Maddie's Recipe Of Mysteries (A Rockcrest Cove Cozy Mystery Book 1) (8 page)

“So,” Bailey interrupted. “What made you get into baking, Evan?”

Evan gave her a warm smile, and his face lit up as he reminisced about his past. You could tell he felt good about what he was remembering.

“I suppose it all started when I was small.”

He settled in for what seemed like another long story. “I never knew my real parents,” he said rather sadly. Don’t really know what happened to them. No one was ever able to tell me. I was raised by a stream of foster parents from a young age.”

It didn’t seem like a happy story from the way he began, Bailey thought, but she wanted to know who this Evan guy really was. So she listened to his story without interrupting.

“It wasn’t until I was about nine or ten that I landed in this home where my foster mom loved to bake.”

His mouth curled up just a little at the corners as he thought about the woman. “She used to let me bake with her. It turned out it was the only thing that kept me stable. You can understand, I was quite an angry kid growing up. It felt like nobody really wanted me until I was sent to live with her.”

He smiled even more. “It was her baking that gave my life some direction.” He fell silent for a moment, lost in his own memories.

Bailey brought him back to the present. “Wow, that’s interesting. But you said that my gran changed your life,” she said. “How’s that?”

“Oh!” Evan responded. He turned and gave Madeline an affectionate look.

“It was the competition,” he said.

“I remember those meetings we used to have in preparation for the competition. Up until then, I only thought of baking as a kind of therapy, but you…you helped me see it as a business. From then on, I started seeing my baking skills in an entirely different way,” he explained.

Bailey wanted to ask him more, but just then a young woman entered the store from the back room. Evan noticed her and beckoned for her to come over.

“There she is,” he said. “I want you to meet my sister, Rachel.”

Rachel approached the table the three of them were sitting at and gave her greetings.

“Good afternoon,” she commented.

“Good afternoon, Rachel,”

Madeline said and offered her hand. Bailey noticed that her voice sounded tiny. She wondered why, but it wouldn’t take too long for her to understand. Madeline knew Rachel all too well.

After introductions were made all around, Rachel joined in the conversation.

“Madeline,” she started, “didn’t you go to school with my brother?”

“Yes.”

“And, don’t you own The Baker’s Shoppe over on Maple Street?”

“Yes,” Madeline confirmed.

“Oh, yes,” Rachel started.

“I’d love to ask you some questions,” she said, almost as excited as Evan had been when he first saw Madeline.

“May I join you?”

She slid into the seat next to Madeline, eager to join the conversation. The four of them chatted away endlessly until well into the afternoon. Rachel plied Madeline with an endless array of questions about how she got into baking and where she came up with her ideas for her store. She also offered her condolences for Emma’s death.

“How is it that the three of you became such good friends?” she asked.

“Well, it’s like any other classmates you have when you’re in school,” Madeline offered.

“You just have some classmates that you click with.”

“I suppose,” Rachel agreed.

“I guess I never had anyone that I ‘clicked’ with,” she said, making the quotation marks with her fingers. She glanced over at her brother.

“I guess it’s Evan who has that friendship gene, not me.”

“I’m impressed,” Bailey commented. “Do you have the same feelings as Evan about your foster mom?”

Rachel fell silent for a moment while she remembered her childhood years. “I knew her,” she finally answered, “but I didn’t have the same relationship with her as Evan did.”

“Really?” Bailey thought, out loud.

“Well, I was pretty much a loner when I came to live in the house.”

“Oh, you didn’t come together?”

Both Evan and Rachel laughed. “No. We’re not really brother and sister,” Evan explained.

“We’re both just foster kids who spent part of their childhood in the same house.”

“Oh,” Madeline interjected. “I never knew that. I thought you were really brother and sister.”

“No. A lot of people think that,” Evan added.

“So, Madeline,” Rachel interrupted.

“Tell me, where did you get the inspiration for your ideas about the store?”

The conversation went on with questions flowing back and forth until the store became too busy and both Evan and Rachel had to say their good-byes and get back to work.

Chapter Nine

Madeline returned to her store, and for the next few days things seemed almost as if nothing had changed. Life slowly began to return to normal for her as she went about her daily activities. Still, nothing changed in regard to finding Emma’s murderer, and the case weighed heavily on her mind.

So, she wasn’t too surprised when, at the height of the business rush, she saw Nolan enter her store and take up his usual position at a corner table, where he could observe all the comings and goings of her business. She knew he was looking for something but so far had been unable to find it.

Nolan said nothing when he came in, but waited patiently for the rush of the early morning patrons to thin out. He made the girls nervous whenever he came in, and they had a hard time concentrating on their work, but Madeline seemed much less threatened by his presence now that she had been doing her own investigating. Emma, it turned out, didn’t have too many friends, and those that she did have were soon to become victims of her conniving plots and schemes; it was just a matter of time.

When everything had quieted down, Madeline poured a cup of coffee, took it over to Nolan, and slid into the chair across from him while the girls went about the cleaning up and restocking that always came after a good morning rush.

“Morning, Chief,”

Madeline said with as friendly a greeting as she could.

Nolan set down the paper he was reading and gave her his full attention. “Morning.”

“Can I get you anything?” Madeline offered, her voice lacking any form of sincerity.

“Sure,” Nolan said. “How about a cup of coffee?”

