Baking is Murder (A Bee's Bakehouse Cozy Mystery) (Bee's Bakehouse Mysteries Book 1) (9 page)

“Happy now?” the chief asked.

As soon as he had opened the secure door to let her out, she had asked him to step inside and waited as Clarice gave her permission for the tests to be carried out.

Jessie gnawed the inside of her cheek. “No. I’m not.”

The chief sighed. “What’s the problem now?”

Jessie thought about it as she escorted him back into his office. She eased herself down into the guest chair and tapped her fingers on his desk.

“I…” she stopped and looked around, trying to put into words the feeling that had been bugging her. “I might be wrong. God knows I have no experience of this or business being—”

“Spit it out,” Chief Daly said, holding up his hand. “You know sometimes it takes someone from the outside to come in and shine a new light on things.”

She looked up at him. “You’re not mad at me for coming in here and making a scene? For suggesting that your cops made the wrong call?”

He looked amused. “I’ve been Police Chief of Springdale for a long time. A police officer for twenty years before that. And you know what? I wouldn’t be a good chief if I didn’t sometimes get it wrong. I don’t mind you coming in here and getting involved if it’s for the right reasons.”

“And you think it is?”

His eyes twinkled. “You think I didn’t keep an eye on your conversation?”

“But you ca—”

“You’re thinking of attorney privilege. You’re not her attorney. There’s no automatic right to privacy in a police station. Anyway, Jessie,” he said, shifting his weight. “It told me you’re a woman of your word. Now, what is it that’s making you unhappy?”

Jessie sighed. “It’s just… It all fit together so nicely, you know? That boy with the flyers; the one arranging the protests. I was sure it was him. I mean, he’s against any industry involving animals, as Miss Waverly and I have both witnessed. So it’s totally believable that he killed Lydia Mackenzie and tried to frame Clarice. That’s all he had to do to put two dog breeders out of business.”

The chief shook his head. “Except we’ve checked his alibis. They check out. It’s a nice theory, Jessie, but you’ve got to admit that’s all it is. You saw the kid—he crumbled as soon as I began to speak to him. He’s just a kid.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m sorry for wasting your time. I was just so sure…”

Chief Daly smiled. “Don’t apologize. You’re tenacious like your aunt. I get it—you’re trying to help out your friend.”

“Do you think she did it?”

“You know I can’t discuss that with you. But that’s where the evidence points. The letter and the murder weapon.”

Jessie nodded, biting the inside of her cheek. “That’s the thing. The letter adds a whole new dimension to this. Are you sure it came from Clarice?”

He pursed his lips.

“Well, are you?”

Without saying another word, the chief reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a billfold. Jessie watched in confusion as he peeled off a couple twenties and threw them across the desk at her. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, but he spoke before she had a chance.

“I’m hiring you as a casual administrator,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “Paperwork, mostly. That sort of thing.”

“What…?”

He smiled and passed a folder across the cluttered desk. “File this for me, would’ya?”

Jessie pulled the file toward her with shaking fingers as soon as the door had closed behind her. She knew what the chief had meant, but still it felt wrong to snoop in police files like that.

I’m doing this for Clarice
, she told herself.

She stared at the file. It was about a half inch thick, which surprised her and made her pause. Suddenly she saw herself from the chief’s point of view—a busybody with too much time on her hands who was interfering in police business.

She was tempted to just get up and leave, but she shook off that feeling. Because she had come this far—even if she was totally wrong, she owed the chief an apology at the very least.

She quickly flipped past the crime scene photos on the top, stomach churning. The first document she came to was the report from the first officer on the scene. She glanced through it. There was nothing on there that she hadn’t already heard. Next, she glanced through a statement from the last person to hear from Lydia. She bit her lip, wondering again if she should just close the file and walk out of there.

The next three pages looked like statements from Lydia’s neighbors. Jessie skimmed through them before flipping on to what looked like a transcript of a phone conversation with Lydia’s husband’s alibi. The next document was the same—another guy from the same bar in Dukefield that he’d spent over twelve hours in on the day of his wife’s murder.

