The Walking Bread Read online

  She stopped, the key in the lock. “What?”

  “If you’re off the case, who’s in charge now?”

  She grimaced. “Lane took it over.”

  My eyebrows shot up. From my experience and from Em’s stories, Robert Lane didn’t get directly involved with the goings-on in town. He was the politician, schmoozing and delegating, while Em was the brains and the muscle of Santa Sofia Sheriff’s Department. “He’s actually leading the investigation?”

  She nodded. “Which tells you how worried he is. Bad PR for the department if we can’t solve it. Bad PR for the department if the deputy sheriff’s boyfriend is the main suspect. Bad publicity no matter which way you slice it.”

  “But I thought he didn’t get his hands dirty.”

  “He doesn’t.” She swept her arms out to her sides, opening them wide as if she were gesturing to the whole property, or maybe even to the city. “He doesn’t do . . . this. He doesn’t investigate a missing tooth, let alone a murder. But he thinks proving Billy’s guilt is the lesser of two evils.”

  “And you’ll get in the way of that.”

  “I need to prove Billy’s innocent. We have opposing goals. He’s cut me off at the knees.”

  From the outside looking in, people thought Robert Lane called the shots, but from the inside looking out, I knew better. Emmaline ran the department. She did everything. Her boss was a figurehead, putting in the least amount of effort, but reaping the maximum benefit. “Does he even know what to do?” I asked, my fear for Billy at the forefront of my mind. Not that there was a playbook for solving a murder, but some general investigative skills were essential.

  She shook her head as she threw up her hands. “I have no idea. He speaks at events and the Rotary Club and has long lunches and golfs.” And then she grabbed my wrist. “I’m worried, Ivy.”

  Two questions hung between us, left unspoken. Did Lane have what it takes to solve a murder and exonerate Billy? And would he even try?

  “How are you able to let me in if you’re off the case?” I asked as Em turned the key. The last thing I wanted—and that she and Billy needed—was for her to get reprimanded, or worse, fired, for breaking the rules of her job.

  She smirked. “I told him the cars needed to be photographed for the committee. They already processed the hangar, so he didn’t have any reason not to approve it. I have to use everything at my disposal to my advantage before he—”

  “Before he what?” I asked.

  “Before he realizes that I’m smarter than he is. Before he realizes that I didn’t stop.”

  She took a breath. Closed her eyes. “Billy asked me to marry him.”

  My heart instantly swelled, but just as quickly, a vice gripped it, squeezing until I thought I might explode.

  “We’re supposed to spend our lives together. To have kids and grow old together.”

  And it could all be ripped away from them.

  “I am not going to leave that in the hands of Robert Lane.”

  “Good,” I said, and I knew she’d be like a dog with a bone, unwilling to give up until she had sucked out every last bit of marrow.

  “Do you remember those old Nero Wolfe novels you turned me on to in high school?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said, suddenly knowing exactly where she was going with this. Nero Wolfe was a fictional detective who tended to orchids, was a gourmand, and was loathe to leave his New York City brownstone. Yet, there were always crimes to be solved. What was a brilliantly eccentric armchair detective to do? Rely on someone else to do the legwork, namely Archie Goodwin.

  Em wasn’t going to stop her investigation. “I’m Nero,” she said.

  But if she got stalled, I’d be there. “And I’m Archie.”

  Our gazes met, a silent affirmation of our common goal. Once she pushed the door open, I followed her into the hangar’s office and through to the main area. Everything looked exactly as it had yesterday, with the glaring exception of Max’s missing car. “They took it for evidence,” Em said.

  “To the county?” I asked, knowing that Santa Sofia was too small to have a forensics team.

  She answered with a low “Mmm-hmm.”

  We took our time, walking around each car, taking in every detail. I took picture after picture after picture so I could finish documenting the artistic details I hadn’t finished the day before. I’d hoped to make some discovery the police had missed. Em and I scoured the area around each car, but nothing was out of order. As we came to a stop in front of Billy’s Jabberwocky car, the reality of the situation hit me in a new way. Someone had managed to get into the hangar, kill Max, and stage the body as if it were part of the art car. Not only had Max been murdered, Billy had also been framed. It was a layer of malice I hadn’t thought of before.