Madeline shoved the cup she had brought over in front of him.

Nolan looked at the cup and then at Madeline. The inquisitive arch of one eyebrow questioned her.

“You see, Chief,” she said,

“I used my own deductive reasoning and determined that you wanted a cup of coffee.”

“Oh really. How’s that?” Nolan asked. He decided to appease her and follow along for the moment.

“Well,” Madeline started,

“I noticed that every now and then you come into my store, take up a table all by yourself, and you never order anything.” She was very calm and composed as she spoke.

“But, I figured he wouldn’t just be coming in here at the busiest time of the day, taking away space from my customers, just to harass me. He must want something.”

She let her voice slow down just a little bit. “After all, I can’t imagine any officer of the law interfering with the flow of business that way.” She proffered him a soft smile.

“So, you must be here for my famous coffee and at least one of my tasty treats.”

Nolan looked at the woman across the table from him. She was pretty smart, there was no doubt about it. But he still felt strongly that she had something to do with Emma’s murder. He’d bet his forty-year career on it.

“Ok, Mrs. McDougal. I’ll bite,” he said.

“Why don’t you give me one of those praline pastries that everyone seemed so gung ho about.”

“Sure thing, Chief.” Madeline got up from her seat and collected the pastry he had requested.

When she returned, Nolan was waiting for her. She slid into the seat opposite him and quietly waited until he had sweetened his coffee and taken a bite of her praline. A satisfying smile crossed his lips before he spoke.

“I see why your business has become so popular. These are amazing,” he said with sincerity.

Madeline thought that she was witnessing the first sign of a human being in Nolan since they had first met. “Thank you.”

“But,” Nolan said as he took another bite,

“I have to remind you that you’re still a person of interest on the case.” He sipped his cup of coffee and turned his attention back to Madeline.

“Don’t even think about taking a vacation or anything like that.”

“Of course,” Madeline said with unusual calm.

Nolan looked at her with genuine surprise. She was not reacting as she had done before, and he was not prepared for the sublime acceptance of his accusation. Madeline, on the other hand, had become accustomed to the man’s empty threats. It was clear that he would never have the evidence to actually charge her with anything. In the meantime, she, Bailey, and Kyle were making headway on their own investigation. They had not yet offered anything to the police, but they certainly had accumulated enough to put Nolan and his hound dogs on a different scent if it ever came to that.

Nolan finished his last bite of the praline, all too soon, he thought. It was no wonder her bakery had become so popular over the years. He’d never had a breakfast treat like that.

“Awesome pastry,” he said as he tossed a five dollar bill on the table.

“I hope that’ll be enough to cover it.”

He lifted his mighty bulk up from his seat, gave her a curt farewell, and then started for the door.

Nolan had left pretty much the way he usually came. In a big huff. A lot of wind but no substance, Madeline thought to herself. Still, there was that nagging doubt in the back of her mind that she had to do something to get him off her scent. Even an old dog would find a bone if he rooted around long enough. She knew Nolan was looking for just one crumb of substantial evidence he could manipulate in order to implicate her, so she had to step up her efforts to beat him at his own game. It was time for her, Bailey, and Kyle to have another meeting.

The store closed early for a change. Madeline, Bailey, and Kyle were meeting in the back room, trying to determine what made Nolan so determined to focus all of his attention on Madeline. Kyle was pacing back and forth across the small room while Bailey was busily typing away at the keyboard of her laptop. She had gathered all the evidence they had found so far in one place so she didn’t have to carry around her cumbersome notebook. It was stored on her flash drive, which she could conveniently stash away when she needed to. Madeline was sitting behind the desk deep in thought.

“He doesn’t have anything on you,”

Kyle said as he stopped his pacing to face her. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Everything he has is circumstantial.”

“Yeah, but that’s the problem,” Bailey said.

“If he keeps digging, he’ll come up with something that might stick. All he needs is something that a jury will believe.”

“True, but what does he have?”

“You keep talking about what he has,” Bailey complained. “It’s not what he has that concerns us. It’s what he might find.”

“Ok. Ok,” Kyle said. “What could he possibly find on Madeline?” he asked, trying to appease her.

“All right, let’s see.” She got up from her seat and started pacing opposite Kyle. “She was the one to find the body.”

“Yeah, but that could’ve been anybody,” Kyle argued.

“It was at her place of business.”

“But it was outside the business, not inside.”

“They had been rivals for years.”

“They hadn’t seen each other in years, so why kill her now?” Kyle countered.

“Witnesses saw them in a heated argument.”

“Two years ago.”

The two were simply at odds on Madeline’s true position in the eyes of the police.

“Ok. Let me tell you why you shouldn’t be concerned,” Kyle said.

“First, she has no history of anger problems, ever. Second, she has a strong relationship with the community with impeccable character.”

He finished his last statement with a sense of finality that said that his last words should’ve been enough to determine her innocence all on their own.

“I’m telling you that Nolan’s argument doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

“Well, she’s still a suspect, no matter what you think, believe, or know,” she said with exasperation. “We have to do something.”

“Well Nolan has to have more to arouse his suspicions than we know, otherwise he wouldn’t be so persistent,” Madeline finally spoke up.

“I know why he’s so persistent,” Bailey countered. “Because she’s being set up.”

“No. I have a better reason,” Kyle countered. “He’s an incompetent boob.”