Never Trust a Skinny Cupcake Baker (Death by Cupcake Book 1) (9 page)

Celery
is 95% water and 100% NOT PIZZA.

I’m just hanging up from my conversation with my attorney
when Anna comes creeping into my office. I roll my eyes. “Why are you sneaking
around?”

She puts a finger on her lips and quickly shuts my office
door. She comes to stand by my chair before responding. “I have an idea.”

“Why do I have a feeling I’m not going to like this idea?”

I don’t know why I bother to speak because Anna just plows
forth without responding to my question. “So, you know at the gym how you have
to swipe your card every time you arrive?” I nod. “I got to thinking about that
last night. What if the gym has some kind of record of who arrives, at what
time, and when they leave?” I smile as I start to see where she’s going with
this. “I called the gym and asked if they could look up if I’d been there on
Friday afternoon and guess what?” Naturally, she doesn’t wait for me to guess
anything. “Turns out they keep computer records of all comings and goings.”

“That’s awesome!” I have no problem giving Anna her high
five this time. “So how do we get our hands on those records?” I see the gleam
in her eyes and immediately cut off that train of thought. “Um no, I’m not
going to try and get the records while you lure away the receptionist.” I shake
my head and cross my arms over my chest. “Forget about it. Not happening.”

Unfortunately, the gleam in Anna’s eyes hasn’t diminished.
“I thought you’d say that, but I have an even better idea.” Uh oh. “I have an
old friend from college. Total nerd. Anyway, I’m sure he can hack into the
gym’s computers and get us any information we want.”

I jump out of my chair and stare her down. “Are you out of
your mind? It’s not bad enough that I’m accused of murdering someone? So now
you want to go to jail for computer hacking, which I’m pretty sure is a federal
crime because of the whole online thing. You know the penalties for federal
crimes are worse than state crimes, don’t you?”

Anna waves my concerns away with a flick of her hand. “Oh
please, don’t start quoting trivia to me.” Before I can explain that knowledge
about criminal penalties is anything but trivia, she gets up on her tiptoes and
stares me down. “We’re doing this because you are not going to jail for a crime
you didn’t commit, and we’re getting you your job back at the University. End
of discussion.” She turns and walks to the door. “We’ll head over to Arthur’s
house after closing.” And with that, she’s gone.

♥♥♥

Despite my reservations, Anna and I end up at Arthur’s
apartment that afternoon. Anna knocks and knocks and knocks. I’m ready to
escape this tragedy waiting to happen when a disheveled man answers the door.
He looks annoyed until his eyes land on Anna. “Anna Banana! How are you?” He picks
her up in a hug and twirls her around as if she’s a small child and not a grown
woman. It doesn’t seem to bother Anna, though. She’s giggling and pounding on
his back good-naturedly.

The twirling stops when the man’s eyes land on me. “Who is
this?” All signs of joviality are gone. His face is blank and his eyes are
hard. He sets Anna down and then starts stalking towards me.

“I’m Callie.” My voice stutters because I’m not liking the
vibe that’s coming off this man.

He stops and stares. “Callie? As in Anna’s Callie?” He looks
at Anna who nods her head.

“Do I know you?”

“I’m Arthur.” I stick out my hand to shake his in greeting,
but he ignores my hand and engulfs me in his arms. I look at Anna and mouth
save
me
. She laughs but manages to pull him off of me. “I’ve heard so much about
you.”

“Really?” I raise an eyebrow at Anna because I haven’t heard
about him until this very morning.

No one responds to my surprise. Instead, Arthur motions to
Anna, and we follow him into a room which probably makes computer geeks go
gaga. There are five monitors set up at a corner desk and hardware scattered
around the room. It’s dark and smells like sweaty socks. In addition to hard
drives, monitors, cords galore, and boxes and boxes of who knows what, there
are old pizza boxes and dozens of soda cans littering the room.

Arthur is already at his computer typing away faster than
anyone ought to be able to. “So,” he starts talking without slowing the pace of
his typing, “I started looking around after we spoke this morning. I think I
have what you need.”

Anna moves to the monitors, and I follow. I gasp at what I
see. I presume this is a list of everyone at the gym between 3 and 5:30 p.m. on
the Tuesday Dolly was murdered. It’s a simple excel sheet with time of entry,
name of the member, and time of departure. “Can you print this out?” Anna asks.

