by K. J. Emrick
She found Mara inside, sitting at one of the three salon chairs over by the sinks, swiping through her cellphone. The room was just as big as it looked from the outside, with tall ferns in the corners and stacks of magazines waiting on low tables for customers to read while they were having their hair done. Blow dryers and brushes and bottles of every shape and size and color were on the counters or hung in their places on the wall. There was a row of cabinets under the counter on the far side, one with a padlocked hasp and another two that were closed with plain brown curtains. A broom and dustpan sat in the corner ready to sweep up hair trimmings.
It was a very neat little shop, very pleasant and inviting. Just one of several homegrown businesses that thrived in little towns like Widow’s Rest.
“Hi, Cookie,” Mara greeted her brightly, pocketing her phone as she got up. “Oh, and Cream, too! Hey there, fellow. How’ve you been?”
He padded over to sniff at her outstretched hand, smiling a doggie smile and turning around in circles to say hello. Then he went off to sniff at each of the corners, one by one.
Cookie watched him go. “I hope it’s okay that I brought him along?”
“Of course, of course,” Mara assured her. “As long as he doesn’t try to do his business on my floors, he’s always welcome. Maybe I can find a bow for him to wear around his neck when I’m done with you?”
“Well, I’m afraid he doesn’t much like bows. He’s always been a very plain mister. I’ll just have you make me pretty today.”
She regarded Cookie closely, leaning an elbow on the top of one of the chairs. “Are you sure you want to go back to the style you had before? I thought this looked really good on you when I first did it.”
“Oh, I suppose it did. I don’t hate it, but I think it’s just not me. I’m more comfortable with my old look. Thanks for seeing me.”
“Of course, of course. I’m here whenever you need me. Except on Sundays. That’s my day for church.”
Cookie settled herself into the salon chair as Mara shook out a hair cape and settled it over her. She had to lower the chair a bit to do it, seeing as how she was all of five foot nothing. She was a slim woman, too, thin enough that if she stood behind a lamp post and turned sideways she would most likely disappear. She always wore black jeans and colorful tops and even now, when Cookie had made an after-hours appointment, that’s what she was wearing.
She put on a green smock before starting on Cookie’s hair. Kind of like how Cookie always wore an apron when she did her work at the bakery.
“You want me to dye your hair like mine?” Mara joked. “We could be hair twins!”
They shared a laugh at that. Mara was always sporting some new style to advertise her talents, and currently she had her naturally brown hair dyed a deep black with purple tips where it hung down by her shoulders. There was no way Cookie would be brave enough to ever try that color combination. Not even back when she was younger and might have pulled it off.
Cream cocked one ear at their conversation, and then went back to sniffing around the room. He snorted at each of the ferns, obviously not liking them very much.
Mara started with a wash and a rinse, tipping the chair way back so Cookie’s head was over the sink. This was one of Cookie’s favorite parts. It felt so nice. After, Mara used the handheld blow dryer and a vented brush as she gently combed the hair straight back. She left it slightly damp as she lifted the chair up again.
“There. That’s a good start.” Mara shook her hands off in the sink and then dried them on her smock. “Now, I’ve got some products I need to work into your hair, and I think we’ll need a little trim before we do anything else.”
“Sounds good to me,” Cookie told her. “I trust you. I hope I’m not taking up too much of your night?”
“Oh, no. I had nothing else planned tonight. Things are usually pretty quiet in my house. Had a bit of excitement while you were gone but things are back to normal now. My mother was the gadabout, not me.”
Sensing the perfect opening, Cookie pounced on it. “Oh, I was actually talking about your mother just a little bit ago.”
“Were you? I know you were good friends with my mom.” She fussed with Cookie’s hair for a moment. “I still miss her sometimes. She helped set me up in this shop. Did she ever tell you that?”
“Did she? No, I didn’t know that.” How nice, Cookie thought.
“Of course,” Mara said, “that was years before she passed away. What brought her up in conversation today? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
“The incident at the bank all those years back. With the robbery?”
“Oh? Hmm.”
“Your mom was a teller when it happened.”
“Of course, of course.”
“The police are looking into it again.”
Mara’s hands hesitated. Silence filled the room.
“You remember what a big sensation that was?” Cookie probed. “Goodness, with the plane crash and all?”
Another few seconds passed before Cookie felt Mara’s hands moving again. “I don’t like to think about it. That was not a great time for my mother. I was young, but I remember how upset she was back then.”
Cookie could understand that. “I can imagine how stressful it was. It was years before she could talk about it to me. I knew the newspapers hounded her for a long time over the story. All that money stolen. I suppose they felt your mother would have an interesting take on the story.”
Mara picked a bottle of something off the shelf and poured a little into her hands, working it up into a thick foam before rubbing it into Cookie’s hair. “I didn’t think they found any of the money.”
“No, they didn’t,” Cookie agreed. “It had to go somewhere, I suppose. In fact, the police now think the money might still be somewhere right here in town.”
Silence filled the room again.
“Mara?” Cookie asked her. “Is everything all right?”
Her fingers started moving through Cookie’s hair. “I’m sorry, I guess all this talk of Mom and the robbery is just distracting me. Why do the police think the money’s still here?”
