How to Bake a Murder

by K. J. Emrick

  She looked up at him then. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, that’s the other reason I came over here tonight. Don’t worry about that for now. Let me finish explaining what happened with Jamie. She came on to me, yes. That must be when you walked in on us. Damn. I wish I’d seen you. I turned her down flat, just so you know. I realized she had asked me there to try to steal me away from you, and I told her flat out it wouldn’t work, and then I left.”

  “You did?”

  He nodded, a hint of his smile returning. “Yes, I did. I wish you’d stayed to see that part.”

  “So do I.”

  “Ha. Anyway. Jamie didn’t tell me anything about what Jessica said. All she was interested in doing was using her womanly charms on me.”

  “She has plenty of those,” Cookie grumbled. “Don’t you think she’s prettier than I am? I mean, look at me, then look at her.”

  “I have,” he promised her.

  “And?”

  His lips found hers in a soft, sweet kiss.

  When he pulled back from her, his fingers traced the line of her jaw. “And, I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

  Cookie’s first thought was that the man needed to have his eyes checked, but then she smiled, and heard the truth in what he said. Those words touched her heart, and she let herself believe he meant them.

  Because he did.

  This time she kissed him, and they held each other, and let the world turn under them for a long moment.

  “Do you forgive me?” he asked her.

  Cookie laughed softly. “It seems I should be asking you that.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then we forgive each other and that’s that. Now. Let me tell you about why I was at work so late.”

  “It’s about Julien, isn’t it?” she guessed.

  “Yes. It is.” He squeezed her hands. “We arrested Sweeney today. You won’t believe what we found out when we did.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “I sat in on the interview of Sweeney that Detective Kent did,” Jerry explained. “The man was a stone. Didn’t give us anything.”

  “Yes, that’s about how it was when I went to—”

  Too late, Cookie realized what she’d just let slip out. When Clarissa went missing today she’d almost made the same slip, even though she hadn’t intended to ever tell Jerry about it. So much for that.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from him?” Jerry’s voice became sharp. “Cookie, this man is nobody to mess around with. Records in three different states—that we know of—and a reputation as a man who will do anything for the right price.”

  “I know, I know.” Well, she actually hadn’t known all of that before she went over there. That might have been enough to change her mind about dropping in on the man, even if it had been in a public place like the town hall. Then again, probably not. “I just needed to know for myself if he was the murderer.”

  “And what did you find out?”

  She let out a breath, admitting defeat. “Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. He told me that Roth… how did he put it? Oh yes. He said Benjamin Roth couldn’t hire a taxi, much less someone like him.”

  Something like grudging approval crept into Jerry’s gaze. “Well, that’s more than what we got out of him. I suppose you were always going to go see him, no matter what I said. And maybe it’s just as well. He’s only said two words to us. Lawyer, and phone call.”

  “I think phone call is two words,” she corrected him. “Not one.”

  “Whatever. The point is you had no business going to confront Sweeney on your own.”

  “I suppose you’re right, Jerry, but what else could I do? I’ve already decided to sell the bakery. There’s nothing left for me but the truth and I was hoping to find it there in Sweeney’s office.” She swallowed back a sour taste in her mouth. “Turns out I was wasting my time.”

  She realized he was staring at her with his mouth open. “What?”

  “You’re selling?” he asked her. “You’re selling the bakery to Benjamin Roth?”

  “Yes.” She took a breath, and then went and sat down. Suddenly she was very, very tired. “I’ve already told Clarissa, and I was going to tell my daughter tomorrow. I’m calling Roth in the morning and making it official.”

  He sat down next to her, leaning close to put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t sell just yet, Cookie.”

  “Why not? Half the town is actively avoiding my bakery now and if we don’t find Julien’s real killer it’s only going to get worse. Now you’re telling me that Sweeney clammed up and won’t tell you anything. What’s a girl to do?”

  “I said he won’t say anything to us.” His smile was sudden and unexpected. “That doesn’t mean we didn’t find anything out.”

