Muffin to Die For, page 6
At least I knew where to find him.
Chapter 15
Avery
Ifollowed Jude's directions off Main Street until we pulled up in front of a long wooden building with another small building out back. "That's his workshop," Jude said. "I got one of his crafts last year for Dad's birthday. When I came to pick it up, he gave me a tour of the place."
"Why didn't you say that before?"
Jude shrugged one shoulder. "Not sure it was relevant. I'm still not. We don't know that Jake was ever out here. Just thought you'd want to know why he might remember me. It's not like we dated or anything. He is married, after all."
Jude would never do that. It was really the only prerequisite for them dating a person, that they were otherwise single unless it was an established polyamory situation. They'd been hurt once, thinking that's what they were involved in and being made out to be the interloper. They were cautious these days about what situations they got into.
Me? I wasn't always sure I could handle one partner at a time. Let alone more than that. I wasn't sure I doubted I'd want to share any person I did end up with. I certainly didn't want to have to hide anything. That got too complicated.
I'd seen Jake with his daughter and how he'd talked about Charisma. Hard to believe he had some secret life. He’d seemed like such a good guy. People were always surprising me, so maybe I was wrong.
We climbed out of the car and walked toward the main building. "Would he be in there or in his workshop?" I asked, not sure where to look. Or what we would say when we found him.
“Hard to tell,” Jude said as we stepped through the door. "He has a buzzer you can ring that will notify him a customer’s here in the shop."
There didn't seem to be anyone here. Just a counter with a few large items behind it. Sculptures? I wasn't sure if that was even what they'd be called. Some seemed to be made of metal. Others from wood. Still others combined what I probably would have considered trash. There were smaller items scattered throughout the shop, some with tags hanging off them.
I ran a finger over the bumpy ridge of a crow's wing. Shredded tire. Weird, but interesting.
A loud thwap came from the back of the store, like a screen door being caught by the wind. I would think he'd want to keep that secured when he's not even here. "He's not afraid someone will steal from him by leaving this place unsupervised while he's out there?" I asked as I continued to look around.
"I hope that is not what you plan to do, friend of Mx. Peña."
I looked over at the man who had stepped through the doorway behind the counter. He was barely an inch taller than me, and I wasn't exactly on the tall side myself. His brown hair had some gray shot through it, although I hadn't thought he was much older than us. Maybe a few years, not quite forty. His green eyes flitted between Jude and me before settling on them.
"Why aren't they saying anything?" he asked. "Please tell me they weren't being serious."
Jude shook their head. "This is Avery, Colby. Ze is as good with human interaction as you are."
He relaxed at that. "Well, that's okay then."
Being antisocial — not that I truly was, I just liked my alone time — had never been said to be a good thing before. He glanced at me, then back at Jude. "What brings you out here today? You need another gift? I have something similar —"
"We need to ask you some questions," I said.
"About one of my pieces?"
"No." Jude shot me a glance and winced. They reached into their bag and lifted Pickle out.
Colby laughed and reached over the counter to take the cat. "I don't usually see someone pull a cat from a purse. Just the once, I had a customer come from the city who had one of those tiny dogs in her purse. But never a cat." He scratched Pickle behind the ears and looked back at us. "What questions you got?"
"How well did you know Jake Diaz?" I asked him.
His fingers stilled on Pickle's head, and his face went blank. "Why would you ask me that?" He glanced at Jude. "You can't think I'd do anything to hurt him."
"We never said that," Jude assured him. "We're trying to figure out who saw him last. Your name came up. Was he a customer here?"
He hesitated for a long moment then set Pickle on the counter. "Yeah." He turned from us. "He came in a time or two. Haven't seen him for a while. Heard he was fighting with that wife of his. If you want to know what happened, you should talk to her. Now, I've got work to do. If you want to purchase something, get in touch."
I glanced at Jude when we were back in the car. "We didn't get much out of him."
"You don't think so?" Jude asked. "He knew Jake. Did you hear the bite in his voice when he mentioned Charisma? Something’s going on there. We need to talk to her again."
"You think she'll tell us? We already tried to talk to her once. It didn't get us anywhere."
“So, we try again. We can't give up. Alex will have to do something about the case. I don't want that to be taking you in when we all know you didn't do anything.”
What were we supposed to do? The question still ran through my head the next morning as I pulled trays of cookies out of the oven and replaced them with yet another pan of treats. The scents of cinnamon and apples wrapped around me, but even that wasn't enough to drive out the fact we didn't know what had happened.
Colby had pointed us back to Charisma, right where we'd started. Could it really all come back to an angry spouse? Could it be that simple?
I glanced up when footsteps clomped down the stairs. A moment later, Jude appeared in the bakery kitchen. Had that much time passed? I thought I would have gotten more baking done before it was time to open. When I looked over at the clock, I saw I wasn't late. Jude was just early.
Which did not happen.
"Is everything all right?" I asked them.