“A man came forward saying he has information.”
“What information would that be?”
Cookie closed her eyes as the hair product began dripping down her forehead. “I know this is going to be hard to believe,” she said, “but this man is claiming one of the employees of the bank was in on the robbery. Not your mother, of course. Either Ed, or Pauline. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but did your mother ever say anything about her coworkers? Or about the money that was taken from the bank?”
When Mara didn’t answer, Cookie opened her eyes. There was an expression on Mara’s face that couldn’t quite be described. Was it something Cookie had said?
“My mom liked the people she worked with,” Mara told her. “She never said a single cross word about either Ed or Pauline. She never mentioned anything about the money, either. Come on, Cookie. You knew my mother. Did she look like a woman who was living it high on a bunch of stolen cash?”
“No, of course not. No one suspects your mother.”
“But they suspect the people she worked with?” Mara laughed bitterly. “You think that makes it better somehow? You’re asking to paint my mother—my deceased mother—with the same brush as whoever robbed the bank in the first place. Or do you and your police officer husband think she robbed the bank, too?”
“Mara, of course not. Your mother was my good friend.”
Cream stopped in the center of the room. He wasn’t looking at Cookie, but at something off to the side. Cookie tried to look that way, but Mara was still talking.
“The only thing my mother ever said about that whole thing was that she was glad the backpack the robber stuffed all that cash into burned up when the plane went down.” The defensiveness in her voice was alarming. “She knew that money was trouble. She didn’t want it around. She didn’t want people accusing her of exactly what you’re
accusing her of right now! And you… you were her friend! So if you ask me, Cookie, if you want to find that cash then you can just go to the crash site and sift it through a colander. Maybe you’ll find a piece of a twenty-dollar bill after all this time. My mother was a good woman. She wouldn’t ever consider robbing a place where she worked.”
“Mara, I swear,” Cookie insisted, “that was never a thought in my head—”
Cream began barking, drawing their attention over to the corner where he’d taken a special interest in the single locked cabinet door. He sniffed around the bottom edge, and then put his paw up against it, and then up against it again, and then again, like he was knocking on the door to have it open.
“Now Cream,” Cookie scolded him. “You stop that. There’s nothing in there for you. I’m sorry, Mara. He just gets excited by new smells. Your shop is full of interesting things.”
“He’s fine,” Mara grunted. “He’s not the one accusing my mother of being a thief.”
“No, honestly. I swear that’s not what I meant.”
She didn’t answer right away. After a moment, she picked up her scissors and gently pushed Cookie’s head back down over the sink. “Maybe we should just be quiet for the rest of your appointment, okay? You sit there and let me work my magic, and I’ll forget all about anyone saying anything about my mother.”
Cookie pressed her lips together. What else could she do? Mara obviously didn’t want to talk about this, and Cookie didn’t want to upset her. She certainly hadn’t been trying to accuse Rosalyn of anything. All she had wanted was to find out from Mara if her mother had ever said anything about the robbery. If Rosalyn had known anything about what happened, anything that might back up this crazy story Jonathan Graham was trying to push about an accomplice at the bank, then she might have told Mara about it.
So why was Mara being so prickly about it? Cookie had to wonder at that. Maybe she had explained it wrong. She could have eased into it more, perhaps. But she had explained to Mara that her mother wasn’t a suspect in anyone’s mind, certainly not hers. Of course Rosalyn was a good person. Cookie knew that. She’d been friends with Rosalyn for a very long time and would never have suggested she was a thief. Not ever.
For her part, Cookie didn’t think any of the three people at the bank that day had anything at all to do with the robbery. She was anxious to see what Jerry would learn from Ed and Pauline, but she was pretty sure she already knew what they would say. The people at the bank were good people, just like Rosalyn had been. It was simply ridiculous to think there was any truth to the load of undercooked fudge Jonathan Graham was trying to sell them.
For the next hour and fifteen minutes Cookie let Mara work with her hair while Cream curled himself up in the corner and closed his eyes. The time seemed even longer for the silence in the room. When the session was done, Mara told her the price, and took her money, and then turned her back on Cookie and started fussing with the perfectly tidy shelves. Obviously, she didn’t want to talk about anything else.
Cookie didn’t push her. She let things go the way they were, having learned nothing at all except that things like this might be better left in the past, where they could stay buried and forgotten.
Well, there was nothing for it now. The investigation wasn’t going to go away just because it would ruffle some feathers. Until they could prove that Jonathan Graham was lying just to save his own soul, Jerry and his officers would have to run down every lead.
Cookie took a moment and checked out Mara’s handiwork in one of the mirrors. She patted at the hair. It was mostly straight now, but still wavier than it used to be. She supposed it would settle down in a day or two and then she’d be right back to her old self.
Cream snorted when she picked him up. She’d disturbed him from whatever dream he’d been having and now he was wide awake and bobbing his head every which way as she took him out to her Volkswagen so they could leave.
“I suppose I might have to find a new place to get my hair done,” she told her little dog friend. “Such a pity.”
He licked at his nose, having nothing to say that would make her feel better.
