Dough or Die Read online

  “Emmaline and her team have processed the crime scene. She said it looked like no one had been on the roof in years and years except for the cluster of footprints and disturbance connected to Sandra being up there. They’ve got forensics looking at some fibers they found both on the roof and gathered from Sandra’s body. That’s the only physical evidence they have to go on.”

  “Ivy.” My dad’s brow furrowed with his concern. “It’s enough that your brother’s soon-to-be wife—”

  “And my best friend, don’t forget—”

  “How could I? I’ve always loved that girl like a daughter. It’s enough that Em lives in the dangerous world of law enforcement. You don’t need to get involved in this.”

  He was right, of course, but how could I not when it had hit so close to home? Something dark was going on, and though I couldn’t prove it, I was convinced the attack on Ben and the murder of Sandra were related.

  “If I can help, I want to.”

  “Let Em and her people do their job.”

  “Dad,” I said, pushing my half-eaten ice cream aside. “There’s something else.”

  He looked at me, waiting for me to continue.

  “Ben Nader showed me the ladder to the roof the day he died. Miguel was there, too. Other than us, who else could have known about it? How did Sandra Mays know about it? I’m worried—”

  He took one of my hands and squeezed. “If this guy Ben showed you, he probably told other people about it, too. The police have no reason to think you had anything to do with this woman’s death.”

  “I don’t want it to affect Olaya or the bread shop, either. A murder right there on the roof, and so soon after her friend Jackie was killed in the parking lot? It doesn’t look good. I have to help if I can,” I said.

  He nodded, tight-lipped. “Be careful, Ivy.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Always.”

  Chapter 15

  My eyelids drooped with exhaustion as I drove my pearl-white Fiat crossover down Maple Street. It had been my mother’s car, which my dad had passed on to me after she died. It wasn’t as if the car represented her or made me feel closer to her, exactly, but I did always think of her, even for the briefest moment, when I drove it. She’d loved it, which meant I loved it.

  Right now, as I pulled into my driveway, I felt comforted by the memory of her presence in it. I pressed the programmed button to open my garage door, waited for it to open, and pulled in. Moments later I’d let Agatha into the backyard, leaving the French door open a crack, had kicked off my shoes, and collapsed onto the sofa.

  Sleep came almost instantly. I drifted off, a dream settling in. A giant loaf of bread. A cell phone with a cracked screen. A hand rising up through a bowl of proofing dough. I felt myself turn cold. I had to save her—whoever it was. Sandra. Was it Sandra? I grabbed ahold of the hand, recoiling at the clammy feel of it. A bell sounded. I let go. Saw it dangling, the fingers directed downward toward the inner wrist. I was too late.

  The bell rang again, startling me out of my slumber. I pried my eyes partway open. The room had grown dark. How long had I been asleep? I pushed myself halfway up, peering into the room as my vision adjusted to the darkness, calling for Agatha.

  She squirmed at end of the couch, then gave a put-upon snort.

  I’d heard something, hadn’t I? Or had I dreamt it?

  The doorbell rang, followed by Miguel’s voice calling for me. “Ivy, are you home?”

  That’s what had woken me up. I pushed myself up and shuffled to the entryway, releasing the dead bolt and opening the front door. Miguel stood there, concern worrying his face. He stepped in and wrapped me up in his arms. “Thank God you’re okay,” he said, exhaling with relief.

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” I asked, my voice muffled against his shoulder.

  He pulled back and retrieved a reusable grocery bag he’d set on the front porch. “I heard what happened at the bread shop. You found her?”

  He shut the door behind him and we walked to the kitchen. “Me and Mack Hebron. He dialed her phone and I heard it ringing. That’s how we tracked it.” I stopped to look up at him. “Miguel, it was in the flowerbed by the ladder Ben Nader showed us.”

  He set the grocery bag on the butcher-block island, giving me his full attention. “So Sandra climbed that ladder?”

  “Along with someone else, who then killed her up there.”

  He shook his head, as stunned by the whole thing as I was. “What does Emmaline think?”

