Never Trust a Skinny Cupcake Baker (Death by Cupcake Book 1)

by D. E. Haggerty

  I shake my head. “No way. I’m not jeopardizing your job.” I try to give him the stink eye, but the man is just too beautiful to glare at. “And it’s not like you’ve been sharing with us.”

  Ben shakes his head at me, but his smile is back. “Sweetheart, I only learned about the strip club thing yesterday.”

  I try to assess if he’s telling the truth, but I just don’t know him well enough yet to make that judgment. Yet? Did I really think that? I shake my head and get back to the matter at hand. “Did you find anything else out?” I may not want him to put his job on the line but if he already has, I’m not going to turn down that information.

  “Your turn first,” Ben demands, and I’m back to glaring at the man. Anna doesn’t have such issues.

  “Well, as you know, we went to the gym and got Dolly’s address. We went to Dolly’s place, but it was locked up tight, and apparently she’s not a good neighbor because her cross-dressing neighbor knew nearly nothing about her and didn’t have a key to her place. He did know she worked at Club Bristol. That’s how we ended up going to the strip club.”

  Ben looks at me and raises an eyebrow in question. “And just how did you get a job there?”

  My face heats up, but I answer him truthfully. “They were auditioning Dolly’s replacement and thought I was there for an audition. Someone,” I take a moment to glare at Anna, “insisted I go through with the audition.” I shrug. “Somehow, I got the job.”

  Ben shakes his head and offers me that dazzling smile with the one dimple. “Somehow? Honey, you are too sexy for your own good. You’ve got the exact type of body a place like that is looking for.” He leans in and whispers to me. “And just so you know, I expect to be the only one you show that act to in the future.” I feel a full body flush overtake me, and I try not to wiggle on top of his lap. I duck my head into Ben’s shoulder to hide my glowing face.

  “Man, that was hot.” Anna fans herself and winks at me.

  I force my thoughts back to the current situation. “So, what have you learned?” I ask as I emerge from the protection of Ben’s shoulder.

  Ben shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. You’re not done. How do you know Dolly’s a prostitute? I’m pretty sure Detectives Duchamps and Smits don’t know that.”

  “Well, the good detectives are pretty ignorant of a lot of things.” I snort and then force my mind back to the investigation. “I asked the manager if he knew if Dolly had a boyfriend or something. He mentioned a doctor, and after some research we found a Dr. Abrahams working at the University Medical Center. I called and made an appointment for yesterday.”

  I stop because Ben is growling. “You went to see a potential murderer without telling me!” Uh oh, he’s beyond angry.

  I try to play it off. “It was no big deal. I was at a medical office. I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything there.”

  Ben grabs my chin and forces me to look at him. “Never again! You hear me? You don’t meet with possible killers alone and without telling me.”

  I nod because it’s only a lie if I say it out loud, right? I’m going to do everything I can find to Dolly’s murderer and clear my name. And I’ve only got a week to do that. “Anyway,” I say when Ben starts to calm a bit. “I met with the good doctor and discovered that he wasn’t Dolly’s boyfriend but a client. Which somewhat shocked me as I didn’t really expect a doctor to just admit that kind of thing.” I know men have needs. I’m not stupid after all, but I thought that’s what dodgy bars and one-night stands were for.

  “I’ll let the detectives know tomorrow.”

  “And now it’s your turn for show and tell.”

  Ben snorts. “I haven’t learned much, but I do know that the cupcake that killed Dolly was placed on top of her locker in the changing room at the fitness studio sometime after 3 and before 5:30 p.m. on the day she died.”

  Anna leans forward; eyes twinkling in excitement. “How do you know that?”

  “The locker rooms are cleaned several times a day. According to the employee on duty that day, she did a quick pick-up of the locker room at three and there wasn’t a cupcake box on the locker then. Several members of your pole dancing class claim they saw Dolly find the cupcake box after your class, which gets out at five thirty.”

  Something doesn’t add up to me. “How do they know it was the cupcake that killed her?” I still can’t stand the idea of one of our cupcakes being used as a murder weapon.

