Wedding Cake

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “I’m so sorry, Shawn. I don’t know what to say.”

  He was more inclined to talk than seek solace and continued, “The upside is I reacted fast and I have a solid history with both the bank and the credit bureaus, which will work in my favor. Also I’ve never had a credit card, which speaks to the fact that I wouldn’t have applied for one now. It’s a royal pain to have to deal with this, but it’s going to work out. Some people have spent years trying to get their credit fixed and a criminal record erased after an identity theft. The bank manager and the police officer keep telling me how lucky I am so I’m going with that. How are things with you guys?”

  Sadie told him about the bakery, then reprimanded him when he swore in response. After he apologized, she told him where she was right then—the Pep Boys parking lot—and why.

  “I remember Brian,” Shawn said. “Weird that Jane stole his phone.”

  “I know. But maybe it’s not that surprising I know someone she targeted—I’ve lived here a long time—but it makes me feel twice as bad about it. I hope he has insurance on his phone.”

  “Hang on a minute,” he said. His voice was muted for a few seconds, then he came back on the line. “I need to go sign some stuff, but I’ll call you when I’m done. Oh, and tell Pete thanks for calling someone to come over. It saved us a lot of time to do the police report at the same time we filed the fraud.”

  “I’ll let him know,” Sadie said. “Good luck with everything. I’m so sorry this happened.”

  “Yeah, me too, but I’m more motivated than ever to nail Jane to the wall!”

  Sadie ended the call and only then remembered she hadn’t told Shawn about the Facebook idea. It can wait, she decided. She stepped out of the car, scanning the area in order to take in what was close by as she wasn’t particularly familiar with this section of town—a block east of Main Street with retailers that she didn’t frequent.

  There was a Family Dollar store across the street and a thrift store next door with a building available for lease on the other side of Pep Boys. None of these businesses would have been open before ten, which cut down on the potential people who could have seen Jane coming or going. Hopefully the Pep Boys employees would remember a tan, blonde woman in a sundress since that likely wasn’t their typical customer.

  Sadie was a few steps away from the entrance when Pete came out, bringing her up short. She could tell from his expression that he’d learned something.

  “They prop the back door open too,” Pete said to her, waving her around the side of the building. They walked down a narrow strip of grass toward the back where a different parking lot opened up. There were four cars parked—employees, Sadie guessed. Pete led her to the back door where, sure enough, a wooden wedge held the door open a few inches.

  “It locks automatically when it closes, but two of the guys working today smoke and so when their manager isn’t here—like today—they prop the door open to make it easier to come in and out on their breaks. Brian thinks he put his cell phone on the desk in the office after he texted with his wife earlier this morning—”

  “She’s eight months pregnant with their first baby,” Sadie cut in. “A boy. They’re so excited. I ran into her at the library last week.”

  “Right,” Pete said. “Anyway, the office is just inside the back door.” He pulled the door open, waved to a young man Sadie didn’t know, and then led her inside. Just ten feet inside was a doorway to a small office with a window that looked out into the back of the store, which was more of a warehouse, with twelve-foot metal shelves filled with boxes and car parts. It smelled like metal and oil and dirt, but Sadie was careful not to wrinkle her nose at it. It was an auto parts store after all.

  “Brian has called his phone a dozen times since we informed him of what happened to it. He’s pretty ticked, especially when he found out it was you she’s harassing.”

  They both looked into the office and then toward the back door and then around the warehouse. They’d only seen that one guy since coming in; it wasn’t a stretch to imagine Jane slipping in and out without anyone the wiser, but it would still take a fair amount of luck to pull off. Sadie felt the same way toward “luck” as she did toward “coincidence”—they begged to be reconsidered to make sure it wasn’t planning and manipulation that really brought them to fruition.

  “So she wasn’t a customer,” Sadie said, realizing that she’d assumed Jane had come to the front of the store.

  “No.”

  “And no one saw her back here?” Sadie questioned even though she knew the answer: a woman in the back of the shop would certainly get someone’s attention.