  I started with the most obvious question that needed answering. Was Max killed and put into the zombie mouth of his car before or after it was brought here? Unfortunately, that wasn’t a question we could answer. Maybe after the county forensic team dug into things, they’d be able to make that determination, but from my novice point of view, I couldn’t say.

  I put my camera on top of Billy’s car and walked the perimeter of the room. I studied the hangar with the hypothesis that the killer had come here either knowing Max was already in the car, with Max dead, or with Max still alive. Each of the scenarios was as likely as the next. I’d initially thought that the most likely entry possibility was that he—or she—had come in through the front entrance, which looked like a massive garage door. I hadn’t noticed it from the outside, but from the inside, I could tell it was bisected horizontally. Five yellow straps, each starting at the top of the door and hanging horizontally, wound around clamping devices along the bottom. From what I could gather, the control panel next to the door controlled the door’s movement. Pressing the top button would cause the two halves of the door to angle out as the pulleys forced the halves to collapse together like the folds of an accordion. Even if someone could open them from the outside, which didn’t seem possible, having the hangar wide open and on display was pretty conspicuous. Unnecessarily risky, especially if Max had unwittingly come here with his killer.

  Emmaline had moved to the now-empty space where Max’s car had been the day before. She stood, hands on hips, turning in a slow circle, but like the rest of the hangar, there didn’t seem to be anything amiss. Not a single clue about what might have happened.

  “If we assume that the killer actually was here, how could he have gotten in?” I mused aloud as I came back around to Billy’s car.

  “Based on that scenario, he’d have to have a key to the office door we came through, would need to know how to open the hangar doors, and have the key, or”—she pointed toward the hallway connecting the office and the bathroom—“he could have come in through the window over there. Which only makes sense if Max was here and the killer needed to sneak in undetected.”

  I thought about that as I went to take a quick peek. A window, smack in the middle of the wall between the office and the bathroom, was taped up with a square piece of thick plastic. “Was it broken?” I asked.

  She hadn’t moved from the spot where Max’s car had been. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s odd. The glass was on the outside, rather than the inside. So let’s assume that the killer was already here somehow, but he couldn’t get out through the hangar door or the office door. His only other option was the window?”

  “That still leaves the question of how he would have gotten in here in the first place, and was Max here, or did the killer haul in the body to stage in the car?”

  I peeked into the bathroom, quickly cataloging the room. A small sink was mounted to the wall. A simple mirror hung above it. A utilitarian shelf held a plastic pump bottle of soap, a roll of paper towels, and three rolls of toilet paper. Whoever had used the toilet last had left the seat up and had forgotten to flush. I shook my head. Men.

  Back in the hallway, I looked more closely at the window. Sprea
ding my arms, I gauged the size. It wasn’t a huge opening, but it was plenty big. An average-sized man or woman could certainly fit through. Easy in, easy out. Emmaline’s supposition about the way the window was broken stuck with me, though. Something didn’t compute about it. I spun around to head back to the wide-open space of the hangar, but stopped short, nearly barreling into Emmaline.

  “Whoa,” she said, back-stepping to avoid a full-on collision.

  She registered the expression on my face. “What?” she asked.

  I gestured toward the blocked window. “Didn’t an alarm go off when the window was broken?”

  “Apparently it wasn’t armed. We talked to the guy who manages the hangar. He said the alarm is always armed when no one’s here.”

  “Always, but not yesterday.”

  “He says it was armed when he left. He’s the one who set it.”

  I followed Emmaline and headed back to the hangar. We both gravitated to Billy’s Jabberwocky car.

  “Do you think Max was killed here?”

  Em shook her head. “I don’t think so, Ivy.”

  Emmaline had a sixth sense for things like this. Even without an explanation, I would believe her, but I asked anyway. “Why?”