  “She didn’t eat all of it. The lab tested the remaining portion for poison.”

  “What kind of poison was it?” My mind is already twirling with the possibility of the poison being something rare or registered that I could have never gotten my hands on. Yet another piece of the puzzle proving I didn’t murder Dolly.

  Ben shrugs. “I don’t know, but you can ask your attorney to request a copy of the autopsy and any related tox screens.” I nod. I’ll be doing that first thing Monday morning.

  “So what do we do now?” Anna asks.

  That’s a no-brainer. “We need to know everyone who was in the gym between 3 and 5:30 p.m. on the day Dolly was killed.” Ben stiffens under me, but I ignore him.

  “How are we going to do that?” Anna asks. I shrug. I have no idea, but we are definitely going to find out every person in the gym at that time because every single one of those persons could be the murderer. Our list of suspects just got blown wide open.

  Chapter 17

  Celery is 95% water and 100% NOT PIZZA.

  I’m just hanging up from my conversation with my attorney when Anna comes creeping into my office. I roll my eyes. “Why are you sneaking around?”

  She puts a finger on her lips and quickly shuts my office door. She comes to stand by my chair before responding. “I have an idea.”

  “Why do I have a feeling I’m not going to like this idea?”

  I don’t know why I bother to speak because Anna just plows forth without responding to my question. “So, you know at the gym how you have to swipe your card every time you arrive?” I nod. “I got to thinking about that last night. What if the gym has some kind of record of who arrives, at what time, and when they leave?” I smile as I start to see where she’s going with this. “I called the gym and asked if they could look up if I’d been there on Friday afternoon and guess what?” Naturally, she doesn’t wait for me to guess anything. “Turns out they keep computer records of all comings and goings.”

  “That’s awesome!” I have no problem giving Anna her high five this time. “So how do we get our hands on those records?” I see the gleam in her eyes and immediately cut off that train of thought. “Um no, I’m not going to try and get the records while you lure away the receptionist.” I shake my head and cross my arms over my chest. “Forget about it. Not happening.”

  Unfortunately, the gleam in Anna’s eyes hasn’t diminished. “I thought you’d say that, but I have an even better idea.” Uh oh. “I have an old friend from college. Total nerd. Anyway, I’m sure he can hack into the gym’s computers and get us any information we want.”

  I jump out of my chair and stare her down. “Are you out of your mind? It’s not bad enough that I’m accused of murdering someone? So now you want to go to jail for computer hacking, which I’m pretty sure is a federal crime because of the whole online thing. You know the penalties for federal crimes are worse than state crimes, don’t you?”

  Anna waves my concerns away with a flick of her hand. “Oh please, don’t start quoting trivia to me.” Before I can explain that knowledge about criminal penalties is anything but trivia, she gets up on her tiptoes and stares me down. “We’re doing this because you are not going to jail for a crime you didn’t commit, and we’re getting you your job back at the University. End of discussion.” She turns and walks to the door. “We’ll head over to Arthur’s house after closing.” And with that, she’s gone.

  ♥♥♥

  Despite my reservations, Anna and I end up at Arthur’s apartment that afternoon. Anna knocks and knocks and knock
s. I’m ready to escape this tragedy waiting to happen when a disheveled man answers the door. He looks annoyed until his eyes land on Anna. “Anna Banana! How are you?” He picks her up in a hug and twirls her around as if she’s a small child and not a grown woman. It doesn’t seem to bother Anna, though. She’s giggling and pounding on his back good-naturedly.

  The twirling stops when the man’s eyes land on me. “Who is this?” All signs of joviality are gone. His face is blank and his eyes are hard. He sets Anna down and then starts stalking towards me.

  “I’m Callie.” My voice stutters because I’m not liking the vibe that’s coming off this man.

  He stops and stares. “Callie? As in Anna’s Callie?” He looks at Anna who nods her head.

  “Do I know you?”

