From Scratch (4 page)

“I guess.”

She reached for the French press and swallowed against the thickness in her throat that had little to do with the brownie. With a hiss of air, she lowered the plunger filling the small area with the delicate aroma of the dark roast. Pouring coffee into each of the cups, she handed one to Sean, before picking up her own and leaning back in her chair.

He lifted the mug to his mouth, taking a tentative sip. A deep sigh escaped his lips. “Amazing.”

“No more drive-through coffee, agreed?”

“Agreed.” He took another deep drink, and then set the cup beside his plate. Grabbing his fork, he drove it into the brownie and shoved a bit into his mouth. A slow smile stretched across his lips. “Awesome,” he said. “Simply, awesome.” He pointed to the brownie with his fork. “What do you put in these things?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Just chocolate and some caramel.”

“That's a straightforward lie. You must get some special ingredient from heaven because this is the best thing I've ever eaten. And that's saying something, since my mom used to own this place.”

“Your mom owned this place? I thought this was just a building you and your brothers owned together.”

“She was the last one to have a bakery here. I'm surprised someone in town hasn't mentioned it to you.”

“They may have tried, but I usually change the subject or find another room to be in when you or your family becomes the topic of conversation.” She lifted her coffee cup and drank deeply, averting her gaze.

He chuckled, “That bad, huh?”

Flush burned her cheeks. “Sorry. I know it's a sin to be angry, so I just tried to avoid sinning too much.”

“Well, I'm glad we called a truce then. I wouldn't want to be the source of your daily confession to Jesus.”

“Me, too.”

“Well, you are sitting in what used to be Taylor's. Just one word. My mom wasn't big on fancy. She always said if people in this town didn't know who the Taylor was or that she baked, then they weren't from Gibson's Run. When my dad died, Mom was all alone with three boys. I was twelve and Joey was only five. We were both too young to do much. Mac was sixteen and tried to keep the farm going, but she knew it was a futile battle. She tried to sell the farm land to Henry Grey, your friend Jane's dad, but he refused. He didn't want us to lose our ‘legacy'. Instead, he leased the land from my mom.

That money was enough for her to buy this building and a small house in town. She rented out the upstairs apartment and went to work doing the only thing she ever truly loved doing, besides being a mother. She worked six days a week in the bakery, from the time I was thirteen years old, until the cancer made it impossible. Closing the store was the hardest thing my brothers and I had to do after her death. It was like losing her and Dad all over again.”

Maggie stretched across the table and brushed her fingers across his hand. “I am so sorry, Sean. I had no idea.” She glanced around the shop. “This was your mom's bakery? Huh. I figured it was a little café or coffee shop or something. I just thought I was super blessed to have the industrial mixer and dishwasher already in place.”

“We've had a few cafés try to start up in the space over the last ten years, but nothing has lasted more than a few months. We've never had any problems renting out the other spaces, but then again, we were more flexible with what we would let go into them. Mac, Joey and I always said this needed to be a bakery. That's what mom would've wanted. But it's kind of hard to find bakers who want to locate in Gibson's Run.” The corners drew up on his mouth. “Then you came along.”

She sighed and withdrew her hand. “Then I came along.”

~*~

Through the high-performance wide-angle zoom he could see her stuff a curl behind her ear. The rapid-fire click-click-click of the camera was the only sound in the tiny car. Her hair was different, but he would fix it. Once he had her back where she belonged, he would fix everything. The hair, though irritating, was a minor inconvenience. He lowered the camera from his face and could almost hear her laugh. The musical quality of it had transfixed him when he first met her nearly a decade earlier.

That stupid cop was laughing through whatever mundane story she was feeding to him.

His hands tightened against the lens. He would teach her that she couldn't talk to other men like that, igniting their lust. But he would be fair.

She would have her lessons, and if she resisted she would have to suffer the pain of her sin. There were always consequences when one sinned. She would eventually bend to his will. Women were supposed to submit to their mates, God ordained it. Once she learned how to be obedient, they would be happy together. God sent her to him. She was meant for him.

