A Fatal Finale

by Stacey Alabaster

  Worse than that, Rogan’s murder had never been solved. There was talk of giving the case over to another department, and of Jackson being called back into town from Mornington to help out, but as far as I could tell, it seemed like the local police had completely given up on it. It was no longer in the papers or on the local news. But that didn’t stop people from talking and making up their own minds about who was guilty.

  Bronson came out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. They looked floury and doughy. I gulped. Please tell me he wasn’t still baking. We couldn’t even afford the cost of flour at that point. He told me that he was making dough for another bunch of cream puffs. As far as he knew, they were still our best sellers. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.

  I shook my head. “There’s no point in baking any more today.” I didn’t want to say it, but I had to. “You may as well pack up and head home early.”

  “To save my wages, you mean,” Bronson said, taking his apron off and throwing it onto the ground. He didn’t even come back to pick it up. I heard the back door slam and Bronson’s car start up and speed away.

  “We can’t keep going on like this,” I said, turning to Pippa.

  “Well, what do you suggest we do about it?” she said with a heavy sigh as she closed her magazine. Before she shut it, I saw that she was reading an article about crystals.

  I lowered my voice. “It’s simple, right? If we could just figure out who actually killed Rogan, then we could all stop suspecting each other. This air of animosity would disappear. Once the killer is out of here, we can get back to rebuilding our relationships—and customers might even decide to start visiting us again.”

  Pippa was silent, though. She stared glumly at the back of the magazine. I tried to ignore her despondency. I was right. The solution was simple. The case was just dragging on a little longer than I had expected.

  “I’m going home,” Pippa said, picking up her coat and placing her magazine in her bag. “There doesn’t seem to be much point in me coming into work these days, you know, if there are no customers to serve. I have a family and a farm that needs my attention.”

  I watched her leave, wondering how things had ever gotten this dire. And I wasn’t aware of just how bad things were about to get.

  Sue yelped a little. I heard the ‘oww’ and came into the kitchen to make sure she was okay. “It’s just the steam from the snow peas,” she said, moving the pot to the sink. “It burnt my finger.” She ran her hand under the cold water. “So, what time is Pippa getting here?”

  We had regular ‘family dinners’ where Pippa would come over once a week for dinner. Sue and I took turns with the cooking and this night, it had fallen on Sue’s night to cook and she was a little stressed about the serving sizes.

  “I’ll check,” I said with a smile, but as I grabbed my cell phone, my smile faded. I already had a text from Pippa, saying that she couldn’t make it. I glanced over at the piles of veggies and pasta that Sue had made and didn’t have the heart to break it to her, so I excused myself and called Pippa back in my bedroom.

  “This is the second time you have canceled dinner,” I said. “Pippa, is there something you are not telling me?”

  In the end, she agreed to come over just to get me off her back, I thought. I didn’t tell Sue anything about the phone call. “Pippa is on her way,” I said breezily. “She should be here in five.”

  She greeted Sue coldly at the door. I wasn’t sure what Sue had done to deserve that. Almost all the purple had washed out of her hair by then and her regular light brown color was showing through, which was an unusual sight. I hadn’t seen Pippa’s original hair color in a long time.

  She didn’t have much to say to me as she sat at the table and began to pile her plate with more snow peas and corn than it was possible for one small woman to eat. “Everything okay?” I asked when she had been silent for five minutes during the main course. She just shrugged, told me that the vegetables weren’t as good as the ones she grew on her farm, and pushed her side plate away. I knew that wasn’t the real issue. I tried to push it again, but she just ate her pasta in silence until Sue left the room to get dessert. Trifle.

  Finally, she spilled what was really going on.

  Pippa’s arms were crossed. She glared at me for a moment, then looked away while I waited impatiently for whatever it was she had to say. “I had an interesting conversation with Tegan recently…”

  I sat there very quietly and played with my napkin, twisting it so tight that it broke. “I…I didn’t think you were in contact with Tegan…”

  “She contacted me on Facebook about a week ago and we met up for a coffee.”

  “Is that where you got that magazine from?”

  Pippa didn’t answer. She was just staring at the tablecloth. “I know you don’t put any stock in Tegan’s abilities, but I do.” Her voice was low, but she was starting to sound less angry and more sad.

  It seemed like I was going to have to drag it out of her. “What did Tegan say?” I asked nervously, hoping that Sue was taking her time adding the cream to the trifle.

  “She said that you were the one who killed Rogan,” Pippa whispered.

  I was angry. Angry that Tegan had passed on that ridiculous piece of information, but more than that, I was furious that Pippa could actually take it seriously. To the point of being cold with me all week and canceling dinner plans twice. And now she was sitting in my house, passing on this gossip.

  “You have got to be kidding me right now,” I said, standing up to clear the table. “Pippa, that was a silly little parlor trick that Tegan was performing.”

  Pippa stood up as well so that we were on eye level. She placed a hand on her hip. She raised her eyebrows right up. “Oh really? You thought it was so silly, huh? Then why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t a secret. It was just too ridiculous to mention!”

