by Abby Byne
“What did Danny say about the main breaker being tripped?”
“He said that the main breaker could have tripped when the current went through Marco into the wet floor,” said Anabel.
“Was Marco lying in the water?”
“Yes,” said Anabel. “He was lying sort of half-in and half-out of that puddle by the sink. Just underneath the outlet box.”
“Wouldn’t an electrician normally clean up a wet floor before working?”
“He probably would have,” said Anabel, “if he could have found the mop.”
“It’s not in the bucket?”
“No,” said Anabel. “We’ve looked for it everywhere.”
“What about rags?” Bitsie asked.
“We can’t find those, either,” said Anabel. “There should have been a whole stack on the shelf in the storeroom, which was left unlocked because that’s where the electrical panel is.”
“What about paper towels? He could have used those,” said Bitsie.
“We are out of paper towels everywhere except the bathroom,” Anabel insisted. “There’s a roll in there, but it’s almost used up.”
“But we just got a whole new case of paper towels,” said Bitsie. “I clearly remember Nick putting it in the office.”
“Nick always locks the office up in the evening, after he transfers the money from the register to the safe,” said Anabel. “Marco wouldn’t have known where to look for them, and, even if he’d known they were in there, he couldn’t have gotten to them.”
“It’s weird for the mop and the rags to have gone missing like that,” Bitsie said.
“It is, but there’s something even stranger,” said Hector. “Marco had something in his hand.”
“He was working, he’d have had a tool in his hand,” said Bitsie.
“It wasn’t a tool, though,” Anabel said. “When we found him, there was a pair of pliers and a pair of wire cutters on the floor beside him. The rest of his tools were still in the toolbox, right over there.” She pointed to a box of tools sitting next to the sink, just outside the puddle and still very much in their case.
“Then what was he holding?” Bitsie asked.
“It was the weirdest thing,” said Anabel. “He was holding a half-eaten cupcake.”
Five in the morning was way too early to be up and working, Bitsie thought. Still, she’d better get used to bakers’ hours.
Hector and Anabel were back in the kitchen, just now getting the morning bake underway. They were hours behind schedule, but Anabel assured Bitsie that there were enough cupcakes in the display out front to get them through the early-morning rush.
Bitsie desperately needed to get off her feet, so when Liz and Stan materialized at the back door, she welcomed the excuse to sit down at one of the tiny tables at the front of the shop for a cup of coffee and a chat.
“Do you really think it was an accident?” Bitsie asked her brother. “Have you ever seen anything like this before, in all your years on the force?”
“The responding officers believe it was an accident,” said Stan. “They took a few pictures and poked around the electrical box before they let Danny put everything back together, just so they’ll have something to put in the report, but I don’t think they plan on opening any kind of investigation.”
“But Hector says—“
“Hector is in shock,” Liz pointed out. “He knew Marco a little. Of course, Hector doesn’t want to believe—“
Liz looked over at Stan.
“Hector doesn’t want to believe what?” Bitsie asked.
“It was something Hector said when he found the body,” said Liz. “Anabel told me.”
“What did he say?”
“When they found him, Hector said something about how he couldn’t believe the idiot went through with it, and then he started sobbing and said something about how he couldn’t believe that he’d do that to Jennifer.”
“Hector did mention a Jennifer,” said Bitsie. “Said she was Marco’s girlfriend and that she’d already lost two husbands.”
“Anabel thought what Hector meant was that Marco might have caused the accident on purpose,” Liz explained.
“Why would he want to do that?” Bitsie asked.
“Suicidal people have been known to make their deaths look like accidents,” said Stan. “Sometimes they do it so their family won’t know, and sometimes they do it so their loved ones can still get their life insurance money.”
“Insurance fraud? That seems pretty unlikely,” said Bitsie.
“I agree with you,” said Liz. “Why would a healthy man in his thirties think he was worth more dead than alive?”
“Stan, do you think you could ask around the station in a few days to see if there are any developments?” Bitsie asked. “I doubt the police will tell the rest of us, or even the family, too much, but they’ll talk to you.”
“You think just because I’m a retired officer—“
“Semi-retired, it appears,” Liz said wryly, shaking her head. “I knew something like this would happen. I knew you couldn’t give up work cold-turkey.”
“Well,” said Stan, ignoring Liz, “I’m not at all sure there’s any evidence of a crime to be found, and even if there is, I’m not sure that anyone’s going to be looking for it.”
“Maybe someone should be,” Bitsie said. “I think it’s just bizarre that he died with a cupcake in his hand.”
“When we came in, Marco was still lying where they’d found him,” said Liz. “I saw that cupcake in his hand. I did think that was strange.”
“Was the hand holding the cupcake in the water? Was it all soggy, or is there a chance that we might be able to still find it intact?“
“I’m pretty sure that hand was lying out of the water,” said Liz. “It’s strange the things you don’t even notice until you try picturing something in your mind later on.”
“Does it seem normal that a man with a reputation for being a methodical worker would be holding a cupcake in one hand and messing around with wires using the other?” Bitsie wondered aloud.
