“Yeah, I heard that rumor. They were seen meeting, and she was dressing all spiffy.” Cassie opened the book. “But this is gibberish - it doesn’t prove anything.”
Nans put her hand out for the book. “Let me see.”
Cassie handed it over. Nans looked at it carefully, slowly turning the pages. “It might not look like much to the untrained eye because it’s in some sort of code. I bet Ida can make sense of it though. She used to be a cryptographer.”
Nans reached for her iPad. A few keystrokes later the device made a ringing noise, then Ida’s face appeared on the screen.
“Hi!”
“Hi, Ida, we have something interesting for you today.” Nans held the book up to the camera so Ida could see it on her iPad screen. “This book seems to have entries in code - can you decipher it?”
Ida squinted on the other end of the screen. “I think so. Can you take pictures of it and email them to me?”
“Sure.” Nans put the book down and dug in her purse for her cell phone. “Did you find anything out about the Saunders?”
“Not much. They have a modest house, make a modest income. Have a bit of debt, but who doesn’t these days? The husband is an accountant. There are some recent high credit card charges on Amanda’s card - high-end clothing stores and boutiques.”
Lexy remembered the fancy purses and clothes Saunders had started wearing. Did she buy them to impress Westmore?
Lexy watched Nans quickly snap off some pictures of the little black book, then send them off to Ida’s phone.
“Did you find any reports of violence or fighting?” Lexy shouted at the iPad.
“No, they were a model couple. And you don’t need to shout, dear - I’m not deaf.”
“I just emailed those pictures to you,” Nans said.
“Oh, great. Hold on.” Ida disappeared from the screen, then reappeared with her cell phone in hand. Lexy, Cassie, and Nans stared silently at the screen while they watched her page through the photos.
“Well?” Nans said, finally.
“It’s definitely some sort of code - it looks like something to do with numbers of some sort. I’ll need some time to decode it properly to be able to tell you more. I’m also working on a police case for Jack, so it might be a day or two.”
“I was hoping it was some sort of diary or record of his liasons with Amanda Scott-Saunders,” Lexy said.
“I’m not sure if it is or isn’t.” Ida looked thoughtful. “But one thing I am sure of, Westmore had a secret that was important enough for him to want to record it, but damaging enough that he didn’t want anyone else to know about it.”
“We better hurry, I want to put some finishing touches on the wedding cakes before the judging.” Lexy held the door open to their suite and pushed Cassie through.
The girls sprinted for the elevator, straightening their aprons on the way down.
When the elevator stopped on the bottom floor, they rushed out, making their way toward the back hall that led to the stadium.
“I wish we had more free time to enjoy Vegas,” Lexy said glancing in at the casino wistfully. Even at this early hour, it was humming with activity.
Cassie nodded. “We should have booked a couple of extra days. I feel like we hardly have enough time to get our baking done for the contest with the time we do have.”
Lexy listened to their shoes make clacking noises on the tile floor. The contest was on a tight schedule. Each day there was a new challenge that they would be judged on, which meant they only had 24 hours to come up with something extraordinary. That didn’t leave much time for fun and games.
“At least our hard work is paying off,” she said.
“Yes, its cool that we are in the top tier of the contest. A few bakers have already packed up and gone home.”
After every challenge, the bottom ten percent of bakers were eliminated and sent home. The competition kept getting smaller and smaller, and tougher and tougher. Luckily Lexy usually ended up placing in the top three of each challenge, which was important since the scores from each challenge were added up at the end to determine the final winner.
Reaching their kitchen booth, Lexy could see that the other booths were already starting to fill up with bakers and their assistants, all busy working out their finishing touches for the wedding cake challenge.
“You get the cakes out and I’ll grab the spatulas.” Lexy rushed over to the wire rack that held their equipment while Cassie opened the doors of the large fridge.
“Lexy…You better look at this.”
Lexy spun around, hearing her friends voice rise in panic.