Cookie shook her head and replayed her conversation with Mara through her mind. Was there anything at all that she heard that might be helpful to Jerry? If there was, she certainly couldn’t see it. She had done this to help him out, and yes perhaps to get herself involved in the mystery as well, against her better judgment. If she’d been hoping to find out anything useful, however, she had certainly failed.
She chuckled as she belted herself in. She wasn’t a police officer, after all. She wasn’t trained in how to interview people or find clues. She was one smart cookie, if she did say so herself, but she was a baker at heart. How was she supposed to help, if she didn’t know what she was looking for? Those files on Loretta Hill’s desk had seemed pretty thorough to her and there was nothing in there about an accomplice. No, sir.
Which meant she should just forget about it, at least for tonight. Jerry would do his job. He always did. If there was anything to find, he would find it.
She hadn’t realized how late it was getting. Mara hadn’t exactly taken her time with Cookie’s hair, but she hadn’t rushed it, either. Maybe she hadn’t really been offended after all. Maybe she was just upset by hearing about the bank robbery again after all this time. That could be it, she supposed. At any rate, it was late. The sun had set a while ago. Cookie drove home in the dark.
As she turned onto Anthem Way and the bakery came into view, she eased her foot off the accelerator and let the car slow to a crawl. The lights in the apartment upstairs were still on. The lights down in the bakery were off, just as they should have been. At first glance everything looked exactly how it should.
At least, until Cookie saw the beam of a flashlight through the front windows of the bakery, splashing haphazardly around the inside of the store.
Someone was in there. It couldn’t be Clarissa. She knew where the light switches were. This was someone else.
“Did you see that, Cream?”
He whoofed and then let out a low growl as he stood up at the window. Yes. He’d seen it too.
She drove past the bakery to park further up the street. Ordinarily, she would have driven back into the parking area behind the store, but she didn’t want to scare off whoever was in there. Her thoughts raced. Clarissa should still be upstairs in the apartment. Was she okay? She had to get in there and see what was going on.
Yanking her keys from the ignition, she took her phone out of her purse and practically jumped out of the car. Cream raced to follow her. Cookie felt better knowing he was there with her. She tried to keep one eye on the front of her bakery, and the other eye on her phone as she speed dialed the police station. Dialing 911 might be faster but those calls went through to the State Police dispatcher rather than the local Widow’s Rest Police Department. By the time she could explain who she was and where she was and what she needed to a State Police dispatcher, whoever was inside her bakery might be gone.
Or worse, they might hurt Clarissa. She needed help right now this instant! It would be much better to call the PD directly and hope that someone answered who knew her well enough to…
“Widow’s Rest Police Department,” said a stiff, formal voice. “This is Officer Hanson.”
Cookie knew Hamlin Hanson. He was one of the nightshift officers. She didn’t know him well, but he would know who she was, and he certainly knew where her bakery was. He stopped in every Thursday morning to treat himself to some of her coffee cake.
“Hamlin, it’s Cookie,” she loudly whispered. “I need you to send a patrol car to my bakery. There’s an intruder inside.”
“Are you inside?” he asked immediately. “Are you safe?”
“I’m outside. On the sidewalk.”
“Okay, good. Stay there. I’ll be just a few minutes. Jerry’s out on an interview right now but I’m going to call him on my way over to let him know. Just stay there.”
“I can’t do that,” Cookie told him, sliding down the side of the building to the back.
“What?” The surprise in Hamlin’s voice was clear. “Cookie, I need you to stay out of the bakery until we get there. There’s no reason for you to go in and put yourself in danger.”
“Yes, there is,” Cookie insisted. “My granddaughter is in there. Just hurry.”
With that, she hung up and went to the back door of the bakery as fast as she could. She had her keys in her hand, flipping through them to find the right one, but then she stopped. The back door was open.
Inside, she could see someone moving around. A shadow crossing over the beam of a flashlight. Something clattered, and then the shadow stopped moving.
Cream growled again.
“Shh,” Cookie warned him. “Don’t let them hear us.”
Fear gripped her insides. She stuffed her keys back in her pocket and made sure to cover the screen of her cellphone as she sent a frantic text to Clarissa. Are you okay?
A few stressful seconds ticked by before the response came. Sure. Just watching a video. Will you be home soon?
Cookie held her breath. Clarissa didn’t know what was going on. There was someone downstairs in the bakery, and she didn’t even know it.
Stay upstairs, Cookie told her. There’s an intruder. The police are coming just stay up there.
She put the phone away before she could see if her granddaughter answered. She couldn’t sit out here and hope whoever was inside would just leave or got caught by the police. She had to protect Clarissa. Her bakery, too, but even with how much this place meant to her, she knew she could replace it. Clarissa was irreplaceable.
“Come on, Cream. It’s you and me. Just stay with me, all right?”
Arf, he said.
She sincerely hoped that meant yes.
Inside the back door were two umbrellas in a stand. She hardly ever used them, but her mother had impressed upon her at an early age the need to be prepared for sudden weather. One was short and flimsy with a clear plastic shell. The other had a solid wood shaft and a sturdy metal skeleton and heavy purple fabric. That was the one she picked up.