Maddie's Recipe Of Mysteries (A Rockcrest Cove Cozy Mystery Book 1) (6 page)

“Rita,” Madeline said. “Where is that large order for 300 cupcakes we took yesterday?”

“It’s done,” she said.

“Done?”

“Yes.” She pointed over at a bunch of boxes all wrapped up and ready for customer pick up.

“Emma did them this morning.”

Madeline looked at the boxes and her anger began to rise again. “Oh,” she said, and went and picked up the boxes to take them to the back of the store.

Rita started to speak but thought better of it. She had never seen Madeline so angry and wasn’t sure how far she should go.

Madeline grabbed the boxes and headed straight for the back door, her composure in check but her anger still strong. She had just learned that Emma was not who she presented herself to be, and she didn’t want her doing anything as important as filling a customer’s order. She opened the dumpster and dumped a full box of cupcakes in just as Bailey walked behind her.

“Gran!” Bailey spoke with alarm. “What are you doing?”

“I’m so mad,” Madeline shouted.

Her whole body trembled as she reached for another box.

“I’m so mad, I could scream.”

She took a second box and with one big gesture dumped another full box of cupcakes into the dumpster. She barely noticed Bailey as she reached for a third box until she felt the firm but gentle tug on her arm. She turned and saw Bailey holding her arm, a look of sincere concern spread across her face.

“What’s wrong, Gran?” she asked. “What happened? Why are you throwing away perfectly good cupcakes?”

“It’s Emma,” Madeline finally explained. “I don’t want anything she’s ever done associated with my store.”

“Gran!” Bailey said, perplexed. “What could she have done to get you so angry?”

“She’s been giving away my recipes,” Madeline shouted.

Bailey was speechless for a moment. “What? To who?”

“I don’t know,” Madeline said, finally beginning to calm herself.

“She said it was to her brother, but I’m not so sure. I walked into the office and heard her talking on the phone to someone.”

“Are you serious?” Bailey asked incredulously.

“Yes, I’m serious.”

Bailey took a step backward, her mind reeling. “How could she do that? Why would she do that?”

“She says that I cheated in the competition years ago. And that’s why I won.” Madeline started pacing back and forth. She felt as if she would explode.

Bailey raised her hands in front of her in a hold-on-a-minute gesture while Madeline reached for another box of cupcakes.

“Hold on a minute, Gran,” she said.

“Just hold on a minute.”

She stood there trying to think of something as she watched her gran dump another box of cupcakes into the dumpster.

Bailey said nothing in response to the last statement. “Where is she?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I fired her.”

“Good for you, Gran. Good for you.”

Madeline took a long, hard sigh as she began to regain her composure once again. With each dump of cupcakes, it was like she was riding herself of a little more of Emma. By the time the last box was dumped, she felt almost like her old self again.

“If you don’t mind, Bailey, I have a large order to fill.”

Madeline wiped her hands on her apron and turned to face her granddaughter. She suddenly appeared the picture of calm.

Bailey stood stunned, looking at her grandmother. She had never seen her that angry ever, and she wasn’t quite sure what to think of it.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Madeline responded. “I just have a lot of work to do.” She walked away, leaving Bailey standing alone in stunned silence.

Bailey drove home, incredulous due to the events that had just transpired. She was appalled that Emma would do such a thing to her gran after all she had done for her.

Rockcrest Cove had high and low peaks of activity throughout the day. The early morning rush before people headed off to work was usually the busiest time for everyone. Afterward, there was a lull in activity until the lunchtime crowd began to break away for a fast hour of eating before rushing back to their work stations.

It was during that lull that Bailey found herself driving the streets of Rockcrest Cove, trying to decide what to do. She knew she had to get to the bottom of everything before anything could be resolved. She thought if she could find Emma and talk to her, she could get a reasonable explanation for what had happened. She knew Emma well enough to know her usual haunts and decided to try to go and find her. Sure enough, she saw Emma’s car parked on the road alongside Rockcrest Cove’s central park. She pulled up alongside Emma’s car and got out.

Standing next to her car, she shielded her eyes from the bright sunlight, looking for places that Emma might be. There was a concession stand in the middle of the park that seemed as good a place to start as any.