  “I’m Arthur.” I stick out my hand to shake his in greeting, but he ignores my hand and engulfs me in his arms. I look at Anna and mouth save me. She laughs but manages to pull him off of me. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Really?” I raise an eyebrow at Anna because I haven’t heard about him until this very morning.

  No one responds to my surprise. Instead, Arthur motions to Anna, and we follow him into a room which probably makes computer geeks go gaga. There are five monitors set up at a corner desk and hardware scattered around the room. It’s dark and smells like sweaty socks. In addition to hard drives, monitors, cords galore, and boxes and boxes of who knows what, there are old pizza boxes and dozens of soda cans littering the room.

  Arthur is already at his computer typing away faster than anyone ought to be able to. “So,” he starts talking without slowing the pace of his typing, “I started looking around after we spoke this morning. I think I have what you need.”

  Anna moves to the monitors, and I follow. I gasp at what I see. I presume this is a list of everyone at the gym between 3 and 5:30 p.m. on the Tuesday Dolly was murdered. It’s a simple excel sheet with time of entry, name of the member, and time of departure. “Can you print this out?” Anna asks.

  “Already on it.” Arthur hands her a print-out of the list. He punches some more buttons and now the screens are filled with member profiles including picture, date of birth, and phone number. “I figured it might help if you had these as well.” Before Anna can bother to ask, he hands her another sheaf of papers containing the member profiles.

  The doorbell rings, and Arthur jumps up. “That must be the pizza!” Does the man ever eat anything other than pizza? Anna and I follow him. While he goes to get his delivery, we sit at the dining room table. She aimlessly flips through the pages.

  “I don’t really know what we’re looking for,” she admits and hands me the documents.

  “You guys hungry?” Arthur asks as he returns with two large pizza boxes. I ignore him as I flip through the pages.

  I grab my bag and take out a notebook and pen. “Okay, so what do we know about the murderer?”

  I was mumbling to myself, but Anna answers. “Nothing.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not exactly true.” A piece of pizza lands in front of my face, and I turn to smile my thanks at Arthur. “We know that Dolly was poisoned, correct?” Anna and Arthur nod. “What do we know about murderers who poison their victims?” Anna just stares at me while Arthur chomps away. “Two and a half percent of murders by women use poison whereas less than half a percentage of men use poison, which means women killers are seven times more likely to use poison than a man.”

  Anna’s not making fun of my trivia knowledge now. “So the murderer is a woman?”

  I tap my pen against my chin. “The use of poison coupled with the cupcake being placed in the women’s locker room at a time, between 3 and 5:30 p.m., when the gym is usually only frequented by women makes it indeed seem most likely that the killer was a woman.”

  I grab the list of gym entries. “So, first things first. I’m going to eliminate all the men from the list.” I quickly scan the hundred or so names and cross out the ten or so men. “Well,” I admit. “That didn’t help much, but there’s one other thing we know about the murderer.”

  “What’s that?” Arthur actually stops chewing to ask.

  “Assuming it’s a she, she is right-handed.”

  Now, Arthur looks confused. “How do we know that?”

  “Handwriting analysis,” Anna says with a flick of her hand. “I’ll explain later.”

  “Do we know if any of these members are left-handed?” I ask before I realize what a stupid question that is. People don’t pay attention to that sort of thing. I have friends who I’ve known for years – and gone to class with, where I always take copious handwritten notes – who all of sudden will comment on how they never noticed I’m left-handed.

  “Everyone in the pole dancing class is right-handed except for you,” Anna says in between bites of her pizza.

  I look at her in surprise. “How do you know that?”

  Anna shakes her head and rolls her eyes at me. “Remember the first day of class? You were the only one having problems because you’re a leftie.”

  I nod slowly. I take a highlighter out of my bag. “Do you know the names of women in our class?”

  Together Anna and I go through the names until we’re pretty sure we have picked out the twenty names of the women in our class. “So how do we figure out who else is right-handed?” I stare at the list and it’s overwhelming. How in the world are we going to eliminate suspects when the only solid thing we know about the murderer is that it’s probably a woman? Great, that’s over fifty percent of the population. And that she’s right-handed? At least eighty-five percent of the population is right-handed.

