by Fiona Grace
Before Delaney’s arrival, Ali had been desperate for anything that might exonerate Piper from accidentally having killed Brandon, and save her from her own liability. But never in a million years would she wish for the evidence to point to Seth…
Ali shook her head, a pit of dread in her stomach. She knew exactly where the next phase of her investigation needed to take place.
“Delaney, I have to go,” she said, grabbing her door keys and dashing to the door.
“Ali, wait!” Delaney cried.
Ali had already heaved the door open. She turned back to find Delaney still standing in the kitchenette. “Delaney, please,” she said. “I have to go.”
“You’re not dressed,” Delaney said.
Ali glanced down. She was still in her night clothes. She had bare feet. “Oh. Good call. Thanks, Delaney.”
Her friend nodded and jogged out, blowing a kiss as she went.
As soon as she was gone, Ali tore back to her bedroom, flinging off the camisole and shorts as she went, and yanked open her closet drawers. She tugged a clean shirt off the hanger, slid into a tennis skirt, and shoved her feet into sneakers. She was out the door in record time, pelting toward the boardwalk, her heart hammering with trepidation.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ali reached Best Hot Dogs, her stomach a knot of nerves. What if Seth wasn’t the great guy she’d thought he was? What if he was some kind of wolf in a handsome, suave, lothario’s clothing…
She could see it was busy inside, with plenty of customers filling the side booths and center tables. Ali was surprised to see so many customers this early—not only because Seth had told her he didn’t start prepping until late in the morning, but also because she had no idea people ate hot dogs for breakfast! She wrinkled her nose, a little nauseated by the thought. But there it was, advertised on the chalkboard above the till in Delaney’s beautiful cursive writing: Breakfast Dog—potato, bacon, egg, cheese and tomato, on our signature sausage and side-loading buns!
It was so unfair. Seth’s store was bustling. He was making a killing while her own business was frozen. A mixture of jealousy of his success and sorrow for her bakery churned inside of Ali.
Just as she was about to head inside, she heard a familiar yip-yip and turned to see Scruff galloping along the boardwalk toward her. She’d never been so glad to see him in all her life.
“Scruff!” she exclaimed, bending down to ruffle his fur.
He nudged into her and danced in circles.
“I don’t have anything to give you,” Ali said, realizing she was wearing the random tennis skirt she’d grabbed out the closet, rather than her pants with the big pockets she made sure to stuff with treats. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to find someone else to give you breakfast.”
Scruff barked and trotted away.
As she straightened up, the scent of caramelized onions tickled Ali’s nostrils, reminding her of the task at hand. Bolstered by the visit from Scruff, Ali pushed open the doors of Best Hot Dogs and went inside.
From the back kitchen came the constant hiss-pop noises of sausages being fried. Ali craned her head to see whether Piper had come here as she’d suggested, but she couldn’t quite see from this vantage point. When she heard a yelp followed by the familiar smell of burning, Ali knew her employee was most definitely inside. The bright red leather purse hung up on the hooks beside the restroom was the final confirmation she needed.
Seth was working the till, attending to a customer. Ali’s insides rolled at the sight of him. She’d never felt so nervous in all her life.
She headed toward him. The customers he’d been serving—a teen couple who looked to be on a very awkward first date—moved aside with their trays of food and drinks, leaving Ali suddenly exposed beneath the strip lights.
Seth spotted her right away. His dark eyes smiled, though Ali noted a hint of caution in them. Did he suspect she was on to him?
Ali built up her nerve and approached the counter.
“Ali,” Seth said, flashing her one his dimpled, disarming grins. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”
“You weren’t?” Ali asked. She was being cautious. Playing her cards close to her chest. Trying her best not to give away her suspicions.
“Well, usually when a girl runs out on me during a first date, it only means one thing,” Seth said.
It took Ali a second to switch tracks. Of course that would be Seth’s first topic of conversation. As far as he was concerned, that was their last interaction. He had no reason to think Ali had done a 180 on him. At least, not in the way she had…
“That she has a bunch of detectives in her bakery asking questions?” Ali said, forcing out a joke in an attempt to play it cool. If only Seth could hear her heartbeat right now. It was practically pounding out of her chest.
Seth gave her an unreadable look, slightly wry, slightly morose. “Ali, if you don’t like me that way, you just have to say. My ego will take a hit, sure, but I’ll get over it.”
“I’m not lying,” Ali assured him, adding in her head, At least, not about that. “The police really did call me in the middle of our date. I had no choice but to leave. I didn’t mean to stand you up like that.”
Seth’s dark brows drew together. “Really?” he asked, sounding skeptical. “What was so important it couldn’t wait?”
Ali didn’t like where this conversation was going. It had steered way too quickly toward the detectives and their investigation than she was comfortable with.
“Just a discrepancy,” she said, trying to play it cool.
When Seth didn’t say anything, she tapped her fingers on the counter awkwardly.
He twisted his lips. “I don’t believe you. You’re holding something back. I can see it in your eyes.”
