Unlike the previous week, the concrete deck around the big pool was littered with supplies to repair cracks on the sides and bottom, along with gallons and gallons of a special rubberized paint labeled for pools. With everything in place, why weren’t any workers on-site?
“Unlucky for you,” Rebecca said with a sneer, “the school suspended work on the pool until after the Bake-Off.”
Well, that answered Tricia’s unspoken question. Now what did Rebecca intend to do, make her walk the plank—or rather, the diving board?
Rebecca kept pushing Tricia closer and closer to the deepest end of the empty pool.
“What’s your plan for me?” Tricia asked.
“Just a little accident.”
“Little?”
“Well, fatal,” Rebecca admitted, sounding positively gleeful. Tricia could just imagine the smug smile on the woman’s face. They advanced until Tricia’s feet were just inches from the edge of the pool. The ceramic tile in front of her toes had a small lip, something for swimmers to grab on to to help pull themselves out of the water.
Rebecca’s hand closed tighter on Tricia’s shoulder. “Turn around.”
With clumsy feet, Tricia managed to turn to face her assailant. She had an inkling of what came next. “And?” she prompted.
“I’m sorry to see you go, dear Tricia, but sadly, it’s your time.” Rebecca reached out her arm but wasn’t prepared when Tricia grabbed it, twisting it until the knife in Rebecca’s other hand went flying and the momentum made them whirl so that it was Rebecca whose back now faced the pool. But the tussling continued.
“Stop!” Tricia commanded. “Or we’ll both end up at the bottom of the pool.”
“Better to take you with me,” Rebecca taunted, then twisted and sent the two of them careening into the void. Tricia thrust her full weight to one side just before they hit the hard concrete, the jolt causing an explosion of pain in her right arm that sent a scream from her throat that seemed to echo over and over again in the cavernous space above them.
Waves and waves of excruciating pain traveled through her and Tricia fought the urge to vomit. She rested her head on the cool cement and waited for what seemed like eons for her breathing to slow so that she was no longer gasping, and gradually awareness began to seep back into her brain.
Rebecca lay beneath her—or at least half of her did. It was Rebecca’s body that had softened her landing, but a look at her right arm told Tricia all she needed to know when she saw the jagged edge of bone protruding through the skin of her forearm—the same arm she’d injured the previous autumn. It was then that what was left of the coffee in her stomach came up and she found herself retching until she was left with the dry heaves.
The stench of sour coffee made Tricia shudder, but it also helped bring her back to her senses. With a horrible jolt of pain, she managed to sit upright, her sight wavering until she thought she might pass out. It took another minute or so for her muddled brain to understand what had happened. She looked down at Rebecca, who was staring openmouthed at the ceiling, her body spread across the white concrete at odd angles. But it seemed she wasn’t dead, because of the spreading pool of blood around her head.
“Rebecca?” Tricia called, but there was no answer. Still, Tricia knew that corpses didn’t bleed. She swung her gaze to take in the edge of the pool above them. The metal ladder had to be at least eight or nine feet above them. Her gaze traveled the length of the pool to see steps and a rail that led from the shallow end to the pool decking. She was going to have to walk the length of the pool—almost twenty-five meters—to get there. And then what? She’d left her phone in her purse in the second-floor culinary room. The Good Food Channel truck had been parked outside the school, but she assumed the limited crew had all been inside with the contestants. The results of the contest might already have been announced, but at that moment Tricia didn’t give a damn who won.
Rolling onto her knees, her right arm hanging uselessly at her side, Tricia somehow managed to crawl over to the wall some five or six feet distant, and then braced herself until she could stagger to her feet. Leaning her left shoulder against the tapered cement wall, she pushed herself forward on wobbly legs.
It took seventy carefully counted footsteps until she reached the base of the stairs in the shallow end of the pool. Unfortunately, the rail was to her right, so she turned, grasped the cold metal in her good hand, and mounted the steps backward. Once she reached the top, she leaned down to rest her sweating brow against the cool steel—but for only a few seconds. She needed help. More important, Rebecca needed assistance if she was to live to stand trial for the murder she had committed, and the one she had tried to commit.
The pain was an agony like nothing Tricia had endured before, but if she was going to get help, she had to move. Pushing herself away from the rail, she staggered across the concrete decking until she got to the door to the anteroom between the locker rooms and the corridor. Once through the door to the hall, she had another decision to make. Cross half the length of the school to go to the office, or climb the stairs to the cookery rooms and ask for help.
Although harder to navigate, the stairs were closer, so that’s the direction she took.
One foot in front of the other.
Keep staring ahead.
Keep your goal in mind.
Get to Angelica. She will somehow make things right.
Tricia slogged ahead and rounded the landing halfway to the second floor before she realized how close she was to her goal. “Angelica,” she croaked, but her voice sounded no louder than a harsh whisper. Where was she? Why hadn’t she come looking for Tricia? It must have been ten or fifteen minutes since Tricia had left the culinary room for the john—which reminded her, she still needed to go. But she needed other help first and had to use all the strength she could muster to haul herself up those last ten steps.
