A Pinch of Sea Salt and a Dash of Murder (Outer Banks Baker Mystery Series Book 1) (9 page)

Chapter 16

It was Melissa’s first time in the back of a police squad car. She dearly hoped it would be her last. Jason kindly volunteered to stay behind with the distraught teenager until friends arrived to care for the boy. Before he handcuffed her, he offered to call Maria and Luis for her. He also tried to reassure her that Logan would be okay. Melissa highly doubted that since the poor boy had just watched his beloved aunt be arrested. She instructed Logan to call his parents to let them know what was going on. Detective Reynolds overheard and gruffly stated that Logan wouldn’t be going anywhere as he was designated as a potential witness. He even had the audacity to suggest that Logan could be upgraded to a potential accomplice to murder. “Now that really is bull----!” she retorted.

At least the ride to the precinct was short. The elderly detective used the time to completely infuriate Melissa as he hummed happily the entire trip. Melissa thought of more than a few words to call the man. None of those words were polite. After being booked - complete with a not-so-lovely mug shot, the confiscation of all her belongings, and being fingerprinted - the detective led Melissa to a small interrogation room where he handcuffed her to the table. “This may be a good time to allow me a phone call to my attorney,” she tersely requested. Nodding, he brought over a cordless phone and left the room.

Needless to say Janice Littleton was shocked when she received the call. She had not expected her client to be arrested for the crime. Suspected? Yes, but clearly there was insufficient evidence. Within less than a half hour, she burst through the precinct door demanding to see her client. Detective Reynolds directed her to the interrogation room. He already turned on the recording device in the tiny room behind the two-way mirror.

Janice greeted a weary and distraught Melissa with a warm hug. She asked about Logan and if he was being cared for by friends or family. Once assured the boy was in good hands, the attorney informed her client that her assistant was already working on the bail hearing. Based on Melissa’s outstanding reputation in the community, she felt they had an excellent chance of getting her released on her own recognizance.

Melissa explained that she had no idea what prompted her arrest. The police showed up at her home, and at the bakery, with search warrants. They trashed her house. She suspected they trashed her business, too. However, no one had seen fit to tell her what implicated her to such an extent that she was now in handcuffs.

As if on cue, Detective Reynolds and Detective Payne entered the room. Based on the size of the area, it was quickly getting crowded in there. Janice ordered them to explain what charges were being filed against her client and the basis for their accusation. Otherwise, she instructed them to release her client immediately. The older gentlemen chuckled, “Oh, we have plenty to base our conclusions on.” Jason didn’t look so convinced. That wasn’t much, but it was something for Melissa to hold onto to in order to retain her sanity.

Both women sensed Detective Reynolds would not be any help whatsoever. Melissa took a chance. “Detective Reynolds, why don’t you do us all a favor and go back to your little observation room,” as she nodded toward the two-way mirror, “and…observe.” Continuing, she said, “Detective Payne is more than capable of asking questions and answering our questions without your…help.”

His reaction was priceless. Melissa swore his face and neck turned the color of a pomegranate in less than two seconds. Even Jason and Janice couldn’t help but smile at her gumption. Jason attempted to calm his partner by assuring him that he had everything under control. It didn’t do much good. The older gentlemen was livid. After storming out of the room, Melissa couldn’t control it any longer. She laughed, even though she knew the detective could still hear her.

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry but I just can’t take that man anymore,” she apologized. Jason reassured her that he completely understood. However, he also warned it was not a good idea to tick off his partner. The man knew how to hold a grudge. Melissa responded, “For some reason, I think he already harbors a grudge against me or has it out for me. For the life of me, I don’t understand why. Throughout this entire ordeal, he’s been a complete…” she struggled with the right word as the real one in her mind would really not help matters, “…jerk.”

With the tension somewhat subdued, Jason informed Melissa of the entire list of charges against her. So far there was one charge for second degree murder – murder without premeditation. Then there was a charge of evidence tampering. Another charge for interfering, hindering, or opposing a police officer by crossing a police line.

“Well, I can tell you that I absolutely, positively did NOT murder anyone!” Melissa affirmed. “However, we both know I went back to the bakery and crossed the yellow line, but honestly I did not know it was against the law to go into my own business.” At this point, Janice attempted to “shush” her and advised that she not say anymore. She also shot an annoyed look to the two-way mirror and directed her next statement to it. “Why don’t you do something useful and get my client’s bail hearing scheduled?”

