Baking is Murder (A Bee's Bakehouse Cozy Mystery) (Bee's Bakehouse Mysteries Book 1) (6 page)

Jessie took a deep breath as soon as she was out on the sidewalk. The uneasy feeling began to ebb away—how could it not when she was now standing on a busy, sunny sidewalk in the town she’d loved since she was a little girl. She shook her head and tried to gather her thoughts. She needed the chief to listen to her and not dismiss her as a madwoman.

Clarice can’t have killed Lydia Mackenzie
, she thought.

Slowly, she walked in the direction of the police station, reciting that statement to herself. The fear that there was a murderer out there had subsided now—it was unseasonably warm for spring and there were just too many people around for something sinister to happen. Besides, whatever their motive, it wasn’t like Jessie could be in their sights. After all, she’d just recently moved to town.

“Motive,” she muttered to herself.

That was the thing. The story fitted together so neatly—Clarice had had a bitter argument with Lydia and murdered her. Whoever did it had not only murdered Lydia Mackenzie, they’d gone to Clarice’s home to plant the murder weapon.

“Now why would somebody have done that?”

Jessie sped up as she walked past Jane’s Yarns and its display of old-fashioned patterns and vintage photographs. There was something in the window apart from the usual patchwork of yellowing paper and it caught her eye. Jessie stopped and stared.

It was an orange flyer. She frowned—she knew she’d seen something similar not long before. She shook her head and leaned forward, her desire to avoid Jane Waverly forgotten.

STOP ANIMAL CRUELTY

It’s time to put an end to this barbaric practice.

Animals aren’t our friends.

Animals aren’t food.

Protest at Sweet Home Farm on Saturday the 5th.

The Justice for Animals Collective.

Jessie shook her head in wonder as she remembered the surly young man and his disapproving comments about Aunt Bee’s food. He’d been holding a bunch of flyers the same color as this one. She wondered if he was the only one behind this or if there were others. She sighed. She’d heard about Sweet Home Farm before—they were one of Aunt Bee’s preferred suppliers. According to Aunt Bee, their animals were treated almost like members of the family. Jessie just hoped that their business wouldn’t be affected. Like Bee, they insisted on doing everything by hand the old-fashioned way.

“Why can’t they focus on big unethical businesses?” Jessie muttered to herself.

An outraged face in the window almost made her cry out in fright. It took her a couple seconds to realize that it was Jane.

She took a step backward, but by then Jane was out the door and squinting into the sunlight.

“What are you doing here?”

Jessie did her best to hide her surprise—was Jane this rude to
everyone
who approached her store? Jessie was surprised she had any customers left.

“I was thinking of knitting a sweater,” she said sweetly.

Jane narrowed her eyes, appraising her. “Oh yeah?”

Jessie pointed at the poster in the window. “I’m surprised you let him put this up. I didn’t see what it said; it was his attitude about Aunt Bee’s food that made me tell him no.”

Jane coughed. “Little cretin said my product was cruel to sheep. Asked me how I’d like it if I was held down and sheared.”

Jessie winced at the image and rapidly tried to think of something—anything—else to replace it in her mind. “Why’d you let him put his poster up then?”

Jane pursed her lips. “Do you want to know what’s worse than bratty, know-it-all college students?”

Jessie smiled helplessly. Because the truth was, she really didn’t. “What?”

“Grown adults who think too highly of themselves. That awful Benny Sweet. I approached him and asked him to stop selling wool. That’s my business. And you know what he said to me? He said he wouldn’t. Said he’d hate to see the wool go to waste.”

Jessie shook her head in disbelief. “So that’s why you allowed that boy to put his poster up? Because you hoped it might damage Sweet Home Farm?”

Jane nodded smugly. “Maybe now he’ll get his comeuppance.”

Jessie walked away, wondering how a peaceful town like Springdale could have produced someone as bitter as Jane. She vowed to do something to counter the protest at Sweet Home Farm. She stopped and turned around. She wasn’t an angry person, but it had really riled her; so much so that she found herself turning around and rushing back to Jane’s shop.

She opened the door and burst in, grabbing the poster from the window before Jane could even react. Adrenaline rushed through her veins as she dashed outside, ignoring Jane’s howl of protest. She rushed all the way to Mysty’s hair salon and stopped, leaning against the wall to catch her breath. She knew Jane would never let her forget that, but it felt good to stick up for Aunt Bee’s friends. She shook her head, still unable to believe she’d just done that. She crammed the crumpled leaflet into her pocketbook and continued on toward the police station.