Once in the corridor, Tricia could hear the sound of voices ahead. No one stood out in the hall or by the coffee stand. Leaning against the wall, step by step she slogged along the passage until the culinary room’s doorway loomed just steps away.
“On behalf of the Good Food Channel,” Larry Andrews was saying, “it’s my pleasure to award the trophy to the winner of the Great Booktown Bake-Off!”
Suddenly Tricia forgot about her broken arm—forgot about the woman in the empty pool possibly bleeding to death. The memory of her beautiful lemon cupcake with the crystallized sugar and the little chocolate book flooded her mind.
“And the winner is—”
Tricia leaned against the doorjamb, gasping for breath—and not just because of the painful, useless arm hanging at her side, but in anticipation of the answer—
“William Everett!”
Mr. Everett? Mr. Everett’s unattractive cupcake? The little cupcake that had less than a quarter of the frosting of the other entrants? The cupcake with only a walnut as decoration?
“Oh, my goodness!” someone called.
It was Angelica, of course.
And that’s when Tricia fainted.
THIRTY-TWO
Tricia’s usual happy hour was almost sixty minutes away by the time she arrived at the back entrance of the Cookery the next day. She’d undergone surgery the evening before and now sported a metal rod and a couple of screws to secure her broken ulna, along with a pretty lavender cast. She’d taken a little white pain pill earlier in the day but had decided to forgo the next dose, preferring gin as her chosen anesthetic.
She’d also decided to stay the night with Angelica rather than go home to Haven’t Got a Clue, but only because she didn’t want Mr. Everett and Pixie to make a fuss over her. And she still had that difficult conversation with Pixie looming ahead and didn’t feel up to facing it on that day. It could wait until tomorrow.
Angelica was like a mother hen helping Tricia safely up the stairs to her apartment. When she’
d renovated her home, Angelica had forgone a huge master suite and instead had installed a second bedroom on her third floor. Now that she was a grandmother, she was looking forward to having sleepovers with Sofia and had decorated that other room to accommodate a fairy princess—what Sofia aspired to be. Tricia was sure she wouldn’t even notice all that purple and pink once she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
Sarge—ever happy to see Tricia—was disappointed not to be immediately given a couple of dog biscuits, but Angelica fetched some and let Tricia toss them to him, which instantly quieted the always happy dog.
After settling Tricia on the end of the sectional in the living room, Angelica entered the kitchen to make them both a drink.
Tricia heaved a sigh and adjusted her arm in the sling, wishing the discomfort would settle down. Maybe she’d regret her decision to forgo the pain pill. She caught sight of a large vase of more than a dozen cheerful pink roses and baby’s breath on the coffee table that she hadn’t noticed when she’d entered the room.
“Who sent you flowers?” she called.
“They’re not for me. They’re for you. Pixie sent them over.”
“They’re from Pixie?”
“I don’t think so.”
Angelica came back into the living room, retrieved the card from the clear plastic pick that held it in place, and handed it to Tricia, who fumbled to open it.
“Oh, they’re from Marshall.”
“What does the card say?”
“Didn’t want to bother you until you felt well enough for visitors. Lunch, dinner, or anything you want, anytime you want. Call me.” She smiled. “Aw, he’s so sweet.”
Angelica raised an eyebrow, sizing up the large bouquet, and then turned to go back into the kitchen. A minute or two later, she returned to the living room and set down a tray. In addition to the pitcher and glasses, she had prepared a large plate of pepper poppers.
“You know how to treat a girl when she’s been knocked down by life,” Tricia said.
“Knocked down by a killer, you mean.”
Still, Angelica had barely stirred the pitcher of martinis before her ringtone sounded. She grabbed it. “Yes, June? What?” Her features collapsed into a scowl. “Okay, send him up.” She tapped the end-call icon. “Chief Baker is on his way.”
Tricia grimaced. “I don’t want to talk to him again.”
“You may as well get it over with,” Angelica advised and poured their drinks.
“Well, don’t offer him any of my pepper poppers.”
Angelica grinned. “No fear.”
Sarge heard the footsteps on the stairs, leapt out of his bed, and started barking, the noise threatening to cause Tricia’s frayed nerves to completely unravel.
“Sarge! Hush!” Angelica ordered, and the dog instantly quieted, but he waited behind the door to the apartment, and even from where she sat on the sectional, Tricia could hear his menacing growl. Sarge and Baker would never be friends.
Angelica picked up her dog and greeted Stoneham’s top cop with subdued annoyance. She and Baker would never be friends, either. “Come this way, but do try not to upset poor Tricia. She’s had a very bad twenty-four hours and needs peace and quiet.”
“Then muzzle that dog,” Baker barked, and stepped inside, without waiting for Angelica to show him the way. Instead, she set Sarge back in his basket with a command to stay and joined the two in the living room.
“Hello, Tricia.”
“Hi, Grant.”
“Are you up to making a statement?”
She stared at the man. He could have at least inquired about her injury. “I had surgery less than twenty-four hours ago, my arm hurts like crazy, and I’m feeling very crabby right now.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I can understand that.”