  “Mostly a hunch. Usually the cars are driven here by a towing company. Lane is looking into that. Max wouldn’t have any reason to be here—”

  “Unless he tagged along with the car transport. Which I wouldn’t put past him. He was obsessed with winning, so would he leave his car in the hands of some strangers?”

  She considered this. “Good point.”

  “Or,” I said, another possibility surfacing, “he and his killer could have both come with the towing company.”

  “Or he could have been killed somewhere else and the killer came along with the cars, stayed behind, and put Max into position.”

  “Do you know the towing company that brought the cars?”

  “Mike Moreno was working on that,” she said as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and pressed a speed dial number. “Moreno,” she said after a few seconds. “Quick question. Did you figure out who brought the first round of cars to the hangar?”

  She listened, but looked at me, the smooth skin of her forehead furrowing. “So Litman arranged it?”

  “Arranged what?” I asked in a stage whisper.

  She held up her finger, started to say something to Moreno, but then, like a flipped light switch, her expression changed. Fire burned underneath her coffee skin and her eyes flared. The tone of the conversation changed and it was painfully obvious that Mike Moreno was no longer on the other end of the line. I knew my friend nearly as well as I knew myself. In some ways I probably knew her better. She was livid, but she swallowed her fury, somehow managing to control her voice. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I know, sir.”

  As she listened, she met my gaze, her jaw tensing. I jumped to the only possible conclusion. Emmaline Davis was not one to kowtow to authority, which was one of the reasons she majored in criminal justice in college and went into law enforcement. She had always wanted to be the one in charge, even when we were kids. Her career as deputy sheriff let her be the boss in her day-to-day life. The only person she had to answer to, and that she’d call “sir,” was Robert Lane. I raised my eyebrows in a silent question, but her response to me was a quick shake of her head; then she was speaking again. Explaining. “The committee’s photographer needed to—”

  She yanked the phone away from her ear as a voice boomed, sounding like it was coming from a bullhorn instead of a cellular device. “Davis, do you think I’m an idiot, or are you just trying to get yourself fired?”

  Em put the phone back to her ear, a flush creeping up her neck. “Sir?”

  Even then, I could hear his side of the conversation. He growled in exasperation. “I am well aware that the committee photographer is the prime suspect’s sister. Your fiancé’s sister.”

  Emmaline cupped her hand across her forehead, pressing her fingers and thumb to her temples. “But, sir, I think Litman was ki—”

  “Goddammit, Davis,” he interrupted. “You are off this case.”

  She winced, pulling the phone clear of her ear again. “I know, but—”

  He cut her off again. “If you know, then why are you there? Get back here. Now!” he bellowed. “Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said through a grimace. She hung up and turned back to me. “He’s a little upset.”

  “So I gathered,” I said.

  “I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re having a banner week, aren’t we?”

  “We’re going to figure it out,” I said, squeezing her hand, hoping against hope that I was right.

  Chapter 7

  Olaya Solis was like my Yoda. She’d taught me not only about bread, but also about life. In baking, you took a starter and from that, sourdough bread was born. It was a cycle, but instead of starting with a handful of ingredients, transforming them into a loaf of bread, I was starting with a set of clues, and I’d end up identifying a killer. By the time I was done, Billy would be exonerated.

  After our morning excursion to the hangar, Emmaline headed back to the sheriff’s station to get chewed out by Sheriff Lane, and I drove along the PCH thinking about what I knew so far and where to go next. I let the fresh salt air waft into the car through my open window, cleansing my mind and my body. And then, out of nowhere, I had a sudden hankering to bake. To try using the sourdough starter I had fermenting in my kitchen. I craved the smell of yeast, and I craved a piece of crusty sourdough bread slathered with butter.

  Making sourdough bread was a process. And it was as much an art as it was science. I couldn’t wait until I could spring for a proofing box. In the meantime, I kept my starter in a large glass bowl. I’d been feeding it, letting it bubble, and rise, and foam. Because of the cool temperature in my house, the starter had taken almost two weeks to be strong enough to use. Today was the day I’d be making sourdough bread.

