A Murder Yule Regret, page 8
“I can’t take you to the bread shop, Ags,” I said, giving her my pouty lips.
She wasn’t placated. She sat down on her haunches and looked up at me with her giant eyes. That was all it took. “Okay, you win,” I said. “Come on. Doggie daycare!”
I harnessed her up and led her to the car, depositing her on the blanket stretched across the backseat. Her tail curled, and she almost seemed to have a smile on her face. Impossible, I knew, but still . . .
Agatha was a little diabolical.
From my driveway, I could see Mrs. Branford standing at the curb in front of her cute, old Craftsman-style house. The warm taupe siding, combined with the creamy white window trim, made it one of the most welcoming houses on a street filled with lovely, welcoming homes.
A person’s home, I’d come to realize, was as telling as his or her wardrobe. Mrs. Branford’s spruced home reflected her spruced countenance. She had her tidy collection of velour lounge suits. She had notebooks chock-full of neat scribblings about each of the local crimes we’d had a hand in solving. Her furniture was old, but it was all highly functional, and not a trace of dust could be found in the house, or in her mind.
Her porch tilted slightly—as if some part of the house wanted to show its external age just like Mrs. Branford’s snowy hair and slightly hunched shoulders showed hers, but overall, Mrs. Branford and her house were tidy reflections of each other.
In the same way, Miguel’s bungalow was as laid-back as he was, and my Tudor reflected my traditional side. People whose houses had perfectly kept yards tended to be more fastidious than their neighbors who had a ladder carelessly lying in the front yard, or who had a flower bed crowded with weeds. It was an interesting way to study people.
I backed out of my driveway and drove the short distance to Mrs. Branford’s house. She stood there with her cane resting on her shoulder in the same way a happy fisherman might have carried his pole. Her cane was more for show than it was for physical support, although I had seen her manipulate its use a few times when it suited her need.
Mrs. Branford jumped spritely into the car’s passenger seat, spinning around to greet Agatha with, “Why, hello there, sweet girl.”
I smiled. Mrs. Branford was Agatha’s second mama. When I had a long day at Yeast of Eden, or a photography shoot that would keep me away from home for more than a few hours, it was usually Mrs. Branford to the rescue. She loved the company, and Agatha loved the attention. “It’s a doggie daycare day,” I said, turning the car around again and heading to the Waggin’ Tail to drop her off.
A short while later, Mrs. Branford perched on a stool in the Yeast of Eden kitchen. The bread shop was closed, but the ovens were fired up, and the scent of baking bread filled the kitchen. Olaya was working on several Christmas Star Twisted Breads. The dough had already risen. She’d divided each mound into four sections, patted each one into a twelve-inch circle, and slathered three of them with raspberry jam.
This particular holiday bread had several steps to it. She layered the jam-covered rounds, one on top of the next, four-high, like stacks of thin crepes, the final layers without jam. She placed a round cutter smack in the center of each stack, pressing just enough to make a faint circle in the dough. Next, she took a knife and created a starburst design by cutting from the embossed circle out to the edge, slicing through all the layers. Finally, two by two, she twisted the strips together, which revealed the layers of jam. “It is messy, but as it rises and bakes, all that messiness disappears.”
“Quite beautiful, Olaya,” Mrs. Branford said.
Olaya dipped her head. A small thank-you. Their relationship hadn’t always been smooth—or even existent—but they’d found common ground and had become friends, though they didn’t like to admit it. They were more alike than not, and they each knew it deep down.
When she was done twisting all the dough and had set them all aside to rest, Olaya took four baked star breads from the oven. They were golden brown, the layers of raspberry jam giving them a festive look. She set them next to another four, which had been cooling. “Ivy, if you would, brush these four with the melted butter and dust with the sugar,” she told me, indicating what had to have been the first four she’d baked that day.
I used a pastry brush to coat each star loaf with butter, then sprinkled confectioner’s sugar over it with a small sieve. It looked like a light layer of snow had fallen. Olaya was right. There was not a bit of messiness to the twists.