“What can I do for you besides sign a statement, and as you can see by my arm in this sling, I really can’t do that right now, either.”
“It’s okay about the statement. You can do that tomorrow or even next Monday.”
“Thank you.”
“I thought you might want to know about Rebecca Shore.”
“Someone at the hospital told me she was in pretty bad shape.”
“She fractured her skull in the fall, as well as half the rest of the bones in her body. There’s a possibility she could be paralyzed for life.”
“Life in prison I hope,” Angelica muttered, and handed Tricia a glass.
“Very likely,” Baker admitted. “But she was able to talk this morning, and cursed your name.”
That was a given.
Tricia raised her glass and addressed Angelica. “Cheers.”
Baker frowned and cleared his throat. “We were able to locate Cori Haskell. She’d gone to stay with her sister in Albany. She was happy to hear that Rebecca couldn’t threaten her anymore, but she doesn’t want to return to New Hampshire until we can assure her that those working with Rebecca aren’t liable to come after her.”
“And how are you making out in that regard?”
“We’ve made three arrests: two at Pets-A-Plenty, and a worker at Monterey Bioresources. They promptly fired the man when they found out he’d been taking in animals from the shelter and possibly contaminating their stock.”
Stock? He made the poor animals sound like items in a stationery store.
“One of the women, Doreen Mitchell, waived her rights and told us the whole scheme. It pretty much matches what you told me yesterday morning.”
Tricia had to bite her tongue not to say “I told you so!”
“Anything else?” Angelica asked, sounding bored.
“We got a search warrant and went through Rebecca Shore’s home. We found Vera Olson’s cell phone.”
“Did you find the pictures she took of Cheryl stealing the dogs and loading them in her car?”
He nodded. “The picture of the license plate helped us corroborate her part of the operation.” Baker’s focus shifted to the pepper poppers. “Can I have one of those?”
“No,” Angelica said firmly.
Baker glowered at her.
“I spoke to Joyce Widman,” he said.
“And?” Tricia asked cautiously.
“She’s relieved to no longer be a person of interest in Vera Olson’s death, but she has no great love for you, either.”
“I didn’t think she would. And Officer Pearson?”
“She faces disciplinary action for not immediately reporting her relationship with Ms. Widman at the start of the investigation. As she’s on probation, it could mean the end of her short career with the department.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No more than me. But . . . we’ll see.”
“Anything else, Chief?” Angelica asked. “As you can see, Tricia and I are in the middle of happy hour, and your presence isn’t making my dog happy. And when Sarge isn’t happy, I’m not happy, either.”
And for effect, Sarge growled loud enough for them all to hear.
“I guess that’s it for now.”
“What? No lecture? After something like this happens, you’ve usually taken the time to reprimand me,” Tricia said.
“From what I understand, you never confronted Rebecca. She came after you.”
Tricia nodded. She hadn’t confronted Rebecca, but only because she hadn’t put all the pieces of the puzzle together before the woman had come after her. But Tricia was pretty sure she would have eventually figured it out.
“I’d better get going,” Baker said. “I hope you feel better soon, Tricia. Call me when you’re ready to make that statement.”
“I will. And thank you, Grant.”
He nodded and turned.
“Close the door on the way out,” Angelica called cheerily.
He did.
Tricia settled back farthe
r into the depths of the sectional and sipped her martini. “With all that’s happened, I’m not clear on the sequence of events of yesterday afternoon. Can you fill me in?”
“Of course, although now I’m even more annoyed with that pompous idiot, Chef Andrews.”
“Why?”
“Because even though we couldn’t find you and Rebecca, he insisted on naming the winner of the Bake-Off. He said he had an appointment back at his hotel he had to keep. Yeah, I’ll bet he did. And I can probably guess with whom.”
Tricia didn’t want to pursue that conversation.
“Just how did Mr. Everett win?”
Angelica shrugged. “He had the best cupcake. It wasn’t showmanship; it was just darn good baking.”
“You were pretty sure you were going to win.”
Angelica sighed. “As you know, Chief Baker and Larry Andrews were predisposed against me, but ultimately it was my ambition that did me in. It was pure genius of Mr. E to go the simple route, and in a way, I shared in his victory.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was my recipe for maple frosting that topped his winning cupcake,” she said, then raised her glass to toast herself and took a sip.
“What?”
“Mr. E took the frosting recipe from my first cookbook.” She shrugged, her smile smug. “What can I say? We make a great team!”
Again, Tricia wasn’t up to disputing the claim.
“So who came in second?”
Angelica positively grinned. “Why, you, little sister.”
So startled was she by the news that Tricia nearly spilled her drink.
“I guess the judges preferred lemon over pistachio.”
Tricia frowned. Had Angelica realized she’d just negated her own argument of the judges being biased?
It wasn’t worth fighting about.
Tricia let out a breath. “Well, I’m glad to have impressed them with my baking, but I wish Pets-A-Plenty could have received the bigger share of the money.”
“Oh, but they will. The Everett Foundation is matching not only what the bakers brought in, but Mr. Everett’s chosen charity was also Pets-A-Plenty.”
A Killer Edition Page 26