The attorney questioned what evidence the police had and how had they obtained a search warrant. Jason admitted he was not present when the warrants were obtained. His partner had them ready to go when he came into work that morning. The only thing Reynolds said was that an anonymous tip had been called in. Janice questioned how the police determined the tip had been from a credible source. Again, Jason shrugged to indicate he was not aware of the answer. “You didn’t think to question your partner before heading over to my client’s house and place of business?” the lawyer asked sternly.

The detective only responded that he trusted his partner. Neither Melissa nor Janice were convinced the older detective was trustworthy. The expressions on their faces were all too readable what they thought of Detective Reynolds.

Jason attempted to move the discussion away from his partner. He continued to explain the evidence that had led up to Melissa’s arrest.  Several items were taken into custody at the time the police were initially called to the scene – baking utensils, some knives, etc. However, testing revealed that none of these were the murder weapon. Also, fingerprints lined up as expected to belong to Melissa, Britney, and Logan as they worked there. Initially, there just wasn’t a lot to go on except the crime occurred in the Kill Devil Delicacies. This alone made Melissa a suspect.

“Officer, none of this is enough to warrant arresting my client,” Janice warned. He nodded in agreement and continued. There were a couple other partial prints which were determined to belong to Mrs. Stevenson and Edward Johnson, Jr. Melissa explained that Eddie sometimes picked Britney up from work so it would not be unusual to find his prints. However, she still didn’t understand why Linda was there in the first place.

The detective enlightened them a bit on that topic. Apparently, Mr. Stevenson informed the police, and anyone that would listen, that Melissa had called his wife earlier that day and asked her to stop by the bakery later in the evening. He thought it was odd since the two women notoriously did not get along. Jason asked, “Did you contact Mrs. Stevenson at any time and request she visit you at your shop?”

“Of course not,” an angry Melissa retorted. “You have my phone in custody. Check the flipping call log!” In her mind, they simply co-existed in the same town. There weren’t friends, but she didn’t consider Linda an enemy either. However, as of late, it seemed Linda had thought differently. Jason nodded as he jotted down her answers on a flimsy notebook pad.

He repeated a lot of the questions that had been asked the first time the police took her statement. Where was she on the evening in question? What time did she leave the bakery? Was she the one to lock-up? And so on and so forth. The line of questioning really frustrated her. The questions had already been answered. Still, a reason for the search warrants and her arrest had not been provided.

According to Jason, Mr. Stevenson had become suspicious after seeing Britney at his house. When questioned, she claimed she was simply there to offer her condolences along with her boyfriend. However, she never even approached Mr. Stevenson, the grieving husband. The cops were called out to take another statement from Mr. Stevenson when he called the police to inform them of the young woman’s presence at his house. They discovered that someone had been in Linda’s home office at some point during the day. He claimed that the office had been locked since the morning before his wife’s murder. Mr. Stevenson suspected, and outright accused, Britney of snooping at his home. He also asserted she probably did so under orders from her boss.

Then the detective dropped a bombshell on them. During the search of the bakery, a sharp item was found wedged in between the office desk and the wall. It was a large, stainless steel serrated cheese knife covered in the victim’s blood. Shock was apparent on Melissa’s face. Being a cop for a long time, Jason felt confident in his people-reading skills. Her expression was one of genuine surprise and horror. Personally convinced she was not guilty, he wasn’t allowed to let his intuition overrule the facts of the case.

Reluctantly, he said, “There’s more.” Jason told them the missing $1,200 cash was found stuffed into a laundry detergent container in her recycling bin.

When questioned, Melissa vehemently denied knowing how the money got there. She also knew nothing about the knife. Yes, she probably owned several knives just like the one described. Still…she didn’t kill Linda! “What possible motive would I have had to kill her?” she asked.

At that, Detective Reynolds re-emerged from behind the looking glass. “Mrs. Maples, it is well known that the two of you had a distinct dislike for each other going back as far as high school. Additionally, you were business rivals.” Melissa started to object by saying that not being fond of someone for years was no reason to kill them. Also, she didn’t consider them to be business rivals. They specialized in two distinct baking areas that did not intersect. Surely there was plenty of room in the small seaside town for them both to have been successful. The look on his face said he wasn’t convinced.

