Flourless to Stop Him (19 page)

“Grandma has me investigating,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner. I’m in a bit of overload with the bakery and I really thought Calvin would clear up this terrible misunderstanding.”

“Yeah, well, the prosecutor’s the one who wants me doing time.”

“Why?”

“It’s Dan Kelly. He was elected last October to the position of district attorney.”

“Dan Kelly . . . Why does his name sound familiar?”

“He was that skinny kid who I beat out as quarterback. He was a senior and I was a sophomore. He thought he was a shoo-in because he had the best throwing arm in his class.”

“But yours was better.”

“And”—my brother looked at me—“he was dating Mary Ellen.”

“Wait.” I tilted my head. “Didn’t you and Mary Ellen go out for two years?”

“Yeah.” He got this sheepish look on his face. “Mary Ellen was the head cheerleader. She wanted to date the star quarterback. When I won the spot from Bill, I won her, too.”

I winced. “So you think he’s still harboring thoughts of revenge? It’s been like twenty-three years.”

“Twenty-
four
years—the man has waited a long time and now he’s dancing around with glee at the idea of sending me to prison for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, come on.” I crossed my arms. “You’re both adults. He’s the prosecutor. That means he has a good job, a good education, and probably a nice house and a wife and kids. Why would he risk his reputation to get revenge on you?”

Tim ran a hand over his face and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not him. It has to be someone important. Who else could steal my identity and
not get caught? Some of those places have video cameras. The cops have the video from the Red Tile, and as far as Brad knows there is no evidence that I entered the check-in area.”

“Well, that should exonerate you right there.”

“But there’s also no evidence I didn’t,” he said. “They’ve got records of my name and my signature on all those records. According to them, I paid my bills in cash. Who has that kind of cash? What the heck were they doing checking into a variety of hotels using my name?”

“What are the reasons anyone checks into a hotel?” I asked.

“To sleep,” Tim said, “or to get laid.”

“What about the drug angle? Why would the cops come and search your apartment and the house for drugs?”

“They think I was dealing out of those hotels.” Tim’s mouth went flat and his gaze turned grim. “Who would be stupid enough to put their own name in a ledger that could prove they were dealing dope out of hotel rooms?”

“Exactly,” I said and patted him on the arm. “You are not stupid, and Chief Blaylock knows that.”

“Yeah, well, Calvin Bright and Joe Emry worked me over for eight hours straight.”

“What did you tell them?” I rubbed his arms to comfort him. Being grilled for eight hours must have been awful.

“The first thing I told them was I wanted my lawyer.”

“Thank goodness for Brad,” I said and meant it. “Did it take him long to get there?”

“Only about an hour. He had to do a bunch of paperwork and such before they let him in to see me.”

“Then what happened?”

“They kept trying to get me to admit to being at the Red Tile Inn that day. They even tried to say they caught me on tape walking through the parking lot toward the room.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t me, Toni. I swear.”

“Did you see the video?”

“No, Brad asked for copies of the clips, but as far as I know they didn’t produce them. Brad says until they produce the videos and share them with him, they can’t use them in a trial.”

My heart squeezed. Trial? Would this mess really go that far? I looked into my brother’s eyes and for the first time ever I saw fear. What the heck was I doing worrying about cookies when my brother was in this much trouble?

I
slept fitfully that afternoon as the storm worked itself out. All the things I’d brought to the house had been baked. Brad and Tim had moved from the den to the front parlor with the pale blue–and-white settee and sateen curtains. It was such a feminine place for two men to work.

Somewhere along the way Mindy had given up flirting with Brad and gone up to her room. I think it was the quiet that woke me from a dream where my bakery failed and everyone in town laughed and told me they knew I could not be successful with such a silly bakery. I mean, who didn’t eat wheat?

Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes and shook off the terrible dream. I hated to nap, and even worse, I hated the way I felt after a nap—you know, as if taking a nap only made you feel worse.

There was a scraping noise coming from outside. I went to my window, lifted the sheer white curtain, and saw that Tim was outside, shoveling snow and ice off the driveway.

A quick glance at the time told me it was nearly 6:00
P.M
. The winter night sky was clear and black. Without a clock it could have been 4:00
A.M
.

I stretched and went to the bathroom to wash my face and run a brush through my unruly red hair. Tim was in deep trouble and, while I trusted Brad would do his best, I had come to the conclusion that if I saved Baker’s Treat only to lose my brother I would never be able to live with myself.

Putting on my heavy coat, hat, gloves, and boots, I went out to give Tim a hand. The snow was about eight inches deep and had drifted to about a foot or two in places. The worst part was the layer of ice that crusted everything like the crumb-coat on a cake.

“Hey,” I said and grabbed a shovel from the open garage. “How long have you been out here?”

“What time is it?” he asked and scooped up a block of snow and tossed it to the growing mounds on the side of the driveway.

“Six,” I replied as I dug my shovel halfway into the drift and lifted the snow up and over the side of the drive. It was what some people termed “heart attack snow”—heavy, wet, and difficult to clear. “What time did Brad leave?”

