As Long As There's Cake

by K. J. Emrick

  “You’re sure about this?” Jerry said from his side of the desk. “You only looked through the reports on the robbery case once.”

  “And you looked through them several times, didn’t you?” Cookie said in return. The visitor chair on her side of his office desk was becoming very uncomfortable, and she might have been a little testy from this morning’s exchange with Rick. “You don’t have them memorized? We’re only looking for one word.”

  “Uh-huh. One word out of thousands.”

  They had been in Jerry’s office at the police station for over half an hour now, looking through the paper copies of the reports from the robbery case. The pages smelled old. The ink was starting to fade. The labels had all been typed by an actual typewriter back in the day with a “b” key that was slightly lower than the other letters. The old reports told the story from long ago in enough detail that Cookie could practically picture it in her mind.

  She wasn’t really supposed to be reading any of this, of course. It was still part of an ongoing police investigation. Officer Loretta Hill had looked at them with a strange expression when Jerry took the files from her and then brought them in here with Cookie, but she hadn’t said anything. Jerry was her boss, after all, and this was still Widow’s Rest. In the big city police departments they might be a stickler for that sort of policy, but here the police took help from anyone willing to give it. At least, in Jerry Stansted’s police department they did.

  Cookie liked Loretta. She seemed like a level-headed woman, smart and articulate. She’d been hired by Jerry shortly after he took over as chief and it certainly reflected well on him that he did.

  He flipped the last page in the manila folder in front of him and then closed it, tossing it aside with several others. “Cookie, there’s nothing in here about a backpack. Each of the three witness statements says a ‘bag’ was used to take the money. They don’t specify what kind of bag. The best description is from Ed’s statement, and all he says is that it was a dark-colored bag. Nothing like that was recovered from the plane crash either, so there isn’t anything about it in the investigator’s notes. Nothing on the inventory log. If there’s a single word in the whole entire English language that isn’t in here anywhere, it’s the word ‘backpack’.”

  Cookie had to agree. Now that she’d had a chance to sit and look through the reports slowly, she had a better picture of what had happened in the robbery. A man came in wearing a mask and holding a gun in his hand. He demanded that the teller at the front window—Pauline Wallace—give him all the money in her cash drawer. It was bank policy not to argue when being robbed. They weren’t even supposed to call the police until the robber left, for their own safety. So, Pauline did what the man said.

  When Edward came out to see what was going on, the robber demanded money from the vault. The investigator on the case had made a small notation that the request was odd, because the robber waited until Ed was there to ask for the cash from the vault. It was like he knew Ed was the bank manager and would have that access. It seemed to point to the robber being a local resident of Widow’s Rest.

  Looking back at it from where she was sitting, Cookie might add that it also pointed to the possibility of the robber having an accomplice. Just like Jonathan Graham had said.

  Ed had gone into the vault to retrieve bags of fifty and twenty-dollar bills. The robber took each bag, opened it up, and removed the explosive security dye pack before putting the money into his bag. That’s all the reports said. A bag.

  Rosalyn had been in the vault at the time of the robbery. Ed told her to stay inside and out of sight. She and the robber never interacted.

  Then the robber left. He made a hasty getaway, and everyone thought he was gone, until that plane crashed in a farmer’s field. Either the plane wasn’t mechanically sound, or the robber didn’t know how to fly because he didn’t make it half a mile before it crashed. The fuel tank had been full, and the fire burned so hot that there was nothing left but a few scraps of metal, a lot of ash, and some singed corners from paper currency. There was no body to be seen. The case had been unsolved for twenty-five years. Hard to solve something like that without a witness.

  Now they had Jonathan Graham. The closest thing to a witness that the Widow’s Rest Police Department had been able to come up with in all this time, and he just sort of fell into their lap. How long had Graham been holding onto this information?

  “It’s an interesting story,” Cookie pointed out, closing the folder she’d been perusing. “It does have a few gaps, though.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Jerry murmured. “Like the fact that the robber got away, unidentified. That’s why this case has been such a big deal for so long. People love a mystery. Especially one that can’t be solved.”

  “Yes, they do.” Cookie smiled, knowing the truth of that. She was the same way. “But there’s another gap in the story, too.”

  “The backpack.” Jerry rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “So. If no one mentioned what kind of bag the robber used back then, that leads to a couple of questions. Like, how does Jonathan Graham know it was a backpack?”

  “Well,” Cookie mused, “he does seem to have information about this case. The question is how?”

  Jerry shook his head. “We see this a lot. Criminals seem to all know each other, and criminals love to brag to each other. That’s probably how Graham came by his information. Somebody said something while they were drunk in a bar. What I’m more interested in is the other person who knows about this backpack, and how they found out.”

  “You mean, Mara. Well, I suppose she must have heard about it from her mother Rosalyn.” Cookie frowned. Even saying it out loud she couldn’t figure that one out. “Except, if her mother stayed in the vault the whole time, she wouldn’t have even seen the robber. Or his bag, either. So how could she have told Mara anything about it?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Jerry agreed. “That’s suspicious, and unexplainable. I think I’m going to have to add Mara’s name to that search warrant list.”

