by Fiona Grace
Ali couldn’t believe she’d managed to offend the mob. So much for keeping a wide berth!
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quavering. “I wasn’t thinking. I realize now that of course you wouldn’t kill someone that way.”
She tried to stand, but Joe thumbed his hand down on top of hers, pinning it to the table. “Believe me, Ali, there’s no way we’d ever go after someone so high profile. Fat Tony is careful. Always careful. And it would be terrible for business, especially after what happened with Giuseppe. Capiche?”
Ali gulped and nodded. Joe released her hand.
“Well, I should probably go,” she squeaked, forcing a bright tone that was far from how she felt. She scurred for the door, calling over her shoulder as she went, “Tell Fat Tony I said hi.”
“What about your pizza?” Joe called after her.
“I—um—I’m actually not that hungry!” Ali exclaimed. She pulled the door open. “But thanks for your generous offer!”
And with that, she hurried outside, striding away from the pizzeria as fast as her trembling legs could carry her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She’d not made it far when Ali heard the sound of barking.
She turned to see Scruff, her canine companion, come bounding up to her. He’d been following her diligently from store to store. Either he really loved the jumbo bones she gave him, or he was genuinely trying to help. Either way, Ali was grateful for his company, especially right now, after her run-in with Joe and the mob.
“This is going terribly,” Ali confessed, crouching to pet him.
He barked in sympathy. Or was it hunger? She had promised to get him a snack.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “You’ve earned your reward.”
She ducked into a convenience store and purchased a treat for Scruff. They didn’t have his favorite bones, so instead she bought him a dog “cookie” in a bright red foil packaging.
When she got back outside with the treat, Scruff ‘s ears pricked upward, his tongue lolled, and his tail began helicoptering with joy.
The sight of the stray’s happy face brought a huge sense of comfort to Ali. She’d been feeling increasingly alone on this journey, and merely seeing his cute, fluffy little face took the edge off.
As Ali unwrapped the crinkly red wrapper, a sudden memory resurfaced. She and Scruff on this exact spot of the boardwalk, sharing a moment of joy as the pup held a bright red cookie in his jaws, before scarfing it down. Scruff had stolen the cookie from right under Miriyam’s nose. It was one of her so-called “killer kookies,” dyed blood red, and popular amongst the macabre teens.
Ali glanced over at the storefront of Kookies, seeing Miriyam working the till inside. She recalled her dough boardwalk, and Delaney’s revelation that Brandon had been to Willow Bay plenty of times before. Miriyam had been the first to tell Ali about the YouTuber and the financial benefits of a visit from him. At the time, Ali had just presumed she was doing her usual thing, talking down to Ali, acting like she had all the answers, giving her “business advice” in that haughty, arrogant way she did. But actually, after her extra talk with Delaney, Ali now realized that Miriyam may well have been talking from experience. There was every chance that she’d had firsthand experience with Brandon in prior years. Her store had been on the boardwalk long enough, after all.
As Scruff devoured his jumbo bone, Ali straightened up to standing, peering left and right along the boardwalk. Because of the direction Brandon was traveling, he would have passed Kookies before Little Bits of This and That. And since Delaney only spotted him as he passed her window, there was every chance he’d made another stop on his tour. Indeed, the first stop on his tour, to Miriyam’s bakery. But whether it was to a friend or foe, there was only one way Ali would be able to find out for certain.
Just then, Scruff went scurrying off into the shrubbery, making it rustle as he disappeared from sight. Ali deflated. She could’ve done with his company for a bit longer. And his support. Together, they made a good team against Miriyam. But no. This was something Ali would need to solve on her own.
She bit the bullet and headed inside Kookies.
Miriyam looked up from where she was neatening up the display cabinet and focused on Ali. Recognition registered in her dark brown eyes, before her features twisted into a look of displeasure.
“What are you doing here?” she muttered.