“He left around four,” Tim said, effortlessly lifting and tossing twice as much snow as I could. “I came out shortly after that.”

I looked around and saw that in two hours he’d gotten two-thirds of the way down the driveway. The streetlights were coated in ice and sparkled more than they actually lit the road. The pavement in front of our house was still paved in brick. It was a quaint reminder of the oil boom days, when people built grand Victorian homes and proudly filled them with china and silver and fine linen.

The street was as filled with snow as the drive. Clearly the side streets were not a priority for the snowplows. “How
did Brad get out?” I asked, noticing that there weren’t even any tire tracks in the snow.

“He has a Jeep four-by-four,” Tim said. “The snow filled in his tracks.” Tim shoveled up more snow and tossed it. I noticed that he worked up a sweat. His heavy jacket was unzipped and the tee shirt underneath dripped with sweat.

“How are you doing?” I asked and continued to shovel snow until my arms shook with the effort.

Tim shrugged and kept working. “Until we know for sure what evidence the prosecutor has against me, there’s little we can do.”

I stopped with a half-lifted shovel. “So, what, you simply wait?”

“Brad says they have to schedule a hearing in the next week or so. Then we’ll know more about the case.” He stopped and leaned on his shovel, the picture of a man in despair. “When you live alone and work the night shift, there aren’t a lot of ways you can prove you were where you say you were.”

“Isn’t it on the prosecution to have to prove you were where
they
say you were?”

Tim shook his head. “It’s a small town, sis. People tend to make up their own minds without regard to facts.”

“Is Brad going to ask for your trial to be moved to Sedgwick County? I mean, it seems only fair to try you in an unprejudiced area.”

“Brad said he thought maybe Oiltop wasn’t a bad place for the trial. I’d be close to home and he’d paint me as a local boy, a high school quarterback who led the school to two state championships, blah, blah, blah.”

I tilted my head. “Do you think that will work?”

“Who knows?” He shrugged and went back to shoveling. “High school was a long time ago.”

I left it alone and worked side by side with him until my shoulders ached and my hands were numb. We got the
driveway cleared, and the front and back walk. The night sky twinkled with starlight and the Christmas lights I’d had Tim hang around the wraparound porch twinkled and illuminated the white snow. It was as if someone had painted the homestead in white icing. Postcard pretty. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my cell phone, and snapped a couple of pictures.

“You know, I never asked how you are with Harold’s death. I know you two were pretty close growing up.”

“Yeah,” Tim said, his expression grim. “I hadn’t seen him in over a year. Still, it hit me hard. First Dad, then Mom, and now Harold.” He shoveled snow as if his life depended on it. “I went to his funeral.”

“You did?” I asked. I was so busy with the bakery that I hadn’t even paid attention to Harold’s funeral. I felt pretty low right now.

“Yeah,” Tim said quietly. “His cousin Jeff asked me to leave.”

I stopped short. “He did not.”

“Yes, he did.” Tim nodded his head. “So much for losing an old friend.”

“You said you hadn’t seen him in a year,” I said. “What happened?”

“We had a fight,” Tim said as he shoveled. “It was over something stupid. He was all hot over this new business he started. Harold had this surefire investment program he’d bought into. He was looking for a partner.” Tim grimaced. “There was no way I was buying into one of those business schemes you see on late-night TV. Harold got pissed. He said it would look bad to people if his own best friend didn’t invest. I told him I didn’t have the capital, and if I did I wasn’t going to spend it on a ‘surefire’ scheme. Dad taught me better than that. He got pissed and stormed out. We hadn’t talked since.”

I reached out and put my hand on Tim’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

He looked up at the night sky and studied the stars. “Thanks.”

I gave him time to think about his loss before I went back to shoveling. The twinkle lights from the house across the street had me thinking. “It’s so strange to think it’s the holidays,” I said. “I’ve been so busy baking and you’ve been arrested—and now this storm. I’d nearly forgotten that this season is about peace on Earth and goodwill to men.”

“How can you forget when you have 1972-era decorations in the basement year-round?” Tim grinned at me. It seemed he’d gotten most of his frustrations out shoveling the snow and ice. We were both physically and emotionally exhausted. Just as we turned to put the shovels away and go in for warm drinks, the street plow came through and filled the bottom of the driveway with a knee-high drift of snow.

“Oh, now, that was simply mean,” I said as he drove out of sight.

“Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night,” Tim muttered. We both turned back, got our shovels, and attacked the drift. It’s funny how at one point of exhaustion you feel warm and relaxed and almost happy. And yet if you have to continue past that point your muscles scream and you are filled with frustration and anger, wanting to rail at the unfairness of it all. The newly plowed drift, my loss of power and work time, and Tim’s terrible arrest was almost too much to bear.

As Tim scooped up the last shovelful and tossed it on the head-high mound of snow I heard a faint whirr of wheels. I noticed an orange triangle waving in the air around the drifts. Grandma Ruth came tearing around the icy road on her Scootaround. She had strapped a flashlight between her handlebars, giving anyone coming at her just enough light to notice her in the middle of the road.