  Pete shook his head. “I talked to a couple of the employees, and Brian had already talked to the one who’d been helping a customer when I came in. No one remembers seeing a blonde in a sundress in the front of the shop, and they certainly didn’t see her back here. They did say it’s been pretty busy this morning and they’ve spent a lot of time up front.”

  “We need to include on the Facebook post that people need to lock their doors,” Sadie said, looking at the back door Jane used to get inside. “She’s obviously picking up phones all over town.” The grocery store she’d lifted last night’s phone from was a good three miles from here so Jane wasn’t limiting her thefts to one part of town.

  “I agree,” Pete said. He took pictures of the back door and the office with his phone. Sadie hurried to move out of the way. “Brian’s compiling a customer list of who came in this morning so we can follow up with them. It’s a time-consuming task to make the calls so I’ll see if the department will do the legwork on it. Malloy will be thrilled.” He gave Sadie a sarcastic smile, and she hoped they were coming together in their feelings toward Malloy’s involvement.

  “Hey.”

  Sadie looked past Pete to see Brian come from the front and head toward them. “I might have something for you. Hi, Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said, then immediately frowned. “I’m sure sorry about all this.”

  “I’m sorry you got pulled into it,” Sadie replied. “Especially with Darcy so close to delivery. I hate that you don’t have your phone if she needs you.”

  “We have a phone here at the shop too so I’m not out of reach.”

  “You found something?” Pete said.

  “Right,” Brian said, holding up a sticky note. “We were putting together the customer list and in the process I remembered when I had last texted Darcy—it was right after Anders Greenburg came in for a new feeler gauge.” He consulted the paper in his hand. “That happened at 9:32.”

  “Rachel said the call to her bakery happened at 9:37,” Sadie remembered.

  “Which means Jane knew exactly what she was going to do with the phone when she took it,” Pete added.

  “Have the police found the tower the call pinged off of yet?” Sadie asked Pete. She hadn’t ever gotten an update on his conversation with the officer who ran the trace.

  “The one on Fourth,” Pete said, pointing in the general direction. “Not surprising since it’s the downtown tower. She could have called from anywhere between here and Rachel’s or half a mile past.” Rachel’s was a few blocks south of Pep Boys. They both looked at Brian as they realized they had taken off on a tangent.

  “Sorry,” Sadie said sheepishly. “There’s a lot going on right now.”

  “No worries,” Brian said with a shrug. “The other thing we figured out was that there was a silver Civic parked on the side of the thrift shop around the same time.” He pointed toward the front of the store, indicating where the thrift shop was in relation to Pep Boys. “Milo walks to work since he lives right around the corner, and he saw the car parked on the south side of the building. He thought it was odd since the thrift store doesn’t open until ten, and no one, ever, goes in early to that place. The owners literally pull in at 9:59 and unlock the front doors on their way inside. But, well, it’s a thrift store.” He shrugged as though that explained everything. It obviously did for him. “Plus, the coup
le who runs it drive a ’78 Cougar—all original parts, if you can believe it—and they park out front not around the side like the Civic was. Of course, Milo didn’t think about it until all of this happened. He clocked in at 9:25, but he didn’t see some lady walking around or anything.”

  “Does Milo remember any other details about the car?” Pete asked.

  “Wyoming plates,” Brian said. “He’s guessing it was probably a ’05 or ’06—he’s not sure. Silver metallic paint rather than flat silver, factory wheels, dark gray interior. The bottom corner of the driver’s side door had a dent so the edge wasn’t flush with the chassis. That’s all he remembers.”

  Was there anything left to remember? That was an amazing amount of detail, but then they worked at an automotive store. Picking up on those kinds of details about a car was probably a lot like Sadie identifying the spices in a recipe just by taste.

  “No one else saw it?” Pete asked.

  Brian shook his head. “Like I said, it was parked along the south side so none of us could see it from the lot or the store.”