“Charming,” Ali said sarcastically, coming up to the counter. “You were in my store the other day, checking out my menu. I figured I’d return the favor.” She glanced at the counter to see Miriyam now had a lovely rainbow display of cookies, very much like Ali’s macarons. “Rainbows?” Ali added dryly. “What an original idea.”
Miriyam gave her an unimpressed look. “This is about Brandon, isn’t it?”
Ali leaned her elbows onto the counter. “Whatever makes you say that?”
Miriyam rolled her eyes. “Because I know what you’re like,” she scoffed. “You’ve taken it upon your shoulders to do your silly little detective routine again. Well, let me save you the bother. I didn’t kill the man, and if you’d been paying any attention to me at all when I was at your bakery the other day, you’d know I had no motive to. I think I was the only person on the boardwalk who actually wanted him to come into my store.”
Ali narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. Miriyam was often moody, but her mood seemed fouler today than usual. Ali had a sneaking suspicion she knew why.
“He didn’t come in, did he?” she said.
Miriyam pursed her lips. “No,” she said, shortly. “So you can lord it over me all you want. Your bakery got all the attention.”
Ali frowned. What was Miriyam talking about? Was she actually jealous of Ali for having a man die in her bakery?
“My bakery is closed,” Ali said. “Far from getting any kind of attention. It’s a crime scene.”
“Sure. Now it is,” Miriyam contested. “But once the investigation is over, it’ll be a pilgrimage spot.”
Ali thought of her conversation with the man from Just DoNuts. He’d mentioned pilgrimages as well, so called “Lennox-heads” coming to see Brandon’s licked donuts. The idea of people flocking to her bakery for such a morbid reason made Ali shudder, but the more morally bankrupt of the business owners of Willow Bay clearly didn’t care about that. All they cared about was an increase in footfall.
“I wonder sometimes,” Miriyam continued, breaking through Ali’s internal thoughts, “if you were the one who killed him. After I told you who he was, I bet you schemed a way to profit off him.”
Ali was immediately insulted. How dare Miriyam say such a thing!
She opened her mouth to argue her case—that her business would most certainly suffer as a result of Brandon’s death, not gain—when she paused and had a change of heart. There was no reasoning with Miriyam. Any further discussion with her would be a waste of time and energy. She’d learned what she needed to from coming in here, that Brandon hadn’t visited, so Ali needed to focus on finding her next lead instead of arguing with her adversaries.
“Think what you want, Miriyam,” she said, wearily. “I have better things to be doing.”
She headed for the door.
“Like plotting your next murder?” Miriyam called after her.
Ali felt her shoulders tense up and her hands curl into fists. But she forced herself to let it go. Miriyam’s lies couldn’t hurt her, and once she’d found out the truth, it would set her free.
She left the store.
*
At the end of the boardwalk, Ali reached a literal dead end to her search. No leads. No clues. She was no closer to getting her bakery back.
She gazed out across the still ocean. The bright lights of the various boardwalk stores were reflected on its surface, along with flashing lights of the rides on the pier, which were in full swing on this glorious summer afternoon. Ali glanced back over her shoulder, her focus drawn to the bright lights of Whitewater, Nate’s surf store.
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She’d barely seen Nate recently. Their last encounter, the cancelled surf lesson, still lingered in her mind like a bad smell.
Just then, Ali spotted Nate in the window, removing one of the dummies. Perhaps now might be a good time to catch up…
Without much deliberating, she turned from the ocean and gravitated over to the store.
She went inside, making the bell tinkle.
Nate swirled from where he was grappling with the bottom half of a store dummy, tugging a wetsuit over its pale plastic legs. When his green eyes found her, he grinned widely.
“Ali!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just passing,” she said. “And it looked like you needed a hand.” She nodded to the semi-dressed dummy he was grappling with.
“It’s hard enough to put these things on when your limbs bend,” Nate joked.