Jessie shook her head and sighed. It wasn’t that she judged the man for drinking—she just wished he’d spent that day with Lydia instead. If he had, she’d still be alive and Clarice would be free. She turned the page, dreading what she was going to see next.

And there it was. She realized that if she’d flipped through the file she would have seen the letter immediately. Because unlike the other documents—or the orange flyer she’d passed to the chief—the letter was written on thick cream paper.

Thick cream paper with the words
Jackson Kennels, Springdale
embossed on the top of the page.

Jessie shook her head and muttered to herself as her eyes skimmed down the page.

Lydia,

I was on the fence about writing to you, but I can’t hold this in any longer. I used to look at you as a colleague. Your recent actions have made me rethink that.

You are scum. You are the lowest form of life that walks the planet.

How dare you think you can ‘branch out’ into breeding toy dogs? You think Springdale is big enough for the two of us? You think your precious American Kennel Club endorsement is all it takes to rocket you to the top?

Your behavior is despicable. I will take you down, you hear me? Watch your back, Lydia. Because when you least expect it, I’ll be there. And you’re not going to win this.

Clarice

Jessie exhaled long and hard. She glanced at the top of the page. The letter was dated two weeks before.

The door swung open and the chief came back in holding two coffee mugs. Jessie stared back at him, eyes wide. She felt vaguely like she’d been caught in the act, but the contents of the letter were foremost on her mind.

“This is bad.” The truth was, she didn’t know what to believe anymore.

What if she was using me all along?

He shook his head as he sat down. “That’s quite a letter, isn’t it? Oh and Jessie, I paid you to file. Not to leaf through confidential police documents.”

Jessie grinned and closed the file. “Won’t you get in trouble for this?”

He shook his head. “Not if you’re an employee.”

“But why? Before, you wouldn’t tell me anything about the case.”

He took a long sip of his coffee. “A couple reasons. First off, I told you not to give her any details of the case. You found a way to satisfy that order while still getting her to agree to the tests.”

“And second?”

He sighed and pulled up his glasses to rub his eyes. “You know how many murder cases we’ve seen here in Springdale? The truth is I could use all the help I can get. We need to solve this. And fast.”

Jessie rubbed her eyes. “The letter is pretty incriminating.”

To her surprise, the chief stared back at her with wide eyes.

“What is it?”

He frowned. “You know, Jessie, I’ve been thinking about what you said. If you’re right and she’s as frail as you think, then I don’t see how she could have done this.”

“But the letter. Why would she have written those things?”

Chief Daly shrugged. “Beats me.”

Jessie sighed and nodded toward the file. “So you think she’s innocent?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what the evidence tells us.”

Jessie nodded, suddenly exhausted.

I’m not qualified for this
, she thought miserably.

Chief Daly must have sensed her hopelessness. “Cheer up, Jessie. If it wasn’t for you, we would never have called in the medical team to test Clarice. You never know.”

But Jessie had a feeling she did know. She shook her head.

“Go on back and help that crazy aunt of yours.”

She glanced at her watch and gasped. “Oh my gosh, you’re right. I should get going if I want to help out at the café before I go and feed Clarice’s dogs.”

Jessie closed and locked the door of the kennel building and walked slowly up the path that led to the street. She had to admit that playing with the gorgeous puppies had taken much of the weight off her shoulders. She knew she’d miss them terribly once they left to go to their new owners. As it was, two of the boys had been picked up by their new families.

She would be saddest to see Toby go. He was the runt of the litter and even though she’d tried hard not to let him, he had stolen a piece of her heart. She sighed.

When all this is over, I’ll look into getting a dog of my own,
she thought.

But try as she might, she couldn’t see an end to all of this. Reading that letter had changed something in her. She had finally realized exactly how naïve she’d been in defending the woman. And there was something else bugging her too, now that she thought about it.

