by Morgana Best
Someone suggested that over beating could cause an explosion, but someone who was studying food science said too much baking soda would do it, and if someone used self rising flour rather than plain flour that could make cakes explode. Still, everyone on the forum seemed baffled. Welcome to my world! It did seem that I had used far too much baking soda, though.
But had I used self rising flour? It was in a big bulk canister, so I had no idea. I walked out into the showroom to see Craig disappearing out the door. “Thyme, is the flour we normally use self rising or plain?”
“Self rising,” Thyme said in a flash.
“Oh! I used it with baking soda. No wonder it exploded!”
Thyme chuckled. “That explains it. Still, when you learn to channel your powers a little better, you won’t have any baking disasters at all.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” I said sadly. “I just feel that I’ll never get there.”
“Your powers are increasing exponentially, though,” Thyme said. “And in a weird way, that makes it harder to control them.”
I raised my eyebrows. “My powers are increasing?”
“Yes, the treadmill appearing from nowhere! Had you forgotten about that?” Thyme asked me.
“But that was the house,” I said, perplexed.
Thyme shook her head. “Perhaps, but I suspect it was you and the house working together. She is your grandmother, after all.”
Just then, a group of ladies walked in and ordered coffee from Camino. “I’ll text Alder and tell him I’ve solved the mystery of the exploding cake dough,” I said to Thyme.
“Batter.”
“Sorry?” Thyme did not reply as she was serving the ladies who also wanted cake, so I texted Alder: Found out what really happened to the dough. I’ll tell you and the others at dinner tonight. Mystery solved!
Thyme and I set the cakes on plates and took them over to the ladies. I was disappointed that there wasn’t a buzz in my store any more. Ever since I had employed Camino to make coffee, the store had attracted a lot more customers. That is, until now. Having my name plastered in the local paper as a murder suspect, and the victim having died from poison in a cupcake, had no doubt turned away many patrons.
“Why don’t you go and speak to Paul Addams now?” Thyme said. “I still don’t like the idea, though.”
“I’m quite upset about the lack of customers ever since the murder,” I said.
Thyme forced a smile. “Never mind, I’m sure they’ll arrest someone soon.”
“I seriously doubt it. That’s why I have to do some investigating. The more I think about it, the more I think it was Edith. Celia not only stole her fiancé, but she even destroyed Edith’s photos of him and made Edith’s life at Happy Valley Gardens a living hell. Edith certainly had a motive, and she also had the opportunity. She was sitting right next to Celia, and I did see her offer her cupcakes on at least one occasion.”
“But how would Edith have had the time to put the codeine in the cupcake?” Thyme asked me.
“I don’t know, but you said you saw her leave the room once. And don’t forget, she had access to codeine. It surely has to be her. Wait a minute!” I tapped my head.
“What is it?”
“I’ve got it!”
Thyme put her hands on her hips. “Out with it, woman!”
“You know, whoever murdered Celia had to have planned it. This was no spur of the moment thing, was it!”
Thyme frowned. “That’s true. Go on.”
“What if someone had already prepared a cupcake? We discussed this earlier. What if someone had a cupcake that they had bought the day before, or something like that. That would give the murderer heaps of time to put the codeine in the middle. Edith had a large handbag with her, and the cupcake could have been in that.”
“Yes, and everyone did know that chocolate cupcakes were Celia’s favourite,” Thyme said thoughtfully.
“The more I think about it, then the more I think that’s how it happened,” I said.
“Should you call the police and tell them?” Thyme asked me.
I shook my head. “I’ll go and see what dirt I can get on Edith from Paul and Maria, and then I’ll call the police later. Ouch!”
“What is it?”
I pointed to my shoes. “This is the first time I’ve worn them. I didn’t think they’d pinch like this, but my heels are already hurting.”
Two more customers came in, so I stayed to serve them. When they left, I turned to Thyme. “Are you sure you’ll be right if I leave?”
“Off you go.” Thyme made a shooing motion with her hands. “Keep your phone close. If it gets busy, I’ll call you.”
“Okay. I don’t think I’ll be long questioning Paul and Maria. If my heels get any worse, I’ll pop home to change shoes, and then come straight back.”
“Should you go and see the police?” Thyme asked me.
I thought it over. “I’ll call you from home. If you’re not busy, I’ll pop down to the police station, otherwise I’ll call them when I get back to the shop.”
I drove to the motel, feeling more optimistic than I had felt in some time. It did look like Edith was the murderer, and now all I had to do was get the police to believe me. Still, something was niggling at me. When Edith told me that Celia had blackmailed people, it had given me a funny feeling. I had learned to take notice of those feelings, but what did it mean? Did it mean that Edith wasn’t the murderer and that Celia had been blackmailing someone else? But if so, who? I rubbed my temples. All this going around in circles was giving me a headache. Hopefully, Paul or Maria would be able to shed some light on the matter.
I headed straight for the cheap motel on the other side of town. It was long and low-set, and on the highway. I had just pulled into the visitor parking area when I saw Paul packing his car in a parking spot nearby. I jumped out and called to him.
He looked up, surprised. “Amelia!”