“That would certainly seem to rule out the possibility that he touched the live wires intentionally,” said Stan. “A man who is saying his last prayers typically wouldn’t be pilfering cupcakes.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a pilfered cupcake,” Bitsie suggested. “Nick was still here when they arrived yesterday evening. He was the one who let them in. Maybe he offered the electricians a snack.”
“That does sound like something he would do,” Liz said.
“It’s an easy matter to find that out,” said Bitsie. “All I have to do is ask Nick.”
“I wonder what happened to that half-eaten cupcake?” Liz said.
“The police might have carried it off with the body,” suggested Bitsie.
“Someone probably threw it in the trash,” said Stan. “I can hardly say they were careful to collect evidence, not that I’m entirely convinced they’ll be wishing they had.”
“I’m going to take a look,” said Bitsie. “See if I can find it.”
“What would a half-eaten cupcake tell you, even if you do find it?” Liz asked.
“I have no idea,“ said Bitsie, “But I won’t have a chance to find out if it goes out with the trash this morning.”
“My little sister,” said Stan, smiling for the first time since they’d all been awakened to the horrible news of the accident. “Fifty years old and still playing Nancy Drew!”
Chapter Three
Bitsie didn’t find the half-eaten cupcake, although it wasn’t for lack of looking. The kitchen trash cans had been emptied at closing the previous evening and contained next to nothing.
She did find a plate of cupcakes on top of the fridge. There was one chocolate, one maple nut, and one raspberry ripple, but all three were untouched. Even if someone had taken a cupcake out of the hand of a dead man, they would hardly have put it back on a plate.
She took the garbage can from under the checkout
counter—which seemed to have been overlooked when the rest were emptied—out to the alley as soon as it got light enough to see and emptied it onto a sheet of clean cardboard she found tucked behind the dumpster. There was no sign of a half-eaten cupcake, although someone had tossed out a perfectly good screwdriver. She had just set aside the screwdriver and was starting to bag everything back up when Nick arrived to open.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for a half-eaten cupcake.”
“May I ask why?”
“It has to do with the accident this morning. Liz told you what happened?”
“Yes, that’s why I came in a little early. But what does a half-eaten cupcake have to do with anything?“ Nick asked.
“The poor man was holding it when he died.”
“Strange,” said Nick. “I offered them a plate of cupcakes before I left. Danny took one, but Marco didn’t want any.” Nick pointed at the pile of trash Bitsie had been sorting through. “You do realize you’ve been dumping trash all over someone’s bed.”
“What?”
“That cardboard. It belongs to Bill.”
“Who’s Bill?”
“I gather you haven’t met Bill, the homeless guy who lives back here. Says he likes the smell of cupcakes.“
“He’s not umm—dangerous or anything is he?”
“Bill? Nah. Drunk a lot of the time, but gentle as a lamb. He’s usually asleep ‘til 10, over there behind the dumpster,” said Nick.
“I wonder where he is now?”
“Bill was here last night when I left. The back door to the kitchen was propped open, and he was hanging around back there with his dog. I offered him the left-over cupcakes, but he didn’t want any, either. He always goes on about how he loves the smell of baking, but never wants to eat any. No sign of him this morning, though.”
Nick shrugged and went back inside. Bitsie returned to dealing with the contents of the trashcan.
Nick wasn’t inside for long. Bitsie was just putting the last of the trash back into the bag when Nick came back out and said, “You’d better come inside and take a look at something.”
The cash register had been pried open. There wasn’t much damage to the drawer, but that might explain the screwdriver Bitsie had found dropped in the trashcan. Bitsie peered into the drawer of the open register. The slot for the twenties was empty, but there were still tens, fives, ones, and a full assortment of coins.
“Isn’t it a bit strange for someone to go through the effort of prying open the register and then only take the twenties?” she said.
“That’s what I thought,” Nick agreed.
“How much was in there?” Bitsie asked Nick.
“I always leave two-hundred dollars to open with. I put the rest in the safe last night.”
“I’d better check the safe. Why don’t you count up what’s left in there and see how much they took?”
The safe was undisturbed, although, any thief who hadn’t spent a lot of time hanging around the place would have had a hard figuring out they even had one. To open the safe, Bitsie had to move the case of paper towels, a broken folding chair, and an empty trashcan into the hall.
“I thought we just opened these?” said Bitsie, gesturing at the case of paper towels. There sure seemed to be a lot missing.
“Anabel didn’t tell you?” said Nick as he walked in. “They had to use half the case this morning just to get that puddle of water by the sink cleaned up.”
“So, the mop and the towels still haven’t turned up?”
“Not that I know of, but I don’t think that anybody’s had time yet to do a thorough search for them.”
Nick was interrupted by the tinkling of the bell out front, which signaled that they had their first customer of the day. Searching for the mop would have to wait. Bitsie looked down at her hands; they were filthy, certainly not the hands of a reputable baker.
“I’d better go back out front—“ said Nick.