Ali smiled as she approached and began to help Nate tug the tight wetsuit up the legs of the dummy. Nate reattached the torso, and they began the second phase of dressing it.
“I’m so glad to see you,” Nate said from the other side of the dummy. “I feel super bad about the other day.”
“The other day?” Ali asked, keeping her attention on the task at hand, rather than Nate, who she could see watching her intently out her peripheral vision.
“The surf lesson,” he clarified. “I was rude. And I’m sorry. Did you want to reschedule?”
Ali hesitated. She’d been certain Nate had cooled on her. But now she wasn’t so sure. Because he was looking at her in the same way he had when they’d first met, romantically, longingly, and his gaze was causing her to feel those same sparks of excitement all over again. But she’d already been let down by him once, and now there was Seth to complicate things even further.
“I have a lot going on at the moment,” Ali said hurriedly, thinking of how scathing Detective Elton had been over her date at La Vie En Rose. Beyond her own complicated and confused feelings, Ali didn’t want to give the detectives any more cause to suspect her. If they got wind she’d been on a second date, with a different guy, no less, it would certainly do no favors for her image.
“Oh,” Nate said, looking crestfallen.
The wetsuit was in place, and Nate pulled up the zipper at the front, with an evident look of disappointment on his face.
“I’m sorry,” Ali added.
“It’s fine,” he said, lying badly. He picked up the dummy and carried it back to the window display. “Thanks for your help with this.”
He said it with the sort of finality that suggested Ali was no longer welcome to hang around.
“I guess I’ll leave you to it,” she said.
“’K,” he replied, his focus now entirely on his window display.
Ali headed out of the store. Nate’s reaction had left her in something of a flux. She wouldn’t have thrown herself into dating Seth if she’d thought Nate still held a flame for her. But now it seemed he still did, and Ali was left to wonder whether she still did in return.
So much for Lavinia Leigh’s prediction of a simple love on the horizon. Ali’s love life seemed to be getting more and more complicated every day.
But she couldn’t think about any of that now. Love? Romance? All that would have to wait. She had a murder to solve, and a business to save. Ali decided the only thing she could do now was to return to the “crime scene” and try to pick up a clue.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Ali stood outside her forlorn-looking bakery, dark, closed up, and devoid of the smiling children who made all the hard work worthwhile. How desperately she wanted it to open it again!
As she gazed at her store, her attention slid to Marco’s pizzeria. The salami statue wasn’t there anymore. Neither was the one outside Emilio’s. Ali frowned, wondering where the statues had gone.
Just then, Marco came out of his pizzeria. He was holding a steaming, beautifully smelling pizza on a tray in his arm. He slid it onto the table of the single customer sitting in the outside dining area, using that suave Italian flourish Ali so admired. Then, spotting her watching him, Marco waved her over.
“Ali, it’s good to see you,” he said as she approached. “How are you doing?”
“I’m coping, all things considered,” Ali said. “What happened to your statue?”
Marco looked a little shifty, his dark eyes dropping to his feet. “It was drawing the wrong crowds,” he explained.
Ali frowned. “Wrong crowds? What do you mean?”
It appeared that Marco was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, and Ali was suddenly struck by a thought. The salami statues had had nothing to do with the twins’ meat feast pizza competition … they were only ever there to lure Brandon Lennox over.
“It was for Brandon all along,” she stated.
Marco hesitated, then conceded with a guilty nod. “I wanted him to come this way … so he would prank Emilio,” he mumbled, looking ashamed.
“What do you mean?” Ali queried.
Marco sighed heavily. “It’s not my first run-in with Brandon Lennox,” he explained. “He visited me before, a year or so ago. He was a massive pain. And I didn’t even get a boost in footfall like the other stores, because Emilio sneakily diverted them to his store, pretending to be me!” He sneered his brother’s name, like it tasted bad in his mouth. “So I suffered through all the humiliation with none of the benefits. This year, I wanted to flip the script. I wanted to lure him into Emilio’s bakery so he could experience it, then get all of the customers off the back of it.” His face soured. “It didn’t work out that way, so I took the ugly statue down. It had become a mockery.”
