Apple Assassination Read online

  What was going on?

  “Yes, I think she bought it. No, she didn’t ask many follow-up questions. Don’t worry. I’m a good liar.”

  Oh, this was the final straw.

  “Marcello?” I asked him, stepping out from the darkness.

  He stopped at the end of the hall, red-faced, his phone dangling from his hand.

  “Rachael…that was just…that was…um, a friend of mine from work.”

  “That was Pippa,” I said. “I heard you talking, Marcello. There’s no sense in lying to me now.”

  “I-I have to go Rachael.” He walked over to me and took Lolly from my arms. “I’ll have to change you as soon as we get home, young lady,” he said, hurrying out the door. I called out to stop him, but he completely ignored me. Like I was invisible.

  I remained in the hallway, even when Sue called me in for dessert, wondering out loud why she was suddenly alone in the dining room. “Oh well. More for Suzy and I,” she called out.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the phone call. Pippa and I had investigated a lot of mysteries together. We’d had a lot of suspects over the years. We’d investigated dozens and dozens of people. We saw guilt everywhere. In other people. Not in each other.

  Pippa and I had always been on the same side. At least, until now.

  Was this the first time she had hidden something from me?

  Was this the first time that I was going to have to turn my back on my best friend?

  Did I have to investigate her?

  Sue was in a bit of a weird mood once Marcello had left. Maybe it was just because she’d finished off the last of the wine that Marcello had left behind. He’d been in such a rush to leave that he’d also left behind Lolly’s baby bag. It was sticky and covered with mashed pears. I wiped it off while Sue covered the leftover tiramisu with plastic wrap.

  “You and Pippa. You get up to some…weird stuff, don’t you?” Sue asked as she placed her empty wine glass down. She stared at me expectantly.

  I took a quick sip from my own glass—the one I had barely touched during dinner. “No weirder than most best friends,” I said, before laughing a little nervously. What did Sue know?

  “Come on, Rach. Did you really think I’ve been living with you the past four months without figuring any of this out?” Sue said.

  I blinked at her a few times.

  “Where was Pippa tonight, really?” Sue asked in a low voice.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “Marcello told you. She was sick.”

  Sue leaned forward. “Come on. Tell me the truth. Did you and Pippa have a fight?”

  I wondered if maybe Sue could see there was a vacancy in my life for a new best friend and she was ready to pounce and fill it.

  I finished off my glass of wine. I was feeling vulnerable. “Not a fight.” I left it lingering at that.

  “But she doesn’t want to see you,” Sue said, leaning back. She tapped on the side of her wine glass. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that woman who ate the poisoned bakery food, does it?”

  I froze. Sue knew. She raised her eyebrows. “I’ve always thought Pippa was a little strange. Not just the bright-colored hair and the crazy schemes either.” Sue shot me a meaningful look. “And something tells me you’ve always thought so too, Rachael. You don’t need to protect her, you know.”

  I sat back and shook my head. “She’s lying to me, Sue. Avoiding me. There’s something she doesn’t want me to know.”

  A late-night phone call woke me up. Finally, I thought. She’s going to explain what happened and apologize for lying to me. I leaned over to pick up the phone and yelped when I felt something fury sleeping beside me in the bed. “Suzy!” I cried, pushing her out of the way so that I could get to the phone before it stopped ringing. “Move, please! My best friend is trying to call me!”

  The call was from a private number but I answered it anyway, assuming it was Pippa.

  “Hello?” I asked desperately. “Where were you tonight…” But I stopped when I heard a male voice respond.

  It was Blake.

  I groaned, realizing it was too late to hang up seeing as I’d already said hello.

  “Rachael, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day today,” he said, frustrated. “But you finally answer when I change my phone to a show as a private number.” He sounded betrayed.

  Pippa wasn’t the only one avoiding phone calls and interactions with a certain person that day.

  “Look, I just needed some time to think about it,” I told him. And I still needed time to think about it. Not only did I not have Pippa’s support, or help, with solving the case, I was starting to think she was the one I should be investigating. This was a conflict of interest that I should not get involved with.

  But Blake interrupted me. “There’s been confirmation.”

  I sat up in bed. “Confirmation of what?”

  He sounded fearful. “From the police. It was definitely the pie, Rachael. That’s what killed Valerie. Someone poisoned it.” He sounded like he was gulping for air on the other end of the line.

  I felt a little dizzy myself. I realized that up until that point, I was still hoping that there could have been a mistake or a misunderstanding. Now the bottom had dropped out completely. How much more trouble were these apples going to cause?

  “I’ll meet you at Dough Planet in twenty minutes,” I said before hanging up.

  I jumped when I saw there was still life in the living room. Suzy had escaped my room and joined Sue for popcorn in front of the TV.

  “Hey, do you want to have a late-night snack with Suzy and I?” she said, grinning.

  Suzy was sitting up at the table on a chair beside Sue, with a miniature bowl of popcorn in front of her.

  “Sorry, Sue,” I called to her. “I’ve got something weird I need to take care of.”

  I heard her calling to me right before I shut the door. “Rachael! Leave it alone. Pippa is not worth saving.”

  But I left.

