Gluten for Punishment (8 page)

“And gave him your card . . .”

“It was purely business.” I lifted my empty glass at Emmi and she nodded and turned
toward the bar. “I told you, I’m never going there again.” No matter how much my heart
went pitter-patter. It’s what got me in trouble with Eric, and I was never trusting
that feeling again. “You enjoy yourself with Craig.”

“Oh, no, Sam Greenbaum is not easily ignored.” Tasha waved her glass Emmi’s way as
well, jangling the remaining ice.

“He’s probably married with five kids.” I refused to look at him again no matter how
much I wanted to. It would be too obvious.

“I happen to know he’s a widower with no kids.” Tasha wiggled an eyebrow at me. “You
should ask him to come to the dinner party on Friday.”

“What? No.”

Emmi set down fresh drinks and took away the empty glasses. Now we wouldn’t look like
lushes, although I was starting to feel like one as the gin buzzed in my head. “No.
No. No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, I don’t ask guys out. It’s a rule of mine because it sets a bad tone
for the entire relationship. And B, I can’t date now, not with the dead guy and all.
It seems kind of disrespectful. And three, I don’t have time. I have a business to
get up and running, which takes every minute of my day and most of my nights, planning
and baking and such.”

Tasha narrowed her eyes and pursed her mouth. “We’ll see about that.”

“And don’t you ask him either,” I said. “You promised not to set me up.”

“Hell, why did I go and make such a fool promise, anyway?”

“Because you’re my BFF. Cheers.” I toasted her and we clinked glasses. I took a sip
of my drink and took a peek at Sam. His head was bent over the menu and he pointed
out something to his grandma. His dark hair curled a bit around his collar and his
smile was filled with love for the older lady. And yeah, I might have sighed a little.

My divorce was less than a year old and it had been ugly. I don’t know how Grandma
had done it after thirty years. Eric and I were married only five. Of course, I later
found out he’d been sleeping with everyone and possibly their brother the entire time
we were married. First I’d discovered he’d run through all our savings with his drinking.
Then I found out about Mercy, his best friend’s wife. It’d been ugly, really. I’d
left something at home and went back to get it only to find them knocking boots on
the living room couch.

I burned the couch, of course, after I tossed them both out on their asses. The hardest
part was discovering my entire marriage had been a lie. While I thought Eric and I
were soul mates, working partners moving toward future goals, Eric figured I was an
easy paycheck and a dupe he could string along with his pretty eyes and to-die-for
ass. When everything crumbles, when all your dreams are nothing but dust, it takes
a lot more than a handsome face to make you want to date again.

I sipped my gin and took one last glance at Sam. Eric had a grandma, too. It turned
out his grandma and his mom came first. His wife, well, I was good for keeping the
house clean, his clothes washed, and the checking account full. It would be a long
time before I fell into that trap again. Happy hormones or no, I’d learned my lesson
well.

CHAPTER
9

I
couldn’t sleep. Even after Lucy’s dinner and Tasha’s company and three large gins
with almost no tonic, I was a head case. I stared at the ceiling in my bedroom. Officer
Emry’s words echoed through my head.

“. . . Your alibi is a bit thin.”

The identity of the man in the horse trough was pending notification of his family.
No one had said a word about how he was killed.

It had to be an accident. Right? I mean, he was probably drunker than a skunk, fell
into the trough, cracked his head, and had a heart attack. All the chief would say
was that it was an ongoing investigation. I’d even sicced Grandma Ruth on him, but,
if he knew more, he wasn’t telling.

To top it off, Carrie quit. I turned onto my side, pulling the pale blue-and-white
checked comforter with me. When I asked why, she explained it was because her mother
had said she couldn’t work where it wasn’t safe. She offered to let me talk to her
mom, my cousin Liz, personally, but I turned down the offer. When Liz’s mind was made
up there was no changing it, no matter how much Carrie loved the bakery.

I’d lost my extra help. The thought made me punch my pillow. Punching didn’t make
the pillow any more comfortable or stop my mind from racing. Even the lavender scent
I spritzed in an attempt to create a calm environment didn’t calm the panic in my
gut. How was I supposed to run a bakery without even part-time help? I didn’t suppose
putting a
HELP WANTED
sign in the window would work either—at least not until the crime scene tape was
taken down.

Ugh.

I flipped onto my other side, getting my legs tangled in the sheets in the process.
Great. I straightened out the blankets and wished my life were so easy to set right.
I needed to find a way to get people back into the bakery. Well, it
was
October. People put crime scene tape up as decorations all the time for Halloween,
right? Maybe I could somehow leverage that.

I tossed to my other side. The sheets tangled, again, and I comforted my frayed nerves
with the reminder that I still had the online orders. They were the real bread and
butter of my shop. Thank goodness the shipping guy wasn’t afraid to come to the bakery.
I could count on those lovely brown boxes going out on time.