  “She doesn’t have any leads yet.” He started unloading the bag, pulling out a head of napa cabbage, two carrots, a bunch of green onions, a red bell pepper, and something wrapped up from the butcher. “What’s all this?” I asked.

  “With your new schedule at the bread shop and after the trauma of today, I thought I’d make you dinner then put you to bed early.” I flicked my eyebrows up at him suggestively. He just smiled and got to work. “First things first.” He pulled a bottle of white wine from the bag, got two stemless glasses from the cupboard, withdrew the cork, and poured us each a glass.

  I sat on one of the stools at the counter and watched while he found a cast-iron skillet in my pots-and-pans cupboard, setting it on a burner to heat up. Next, he undid what turned out to be chicken thighs from the brown paper wrapping. He seasoned them with paprika, garlic, and onion, spritzed the pan with olive oil, and laid the chicken out to grill.

  Next, he washed the vegetables, got out a clean cutting board, and set to work chopping the cabbage, shredding the carrots, dicing the bell pepper, and chopping the green onion. I hopped off the stool to find him a wooden salad bowl, then went back to my wine.

  He checked the chicken before moving on to the dressing. In a coffee mug, he measured seasoned rice vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and sesame oil, stirring it together with a mini whisk.

  “That’s all that goes into it?”

  “Less is more, love.”

  I lowered my chin but looked up at him sheepishly through my eyelashes. I liked that little endearment.

  A few minutes later, he added sesame seeds and the dressing to the chopped salad, plated it for us in shallow wooden bowls, also from my cupboard, and laid the sliced chicken on top of the greens. He set one bowl in front of me, sat down on the other barstool with his, and we dug in.

  I didn’t say a word for a full minute as I ate. “Oh my God, this is so good,” I said, my mouth full.

  He laughed. “I figured you’d be hungry.”

  How right he was.

  I had the leftover tail end of some French bread I’d baked the day before. I got it from the plastic baggie it was in, tearing off a hunk for him as I returned to my seat and my salad. He used a bit of it to sop up the remaining dressing at the bottom of his bowl.

  It didn’t take us long to wipe out the entire salad. If there had been more, I would have eaten more.

  We cleaned up together and a few minutes later, we were sitting on the sofa. I reclined with my feet stretched out on his lap. He draped one arm across the back of the couch, lazily resting his other hand on my crossed ankles. “Be careful, Ivy.”

  I eyed him. “Have you been talking to my dad?”

  He shot out a quick breath. “No, but I know you.”

  “What do you know?” I asked.

  “Oh, all kinds of things, but about this specifically?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not having the energy to go anywhere else with him tonight. Another time, though, and I wanted to hear everything he thought he knew about me.

  “I know that you are going to put on your amateur sleuth hat and see what you can find out about Sandra. I know that you’re going to try to figure out who went up to the roof with her, and how she even knew about the ladder going up there. And I know that you won’t stop until you have the answers.”

  “God, you’re good,” I said.

  He cracked a smile. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “So you have.” We’d amateur sleuthed together, in fact, so it should have
come as no surprise that he’d know my mind. “It can’t be a coincidence that Sandra’s dead and Ben is in a coma. They have to be related.”

  “Were they friends?” he asked.

  “More like frenemies, I’d say. She was a little hard to take.”

  “Who else was she frenemies with?” he asked. “Or just straight-on enemies?”

  Names flitted through my mind like stocks on a ticker tape. Mack Hebron was in bold print. Maybe Ben’s wife. If there had ever been something between Ben and Sandra, she’d be a woman scorned. Unbidden, Tae, Ben’s replacement cameraman, came to mind. He had a motive for Ben, but did he have one for Sandra? Finally, I answered Miguel’s question with an exhausted, “I don’t know.”

  I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. Miguel moved my legs off the couch and helped me sit upright. “Come on, Ivy,” he said. “Up to bed.”

  “Wait. Agatha—”

  “I’ll walk her around the block. No worries.”

  After I kissed him, he turned me around by the shoulders and gave me a little shove toward my bedroom. “I’ll be back,” he said, already crouching down to harness up Agatha.