  “Where is your assistant?” Blake asked me breathlessly as he opened the door and ushered me inside. Most of the lights were off, but there was a computer screen on that provided me enough light to at least be able to walk around without bumping into objects.

  “Pippa is getting an early night today,” I said. “She’s not feeling well.” I tried to hide my bitterness at having to repeat Pippa’s lie. “She has a baby to take care of, you know. She can’t be at your beck and call, Blake, the way I apparently can.”

  I yawned. It had been an incredibly long day and I just wanted to get home and back into bed.

  “Well, I’m sorry you’re tired, but I’m not exactly getting much sleep myself,” Blake replied, running his hand through his messy hair. “We need to find out who poisoned the pie, Rachael. We need to find Valerie’s killer.”

  I nodded. Things had changed. I’d promised Pippa that she and I would keep our investigation separate, secret from Blake. But now I was going to have to jump ship, switch sides.

  Now I was going to have to keep it secret from Pippa. It might be the only way to save her.

  I had a proposition for him. “If I agree to help you, you are going to have to give me full access to your kitchen, and to all of your staff,” I said. “You have to agree to cooperate fully.” But this wasn’t what Blake wanted to hear.

  He was glaring at me like I was the enemy. A bit rich considering the man wanted my help. Needed it. “I told you. None of my staff did it.”

  I shrugged. “If you are so certain of that, don’t you want me to rule them all out?” What was there to hide?

  Blake thought for a second, then nodded reluctantly.

  “Well, to do so, I am going to have to talk to all of them.” I switched on the light and Blake squinted. “I need to be up in four hours,” he grumbled. “I’m usually fast asleep by now.”

  I stared at him in surprise as I followed him to the kitchen. I’d never actually been inside it and I was curious to see what so
rt of operation Blake had set up. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of opening tomorrow?” I asked. Not only was the following day a Sunday, the shop was still a crime scene.

  Blake started to pull old items out of the fridge and threw them in the bin. “Valerie didn’t actually die here,” he pointed out. “I intend on making up for the lost days. Even if that means opening up on a Sunday. Or getting no sleep.”

  The kitchen was even smaller than I had imagined. Dough Planet was only a hole in the wall type of store—there weren’t even any tables inside for customers to sit at. Only two benches right in front and two small foldaway tables that Blake set up outside when they got extra busy.

  “Geez,” I said, squeezing in behind him. “How does Alex even fit in here?”

  Blake shrugged. “That’s one of the problems,” he replied, his forehead creased. “One of the reasons I need a bigger space. Or a business partner with a lot of space,” he said meaningfully. I ignored the comment and looked around. “There’s only room for one person at a time and Alex is a reasonably big guy. So when he’s out here cooking, I try and stay out of his way.”

  Hmm.

  “Which means you don’t supervise him,” I said, understanding now. Who knows what went on in Blake’s kitchen when he wasn’t around? Alex could have easily tampered with the pies.

  Blake nodded. “I trust him to do the right thing, I suppose. Or, at least, I did.”

  I thought about what Alex had told me at the farmer’s market. Could Blake have put so much pressure on Alex that he had snapped? Or at least, pushed him so hard that he had become exhausted and made a fatal mistake?

  “I guess part of that trust includes relying on Alex to use the best ingredients,” I said. “And not to cut any corners.”

  Blake nodded. “Of course. If we don’t have our reputation, we don’t have anything.”

  “So what happens if you can’t find the organic produce you need?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s pretty simple. We just don’t bake the products,” Blake replied. “Everything has to be certified fresh and local.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Bit hard to certify stolen apples, isn’t it?”

  I thought I saw Blake’s face redden a little, but in the dark, it was hard to tell. “I sent Alex to the farmer’s market to get apples from proper suppliers,” Blake replied. “I never authorized him to steal apples.”

  “Still. He must have been under a lot of pressure to pull a stunt like that,” I stated.

  “If I had known, I never would have used those apples.” Blake shook his head. “Can we drop it, Rachael?”

  He seemed in an awful hurry to deflect attention away from himself. And from Alex. It only made me want to push harder.

  “Well, no, not really. How do you know that Alex didn’t poison that pie as a way to teach you a lesson?” I asked.

  He rolled his eyes at my statement. “Alex is a loyal employee. Too loyal. That should be obvious to you, given the lengths he went to keep his job. He wouldn’t poison a customer just to get back at me.”

  It was true. Alex seemed desperate to keep his job, not lose it. He’d even managed to humble himself to beg for apples from Pippa at the farmer’s market. Still, people do crazy things when they feel pressured by their employers.

  “So, you didn’t see Alex baking those pies at all?” I asked.

  Each pie was individual; at least they were on the day that Valerie had died. Blake told me that the usual practice had been to make one large pie and sell the slices individually, but Blake had decided that was too simple. That his customers would appreciate the individually baked mini-pies rather than having to just take a slice. Even though it probably took five times as much work to do so. So in other words, he’d put even more pressure on his cooks. Blake was such a perfectionist. I always thought I was, but he took it to insane levels. Working with him was going to be a barrel of fun. Not.

