Sugar and Vice: Cupcake Truck Mysteries

by Emily James

  The suspicion in Vinny’s voice as he agreed was so thick he could have used it as a sauce. But at least he agreed.

  “I was just wondering if you saw Claire Cartwright bring that specialty ketchup that she seemed to think was so important?”

  The way Dan phrased it was smart. It made it sound like he was agreeing with Vinny that it’d been silly and unreasonable for Claire to ask for a specific ketchup rather than using the standard one.

  “I didn’t see her. Did any of yous?”

  He had to be addressing his employees. I wished I could see Vinny’s face. I had to even trust Dan to interpret it and the employees’ reactions. It made my skin itch.

  “Nah,” one of them said. “They showed up on the table while we were setting up.”

  Dan must have looked at the other employee or something because he said “me neither” in a tone that made me think he was shrugging along with it.

  In less than a minute, Dan came around the corner toward me, an order of onion rings in his hand.

  He held it out toward me. “We might need to work on your charades skills. For a second, I thought you were proposing without us ever having been on a date.”

  I laughed and snagged a few rings, but the laugh felt like it didn’t reach all the way inside. Because some day I might wish I could date, and I wouldn’t be able to. I’d left Jarrod, but I couldn’t divorce him without giving away where I was. Maybe it was old-fashioned of me, but it didn’t feel right to date anyone while I was still married. In my mind, I’d be committing adultery.

  Thankfully, that wasn’t a dilemma I needed to deal with at present. It might never be an issue. I hadn’t had much time for dating while I was caring for my dad, and Jarrod was the first man I’d dated after he died. We’d married within six months.

  Dan wiped his fingers on one of the napkins he’d snagged along with the onion rings. “Does that set your mind at ease about Claire?”

  It did. Judging Claire guilty based on the fact that she’d requested that specific ketchup was circumstantial at best. No one deserved to go to prison for that, and I wanted to see the right person caught almost as much as Dan did. Not only to protect my own skin, but because I couldn’t close my eyes at night without seeing Janie’s sweet, panicked little face as she struggled to breathe.

  But if Claire hadn’t put the ketchup there, it did tell us one thing that should help narrow our suspects down. “It had to be someone who knew Claire was going to ask for the ketchup, but also someone who didn’t know she wasn’t able to get it.”

  Chapter 14

  I felt like I was holding my breath for most of the drive from Serial Grillers to Claire’s house in Dan’s car. I spent the whole time trying to decide if I was struggling to breathe because I accepted a ride from a man I barely knew or if I was struggling to breathe because the thought of facing Claire again spiked a level of anxiety in me that people usually reserved for a root canal. If I kept this up, I’d be on high blood pressure medication before I hit forty.

  Claire wasn’t out front in her garden this time when we pulled up, but her car was in the driveway and a silver SUV was pulling out. Silver seemed to be the popular color of the year. I’d seen an increase in cars that shade on the road.

  Dan’s arms tensed, making his muscles pop out, and a shiver went down my back.

  “Claire’s ex,” he said. “Soon to be ex technically.”

  The car rolled slowly by us. The man in the driver’s seat waved at Dan on the way past. Dan didn’t wave back.

  “You don’t seem to like him much.” I almost expected him to say no kidding, Captain Obvious in response, but I had to say something. The tension filling the car was so heavy it made my ribs ache.

  “I’d rather have dinner with a drug dealer.” He glanced into his rearview mirror as if he wanted to make sure the guy was gone. “He left Claire for a woman our age, but he’s refusing to actually divorce her because he doesn’t want to pay alimony. Claire’s lawyer says they’ll get the divorce eventually, but Claire didn’t need the stress.”

  I almost asked if he was sure Claire hadn’t killed Harold, but I swallowed the words back down. I either had to commit fully to this partnership or not at all. “What was he doing here then?”

  “Probably picking up more boxes of his stuff. He’s taking a couple at a time. I think it’s to torture Claire.”