Emma was sitting on a bench near the stand, sipping what appeared to be a cup of coffee. She seemed to be casually chatting on her cell phone as Bailey approached. To her surprise, she saw a smile spread across Emma’s face and heard laughter emerge from the woman. Bailey’s sense of reason left her at that point. She could only think of her gran and how upset she was, and this woman was making a mockery of her. Without thinking, Bailey approached Emma and swiftly snatched the phone out of her hand mid-sentence.

“What!” Emma leaped from her seat. “I was in the middle of a conversation,” she protested.

“To the same person you gave my grandmother’s recipes to?” Bailey challenged.

Emma looked at the younger woman and started to say something, but then she thought better of it.

“What were you thinking sharing my gran’s baking secrets?”

Emma took an indignant stance. “Like you care,” she said. “You’re hardly ever around anyway.”

Bailey refused to take the bait. “How dare you try to sabotage her business!”

“It’s not her business. It should’ve been our business. But she’s so greedy and selfish.”

“Selfish!” Bailey looked at her, eyes wide. “Selfish!” she repeated. “Who’s the one trying to steal her secrets and sell them to the highest bidder?’

“What are you talking about? I was just trying to take back what was mine. Your grandmother stole those recipes from me.”

“What recipes?”

“She took my recipe and used it for the competition, and then when she won, she used her winnings to open up that bakery.” Emma stuck her chest out in a subconscious effort to appear bigger, her arms thrown back in a confrontational stance.

“She never stole your recipes. That’s just some idea you cooked up because you were jealous of her success,” Bailey retorted. She was not about to back down.

Soon, a crowd began to notice the heated exchange.

“That’s what she told you.”

“That’s what I know.”

“And how would you know that? You’re still wet behind the ears.”

“You want to know how I know?” Bailey stuck her finger in Emma’s face.

“You want to know how I know?”

She paused to catch her breath for just a second.

“Because, if she had stolen your recipes for her bakery, you wouldn’t have had to sneak around and steal them.”

The words hit Emma like a slap in the face. The argument was sound, and Emma had no defense for the accusation, so she changed tactics.

“Well, you shouldn’t have been surprised,” she finally said. “After all, the espionage thing was your idea.”

Bailey looked as if she had been physically struck. “Are you deranged? Are you out of your mind?” she asked.

“There is no possible way that I would have done anything to damage my grandmother’s reputation.”

“Of course not,” Emma agreed, seeing that her words had hit their mark.

“It’s just that you yourself said that sometimes it is necessary to do some undercover work in order to get to the bottom of some cases.”

Bailey, recalling that conversation, knew that Emma had taken her comments entirely out of context. She had simply been talking about investigating legal cases in which the proof was not always so easy to find. She decided to not give her the satisfaction of debating such a ridiculous issue with her.

“My grandmother did everything to give you a helping hand, even offered to help you win the competition. And this is how you repay her?”

Emma looked on as Bailey stood there, fists clenched, eyes piercing into her soul like daggers cutting through her flesh. She was trying to find a way to respond to the statements, but nothing was coming to mind.

“I promise you this, Emma,” Bailey said. “After what you’ve done, I wouldn’t ever advise you to enter another competition here in Rockcrest Cove for as long as you live.”

“And how would you stop me?”

“I’m pretty darn close to finishing my law degree. I guarantee you that I have learned quite a few ways to stop you.” Bailey spat out the last words and turned on her heel, only then realizing that she still held Emma’s phone in her hand.

“My phone, please,” Emma said, her hand out.

“Oh, this is your phone?” Bailey asked, turning the device over in her hands.

“You know it is.”

Bailey turned and tossed the phone into the lake as she walked away.

“Maybe you should try to do a little espionage to find out where it is,” she responded.

Chapter Seven

Madeline snapped out of her thoughts as if she had been struck in the head. It was clear that Emma’s sneaky practices had not been stopped the day she was fired. As a matter of fact, it appeared that it had escalated from then on. She had noticed a decline in her business, but she did not connect it to Emma since the woman had not been in her store for at least two years. At least as far as she knew, Emma had left on that awful day. Now, she realized that Emma must’ve had an accomplice to help steal her secrets.

The fact that the door was open the night she found her meant that Emma and someone else had had access to her shop after hours. Who knows what information they had been able to collect all those years.