  Blake shook his head. “I might have stuck my head in a couple of times to make sure that he was sticking to the schedule, but that’s about the extent of it.”

  I began pulling off jars from the shelves. Organic flour, gluten-free corn flour, pure organic maple syrup. I wiped the goop off my hands and kept going, placing all the glass jars on the floor, making the small kitchen even smaller. “Hey, what are you doing!” Blake cried out, trying to chase after me to put all the items back on the shelf. “Did you not hear me when I told you I’ve got to open up in a few hours? I can’t be dealing with all this mess!” He stepped over the glass jars and tried to put them back into place.

  “I’m looking for poison,” I said. “Anything that Alex might have used to lace the pies with.”

  I realized I was getting desperate to find anything that might implicate Alex. I was like a madwoman, pulling jars of cinnamon and bottles of vanilla essence off the shelves. The bottle of vanilla smashed and let out a pleasant scent, but Blake groaned and fetched a dustpan, making an extra show of cleaning it up as he threw the glass in the trash can with a loud bang.

  He snatched a bag of glazed cherries out of my hands. “You think he’d just leave the poison laying around?”

  I stood up and brushed off my knees, which were now covered with flour. “Maybe he’s hiding it in plain sight. Or maybe he’s just careless.” He hadn’t exactly done the most careful job of being an apple burglar. Even with our own mistakes counted, Pippa and I had managed to catch him on the first night we’d tried.

  I returned to my search, focusing on the cabinets beneath the shelves this time. Less distance for things to fall and smash.

  Blake scratched the back of his head. He seemed hesitant to admit something. “We do actually have another cook,” he said.

  I spun around, a bag of flour in my hands. “What cook?”

  “Her name is Laura,” he mumbled.

  First I’d heard of her.

  I stood up. “And why didn’t you tell me about this Laura before?”

  “I can assure you that she had nothing to do with it.” But he sounded less sure than he had when he’d been defending Alex. Almost like Laura had been in the back of his mind this whole time as someone he suspected. Maybe that was why he hadn’t mentioned her.

  “You think she did it?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I came closer to him. “Blake. Did Laura have any contact with the pies?”

  Blake shook his head. “She wasn’t working the day that Valerie died, but she did drop by to collect her paycheck. She came through the front, though, not through the kitchen.”

  I thought he was forgetting that the pies were in the front. They could have been tampered with at any time during the baking and selling process.

  “Do you have an address?” I asked Blake. I was going to have to pay Laura a visit as soon as the sun came up.

  As I reached back into the pantry, I came across a hard glass jar that had been pushed way to the back, hidden out of reach. This could be what Alex used. I leaned in as far as I could, almost dislocating my shoulder in my effort to reach it. With a grunt, I finally wrapped my fingers around it and pulled it out.

  The label was half-ripped off, as though someone wanted to hide what was in it.

  But I could see “Co” on the small bit of green label that was left behind.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” Blake said, taking the jar from me, way too quickly. He was doing his best to hide it, with his hands covering the label.

  I squinted, trying to read the rest of the remaining label. I gasped and slapped my hand over my mouth. “That is corn syrup!” I said, taking a step away from it like it actually was poison that could burn my skin off if it got too close.

  “What? No… No, it isn’t,” Blake said, trying to hide the jar behind his back.

  But I’d seen it. And from the look on his face, I could tell that I was right.

  “Doesn’t look very organic,” I said, raising my eyebrows at him. “Looked full of chemicals to me.” I shoo
k my head in disbelief. “Plus, you promise all your customers that your products are completely free of corn syrup!” Not only were most of Dough Planet’s baked items gluten-free and vegan, they were all promised to be free of processed sugars. Organic cane sugar or honey only—and that was if they were sweetened at all.

  But it looked like someone in Blake’s staff had been taking a shortcut. And from the way the jar had been hidden away in the back of the pantry, they wanted to keep it a secret.

  Blake slammed the jar down on the bench. “I don’t know how this got here, but I can promise you, no one in my bakery would ever bake with processed corn syrup.”

  “Well, it didn’t grow legs and walk into the pantry by itself, Blake.”

  “It must have been left here by the previous owners, then,” Blake said stubbornly.

  I made a face and tilted my head. Seriously? He would prefer to argue that he hadn’t cleaned out the kitchen properly since the previous owners had vacated than to admit that he used corn syrup in his food?

  Blake took the jar and threw it in the trash. “I don’t know how this got in here,” he said. “But there is no way it has ever been used in any items baked here.”

  But I didn’t believe him. I had a feeling that Blake didn’t know what went on in the kitchen of his bakery. Nor what his employees were capable of doing.

  Chapter 5

  “Whoa, sorry,” I said, coming to a halt in the living room. “I just didn’t expect anyone else to be up this early on a Sunday.” It seemed that Sue was always home these days. And always in my way.

  “I’ve got a lot to do today,” she said with a concentrated grin from where she was standing, on the middle of the sofa. She was hanging a painting, a modern one with a white background and three red and black balls in the center. “Do you think it looks okay here?”

  I nodded. It actually suited the rest of the decor really well. Sue had a good eye for art and design. I suppose that was how she got her job in an art gallery, though she never seemed to actually be at her job these days.