Meet Your Baker (15 page)

Lance whistled. “That’s an understatement. She was three sheets to the wind, delivering insults better than half the actors in the company.”

“Who was she fighting with?”

“Everyone in the room. She was that kind of personality. If you were in her line of sight, you were prey.”

“I kind of got that impression when I met her the other morning.”

Lance took a sip of coffee and readjusted his bandaged hand.

“What happened after she left?” I asked.

“We all did a dance of joy.” Lance snorted. “Then we got back to work.”

“How long did you stay?”

Lance stroked his dark goatee. “Are you working with the police or something?”

I had pushed too hard.
Damn, Jules, go easy.
This is one of my many less than stellar qualities. I know. I just don’t know how to pull back. Carlos used to tease me about it.

“No, of course not.” I crinkled my forehead. “I’m the one who found her, I just wanted to make sure my staff did everything they were supposed to.”

Lance didn’t look convinced, but continued anyway. “I left around one-thirty. There were a few stragglers left. I think Caroline was still here and your barista and Mia, one of our junior interns.”

“What did you do after you left?”

“I see why you don’t want to return to the stage—you’re priming yourself for a career as an investigator, is that right?”

“No, I’m just trying to get a handle on the timeline. Did you see Nancy hanging around outside when you left? Did you notice anyone outside Torte? Anything that seemed out of sorts?”

Lance paused. “Actually, now that you mention it, I did see something strange.” He pursed his lips. “I didn’t give it a thought at the time.”

I scooted forward in my chair, eager with anticipation.

“You are an eager one. Patience.” Lance took a long sip of coffee before he continued. I’m sure it was a deliberate attempt to annoy me.

“I realized I’d forgotten a script at my office that I wanted to look over, so I swung back by the theater before going home. On my way to the theater I passed by the Merry Windsor. Nancy was nowhere in sight, but Richard was lurking out in front.”

“What do you mean, lurking?”

“I mean lurking.” Lance pantomimed the act of lurking. “Not a bad job either. He could give a few of my actors a pointer or two.”

I waited for him to continue.

“When I passed by, he startled me. He came out from the darkness, dressed all in black. He’d been in Torte earlier with Nancy, wearing one of his usual ridiculous golf outfits.” As Lance mentioned this he straightened his jacket collar.

“Did you tell Detective Curtis about this?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t think I did. When he came by my office to tell me Nancy had been killed, I have to admit that I was overcome with joy and it completely slipped my mind.” He dabbed the side of his mouth with a napkin and crowed.

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

Lance checked his watch. “Make it quick, darling. I’m meeting some very important people in thirty minutes.”

“What was Nancy’s role on the board?”

“That’s a loaded question. Do you mean what her role should have been, or what part she was trying to play?”

“I guess both.”

“You may already know this, so stop me if I begin to bore you.”

“Not at all, please go on.”

“Theater boards are responsible for fund-raising and contributions. Period. Well, fine, we like to let them believe they have a voice when it comes to fiscal oversight, management, and policy, but there’s a strong separation between art and the board. They don’t, and never will, provide any direction about what plays we produce, who I hire as actors, nothing.”

“So, Nancy really couldn’t have fired Caroline, even though she was threatening to?”

“No, please, darling. That’s my job. Although Nancy wanted it to be hers.”

He leaned across the table. “She was completely inappropriate in her attempts to try to influence the artistic side of the festival and everyone in the company knew it.”

“What did the board say?”

“That’s the problem. We’re in a unique position here. In some ways it’s almost as if we have two boards. Our actual board is huge—sixty members. They come from all over the West Coast, Seattle, L.A., the Bay Area, because that’s where our audience comes from. This larger board only meets four times a year, but the local members of the board, many of whom I’m sure you know, make up our executive board. They have a better handle on what’s going on day to day, and we meet more like once a month.”

I caught him looking at his injured hand more than once.

“So, since Nancy moved here, she became part of the executive board?”

