Loaf or Death (Sweets and Secrets Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Page 3

  I believed it. I hoped that she believed it too.

  Now I just had to make it happen.

  Chapter Four

  It had been a day since my conversation with Aunt Betsy, and I hadn’t stopped thinking about how I might be able to help her.

  Even after a full twenty-four hours, I still felt like I was floundering. There were just so many unknowns. Like… what had the killer’s motive been? Dorothy’s family had lived in Reedville for a long time, and there was obviously someone out there who hadn’t been a fan of hers. But had the killer planned on framing Aunt Betsy, or had that just been a coincidence? Who had the most to gain? Who had the most to lose?

  Sadly, I hadn’t been able to come up with answers to any of those questions, and time was not on my side. I needed to clear Aunt Betsy’s name. Her freedom and her business—not to mention her good reputation around town—depended on it.

  Before I could really form a plan, I needed some more information. For starters, I needed to know more about Dorothy and her son, Steven. And in order to get that information, I had to enlist some help.

  Which is why I had left my house that afternoon and headed straight to Cleo Carter’s door. She and I had been friends since we’d been kids, and I felt like I could trust her with anything. I’d never been very good at keeping secrets—but the few I did have, Cleo knew them all.

  She answered the door with a concerned look on her face. “How is your aunt? Mom told me the news.” She ushered me inside. “Can I get you something to drink? Soda? Tea? Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” I took a seat on the couch and waited until she was sitting next to me before I started laying out my plan. “And Aunt Betsy is doing about as well as can be expected. She’s pretty rattled by the whole thing, and she feels like the whole town has suddenly turned against her.”

  Cleo grimaced and shook her head. “That makes me want to go down there right now and give her a hug. Your aunt is seriously one of the nicest people I know. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  I smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Well… funny you should mention that.”

  Cleo’s face instantly fell. “Oh, no. I know that look, Jean.”

  “What look?”

  “That look.” Cleo sighed. “The one that always comes right before you ask me to help with something that sounds so easy and innocent but always ends up getting us both in trouble.”

  I tried to school my features, but I was pretty sure the corners of my mouth still twitched a little as I fought back a smile. She wasn’t completely wrong, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

  “When was the last time we were in trouble?” I shook my head. “I can’t even remember but—”

  “Really? The Bigfoot festival? The mountain? The sheriff?” Cleo closed her eyes for a moment as if she was reliving that series of particularly frightening and unfortunate events. “Any of those things ring a bell?”

  “Come on, Cleo. That was different.” I finally gave in and smiled. “Besides, I bet I’ve heard you tell that story ten times since then. You know that was the most excitement anyone around here has seen in… well, probably in forever.”

  “We’re lucky to still be alive to tell the story.” Cleo shuddered. “I’m probably going to have nightmares tonight just from talking about it!”

  “Then we should stop talking about it. Let’s talk about helping Aunt Betsy instead. You did just say you wished you could do something, right?”

  Was I shamelessly using my best friend’s words against her?

  Yes. Yes, I was.

  But this time really was different. And anyway, the thing I needed Cleo’s help with this time wasn’t dangerous at all. Maybe a little unpleasant, but definitely not dangerous.

  “I did say that.” Cleo took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. “And I meant it. So… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if you can think of something non-life-threatening for me to do that will be helpful, I’m in.”

  “Perfect! You’re the best, Cleo. I knew I could count on you to help.” I leaned in a little and lowered my voice even though I was pretty sure Cleo’s mom wasn’t around. “Do you know who Steven Adler is?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m not familiar with—wait, isn’t that the lady’s name? Adler? The Adler Bakery?”

  I nodded. “Dorothy Adler. She was the owner of the bakery, and she has a son named Steven.”

  “Okay. Steven is Dorothy’s son. I still don’t know him, but I’m with you so far.”

  “That’s sort of the problem,” I began. “I don’t know much about Steven, either. And he’s obviously not going to talk to me, since he apparently thinks my aunt may have murdered his mom.” I nibbled at my lip. This was the part that Cleo probably wasn’t going to like. “I was thinking maybe you could sort of… cozy up to him? Maybe see if you can find out what his story is. Where is he from? How was his relationship with his mom? Did he notice anything out of the ordinary the day she died? That sort of thing.”

  Cleo made a face, and for a moment I thought she would refuse. But then her eyes sort of lit up, and a hint of a smile crossed her lips. “Fine, I’m happy to help. I’ll see if I can get Steven to go for a beer down at the tavern tomorrow night.”

  “Really?” I breathed a sigh of relief. That was almost too easy. She didn’t even make me resort to begging. “You’re a life saver, Cleo, honestly. I don’t know what I’d do—”

  “But,” she interrupted, holding up a finger. “I need you to do something for me too.” She grinned and gave me a knowing look as my brow furrowed. “Don’t worry. It won’t be anything dangerous.”

  “O-kay…” I stretched the word out as I waited for her to continue. “I’m listening.”

  She laughed. “Don’t look so apprehensive! You know how I was telling you about this place a couple of towns over where they do this speed dating thing?”