  Pete shook Brian’s hand. “This is great information, thank you.”

  “You bet,” Brian said, smiling broadly. He had unfortunate teeth—the only thing that kept him from being a real heartthrob—but he was as nice a man as Sadie had ever met. “I’ll have that customer list for you in a few more minutes,” Brian added, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s three who weren’t in our system—most of our regulars are—but we have the card info for two of them. The other guy paid in cash, but he wasn’t here until 9:40.”

  “Excellent,” Pete said. He dug into his pocket and removed his wallet, extracting a business card left over from his years as a detective. “If you’ll fax that list to this number,” he said, pointing out the detail on the card, “I’ll let them know it’s on its way.”

  “And whoever calls will be sure to tell the customers that we’re participating in an investigation, right? I don’t want them thinking we just give up information willy-nilly.”

  “Absolutely,” Pete reassured him.

  Brian turned to Sadie. “I hope we find this lady that’s bothering you, Mrs. Hoffmiller. Some people are just nuts.”

  Sadie agreed completely and yet his comment reminded her of something Pete had told her once—even crazy people have motives, and Sadie still had no idea what Jane’s was. Hopefully this new information would give them a leg up on whatever Jane had planned. Sadie was more eager than ever to get the sketch of Jane posted online. Maybe they could make posters to put up around town too. And they had her car information. That had to make a difference.

  Pete and Sadie said their good-byes and let themselves out the back door, removing the wedge in the process so that the door closed behind them. Pete immediately pulled out his phone, and before Sadie could ask who he was calling, he’d greeted Detective Malloy and started giving the information he had on the car. He suggested an “APB,” which Sadie knew stood for All Points Bulletin and meant the car info would be shared with the entire Garrison police department and perhaps neighboring cities and counties as well. Apparently, Malloy agreed with Pete’s suggestion, as there was no argument back and forth. Pete also told Malloy about the soon-to-be-faxed customer list and gave him the suspected time of the theft of Brian’s phone.

  Once inside the car, Sadie texted Shawn about the Facebook idea and the sketch, hoping he would help her and Pete with the social media since he was far more familiar with it than either of them. She worried he might still be overwhelmed by his financial situation, but he immediately responded with two words: “I’m in!”

  His enthusiasm was appreciated. Assuming he was still busy at the bank, she didn’t linger over the conversation and instead looked up the number for the Garrison News Journal on her phone. By the time Pete turned onto Second Street, Sadie was gushing thank yous to the editor who had been more than happy to put a notice on their website. The weekly paper for Garrison had already gone out that morning, but Lori said she’d post something online as soon as Sadie got her a copy of the sketch and they could finalize the text. She also offered to call the editor at The Denver Post to see if they could run something in tomorrow’s paper. Sadie thanked her profusely for her generous help.

  Sadie finished the call, thinking for a few moments. Jane knew the bakery Sadie was using for her cake and had entered from the back. She’d also snuck into Pep Boys, which had a back entrance hidden from the main parking lot. Such familiarity, and yet based on what Sadie knew of Jane, she had only been to Garrison one other time. How could she know the town so well in twenty-four hours?

  “I think Jane’s been in Garrison for a while,” she said.

  Pete turned into the Fine Arts Center parking lot. “What makes you think that?”

  “She knows so much about the town. No way she arrived yesterday and coincidentally chose all the right places to get phones from. I remember Malloy saying that the grocery store didn’t have cameras, right? Did Pep Boys?”

  “Not in the back,” Pete said.

  “How would Jane know that?”

  Pete parked the car and looked at Sadie. “Maybe when we get this sketch done, we should go back to the employees at Pep Boys and the grocery store. Maybe she has been here for a while, staking things out.”

  “And we can’t assume it’s a coincidence that she’s back in time for the wedding. How does she even know that’s happening? How did she know Rachel’s Bakery was doing the cake?”

  Pete furrowed his eyebrows together. “Those are really good questions.” Neither of them had obvious answers, however.