  “Wait. What?”

  This time his smile had just a hint of sass in it. “We’re the police. We know how to investigate crimes. Even big ones like murder that hardly ever happen in Widow’s Rest. That’s why I said you should leave this to us. It’s not that I don’t think you can handle yourself, Cookie.”

  Sarcastic or not, the little compliment made her feel worlds better.

  “So,” she said, “tell me what you police officers found out.”

  “When Sweeney wouldn’t tell us anything we did some digging. Turns out, he’s been staying at the motel just outside of town.”

  “A motel?” Cookie had to wonder at that. “You mean the Blackbird Motel? Doesn’t really sound like a place for a mayor’s personal assistant.”

  “Exactly. We figured the man would buy a home in town, or at the very least be renting one of the apartments over on Waverly, not be staying in a place that rents rooms by the hour. Anyway. We got a search warrant for the room he was in. Lots of take-out pizza boxes. Lots of empty beer bottles. Not much else, except for some personal papers. Guess he figured no one would look through his ratty motel room, because he didn’t even try to hide them.”

  Cookie’s curiosity had her on the edge of her seat. “What? What did you find?”

  “A recent bank deposit slip. Seems our Mister Sweeney received a large sum of money recently.”

  Hmm. “I’m guessing it wasn’t just his salary for driving the mayor around.”

  “No. Hardly. This amount was probably double what he’d make in a year working a government job. Our assumption is that it was payment for other kinds of services rendered.”

  “You mean, like poisoning someone in my bakery.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So Sweeney was the murderer,” Cookie said.

  “That’s what it looks like. Which means it wasn’t Benjamin Roth after all.”

  Cookie felt a twinge of guilt for suspecting Roth, but it disappeared quickly. He wasn’t a nice man, murderer or no. “Sweeney told me he didn’t have anything to do with Roth. So if it wasn’t him who paid for the murder, who was it?”

  Jerry sat back in his chair. His expression turned serious.

  “The manager down at the bank let us have a look at the transaction records, once he knew why we wanted to know. He didn’t want his bank being associated with a murderer. You’ll never guess where the money came from.”

  “Where?”

  “It was one Jessica Carson.”

  Cookie was shocked. “The mayor’s wife?”

  “One and the same. You said yourself that they knew each other from back in the day. And this mistake from her past that she was telling you about? Sounds to me like she was trying to work up the nerve to confess to you. Maybe she felt guilty about getting a man killed in your bakery.”

  Cookie put a hand to her mouth. Of course. It all made sense, in a warped and twisted kind of way. “Did you tell Sweeney about the money trail you found?”

  “No. Not yet. I want to get to Jessica first because I think she’ll be easier to crack than a seasoned criminal like Sweeney. Detective Kent agrees with me.”

  “When are you arresting her?”

  “Tonight.
Well, Kent is arresting her tonight. I’m off duty.” He smiled when he said it, like it was the best news in the world. “I think you and I should get a drink and celebrate.”

  “Humph. Celebrate what?”

  He lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, sending a little shiver up her skin. “We should celebrate the fact that now you don’t have to close the bakery.”

  She blinked at him. “How do you figure that?”

  “Because now that we have the real murderer in custody, now that we’re about to wrap up the case, people will start coming back to your store again. Like they used to. It will be business as usual, and you won’t have to worry about paying your bills.”

  A frown settled over her face. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t know if I even want to stay in business in this town. I know most of my loyal customers stayed by me, but I just don’t know if I can keep doing business in a town where so many people turned their backs on me.”

  He took a breath, considering his words. “I don’t think any of them suspected you of anything, Cookie. People are just cautious. Some people just like to avoid controversy. And, then you have to remember the number one rule about human beings.”

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  With a wink of one hazel eye, Jerry said, “People are dumb.”