Chief Daly tapped his chin as he listened to Jessie’s explanation. She could tell from his expression that he felt like she was wasting his time. Her well-prepared speech had gone to pieces—she knew she was talking in circles and not making much sense.

“I’m sorry, Chief. I know it sounds crazy but I don’t want an innocent woman to be punished for something she didn’t do.”

The chief smiled kindly. “Jessie, dear, you’ve got a good heart. Don’t allow others to take advantage of that.”

She frowned. “I… don’t.”

At least she didn’t think she did. She knew she was a bit of a soft touch. She’d always gone out of her way to help her friends. But that was what being a good person was about, wasn’t it? She’d rather think the best of people than be cynical and maybe not help somebody who was actually in need.

The chief sighed. “Just hear me out. Put yourself in Clarice Jackson’s shoes. You’ve been caught out. The cops are used to hearing excuses from suspects, even when they’ve been caught red-handed. You’re sitting in lock-up looking at a life sentence. You know they’ve found the murder weapon in your home. And lo, here comes this nice civilian. She’s a kind, decent person. And you know she’s sympathetic to your cause. What do you do?”

Jessie shook her head. “She couldn’t have known I was coming. You only told her I’d offered to look after her dogs when we got back to the station. I went to see her barely five minutes later.”

“Ah, but what would she have needed? All she’d have needed to do was make her hands shake.”

“But I was the one who noticed them. She didn’t draw my attention to them in any way.”

“Didn’t she?”

Jessie thought about it. Was it possible? If it was, then Clarice was a skilled manipulator, because she hadn’t uttered a single word to Jessie; if anything, she’d been evasive about her condition. She shook her head. “I don’t get it. She didn’t say anything. I could easily have missed the shaking. Then where would she have been?”

“Right back where she started. She had nothing to lose by trying. And who knows, she might have ramped up her efforts if you hadn’t noticed.”

Jessie bit her lip. She liked the chief, but there was something about his cold tone that made her stomach churn.

“I know you think I’m being cruel,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back in his high-backed leather chair.

“She said she had a medical condition. I… I just think it’s not something that can be ignored.”

He closed his eyes. “I shouldn’t be telling you this because it’s part of an active investigation. But I trust you, partly because of who you are. We found no medication in her home. She’s been in custody for days and she’s made no request for medication. Now, doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?”

Jessie felt sick at the thought of being hoodwinked. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Because I googled her condition when I got home and I remember seeing something about a hospital treatment plan. Oh, I feel so dumb for believing her.”

The chief placed his huge hand on hers. “Don’t. She obviously saw someone with a kind heart and tried to take advantage of that. Now, if she’d tried it with one of my boys, they might have seen through the ruse immediately. And that’s probably why she didn’t.”

Jessie shrugged. “I guess I let my imagination get carried away.”

“It happens to the best of them,” the chief laughed. “If I had a penny for every time your Aunt—”

He stopped cold and stared at her, blinking.

Jessie stifled the urge to laugh. Here was a man in his sixties—one of Springdale’s most prominent citizens—trying to hide his romance from her. She stood up to leave.

“I know about you and Aunt Bee,” she said with a smile. “I’m glad she’s with somebody who makes her happy.”

***

Jessie left the station and walked out of town toward Clarice’s small home. Clarice may have tried to lie to her, but she wasn’t doing this for Clarice. She was doing it for those gorgeous puppies. She wondered what was going to happen to them if Clarice was found guilty and sent to jail for a long time.

She unlocked the doors to the kennels and made her way inside. The puppies squealed with excitement. She smiled. Maybe when she got established in a place of her own she’d see about adopting a pup. It was just a shame that Toby had already found a home. He was her favorite, even after spending time with his bigger, stronger siblings. There was something about his sad little face that pulled on every heartstring Jessie possessed.

“Hey, little buddies,” Jessie smiled, watching as they crawled all over each other to get closest to her. “Are you hungry? Let me go get the food. Then I’ll give you guys a drink and sneak in there to play—just don’t tell Clarice.”

She moved to the cupboard and sighed. She’d clean forgotten the message that the Chief had given her from Clarice. As well as feeding the dogs, she needed to give Bentley his medication, which was stored in the house. If she had remembered earlier she would have done it on her lunch break.

She shook her head. “It’ll only take five minutes. Come on, Jessie. Just another five minutes and you can go home to bed.”

But it wasn’t the effort of walking along the narrow pathway from Clarice’s house that bothered Jessie. It was the thought of being in the home of a woman who’d killed another in cold blood. She shivered and rushed out of the kennels.

“The sooner you do this, the sooner it’s over.”