  On second thought, maybe it was a good thing I couldn’t date or marry again for fear of Jarrod finding me if I tried to divorce him. I’d picked Jarrod my first time around. There was no guarantee my judgment had improved over the years. I could end up with another Jarrod, or someone like Claire’s husband. Not that Claire seemed like the easiest person in the world to live with.

  My mom had died when I was too young to remember what she was like or what my parents’ marriage was like. My dad told me happy stories, though, so I had to believe not all marriages were bad.

  I swiveled around in my seat, but the silver SUV was gone. “Maybe this isn’t the best time for me to drop in on Claire.”

  “Probably not.” Dan turned the car off. “But the police have been pushing her, thinking the same as you have about her. It’ll be one less thing for her to worry about if we can figure out who killed my grandpa.”

  From the sound of it, the police had it narrowed down to Claire and me. Those weren’t great odds for either of us.

  We got out of the car, and I trailed him to the front door. I stayed one step behind him while he knocked.

  Claire threw the door open. “What?” A pause. “Sorry, Dan. I thought you were Mike coming back. He was just here.”

  “We saw him on our way in.”

  “We? Is Janie sick? She should be at school.”

  If I hadn’t been convinced by what Dan said before, I was by the concern in Claire’s voice. A woman who reacted that way over a potential sniffle wasn’t someone who’d do anything to risk Janie’s life.

  Claire stepped out of the doorway and leaned around Dan, likely expecting to find a sick little girl.

  Instead she found me.

  Her eyes were red as if she’d been holding in tears the whole time her ex was in the house. Her gaze landed on me, and she jumped back as if she’d almost stepped on a snake. The look she turned on Dan was that of a parent who’d just discovered their child had been stealing from them.

  “I need you to trust me and listen,” Dan said.

  I expected Claire to flare up at him the way she had at me and at Vinny. I expected her to slam the door in our faces.

  Instead, she stepped back and motioned for us to come inside.

  I hesitated for a second before following Dan in. What kind of a long-standing relationship must it take to have that kind of confidence in someone? She hated me. She thought I killed her grandfather. And yet, she let me into her home because Dan asked her to. The only person I’d ever had that sort of faith in was my dad. I’d thought maybe relationships like that didn’t exist elsewhere and that I’d never feel that safe again.

  Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe if Jarrod ever stopped hunting me I could one day have a friendship like that. But first I’d have to find someone who I could trust that way again. Those types of people probably didn’t come along every day.

  That thought sent a tiny sliver of pain sticking into my heart.

  Dan continued to lead the way through the house. Brown packing boxes were stacked everywhere. Not only did it seem like Claire had packed up her soon-to-be ex-husband’s stuff, but it looked like she was planning to move as well, either for financial reasons or because she couldn’t stand to walk through a house where everything would remind her of her ex.

  Dan took a seat on a beige leather couch and patted the other side. I assumed that invitation was meant for me. Claire took a chair to his left. The look she gave me made me think she’d scrub the spot where I was sitting after we left to rid it of the taint.

  Dan explained to her everything I’d told him, including how I’d pretended to w
ant to hire Vinny the hot dog and hamburger vendor.

  Claire’s shoulders inched down as he spoke, but the color also seeped from her face, leaving her skin a strange pasty yellow that reminded me of whole wheat bread dough. She’d been sure I’d done this, and now with that theory looking shaky, she had to be afraid of what it meant for her.

  She gripped the arms of her chair. “You said the police are sure the crew of the food truck had no connections to grandpa and their bank accounts checked out?”

  They clearly had a better relationship with the police than I did to know that Vinny and his crew hadn’t received any strange influxes of cash indicating they’d been paid to kill Harold. Of course, I’d been actively trying to avoid the police, so who knew what I’d have discovered if I went in for the interview immediately instead of waiting.

  Dan nodded in response to Claire’s question. “Isabel thinks it had to be someone else who knew you’d asked for Grandpa’s favorite ketchup but didn’t know you weren’t able to get it. Was there anyone you talked to about it?”