“Exactly. She’d been trying to leverage her role and was extremely vocal when she was living in California, but fortunately we only had to deal with her a few meetings a year. That all changed when she moved into town.”

Lance inhaled through his nostrils and continued. “She actually believed that by dumping money into the coffers, she could decide what plays we produced, who I could hire. She was sorely mistaken. I am the lead artist in this organization. It’s my vision that our actors support.”

The tone in Lance’s voice hardened. I could tell he was getting angry. He clutched the empty coffee mug in his hand. I was worried he might snap it.

“Does Caroline know that?”

Lance looked put upon. “All the actors in the company know that it’s my vision that drives us forward.”

Maybe,
I thought, but what if Caroline believed that Nancy had the power to fire her?

Another thought popped into my head. I wanted to see how Lance would react to the question.

“I get that you have control of the actors and staff, but who’s
your
boss? The executive director?”

“Miranda?” Lance smirked. “Please.”

“What’s her role?” I tried to pace my questions, acting as if I was really interested in the structure of the festival’s management team. I wasn’t, but Lance was already suspicious of my questions and I wanted this most important one to evolve naturally.

“She oversees marketing, fund-raising, operations, but she doesn’t have any say in the art and certainly not over me. She spends most of her time kissing the board’s ass.”

Lance was fired up. I used the opportunity to sneak in my final question. “So, who’s your real boss, then?”

He answered exactly as I anticipated. “The board.”

Glancing at his watch, he stood quickly and gave another half bow. “Charming conversation as always, Jules. I must depart with your divine torte.” He kissed my hand. “Until we meet again.”

I remained at the table for a moment, mulling over everything Lance had told me. There was plenty to consider—but the thing I couldn’t help but wonder about was that if the board had the power to fire Lance, it suddenly made him a very viable suspect, especially because I didn’t believe for a second that he’d injured his hand in a run-in on stage.

Chapter Twenty-three

With Lance gone and Torte empty, I cornered Mom.

“Have a minute?” I asked, interrupting her as she checked off items on the inventory sheet.

“You bet. I’m finished here anyway.” She made a note on the checklist and pulled the bar stools next to each other. “We’ve been going through flour like crazy. I’m going to order another twenty pounds.”

I threw my apron in the sink and sat next to her.

“Uh-oh, that’s a serious look.” Mom studied me. “Is this the kind of conversation that calls for chocolate? I have a flourless chocolate cake.”

“No, I’m fine.”

She reached her hand to mine. Her fingers looked stiff.

“Is this about Carlos?” she asked softly. “I saw you tugging on your ring all day.”

I swallowed hard. She saw through me too easily. Was tugging my ring off a physical reflection of my flip-flopping emotional state?

“No, this isn’t about Carlos.” The bakeshop smelled of lavender-scented dish soap and a hint of the bacon that I’d cooked earlier lingered in the air.

“Mom, it’s time to talk about money. What’s going on? I looked over the books last night. I know you’re short. Really short.”

She bit her bottom lip and nodded.

“Don’t think you have to protect me. I can handle it. Is it Andy or Stephanie? Do you think one of them is stealing?”

Mom pushed her stool back and stood. She walked to the other side of the counter and tapped her fingers on the wooden butcher block. “No, no, it’s not them.” She paused for a breath. “It’s my fault.”

A faraway look glazed her eyes as she stared out the window.

“After your father died, I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue with the bakeshop. You remember how difficult that time was?”

I nodded. “Of course I do.”

“Well.” She paused, catching the eye of someone walking by outside. She waved and flashed a huge smile. “It’s people like that, the town that made me go on. Without them, I wouldn’t have, I couldn’t have kept it up.”

“I know, Mom.” I shared her memories. In the months, even the first few years, after my father died, the town rallied around Torte. I’d arrive after school to find one of Mom’s friends or fellow shop owners manning the cash register or helping watch bread baking in the oven. Ashland might be a travel mecca for literary lovers all over the world, but to those of us who live here, we’re family. Nothing highlighted that like a tragedy.