  “What about a card?” I look up from my depressing thoughts. Anna smiles. “We can buy a big condolence card and then take it to the gym and ask everyone on that list to sign it.”

  It’s a good idea except for one small detail. “I can’t exactly ask people to sign a card for a woman I supposedly murdered.”

  Anna shrugs. “No worries. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll go at three since that’s when the same women will most likely be there.” There’s a moment of silence before Anna speaks again. “Um, Callie, I think you’re forgetting something.” She almost looks sheepish. That can’t be good. I merely raise an eyebrow at her. “What about the fact that the murderer is tall?”

  “Tall? What do you mean?” She’s lost me.

  “The person who keyed Dolly’s car was at least five feet seven, remember?” I nod because of course I remember.

  “Hmm…” I think about it for a few seconds. “I’m not really sure if the two events are connected. And we have less than a week before the fall semester starts. What if we assume the person who keyed the car is the murderer and we’re wrong?” I know we have enough evidence to clear me of any charges Detectives Duchamps and Smits can drum up, but I need to be completely free and clear of any implication of wrongdoing in a week.

  “But there’s no way we’re going to get through these names before then,” Anna protests.

  “True,” I say feeling a bit defeated. “Maybe you’re right. The card does mention the car after all.”

  Anna bounces in her chair. “And isn’t that one of the reasons the detectives think you did it?”

  I nod. “Okay,” I say pulling the list towards me once again. “Let’s go through this list and whittle it down.”

  Luckily the profiles that Fred printed out contain each member’s height. Leaving room for margin, we eliminate anyone under five feet seven. That leaves only twenty names. Much more manageable. Here’s hoping we’re on the right track.

  Chapter 18

  Cupcakes don’t ask silly questions. Cupcakes understand.

  I’m staring at the display of condolence cards at the grocery store trying to pick one, but there isn’t a card that says Sorry you’re dead but I didn’t kill you! Good luck in the afterlife. I select five of the biggest cards the store stocks and eliminate any with religious overtones. The two cards left over should be more than en
ough for the twenty signatures we’re hoping to get from our suspects.

  Anna’s waiting in the bakery department. I watch her checking out the competition and roll my eyes. I can’t believe she actually thinks any baked good from a grocery store could ever compete with the creations she makes. “Come on,” I tell her and grab her arm to pull her away. I drag her to the check-out and pay for the cards.

  “Here,” I say as we walk out. I hand her the cards and a few pens. It’s a few minutes before three and Anna’s off to the gym while I’m going back to the bakery to close shop.

  “Go, go Gadget,” she shouts as she takes off on her bike.

  ♥♥♥

  I’m walking into the kitchen after locking up when I hear knocking on the front door. I turn, expecting to see Ben, but it’s Anna. “Why are you back already? It’s not even five yet. I thought you were staying until five thirty.” I don’t bother asking her where her keys are. She’s forever losing them.

  “The natives were starting to get suspicious,” she pants as she rushes in.

  I roll my eyes but lock up after her and follow her to my office. She pulls the cards out of her bag and throws them on my desk. I open them and see signature after signature. She actually pulled it off. “How did you manage it?”

  “I have my ways,” she says with a wink.

  I grab the list of suspects we made yesterday and start to cross-reference the names when I realize we made a huge mistake. Some of the signatures are both first and last name, but the majority are only one name. I look up at Anna. “How are we going to figure out who these women are who only signed with their first name?”

  “Already on it.” Anna grabs a copy of the suspect list out of her bag. “After the first woman signed with just her first name, I realized we needed her full name so I asked her what her last name is so I could cross it off.” She shows me the list. A majority of the names have been crossed off.

  “And she just told you?”

  Anna shrugs. “I made up some bull about wanting to make sure I had Dolly’s friends sign the card.” I don’t bother to inquire further. Anna has a way of making people believe everything she says. Not that she’s a compulsive liar or anything. More like everyone finds it hard to believe that she would do anything nefarious.