They looked at me, shook their head, then finished coming into the kitchen and dropped onto the stool I largely ignored while in the midst of baking and took a long sip from their tall covered mug. Then, they said, "A friend of ours, one of our best customers, was killed right outside our place —"
"I wouldn't be so sure about that."
I turned my head, my hands buried wrist deep in bread dough, to stare at Alex. "How did you get in here?"
He held up a key. "Jude gave me this if I needed to get in."
"For emergencies," Jude said. "I don't think this constitutes. So, what are you doing here?"
"I saw your light on. It seemed early for it. I wanted to be sure you were all right."
"This isn't early," I told him. “I've been at work a couple of hours already. I need to have some of this ready before we open the doors.”
"What do you mean," Jude asked their stepbrother as I turned back to my dough, "about him not being killed right out there? Avery found him there."
"Doesn't mean that's where he was killed."
"Is that what you're saying? That someone dumped his body? Why our place?"
"We're still looking into that. I wish we had those answers, trust me. The two of you aren't helping by stirring up trouble."
"What trouble?" I slid the dough into the oven. "We haven't done anything." So much for ignoring him.
"Is that really what you think?" Alex asked when I turned to him. He held up a finger. "First, the widow and the health center. Now, I hear you went by the fitness center, Skyrocket, and out to Colby Olson's place. Did I miss anything?"
I shook my head and glanced over at Jude. They were sipping their coffee and looking away from their stepbrother. Well, I could see they weren't going to be any help right now. Not even with this whole thing being their idea in the first place. I supposed I would have to deal with Alex.
"I'm sure there's no law against us going any of those places. Aside from Charisma's, they were all places of business. Is there a reason we shouldn't have set foot across the threshold?"
Alex let out a sigh, but I'd already turned back to the counter. I still had more food to get ready before opening. His frustration could wait.
"What have you found out so far?"
I was surprised he didn't demand we butt out right this instant. I wasn't sure what to do. I turned to Jude, but they were staring at him.
"What?" he demanded. "I've known both of you long enough to know when something's a waste of breath. You're not going to stop short of me locking you up. I'm not sure that would help, and Miguel would look at me with those sad, disappointed eyes. Not worth it. Will you just please share with me whatever you find out and promise not to go after a potential killer on your own? As disappointed in me as Miguel would be for arresting you, it would be a thousand times worse if I let you die. So, can you do that?"
I looked at Jude, who was looking back at me, then we turned to Alex. "We really don't know much," Jude told him. "Neither Charisma nor Meghan told us much of anything. Lara Pace said Hector Ball was meeting Jake. Hector said Jake had something going on with Colby Olson. Colby said Jake had been arguing with Charisma. We haven't gone back to talk to her again, though."
He swore. "Those are all the rumors we've heard as well. If you hear anything else..."
Jude nodded. "We'll let you know. Don't worry, Alex."
He smiled. "But, I'm good at that. I'll leave you two to do what you're good at and get out of your hair."
"Thank you." Jude pressed their hands together.
Alex shook his head and left the kitchen. I looked at the dough in front of me, forgetting what I'd been doing as I came back to the question Alex had raised earlier.
Why would someone dump Jake's dead body behind our bakery?
Sanders wound around my legs as soon as I entered the apartment. I scooped him up and nuzzled my face in his fur. It had been a long day, and I'd had to deal with more people than I cared to. At least the cats didn’t ask me for more than I could give. They accepted me as I was and only asked for food and cuddles when they decided it was time for them. I understood that kind of contact. "Sometimes you just want someone next to you, huh?"
I wished sometimes that was all that was expected from me. Any relationship I'd started with another human being came with so many more expectations than that. Even when they claimed to be understanding at first. When you were only intermittently interested in sex and didn't try to hide that, people tended to be put off, thinking it had something to do with them instead of just the way you were.
I pushed away those thoughts and the image of Alex they'd brought into my head. He wouldn’t ever think of me like that. He'd known me since I was like six years old, and I was sure he still saw me as that weird kid who hung around with Jude and tried to get him to play with us.
"Why do my thoughts keep jumping tracks like this, Sanders?" I sighed. "Let's put that train back in the station if it's going to be so erratic." I carried him over to the couch, where I plopped down and put my feet up. A little mindless tv could fix this problem.
Maybe it would clear my head to figure out what any of the information we'd learned meant. There hadn't been much chance for that with the rush we'd gotten on the bakery today. Had that just been because we'd been closed the last couple days, or were people that morbidly curious?
I wasn't sure I really wanted the answer to that question.
I'd started flipping through the listings on what was streaming when a knock sounded on the door. Great. I hadn't even taken a shower after work. I figured I'd have time to get to that before I had to deal with anyone. Maybe if I ignored them, they'd go away. However, I wasn't sure who would have stepped over the gate to come up the stairs, especially when Jude stood right there behind the counter.
Another knock sounded on the door. "Come on, Ave, I know you're in there. Jude told me you came up here."
I brought Sanders up to press my forehead to his face. "Seriously? What does he have to be doing here?"