“Already on it.” Arthur hands her a print-out of the list.
He punches some more buttons and now the screens are filled with member
profiles including picture, date of birth, and phone number. “I figured it
might help if you had these as well.” Before Anna can bother to ask, he hands
her another sheaf of papers containing the member profiles.

The doorbell rings, and Arthur jumps up. “That must be the
pizza!” Does the man ever eat anything other than pizza? Anna and I follow him.
While he goes to get his delivery, we sit at the dining room table. She
aimlessly flips through the pages.

“I don’t really know what we’re looking for,” she admits and
hands me the documents.

“You guys hungry?” Arthur asks as he returns with two large
pizza boxes. I ignore him as I flip through the pages.

I grab my bag and take out a notebook and pen. “Okay, so
what do we know about the murderer?”

I was mumbling to myself, but Anna answers. “Nothing.”

I shake my head. “That’s not exactly true.” A piece of pizza
lands in front of my face, and I turn to smile my thanks at Arthur. “We know
that Dolly was poisoned, correct?” Anna and Arthur nod. “What do we know about
murderers who poison their victims?” Anna just stares at me while Arthur chomps
away. “Two and a half percent of murders by women use poison whereas less than
half a percentage of men use poison, which means women killers are seven times
more likely to use poison than a man.”

Anna’s not making fun of my trivia knowledge now. “So the
murderer is a woman?” 

I tap my pen against my chin. “The use of poison coupled
with the cupcake being placed in the
women’s
locker room at a time, between
3 and 5:30 p.m., when the gym is usually only frequented by women makes it
indeed seem most likely that the killer was a woman.”

I grab the list of gym entries. “So, first things first. I’m
going to eliminate all the men from the list.” I quickly scan the hundred or so
names and cross out the ten or so men. “Well,” I admit. “That didn’t help much,
but there’s one other thing we know about the murderer.”

“What’s that?” Arthur actually stops chewing to ask.

“Assuming it’s a she, she is right-handed.”

Now, Arthur looks confused. “How do we know that?”

“Handwriting analysis,” Anna says with a flick of her hand.
“I’ll explain later.”

“Do we know if any of these members are left-handed?” I ask
before I realize what a stupid question that is. People don’t pay attention to
that sort of thing. I have friends who I’ve known for years – and gone to class
with, where I always take copious handwritten notes – who all of sudden will
comment on how they never noticed I’m left-handed. 

“Everyone in the pole dancing class is right-handed except
for you,” Anna says in between bites of her pizza.

I look at her in surprise. “How do you know that?”

Anna shakes her head and rolls her eyes at me. “Remember the
first day of class? You were the only one having problems because you’re a
leftie.”

I nod slowly. I take a highlighter out of my bag. “Do you
know the names of women in our class?”

Together Anna and I go through the names until we’re pretty
sure we have picked out the twenty names of the women in our class. “So how do
we figure out who else is right-handed?” I stare at the list and it’s
overwhelming. How in the world are we going to eliminate suspects when the only
solid thing we know about the murderer is that it’s probably a woman? Great,
that’s over fifty percent of the population. And that she’s right-handed? At
least eighty-five percent of the population is right-handed.

“What about a card?” I look up from my depressing thoughts.
Anna smiles. “We can buy a big condolence card and then take it to the gym and ask
everyone on that list to sign it.”

It’s a good idea except for one small detail. “I can’t
exactly ask people to sign a card for a woman I supposedly murdered.”

Anna shrugs. “No worries. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll go at
three since that’s when the same women will most likely be there.” There’s a
moment of silence before Anna speaks again. “Um, Callie, I think you’re
forgetting something.” She almost looks sheepish. That can’t be good. I merely
raise an eyebrow at her. “What about the fact that the murderer is tall?”

“Tall? What do you mean?” She’s lost me.

“The person who keyed Dolly’s car was at least five feet
seven, remember?” I nod because of course I remember.

“Hmm…” I think about it for a few seconds. “I’m not really
sure if the two events are connected. And we have less than a week before the
fall semester starts. What if we assume the person who keyed the car is the
murderer and we’re wrong?” I know we have enough evidence to clear me of any
charges Detectives Duchamps and Smits can drum up, but I need to be completely
free and clear of any implication of wrongdoing in a week.