“I hope you don’t mind me calling by. I just wanted to speak to you and Maria about Edith.”
“Is she okay?”
I waved my hand in dismissal. “Sure, she’s fine. I just wanted to ask you and Maria some questions about her, if you don’t mind.”
He gestured to the building. “Maria’s just having a bit of a lie down before we drive home.”
“You’re leaving? Did the police say you could leave town?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
I was quite put out. That surely meant the police were focusing on me.
“Could we sit out here? I don’t want to wake up Maria.” He gestured to a wooden picnic table with a makeshift blue umbrella over it, and a garbage can rather too close. Flies were buzzing around it.
I screwed up my nose in distaste. “Sure.” I put my car keys and phone on a clean spot on the table, and then sat down.
“What did you want to ask me?”
I hesitated. “I don’t want to offend you, but well, I suppose I should just come out and say it. Do you think Edith could be the murderer?”
“Edith?” he repeated. “Whatever would make you say a thing like that?”
“If we just look at the facts,” I began, “it had to be someone who was there at the time. I know it wasn’t me, and I know it wasn’t Thyme. Edith hated Celia, if you don’t mind me saying so, and Jane told me that Edith had plenty of access to codeine. In fact, she had just recovered from the flu and she had been prescribed codeine. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to crush it up and put it in a chocolate cupcake. She, of all people, would have known that chocolate cupcakes were Celia’s favourite.”
“But everyone knew that Celia liked chocolate cupcakes the best,” Paul said.
“Well who else could it be?” I said, exasperated. “Do you have any other ideas?”
Paul was taken aback. “No, I suppose, since you put it like that,” he said. “And Edith really did hate Celia. I don’t just mean she disliked her—the woman really hated her. You know, when Celia insist
ed that we booked her into Happy Valley Gardens, I didn’t think anything of it. Sure, I knew that Celia had married Edith’s ex-fiancé, but I assumed they had somehow made up after it. Why would I think otherwise?” I nodded. “But soon, Maria and I realised just how much Edith utterly despised Celia. Now don’t get me wrong; I know what Celia could be like. I saw her taunting Edith. I suppose, upon reflection, it does seem quite logical that Edith poisoned her.”
I nodded. “So you don’t think it’s such a crazy idea?”
Paul stroked his chin. “No, now that you mention it, it seems rather obvious.”
“Can you think of anything else?”
“Like what?”
I drummed my fingers on the table. “Did Celia ever have any near misses? Like an overdose of anything? Anything at all?”
Paul at once shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”
I was a little disappointed. I hadn’t found out anything further incriminating about Edith. I was hoping to have more to take to the police. The police knew that Edith didn’t like Celia and that Edith had access to codeine, yet they had not arrested her. I thanked him and stood up, when Maria stuck her head out the motel room door. “I’ll just go and say goodbye to Maria,” I said.
I walked over to Maria. “I just popped over to ask you if you thought Edith could have murdered Celia.”
Maria looked shocked. “Surely not!”
“Anyway, I was about to leave. Paul said you were leaving so I came to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Amelia. It was nice to meet you.”
I nodded. “You, too. Safe trip.” I walked back over to Paul, surprised to see he was staring at my phone. I was even more surprised to see he looked white and shaken.
“I’m sorry I picked it up,” he said, in a tone that did not sound sorry in the least. “I suppose it’s instinct to look when a text comes through. Sorry.”
“That’s quite all right,” I said, taking the phone from him and picking up my keys. I looked at the screen. The message was from Alder: Glad to hear you solved the mystery. Can’t wait to hear what you found out tonight. “Well, have a safe trip, and sorry about your grandmother again,” I said. Paul merely stared at me, his mouth open.
I wondered what had upset him so much. I got into the car, and then took off my shoes. I figured I needed to go home and put on my old ones as well some Band-Aids. I sat in the car and called Thyme. “Is the shop busy yet?”
“No not yet, why?”
“I’m just going to pop home and change my shoes.”
“Did you find out anything?”
I sighed. “No, not a thing.” I sighed again.
Chapter 19
I raced in the front door of my house, only to be tripped up by Willow. Hawthorn sat further down the hallway, meowing plaintively.
“I fed you this morning,” I said. My statement had no effect on them. They both ran in front of me, blocking my every move.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, you win.” I walked down to the kitchen. “There’s already dry food in your bowls!” I said. They looked at me, unblinking. I topped up their bowls and muttered to myself, “Why do you always need more food when you already have plenty in your bowls?”
The cats tucked into their food as if they were starving. I shrugged and walked back to my bathroom, where I readily located Band-Aids and stuck them over my heels. I grabbed a pair of sandals, and then walked back into the living room. I sat down and called Thyme. “Are you busy? Or do I have time to go to the police station? I’m home now, just about to leave.”
“Well, the lunch rush should be coming up,” Thyme said, “but if you’re leaving now, you should make it here in time. If it gets busy, I’ll call you and you can always go back there later.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. I stood up, but then the treadmill started by itself. “Oh no you don’t!” I said to the house. “I have to get back to the shop, and I have to go to the police right now and tell them what I found out about Edith. If I don’t, the cops will probably throw me in jail. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
The treadmill came to a stop. I let out a long sigh of relief. I crossed to the door and opened it, to see Paul standing there.