“Now, try one,” she said as she continued to work, measuring the ingredients for another set of four.
“What are they for?” I asked.
“Some for a book club holiday party this evening, others for another office party, and the last four for a dinner group,” she said.
I cut three pieces, placing each on a white napkin. I set one next to Olaya’s workstation, handed one to Mrs. Branford, and kept the third for myself.
“Mmm.” Mrs. Branford dabbed her lips with her napkin after tearing off a hefty piece and plopping it into her mouth. “It tastes better than it looks. And it looks spectacular, so that’s saying something.”
I took a bite, practically smacking my lips at the lightly sweetened bread mixed with the jam. “So good,” I agreed.
Olaya’s eyes sparkled as she worked, keeping an eye on us as she mixed the new batch of dough. One of her greatest joys was seeing people savor what she baked—and Mrs. Branford and I were savoring on a very high level.
I waited until I’d finished eating the buttery bread, groaning with delight after each bite, before bringing up the murder. “I have a theory to run by you both before I take it to Emmaline,” I said, brushing away the remnants of powdered sugar from my shirt.
Olaya simply nodded, while Mrs. Branford said, “It’s about time. Let’s hear it.”
I filled them in on my visit with Renee Ranson, as well as the photos I’d found of Rita and Brad from my internet search and my doubts about their authenticity.
“What is this green screen?” Olaya asked after I suggested my theory.
I explained the process of using a solid green background to photograph something. “You can then replace that solid color with a different background.”
“Interesting,” Olaya said. “And this can be done?”
“It would take someone who knows what they’re doing, but I bet Yentin would have had that skill.” I paused long enough for them to consider what I’d said. “It makes sense, right?”
“Perfectly,” Mrs. Branford said. “I believe it is quite a good deduction.”
Despite the fact that we were talking about murder, warm fuzzies bloomed inside me. I felt like Mrs. Branford had just given me genuine praise on a particularly well-written essay.
Olaya looked reflective, finally nodding. “I agree with you, Penelope. This young woman, the Rita—sadly, she seems lost.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. To entrap someone in an effort to be discovered was underhanded; to compromise yourself with a naked Photoshopped photo was just sad.
“Call Emmaline, mija,” Olaya said.
I’d felt anxious about making yet another call to Em. I was pretty sure I was right about the photos, but what if I was wrong? I didn’t want to throw somebody under the bus if there was a chance I was offtrack, but Olaya and Mrs. Branford had agreed with my line of thinking. That was the reassurance I needed. Plus, I’d never held out on Em before. I couldn’t start now.
I stepped outside to the back parking lot. The flower beds, which were usually blossoming with an array of flowers, had been pruned back for the winter. It was fifty-seven degrees, a bit cooler than the average December afternoon. I’d left home without a sweater or jacket, and now I shivered. Instead of suffering in the coastal California cold, I unlocked my car and sat in the driver’s seat, the door closed against the chilly breeze.
Emmaline answered before the second ring. “Hey, Ivy.”
“Hey.” I bypassed the small talk, knowing Em would want to hear what I had to say. I relayed my story once again, falling silent at the end and waiting for her response.
“That’s a great lead,” she said. “Much clearer motive for Brad McAvoy. So far, still no solid evidence he was at the party, though.”
My anxiousness had abated after getting Olaya and Mrs. Branford’s reassurance, but after I hung up with Em, it came back with a gale force wind. I’d hoped to alleviate the strife in Eliza’s marriage by discounting the affair, but Em was right. Now Brad had an incredibly solid reason for pushing Yentin off the cliff.
Chapter 9
For a bakery, the holiday season is beyond busy. Yeast of Eden was no exception. On top of the regular seasonal parties, customers came in droves. The front of the store was rarely empty. Felix, his small morning crew, and I had trays of croissants in the oven and had moved on to the sourdough rolls and rye loaves. The scent of baking bread spiraled in the air like vapory lengths of ribbon. For a moment, I closed my eyes and just breathed it in. As it always did, the yeasty scent softened the hard lines in my mind and took the edge off my anxiety—which at the moment was centered around Eliza Fox, the death of Edward Yentin, and Brad McAvoy’s motive for killing him.