  Pippa tried to pick up her purse from the back of the chair where she had hung it, but she was so flustered that she only got the handle more tangled. “And why is this the one mystery that you have never been able to solve?” She finally turned back to me. Her eyes were full of questions. Worry. Accusation.

  “Pippa. I think you should be careful about what you accuse me of here,” I said as Sue started to make her way back into the dining room with an entire trifle held out in front of her. “Because there are some things that can never be taken back.”

  “Excuse me, Sue,” Pippa said, finally untangling her purse as she hurried down the hallway and I followed her, a confused Sue watching us go.

  My own voice became raised. “Well, maybe you did it then, Pippa! Maybe that is why you are deflecting all of the blame onto me.”

  Pippa spun around right as she reached the door. “Don’t even try to make yourself look less guilty, Rachael. For your own sake as well as everyone else’s…you need to take responsibility for what you’ve done.”

  “Pippa. Please. You can’t really believe this,” I said, in complete shock.

  Sue came up to us asking if we were coming back to sit down for dessert. Pippa shook her head. “I can’t work with a killer,” she said. “And I certainly can’t eat with one.” She slammed the door.

  I was still shaking after she left. “I don’t know where that all came from,” I said, trying to laugh it off so that Sue didn’t take it too seriously. But instead I started to well up.

  Sue came and placed an arm over my shoulder. “You two will work it out, you always have before.”

  I shook my head. This time was different. This time, she had looked at me like someone she didn’t even know. And what she had just accused me of... What would it take to get over something like that?

  “She just said she didn’t want to work with me, didn’t she?” I asked, looking to Sue for clarification.

  “Maybe she didn’t mean it.”

  But she had meant it.

  This time, the damage had been done. Th
e egg had been cracked and it couldn’t be put back in its shell.

  7

  I never expected an art gallery to smell like paint, in spite of all the paintings that were hanging up all around me, but there was one bare wall with a ‘don’t touch, wet paint’ sign. It had been given a fresh white coat. “We have to keep the walls all a pristine shade of white or the artists start getting cranky that we are displaying their work on dirty walls,” Sue explained, her hands full with fliers that she placed on a small wooden table in the middle of the gallery.

  “You’re having a show?” I asked, picking up the flier. “Oh, it’s this weekend.”

  She gave me a bit of a wary look, but poked her tongue out to show that she was only teasing. “I have them quite regularly. You’ve missed the last two… Even though I did invite you.”

  “Oh, sorry.” I flashed her an apologetic smile.

  She didn’t seem to mind. “It’s completely understandable after everything you’ve been going through.” She waved her hand to dismiss it and walked over to one of the not-so-freshly painted walls to readjust a frame that had started to tilt slightly to the left. She wasn’t lying—she meant what she said. And she was right, I’d had a lot on my plate. But that didn’t mean I had to be a bad friend.

  “I promise I will make this one,” I said, picking up a flier again and grinning at Sue. After all, what else did I have going for me in way of a social life these days?

  “Oh!” I had something to show her as well, which I just remembered. I needed a second pair of eyes to run over it before I took it down to the local newspaper. I buried the flier for the art show in my purse and dug out a piece of paper of my own. “What do you think?” I asked, showing her the draft, which I intended to submit that afternoon.

  She took the piece of paper off me and read it curiously. I tried to read her expression. Was I doing the right thing? Had I kept it all anonymous enough?

  “Are you really going to place the ad?” Sue said, handing it back to me. “Are you really going to sell the bakery?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “What about Blake? Does he know about this?” No. Hence the reason I had written the ad carefully. I hadn’t placed the name of the bakery on it and I certainly hadn’t put our names on it.

  I shrugged a little. “I’m sure that Blake wants out as much as I do. If we could actually find a buyer for the place, I’m sure he would jump at the offer.”

  Sue didn’t look so sure. “What about just selling your half to him?”

  I scoffed and placed the ad back in my bag. “He is in no position to buy me out. There’s no way he would ever go for that.” Nice plan, sure. But never going to happen.

  Sue must have seen the look on my face.

  I was stuck. Trapped in Belldale. “This is the only solution I can think of,” I said quietly. “We haven’t turned a profit in two months.”

  “Well, I’ll walk you down to the newspaper office,” Sue offered, sounding understanding. “So that you don’t have to go alone. Let me just pack up here.”

  We didn’t have much time to make the next day’s edition. And now that I had made a decision, I wanted to get the ad running as soon as possible. So I was hurrying along not really paying attention to my surroundings. It was Sue who noticed and pointed across the road. “Is that…”

  “What? Who?” I asked, spinning around to look behind me to where Sue was pointing to the other side of the street. It was the end of the work day, so there were a lot of people milling about.

  “Er, no one,” Sue said, hurrying ahead. She pulled me by the arm so that I couldn’t turn around and look. But I struggled free anyway. Now that she had said something, I had to look.

  I could see a head, with candy-colored, pink hair bopping up and down. There was only one person in town who would have hair that color. Pippa.