By the time I left for culinary school, Torte was thriving. I felt guilty leaving Mom alone, but I knew the town would watch out for her, just as she watched out for everyone else.

“You do the same thing for the people in this town—they love you. They come here for comfort, and not just in the form of a cherry turnover.”

“Don’t make light of this, Juliet.” Mom removed a cookie cutter from the tub resting on the island and flipped it in her hands. “Things got pretty bleak around here when the economy crashed. Over a couple years, ten small businesses in town had to close up shop. You know how it goes—businesses with no plan to survive the off-season.”

This was a recurring problem for our town, which relies so heavily on the tourist dollars that OSF brings in. It’s boom time while the season runs for ten months, but once the theater shutters at the end of October, businesses are bound to bust if they haven’t planned ahead for the quiet, desolated streets in the winter. I saw it every season growing up. A new business would pop open in early February, in time for the launch of a new season. They’d thrive in the summer months and then be closed for good the first week of January.

Fortunately, Mom and Dad learned the ebb and flow of operating a bakeshop in a town dominated by tourists.

“I know,” I agreed. “We had the same problem on the cruise ship. I mean, not with businesses going under, but with sales plummeting. The industry took a huge hit. Carlos and I were lucky that we had seniority, but a number of our friends weren’t as lucky. There were a few times when we sailed with ships so empty I wondered why the cruise line even bothered. They did everything to try and beef up numbers—huge discounts, bonus land excursions, upgrading cabins. Nothing helped for a while there.”

“Exactly.” Mom began removing all the cookie cutters and arranging them on the table. “When things got tight around here, I was okay. You remember how careful Dad always was with reserving cash for off-season.”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “You remember that year I really wanted a new cruiser bike for around town and Dad made me save all my summer money? He told me my old bike worked perfectly and I’d appreciate having the cash in the winter. I was so mad, but then at Christmas time I was the only one of my group of friends who could afford to go ski for the entire season. He was right.”

Mom stacked the cookie cutters. “Yes, well, unfortunately many of our counterparts here didn’t have the same foresight.”

She looked out the window again.

I urged her to continue. “Okay, but what does this mean for Torte? If you were fine and saved, what’s the problem?”

She stopped messing with the cookie cutters and put her head between her hands. “The problem is, I couldn’t stand to see so many of my friends suffering. When they’d come in and couldn’t pay, I’d feed them and tell them to pay me when they could.”

“Okay?” That didn’t sound too bad. What harm could there be from a few IOUs?

Mom could tell from my expression that I didn’t understand.

“I thought it would be a little blip and things would improve quickly.” She sighed. “They didn’t. I loaned some money out. I know I shouldn’t have, but I thought maybe it would help.”

“Mom, why didn’t you tell me?”

She met my eyes across the island.

“Honey, I couldn’t. I knew you were worried about your own position on the ship. I didn’t want to burden you with this.”

“How bad is it? You gave away some food for free and dished out some cash to a few struggling friends, right?”

“It’s more than that. I mean, yes, that’s part of the problem. There were a couple people who I think might not have had anything to eat if I hadn’t kept the doors open here. But on top of that, tourists disappeared; the town felt like it was sinking. I started having to put off my suppliers, paying them late. Things started to spiral.”

She looked like she was going to cry.

Not paying vendors would be like intentionally serving burned pastries. No wonder Mom was distraught. Could this explain the strange vendor receipts I’d found last night? Maybe Mom had to use a more expensive vendor if she was behind in payments to her regular suppliers.

I felt my stomach turn. How had I missed that she was struggling? We talked every Sunday (or at least as close to every Sunday as possible) when I was aboard the ship. She mentioned that things were slow, but I never picked up that she was actually struggling. I felt terrible and completely self-obsessed. Since I’d been home, I’d been consumed by my own problems. This should have been the conversation I had with her my first day home.

“That’s when Richard stepped up the pressure. I don’t know if he found out that things were tight, but he’s been vying to take over Torte and any other struggling business he can get his hands on for a couple years now.” She tossed a cookie cutter in the tub.