by Morgana Best
I chopped the butter into small pieces and then wondered how to soften it. It wasn’t going to soften by itself, certainly not at room temperature. What to do? The only thing I could think of was to microwave it, so I put it in a microwaveable bowl and stuck it in the microwave. Previous experience had taught me, the hard way, to put it in the microwave for a short space of time and then check it. I did that now, but when I removed it, it was liquid. Oh well, it was soft, after all. I put the buttery liquid into the electric bowl and then looked at my iPad. Thank goodness the internet connection was back up. I set the timer to the required six minutes. All I had to do now was beat the mixture on medium speed. Then I realised that the mixture was plain. Perhaps I should have made it more interesting by adding chocolate, but on second thoughts, who would eat it? No one, that was for sure.
I must have stared at the mixture for the full six minutes waiting for something to go horribly wrong, but nothing did. It all looked fine. It did froth and foam a bit, but I supposed that meant it would be a nice, light mixture. I had the cupcake papers sitting ready on the oven tray, so I carefully spooned the mixture into each paper cup, making sure I didn’t overfill any. Luckily, I had remembered to preheat the oven. The recipe said I had to cook them for twenty-one to twenty-four minutes, or until cooked. I did not know how I’d tell if they were cooked, so I set my timer this time for twenty-one minutes. While they were in the oven, I went back out to help Thyme. “It’s a slow day today,” she said.
I was dismayed. “Do you think that’s because I’m a suspect in the murder case?”
Thyme shook her head. “The newspaper article wasn’t too bad. It only said you were one of the suspects. The photo of you was good, too.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “I’d forgotten about the paper! Have you got a copy?”
“Seriously, Amelia, it was nothing.” She was not at all convincing. “How are the cakes going?” she hurried to add.
“So far, so good,” I said cheerily.
“Why don’t you sit in the kitchen and keep an eye on them,” Thyme said. “I’ll call you if I get too many customers.”
I went back in and turned on the oven light. They were rising nicely! I gasped. I had never made any cakes that had actually risen before. My baking was certainly moving in the right direction. I couldn’t have been more pleased.
I turned off the oven light and then turned around to see Alder. I gasped again. “I didn’t hear you come in,” I said. “I was just doing some baking.”
I saw Alder’s eyes move to the nearest fire extinguisher. “I just came to check on you.”
I gestured to a seat at the nearby table. “I should be the one who is checking on you. How are you feeling?” His face was still white and pinched. “Seriously, you shouldn’t be out and about.”
Alder forced a smile. “I’m all right. I came to hear about Jane. Did you realise how many strange words were in your text? I couldn’t decipher half of it.”
“Oh, it’s that new spellcheck app I downloaded recently!” I said, irritated. “The nurse, Jane, said Celia didn’t have any money at all, so Paul was telling the truth. She also seemed shocked that Celia was killed with codeine.” Just then, something dawned on me and my hand flew to my mouth.
“What is it?” Alder asked me.
“I just realised that we’ve all assumed that the codeine was administered to Celia orally, because I saw that white stuff in the cake, but what if it was actually injected?”
“And the police only told Paul that it was codeine, not how it was administered?” Alder asked me.
I nodded. “As far as I know. Maybe Thyme can ask Constable Dawson. She should be able to get it out of him.”
“That’s a good idea, but given that you saw the white substance in a chocolate cupcake and your cakes were chocolate right through, that seems to suggest that it was administered orally,” Alder said.
I nodded, thinking of Ruprecht. “Occam’s Razor.”
Alder nodded. “Exactly.”
Just then, the timer on my iPhone made a shrill noise. “Excuse me, I had better get these cakes out of the oven.” I donned two oven mitts and gingerly opened the oven door, leaning well out of the way in case flames escaped. To my delight, there was not a flame in sight. I carefully tipped the cakes onto the oven rack, and the oven rack didn’t flatten out, all squashed. I couldn’t believe my luck.
“How do they look?” Alder asked, concern evident in his voice.
“Fantastic!” I said in delight. “Absolutely fantastic! They’re the best batch I’ve ever made, not that that’s saying much, but they look fine.” I picked one up and dropped it on the counter. It didn’t bounce!
I grabbed a knife and inserted it into the cake. To my shock, it went right through it. That was an all time first. “Wow, Alder, I think these are the best I’ve ever made. I’m just so excited.”
I took two plates from the pantry, put one in front of Alder and one opposite him where I would sit, and then placed the cakes in the centre of the table. “Go on, Alder, have one,” I said gleefully.
A look of abject horror passed across Alder’s face. He held up his hands to defend himself. “No, Amelia, I can’t. As much as I love you…” Alder’s jaw dropped open when he realised what he’d said. “Sorry,” he muttered, “it must be the painkillers…”
He had no chance to say any more, because there was a loud bang.
When I wiped the goo out of my eyes, I saw Alder covered from head to toe in gooey cupcake batter mixed with crumbs.
Thyme and Camino hurried through the door. They didn’t ask what had happened, because it was quite obvious. Alder excused himself to drive home to have a shower. “Wait!” I handed him a towel. “Better get the worst of it off before you go outside.” Alder thanked me, but the stuff didn’t seem to want to come off. In the end he gave up, gave me a little wave goodbye and hurried out of the room.