  “But why? She’s never worked at the bank. She couldn’t possibly have been the robber’s accomplice!”

  “But her mother could have. I’m sorry, Cookie, I know Rosalyn was your friend but if she helped someone commit a bank robbery and passed even some of the money down to her daughter Mara, I need to know about it.”

  “Rosalyn was never like that,” Cookie insisted. “She was never rich, either.”

  “Oh? Didn’t you tell me that she helped finance her daughter’s business when Mara was first building her hair salon?”

  That was true. Cookie had always wondered where that money had come from, because Rosalyn was the kind of person to pinch a dime to make a penny, but still. She knew her friend. She knew Rosalyn’s daughter, too. “Jerry, Mara is a friend of ours. She’s a neighbor. She did my hair, for land’s sake!”

  “I know that, but that doesn’t put her above the law. I have to enforce the laws for everyone, equally, even when I don’t like it.”

  Cookie knew he was right, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. She’d already been wondering about how defensive Mara had been when Cookie and Cream had been there, and she’d mentioned the old robbery. Now it turned out that she had first-hand information about the whole thing. Information that no one should have.

  The backpack.

  Could she be wrong about Mara? Jonathan Graham said the robber had an accomplice. She and Jerry had assumed that the accomplice had to be someone who worked in the bank. What if it had been the daughter of one of the employees instead? Back then, Mara would have been in her early twenties, and young and impressionable, and maybe eager to please a boyfriend looking to make quick money by robbing a bank. Mara would have known everything about the bank from her mother. Where the security cameras were. The exits. The police response procedures. All the details that a robber would need to know.

  She frowned at herself. She hated thinking that Mara might be involved. It all made t
oo much sense to just ignore, however. Jerry was right. They needed had to know for sure. A search warrant for Mara’s place wasn’t an accusation. It was just a way for them to find out the truth.

  Edward Mayes. Pauline Wallace. Now, Mara Kelsey. Three suspects.

  The motive? Money, and lots of it. Anyone would do almost anything for the amount of cash taken in that robbery. The fact that all three of them seemed to be living day to day, paying their bills and making a living just like anyone else, didn’t mean anything. Even decent people could spend through a fortune in a year or two and be right back to earning a paycheck. That didn’t narrow things down in the least.

  What would she do for that amount of cash, she asked herself. How long would it take her to spend it all?

  Not long. She had bills, and she had people to take care of in her life just like everyone else. As Cookie remembered, Ed had been divorced twice. If he was paying alimony to those ex-wives, that would certainly eat away at a fortune quickly. Pauline had always lived simply but she had three children, all of whom had gone to Ivy League schools in the East. And Mara had built that nice hairdressing business up from nothing with help from her mother. The money for that had to come from somewhere.

  She could see the same questions mirrored in Jerry’s eyes. They had plenty of questions. What they were lacking in was answers.

  Before they could talk about it a knock on the door interrupted them. Officer Loretta Hill stepped inside with a folder in her hand. She looked back and forth from Cookie to Jerry, and some decision passed over her face. Cookie thought she was maybe deciding if she should talk in front of a civilian like her. Then she shrugged, apparently deciding if the chief of police was okay with it, then she should be okay with it, too.

  “The judge came through with the warrants.” She held the folder up. “How do you want to proceed?”

  Jerry nodded as he got up from his desk and took the folder from her hand.

  “First, we need to call the judge back and have him add one more warrant.”

  “Okay, who?” Loretta asked.

  Cookie sighed. “Mara Kelsey.”

  Loretta’s eyebrows shot up. “Um. All right.”

  “I’ll jot down all the reasons for the new one,” Jerry told her. “I’ll have you call him and give you verbal permission before he faxes the warrant to us. After that, you go with Patrick Flanagan and serve the warrant on Ed Mayes’ place. Jason and Norbert can do the warrant on Pauline Wallace’s home.” Then he smiled over at Cookie. “You feel like coming with me to look through Mara’s place?”

  “Chief,” Loretta said hesitantly, “Cookie’s not employed by our department, remember?”

  “I do, but we’re shorthanded here. You know how hard it is to get together enough people to do all the things we need to do. We already have to keep a twenty-four-hour watch on Jonathan Graham back there. Cookie wants to help, and she’s pretty smart.”

  “A pretty smart cookie?” Loretta joked, smiling with him now.

  Cookie smiled back at her. Apparently, she was going to be okay with Cookie’s help after all. That was good, because she didn’t intend to stop helping until she knew the truth. Someone she knew might be involved in one of the biggest mysteries in the history of Widow’s Rest. What kind of a person would steal from their neighbors?

  She shook her head. Apparently there were a lot of people who weren’t who they said they were. People like Rick, hiding behind a mask to hide his addiction and hide the trouble he had gotten himself and Clarissa into. She might have to put Mara on that list as well. What was she hiding?

  With those search warrants, maybe they would find out.

  Chapter 7

  Mara’s house and shop came into view when Jerry turned the corner. Cookie put her second thoughts aside as they parked close to Mara’s little blue two-door sedan. The parking area for the business was empty. She was glad to see that. It wasn’t like she and Jerry could call ahead to make sure this was a good time.