“Paul! What are you doing here?” I said in surprise.
“I just wanted to talk to you about Edith,” he said, looking behind him.
“Sure, come in.” I showed him into the living room.
“Is your TV always that loud?” he asked me.
I apologised, and hurried to turn it down. Unfortunately, the house would not let me. I tried to turn it off, and that didn’t work either. “I’m sorry, it’s an electrical fault that often happens,” I lied.
“Just turn it off at the wall!” Paul snapped at me.
I was surprised. That was hardly the tone one should take when visiting someone. As I stood there looking at him, he marched over to the TV and switched it off. When that didn’t work, he pulled the plug from the wall. The TV kept going. “What the?” he said, looking around the room wildly.
“It’s one of those new cordless TVs,” I said, wondering if he would swallow such an outlandish story. “I’ll have to call someone to fix it.” He just stared at me, so to distract him, I said, “You came here to tell me something about Edith?”
He took a step towards me, so I instinctively stepped backwards. “I read your text.” His tone was menacing.
My phone was in my hand, so I looked at it. “What text?”
“The game is up, Amelia. There’s no use pretending. I know you found out what I did.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I’m really not following you. What’s going on?”
His face turned bright red, and a vein throbbed in the side of his neck. “I read your text!” he said loudly. “You found out what really happened to Joe.”
“Joe?” I parroted. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” I looked at the text on my phone. It read: Found out what really happened to Joe. I’ll tell ewe and the mothers at dinner tonight. Mystery solved exclamation mark.
“Oh, it’s that dreadful spellcheck app,” I said. “I’ll have to delete it. I meant to say I found out what really happened to the dough. The cake dough, I mean the batter. I made cupcakes the other day and they exploded.”
“Good try, but it’s not at all believable.”
It took me a moment to process what was going on, to realise why he was upset about my text. “Joe Collins!”
He nodded grimly. “Yes. How did you find out what I did to Joe?”
“Seriously, I don’t have a clue what you did to Joe. I was talking about dough, cake batter.”
Paul lunged for me and I ducked behind the treadmill. “You pushed Joe over the cliff!” I said in a moment of clarity.
“Who else knows?” he asked me.
“No one,” I hurried to say. “I figured it out for myself.” Actually, I had only figured it out for myself at that very moment. I put two and two together. “And Celia was blackmailing you, wasn’t she? How did she find out?”
“Celia was no fool,” Paul said. “She knew I was always in love with Maria. Joe was a very experienced climber. Celia didn’t think for a minute he had really gone over the cliff, and then she saw how I hung around Maria, pretending to support her in her time of grief. Maria always thought that we came together over our mutual grief for Joe.”
“But that was years ago,” I said. “Why would Celia only blackmail you now?”
“Celia was a real…” Paul let out a string of language that made the house shake.
“You shouldn’t use that language around here,” I said. “The house doesn’t like it.”
Paul looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “She was bored, I suppose. Who knows? She was malicious. I don’t know why she turned on me like that. She wanted me to upgrade her to a better room, and I told her we couldn’t afford it. I wasn’t lying—we literally couldn’t afford it, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She said if
I didn’t upgrade her to a new room in the new wing they had just built at Happy Valley Gardens, then she was going to tell Maria everything.”
“How did you get the codeine in the cake?” I asked him. I really wanted to know. I wasn’t trying to keep him talking as such—no one knew he was here, and no help was on the way. I was fairly certain the house would rescue me as it had always done before, and I wanted to know the details so I would be off the hook with the police.
“It was easy.” He was calm again now, and it was as if we were having a normal conversation. It was hard to believe he was a cold-blooded killer. “Chocolate cupcakes were Celia’s favourite. I simply bought one from Woolworths the day before, scooped out the middle, and filled it with as much codeine as I could. I mixed the codeine with butter cream frosting and then put a lot of chocolate butter cream frosting over the top. Celia was such a glutton that she always stuffed chocolate in her mouth, even chocolate cupcakes, without really tasting it. She was a heavy drinker too, and I read online that a combination of codeine and alcohol is far more dangerous than codeine alone. I also read online how much to give her for a fatal dose for her weight. It was easy, really. She shouldn’t have crossed me. She brought it on herself.”
“I don’t suppose you want to go to the police and confess,” I said hopefully.
He lunged at me by way of answer, but the treadmill was between us, so he had to cross the treadmill to get to me. As he did, the treadmill turned on at high speed. Paul grabbed the bars and swung himself forward. It was going so fast that he had to sprint. He had no hope of getting off.
“Can you turn that TV down so I can call the police?” I called out to the house.
As soon as the house turned down the volume, I called the police. When the desk sergeant answered, I said, “Paul Addams just came to my house to kill me, but he’s had some sort of psychotic episode. He confessed to killing his grandmother, Celia Carmichael, and he told me exactly why he did it. He also confessed to another murder of years earlier. My address is nine Salisbury Street. Would you please come here as fast as you can because I’m alone in the house with him.”