Gluten-Free Murder

by P. D. Workman

  “Let’s see, the chocolate chip zucchini loaf is a hot seller,” she said, even though it wasn’t, and that was why she wanted to sell it to him. “Or if you prefer a savory bread for sandwiches or to be paired with soup, this jalapeño cheese bread is just to die for!” She covered her mouth, realizing what she had said. “I mean… it’s really good. If you like a little bit of a kick. Do you like things… uh… spicy?”

  She could feel rather than hear Vic laughing beside her. Erin’s face got hot as she grew more flustered. Piper just stood there looking at her, the corner of his mouth twitching.

  “So, chocolate chip zucchini bread, or jalapeño cheese bread?” she asked briskly.

  “Well, I do like spicy…” Piper trailed off, considering. His eyes twinkled. “But I also like sweet.”

  Erin used the tongs to grab a slice of the zucchini bread and put it into a paper snack bag. Then she selected a small loaf of the jalapeño cheese bread and put it into a longer sleeve.

  “Something for now, and something for later,” she announced. “If you don’t use the cheese bread tonight, wrap it in plastic to keep it from drying out too much. Then just warm it in the oven for a few minutes before eating to crisp it up a bit.” Erin watched Vic ring it up on the register and complete the transaction with Officer Piper.

  “Be sure to come back in a couple of days,” Erin told him. “I’ll be sure to have some biscuits ready for K9.”

  Piper nodded. “I’ll be back,” he agreed.

  And he walked back out without a single question about the murder.

  “You and the cop?” Vic demanded, after the door had closed behind Officer Piper. “Holy cow! And you the prime murder suspect? Or one of them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Erin said. “I just sold the man a few baked goods.”

  Vic flapped her hand at her throat, fanning herself. “Is it hot in here, or is it just you? Just selling him a few baked goods? I don’t think so!”

  “He paid for them.”

  “Yeah. He did. And he’ll be back for more.”

  “Well then, that’s just good business, isn’t it?” Erin said brightly, with an innocent smile.

  “He’s good for what ails you, all right.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  #

  Erin ran into Melissa at the grocery store and took the opportunity to chat with her for a few minutes to get her views on Angela Piper and her murder. She wasn’t investigating, exactly. Just getting to know one of her clients better. Getting a bit more background on Vic’s aunt. Definitely not investigating.

  “So, what did you think about Angela?” Erin asked, as they both considered the various yogurts, sour cream, and soft cheeses in the dairy case.

  “What did I think of her?” Melissa let the question hang for a few minutes, then gave a little shrug. “I don’t know. What am I supposed to think of her? She was a fixture here. The owner of the bakery and all. And now she’s dead. I don’t know anything about it. Not sure what you’re looking for from me.”

  “Nothing special,” Erin said. “I just never really got a chance to know her. And I’m wondering now… what she was like. Were the two of you friends?”

  “We were all friendly with each other,” Melissa deflected. “Me and Angela, Gema, Mary Lou, other ladies from the church. We all did things together. Worshiped. Had some fun. Gossiped and commiserated. Everybody knew everybody else.”

  “You knew each other for a long time?”

  “Not as long as Gema, maybe. I’m quite a bit younger than either of them. But yeah, we all knew each other. It was nice now and then, to get together to do something.”

  “Birthdays, weddings, bridge night…”

  “Yes. Like that. Just the girls getting together for a little relaxation. Nothing unusual about that.”

  “So, you would consider Angela a good friend.”

  “No… a… friend. An acquaintance. Someone familiar.”

  “Did you… like her…?” Erin asked tentatively. They were up to the beverages aisle and Erin picked up some club soda. She considered the big display of RC cola, remembering how much she had enjoyed it as a girl when she had come to visit Clementine. But she couldn’t drink her calories anymore as an adult. She needed to be disciplined and stick to healthy food and drink. An RC might get her engine going in the morning, but in the evening, it would either keep her up all night, or she would crash and wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. Erin walked on by the display with an iron determination. Melissa reached over and grabbed a big bottle, which she put in her cart. Erin eyed it.

  “Do you have children?”

  “No, I’m just on my own.” She caught the direction of Erin’s eyes. “It’s for bridge night,” she said. “I’m not drinking the whole thing. You wouldn’t begrudge me one drink of RC, would you?”

  “No, of course not. What you eat is your business. I wouldn’t want anyone judging me by what I put in my cart.” Erin looked down at several pounds of butter, cream cheese, and sour cream.

  “Yes, but everyone knows you run the bakery. It’s not like you’re eating it all by yourself.”

  “You can’t run a bakery without tasting some of the goods,” Erin said. Then she remembered Angela. “Well… I couldn’t anyway.”

  Melissa nodded. “It was hard for Angela. Giving up everything she loved. Not just eating, but baking. It really was her calling.”

  “Is that why she was so angry?”

  “When?”

  “All the time, from what I could tell. Wasn’t she?”

  “Mmm…” Melissa considered. “I wouldn’t want to speak ill of the dead.”

  “No, of course not…”

  “It wasn’t just not being able to eat things or bake anymore. She was… not a nice person before that, either.”

