Case of the Muffin Murders

by Jeffrey M. Poole

  “Is she still open?”

  “No. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re planning on talking to her tomorrow?” I asked Jillian.

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like me to go with you?”

  “Would you? I think I could use the support.”

  “Then count me in.”

  “You two are going to be just fine. Jillian and I are just going to talk to a friend. Behave yourselves, okay?”

  Two sets of corgi eyes stared at me in the rearview mirror.

  “Don’t worry,” Jillian soothingly told the dogs. “We’ll get you each a bag of doggie treats, okay?”

  Farmhouse Bakery baked many fine pastries, cookies, pies, cakes, and so on. They also made bagels, loaves of bread, and the occasional batch of croissants. They also made the highly popular Bagel Bits, a canine treat enjoyed by practically every dog in PV, including Sherlock and Watson. Everyone in this dog-friendly town seemed to have them in their store so that every canine visitor could have a little treat whenever they frequented a place of business.

  I pulled open the bakery’s glass front door and held it open as I waited for Jillian to pass. A small silver bell announced our arrival by clanging on the door’s handle. A short woman in her mid-thirties poked her head out from the back room. She was cute, in a girl-next-door type of way, and fairly slender. She also had a hair net over her short, curly blonde hair. I also noticed she still had nearly a dozen earrings in her left ear alone, with only two or three in her right.

  Taylor was wearing a plain blue shirt and khaki capris, with a large pink apron tied to her front. Splashes of flour were everywhere, as though she had dumped too much flour into a mixer and then mistakenly turned it up high. And for the record, yes. I’ve done that. Three weeks later, I was still finding bits of flour all around my kitchen.

  “Jillian! Zachary! It’s so nice to see you! Wow. You two sure are getting around early. I typically don’t see either of you in here before 8am. And here it is, just after 7. So, what can I do for you?”

  I looked at Jillian and inclined my head, giving her the opportunity to go first. Jillian shook her head and took a single step back. Resigning myself, I pulled out my cell, brought up the picture I took from the first crime scene, of the muffin wrapper, and showed it to Taylor.

  “Can you identify this?”

  Taylor took my phone and studied the screen.

  “It’s one of my baking cups, if that’s what you’re asking. Why?”

  I took the phone back and brought up the other picture of the wrapper, from the second crime scene.

  “And this one? Is that one of your wrappers, too?”

  Taylor leaned forward to look at my phone’s display.

  “I don’t… wait. Yes, I see another one there. It’s crumpled up behind that can. Why are you asking me this?”

  “Did you know that the PVPD has hired me as a police consultant? They are apparently familiar with Sherlock and Watson’s work on previous cases, and were anxious to put us to use on this one.”

  Taylor nodded, “I have heard that you and your dogs help out the police from time to time. Jillian, I think you told me that. Okay, you’re starting to freak me out a little. What’s going on?”

  I glanced back at Jillian, seeking advice on how to proceed. Jillian shrugged. She didn’t know. I took a deep breath and faced one of Jillian’s closest friends.

  “There’s something you need to know. Can we sit down for a bit?”

  Taylor nodded and pointed at the closest table. Once we were all sitting, she leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. I did the same.

  “Do you know which case the dogs and I are working on now?”

  Taylor’s brow furrowed as she considered the question.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “There have been two murders here in town.”

  Taylor gasped and quickly looked at Jillian for confirmation.

  “What do they have to do with me?” Taylor all but squeaked out.

  “Are you familiar with how Sherlock and Watson work?” I quietly asked, deliberately lowering my voice so that we wouldn’t be overheard. “They search for clues – no matter how obscure – and when they find them, they’re inevitably always right. Well, Sherlock led me straight to the trash can, grabbed that muffin wrapper, and consequently led me on a high speed chase through the house. At first, I thought he was playing. I should have known he wanted me to find it.”

  “So, there’s one muffin wrapper in a person’s trash can,” Taylor slowly began. “How does that make me involved?”

  “Because Sherlock promptly found a second wrapper at the second crime scene.”

  “I sell a lot of muffins,” Taylor said, a little too defensively for my taste. “What are you getting at? Are you saying I somehow killed two people with my muffins?”

  “No, he isn’t,” Jillian said, as she placed a hand over Taylor’s. “Right now, the police think Daryl over at Wired Coffee & Café is involved, and they are treating him like he’s their prime suspect. Why? Because two coffee cups were also recovered, one at each crime scene.”

  “I sell a lot of muffins, he sells a lot of coffee. I don’t see how that makes either of us involved. Wait. How did these people die? Do we know?”

  “The first victim died by arsenic poisoning,” I answered.

  Taylor gasped with alarm, “Look, you can check all my cabinets, all my supplies, and any existing product currently on the shelf. You won’t find a trace of arsenic here.”

  “I believe you,” I said, without preamble.

  Surprised, Taylor could only nod.

  “I believe you, too,” Jillian told her friend.

  “What about the second victim?” Taylor quietly asked. “What did he, or she, die of?”

  “Carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  Taylor blinked with confusion, “Carbon monoxide poisoning? How… what… why would I have anything to do with that? I mean, how could I?”