“But there’s no way we’re going to get through these names
before then,” Anna protests. 

“True,” I say feeling a bit defeated. “Maybe you’re right.
The card does mention the car after all.”

Anna bounces in her chair. “And isn’t that one of the
reasons the detectives think you did it?”

I nod. “Okay,” I say pulling the list towards me once again.
“Let’s go through this list and whittle it down.” 

Luckily the profiles that Fred printed out contain each
member’s height. Leaving room for margin, we eliminate anyone under five feet
seven. That leaves only twenty names. Much more manageable. Here’s hoping we’re
on the right track. 

Cupcakes
don’t ask silly questions. Cupcakes understand.

I’m staring at the display of condolence cards at the
grocery store trying to pick one, but there isn’t a card that says
Sorry
you’re dead but I didn’t kill you! Good luck in the afterlife.
I select
five of the biggest cards the store stocks and eliminate any with religious
overtones. The two cards left over should be more than enough for the twenty
signatures we’re hoping to get from our suspects. 

Anna’s waiting in the bakery department. I watch her checking
out the competition and roll my eyes. I can’t believe she actually thinks any
baked good from a grocery store could ever compete with the creations she
makes. “Come on,” I tell her and grab her arm to pull her away. I drag her to
the check-out and pay for the cards.

“Here,” I say as we walk out. I hand her the cards and a few
pens. It’s a few minutes before three and Anna’s off to the gym while I’m going
back to the bakery to close shop.

“Go, go Gadget,” she shouts as she takes off on her bike.

♥♥♥

I’m walking into the kitchen after locking up when I hear
knocking on the front door. I turn, expecting to see Ben, but it’s Anna. “Why
are you back already? It’s not even five yet. I thought you were staying until
five thirty.” I don’t bother asking her where her keys are. She’s forever
losing them.

“The natives were starting to get suspicious,” she pants as
she rushes in.

I roll my eyes but lock up after her and follow her to my
office. She pulls the cards out of her bag and throws them on my desk. I open
them and see signature after signature. She actually pulled it off. “How did
you manage it?”

“I have my ways,” she says with a wink.

I grab the list of suspects we made yesterday and start to
cross-reference the names when I realize we made a huge mistake. Some of the
signatures are both first and last name, but the majority are only one name. I
look up at Anna. “How are we going to figure out who these women are who only
signed with their first name?”

“Already on it.” Anna grabs a copy of the suspect list out
of her bag. “After the first woman signed with just her first name, I realized
we needed her full name so I asked her what her last name is so I could cross
it off.” She shows me the list. A majority of the names have been crossed off.

“And she just told you?”

Anna shrugs. “I made up some bull about wanting to make sure
I had Dolly’s friends sign the card.” I don’t bother to inquire further. Anna
has a way of making people believe everything she says. Not that she’s a
compulsive liar or anything. More like everyone finds it hard to believe that
she would do anything nefarious.

I look through Anna’s list but I don’t see any notes
indicating if anyone is left-handed. “Are any of these women left-handed?”

Anna shakes her head. “Nope. Not a one.”

I try not to get upset about this news. “We didn’t manage to
eliminate anyone as a suspect, then.” I sigh and collapse against my office
chair.

“But there are still seven women who haven’t signed their
names. Maybe they’re all left-handed.”

Her weak attempt at cheering me up doesn’t help. “That’s
statistically improbable.”

Anna takes a seat across from my desk and is quiet for a
while. “I do have some good news though.” I raise an eyebrow at her. “Dolly’s
funeral is tomorrow.”

I’m not following her logic. “And this is good news,
because?”

She shrugs. “Maybe the murderer will be there?” She leans
across the desk. “We’ll take pictures of everyone there and see if any of our
suspects show up.”

“You want to take pictures at a funeral?”

Anna waves my concerns away. “Everyone’s taking selfies all
the time anyway. We’ll use our cell phones. No one will notice.”

I’m not so sure about that, but I do think Anna’s on to
something. I grab the printout of the members Arthur gave us yesterday. “Let’s
pick out our suspects. If we can identify them from these pictures, we won’t
need to take any pictures.”