  I sighed. I could already guess where this conversation was going, but I had to play along if I wanted Cleo’s help—and she really was the only person I trusted to help with this particular matter.

  “I remember,” I nodded. “Keep going.”

  “Well…” Her grin got wider. “I want to try it! But I want you to go with me in case I hate it.”

  “Okay, sure,” I grumbled. I didn’t really have a choice, did I? “You get some information from Steve, and I’ll go to the speed dating place with you. Seems like a fair-ish trade to me.”

  “Seems more than fair to me.” Cleo wrinkled her nose. “You aren’t the one who has to cozy up to some random stranger.”

  I didn’t point out that cozying up to random strangers was basically the definition of speed dating. Whatever. If she wanted to try something new, I was all for it—just as long as she didn’t expect me to enjoy it.

  “Just text me and let me know how it goes with Steven,” I said. “If he agrees to go for a drink, I’ll just show up and stay out of sight.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Wish me luck!”

  “Maybe it’ll be good practice for speed dating night.” Yeah, there was no way I could have said that without sounding a little sarcastic.

  Luckily, Cleo either let it slide or didn’t notice. And with a little more luck, she’d forget all about our agreement by the time the next speed dating event rolled around.

  The town library was quiet when I walked in that afternoon—quiet for even the library, which was saying something. I walked up to the circulation desk where my dad was working and tried to act nonchalant. Like I wasn’t totally there on a mission.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Dad waved as I approached. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today. Did you get lost?”

  “I read sometimes, for the record.” I wanted to be annoyed by his joke, but it was a pretty good one. Not totally accurate, but still funny. “Hey, do you have a second?”

  “All the time in the world until five.” He pushed aside a stack of books and peered at me over the counter. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much.” I nibbled at my lip, trying to think of a good way to get what I needed without making him suspicious. The less time my parents had to spend worrying about me, the better. “I was talking to Aunt Betsy earlier, and she’s pretty upset.”

  “I would imagine so.” He picked up a book from the stack and flipped through it, pausing to write something on the card in the back before setting it aside and replacing it with the next book from the stack. “It’s just awful that they’re trying to pin that on her. My sister doesn’t have a violent bone in her body.” He shook his head. “Even as a kid, she didn’t like to play games where someone might get hurt. That’s who she’s always been.”

  And she hadn’t changed. All my life, I’d known Aunt Betsy to be kind and gentle and caring. She didn’t mind giving her opinion, and she was usually the first one to stand up for what she believed, but violence and murder?

  No.

  Not a chance.

  But until I could prove otherwise, I was afraid everyone in town would continue treating her like she was the prime suspect.

  “Did you know anything about Dorothy Adler?” I tried to sound nonchalant, as if the question had just occurred to me. “I know her bakery used to be the best one in the area.”

  “That’s right.” Dad flashed a quick grin. “Until your aunt bought the Shepherd’s Falls Bakery and turned it around. I don’t think the Adler Bakery could ever really keep up after that. It was never as busy in Dorothy’s bakery as it was in your aunt’s place.”

  “No wonder Dorothy seemed so angry,” I mused out loud. “She probably thought Aunt Betsy was taking business away from her.”

  Dad nodded. “And since Dorothy’s family—and her bakery—have been around ever since the town was founded, I’m sure her feathers were a littl
e ruffled by Betsy’s success.”

  It had definitely seemed that way the other day when Dorothy stormed into the Shepherd’s Falls Bakery to confront Aunt Betsy and make those ridiculous accusations.

  “Yeah, Aunt Betsy told me Dorothy’s bakery was really well-known around here, but I didn’t realize it was that old. Or that her family had been around for that long.”

  “Oh, they’re in the town archives and everything.” Dad loved the moments when he could talk about the town’s history or just history in general. And I also knew he loved an excuse to dig in the archives.

  So I was about to make his day.

  “That’s really interesting, Dad.” I gave him a genuine smile because I really did love seeing my dad happy in his element at work. But I also needed whatever information we could find in those archives. “Do you think you could show me? It would be cool to see how far back her family’s roots go.”

  He didn’t waste any time getting up from behind the counter and walking around to the front where I was standing. “Sure! Come on back and I’ll show you. There might even be some old pictures of the bakery on Main Street. It really is fascinating stuff.”

  “Totally.” I grinned, following him to the back of the library where the town’s archives were kept. “I can’t wait to see.”

  And hopefully, he could show me something that would help clear Aunt Betsy’s name.

  Chapter Five

  Dad started pulling out thick, leather-bound books from one of the back shelves and handing them over to me. By the time he placed the sixth book in my already-aching arms, I realized this task might not have been as simple as I’d envisioned.

  “How many more are there?” I nibbled at my lip as I tried to look over his shoulder. “These are getting heavy, Dad.”

  He laughed. “Oh, we’re just getting started, sweetheart.” He pointed to a nearby table. “You can set everything over there and we’ll take a look at it in a minute.”

  Several minutes later and the table was already beginning to get crowded with the books, folders, newspaper clippings, magazines, and maps that contained the history of our small town.