Ali became suddenly very aware of the fact she wasn’t maintaining eye contact, which was pretty much 101 on catching a liar. When she was a kid, she’d thought her mom had a telepathic ability to know when she was lying. Turned out she just hadn’t learned the nuances of non-verbal interaction yet.
“It’s not that,” Ali said, hurriedly, locking her gaze with his.
Instantly, she felt the magnetic pull of his dark eyes. They were irresistible. The sort of eyes to get lost in.
“Then what is?” Seth prompted, his voice softer. “Because right now you look like you want to be anywhere else but here.”
“I saw the rest of the video,” Ali blurted.
Those damn eyes!
A look of understanding came over Seth. He nodded slowly. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” Ali said. Now the cat was out of the bag, there was no point holding back. “You really went to town on Brandon, didn’t you?”
Seth looked uncomfortable. His gaze dropped. “Doesn’t paint me in the best light, does it?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d physically thrown him out of your store?” Ali asked.
“Because I didn’t want you to look at me the way you’re looking at me right now,” Seth said. “With fear.”
There was no point arguing with him over that. Ali was scared of Seth. Scared that she’d completely misjudged him, that she’d failed to see the killer in him.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He wound me up,” Seth said, simply. “He was a jerk. I just… I snapped. I’m not proud of it.”
Ali felt her stomach drop. Was Seth confessing?
“What did he say that made you so mad?” she asked.
“It was the way he was acting toward Carys,” Seth said. “It just made me feel crazy protective. She’s a young woman, this is her first job. And on her first day some sexist ass does that to her? I felt really responsible. Like it widened my eyes to the sort of crap a young girl has to put up with in a job like this, and I just saw red.”
An image of strawberry red macarons popped into Ali’s head, like some kind of security blanket trying to protect her from the mental picture of Seth sprinkling poison in Brandon’s hot dog.
Seth sprinkling poison? Ali thought suddenly. When would he have gotten the chance to do that? Brandon infuriated him after he’d been served his food.
Suddenly, she realized she might’ve gotten this completely wrong.
“What happened then?” she prompted. “Once you saw red?”
“I don’t remember much,” Seth said. “It was a bit of a blur. I grabbed him. Shoved him outside.”
His explanation really sounded genuine to Ali. But she didn’t know if she could trust herself. Was she just falling for it because she was so desperate for Seth not to be involved in any way? Besides, if Seth had merely blown up out of a sense of noble duty to his young female employee, then why was he acting so ashamed, and like he’d ruined everything between them? She needed to hear more from him. Needed to probe into the altercation a little further. She wanted to know how well his version of events stood up to scrutiny.
“How is Carys now?” she asked.
“Well, just after I threw him out, the camera stopped rolling, and he turned back and was like a totally different guy. He explained to me how he was doing a bit, a prank, you know? My heart was pounding with fury, it really took me ages to hear what he was actually saying. But when it started to dawn on me that it was actually all some stupid joke, I started to calm down. He apologized to Carys personally. I mean, it’s really not my sense of humor, but I got where he was coming from and we parted on good terms.”
Ali hesitated. Seth had just earned himself another check mark in the innocent box. Because Brandon had had a similar conversation with her. Only in her case, he’d had the wherewithal to explain the situation before the prank got out of hand. How would she have reacted if she’d not seen his true persona in advance and heard his explanation about being a businessman? Even with the explanation she’d gotten pretty riled by his antics. If he’d made Piper feel threatened in the same way he had with Carys, and she’d been unaware of the theatrical element of it, would she have seen red and manhandled him right out of her store, too? Quite likely she would have. She felt extremely protective over Piper, and could easily understand how Seth would feel the same way with Carys.
“Weren’t you worried about the video being online?” Ali asked, pressing just a little bit more. “Didn’t you think it might damage your reputation? Bring the police to your door?”
“I mean, I didn’t exactly have a choice about that. The whole thing was live streamed, so plenty of his loyal fans had already seen it. He did offer to take down the video after the fact if I was really concerned, but then he also told me how much attention his videos drum up for the local businesses. And how any publicity is good publicity, especially when it was going out to hundreds of thousands of people.” He chuckled. “I couldn’t really argue with that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Ali asked. “When you heard the rumors that he’d been poisoned by a disgruntled food seller, didn’t you worry people would suspect you?”
“Of course I did!” Seth exclaimed. “But then I heard it was a poisoned pastry, so I figured the cops wouldn’t be looking at me and I guess I didn’t think it was the best way to impress a pretty girl on a first date.”
Ali felt her cheeks warm at the compliment. She was becoming more and more convinced that Seth had nothing to do with it.
“You know the pastry thing is just a rumor,” Ali told him. “That didn’t come from the cops themselves. It could be poisoned anything that killed Brandon.”
“I see that now,” Seth said. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “And I’m expecting to get questioned by the cops any second, to be honest. I mean, once they see that video, I’m going to be their prime suspect, aren’t I?”
“Luckily for you, they’ve zoomed in on someone else,” Ali replied, wryly, jabbing her two thumbs up her chest.
Seth shook his head of dark hair. “Quite a pickle we’ve found ourselves in, huh?”