  I got myself ready for bed, slipping into sleep shorts and a tank before heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth and clean my face. I reached for my toothbrush, but it wasn’t in its normal spot. Weird. Had I been so out of it this morning at four thirty that I’d stuck it in the drawer? I checked all of the drawers. No toothbrush.

  Downstairs, I heard a faint clicking sound. A door? Was Miguel already back from walking Agatha? I called his name.

  Silence.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I spun around, suddenly more alert. The hand towel and bath towel, both of which had been neatly hanging from their towel racks when I’d left this morning were reversed, the hand towel hanging where the bath towel had been and vice versa. My breath caught in my throat.

  Someone had been in my house.

  “Miguel?” I called again.

  Still nothing.

  My skin felt hot, my nerves frayed. My heart dropped. I dropped to my knees and speed-crawled from the bathroom, through my bedroom, to the window overlooking the backyard. I’d left the patio lights on and solar lights dotted the landscape. From my vantage point, it didn’t look like anyone was lurking nearby.

  Still, my heart thundered. Someone had been in my house! Were they still here, or did the click I’d heard mean whoever it was had already left? I hoped for the latter.

  I stood and pressed myself against the wall and moved slowly from down the hallway to the kitchen, feeling like an FBI agent searching for a suspect. Only I was without a weapon or any backup. Where was Miguel?

  My mind raced, circling around until it landed on something. The tailgating car. The impact as it hit me. Was it the same person?

  Another thought careened into my brain. Luke. He’d warned me about Heather’s death wish for me. I hadn’t taken Luke very seriously when he’d shown up at my dad’s house during Billy and Emmaline’s engagement celebration to tell me that the woman he’d cheated on me with, and who he was still in a relationship with, wanted me dead. I was rethinking my cavalier response to that bombshell now. I inched closer to the kitchen. “Heather?” I called, then froze, scarcely breathing so I could listen.

  I couldn’t explain why, but I felt sure there was another presence in the house. Not a ghostly presence, but a real live human being. The air seemed to carry the breath of someone else. “Heather?” I said again.

  A click. The sound of the front door opening. Silence.

  I bolted toward the entryway, skidding to a stop when I saw the door was ajar. I grabbed ahold of the blown-glass Galileo thermometer Miguel had given me as a housewarming gift. It was not a good weapon, and I didn’t want to destroy it, but it was something, and right now I needed something. Anything. I edged up behind the door and peeked my head around, my elbow cocked, my hand clutching the glass.

  No one lurked on the front porch. No one ran across the lawn. I stepped onto the porch and peered around the corner to the driveway. The street was deserted. I heaved out the breath I’d been holding. Whoever it was, they were gone now.

  Back inside, I sank to the floor, my back against the wall of the entryway. How had someone broken into my house? And why? I didn’t want to believe it was Heather, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who’d be stalking me. On the heels of Ben Nader’s accident and Sandra Mays’s murder, I was fully freaking out.

  The handle of the front door jiggled. I jerked back, lifting the Galileo thermometer again.

  “Come on, Agatha.” Miguel’s tone was light and coaxing as he led my little fawn pug inside. He stopped abruptly when he spotted me. He went on instant alert. “What’s going on?”

  I fell back to a sitting position, the beautiful glass piece shaking in my hand. He reached out and took it from me, setting it back on the little table where I kept it. It took three tries before I managed to speak without my voice trembling. “Someone was in the house.”

  One of the things I’d come to love about Miguel Baptista as an adult was that he was no-nonsense. He didn’t look skeptical or question whether or not I had imagined it. He simply believed me and went into action. “Are they gone?”

  “Yes. At least, I think so.”

  He made sure the front door was locked, then quickly circled the house, checking the rooms, doors, and windows, making sure no one was hiding and that everything was secure. Back in the entryway, he took hold of my hands and pulled me to standing. “Are you okay?”

  I thought about how to answer that. “I’m shaken,” I finally said. I told him about the missing toothbrush and the rearrangement of the hand and bath towels, then about the sound I’d heard cluing me in to the fact that I hadn’t been alone.