I let it go as I picked up a mound of dough, dropped it again, and dug the heel of one hand into it. Baking bread Olaya’s way, which was to say with the traditional long-rise method, was physical and could be cathartic, if you let it.
I was letting it, one hundred percent.
Olaya breezed in, her caftan billowing behind her. “I have hired someone to help in front,” she announced. “Amanda quit last night.”
I glanced up. Amanda had only worked here for a little over a month, and I’d only seen her a handful of times. She was a junior at Santa Sofia High School who, apparently, cared more about hanging out with her friends than being committed to her job. “She quit? Just like that?”
Olaya snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”
“And you already hired someone?” I asked. Olaya wasn’t the type of person to sit on her hands, but a new hire in the matter of a few nighttime hours was fast, even for her.
From her smile, I knew she was more than pleased with herself. “What is the American expression—a door closes fast before a different door, it opens?”
“That’s it exactly,” I said. More or less.
“To Amanda, vaya con dios, because the door opening brought me”—she paused, the silence filling the air with an imaginary drumroll—“Zula.”
I dropped my hunk of dough. It fell with a thud on the stainless-steel counter. “Zula?! Zula Senai? Really? She’s going to work here?” I asked, resisting the urge to jump up and down with excitement.
Olaya had a passion for helping and empowering women. One of the ways she did that was by running a program called Bread for Life. Bread was a staple in every culture and country. Olaya’s program was designed to bring women together and to share their stories through baking. Zula Senai had been one of the women in the first cohort. “Senai was my father’s first name,” she’d explained when she’d filled out the initial application. “It is different than a surname here.”
We’d all loved her name . . . and her. If I had to choose three words to describe Zula, they’d be: boisterous, stunning, and enthusiastic. She was an Eastern African version of Sofia Vergara in Modern Family. She had a tween daughter named Ella and worked as a hospice-care nurse. “What about her current job?” I asked.
“Zula told me she wants to spread her wings. Those were her words.”
She had loved baking bread and teaching the other women in the Bread for Life program about hembesha and other traditional Eritrean foods, and she was full of energy and life to the point that she made the rest of us seem downright dull. “So she’ll do both?”
“She will work mornings here, and schedule her hospice shifts in the afternoons,” Olaya said.
“It sounds perfect.” Honestly, I couldn’t wait to have Zula around all the time. I might never want to leave the bread shop.
As if on cue, a woman’s voice boomed from the front of the house. “I am here!”
Zula swept through the swinging doors separating Olaya’s commercial kitchen from the shop. She was tall—five feet, eleven inches—and she had pronounced high cheekbones, and deep, rich skin that had the beautiful shine of polished mahogany. Her long braids were banded together at her shoulder blades. But it was her smile, which spanned the width of her face, that captured the attention of anyone she encountered. She wore a deep shade of red on her lips and her white teeth practically glistened. The woman was supermodel-gorgeous, down-to-earth, and humble. It was a killer combination.
She came over to Olaya, towering over her. “You just tell me what to do, boss, and I will do it.”
“You are where you are meant to be,” Olaya said, perfectly sanguine, as she always was.
Zula’s grin grew wider, if that was possible. “Of course I am!”
“Come with me,” Olaya said, and she led Zula back through the swinging doors to start her training.
* * *
The phone call from Eliza came at exactly 11:03. “They arrested Brad!”
I clamped the phone between my shoulder and ear as I washed my hands at the commercial sink. My heart sank. Captain Craig York must have had enough suspicion to bring Brad in for questioning, which I feared I’d had a hand in.
“Ivy, you have to help me!” Eliza’s voice shrilled in my ear.
“Help you how?”
“Brad couldn’t have killed that man!” she wailed.
I perked up. “Does he have an alibi?”