“What?” she started over towards the fridge, then stopped short when she saw the cause of Cassie’s panic.
Inside sat the wedding cake they had labored over for the competition.
Ruined.
One of her very own giant butcher’s knives stuck out of the center, the words “Back Off” in red food coloring written all over her beautiful white cake.
8
Lexy stared at the cake, her stomach sinking like it was filled with lead. Who could have done this?
Cassie turned around, wide-eyed. “What should we do?”
“I wonder if we can fix it,” Lexy said, fighting back tears. Without the cake, she’d be disqualified from this part of the competition, severely limiting her chances of winning.
She whipped her cell phone out of her pocket, snapping off a few pictures of the cake.
“Whoever did this either wants me to stop investigating the murder or wants to ruin my chances of winning Bakery Battles…or both.” Lexy glanced over at Aurea Pearce’s kitchen. It was empty.
“You need to tell the police. Isn’t the cake some sort of evidence?” Cassie asked.
“Probably, but I took pictures and that’s going to have to be good enough. I’m not losing this competition because someone sabotaged our cake.” Lexy moved over to the fridge, holding the door wider. “Let’s get the cake out onto the table and see what we can do with it.”
Cassie slid her hand under the cake while Lexy held the door. Lexy noticed something falling to the floor as Cassie moved the cake out.
Dust?
No. Glitter.
Lexy looked at her hands - tiny dots of glitter sparkled in the harsh stadium lighting.
“Cassie, did you put glitter on the cake?”
“No, why?”
“There’s glitter here over by the fridge and on the handle.”
“That’s strange I don’t think we even have any glitter, do we?”
Lexy rubbed her hands together, watching the shiny flakes drop to the floor. “No, must have been someone else - a cleaning person maybe?”
Lexy watched Cassie edge the cake onto the table, her mind already whirling with ideas on how to fix it. But first, she looked up Detective Jake Ryan’s number on her phone and sent him the cake pictures with a text of what she had found. At least they couldn’t say she didn’t tell them about it, and she could always act dumb about touching the cake.
“Let’s take the knife out, but be careful with the handle - we don’t want to smudge any fingerprints.”
The girls slipped on the latex gloves they normally wore when preparing food. Cassie gingerly grabbed the end of the knife, sliding it carefully out of the cake. She put it out of the way on the corner of the long table.
Whipping up some frosting, they set about repairing the cake - patching up the big hole and carefully covering the red words with white frosting.
“We better speed it up.” Lexy nodded toward the other end of the stadium where the judges were already doing a preliminary judging on the cakes.
She glanced over at the next booth. Aurea Pearce had arrived. She was setting her cakes out on pedestals, applying some finishing touches.
Aurea looked over at Lexy and smirked. Lexy wondered if it was an “I ruined your cake” smirk. She craned her neck to see if Aurea had any glitter in her booth.
Working at breakneck speed,
Lexy and Cassie managed to make the cake presentable. They put the two cakes out on presentation platters at the front of their booth just in the nick of time.
The judges were at Aurea’s booth. Lexy noticed that the judge in Amanda Scott-Saunders’s spot was Grace Harvey and her heart took a nosedive. She wasn’t surprised when Harvey heaped praise on Aurea’s cakes or when Aurea cast another smirk in her direction as the judges moved toward Lexy’s booth.
Lexy held her breath, watching the judges bend over her cake stand inspect them from every angle.
“This one looks a little funny,” Grace Harvey said to the other two judges.
Lexy watched silently as they all bent down and peered at the cake sideways. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Detective Jake Ryan approaching. She hoped he had the good sense to stay back while the judges were there.
“A little off-center, but its not too distracting. Still, you’ll get points off for it. But the roses are beautiful.” Tim Gartner, the head judge, pointed at the roses with his pen.
“The grooms cake is fantastic.” Joan Lutner, the aesthetics judge, smiled at Lexy.