Ali, convinced now that Seth was innocent, felt a well of determination in her guts. It wasn’t just her name she needed to clear, it was Seth’s, too. She needed to solve this case for everyone.
And she knew just where to visit next.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As she left Best Hot Dogs, Ali discovered Scruff was waiting for her outside. He barked happily at the sight of her.
“What are you still doing here?” she asked. “Didn’t you find anyone to feed you breakfast yet?”
He tipped his head to the side and barked again.
“Well, I have some very important things to do right now,” Ali told him. “But you can tag along if you want, and just as soon as I get the chance, I’ll buy you your favorite bone. Okay?”
Scruff agreed to her terms with an enthusiastic bark.
“All right then, sidekick,” Ali said. “We’re going to the pier.”
They walked there together.
Ali had never actually been inside the donut kiosk, so she was surprised when she entered the small store beside the entrance to the pier and realized it was actually quite a swanky place. The floor was tiled with futuristic metal grating, and the walls were covered in artistic graffiti. The shelves were all bright blue, and lit with big white bulbs like a theater mirror.
It smelled absolutely delicious, of sweets and fragrant spices, and Ali couldn’t help but wonder how Teddy’s keen nose had never sniffed this place out. He, like her, must have just presumed from the outside that it was an average, run-of-the-mill donut place.
But as her eyes grazed the many different varieties of donuts on display, Ali quickly discovered this was far from an ordinary donut place. Alongside the usual donuts, cronuts, and yum-yums on sale, there was a huge selection of international desserts—Portugal’s famous custard tart, the Pasteis de Nata, deep fried Gulab Jamun from India, Spanish churros, Turkish baklava. There was also a large variety of pastries on offer—croissants, cinnamon swirls, Danishes…
No wonder no one wanted my pastries, Ali thought. There was already a place in town covering that corner of the market.
But her initial thought was overtaken by a different, altogether worse one: Poisoned pastry.
The rumor flying around town about the cause of Brandon’s demise was that a disgruntled pâtissier had poisoned him. Now, it turned out, Ali wasn’t the only pastry maker in town.
“Just go nuts,” a voice suddenly said.
Ali startled. She looked over to see a man standing behind the counter. He was a hipster, with a mass of dark curly hair coming out from beneath a red baseball cap. He was wearing an oversized denim shirt.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“I said, “Just do-nuts,” he said again, pointing to the retro-style sign above his head. Just DoNuts. It was the store’s name.
“Oh, I get it,” Ali said as she read the sign. “Nice pun.”
“Thanks,” the guy replied. “What can I get you?”
Ali immediately remembered the cover story she’d concocted on the way over here, and slipped into her Valley Girl persona. It came easy thanks to the girls she remembered from high school.
“So, I’m a fan of Brandon Lennox,” she said, exaggerating her accent. “And I heard he came in here before he passed away and licked like ten donuts. Is it true?”
The guy gave her a skeptical look up and down, evidently suspicious that a woman of her age would be interested in the sort of content Brandon was creating. But then his features relaxed and he nodded.
“Yeah, it’s true,” he said. “And man was it funny!”
Ali hesitated. His reaction was not what she had been expecting to hear. She would’ve thought a customer licking ten of your donuts and ruining them would be the sort of thing a store owner would be annoyed about. But in actual fact, it seemed like this guy had found the whole thing hilarious.
“Are you here to put in a bid?” the guy asked her.
“A bid?” she asked, confused.
“To buy them,” he explained. “We’re taking bids.”
His question to
tally took Ali off guard. “You mean you kept them?” she asked.
She felt incredulous, but forced herself to use a positive tone.
“Of course we did,” the guy continued. “Last time Brandon visited we got a bump in sales from his groupies. We figured the same would happen this year, so we kept them to see if we could flog them. But now he’s dead, they’ve become an even rarer commodity, so we’re selling them to the highest bidder. Give me a second, I’ll fetch the bidding sheet.”
He disappeared into the back room.
The moment he was gone, Ali squirmed inwardly. It was beyond distasteful, and the clerk was so flippant about a man’s death it made Ali’s blood run cold. She had to try very hard not to grimace at this awful disrespect.
But then she thought of Brandon. He’d probably be proud to know people were bidding on a donut with his spit on it, and there was no point wasting energy on being insulted for his sake when he probably would’ve done the same given half the chance.
The clerk returned to the counter with a clipboard and held it out to her. There were already several scrawled names, addresses, and bids on the sheet.
Ali scanned the page. “Someone bid five hundred dollars?” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Donut Guy said with a smirk. “Those Brandon Lennox fans are crazy.” He chuckled.
Ali had another horrible thought. Donut Guy clearly had no respect for human life, he’d proved that much in just the five minutes she’d been talking to him, chuckling away and speaking flippantly about Brandon’s death like it barely even mattered. In fact, he was showing such a lack of empathy and emotion, he was coming across like a sociopath. And if there was anything Ali had learned from her crime documentaries, it was that sociopaths perceived people as nothing more than tools to be used for their own gain. Had the clerk killed Brandon for the notoriety? For the “crazy fans” who’d stop here on some kind of pilgrimage? For the profit of selling a five-hundred-dollar donut?