  “Angela.” Claire’s answer was immediate, as if she hadn’t had to think about it at all. “But it wasn’t her.”

  Dan turned his head toward me. “Angela and Claire have been best friends since high school.”

  I couldn’t even imagine what a friendship that lasted that long would look like. You’d be more family than friends at that point.

  I tried not to envy the fact that Claire had yet another person in her life who she could trust so completely as to not even question her involvement.

  “Angela knew I couldn’t get Grandpa’s ketchup from the food truck,” Claire added, with a look at me that said she’d expected me to argue with her statement that it wasn’t Angela.

  As if she still believed I would blame anyone so long as it took the focus off of me. Really, I couldn’t hold that against her. I’d still been questioning her innocence a few minutes ago.

  Dan leaned forward. “It wouldn’t have been anyone who knew you couldn’t get the ketchup. I’m figuring they knew you were going to ask for the ketchup, and so they planned to swap the bottles that were there out with bottles they’d tampered with.”

  I couldn’t help being impressed that Dan had understood what I was getting at with my idea without me having to lay it out.

  Claire pressed her fingers in a line above her eyebrows like she was trying to smooth away the tension there. “I can’t think of anyone who I would have talked to about those small party details only at the beginning, but not later on.”

  Whoever came up with the plan to swap out the ketchup had a nearly perfect scheme. The only flaw was they hadn’t realized Vinny couldn’t get Claire the special ketchup. Had the plan worked as designed, to anyone who asked, it would have seemed like someone from Vinny’s truck had to have spiked the ketchup with almond butter because they were the ones who provided it. No one would have realized the bottles were switched.

  The trickiest part for the killer would have been swapping the bottles, but they could have done it one bottle at a time even.

  That brought up another idea for how we might figure out who was behind this. “If you have someone at the police station willing to talk to you, maybe you could suggest they check the bottles for fingerprints that appear on all of them. Most people would have only touched a single bottle. The killer would have had to touch them all. They might not have worn gloves. If anyone had spotted them wearing gloves when they placed the ketchup, it would have seemed strange. Who wears gloves in May, right?”

  Dan and Claire exchanged a glance I couldn’t interpret, but I suddenly felt like I was on the outside, looking in.

  Dan rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. “There were only three sets of fingerprints on all three bottles. Claire’s from when she took the bottles off your cupcake display, a set they identified as belonging to a woman named Amy Miller, and a set that didn’t show up in the system.”

  No wonder the police were now trying to get my fingerprints. They knew my fingerprints should be on all the bottles. They weren’t really trying to eliminate the people who were supposed to be at the party from the unknowns. They were trying to make sure my prints matched the third set because then they knew the person who killed Harold had to be one of the three whose prints were on all the bottles.

  It also explained why Dan and Claire were originally convinced I had to be the killer. Because it was either me or Amy Miller.

  The problem was I was Amy Miller. The unknown fingerprints belonged to the real killer.

  I’d fallen straight into a catch-22. I couldn’t tell them I was Amy Miller. But if I didn’t, I’d be sending them on a useless hunt for Amy when the real killer was whoever those other fingerprints belonged to.

  Chapter 15

  You have to say something, Fear prompted me. You have to lie. They won’t protect you.

  I didn’t want to lie to their faces. It was one thing to call myself Isabel Addington when it didn’t hurt anyone. It was another thing entirely when it could let a killer go free.

  But I couldn’t get the simple words I am Amy to come out of my mouth. “I’m guessing you don’t know an Amy Miller. It wasn’t someone you invited?”

  Claire shook her head.

  Dan was watching me in a way that made me want to crawl out of my skin. Like he knew I was holding something back.

  I should never have agreed to this. In fact, my desire to stay somewhere—anywhere—had clouded my judgment. I should have tried to run soon enough that I could have sold my truck and bought a new name before the police caught up with me.