  ***

  The rich smell of coffee brewing filled the air in the bakery while Cookie put together a platter of donuts and croissants from the day-old goodies packaged in the refrigerator. She hadn’t realized how much she missed just talking with Jerry. With everything that had been going on lately, even before the misunderstanding with Jamie, they hadn’t done very much of that.

  She realized now how close she had come to giving up on everything, including her friends.

  “Two sugars, just like always,” she told him, putting a ceramic cup of dark brew in front of him at their table. “I can’t stay up long, Jerry. I’ll need to get up early.”

  “To sell your store?”

  Cookie sat down across from him. “Well. A good friend thinks I may not need to sell after all, so perhaps I’ll have to give that some more thought. Before I do anything rash, that is.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” He raised his coffee, and she clinked the side of his cup with her own cup of tea.

  They smiled at each other. The way he was looking at her reminded Cookie of how Hamish had looked at Clarissa, there in the community hall. Maybe she wasn’t too old to know what that felt like, after all.

  The door to the shop opened, letting in the dark of night. A single figure stood there, and at first Cookie couldn’t make out who it was.

  Her eyes were adjusting just as the figure stumbled into the light. Jerry stood up from his seat. His coffee tumbled, creating a dark brown river that spilled over the edge of the table and onto the floor.

  Jessica Carson. She stood there with her hair hanging loose around her face, panting heavily, her eyes wild and unfocused. In her hand she held a long blade. A kitchen knife.

  Jerry picked Cookie up by her elbow and made sure to stand between her, and Jessica.

  Cookie was terrified. Jerry had just told her that Jessica was the one who paid Sweeney to murder Julien and now here she was, bursting into the bakery with a weapon in her hand.

  “Stay behind me,” Jerry whispered.

  No trouble there, Cookie thought to herself. She wished Jerry had come here in his uniform. Then he’d have his gun with him. A taser, maybe. Handcuffs. A radio to call for help…

  Oh. She had her cell phone in the pocket of her robe. She’d picked it up on her way downstairs. She could at least dial 911. How could she do that without Jessica seeing her, though? The woman was standing right there, with a knife in her hand!

  It was when she looked back into Jessica’s eyes, trying to sense what she might do next, that she saw the fear lurking there. The mayor’s wife was terrified. More than that. There were bruises on her face, almost hidden by her dark skin but impossible to miss once you saw them. Blood was trickling down her chin from a split lip. Her nice blue blouse was torn at the shoulder.

  And there was blood on that knife.

  “Jessica,” Jerry said, in a slow and careful voice, “why don’t you put the knife down. Whatever is wrong, we can help you.”

  Cookie leaned up on her toes to whisper in his ear. “Jerry. Look at her. She’s been beaten.”

  She couldn’t see his expression standing behind him like this, but she could feel his body tense. There was definitely something not right here.

  The cell phone came out of her pocket smoothly. She had to wait for the screen to come to life with a swipe of her thumb, but then she had the dial pad up and was typing the emergency response number in.

  Jessica took two stumbling steps forward. She was shaking. She was hurt. “Please,” she said, her voice trembling. “Help me.”

  Jerry didn’t hesitate. He rushed across the floor to Jessica and took hold of her before the woman could drop where she stood. Cookie really wished he had stayed where he was, in front of her, keeping her safe and protected. Even when the knife slipped from Jessica’s hand and fell to the floor she knew it wasn’t over. Something else was going to happen here. Something very bad. This recipe wasn’t finished yet.

  And here Cookie stood in her bathrobe.

  Sitting Jessica down in a chair, Jerry told Cookie to go and get a damp cloth and a first aid kit. He knew she kept one of those back in the kitchen. Health Department regulations required it. Eyeballing the knife on the floor, with its red flecks of blood, Cookie did as she was asked and hurried back to the sink to run some water over a folded hand towel. What had Jessica gotten herself into? First she’s paying to have people killed, and now… whatever this was.