  It didn’t take very long, as it turns out. I mixed the dough, shaped it into two ten-inch oval loaves, and set them aside to rise. After an hour, it was ready to bake. Thirty minutes later, the scent of baking bread filled the kitchen. The loaves were a deep golden brown when I pulled them from the oven. As good as they smelled, I didn’t actually want to eat any. I left them on a rack to cool, got back into my car, and headed to Ocean Drive. A few minutes later, I pulled into the back parking lot of Yeast of Eden. The discovery of Max’s body had zapped my appetite, but suddenly I craved one of Olaya’s skull cookies. She made them every other day, hiding them amidst the bread shop’s daily offerings like Easter eggs tucked away for children to find. And that’s exactly what happened. Little eyes would light up with excitement when they spotted one of the decorated cookies, modeled after the Day of the Dead sugar skulls, tucked behind a loaf of rye bread, or poking out from behind a mass of scones or croissants. Yeast of Eden didn’t make the traditional sweets that a bakery did. “I make artisan bread,” Olaya said. “I must stay true to my passion and my culture.” Her sugar skull cookies were the exception to her rule.

  They weren’t overly sweet, but the taste of the sugar cookie was so satisfying. And right now I needed that type of satisfaction.

  I walked in through the back entrance, straight into the kitchen. The bakery racks overflowed with baguettes, boules, rustic loaves, croissants, and a number of other Yeast of Eden offerings. I searched high and low, but there were no sugar skulls to be found.

  Bypassing the office and the ovens, I abandoned the kitchen and went to the front of the bread shop. As always, the lobby was abuzz with bread lovers. Mandy, a young college student who’d been working at Yeast of Eden, manned the cases, along with a part-time high school student, while Olaya worked the register. Together, they were a well-oiled machine.

  I took my place at the end of the line to wait my turn, standing behind a woman holding a toddler in her arms. He look
ed over his mom’s shoulder, his slobbery mouth chomping down on three of his chubby fingers. His deep brown eyes were red-rimmed. I scrunched my face up, blew a raspberry, and made googly eyes at him.

  With one hand still in his mouth, he balled up the other and rubbed his tired eyes. His lips quavered, pulling into a frown, then a smile. “It’s okay, buddy.” I quickly scanned the bread case, spotting a sugar skull cookie next to the salted pretzels. I waved my hand to get Mandy’s attention and pointed to the cookie. She made a face at me like, really, you’re going to take one of the kid cookies? I notched my head toward the little boy. It looked like he’d given up the battle between laughing and crying. He was winding up, ready to drop his jaw and belt out a toddler-sized wail.

  The little boy’s mom bounced him up and down on her hip as Mandy handed me the cookie. I held it up for the little boy to see and, like a light switch turning off, his cheeks pulled up and his cry turned into a laugh in that way that exhausted two-year-olds can.

  “Excuse me,” I said as I tapped the woman on her shoulder. “Is it okay if I give—”

  The words froze on my lips. The little boy’s mother was Laura, Miguel’s sister—who happened to hate me with a fiery passion.

  The little boy reached his chubby, slobbery hand toward the skull cookie.

  “Hi, um, Laura,” I said, anything more intelligible failing me.

  “Ivy,” she said. The disdain dripping from her voice matched the expression on her face.

  “Cookie.” The little boy lunged toward me, his arm outstretched. “Cookie?”

  I raised my eyebrows at Laura. Her answer was a grimace as she snatched the colorful skull from my hand. But then she turned to her little boy, her scowl turning into a compassionate smile, and offered it to him. At long last, he took his slobbery fingers from his mouth, giggled, and clapped his plump hands together. And then he took the cookie from his mother and started gnawing on it.

  “Your bread,” Olaya said from behind the cash register. She held out a brown gift-style bag, a sticker with the Yeast of Eden logo stuck on the front. Three baguettes artfully emerged from the top, looking like they came from a French sidewalk patisserie.