Bailey and Kyle were still in the other room play acting. Madeline quickly forgot about the cupcakes and crossed the hall to show them the book. As she entered the room, Bailey and Kyle, who had a makeshift handbag on his arm, both burst into giggles, but the laughter didn’t last long. As soon as they saw her face, they realized something had happened.

“What’s wrong, Gran?”

Madeline held up the little red notebook and tossed it onto the table. “I found this.”

“What is it?” Bailey asked as she picked up the notebook and examined it.

“It looks like a book of a bunch of my recipes that Emma had collected over the years.”

“Are you serious?” Kyle said as he reached over and grabbed the book from Bailey. He flipped through the pages as if looking for something to jump out at him.

“It appears that Emma did not stop stealing from me the day I fired her two years ago,” Madeline said.

“Obviously,” Bailey agreed.

“Apparently she’s been coming in and out of my store all along, going through my things and stealing whatever information she could.”

“But how was she able to get in?” Bailey asked. “Someone had to have been helping her.”

“Maybe she had an extra key made,” Madeline suggested.

“Do you think one of the girls could’ve been helping her?”

“No. I don’t think so. They never could stand Emma, and Emma never made it any secret that she didn’t like them at all.”

“Well, someone had to have been helping her these last two years.”

The two women tossed ideas back and forth, trying to figure out how Emma could have worked behind the scenes to steal Madeline’s secrets. Kyle, on the other hand, was deep in thought.

“This can’t be right,” he finally interjected.

Both women looked as if they had forgotten he was in the room.

He continued. “This can’t be right. Something’s wrong here.”

“What d’you mean?” Bailey asked.

“Well, think about it. The police were in here for three days, examining every inch of this place. They even locked you out, Madeline.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“So, why didn’t they find this notebook then?”

The women had no answer to the question, but it did inspire deeper thought.

“You mean to tell me that with all those police investigators running in and out of your store, with access to every part of it, this little book was not found?”

“So, what are you saying, Kyle?” Madeline asked.

“I think this book is a plant.”

“Yeah, but it has so many of my secret recipes, even the new ones I was developing.”

“I don’t doubt that Emma had devised a way to get in and steal your secrets, but even she wouldn’t have been so foolish as to leave her book behind for you to find.”

“So, what are you implying?” Bailey asked this time.

“It’s a way to incriminate you, Madeline.”

Both women looked stunned. The thought had never occurred to them that someone could be trying to incriminate Madeline in Emma’s murder.

“Think about it,” Kyle tried to explain.

“The murder takes place at your place of business, the victim is a long-time rival of yours, and the evidence is found hidden away in your kitchen. All the incriminating evidence is pointing at you.”

“So, are you saying that someone snuck in here after the police investigated to plant this in my kitchen?”

“I’d bet money on it,” Kyle confirmed.

“Someone doesn’t want us to look at other possibilities for why Emma may have been killed. They want us to focus on this rivalry of yours instead.”

The three of them stood in silence, pondering the logic that Kyle had put before them. It was a logical conclusion, and it was disturbing that someone would want to set Madeline up for murder. How desperate could they be?

“Bailey, you said you uncovered a list of other reasons why someone would want to kill Emma.”

“Yeah,” she said, and reached to pull out her own notebook.

“Did you know that Emma was caught in a tryst with one of her professors at your culinary school?” Bailey asked Madeline.

“What?” Madeline was stunned.

“But that’s small potatoes compared to this one.”

Bailey held up a single page for them all to see. “It seems that Emma had an affair with Mayor Bryson.”

No one spoke, so she continued. “It was all swept under the rug because it was an election year. It seems like when the mayor wanted to break it off, Emma threatened to go public. Money changed hands and everything went silent.”

“How do you know all of this?” Kyle asked.

“I just put out a few choice words with the local gossipers. They know everything. Rockcrest Cove is a small town; there is no such thing as a secret in a town like this. Somebody, somewhere, always knows something. I went on several chat lines, checked up with people on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Now that Emma’s dead, you’d be surprised by how many people want to talk.”

“So, how do we proceed?” Madeline finally spoke up.

“I think we should start at the top,” Bailey said. “Let’s go see Kelsey Bryson.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kyle said.