“Mrs. Maples, isn’t it true that you entered the Outer Banks Regional Bake-Off?” She nodded. “And what exactly were you planning to bake for the contest?” Melissa recalled considering her two best-known breads - Cranberry Orange bread and Rosemary Sea Salt bread. She eventually decided on the Rosemary Sea Salt recipe. The older detective continued, "Were you aware that Mrs. Stevenson also intended to compete in the Bake-Off?” Before she had a chance to answer, he moved on to his next question. “Were you also aware that Mrs. Stevenson planned to enter the contest with her own Rosemary Sea Salt bread?”

Chapter 17

Hours later, Detective Payne emerged from the police station exhausted. He and his partner had questioned Melissa for a large portion of the day. The rest had been spent reviewing all the evidence obtained from her home and business. Just a couple hours ago, the call came in that a bail hearing was set for 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. He hated that the pretty baker had to spend even one night behind bars. Truly, he believed she was innocent. However, he had not yet determined any other suspects for the murder nor who set Melissa up to take the fall.

Jason drove away from the station in his beat-up red Chevy truck. His mind swirled with countless questions. Nothing about this case made sense to him. Murder over artisan bread? Really? There had been a lot of nutty cases in Kill Devil Hills throughout the years. This one took the proverbial cake.

He decided against going straight home. No one waited for him there anyway. Not since his ex-wife Chrissy left him for some Army ranger-type living in Elizabeth City. He didn’t mind the loss of his wife. The few years of wedded bliss had been anything but blissful. His only regret was he missed out on the everyday life of his daughter. Madeline was now a junior in high school. She visited occasionally, but never long enough or often enough for her dad’s wishes.

Before Jason realized it, he drove past a large local church where a candlelight vigil was being held for Mrs. Linda Stevenson. Cars and trucks belonging to family and friends of the Stevensons crowded the parking lot. He thought back to all the accusations from Lloyd Stevenson since the very beginning. The detective questioned if there wasn’t an ulterior motive for the man to place the blame on Melissa. Her attorney had pointed out Linda hired a private detective and what he discovered. Mr. Stevenson did have motive if he really was messing around with another woman, or women. He sure played up the part of the grief-stricken husband though. Larry had outright dismissed the idea when it had been brought up earlier. He even accused Melissa of hiring the detective to dig up dirt on Linda and her husband. While Jason didn’t believe it for a second, Larry was adamant in his conviction. The private detective was scheduled to come in the next morning for questioning and to take a polygraph. Hopefully, they would get the answers they desperately needed then.

A few miles down the road, Jason found himself in the Stevenson’s neighborhood. Not even knowing why, he parked his truck a few yards away from the house. He got out of the truck and took a good look around. Everything looked normal in the front. There was one car in the driveway – Linda’s almost new metallic silver Lexus ES sedan. No one appeared to be home. Jason walked around the back of the house. The detective had no idea what he was looking for, but gut instinct told him to keep searching. Sure enough, at the back right corner of the house a window was open with a white linen curtain fluttering through the open slit. Kill Devil Hills was a quiet town, but still no one would leave a window open, especially during tourist season.

His police training kicked in as he quietly approached the open window with his 9mm pistol drawn. Listening intently, he heard at least one person moving around inside the house. Deciding against barging into the Stevenson home, Jason waited for the intruder to leave. It wasn’t too long before a long, lanky leg appeared over the window sill. The cop reached out and grabbed the unsuspecting appendage and pulled the entire body out the window. When he saw who lay on the ground, Jason was astounded. Sprawled on the patchy grass, dressed in gym shorts and a Carolina Panthers t-shirt with a look of surprise and fear, was Melissa’s teenage nephew, Logan Jones!

Jason lowered his weapon that had been pointed directly at the intruder. Flabbergasted, he shook his head. Considering he’d just caught Melissa’s own nephew breaking into the victim’s house, it did not help Melissa’s case. “Can this day get any worse?” the weary cop thought to himself. Out loud he asked, “Logan, what in the bloody pit of Hades are you doing here?”