He set the camera on the console and twisted, lifting a three-ring binder from the passenger seat of his rented car. He gently turned the plastic covered pages filled with pictures of her, his Mary Margaret.

He hated that she called herself Maggie now, such a common name.

Who was Maggie? Did Maggie sing like an angel or listen to him as if his words came directly from God? No. No, Maggie lived in this backward town, in a backward state in the Midwest. Maggie dressed in a tent and looked as if she belonged in a refugee camp. His Mary Margaret was a lady. She was a beautiful vision from God. She belonged to him. He would just have to remind her. God had given her to him, until parted by death. She would learn that they were forever; he just had to teach her the proper lesson.

Patience. Good things came to those who wait.

And Mary Margaret was a very good thing.

3

The following morning, Sean walked into the station and found the other officer on duty already at his post; with his feet propped up on his desk, he snored like a bear in hibernation.

Alvin Murray was an OK guy, but he was the kind of cop that required Sean to be on duty simultaneously. Alvin had been counting down the days until he could cash in his retirement benefit check and move to his houseboat on Buckeye Lake since a week after graduating the academy. On Alvin's best days, protecting and serving the residents of Gibson's Run was an afterthought. Thankfully, the town didn't require any real police work beyond the occasional traffic ticket.

The door clicked closed behind Sean. Crossing the four steps from the main entrance to Alvin's desk in two seconds, he set two cups of coffee and a bag of muffins from Only the Basics on the paper-strewn surface.

Alvin's response was a snort and a soft whistle through his lips.

Should I wake him? He looks awfully peaceful.

The ring of the main phone line interrupted his thoughts. He glanced at his deputy.

Alvin didn't budge.

Sean reached across the desk to answer the phone. “Police.”

“Hello. Chief, it's Sissy Jenkins.”

Sean knocked Alvin's feet off the desk with a thump and rested his hip against the now open space.

The deputy rubbed his face with the back of his sausage-fingered hand and scratched his belly as he looked at Sean.

Sean rolled his eyes, focusing his attention on the caller. “How's it going, Sissy?”

“Well, Chief, I'm a little worried.” Of course, Sissy was worried. She was born worried. At least once a day she called to inform him of her latest worry. He always felt as if Sissy should have business cards created: World's Biggest Worrier—will worry for you, about you, with you, and because of you—free of charge.

“What is it that's got you worried?” Today.

“Well, there's been a strange car parked down the street all morning.”

“All morning, you say?” Sean looked over the stack of reports sitting in Alvin's in-box and found two on top that had little more than the date typed. He slid the reports across the desk to Alvin, who was sipping from one of the cups of coffee, and lifted an eyebrow.

Alvin rubbed his hair and sniffed at the coffee's lid.

Sissy chattered in his ear. “Why yes, Chief. There's been a gold foreign sedan with Maryland plates parked a block up the street for over an hour.”

Sean closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I'm not sure that an hour is really something to get worried about, Sis.” Opening his eyes, he glanced at the disarray of papers. He shuffled them and spied a complaint filed by Sissy a week earlier. He yanked the paper from the pile, snatched a pen out of the Merry Christmas Dad mug, drew a large question mark on the top of the page, and shoved it in front of his deputy.

Alvin sucked in a mouthful of coffee with a shrug of his shoulders and turned to boot up his computer.

Dropping the report back into the pile, Sean rubbed the base of his neck. He could feel a headache building. Maybe he was allergic to Sissy Jenkins. He seemed to get a headache every time she filed a citizen's complaint. Listening to Sissy was similar to sitting through his high school World History class—he knew the words coming from her mouth were important, but every last one of them ran in one ear and out the other.

She prattled on for countless minutes. And then there was a pause, just the sound of her breath coming through the phone.

Aww, man. She's waiting for me to say something. What was she even talking about?

He cleared his throat. “I'm sorry. What did you just say?”

Sean could almost feel the heat of the Sissy's sigh before she rewound her soliloquy. “What I was saying, Chief Taylor, is that I filed a complaint last week about the very same automobile. It was parked across the street all night last Sunday evening and I saw it two weeks ago for two days straight just sitting in the parking lot of the bank.”