Maybe I could contact Pete at the chamber and get him to rustle me up a catering job
or two. After all, Halloween parties were coming up. Nursing homes and schools were
great places for gluten-free goodies. I’d even said so in the newspaper interview.

That was it then. I decided to make up some fliers in the morning presenting holiday
party options. Now if I could get some sleep . . .

Yeah, right. Sleep was highly unlikely. Let’s face it: the only thing more terrifying
than the possibility of being an out-of-work murder suspect was the idea of going
back to work in the early morning . . . alone . . . with a killer on the loose.

• • •

“
Good morning.”

“What are you doing here?” I tried to blink the grit from my eyes without disturbing
the makeup I’d troweled on, and for a brief moment wondered if I was still in bed
dreaming.

Nope. Grandma Ruth stood in my kitchen making coffee at 3:45
A.M.
“You know us old people.” She poured cream into her espresso and then put the pint
container back into the refrigerator. “We’re up at the butt crack of dawn. By the
way, you’ve got like twelve messages on your answering machine.”

I glanced at the offending device as I grabbed a thick mug from the cupboard beside
the sink. “It’s probably Rosa and Joan checking on me.” Tim and I were the only two
who still lived in Oiltop. My sister Joan lived in Kansas City and Rosa lived in Wichita
in fancy houses with fancy friends.

Eleanor wouldn’t call. Between the family vacation at Disneyland and the fact that
she lived in San Francisco, it would take a week before she found out. And by then
the murder would be solved. As for my oldest brother, Richard, he would only get involved
if Rosa bugged him and then he was more likely to e-mail than call.

I shrugged off the messages. Most likely Rosa and Joan wanted nothing more than the
inside scoop so they could gossip with their friends. I didn’t have time for that
right now.

“Tell me the truth, Grandma, you’re here because you didn’t want me in the bakery
alone, did you?” I added cream to my coffee and took a sip.

Grandma shrugged. “Like I said, I was up.”

I glanced out the window. My van was the only vehicle in the driveway. “Did Bill drive
you?”

“I drove myself.”

The state had taken away Grandma Ruth’s driver’s license last year after she totaled
a car for the third time. She was angry at the time, but had gotten over it and bought
herself a scooter. Now she drove the scooter down the middle of the road. Tim had
equipped it with lights and a large orange flag on a pole tall enough so that drivers
could see her when she came around corners.

“You drove the scooter? You know, one day the police are going to give you a ticket
for driving an unauthorized vehicle down the street.”

Grandma shrugged. “This time of night, no one’s around to complain. I have my cell
phone should I get into trouble.”

I made a face. “Even if you think you can afford to pay the fine, I don’t want to
have to attend your funeral when some drunk runs you over.”

“Kiddo, either way one of these days you’ll be attending my funeral. Besides, freedom
of movement is a constitutional right.”

“Humph.” It’d been a while since I took American Government, but I highly doubted
our forefathers had Grandma Ruth’s scooter in mind when they wrote it. “Come on. I’ll
load the scooter into the van and we’ll get going.”

“Great!” Grandma hefted her bulk out of the kitchen chair. Cane in one hand, coffee
mug in the other, she let me hold the back door as she ambled out. “I needed a cigarette.
You certainly take your sweet time getting dressed for work. I’ve been dying for a
smoke for thirty minutes.”

“What time did you get here?”

“Right before your alarm went off. Tim let me in. Did you know he got a job at FedEx
filling trucks?”

“No, I didn’t.” Tim was older than me, but he’d never settled down. Richard’s responsible
streak had sent Tim in the opposite direction. While Richard worked hard, Tim glided
through life. His tall, lanky body and scruffy dirty blond hair made him a favorite
at the bar scene. Needless to say, Tim only came home to change clothes or to sleep.
We might live in the same house, but we ran in different circles. “I haven’t seen
Tim in days.”

I loaded Grandma’s scooter into the van. Lucky for me, I had a ramp for the van and
it was simply a matter of driving the scooter up into the back.

“Probably because he sleeps while you work and vice versa.” Grandma took a long drag
on her cigarette. “Like I said, he let me in. Told me he had just come in from work.
You might know that if you answered your machine.” I took her chiding in stride and
opened the van door for her. She frowned, then twisted the ash off the end of the
butt and stuffed it into her coat pocket. “Waste not, want not.”

I coughed and waved away the cloud of smoke as she settled into the passenger seat.
“Someday you’re going to start a fire in your pocket from doing that.”

Grandma grinned. “I’ll go down in the
Guinness Book
as spontaneous human combustion. Getting my name in there has always been a dream
of mine, you know.”