  “I had no idea there was so much stuff,” I scanned the table once he’d finally stopped pulling things from the shelves. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Don’t worry, there’s still more on the next shelf if we don’t find what we’re looking for here. And then a few other odds and ends in the basement, but I doubt we’ll need to get into that stuff today.” His brow furrowed. “What did you say we’re looking for again, dear?”

  There were so many decades of history and information spread out in front of us that it actually took me a few seconds to remember our original goal. And then the thought of gathering information about a single family out of the pile of records and official documents seemed… well, not impossible, but certainly daunting.

  “I was hoping to see how far back Dorothy Adler’s family has been in Reedville, but…” I exhaled as I looked around. “We could be here for days.”

  Dad reached for one of the leather-bound books. “There is a lot, yes. But the Reedville Historical Society put these books together a few years ago, and they’ve been amazing. See how each one has a specific decade printed on the spine? It’s sort of like an encyclopedia of what happened in the town during those years, and you can actually use them to cross-reference maps, deeds, census information—all sorts of interesting things. It’s really handy, and there was just someone in here about a month ago remarking about how easy these books made it to look up his family’s history.”

  I was pretty sure my dad’s definition of interesting was slightly different than most people’s, but the town encyclopedia thing really did sound pretty cool.

  “So, if we go back to the oldest volume,” Dad continued, flipping through one of the books. “It looks like… oh, right here! Adler… Thomas Adler.”

  He pointed to a black and white photo on the page that looked like it was at least a hundred years old, and I read the caption printed beneath it. “Wow, so this Thomas Adler guy really was one of the town’s founders?”

  “It looks like he was, yes.” Dad squinted and continued reading. “And the bakery dates back to almost the same time—the 1880’s, apparently.”

  Okay, so maybe it was pretty interesting to see so many old photos that showed what the town looked like back in its earliest days. Even back then, the Adler Bakery had a sign in the window advertising their “famous golden sourdough.”

  “Aunt Betsy was telling me about that.” I pointed to the sign in the photo. “She said that Dorothy’s bakery had always been known for their special sourdough. I’m pretty sure that’s the recipe Dorothy accused her of stealing.”

  Dad snorted. “Betsy’s never stolen anything in her entire life. Any suggestion that she did something like that—especially with something that’s so well-known around here—is just ridiculous. That sourdough was named as a sort of tribute to the miners. And if you’ve ever seen a loaf of Dorothy’s golden sourdough, it does kind of look like a giant golden nugget. What would the point be of stealing something like that?”

  I shrugged. “She seemed really convinced that Aunt Betsy was trying to put her out of business. Maybe she was afraid Aunt Betsy would take the recipe and make it even better. Who knows, really?”

  “True, we have no way of knowing what Dorothy may have thought—or why, for that matter—but I do know she was wrong. There’s no way Betsy stole that recipe, and she definitely didn’t murder that poor woman.”

  I loved that my dad was so loyal to his sister, and of course I believed the same thing. There was no way Aunt Betsy did those things. But believing in her innocence was the easy part. Proving it, however, was turning out to be a bit more difficult.

  I started idly flipping through the pages of the book as we talked. The history of the Alder family seemed to be well documented, which made sense to me, given their important role in Reedville’s formative years. I wasn’t sure how helpful any of the information was to Aunt Betsy’s case, but I still found it to be pretty interesting.

  “Aunt Betsy told me she offered to buy Dorothy’s bakery when she heard it wasn’t doing well. I think Dorothy must have still been upset about that. Betsy was only trying to help, but I guess Dorothy didn’t see it that way.”

  Dad nodded, and I could tell that he was also skimming the information in the book as he listened to me. I knew that looking back through the town’s archives was one of his favorite things to do. This sort of fact-finding dig into the past was right up his alley. “That bakery has been passed down in the Adler family for generations. I’m sure Dorothy planned on handing it over to her son at some point, so she obviously wouldn’t have wanted to see the bakery go bankrupt on her watch.”

  He paused and looked thoughtful. “Although, as far as I know, it’s only been in the last few months that Steven has been coming back into town to help at the bakery. I remember talking to him about the family business once when we were teenagers, and he had absolutely no interest in it back then. I couldn’t imagine it at the time—it was a ready-made career and what I assumed was good money—but he took off for the city after high school and made his own way in life.”

  It hadn’t really occurred to me that Dad would have been around the same age as Dorothy’s son, Steven, but of course they would have known each other back then. Reedville was still a small town, but it had been absolutely tiny back in my dad’s teenage years.

  “I bet Dorothy wasn’t happy about that,” I mused. “Steven was basically saying he didn’t want his inheritance—the main thing his family had been known for since—”

  “Since the very beginning,” my dad finished. “Exactly. And oh, it caused a big rift between them at the time. I suppose they must have patched things up recently. Maybe he had a change of heart, or maybe she finally convinced him that keeping the bakery around was important.”

  He shrugged. “Those are just my best guesses. Steven is the only one who could say for sure, of course. Anyway, I hope for his sake they really had moved past all of their issues. I couldn’t imagine how guilty he would have felt if something had happened to her while they were still on difficult terms.”