Ali herself was certainly glad to see the back of the salami statues. “So Brandon was just another thing for you two to compete over?” she said with a disapproving tut.
“Yes, and it failed anyway because Brandon got distracted by your pretty assistant.”
Ali recalled the way Piper had draped herself out of the bakery door, prostrating to get Brandon’s attention. The boy hadn’t stood a chance.
“Hmm,” Ali said with a heavy moment of realization. “If Piper hadn’t been so eager for his attention, none of this would’ve happened.”
Just then, Emilio came out of his bakery. He must’ve spotted the two speaking through his window. He marched over, guns ablazing.
“What is he telling you?” Emilio demanded.
Ali felt a pit open in her stomach. Getting caught between the two warring Italian twins ranked right up there amongst the things she disliked the most. She’d even asked them if they could keep their bickering away from her store, since she was positioned right in the firing line, and though they’d agreed they would in principle, it never seemed to work out that way in reality.
“Nothing,” Ali said, wearily, trying her best not to get dragged into their petty shenanigans. “I’m just trying to work out what happened with Brandon the day he died.”
Emilio put his hands on his hips. “Did he tell you about his dirty tricks? How after Brandon pranked my store, he stole all the customers?”
Ali frowned. Emilio was repeating the exact same story as Marco had, only the roles were now reversed. “He said the opposite.”
“It was the other way around!” Marco cried.
“No it wasn’t! Brandon came to my store first, two years ago, and yours last year. I was the one he pranked first.”
“You’re talking fiction!” Marco yelled. “You cannot rewrite history!”
“Fiction, eh?” Emilio shot back. “I’ve got receipts. I can prove it!”
“Then prove it!” Marco cried.
Ali sighed with defeat. The twins may well have had some interesting insights into Brandon that would help with her case, but there was no talking to either of them when they were busy locking horns. At least she’d confirmed that Brandon hadn’t eaten at either establishment on the day he died, and so neither of the twins could be his killer.
Ali turned to leave, when she spotted th
e sole customer in the dining area trying to get her attention. He waved his hands, as if flagging her down. Curious, Ali approached.
“Sorry to bother you,” the man said. He was an older man, with graying hair and jowls. “But did I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Is it true you hired a young woman named Piper?”
At the mention of Piper’s name, Ali frowned, her intrigue growing. “Yes…” she said with trepidation. “Why?”
The man started to laugh. “Know her? Why, she almost burned down my popcorn stall last summer!”
Ali blinked in astonishment. “I’m sorry… what?”
She couldn’t believe it. When Ali had found Piper on the outskirts of town waiting tables in a truck stop diner and offered her a job, she’d assumed the young woman was new to California. But by the sounds of things, she’d been around long enough to work another job—another job in Willow Bay no less! Why would her new employee omit that bit of information from her? Was she trying to hide something?
“She used to work for me,” the man continued in the same flippant tone, oblivious to the massive bombshell he’d just dropped on Ali. “I run the popcorn stand at the other end of the boardwalk. I come here for lunch because I refuse to dine in any of Fat Tony’s pizzerias.” He shuddered. “Very strange vibes. I’m pretty sure that guy is a gangster or something.”
Ali felt herself grow impatient. She didn’t care about the man’s suspicions about Fat Tony—however justified they may be—she wanted to hear all about Piper and find out exactly what the girl had been up to last summer.
“When did you say Piper worked for you?” Ali queried, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“Last summer,” the man said. “I’d just opened up and needed someone to cover the tills at the weekends. My wife insisted I take some time off, you know? But money was tight. I wasn’t turning a profit, and I couldn’t really afford wages for another staff member. I was working so hard, and getting dog-tired. My wife told me I had to close up the store for one evening and take her on a date.”