  Erin looked at her. Melissa’s face was flushed. She turned away from Erin, pretending to be studying the prices on the cold cereal. It wasn’t like the specials weren’t marked with bright red signage.

  “Was she mean to you?” Erin asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “She was mean to everyone. Not just me. Everybody was afraid of her.”

  “What did she do to you?”

  “I didn’t say she did anything to me. Just that she was a mean person. To everyone.”

  “Okay.” Erin pushed her cart down the aisle and let silence do its work. People didn’t like silence. They tried to fill the vacuum.

  “I went to school with Angela’s kids,” Melissa offered. Her face was getting redder.

  “Did you?”

  “Do you know what that was like? She was horrible to her kids.”

  That hadn’t been what Erin had been expecting. “Was she? What happened?”

  “Can you imagine having a mother like that? Who would intentionally humiliate you in front of your friends? Punish you? Call you out? With no regard for your privacy at all?”

  “That must have been pretty tough on them. Were you… good friends?”

  “No!” Melissa’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “She wouldn’t have let them be friends with me anyway. She never thought anyone was good enough for them, even though she acted like they were worthless. Why do you think none of her kids live in Bald Eagle Falls anymore? They all got out as soon as they could.”

  “That’s pretty sad. Is she married, then? I never heard anyone mention her husband…?”

  “No, there hasn’t been a man around for a long time.”

  “Did they divorce or separate? Or did he die?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Erin frowned. “How could you not know? I thought everyone knew everyone’s business in a town like this.”

  “She made it this big mystery. She would refer to him all the time, try to intimidate people. ‘When I got rid of my husband…’ It was actually really creepy.”

  “So, she… implied that she killed him? Or ran him off?” Erin shook her head. “Or what?�
��

  “That’s just it. She never said. Just let everyone draw their own conclusions and wonder what had happened. I expect that he just left her one day. Got tired of all the nagging and complaining and berating him in front of his own children and ran away. I would have, if I’d been living in that house.”

  “Someone must know.”

  “I don’t know. It’s a small town, but when someone just up and disappears without a trace… I’m telling you. No one knows what happened.”

  “What did the kids say? You said you went to school with them.”

  “They didn’t know. She just told them he was gone and he wasn’t coming back.”

  “And his work? His boss and his coworkers would have reported him missing, wouldn’t they?”

  “Angela and he worked together. Family business. It started out as his inheritance. The store. The business. But she squeezed him out… until there wasn’t anything left of him, financially or physically.”

  Erin stopped walking and just looked at Melissa. “The business? The bakery was his business?”

  “Initially, yes. But she just sort of… took over.”

  “And nobody looked for him when he disappeared?”

  “He didn’t disappear. Well, he did, but nobody reported him missing. That was up to Angela. She said he wasn’t missing, so what was anyone else to do?”

  “That’s just bizarre.”

  “That’s Angela.”

  “And the kids, they didn’t try to track him down after they left home?”

  Melissa added a couple of ‘slim’ soups to her basket. “The kids are all train wrecks. Davis is an addict. In Seattle, last I heard. Sophie committed suicide. I don’t know what happened to Trenton. Like his dad, he just… walked out of Bald Eagle Falls one day and was never heard from again.”

  “Walked out of Bald Eagle Falls?” Erin repeated. “How could anyone walk out of Bald Eagle Falls? It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

  “He didn’t take a car. Didn’t get on the bus. Must have walked out and hitched a ride. There was no sign of what had happened to him.”

  “Two disappearances? And nobody thought anything of it?”

  “Trenton was reported missing. But the police never turned up a trail. I don’t think they tried all that hard. They just figured that he’d gone off like his dad. Turned tail and ran.”

  “Those poor kids,” Erin said, shaking her head. “What a toxic place that must have been.”

  “I hated that whole family,” Melissa said vehemently. Her coy ‘I would never speak ill of the dead’ manner was gone. The emotion she radiated was raw, almost palpable. Erin saw one of the clerks looking nervously in Melissa’s direction. Erin was sure she couldn’t have actually heard what Melissa was saying. She could just see or feel the anger and outrage Melissa was giving off. “The whole flippin’ family. They were sickos raised by a sicko. Or a psycho. Everyone pussyfooted around here, pretending that Angela was a pillar of the community. She wasn’t any pillar, they were just afraid of setting her off. Afraid of what she would do to them if they ever crossed her. They were the most dysfunctional family you ever saw, putting on masks and pretending that they were perfectly normal.”

  “Did they bully you?” Erin guessed. The anger had to be coming from somewhere. It had to stem from something. Not just a dysfunctional family in the community, but one that had done her wrong. One that had done something that hurt her so badly she couldn’t forgive it decades later. It was still an angry, raw wound.

  “That Trenton was in my grade. It was a small school, we only had one class per grade. He was always in my class. I could never get away from him. He was always so smarmy and respectful in front of the teacher, they all loved him and thought he was the greatest thing on earth. But when their backs were turned… it was hell. He wasn’t an angel; he was a demon. I was glad when he was gone. Glad that he disappeared and never showed his face here again.”

  “How long ago was that? Did he disappear while you were still in school?”