  She could hear a small voice calling out, like someone talking through a tin can. Cookie looked all around, scrunching up her brows in confusion until she remembered. She had placed a 911 call on her phone and had automatically slipped into her bathrobe pocket when Jerry had asked for the damp cloth and first aid kit. Reaching into her pocket, she scooped up the phone and put it to her ear while setting the damp cloth aside and reaching for the first aid kit from the wall.

  “Hello. I’m so sorry. This is Cookie… I mean Karen Williams.” It hadn’t escaped Cookie’s notice that she was once again having to call 911 from her shop.“I’m at my bakery on Anthem Way. There’s a woman here. She’s been beaten.”

  “Hey, Cookie. It’s Thelma down here at the police station. Who’s been beaten, hon? How bad?”

  “It looks like some bad bruises and maybe a split lip,” Cookie said, getting the white plastic kit off the wall clip. “Might be worse, Thelma. She’s really shaken up. We need you to get someone here for her. Jerry’s already here, I mean, but an ambulance. Maybe some on duty officers, too?”

  “I’ll send a patrol with the ambulance until we know what’s going on, hon. So who was it got beat up?”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t say yet, did I? It’s—”

  The loud crash from the front room took Cookie’s breath away as the door was thrown open again, violently this time.

  “Where’s my wife!” she heard Mayor Belvedere Carson yell.

  She heard Jerry talking, and Jessica screaming, and the sound of a chair being thrown across the floor. Here it was. Just like she’d been expecting. The final ingredient to make the night complete.

  Cookie rushed out to see what was going on, leaving everything behind as she did.

  Jerry stood between Jessica and Belvedere. The mayor had boxed them into a corner at the far side of the room in his rush to get at his wife. Jerry wasn’t having any of it, but he’d have a hard time holding back the larger man raging before him.

  “You get outta my way!” Belvedere roared at Jerry, pointing a big finger up in his face. “You work for me, Officer Stansted! Get away from my wife!”

  “I work for the people of this town,” Jerry argued, not moving an inch from where he stood. “Now,
I think everyone is really worked up right now. Let’s just calm down for a minute, and figure out what’s going on here.”

  “What’s going on?” the mayor shouted, his voice seeming to get louder in Cookie’s ears. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. That woman cut me, that’s what’s happening. With a knife!”

  Cookie looked down at the knife Jessica had dropped on the floor. The blood on its edge was a dark stain against the metal. Not unlike molasses. That thought nearly turned her stomach.

  Jessica had already killed one man. Had she tried to kill her husband, too?

  Jerry caught her eye, and with a look, told her to stay back.

  Belvedere lifted his left arm, showing off a neat slice in his white shirt and the blood that had soaked through the sleeve. That would be where the blood on Jessica’s knife had come from.

  “Mayor Carson,” Jerry said in a stern voice, “I need you to step back. Just stay over there and tell me what happened.”

  “This isn’t any of your concern,” the mayor told him. “This is a family affair.”

  “This is a matter for the police to take care of, is what this is. I’m the police. You will let me take care of this, and you will step back.”

  “How do you figure this is a matter for the police?” Belvedere didn’t sound happy, but he did step back. Far enough that he caught sight of Cookie. “Oh, so we got an audience. Doesn’t matter. This is still just between me and the wife. She cut me. I don’t want to press charges. That’s all, and we’re leaving.”

  Cookie saw the look that passed over Jessica’s face. The last place she wanted to go right now was home with this man. Maybe she should have stuck to hiring other people to kill her victims instead of stabbing her husband on her own.

  “You aren’t leaving,” Jerry told him firmly. “You and Jessica are both coming down to the police station with me, Mister Mayor.”

  “Oh, really? Now why would we want to go and do a thing like that?”

  “Well to start with, your wife is going to be arrested as an accessory to murder.” Jerry stepped aside a bit so Belvedere could see Jessica but not get close enough to touch her. Jessica’s mouth dropped open when she heard she was being arrested. “As for you, Mister Mayor, you’re being arrested for beating up your wife.”