She hurried along the path. The sun was sinking fast; its light waning. She unlocked the door and rushed inside. She walked through the house, trying to calm down her racing heart.

“She’s locked up. And besides, she has no grudge against you. Calm down.”

Jessie walked through the combined kitchen and living area, scanning for someplace obvious that Clarice might have stored the medication—the chief hadn’t told her where in the house the medicine was stored. Nothing jumped out at her from the kitchen cabinets. She shook her head and rounded the corner.

She almost wandered into a bedroom that was obviously Clarice’s but stopped herself in time. She decided she would check that room last if she didn’t come up with something else.

Opposite the bedroom was a closed door. Jessie pushed it open tentatively, steeling herself for something to jump out at her. Nothing did, of course.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she stepped in and her eyes immediately widened. This was another bedroom; almost double the size of Clarice’s. But there wasn’t a bed or other furniture in sight. Instead, it was set up like an office, with framed pictures of dogs lining ever spare space on the wall.

Jessie felt a pang of guilt and doubt. She tried to brush it aside.

You can’t judge people on how they treat their animals
, she thought, reminding herself that some people treated their animals ten times better than they’d ever treated another human. But still the feeling stuck with her.

Exasperated at her soft heart, she crossed the room and looked at the cabinet of medicine, wondering if she should call Doctor James just to double check what she was looking for.

But there it was. Dramadov. She grabbed the bottle and made her way out of the room, closing it carefully behind her. She walked back the way she came, ignoring Clarice’s bedroom this time.

“Damn it,” she said, as she tripped over something. Before she could right herself, she was flying through the air and landing with a thud on the hard tiled floor of the living room. Jessie cried out, grasping her wrist and trying to breathe deeply and calm her rapidly beating heart.

She looked around. There was no one there. She could plainly see the reason for her fall now: a doorstop left in the middle of the floor. She tried to remember if it had been there on her way in but she couldn’t.

She shook her head.
I need to get out of this place; it’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.

She pushed herself up to standing and reached for the medicine bottle. It was then that she noticed that her wrist wasn’t the only casualty—the bottle had shattered on the tough surface, spilling its contents all over a nearby bookshelf.

“Oh no,” she muttered, ignoring the pain in her wrist and rushing over to pick up the pieces.

Thankfully it was safety glass, so it had crumbled into blunt pieces and not shattered. When she’d got most of the large pieces, she turned her attention to the books on the shelf, hoping that she’d be able to wipe off the thick liquid. To her relief, she saw that most of the books were sturdy hardback dog breeder guides and she’d only splattered one or two.

She rushed to the kitchen and fished out a carrier bag, carefully wrapping the glass inside and depositing it in the trash. She’d forgotten about her apprehension now, distracted by the task at hand. The kitchen was neatly ordered, with everything stored in its correct place. She looked around and quickly saw a dishcloth. She twisted the faucet and held the cloth under it, trying to ignore the swelling in her wrist. If she didn’t ice it soon, she knew, it’d be swollen and painful for days.

At least it isn’t broken,
she thought.
Probably just a sprain.

When the water was almost hotter than she could stand, she turned off the faucet and gingerly wrung out the rag. Then she hurried back over to the bookcase and began to pull the books out one-by-one, sponging them down and stacking them to dry. She was just about finished with the last one when she stopped. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but the bookcase was far deeper than one book’s depth. Now she saw that there was another layer of books behind the first.

She leaned in to get a closer look and her heart began to race. Hurriedly, she began to pull away the outer layer of books until they were all gone. Shock and guilt rushed through her. Because if there had been a common theme among the front layer of books, the same was true for the ones that had been concealed.

Living with Limak Syndrome

Treating Limak the natural way

How to live a normal life with Limak Syndrome

Diet and Limak

There must have been twenty or thirty books in all, all dealing with the same subject. Jessie shook her head as she picked up one of the books and flicked through it. The cover was scuffed and marked, worn from constant use.

“Why the secrecy?” she muttered.

But she thought she knew why. She flipped the book around and looked at the back. Sure enough, the price sticker announced it had come from Digby’s in Dukefield. It seemed odd to Jessie that a virtual recluse would have ventured to the next town over when there was a perfectly good bookshop right there in Springdale.

She didn’t tell me herself and it wasn’t because she was manipulating me.
It was because she didn’t want anyone to know. The poor woman probably hasn’t even thought of using her illness as a defense. Does she even know what the murderer used as a weapon?

There had been a murderer in Clarice’s house, alright. Jessie shivered. Because she knew now that it wasn’t Clarice. She picked up a couple of the books, hurried to the door and locked it carefully behind her.