Lexy nodded her thanks, then breathed a sigh of relief as they moved on. They would judge all the cakes for appearance, then the best four would be selected for the tasting judgment.
Jake Ryan moved in to fill the void left by the judges.
“Where’s the cake?” He held up his phone, pointing to the picture Lexy had sent him earlier.
Lexy put on her wide-eyed innocent look. Nodding toward the cake on the table, she said, “We had to repair it for the judging…but we saved you the knife.”
She went over to the table where they had put the knife. Picking it up by the edge with her thumb and forefinger, she held it up for Jake to inspect.
He whipped out an evidence bag, indicating for Lexy to put the knife in.
“I wish you hadn’t tampered with the cake. That’s evidence.”
“Oh, sorry.” Lexy tried batting her eyelashes but only ended up aggravating her eye twitch.
She saw Jake looking down at the cake, comparing it to the picture on his phone. She was afraid he was going to insist on taking it when the judges returned.
“Good news,” Tim informed her, “you made fourth place, so go ahead and move your cakes over to the tasting area.
Lexy turned to Cassie, and the girls high-fived each other. “We did it!” Lexy felt her heart soar. It only became slightly deflated when she heard Tim telling Aurea she had won second place. Hopefully Lexy’s cakes tasted better than Aurea’s which, could give her an overall win.
Ignoring Jake, she grabbed a wheeled cart and carefully transferred the cakes onto it while Cassie ran over to the rack to grab cake plates, forks, and a cake knife. With the cart loaded, the girls took off for the tasting area, leaving Jake in their wake.
Lexy felt her stomach do nervous flip-flops as she took her place in the row of contestants directly across from the judges, who were seated at a long table. Each contestant had sliced bite-size pieces from their cakes, which were resting on identical stainless steel carts in front of them.
Lexy looked at her cart. Slices of the white bride’s cake oozed raspberry liqueur filling. She had been careful not to cut into the damaged side of the cake so as not to bring attention to the patch job she and Cassie had done to hide the sabotage. The groom’s cake looked equally delicious with its hazelnut toffee filling shining in between the chocolate layers. Lexy took a deep, calming breath and her nose was treated to a variety of sweet smells from the raspberry, caramel, and chocolate.
Evan Westmore made his way to the podium. Lexy noticed he was wearing an Armani suit. The man had good taste if nothing else. He posed for the cameras that were rolling to record the judging and began to speak.
“It’s with great sadness that I announce the death of one of our judges, Amanda Scott-Saunders. She was a wonderful judge and a great personal friend.” Lexy studied Westmore as he went on to say a few words about Saunders. How close of a personal friend was she? Lexy wondered.
“And now, I’d like to announce our new judge—Grace Harvey.” Lexy noticed Aurea looking at her with a “cat that ate the canary” smile.
Lexy tuned Westmore out as he droned on about Grace Harvey’s qualifications and, then introduced the rest of the judges and contestants. She looked around at all of them wondering if one could be the murderer.
The judges went through the cakes one by one tasting and critiquing the flavors of each. Lexy got high marks for her flavor combinations, but was it enough to overcome the points off for the damaged cake and take the overall win?
Westmore collected the scorecards from the judges, did a little bit of math, then cleared his throat to announce the winners.
“In third place, winning four points for aesthetics and four points for taste, is Bill Salida.” Lexy clapped along with everyone else as the rotund baker went up to collect his ribbon.
“In second place, winning five points for aesthetics and four points for taste is-” Westmore paused for effect, and Lexy found herself holding her breath. “Aurea Pearce!”
Lexy looked over at Aurea and found her glaring at Grace Harvey. She noticed Aurea’s face was bright red as she went up, snatched the ribbon out of Westmore’s hand, then stomped off toward the kitchen area.
Lexy let her breath out. That meant the winner was either her or Corinne.
Lexy knew the judges had liked the taste of her cakes, but the problems with the damaged white cake worried her. At least she could take solace in the fact that Aurea hadn’t gotten first place.