I rolled my eyes and closed her door. The walk around to my side was brisk. The air
had the crisp scent of fall. People around town had already started putting out decorations
of cornstalks, pumpkins, and scarecrows. Still it wasn’t Halloween until Mr. Peters,
who lived two doors down, put up his annual graveyard display. A tiny shudder streaked
down my back. Graveyards and skeletons hit a little too close to home at the moment.

• • •

G
randma Ruth made a regular pest of herself for the rest of the morning. She poked
and prodded into everything I made. And she went out to smoke every five minutes,
letting the cold air blow into the kitchen. I had to put my yeast goods in a proofer
to prevent them from falling. Then there were the ashes, which fell off her every
time she moved. I had to check each batch of dough to make sure nothing got into the
food. I finally sat her down in my office and turned on the computer. She found a
Scrabble game and I was home free.

Until seven
A.M.
, when I opened the front door to put up a go-around-back sign only to find Candy
ducking under the crime scene tape. Rocky was right behind her with his camera in
hand.

“Hey.” I smiled at them and held the door open. “Come in, want some coffee?”

“Oh, we’re not here for the coffee.” She took out her little recorder. “We came for
your reaction.”

“My reaction? To what? To the fact they haven’t taken down the crime scene tape yet?”
I put the sign down and made my way around the counter to get coffee mugs. “Let me
tell you, crime tape certainly isn’t good for business.”

“Oh, no, dear.” Candy’s smile was darn right predatory as she leaned across the display
case. “I take it you haven’t heard.”

“Heard what?” I put two oversized coffee cups and saucers on the counter in front
of them. “That my misfortunes are selling newspaper subscriptions? Yes, I’ve heard.”

“No, not that.” Candy waved her hand. “I’m not talking about the increase in newspaper
sales or my negotiations for a bonus.”

“Then why are you here, Candy?” I stuck my hands in my apron pockets.

“For your reaction, silly.” Candy picked up the cup. Her eyes sparkled.

“Like I said, what reaction?” I felt like I was doing an Abbott and Costello routine.

“She doesn’t listen to the local radio.” Grandma Ruth came out from the kitchen, moving
quick for an old woman with a cane. She snagged the cup out of Candy’s hand, made
a beeline for the coffee, and helped herself. “Let me guess,” Grandma said as she
added generous amounts of cream and sugar. She drank her coffee beige. “They announced
the dead guy’s identity.”

“That’s right.” Candy was nearly breathless. Her lovely caramel-colored curls trembled
with excitement.

“Get on with it.” Grandma waved.

“It’s George Meister.” Candy’s eyes were wide. She stuck the microphone under my nose
to capture my thoughts.

Only, I didn’t have any. Not intelligent ones, anyway. “George Meister?” I wrinkled
my forehead, trying to place the name as Rocky snapped photos. “I know that name.
Who was he, again?”

“The protester,” Grandma informed me.

“Oh.” I felt my expression freeze. My thoughts raced. Candy’s mic followed my every
motion while Rocky caught every nuance of my expression on film. All I could think
was oh, crap, but I didn’t expect those words would make a good caught-on-tape moment
and I certainly hope it didn’t show on my face. I said the next thing that came to
mind. “I guess that explains the paint can.”

“Put that camera down,” Grandma ordered and shifted her weight onto the stool behind
the counter. “How’d he die?” She took a sip of her coffee, but I could see the reporter
in her thinking and thinking hard.

I personally had my fingers crossed that he’d drowned. You know, drunk, accidental
drowning. Or heart attack. Yeah, heart attack would be even better. Case solved. Crime
scene tape gone. I looked at Rocky. His eyes gleamed. His hands were ready on his
camera.

“They’re calling it a homicide.” Candy’s eyes were alight with intent. “Toni, did
you kill George Meister?”

My mouth went dry. My jaw went slack. The camera’s flash kept popping, blinding me.
“What?” I glanced toward Grandma for some help.

“Don’t answer,” Grandma said sharply. She narrowed her blue eyes at Rocky. “I said,
put that camera down or I’ll put it down for you.”

He lowered the camera and held out his free hand. “Okay. I’m putting it away.”

Grandma gave him her best evil eye until he tucked the camera into the bag strapped
across his shoulder. Then she turned her attention to Candy. “What made you ask that
question?”

“Everyone knows George Meister was behind the flour bombing of your grand opening.”

“They do?” I was confused. “I thought the chief said it was two joggers.”

“Add the fact that George was vandalizing your store when he was killed,” Candy pushed
on. “Then you yourself told everyone you were inside the store at the time he was
murdered.”

“I was? You mean he wasn’t killed before I got here?”

“What time was he killed?” Grandma asked. She studied her coffee cup as if the pattern
in the cream would give her the answer she wanted.

“The county medical examiner estimates George’s time of death to be around 5:30
A.M.
”

The hairs on the back of my neck rose. “Oh, no, the noise I heard was a man being
murdered?”

“What noise?” Grandma asked, her fierce, intelligent gaze intent on my face.