Bitsie had just finished scrubbing her hands and was in the process of refilling the paper towel dispensers when Nick returned to find Bitsie.
“You’d better come back out here,” he said. “We just had an irate customer come and go, and I can’t say that I blame them for being upset.”
Bitsie followed Nick out to the front. He motioned for her to step behind the counter and pointed to the glass shelves, which held the display of cupcakes sitting in neat rows inside the antique glass bakery case.
“I don’t get it,” said Bitsie, staring at the cupcakes. “What’s the problem?”
“Look closer,” said Nick.
Bitsie got down on her knees and pulled a red velvet cupcake from the case and looked at it. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” she insisted.
“No, there isn’t anything wrong with that one,” said Nick, “but take a closer look at the one next to it.”
Bitsie took another look, and this time she saw what Nick—and their irate customer—had already noticed: in every single row of cupcakes on the top shelf, there was one cupcake with a bite taken out of it.
“Is this somebody’s idea of a practical joke?”
“Normally, that’s that what I’d think,” said Nick, “but because of what happened last night, it’s hard not to wonder if it means something.”
“What could it possibly mean?”
“I have no idea, but I do know that we’d better get this case emptied before any more customers come in.”
“Wait!” said Bitsie as Nick dragged the trashcan over and prepared to dump a tray of cupcakes into it.
“I don’t think we should be serving any of these.”
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t think we should be serving them, either,” said Bitsie. “But what if you’re right? What if all these bitten-into cupcakes mean something?” She pulled her phone from her pocket. “Don’t move anything until I take some pictures.”
A little after ten, Hector came out from the kitchen into the shop. Although they’d been busy all morning, the shop was empty for the moment.
“I’ve been talking to my friend Luke, the one who works—worked—for Marco, and he says he knows who did it.”
“You mean he thinks someone murdered Marco?”
“Yes. He’s sure of it.”
“But I got the impression that you thought Marco might have staged the accident himself,” said Bitsie.
“Oh?”
“It was something you said to Anabel when you guys found him.”
“Oh, that. I did think that might be what happened, right at first,” said Hector.
“What made you think that?”
“It was something my wife said a couple of weeks ago. She’d seen Marco’s girlfriend Jennifer at a class reunion, and Jennifer had said something about how Marco was really sick, and how she didn’t want to lose another man.”
“Jennifer is a widow?”
“Yeah, she’s had two husbands die. They both had cancer. She wasn’t married long to either one of them. Some people just have really bad luck, I guess.”
“So, your wife got the impression that Marco was really sick?”
“Yeah. Jennifer didn’t go into details, but it seemed to my wife like Marco might be dying or something. I don’t know if that’s true, though, ‘cause Luke thinks somebody killed Marco and made it look like an accident.”
“Your friend Luke should be telling the police that,” Bitsie said.
“Luke told them already, but he doesn’t think they took him seriously.”
“I can see why he’s upset, if that’s what he really thinks, but—“
“He’s going to be here in ten minutes.”
“Here?”
“Yes. I called Stan, too.”
“I don’t—“ Bitsie started to protest, but then she saw Hector’s face and realized that what she should have done was send him home. He shouldn’t be working.
“Why don’t you go home early,” she said. “Better yet, why don’t you take the ne
xt three days off. We’ll be able to manage without you for that long. Think of it as paid leave. You’ve had a nasty shock, and you need time to recover.”
Hector did not refuse. He was gone before Luke and Stan arrived.
Luke had worked for Marco his whole career as an electrician, he said, and there was no way that someone like Marco would make the kind of stupid mistake that had killed him.
“But you told Hector that you believe you know someone who might have wanted to kill Marco,“ Bitsie said.
Luke seemed sincere enough, but accusing someone of murder? And based on what evidence? Still, there was no reason not to hear the man out, especially since the police hadn’t seemed to take his fears seriously.
“Yeah, I do know someone who might have killed him,” Luke insisted. “I’ll tell you how I know—“
“Be careful what you say,” warned Stan. “Going around saying somebody might be a murderer is serious business.”
Luke shrugged off Stan’s warning and continued. “We have—had—this dude working for us,” Luke began. “Nobody liked him, right from the start. His work was O.K., but he had a mean streak. He’d go off—“
“What’s this man’s name?” said Bitsie. If she was going to become even more entangled in this whole sad affair, she’d at least like to get her facts straight.
“Monty Burge. Anyway, he finally took it too far and hurled a hammer at my head. Said I’d stole something out of his toolbox.”
“Did he hit you?” Stan asked.
“No, he missed. Could have killed me, throwing a hammer at my head like that. Anyway, Marco fired him on the spot.”
“How did that go?” Bitsie asked.
“Not well. Monty called Marco (and me) every name you can think of, then he said something to Marco that I’ll never forget: ‘you’d better watch your back, Hernandez’.”
“That’s hardly a specific threat,” Stan pointed out.
“There’s more,” said Luke. “Monty’s one scary dude. After he went off on me like that, I did some digging around on him, and you know what I found out? He done time.”
“For what?” Bitsie asked.