Sanders meowed and pressed his nose to my glasses. I laughed and set him down. "You are no help, you know that?" Now I would have to clean the nose print off my glasses. The other two kittens were collapsed in a heap together on the cat bed in the corner of the living room. Who knew what trouble they'd gotten into that had tired them out so much? They weren't going to be much help to me either. I walked over to the door.
"What can I do for you, Officer?"
Alex groaned and ran a hand through his hair. "Do I look like I'm in uniform?"
I ran my gaze up and down his body. Gone was the light blue uniform shirt and black slacks. In their place was a pair of battered jeans and a slim-fitting gray t-shirt. "No," I managed to say through a suddenly dry throat.
"You feeling all right, Avery?" He reached out toward me as if he would check for a fever or something.
I jerked back from him. "I'm perfectly fine. Don't worry. I wouldn't risk spreading some infection through my baking."
"I wasn't thinking of anything like that. You just… never mind," he said with a shake of his head. "This isn't why I came up here."
"Why did you then?" I knew it sounded rude even as the words came out of my mouth. I'd already used up my putting-on-a-smile-for-other-people ability points for the day. I needed the rest of the day alone to recharge them. "Jude's downstairs. They're the one you should be worried about."
"Is there a reason?" Alex still leaned against the door frame, though his posture seemed straighter. As if he was prepared to shoot off and go to the rescue at a moment's notice.
I shook my head. "Just that they're your sibling, not me. No need for you to worry about me. I have my own brother for that."
"Trust me," Alex said, "I've never mistaken you for my sibling."
"Of course not. I'm nothing like Jude. Even I know that. I couldn’t run the counter like they do. We'd lose all our customer base if I tried."
He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Still, no sound came out. Finally, he shook his head. "Jude is full of it," he muttered.
That didn't make sense to me, but instead of clarifying, he headed back for the stairs. "Wait," I called out to him.
He paused and glanced back over his shoulder. "What?" He arched an eyebrow.
"Did you learn something else about Jake's case? Is that why you came up here?"
He looked like he would say something, but he shook his head. "No, Avery," he said. "That's not why I came up here." Then he went back down the stairs, leaving me staring after him.
Sanders meowed and rubbed against my legs, and I picked him back up. "Well," I said, "that was weird."
If he hadn't been here about Jake, what had all that been?
Chapter 16
Jude
Iwalked down the steps, casting a glance toward the kitchen. Did Avery realize how twisted up ze had my brother. I thought about that look on his face when he came back down from the apartment the night before. I’d teased him how no one, especially Avery, could read his inscrutable looks.
I wish it hadn’t been more than him not knowing how to express his feelings. Our conversation had continued to run through my head.
“It doesn't matter. I can't take Avery to dinner. Or lunch. Or even for a freaking coffee. Not if I don't want to be pulled off this case. I don't know why I let you make me think this was a good idea."
"What are you talking about? Why would you get pulled?"
"The captain knows you're my sibling. The victim was found behind your place of business. If Detective Weixel hadn’t spoken up for me, I'd be buried under paperwork right now. If I set a single toe out of line... Which guess what? Dating one of the lead suspects would be stepping way out of line. If I do that, the captain will yank me so fast, I'll leave skid marks in my wake."
"Avery's not a suspect," I argued. "You know ze would never do anything like that. Did you talk to —"
"I know that," Alex said, before I could finish my question, his voice low and rough. "I still have to prove it, or Avery stays right at the top of the list. I don’t like it, but I can't act on anything until we can completely clear Avery and have the right person behind bars. That's all there is to it." He took a deep breath. “You need to stay out of this, or it will make everything worse.”
I dislodged the memory as I moved over to flip the sign to open. The last thing I wanted to do was make things worse. For Alex or us. But, I didn’t know if I could let this go. Alex might not see Avery as a suspect, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have to arrest zem if the department pressured him.
No way was I letting that happen.
I had just started the computer when the bell over the door rang. I hadn't expected customers this soon, hoping that the curious lookie-loos would have been appeased with whatever they'd gotten yesterday.
Had any of them given Jake the time of day when he was alive? Now, they all acted like they'd been his best friend.
Did we even know that much about him?
I'd thought he was a nice guy, but Lara had described him as a user. Both Hector and Colby had hinted at some secrets Jake had. Of course, everyone held parts of themselves back, didn't they? It's not like I went right up to people and told them I'd lost my mom at a young age and sometimes worried I was unlovable. You didn't just do that, but some would come back at you and accuse you of lying.
Maybe that's all his secrets were. Information other people weren't entitled to, no matter what they thought.
I shook away those thoughts as the customer approached the counter. "Welcome to Status Dough," I said. "How can we treat your taste buds today?"
The woman let out a laugh, though there was a sniffle behind it. "That's clever," she said, "but I didn't come here to purchase anything." She brushed her hair back, and I had a flash of memory: red eyes, a puffy face. True sadness.
"You were at the health center. The receptionist. I'm sorry —"
"Emily." She smiled slightly. "I don't blame you for not remembering, even though I cried all over you."
My lips twitched at that. "I wouldn't say all over me. It's not the worst greeting I've ever gotten from someone."