Anna frowns. “I still think we should take pictures as
proof.”

I don’t fancy taking pictures at a funeral, and there will
be enough eyewitnesses as proof. I keep those thoughts to myself, though and
instead promise myself to figure out a way to nick Anna’s phone from her
tomorrow. I grab a pair of scissors and start cutting out the pictures of our
suspects. Between Anna and I, we make a sheet of paper with all of the suspects’
pictures.

“Okay,” Anna says as she stands. “I’m going to head home.
Between leaving early today and the funeral tomorrow, I’m going to have to
start baking early tomorrow.”

“Oh,” she says as I walk her to the front door. “Any news
about the autopsy report?”

“Should have it tomorrow or the day after.” Although I’m not
sure how much it will help. We already know Dolly was killed by poison, but
information is knowledge.

I let Anna out and then turn to exit out of the back. I step
on something and slide a bit. Guess I didn’t do a very good job at mopping the
floors. I reach down to grab the piece of paper under my shoe. It’s a
Callie’s
Cakes
postcard. I must have missed it when I was closing. I start to
crumple it in my hand as we can hardly use a card with my shoe print on it, but
I stop when I see writing on the front.

Stop interfering before you regret it. Call the cops and
Anna will suffer.

My heart stops at the words. My hand starts to shake, and I nearly
drop the card. I don’t know what to do. Every fiber of my being is urging me to
call the police and let them take over everything. But a tiny part of me is
wondering if Anna will pay for that. And of course there’s that other sarcastic
part of me that thinks the police won’t take me seriously.

There’s a knock on the door, and I turn to see Ben smiling
and waving at me. Guess the decision is taken out of my hands. With trembling
hands, I unlock the door.

“Hi, sweetheart.” Ben starts to pull me in for a hug but he
stops. “What’s going on?”

I don’t bother trying to hide the card from him. I hand it
to him and collapse in one of the chairs. I hear a growl and look up to see Ben
is fuming mad. He sets the card down on the table in front of me. “Don’t touch
that.” He walks behind the counters and returns with a plastic bag. After
carefully putting the card in the bag, he turns to me. “When did you get this?”

“Just now.” He just stares at me. I fill him in. “I was
letting Anna out of the front door because her bike was out here, and I
accidentally stepped on it.”

“You sweep and mop every day after closing?” I nod. “What
time did you do that today?”

“The usual time, four thirty or so. Anna came as I was just
turning out the lights.”

Ben looks at his watch. “It’s five thirty now.” I nod even
though that wasn’t a question. He pulls out his phone and walks away to place
the call. He returns to me after hanging up his phone and picks me up off the
chair. He pulls me to the sofa in the corner and sits next to me holding me
close until the detective arrives.

Ben helps me up when the banging on the door starts.
Detective Smits has his face plastered against the door trying to peek in. “Why
are the lights out?” He demands when Ben lets him in. Ben pulls him into the
café and locks the door behind him before responding.

“Come on; let’s move to the kitchen where no one can see
us.” Ben grabs my hand and pulls me to the back. He leans against one of the
decorating tables and hugs me close to him. He hands the note to Smits before
putting his arms around me for support.

 Smits swears when he reads the card before looking up
at me and muttering, “Sorry.” I just shrug because the detective swearing is
the least of my problems at the moment. “I’ll take this in, but I’ll need your
statement.”

I start to respond, but Ben cuts me off. “Not tonight. She’s
shaken up. I’ll bring her in tomorrow.” Once the detective nods in agreement,
Ben continues. “Come on, I’ll let you out the back way. Considering that note,
I don’t want anyone knowing you were here.”

Ben and I follow Smits out the back door. Smits takes off
without another word. After which, Ben and I climb the stairs to my apartment.
He makes me stand at the entrance to my place while he checks to see it’s empty
and there are no other notes. Normally, I’d roll my eyes at this over the top
behavior, but today I’m not moving until he gives me the all clear.

Within a minute, Ben is back and pulling me into my home. He
leads me to the sofa where he lays down and then pulls me on top of him. I know
I need to fess up and tell him about the hacking but that’s a conversation for
later. Right now, I need to feel his arms around me and feel safe.