She sped up as she got closer to Clarice’s empty cottage. There was no way to visit the kennels without passing it. It seemed so ominous to Jessie now, even though she knew she was being ridiculous.

She groaned as she pictured the letter. It wasn’t just those horrible words, it was the writing. The words were scored deep into the page—anyone reading it could see that Clarice had been full of rage and hatred when she wrote it.

Jessie shook her head and wondered if that was the main reason that she’d begun to second-guess her involvement with the case. Because the strength of Clarice’s hatred was now as clear as day…

Jessie clutched her chest. “Oh my goodness.”

She had almost reached the path, but she turned and raced in the opposite direction toward Clarice’s cottage. When she got to the door, she pulled the keys out of her pocketbook quickly, before she could change her mind.

“Why didn’t I think of this before?” she muttered, fumbling to get the key into the lock because her hands were shaking so hard.

It didn’t help that she was consumed with guilt at the thoughts that had been going through her mind since her conversation with the chief that day. She shook her head. She now knew that somebody had banked on the cops having that exact reaction.

She threw open the door and looked around, frantically wondering where she should start. She settled for the kitchen, hurrying because of the dwindling light. She didn’t want to turn on the lights just in case somebody drove past and saw her.

Fear gripped her heart
. What if the killer…

Because she was now more convinced than ever that Clarice wasn’t responsible for Lydia’s death.

She remembered seeing a fine collection of cookbooks the other time she’d been in Clarice’s home, and she knew first hand that serious cookbook collectors didn’t just collect cookbooks—they collected recipes from every source available. She picked up one of the older books and flicked through. Torn recipes from magazines stuck out from among the pages, but, to Jessie’s disappointment, she found none of Clarice’s own recipes.

She moved on to the next one, which yielded nothing. She was about to rethink her idea when she got to the end of the third book and found what she was looking for.

There, in looped, spindly handwriting, she saw a recipe for banana bread. Jessie glanced over the recipe, paying attention to the script more that she did the recipe, as she tried to ignore the gnawing hunger in her belly. Satisfied, she clapped the book shut and put it on the counter. She checked another book and then another. Soon she had a stack of four books, each one containing handwritten recipes—none of which were in a handwriting like the one she’d seen in the police file.

Jessie leaned against the counter. She knew now that it wasn’t Clarice. There was no way that Clarice had written that letter—years of scrawled recipes proved that. She’d been in such a rush to prove her suspicion that one thing hadn’t occurred to her. She was no closer to identifying the real killer was.

“So who was it?”

It was almost dark now and Jessie realized she should get back home before the light was gone completely. She hadn’t thought to bring a torch with her and she had the same sense of unease that there was a murderer out there among the townspeople. Plus she was so hungry she was beginning to feel faint.

She pulled open a cupboard and took out a glass, filling it with water from the faucet. She drank it down and filled another. But it was no use.

Jessie gritted her teeth. She hated to go snooping in Clarice’s home, but it was a twenty-minute walk home and she didn’t like the prospect of fainting at the side of a quiet, dark street.

“I’m sorry, Clarice,” she whispered, as she opened up another cupboard looking for something to eat.

Jessie shook her head. It was clear that Clarice had been following her diet books to the letter. The smell of aging fruit and vegetables was overpowering. Jessie resolved to come back and clean the place out when she got a chance—though she hoped Clarice would be able to do that herself before the end of the following day.

She grabbed the only thing that might give her an instant energy boost—a container of sugar—and closed the cupboard door quickly. She opened the silverware drawer and picked out a teaspoon. She hesitated over the open sugar canister—her mother had always nagged her about eating pure sugar as a kid, and it was something she still avoided all these years later.

It was crazy—she’d spent summers gorging on Aunt Bee’s sweet treats, which her mom was fine with. But take one step near the sugar bowl?

She could hear her mother’s voice clearly in her mind.

Jessica Henderson. Put down that spoon. Honestly, don’t come crying to me if you get diabetes.

The spoon clattered to the floor.