Lexy would actually be happy to see the blue ribbon for this judging go to Corinne. She knew she had enough points to pull ahead in the other segments of the contest, and besides she had taken a liking to Corinne and was very sympathetic to her money problems and the fact that she was pursuing her dream even though her husband left her broke and with young children to raise.
Westmore looked down from his podium at Lexy and Corinne like a bird singling out its prey. Lexy thought she saw him give her an angry glare, but maybe it was just the lighting.
“That means either Lexy or Corinne is the winner of the wedding cake contest.” Westmore stated the obvious. “-and…the…winner…is”
Lexy and Corinne glanced at each other nervously.
“Corinne Conners!”
The room burst out in applause. Lexy found herself clapping the loudest because she was genuinely happy for her friend. She ran over and threw her arms around Corinne, who was wiping away tears.
She admired the winning cakes up close; they were beautiful. Tall and elegant, the designs meticulously blending contemporary with traditional.
Lexy felt her heart swell for the young baker…until she noticed something about the cakes that made her feel like she’d been punched in the gut.
The cakes were covered in glitter - the same type of glitter Lexy had found near the sabotaged cake in her kitchen.
9
“Did you see Corrine’s cake? It was loaded with glitter!” Lexy whispered to Cassie as they made their way back to their kitchen.
Cassie stopped short. “Oh my God. You mean like the glitter we found near our white cake?”
Lexy nodded. “Do you think Corinne sabotaged the cake? Maybe to knock me out of the competition, or because she’s the murderer and wants me to stop looking into it?”
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know, but either way I’d watch myself if I were you.”
“Yeah, we may have just added another suspect to the list. I’m going to give Nans a call and see what the ladies can dig up on Corinne.”
Lexy took out her cell phone and punched in Nans’ number, then listened impatiently to it ring several times. “Damn it, she’s probably in the casino and can’t hear the phone. I’ll have to text her.”
Lexy fumbled with the keyboard typing out a quick text for Nans.
“Who are you texting?”
Lexy jumped at the voice, whic
h was awfully close to her ear. She whirled around and her heart sped up when she saw Detective Jake Ryan had snuck up on her and was standing dangerously close. Had he seen the text?
“I’m just texting my grandmother.” Lexy considered telling Jake about Corinne’s glitter cakes, but something held her back. She wasn’t positive Corinne had anything to do with the cake sabotage and didn’t want to get her in trouble with the police.
“Did you win?” Jake asked, nodding his head in the direction of the cakes.
“No, I didn’t win this one,” Lexy said ruefully. “We couldn’t repair the cake fully and lost quite a few points because it wasn’t up to par.”
“Oh, sorry.” Jake looked genuinely sorry, which made Lexy’s heart do a little hop, skip and jump against her will.
He ventured on. “I had them check the knife really quick. There are no prints on it. Do you have any idea who could’ve done this?”
“No.” Lexy felt the nervous tic in her eye start up. She was glad it was Detective Jake Ryan and not Detective Jack Perillo in front of her. Jack would recognize the eye tic as a sure sign she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
“I guess maybe someone wants to scare me out of the competition.”
“Or maybe the murderer doesn’t like you running around asking questions,” Jake offered.
Lexy’s thoughts went immediately to Peter Saunders. He had been pretty angry with her, and the attack on the cake sure seemed like an expression of anger - maybe the glitter was just a coincidence.
“That could be,” she said, thinking that if Jack were here, he’d be giving her the same exact reproachful look Jake was.
Jake nodded. “Well, I think you’d better watch your back, it looks like someone might be out to get you.”
Lexy felt a chill run up her spine, causing her body to vibrate. It took her a second to realize the vibrations were from her cell phone. She dug it out of her pocket thinking it might be Nans. It was Jack.
Lexy Baker Cozy Mystery Series Boxed Set Vol 1 (Books 1 - 4) (Lexy Baker Cozy Mysteries Boxed Sets) Page 20