  “You didn’t,” I said, using the same firm tone I used before. “Not unless you drove to this lady’s house, knocked her out, and placed her in her garage with her car running. No, I definitely think you’re off the hook there.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “I hate to say this, Taylor,” I hesitantly began, “but sooner or later, I think the police are going to come calling for you. They are looking at all possible links. If they looked at the trash and saw two similar coffee cups, what do you think they’ll do when they find two baking wrappers, too?”

  “Cups,” Taylor quietly corrected.

  “Huh?”

  “They’re called ‘cups’, not wrappers.”

  “Oh. Okay, got it.”

  “Maybe they won’t ever find out,” Taylor began. “Maybe they’ll just overlook the simple fact that those used cups were in the garbage. That could happen, couldn’t it?”

  I sadly shook my head, “I’m afraid not. I’m a police consultant. I have to report my findings.”

  “You’re going to tell them that you think I’m guilty of murder?” Taylor indignantly cried, her voice rising. “I’m no murderer!”

  “I’m going to tell them nothing of the sort,” I soothingly told her. “The captain is going to ask if the dogs found anything. Trust me, Captain Nelson knows all about Sherlock and Watson, and all of their exploits. If Sherlock picks up on something, then he’ll want it investigated. So, I’m sorry to say, it’s not a matter of ‘if’, but a matter of ‘when’ the police come calling. They’re going to want to talk to you.”

  “That’s just great,” Taylor moaned as she crumpled in her seat. She rested her head on the table and sobbed.

  I glanced around the store and noticed a blinking red light up in one of the corners of the store. A video camera, perhaps? I glanced over at Jillian and pointedly looked up at the camera. Then I slowly glanced around to see if there were more.

  Yep, there were. I counted at least
three of the tiny cameras, strategically positioned around the perimeter of the store. Those were just the ones I could see.

  Jillian tapped her friend on the shoulder and pointed up at the closest camera, “Taylor, tell me those aren’t dummy cameras.”

  Taylor’s head lifted off the table and looked to see where Jillian was pointing. She slowly nodded. Then she pointed out the locations of the others.

  “I do have cameras, and they record everything. I have one covering the door, one covering the register, one covering the tables, and one covering the back room.”

  “Are the recordings stored elsewhere?” I hopefully asked. “If the recorder is located offsite, then there will be less chances for it to malfunction. I, for one, would really like to be able to view that footage. I know the police will want to, too.”

  “Everything is recorded onto a hard drive,” Taylor confirmed. “I unlock the case, slide out a full drive and replace it with an empty one. I have three different drives, alternating them out whenever one fills up.”

  “How long does it take to fill one up?” I asked.

  Taylor shrugged, “I’m not sure. Usually about a month and a half.”

  I nodded, “Perfect. So, the current drive in there would have footage of the victims coming in here to buy their muffins?”

  “Yes. I can show you, if you like. It’s a sophisticated system, but thankfully it’s pretty easy to use.”

  We followed Taylor into her back room. There was a large roll-top desk, currently closed and locked. Taylor unlocked the desk and rolled back the top. There, on the desk, was a sleek 13” flat panel monitor populated with four different camera feeds. She pointed at a box that looked remarkably like a small computer tower.

  “This is the part that does the recording. Whenever I want to view something, I pull out the keyboard here, tap this key, and then enter my password. I don’t have to go into this thing very often, so sometimes it takes me a while to remember my password. Ok, once that’s entered, then I… what? What’s this? Something’s wrong!”

  I leaned over Taylor’s shoulder and saw that there was a single pop-up message line of text in the middle of the screen:

  System offline. Missing or incorrect dns settings.

  “What does that mean?” Taylor asked. Her voice had once again risen and I noticed she was starting to hyperventilate. She tapped the ‘Enter’ key a few times to clear the pop-up, but it kept coming back.

  I pulled her office chair over to her and slid it under her before she could collapse onto the floor. Missing DNS settings? I was sure neither Jillian nor Taylor had any idea what a missing DNS setting referred to, but I did. Well, I was no expert, but I knew enough to make myself dangerous.

  While I may not have been savvy enough to know what ‘DNS’ stood for in computer terms, I did know it had something to do with how a computer resolved domain names on the Internet. For example, if I typed in ‘www.JohnDoe.com’, then a computer would convert ‘JohnDoe.com’ to an actual IP Address, and voila, the page would appear in my browser. But, if something happened to the DNS settings, and the computer couldn’t figure out how to pull up the requested web page, then it was bound to cause a few problems.

  Taylor mentioned that her data wasn’t being stored offsite, like Daryl’s Wired Coffee & Café was. So, what would it matter if the Internet settings weren’t working? Based on her reaction, she hadn’t ever seen it generate that message before. That would suggest someone has tampered with her security system.

  Damn. That would also suggest that more than likely, we weren’t going to get any usable data out of her cameras. But, we should at least try.

  “Have you ever seen it do that before?” Jillian wanted to know.

  Taylor shook her head. A growing sense of unease was filling my gut, and from the look on Jillian’s face, she was feeling the same way. She pointed at the sleek machine and gave Taylor a hopeful smile.

