deals out of state.”