“Yes! I mean, no. I don’t know. What I mean is that he doesn’t have it in him. He’s not a . . . a killer!”
That might be true, but I’d seen Brad McAvoy in plenty of movie roles where he’d adeptly used a gun or simply his fighting skills to take down the bad guys. Brad had killed in the movies, and any prosecutor would surely use that preconceived perception to sway a jury into thinking he could do the same in real life.
“I saw you talking to the sheriff. Aren’t you friends? Can you find out what’s happening with Brad? Please, Ivy.”
This was not the pleading voice of a woman who wanted to divorce her husband. This sounded like a woman desperate to save her husband. Despite the estrangement, she still loved Brad.
“I don’t know if I can find out anything, Eliza, but I’ll try,” I said, knowing Em would tell me only what she felt she could, and not a single, solitary bit more.
I was about done with my bread shop shift, so I dialed Em’s cell right away. Sounds from the front of the shop drifted back to the kitchen, the holiday spirit heightened with Zula’s effervescent presence.
“Hey,” Em said by way of greeting. “You have me on speed-dial lately.”
That was true. She was in my Favorites list, anyway, but lately I’d called her more than anyone else. “I just got a frantic call from Eliza Fox.”
That was all I had to say. “York brought Brad McAvoy in for questioning,” she said. “He’s a person of interest.”
Nerves coiled in my stomach. “Based on what I told you?”
“Partially, but also, we found some things on Yentin’s computer and in his home office.”
I knew Yentin’s computer would reveal something sordid, but I hadn’t considered that that something might include Brad McAvoy. It took the responsibility off of me—he’d have been looked at by law enforcement without the motive I’d handed Em—but that didn’t make me feel less guilty. Before I could ask what they’d found, Em said, “You’re becoming friends with Eliza?”
Was I? That might be a stretch, because even if she did seem like a lost puppy, whatever connection we’d forged was based on the transactional relationship of me being her party photographer. Still, we had broken bread together. Literally. “Um, maybe? A little bit.”
A rustling. Footsteps. It sounded like Em had moved the phone from one ear to the other and was moving from one place to another. “Look, I can’t give you details,” she said, her voice lower than it had been, “but Yentin was working on an article about . . .”
She trailed off, as if she wasn’t sure if she should say anymore. She probably shouldn’t, but I pressed her anyway. “About Brad McAvoy?”
“No. About Eliza Fox herself.”
* * *
Forty minutes later, with Emmaline’s blessing—and encouragement, truth be told—I stood at the island in Eliza Fox’s kitchen sipping a cup of hot tea.
Eliza and Nicole stood shoulder to shoulder. “What did he want?” Eliza muttered into her teacup, referring to Yentin.
“He was a hack,” Nicole said. She set down the set of car keys in her hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
Eliza didn’t look convinced, but she nodded.
Nicole looked at me. “Let me get this straight. The authorities think Brad pushed the guy off a cliff in the middle of a party, in plain view of half the party guests, because a) he was getting revenge for the article about him having an affair—”
“He didn’t have an affair!” Eliza interrupted. “It looks that way, but he didn’t!”
“Okay, okay. I know he didn’t, but the article and the pictures are still out there,” Nicole said, then continued. “Or b) because the guy was writing an article about you and, what, Brad wanted to stop it? What was the article even about, and how would Brad know about it, and why would it matter? It’s not like you have skeletons in your closet, Eliza. And I’m with you, I don’t think Brad is capable of killing someone.”
Those were excellent points, and I said so. “Maybe Yentin baited him,” I suggested. The second the words left my mouth, I knew it was true. Yentin had baited Brad McAvoy, and I’d overheard it. Brad had threatened to sue Yentin about the so-called affair, but Yentin had no fear. I could hear his response in my head. I’ve moved on. You’re upset about that hot little thing? Wait till you see the next piece I’m printing. Could he have been talking about whatever tell-all he was planning about Eliza? And more importantly, did Brad know what Yentin was referring to? Did Eliza have skeletons that Nicole didn’t know about, but that Brad did?