Sean shifted on the desk and looked out the large picture window overlooking Main Street toward the bank. “Did you ever think that someone may have moved to Gibson's Run from Maryland?”

“Well, I would know if someone moved to town.”

“Yeah, I guess you would.” He puffed out a breath. “Maybe this person is on an extended visit with someone who lives on your street?”

“Chief, I am not an alarmist, but I do keep track of what is going on in my neighborhood. Trust me, if someone was visiting from out of state I would know about it.”

Sean thought he heard the faint tinkle of drapery hooks in the background. “I'm sure you would.”

“Chief, I do not like your tone of voice. You forget I was friends with your mother. She would be very disappointed knowing you are treating me like this.”

The mother card always worked on Sean. “Sissy, I'll send Officer Murray over as soon as we get off the phone. He can take your statement and check out the car. How'll that be?”

“Well, I guess it's better than nothing. Sean, I am not crazy. There is something not right about that car. If you have a pen and paper I can give you the license number right now.”

“Alvin will be over in fifteen minutes. He can get all of the details then. We'll keep all of the important information together that way. OK?”

“I guess that'll do. I just know something is amiss.”

He drew in a long breath. “I believe you. We'll look into it. Have a good day.” Sean hung up the phone before Sissy could discover something else she wanted to share.

Sissy Jenkins was a kind enough woman, but she accounted for nearly fifty percent of the paperwork at the police station.

“Alvin. Sissy Jenkins is seeing some suspicious behavior in her neighborhood. I need you to go over and take her statement.”

Alvin swiveled his chair and faced Sean. “Seriously? I have a stack of paperwork to get through. Can't you go take her statement?”

“Nope. You volunteered yourself when you were taking a nap this morning.”

Alvin released a long sigh and thrust himself away from his computer, the wheels of his chair wobbled as they spun. He yanked his city-issued, deep blue windbreaker off the hook. He thrust his arms in the sleeves, and the GRPD embroidered above the chest pocket threatened to pop threads as he tried to zip up the front. Failing, he glared at Sean. “If I didn't know better, I'd say you just like giving me stupid work.”

“If you didn't fall asleep at the office, you wouldn't volunteer yourself so often. Have fun.”

Alvin jerked open the door and stomped away without a word.

Sean couldn't suppress the pull of his lips as he watched Alvin wriggle behind the wheel of one of two GRPD police cruisers. Turning his back to the window, he nudged open his office door with his foot, and quickly scanned the tidy contents of his desk. The in-box was empty. His pen holder held seven black ink pens and a monogrammed coffee cup rested on a cork coaster. Dropping the bag of muffins in the center of his desk, he gulped a quarter of his coffee before swapping the ceramic mug with his to-go cup from the bakery.

He slid into the high-back office chair and tugged at the bag. He could smell the blueberries and lemon before he opened the sack. Maggie sure could bake. Thank God for the truce. He shoved his mouse to wake the computer from hibernation, and the office hummed with the soft buzz of the motor. As the screen flickered from black to blue to a security warning, he sank his teeth into his muffin, followed by another quick sip of coffee.

The coffee was now more room temperature than hot, but the flavor was better than one hundred cups of fast food's best. It must be the brewer. Maybe she put something extra in the water? Or the beans? He took another sip and sighed. Fast food joints could do fries…coffee was Maggie's domain.

Despite the two months of back-rent now paid and near constant nagging, Maggie was an excellent tenant. Her business was growing daily. She had loyal customers, the mayor included. Both his brothers would be home in a little over a month for Thanksgiving, and he thought they'd be pleased with the woman trying to fill their mother's shoes. No one would ever fully take the place of Lorraine Taylor in this town. But Maggie McKitrick was definitely bringing a wonderful bakery to life in little Gibson's Run. Shifting his attention from the bakery to his computer, he tore off another piece of the muffin and popped it into his mouth. And now he was enjoying the benefits.