  They let themselves out of the car and Pete reached for her hand. He smiled at her when she looked up at him.

  “We’re on her trail,” Pete said. “A few more quick steps and we’ll pull ahead.”

  Sadie smiled and squeezed his hand, optimistic that he was right.

  Chapter 11

  It was almost an hour before they had the sketches right. At one point, when Mr. Meyers stepped out of the room to take a call from his wife, Sadie asked Pete if it always took this long. He assured her that things were moving really fast. Sketches based on verbal descriptions were extremely difficult to put together. Sadie felt better knowing that, but every hour was precious right now, and she’d never been good at waiting. Especially when there was so much to do. She hadn’t done anything from her to-do list, and it was already 11:30 when they’d arrived at the Fine Arts Center.

  Not surprisingly, Sadie had the best sense of what Jane looked like since she’d spent the most time with her and had reason to be more attentive to detail. Pete was still helpful, though. In the end they had two sketches: one of the old Jane and the other of the new Jane with the long blonde braid and the strappy sundress. Sadie hadn’t expected the sketches to look as good as a photograph, but she had hoped for a bit more lifelike detail. She worried Jane wouldn’t be as recognizable as they’d hoped when Pete first suggested this idea.

  “Have you got a 400 DPI scanner for high-def res?” Mr. Meyer asked as he sprayed the paper with what looked like aerosol hair spray. To set the pencil, he said.

  “Wh-what?” Sadie asked, not sure that what he’d said was all in English.

  “You need a digital image, right?” he asked, fanning the paper slightly.

  “There’s a guy at the station who can convert it,” Pete said.

  Sadie frowned. Anything involving the police department would take ten times longer than it needed to—especially if Detective Malloy were involved. She was certain he would use any excuse to remind her who was in charge. Or at least who he thought should be in charge. What if he put the brakes on the Facebook page?

  “I need to run home for lunch so I’ll just scan it and e-mail it over to you guys. It’ll be faster that way.” Mr. Meyers got up from the stool he’d occupied while translating their descriptions. “I just need an e-mail address to send it to once it’s digital.”

  Sadie told him her e-mail address
, which Mr. Meyers put into his phone while Pete wrote out the check. She’d offered to pay but he’d refused. Sadie was certain that paying for a sketch of someone’s stalker was the highest sign of love and devotion. They all shook hands, and she thanked Mr. Meyers again. Pete held the door for her as they left the building.

  As soon as they were in the car, Sadie wondered out loud how things were going with Shawn and noted that Breanna’s flight would be landing around 1:30. She’d texted her plans while Sadie had been at the bakery. That meant she and Liam would be in Denver in just under an hour and would then wait for Maggie; her plane landed at 3:40. Hopefully Sadie would know by then whether or not it was safe for the three of them to come to Garrison. She hoped the Facebook blitz would change the game.

  Pete pulled out of the Fine Arts Center parking lot onto Main Street and headed toward Sadie’s neighborhood. “Are you hungry?” he asked once she put the phone in her lap to await Shawn’s response.

  “I could eat.” It had been awhile since those cheese blintzes.

  “The Inn has their basil chicken as the special on Wednesdays. How does that sound?”

  Basil chicken with a side of stuffing and a baked sweet potato was perhaps the only thing Sadie would agree to sit down and eat right now. But the idea of doing more waiting was borderline repulsive. “Could we get it to go and take it home? I think I’m too anxious to sit in a booth while they make up a plate, but if we call it in, it could be ready by the time we get there.”

  “Sure,” Pete said. “Wanna call?”

  Sadie looked up the number, and while she was putting in the order—for three meals in case Shawn would be home in time to eat with them—she heard a buzz indicating an incoming text message. Hopefully it was Shawn with an update. Sadie finished the call and hung up. “It’ll be ready in about ten minutes,” Sadie said to Pete.

  She toggled to her text messages and then tensed when she saw that the new message was from an unknown caller.