Camino and Thyme fussed about me, trying to wipe the goo from me, to no avail. “Go home and have a shower,” Thyme said. “Hardly any customers have been in, so it’s fine to go. We’ll get it off all the walls.”
“And the ceiling, too,” Camino added. “I can help Thyme if it gets busy. Besides, it won’t take you long to go home and have a shower and change.”
I nodded, and walked to my car in a daze. All I could think was that Alder had said the L word.
Chapter 11
Straight after work, Camino, Thyme, and I headed straight over to Ruprecht’s. Alder was already there, leaning back in a comfortable chair. Ruprecht had invited us all to dinner, and to discuss the case.
I was a little embarrassed to be around Alder, considering what he had said to me only hours earlier. He appeared to be feeling the same way. Did he mean it? Or was it really his painkillers talking? Our relationship was still young. I certainly hoped he didn’t regret saying it to me, if he even meant it in the first place.
“We shall all dine on a delicious Buddha Bowl with chickpea marsala, Brussels sprouts, roasted carrots, avocado, aioli, sunflower seeds, and salad out here in the living room,” Ruprecht said, catching my eye and with an ever so slight nod to Alder.
I nodded in return. It was kind of Ruprecht to take Alder’s current state into consideration. Alder was still something of an invalid and it worried me that he wanted to be at home by himself.
“Amelia, perhaps you could help me in the kitchen.”
As soon as we were in the kitchen, which was a short distance away, but involved navigating five velvet-upholstered mahogany Victorian grandfather chairs and one Victorian Breakfront Bookcase, Ruprecht turned to me. “I’m somewhat worried about Alder’s condition. Now, I don’t mean to worry you; I’m sure he is improving nicely. It’s just that I don’t think he should be home alone.”
“I completely agree,” I said with concern. “He refuses to come back to my place, though.”
“Perhaps I could convince him to stay here until he recovers,” Ruprecht said. “I’m sure he’s told
you that he doesn’t want to be a burden to you, but the real reason is that he isn’t used to being weak, and he sees his role as your protector. I think he feels bad to be vulnerable.”
“He said he was worried I might be in danger if he stayed with me, because of the case in Melbourne,” I said. “Won’t he worry about putting you in danger?”
Ruprecht shook his head. “No, I think he feels uneasy staying with you, because of his feelings for you.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “That would be great if you could convince him to stay here. That would be a huge load off my mind.”
Ruprecht patted my shoulder, and we set about preparing the chickpea marsala, chopping vegetables, basting the roasting carrots, and washing the salad vegetables.
When we returned to the living room, Alder had dozed off. He woke up with a start when Ruprecht placed platters of food on the coffee table in front of him. I noted with relief that his appetite was good; at my place, he’d eaten hardly anything. I had no doubt that Alder was recovering. After all, he’d had a serious wound and now was doing much better.
Ruprecht and I cleared the plates, and I switched on the coffee pot while Ruprecht went to fetch his laptop. Soon Ruprecht was seated in front of his laptop with all of us, with the exception of Alder, looking over his shoulder. “We need to google all the suspects,” he said. “It worries me that the police haven’t been back in touch with you, Amelia.”
“Why?” I said in disbelief. “That suits me just fine.”
“From the police’s point of view, you should look like a suspect,” Ruprecht said happily.
I snorted rudely. “Is that supposed to reassure me? I don’t want to be a suspect.”
“My point is, that I’m concerned as to whether the police are doing a good job with their investigation,” Ruprecht said. “We should look through all references to them on the internet.”
I was confused. “We should google the detectives?”
Ruprecht looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. “No, my dear girl, the suspects. We have yet to find out if Celia was in fact penniless, but the evidence suggests that she was. At the moment, Jane appears to be the prime suspect, for motives unknown. We still have to take into consideration Paul, Maria, and others of the nursing staff as well as the residents, although I maintain that a nurse would have injected Celia with poison rather than added codeine to her food.”
Alder finally spoke up. “And I’m sure nurses have other ways of killing people subtly, far more subtly than adding codeine powder to a cupcake.”
There was a murmur of agreement. “And that brings us to the question of opportunity,” Alder continued. “Someone had to have the time and the privacy to take one of the chocolate cupcakes, scoop out the middle, put in the codeine powder mixed with something to make it more palatable, and then put the frosting back on the top.”
Camino spoke up. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to scoop out the bottom, so the frosting wasn’t ruined?”
“But that would have been obvious,” Thyme said. “At least by scooping out the top, the killer left no telltale signs, and was able to cover the hole with the creamy frosting.”
Ruprecht waved his hands expansively. “This is merely conjecture,” he said. “The method of inserting the codeine is not important. The question remains, who had the opportunity?”
Thyme and I looked at each other. “The cupcakes were in the kitchen out of sight for some time,” I said.
Thyme agreed. “It could have been anyone.”
“Did any of the residents go into the kitchen?” Alder asked us.