  Now I had to stay the course and hope we could somehow identify the real killer without giving away my real name.

  “The killer might not have planted the ketchup themselves, too. They might have hired someone.” I was careful not to say that the killer might have hired Amy. “We still need to think about who would have known you wanted the ketchup but not that you couldn’t get it.”

  Claire rolled her lips together. “There isn’t anyone.”

  Dan rose to his feet. “I have to get going to pick up Janie. Try to think about it some more tonight.” He walked over to Claire and gave her a hug. “And don’t let Mike keep coming back. Next time he shows up, tell him he needs to take everything he still wants because anything he leaves behind you’re going to sell at a yard sale and split the money with him.”

  Claire nodded and said something in reply, but my brain couldn’t catch it. There was one person who Claire might have told about trying to get the ketchup, but who might no longer have been someone she communicated with regularly by the time she learned Vinny couldn’t or wouldn’t supply it for her.

  “Would your husband have had a reason to want to kill your grandpa?”

  Claire’s hand clamped onto Dan’s arm like she needed the support to stay on her feet. “Mike’s fingerprints weren’t on the ketchup bottles, and I didn’t see him at the party.”

  “When has he ever done anything for himself?” Dan asked. “You took care of everything. It’d make sense that he’d hire someone to do this rather than doing it himself.”

  Claire started to shake her head, but then it changed to a nod. “I don’t know. There’s no reason for him to kill Grandpa except to hurt me. Mike was already leaving me, so it wasn’t like he’d have to worry about me spending our money on taking care of Grandpa anymore.”

  Her voice wobbled, and a muscle twitched in her throat like she was fighting back tears.

  Her husband seemed to have no problem hurting her in other ways. Unless his delaying of the divorce and continued presence in her life were for another reason. “Could he have thought that you’d inherit something when Harold—when your grandpa died? I was thinking that could be the real reason he held up the divorce. If you inherited anything while you were still married, he’d have gotten half of it. He could keep coming back hoping you’d let something slip about it so he can have his lawyer add it to the marital property list.�
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  Claire sank back down into her chair. “Grandpa had a half-million-dollar life insurance policy. It all went to his children, not to us grandkids, but Mike might have assumed that it was left to me because I was the one taking care of Grandpa. He was always asking why I was doing it. He could never understand doing things for someone without an expectation of getting something back in return.”

  “I’ll tell the detective on the case that he might want to check Mike’s financials to see if he paid out a large sum that he can’t account for.” Dan rested a hand on Claire’s shoulder. “If we can’t get this resolved soon, though, I want you to come stay with me. His plan might not end at killing Grandpa. If he thinks you got that life insurance money, he might mean to get rid of you too once the thirty days have passed.”

  My hands went cold, and I tucked them between my knees. It all made a little too much sense when Dan put it that way. Some policies only paid out if the beneficiary survived the deceased by a certain number of days.

  Claire saw us to the door. She gave my hand a quick squeeze on the way out. It felt like an apology—not only for thinking I was the one who murdered Harold, but also, maybe, for the way she’d treated me at the party. My suspicion was that the real Claire was the woman I’d spoken to on the phone originally. The crazy Claire I encountered later was a woman who was hurt and scared, facing a divorce and a death and financial problems all at the same time.

  I hadn’t been so far from any of those in my life. I could see how easy it would be to lose patience with the world in general and to want to lash out at someone, even if it wasn’t the person who’d caused you the pain.

  The clock in Dan’s dashboard read 3:15. We’d been at Claire’s longer than I realized. Hopefully my truck hadn’t gotten a parking ticket. I’d feel honor-bound to pay it.

  My stomach growled, and I placed a hand over it. I’d eaten more today than I normally would, and my stomach seemed to think that was reason enough to start demanding three meals a day again. It couldn’t do math. It couldn’t understand that wasn’t possible. With the summer season coming, things would have gotten better if I didn’t need to pick up and move as soon as running wouldn’t make me look guilty.