  “Any sign of forced entry?” I asked, pulling myself together and slightly surprised at how easily the investigative jargon came out of my mouth.

  “The back window in your office is open. The screen’s off.”

  I slapped my hand to my forehead. “I opened the window last night when I was working on my website. I must have forgotten to close it.” I supposed it was possible that it was a random breaking and entering. A burglar seizing an opportunity.

  Miguel’s thoughts had gone in the same direction. “Your computer’s there. Nothing looks amiss.”

  I hadn’t checked to see if anything was missing, but I didn’t really have many valuables. My laptop was probably the most expensive thing I owned, if you didn’t count the baking supplies. It had all added up to a pretty penny, but really, who would break in to take any of that? Add to that the fact that the toothbrush was missing, and the rearrangement of the towels. Breaking into a house to steal a used Sonicare was not something any burglar worth his salt would do. I dismissed the idea of it being random. The toothbrush and towels made it personal.

  “I’m staying here tonight,” Miguel said.

  I worked to control my still trembling hands. I thought about refusing. Insisting that he go home. That I was old enough and strong enough and independent enough to manage on my own, thank you very much.

  Instead I nodded, because who was I kidding? I did not want to be alone tonight. Not even for a second.

  Chapter 16

  Early the next morning, I awoke to my alarm. My anxiety from the night before had settled into a mild worry, which I pushed aside. Instinctively, I checked my phone to see if Emmaline had texted with an update on Sandra Mays or Ben Nader. She had not. Or if Penelope Branford had messaged me while I slept, about a doctor’s appointment she’d forgotten about, asking me to take her first thing. There was nothing from her. Or if Olaya needed me to pick anything up on my way in to the bread shop this morning. She didn’t.

  The only message I had was from Felix. A friend is coming into work with me today. She’ll be here to help, so take the morning off and sleep in!

  I lay back and processed this. Felix had a female friend who wanted to see what life running
a bakery would be like. Was I jumping to conclusions to assume it was a girlfriend? Yes, I decided, I definitely was. I hardly knew Felix, but still. If it was his girlfriend, it made good sense that she’d want to see what the life of a baker would be like, especially if she had any plans to tie her apron strings to his.

  I debated whether or not I should go in to Yeast of Eden anyway. I was not experienced, by any stretch of the imagination, but I was probably more experienced than Felix’s friend. I lay back to think about it, letting my eyes close.

  * * *

  I woke up to the clatter of someone moving around in the house. That mild worry ratcheted up and my heart seized reflexively. I pushed myself up to sitting, scanning the room. Panic gripped me. Where was Agatha?

  I leapt out of bed and hurried down the hallway, a feeling of déjà vu crashing into me. I slowed as I reached the kitchen, peering around the corner. The adrenaline that had been pumping through me suddenly crashed. It was Miguel. He had coffee brewing. A few pieces of kibble remained in Agatha’s bowl while she lay contentedly in a sliver of sunlight stretching across the floor. Miguel stood at the stove, manning a frying pan that I could see was filled with vibrant yellow. He slid a silicone spatula around the edge of the pan, loosening the eggs before expertly flipping them. He spooned what looked like sautéed chopped bell peppers, mushrooms, and onions into the pan, added a sprinkling of shredded cheese, then flipped half of the omelet onto itself. He cut it in half with the spatula before sliding each of the two sections onto their own plates. He picked up a bowl, this one with strawberries and blueberries mixed together, and scooped it out onto each of the plates before turning toward the table. He spotted me and a slow smile spread. “Morning, sunshine.”

  “Morning,” I said. Agatha raised her head, her bulbous eyes looking at me for a moment before they closed again and she gave herself to the sunlight. I sat at the table, feeling suddenly self-conscious about the state of my hair and pajamas and just . . . everything. I slept with my mass of curls in a topknot to prevent an onslaught of tangles, my sleep shorts and tank were rumpled, at best, and I was sure I looked worse for wear after not bothering to remove any traces of makeup before I’d crashed the night before. A weaker man might have turned and run for the hills, but Miguel poured us both coffee and sat down.