Thyme shrugged. “I’m not really sure,” I said. “Some of them did leave the room. Jane had plenty of opportunity, but I don’t know about the residents.”
“Was there any way anyone could have done it while you were all in the main room?” Ruprecht said. “I know it wouldn’t have been easy, but was it possible at all?”
“I don’t really see how,” I said. “I noticed Edith and some of the other residents were eating the cupcakes with a spoon, so I suppose they could have easily made the hole in the cupcake, but as for putting the powder in, surely someone would have noticed.”
“Not if someone left the room with the cupcake, put the poison in and then brought the cupcake back into the room,” Camino said.
I bit my lip. “I suppose that that’s possible. And what if someone actually brought a cupcake to the event, I mean, one that was already poisoned? Chocolate cupcakes all look pretty much the same, and Happy Valley Gardens did specifically request plain chocolate cupcakes. Someone could have slipped in an already poisoned cupcake.”
“Good point!” Ruprecht and Alder said in unison. “If that was the case, then it was more likely to be Paul or Jane,” Ruprecht added.
“Not necessarily.” Alder shook his head. “One of the residents could have asked someone to bring them a chocolate cupcake and then doctored the cake with the codeine.”
“We’re not getting anywhere with supposition,” Ruprecht said. “We need to look at motive. We need to look at connections between Celia and the others. What do we know so far?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but was forestalled by the sound of a particularly annoying cuckoo clock. The massive thing, a hideous monstrosity sporting huge deer antlers—carved and wooden that is, mercifully not real—jutted out into the room over Ruprecht’s chair. I shuddered before speaking. That thing really gave me the creeps. “We know that Celia was Paul’s grandmother, and that she bullied everyone else present at the time of her death, the nurses and the residents.”
Ruprecht nodded. “The motive might indeed have been her bullying, but there could well be something we don’t know about—yet. Let’s google her and see what comes up. What was her surname again, Amelia?”
“Carmichael,” I supplied.
Ruprecht tapped away. “Just as to be expected, all the first entries are about her murder,” he said. “Still, bear with me, because it might mention something of her past.”
As Ruprecht scrolled through countless media reports, I zoned out. There was nothing much of any interest about Celia. Most of them were interviews with residents, saying Celia was a lovely person and that she’d had a long life and that she’d had a good innings. I thought that rather a strange remark, given that she had been murdered.
Finally, Ruprecht gave up. “There was no background on her,” he said. “I’ll scroll down and see what else we can find about her.” To everyone’s dismay, all the entries about Celia were to do with her murder.
Alder leant forward. “Given Celia’s age, there could well be newspaper reports about her, but they would probably be on microfiche files in the library. It all happened pre-internet times and wouldn’t have made the big papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald or any of the other papers whose archives are online these days.”
Ruprecht tapped his chin. “Good point. One of us will have to go to the library.” He looked at me as he said it.
I held up my hands in surrender. “All right, I’ll go. I’ve been to the library before, and I used a microfiche machine some time ago, back at uni.”
“And now let’s turn our attention to Jane,” Ruprecht said brightly. “What’s her surname, Amelia?”
“Jenkins,” I told him.
Ruprecht tapped away at the keys. “There’s so much more online about this lady. She’s on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.”
“Go to LinkedIn,” Alder said. “It should give a list of her previous employers, and we can crosscheck them against any suspicious deaths there.”
“But would she actually list a previous place of employment where someone died from a suspicious death?” I asked him.
“You’d be surprised,” Alder said, raising his eyebrows.
Ruprecht called for a pen and paper, and scribbled down Jane’s previous places of employment. He then began a lengthy and boring crosschecking to see if there were any news reports of suspicious deaths of th
e residents at those nursing homes. “This could take some time,” Ruprecht said with a sigh. “Now what’s our to-do list? I’ll check all these nursing homes, and Amelia, you go to the library tomorrow and see if you can turn up anything about Celia, and her friend Edith. We can’t discount Edith as a suspect.”
My phone rang. I looked at the Caller ID but didn’t recognise the number. “Hello?” I said tentatively.
“Miss Spelled? This is Detective Scott. We would like you to come down to the station now to answer some questions.”
“Right now?” I squeaked.
He answered in the affirmative. I hung up, and turned to Ruprecht. “It seems as if the police are on the job now. They want me to go in for questioning.”
I saw a look of worry flash across Alder’s face, but he hurried to compose himself. “Don’t worry, this is only routine.”
I nodded, unconvinced.
“Call me as soon as you leave there,” Alder said.
I said that I would. “And I’ll call you too, Ruprecht.”
“I insist that Alder stay with me tonight,” Ruprecht began, but Alder interrupted him to protest. Ruprecht waved away Alder’s concerns. “I insist upon it, young man, and that is the end of the matter,” he added firmly.
“I had better get going,” I said, my heart in my mouth.
“Here, take this,” Ruprecht said, crossing to a cabinet and removing a small vial.
I turned the little blue bottle over in my hands. “What is it?”
“It’s a compulsion oil,” he said. “Before you go into the police station, rub this over your hands. Then make sure you shake hands with the detectives. It will bend them to your will somewhat—you know, make them less likely to see you as a suspect.”