  It was so strange to be walking on the opposite side of the road, away from her like that. So strange to not even know that she had dyed her hair that color.

  For a moment, I considered crossing over. “Do you want to say hello…” Sue started to say. I shook my head. No. The newspaper office was about to close.

  “Let’s hurry up.”

  At least there was one positive to Pippa leaving the bakery—one less paycheck to have to write every week. But it also meant that I was stuck with Simona out front. And we had never been close. On this particular day, she was taking things easy, looking through her phone for most of her shift. Nothing too unusual there. The door opened and for a moment, I thought we had a customer. But it was only the wind, blowing in a few stray leaves with it. I looked at Simona expectantly. When she didn’t move or put her phone down, I asked, “Can you please sweep up those leaves?” I wasn’t paying her to stand around and look at social media.

  “I will be leaving soon,” Simona said, her ponytail swinging back and forth as she grabbed a broom and dust pan.

  I glanced up at the clock. “It’s only one-thirty. But… Well, we are quiet, so I suppose it’s okay if you leave early.” I couldn’t help feeling a bit annoyed at the way she had just announced it though, rather than asking if it was all right for her to finish two hours early.

  “No, I don’t mean today,” Simona said, jumping up onto the counter to take a seat. “I mean I will be leaving the bakery.”

  I finished re-arranging the display of baked rolls for the tenth time and looked up at her in shock. I put my hand on my hip. “What do you mean? You are resigning?”

  She grinned at me and extended her left arm so that her hand was dangling in my face. The hand that contained her wedding finger.

  And now, a giant diamond ring. How had I not spotted that before?

  My first thought was, How did Blake afford that? Followed by, These two can’t seriously be marrying each other?

  “But—but are you sure?” I asked. “The two of you have been dating such a short time…”

  “It’s been three months,” Simona said with an eye-roll, like that was all the time in the world. “And when it’s right, when you really love each other, then you just know.”

  “If you say so,” I said, still inspecting the ring, Simona’s hand in mine. “Hang on,” I said, dropping her hand. “Why does any of this mean that you are quitting the bakery?”

  She pulled her hand back and pouted a little. “Well, I’m not going to work after I am married, am I?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Is this nineteen-oh-four?” I asked.

  “We will be starting a family right away!” Simona cried out defensively.

  “I—“ My mouth was hanging open at the rush of it all. Then I remembered that Pippa and Marcello had met in a similar way. They had gotten engaged after about a week of dating and started a family right away as well. And that had all worked out well in the end, although there had been a few hiccups along the way.

  I decided to just let the whole thing drop. It was Simona’s life and choices. If that was what she wanted to do, then let her.

  And at least that was yet another paycheck I wouldn’t have to write every week. Maybe we could start breaking even, with just the skeleton crew working now. Laura’s wrist had mended, but she had decided to take a leave right afterward and neither Blake nor I objected. Without Simona, Pippa, Laura or Rogan, it would just be me, Blake, and Bronson. Maybe we could keep going like that.

  But I had no idea how Blake was going to support a new family off the back of a bakery that was losing money every day. I glanced out the window and wondered if we would ever get any bites from the newspaper ad. Simona asked what I was daydreaming about. I asked her politely to please take the pile of leaves outside. “We might be losing money, but that is no reason why it has to look like a barnyard in here.”

  The kitchen doors swung open and I saw a shock of slick backed black hair. Blake stomped over to me. We had barely been speaking to each other for weeks—no more than we absolutely had to—so it was nothing out of the ordinary for him to be in such a bitter mood wit
h me. At first, I thought nothing of it.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  And then I froze. Because I saw what he had just thrown on the table. A copy of that day’s local newspaper. It was flung open to the classifieds section. My ad wasn’t large or embellished in any form (that cost extra), so he made a point of pointing to it

  “That could be any bakery,” I said, keeping my voice even. I acted calm and just went back to arranging the buns again. I had been very careful not to leave any identifying details in the ad. No name of the bakery, or exact location, and the contact details simply said to “Contact the editor of the paper for details.”

  Blake laughed quietly and picked it up, reading over the ad again, his face growing more and more red. “There’s no other bakery that it could possibly be…” He read it again, this time out loud. “It says that the bakery is ‘boutique’ in style and that is has been operating in the area for ‘a few’ years.”

  I shrugged again and tried to act casual. “I’d be interested to see who is selling it then,” I said. “Maybe it’s good news for us. If there are less bakeries in the area, then we will have less competition.”

  “Cut the act, Rachael.” Blake ripped the ad out this time. “It is one thing to go behind my back to plant the ad. At least admit that you did it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, still keeping my cool as Simona came back in through the door with an empty dustpan. “I don’t know anything about that ad.”

  “Okay then. If I call up the editor right now, I suppose I will be forwarded on to some other mystery bakery in town, will I?”

  I shrugged a little. “I suppose you will,” I said, but this time, my voice lacked confidence. I knew that as soon as Blake called and asked, the editor would forward the call to my cell phone. Which was right beside me with the screen face side up. And I had saved the editor’s name in my phone as just that—Editor.