“Grandma! Get off the road. You are going to get killed. At the bare minimum the snowplows will run you over.”

Grandma zipped around the corner into the driveway and stopped by the back door. She wore goggles and an old-fashioned leather pilot’s flight hat strapped under her chin. Her torso was wrapped in a thick leather coat with lamb’s wool inside. She had on a butterfly patterned skirt, thick striped over-the-knee socks, and heavy combat boots.

“I’m going to have to rig a headlight for her scooter, aren’t I?” Tim muttered as we walked in tandem to the garage to put away the shovels.

“And reflectors,” I added. “The triangle doesn’t work so well in the dark.”

“Hi, kids. Nice work on the driveway.” Grandma slowly swung her hefty body off the seat of the scooter. “No worries, Toni, I won’t drive my scooter into the house . . . just yet. I know how fussy you are about a little snow and salt on your wood floors.”

“Grandma, what are you doing? It must be at best twenty degrees out. You’re going to catch your death of cold.”

“Honey, by now I’ve figured out that death is more worried that I will catch it than I am of it catching me.” She used the rails on either side of the steps to hang on and lurch up them. Grandma had had both knees replaced in the last ten years. She also had a new hip. They worked well enough, considering Grandma had refused to go to physical therapy afterward.

When I’d mention PT, she’d shake her head and tell me she didn’t have time for such silliness. Besides, she got around just fine with her scooter.

Grandma stopped at the top landing and pulled a half-smoked cigarette out of her skirt pocket. Her lighter clicked as she created a flame and lit the remaining bit of tobacco.

“Grandma.” I coughed and waved my hand through her smoke. “It’s a law that you have to be fifteen feet from an entrance to smoke.”

“That’s a public entrance. This is a private residence.”
Grandma drew in a deep breath, held it a second then blew a long cloud of smoke straight up. “Bring out a can, will ya? The butt collector is buried under the snow somewhere and I don’t want to pollute.”

“You’re always so thoughtful.” Tim gave Grandma a kiss on her cheek. “Go on, Toni, get the poor woman a butt can.”

I narrowed my eyes at my brother and he laughed. Lucky for me, the mudroom shelves held a wide variety of cans and vases and miscellaneous containers—some empty and some full. I picked the least valuable one and handed it to Grandma.

Tim took his boots off in the mudroom and hung up his coat and hat. I did the same and moved in stocking feet to make a fresh pot of coffee.

“I heard on the police scanner that the power has been restored to Main Street.” Grandma waddled into the kitchen and sat down with a huff and a cloud of smoke.

I grabbed three mugs of coffee and brought them to the table, where Tim and Grandma sat. In my family some of the most important conversations happened over cookies and hot beverages. I put a variety of cookies on a plate along with the fudge and set it on the table.

“You’ve been busy,” Grandma said as she snagged three cookies.

“I’m a day behind on my order list.” I sat down. “I managed to get some of the orders filled here. I need to get back into the bakery and see what survived the power outage.”

“Didn’t that nice boy Sam Greenbaum drive you home this morning?” Grandma asked.

“How do you—never mind.” I sighed. My neighbor Mrs. Dorsky was number one on Grandma Ruth’s senior watch call tree. “Yes, the van was too unstable in the wind.”

“How do you intend to get back to the bakery?” Tim asked as he stretched his long legs out in front of him and absently played with his cup of coffee.

“I suppose you could drive me,” I said. “Or I could take Grandma’s scooter.”

“Hey, keep your mitts off my scooter.” Grandma talked as she chewed the cookie, spitting crumbs all the while giving me the stink eye for even suggesting such a thing.

“The only way I’d drive you there is if I stayed,” Tim said. “Brad advised me to never be alone night or day. I need solid alibis in case the identity thief strikes again.”

“I have a cot in my office,” I said with a shrug.

“Why can’t Brad take her?” Grandma asked.

“Brad has a date,” Tim said. “Our cousin is on the hunt for a new man, and I think she’s set her eyes on Brad.”

Grandma eyed me. “You okay with that?”

“I have to be.” I shrugged. “Brad’s free to date whoever he wants.”

“You don’t sound happy about it,” Grandma pointed out.

“No, I am,” I said truthfully. “If he and Sam find other women to date before I’m ready, then I have to be okay with that. Besides, I have a business to concentrate on.”

“So, Grandma, you can tell me,” Tim said. “What’s up with Mindy? Why is she suddenly back in Oiltop and picking up men?”

Grandma Ruth concentrated on picking up crumbs off her ample breast. “She’s going through a bit of a rough spot. The last thing I need is for you two to reject her.”

“We’re not rejecting her,” I stated.

“We’re curious.” Tim put his arm around my shoulders. “Aren’t we, sis?”

“Curiosity did nothing for the cat,” Grandma said and bit into another cookie. “I can tell you she’ll be here through Christmas, so you’d better have something for her under the tree.”