  “Well, try to load something up. Hopefully everything will be okay in there.”

  “Okay, here we go. I enter my password, I click on the… wow, that pop-up is annoying. It won’t go away when I click the ‘X’.”

  “Try moving it to the side,” Jillian suggested. “Just get it out of the way. We’ll try to figure out what it means later.”

  “Good idea. Okay, there’s my admin login. I click that, enter my username and password, and then it’ll… uh, oh. Jillian, it won’t let me in! I think someone has changed my password!”

  A nagging thought occurred to me.

  “Taylor, do you remember what the default username and password is?” I asked. I had an idea what had happened to Taylor’s security system, but I could only hope I was wrong. “What did you have to type into the program before you configured it for your bakery?”

  Taylor was silent for a few moments as she considered.

  “Well, I seem to recall the default username was ‘User’ and the password was ‘admin’. It wasn’t very secure, but I guess the manufacturer was assuming we’d change the password to keep the data safe.”

  I pointed at the keyboard, “Give it a try.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be my password?” Taylor inquired. “I’ve had the same one for several years now.”

  “I’m just testing a theory,” I explained.

  “What theory would that be?” Taylor wanted to know.

  “I think someone has reset your system,” I slowly said. I watched Taylor’s face closely to see what her reaction was. “I think someone wanted to disable your security system as quickly as possible, and in order to do that, they hit your reset button and poof! Down goes your system. It would explain your ‘DNS’ error message you keep seeing. The system is no longer setup and is prompting you to enter in all the settings to make it work again.”

  “But… but… that would mean it hasn’t been recording anything!” Taylor stammered. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “Someone who didn’t want to be recorded,” Jillian quietly answered. “Perhaps someone who is responsible for killing two people?”

  “That’s horrible!” Taylor gasped.

  “How long has it been since you changed out that thing’s hard drive?” I asked as I pointed at the desk.

  Taylor was silent for a few moments as she considered, “Umm, it’s been at least two weeks.”

  “Damn,” I swore. “There go our chances to see PV’s most wanted man on video.”

  “This is a security system,” Jillian suddenly told me, after a few minutes of silence had elapsed. “How could someone reset all the settings if they didn’t know the password?”

  I walked over to the computer running the DVR and inspected the front of it. To me, it looked just like an ordinary home computer, only I knew it wasn’t. I checked the back. After a few moments, I found what I was looking for. I gently turned the machine around and pointed out a tiny pinhole with the word ‘Reset’ next to it.

  “There’s your problem,” I told the girls. “There’s a reset button right here. All it would take is for someone to take a straightened paperclip, stick it in there, and press the button for a few seconds.”

  “That’s it?” Jillian demanded. “So anyone could waltz right in here and erase the settings using only a paper clip? There’s something wrong with that picture. Why would anyone make a system like that?”

  “Most electronic devices have a failsafe like that,” I pointed out. “It’s to prevent you from getting locked out of your own machine. Wireless routers, handheld gaming systems, and digital cameras are just a few of the devices I’ve seen with a reset button.”

  “But how could they have gotten in here?” Jillian demanded. “I know this door is usually locked. Besides, if someone did manage to get through this door, then someone would have noticed.”

  “True story,” Taylor confirmed.

  “You should see if you can log into your system using the default username and password,” Jillian suggested.

  Sure enough, the DVR beeped once and let her log in.
It then brought up an install wizard that wanted to walk her through the basic setup procedures. I tapped the screen and inclined my head.

  “Would you like me to see if I can get it set back up for you?”

  Taylor nodded, “Yes, please.”

  “Who would know about that reset button?” Jillian asked. “Do you have any idea who would want to disable your security system like that?”

  “I’d like to think that no one would know where I kept my security system, but that clearly isn’t the case.”

  “Could Daryl Benson be able to wipe that gizmo free & clear?” I asked from my position in front of the recorder.

  I may not have been the most qualified to set this thing up, but since I didn’t have to worry about any special configuration to get this accessible from the Internet, I felt confident I could get the job done. And you know what? That’s exactly what I did. The four video feeds were now being recorded, the annoying ‘DNS’ error went away, and I was now able to jump the footage back to look at what was just recorded.

  Sadly, it confirmed that the system hadn’t been doing any recording from the time the system had been reset, which was sometime last week.

  “Damn,” I swore, as I pushed back from the desk.

  “Couldn’t get it to work?” Taylor sadly said.

  I shook my head, “Actually, it’s now working fine. I’ve tested it, and it’s recording the way it should.” Both women whooped out loud and clapped vigorously. “The drawback to that is that I’ve confirmed it hasn’t done any recording in the past week or so.”

  Jillian sobered instantly, “Oh. Rats.”

  “Do you really think Daryl Benson could have done something like this?” Taylor asked, in a shaky voice. “What have I ever done to him? Why would he do something like this?”

  “We have no proof he’s the one who did this,” Jillian responded. “Innocent until proven guilty, remember?”

  “He’d have the know-how to reset the system,” I casually remarked, eliciting a frown from Jillian. “I’ll bet you he could do it if he really wanted to.”

  “He would have been seen,” Jillian insisted. “I don’t buy it.”