  “He was eighteen. Just barely. Hadn’t graduated yet, but was on track to be the class valedictorian or prom king. Or both. He was so smart and the teachers all thought he was so wonderful.”

  “Then it must have been really strange for him to disappear so suddenly.”

  “The whole town wanted to know what had happened to him. All the adults, anyway. Not the kids. We were just glad he was gone.”

  “Do you think…” Erin’s mind was racing, trying to make sense of all of the new information. “Do you think that he just took off, ran away, or do you think… someone did something to him? If all the kids hated him so much, do you think there was foul play?”

  “I don’t know. No one ever said who it was. No one spilled it. If someone did something, they kept quiet about it. Never bragged about it.”

  “And his family? How did Angela and his siblings react?”

  “Just like with his dad. After the initial investigation, they never talked about it again. Angela acted like he hadn’t even existed. No pictures up. Never talked about how he had done so well at school or anything like that. She didn’t talk about him at all, positive or negative. Just wiped him out.”

  “Everybody mourns differently,” Erin allowed, feeling like she should say something to defend Angela. Surely the woman couldn’t have lost her son without feeling something, as Melissa implied. One woman sets up a shrine to her child, and another, unable to bear thinking of him or referring to him again, wipes out everything that would remind her of him.

  Melissa just looked at Erin. Erin forced herself to push on, getting some freezer meals so that she and Vic would have something that wouldn’t take any energy at the end of a long day. Frozen dinners weren’t a great choice, but they would be better than takeout or just eating nothing because no one had the energy to cook.

  “So, if Angela was so difficult to get along with,” she circled back to the initial topic. “Then there must be a lot of people who were bitter about her.”

  “A lot of people who wanted to kill her, you mean?”

  “Well…” Erin couldn’t think of a tactful way to put it. “I suppose, yes. Do you think there were a lot of people who would have wanted to harm her?”

  “I don’t think anyone was too broken up about it.”

  “Do the police know all of this stuff about her past? Are they looking into any connections?”

  “Officer Piper was younger than us. He would have heard about it when Trenton disappeared. I would guess those old files are around somewhere. Unless they were part of the batch of files we had to destroy that had that dangerous black mold on it. I don’t know if Trenton’s missing persons file would have been in that batch.”

  “But he knows about it. Piper. He must be considering any suspects in Trenton’s disappearance.”

  “I guess.” Melissa’s shoulders rose and fell like it made no difference to her. And maybe it didn’t. Maybe she didn’t realize that having a key to the shop and being there around the time that Angela was killed made her a suspect. Maybe she didn’t think Piper was looking at her and would be looking for any connections to Trenton’s disappearance. Like the fact that they had been in the same class at school at the time that Trenton had disappeared. And that she had been one of Trenton’s victims.

  Had Melissa harbored bitter feelings toward Angela for all those years? Pretending to be friendly with her, playing bridge with her and going to church with her, all the while believing that Angela had made her sadistic son what he was and had been the ultimate cause of Melissa’s pain?

  Erin gave a shiver, even though they were well past the freezers.

  Chapter Twelve

  ERIN SAT IN HER car for a few minutes in the parking lot of the grocery store, scribbling down lists. She didn’t want to forget any of the details of what Melissa had said. If any of it was motive for Angela’s murder, she wanted to make sure she had it all down.

  After she had recorded everything she could think of, she
glanced at the back of the car where the groceries were stacked. She had both groceries needed for the bakery and groceries to be taken home. She knew that she should go back to the shop and put all of her supplies there before going home. She wouldn’t want to go out again once she was home. But maybe she could save herself time by just taking everything home with her and then taking it in to the bakery with her the next morning. Instead of having to go two separate places.

  But she knew from the start that was a bad idea. That would mean putting things in the fridge at the house and then getting them back out to take with her to the bakery. It meant putting things away twice, which was a waste of time. And she really needed to be efficient with her time.

  With a sigh, Erin pulled out and headed over to the bakery. Just a few minutes there to get everything put away, then she could go home and relax. And put away the groceries. And warm up something for supper. And she should do a little cleaning, so that it wouldn’t all be piled up for her to do on Sunday after she and Vic got back from their exploring.

  She pulled into her parking space behind the store, grabbed a couple of the bags of groceries earmarked for the bakery and hurried to the back door. If she were quick, it wouldn’t take so much energy. She had already taken too long at the grocery shopping, listening to Melissa’s recollections.

  Erin opened the back door and shouldered her way through it before realizing that she had not unlocked it. She knew she had locked it before dropping Vic at home and going grocery shopping. She locked it every day. And Vic would have noticed and reminded her if she had somehow forgotten.

  Erin stood just inside the back entrance, holding the groceries, trying to decide what to do.

  “Hello? Anybody here?”

  She knew that they had keys. The other murder suspects had keys to the shop. She had put in a work order to have the locks on the shop changed out, but the locksmith was apparently on a fishing vacation and could not be talked into coming back to do an emergency job. If she were that desperate, she could get a locksmith from the city. But none of the locksmiths from the city were willing to make the trip out. It wasn’t even the money, they just didn’t want to make the trip.