Just recovered from his shock at being caught in the act, Logan tried to plead his case. According to the young man, it was obvious the police were not going to even attempt to find the real killer. They were content they had arrested Aunt Mel. Based on those ‘facts’, he determined to find the killer himself. Logan refused to sit by while his aunt went to jail for something she most definitely did not do. He admitted to overhearing a conversation earlier that day between Melissa and her lawyer. They had discussed how Mr. Stevenson had been found out to be cheating on his wife and had taken out a large insurance policy on her life. It was clear to him that Mr. Stevenson killed his wife. It was obvious he wanted to peg Aunt Mel as a scapegoat with all his blustering about the discord between the two women. Logan wondered why the police hadn’t already concluded the same. Therefore, he believed the cops simply didn’t care about real justice being served as long as somebody, anybody paid the price. That somebody was his aunt!

Jason shook his head in disbelief. The poor kid! His love for her clouded his judgment and made him act out irrationally in order to vindicate her name. Quite frankly, the detective also wanted to prove her innocence. He just lacked the evidence to do so. He never wanted the guilt of sending someone to jail who wasn’t guilty of the crime, especially if the death penalty could come into play. As he towered over the young man, Jason reached out his hand to help the lad up. “Ok, son. I believe you, but you do realize that by breaking into the Stevenson’s house you committed a crime. This is not going to help your aunt’s case.”

Logan pleaded with Jason not to arrest him. He hadn’t taken anything. Nothing was broken. The cop looked at him skeptically. “Okay, I didn’t take anything per se. However, I did take a couple pictures with my phone,” he grudgingly admitted. Without waiting for the inevitable question, he took out the phone to show Jason the images he captured. One was the high school picture Britney had also seen with Aunt Mel’s face crossed out in red ink. Another was the Outer Banks Regional Bake-Off entry form that showed Linda intended to submit a Rosemary Sea Salt bread, which was his Aunt Mel’s specialty. Everyone in town and beyond knew of Melissa’s Rosemary Sea Salt bread, as well as a number of others. This particular bread was her landmark recipe. “Why would Mrs. Stevenson enter that particular type of artisan bread,” he asked the cop, although he didn’t expect an answer.

Jason informed Logan that they had known about the contest and the proposed bread entry. What he found to be unusual though was the form was pre-dated several weeks ago, as soon as the contest had been announced. However, the form had not been submitted yet. Against his better cop judgment, Jason decided to not haul Logan to the police station. Instead he told the boy to hop into his truck so they could get out of there before someone else saw them.

He drove to The Surf Shack where he bought a couple bottles of Orange soda and sat at the picnic table listening to the waves crash against the shore. The two men put their heads together to try to make some sense of this entire fiasco. Neither believed in Melissa’s guilt. Both believed Mr. Stevenson may have something to do with his wife’s murder, but again there was no evidence. Just speculation based on the findings of the private detective. If Melissa truly wasn’t guilty, then someone certainly tried to make it look as if she were. That someone needed access to her home and her business.

They kept coming back to the same question. Why was Linda Stevenson inside the Kill Devil Delicacies bakery in the first place? Mr. Stevenson said that Melissa had asked Linda to meet her there after hours that evening. Melissa denied that accusation. It could be proved once forensics finished evaluating her phone’s call log.

Mrs. Stevenson intended to enter the same type of bread as her rival, even though Melissa was famous for that particular recipe. Linda had no expertise in bread-making, only wedding cakes. Perhaps Mrs. Stevenson broke into the bakery to steal the recipe? It was an easy assumption given the circumstances. Maybe she told her husband that Melissa asked to meet her as an excuse so he wouldn’t suspect what she was up to? Perhaps she didn’t tell him anything and he made the whole thing up? What if he followed her to the bakery? What if someone else had found her there?

This list of questions grew exponentially by the minute. However, Jason realized it was getting late and he instructed Logan to call Maria and Luis to pick him up, since he was supposed to be in their care. Jason didn’t want to risk taking the boy home himself.  If a news crew reported one of the detectives on the case was seen with the suspect’s nephew; well then the chief of police would throw him off the case in a second. Then he wouldn’t be able to help Melissa. Jason ensured Logan that he wasn’t done making sense of all that had transpired and that he’d work to prove Mel’s innocence. 

Jason continued to drive around town into the night, thinking and pondering on how to find the true murderer. Then in the early morning hours a plan formulated in his head as he drove home for a quick shower and a short nap before putting it into action.