“Why not?”

“If the murderer is trying to divert attention away from him, two amateur investigators will just stir up a hornet’s nest.”

“In the meantime, I have Chief Nolan compiling a whole hornet’s nest just for me,” Madeline put in.

“If I don’t find another suspect, I’m in a lot of trouble.”

Kyle thought for a moment. He knew that if he turned in the notebook, Nolan would use it as evidence against Madeline, but if they held onto it and said nothing, it would look even more incriminating.

“We need more evidence,” he finally said. “We need to find out what really happened between Emma and Mayor Bryson.”

“Then it’s settled,” Bailey said.

“Gran and I will go to see Kelsey, but we’ll do it on the quiet. That way, if it turns out to be nothing, we’ll be in the clear.”

The drive to the Bryson’s home was a short one, but it felt as if they had traveled to a new world. On their side of town, the neighborhoods consisted of small family cottages and multi-unit apartment buildings, but here on this side of Rockcrest Cove, they were driving past the stately mansions of the upper echelon. The mayor had been a prominent figure in Rockcrest Cove for quite a few years.

Madeline and Bailey were a bit awe struck when the saw the house. Not quite a palatial mansion like others in the immediate area, but certainly a cut well above what either of the ladies were accustomed to. The driveway to the house was a horseshoe affair, where you entered through one gate, which led you right to the front steps of the Bryson home, and exited through another.

They rode in Bailey’s car since Madeline’s would not have been able to blend into the surroundings without drawing undue attention. Bailey’s car wasn’t much better, but at least it was a newer model and it had a decent paint job. The two women pulled up to the front steps and were immediately greeted by one of the Bryson’s servants, who opened the door and escorted them up the steps. Neither of them were surprised. It stood to reason that no one would have been able to traverse that drive without being seen, even if their visit was unannounced.

“Who shall I say is calling?” the servant asked.

“Madeline McDougal to see Mrs. Bryson.”

“Please wait in here.” The servant gestured with his hand into a small room off the hallway.

The two ladies followed his lead and found a quaint little sitting room that was quite comfortable. Before long, Kelsey Bryson appeared in the doorway, a hint of confusion on her face.

“Hello,” she said as she floated into the room.

“Mrs. Bryson,” Madeline started, extending her hand, “it’s so good to see you again.”

Kelsey looked even more perplexed. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

“Oh, you probably don’t remember me. It was so long ago, and only for a brief moment,” Madeline explained.

“You were at the grand opening of my bakery ten years ago.”

Kelsey gave Madeline a once over. “Oh, yes,” she replied.

“That was quite an opening you had. Businesses all over have been trying to match that big affair.”

“Well, it was a special occasion for me, that’s for sure,” Madeline agreed. “I had wanted my own bakery for years.”

“Well, you did well for yourself,” Kelsey praised.

“But what brings you here today?” she asked, anxious to get to the point.

“Well, I’m afraid it’s a rather delicate situation,” Madeline commented. After a short hesitation, she continued.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened to Emma Larson.”

“Oh,” Kelsey stated, almost as if someone had let the air out of her.

“Yes, I did. A sad affair, but I can’t say that I’m surprised,” she added.

Both Madeline and Bailey looked up but didn’t say anything.

“Can I get you ladies something to drink? Coffee? Tea? It’s been so long since I’ve had any visitors around. I could use the company.”

They all settled down to a little small talk before the conversation got back around to Emma.

“Kelsey,” Madeline started, “do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

Kelsey put her cup down on the table and turned to face Madeline. “About Emma?”

“Yes.”

Madeline put her cup down and faced the other woman. “As you’ve probably heard, there was no love lost between me and Emma, and we had a serious falling out a couple of years back. We hadn’t spoken to each other since.”

“Well, news travels here in Rockcrest Cove,” Kelsey agreed.

“My guess is you’re here because you’ve heard the rumors about Emma and my husband.”

“Yes, we have.” Bailey finally spoke for the first time.

“Well, I have to admit, there was no love lost between me and Emma either.”

Kelsey looked pensive as she recalled that day several years ago.

“I’m not going to lie. When I heard what happened, I wasn’t at all shocked, nor was I the least bit saddened. The woman nearly wrecked my marriage.”