  They went up to the front door, and knocked, and waited.

  When Mara came to the door, she looked tired, like she had just gotten out of bed. She was still in her pajamas with a corduroy nightgown wrapped tight and cinched at her waist. She blinked at Jerry, and then at Cookie. Rubbing her eyes, she stepped back from the door.

  “Cookie? Did we have another appointment? I don’t have anything written down.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Cookie told her, self-consciously patting at the sides of her newly styled gray hair. “What you did the other day for me was perfect. This is for something else.”

  “Oh? What?”

  Jerry stepped forward and handed Mara a folded piece of paper. “I’m here to serve a search warrant. I need to search the premises for evidence of a robbery.”

  “The bank robbery?” Mara blurted out. “This again, Cookie? What is wrong with you? How can you keep coming here and running down my mother’s memory like this? She was your friend. She thought the world of you. How can you do this?”

  Tears flooded her eyes suddenly and she had to turn away. She flipped the hand holding the warrant angrily through the air. “Well, go ahead. I guess it doesn’t matter what I say, or what I do, you’re just not going to believe my mother had nothing to do with that robbery. Well then search the house. Search the whole place. You want me to give you a guided tour? Do you? Fine. Come on, then!”

  She headed away from the front door, down a hallway past the living room, waving her arms from side to side. “The kitchen’s over there. That’s a closet. You want to start in my bedroom? Well, here it is! Come on in!”

  Cookie sighed loudly. She had been Rosalyn’s friend, not Mara’s, but they knew each other and were at the very least friendly with each other. This was going to destroy all of that. She looked over at Jerry. The sympathy in his eyes told her that he understood completely.

  “Go with her,” Jerry told her. “Don’t do any searching on your own but look at everything she shows you. Tell me if you see anything suspicious.”

  “You mean like a twenty-year-old backpack?”

  “Twenty-five years, and somehow I doubt it’s going to be that simple.” He squeezed her hand for support. “Just sit with her while I search. Keep her occupied. Her house is small, and it shouldn’t take me very long.”

  “Where are you going to start?”

  “In the hair salon,” he said. “It’s the furthest end of the place. I’ll start there and work my way back to you two.”

  Cookie didn’t know what to say to that. She had been very excited to be part of this, and to be here helping Jerry. A call to the bakery earlier had let her know that Clarissa had everything in hand there. She had nothing to worry about except helping Jerry to solve this mystery. Now that she was here in Mara’s house, however, she wanted to be anywhere else but where she was standing. She didn’t know how Jerry found the strength to handle people’s emotions all day long. At least at the bakery, the only time someone got emotional was when she ran out of crème puffs.

  She caught up to Mara in her bedroom. She was still in her nightgown, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at the search warrant in her hands. Cookie could see that she wasn’t really reading it. Her eyes were still wet with tears and her vision was focused inward, on her own thoughts.

  Cookie thought she hadn’t noticed her coming into the room, but Mara heaved a breath and spoke to her without turning her way. “My mother would have something witty to say to you right now. Something that would defuse the whole situation and make everybody laugh.”

  “That’s true.” Cookie remembered playing cards against Rosalyn, and how her humor would get more cutting when she was losing, but even then she always managed to make you laugh, even if she had just melded all of her cards into gin for the second time in one night.

  “I can’t believe this,” Mara said miserably.

  “Your mother really was my friend, you know.”

  “Sure. That’s why you’re doing this. Some friend
. You aren’t going to find anything, you know. It’s just me in the house now that my husband left and moved out to the west coast.” She shrugged. “I do my job, and I go out on Saturday nights only to come home early, and I’ve never left this town in my whole entire life. I never go anywhere. I’m here, in this house, night after night. I’m always here. I’m trapped here. I’m going to live and die here.”

  Cookie thought about what Mara had said. “I moved here when I was young,” she explained. “Very young, actually. I was scared, and was lonely, but I found a home here. This town is really a nice place to be. I don’t think being part of Widow’s Rest is anything to be upset about.”

  Mara tossed the warrant aside on the bed next to her. “That’s easy for you to say. I had plans when I was younger. I was going to see the world. My loser ex-husband was supposed to help make that happen for me. He promised me trips to Europe, to Hawaii, to all of those places. Did he deliver? No, he did not. Just one more disappointment in a long string of the same. I was stuck in this postage stamp cesspit all my life. Then my mother got sick, and I had to stay here to help take care of her. I couldn’t just up and leave because a good daughter doesn’t do that. I stayed, and I helped my mom right to the end.”

  Cookie sensed more of the raw emotions flowing out with Mara’s words. She had never imagined that Rosalyn’s daughter had been so unhappy here. She didn’t know anybody in Widow’s Rest was this unhappy. This town really was a nice place to live. Except when people were getting murdered, of course. That was never fun. At least this time, the mystery that Jerry was investigating was just a decades-old robbery that needed to be solved. One that might involve one or more of her own neighbors.

  But at least, nobody was dead.

  Poor Mara, she thought to herself. All these years she’d wanted nothing more than to get out of this town. She’d been stuck in a bad marriage, and unable to leave. Her mother had fallen deathly ill, and she couldn’t abandon her.