Gluten-Free Murder (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 1) Read online

“Me too. Come up here to read, write, or just chill out. No distractions. It’s so restful.”

  “You have the perfect little house. You’re so lucky!” Vic covered her mouth and reddened. “Sorry. I mean… it’s not lucky when someone dies. That’s not the right word.”

  “It’s okay,” Erin assured her. “It was a great opportunity for me. I never had anything like this before. I never thought I would. I was just living day to day, trying to make ends meet. Trying to keep myself from going crazy. And then suddenly… I had this. It still hasn’t really sunk in. I keep thinking… someone will come and tell me it was all a joke. Or a mistake. That it isn’t really mine and I don’t have any rights to any of it.”

  Vic nodded. “Yeah. I can understand that.”

  Erin stood up and stretched. “But… no point in stressing out over these things. Whatever happens, happens. We have to enjoy what we have right now, because no one knows what we might or might not have tomorrow. It could all be gone in a day.”

  She went over to the stairs and paused.

  “Do you want to stay up here, or do you want me to show you your bedroom?”

  “I’m ready for bed. It’s been a long day.”

  “Come on, then. Light switch is here, just hit it before you come down.”

  Erin waited at the bottom of the stairs, then showed Vic how to fold them back up to the ceiling. Vic stared up at them.

  “That’s just really cool.”

  “It is.” Erin agreed. She went to Clementine’s room and indicated it. “This one is yours. There are fresh sheets on the bed. We’ll clear out some closet space after you retrieve your things.”

  Vic looked at the room, her mouth falling open. “But… this is the master bedroom, isn’t it? This is your room.”

  “I’m in the next one down. I wasn’t comfortable with this one. So, you’ll have to deal with it. This was my aunt’s room. I don’t think I could sleep in here, thinking about her. But you didn’t know her. You should be fine.”

  “You don’t want this one?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well… you’ll let me know if you change your mind? Because it’s your room. You should be able to sleep in your own room.”

  “I’ll let you know if I change my mind. But that’s not going to happen in the near future.”

  Vic tiptoed into the room. Erin giggled at the sweat pants which climbed almost to her knees. Vic looked down at her legs and shook her head. “You’re right about them being too short. But they’re fine for sleep.”

  “Good. I’ll say goodnight now and see you in the morning. We’ll need to be up bright and early.”

  “That’s the plan. Thanks so much, for everything. You’ve done more than anyone could be expected to.”

  Erin patted her on the arm and headed back to the bathroom. There was a moment of silence, and then Vic closed her bedroom door.

  Chapter Ten

  ERIN WOKE UP IN the morning with the kitten sleeping on the pillow against her cheek. Erin’s nose tickled and she sneezed, making the kitten jump up and stare at her indignantly. Erin laughed.

  “Serves you right for sleeping against my nose! I can’t help it, you know. You got your fluff up my nasal passages!” She sneezed again and the kitten jumped down from the bed. He made a little noise as he exited the room.

  After getting dressed, Erin pulled Vic’s clothes out of the dryer and knocked on the door.

  “Got your clothes.”

  She just about walked into the door when the knob didn’t turn in her hand. It was locked. Erin stared at the door for a moment, surprised, then knocked again.

  “Vic? It’s time to get up, Vic. Rise and shine! I’ll leave your clothes here outside the door.”

  There was a groan from within, which Erin took as acknowledgment. She went into the kitchen to feed the kitten and have a quick bite to eat before heading to the bakery. And coffee. She needed coffee.

  Mrrrow, mrrrow! The kitten rubbed against her legs, making excited noises.

  “Yes, you can have the rest of the tuna this morning. Just wait a minute while I get it ready for you.”

  The cat continued to chirrup and patted at the cupboards, trying to climb up to where Erin was working. Erin did not enjoy the smell of tuna first thing in the morning.

  Erin heard Vic open her door and head across the hall to the commode. In a few more minutes, she was in the kitchen, sniffing at the air like the cat.

  “Coffee?”

  “Over there,” Erin indicated the machine. “Grab a to-go cup, because we need to be on our way soon.” Erin bent down to put down the cat’s dish. “I’m going to put some fresh papers down in the bathroom, just in case. Do you need anything else?”

  Vic shook her head. “No, I think I’m good.”

  “There are bagels. Or—”

  “I’m not the kind of person who can eat first thing in the morning. I’ll have something at the bakery later, once my stomach wakes up.”

  “Okay.” Erin nodded. “No problem.”

  She went to the back door where the newspapers and other recycling were stored. She took the top newspaper from the pile. It was a few months old. Erin picked it up and glanced over the headlines.

  Sleepy little town. Not much happened there.

  But under the newspaper was another kind of paper. This one oversize, the paper yellow, brown at the edges, and crumbly. Erin picked it up. She carried it back to the kitchen with the newspaper, studying it.

  “Vic, look at this.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a map.”

  Vic leaned over her shoulder, looking at it. “A map of what?” She frowned. “That’s out on the mountain somewhere? It looks really old.”

  “Yeah. It does.” Erin studied it. “I think it’s a mining survey.” She glanced at her watch. “We’ll have to look at it tonight. Got to get in to the bakery now.”

  Erin had awoken that day with new resolve. If she wanted to prove her and Vic’s innocence, she needed to find other suspects for Officer Piper to focus on.

  The question that loomed up before her to begin with was who had a key. Someone had unlocked the back stairway door and probably relocked the back door to the parking lot. She just needed to find out who had keys.

  “How’s your new little assistant working out?” Mary Lou asked, putting down her tall coffee cup to pay for her muffin. She straightened her blouse and smiled in Vic’s direction.

  “Vic is really a help. I don’t know how I thought I was going to run the place by myself. I could even use a third person, someone in the kitchen, to keep things running and make sure we don’t let something burn in the oven.”

  Erin was keeping her ears open for the timer, but was afraid that she would miss it with the conversation and the noise of the till. She really should bring her timer to the front to keep an eye on it instead of leaving it in the back. That would make a lot more sense.

  “It’s a lot of fun,” Vic said.

  “I’m glad you think so.” Erin didn’t hand Mary Lou her money right away. “Mary Lou… you knew my aunt Clementine, didn’t you?”

  “Everyone knew Clementine, dear. Well, maybe not so much the last few years, with her being mostly housebound and new people moving into town, but before that, when she was running the tea room, everybody knew who she was.”

  “Yes, but I’m wondering who was particular friends with her.”

  Mary Lou held her hand out for her change and Erin handed it over. “Well, Clementine was very well-liked. She had a smile and a kind word for everyone. Like you and Vic. Unlike some recently deceased who went around sour-pussed all the time, acting like the world owed her something.”

  “I thought you were friends with Angela.”

  “As close as anyone. Which is to say, not very close at all. We were on speaking terms. Of course we would talk, exchange pleasantries. But Angela wasn’t an easy person to know. She was angry and pushed people away. She got people involved in… questionable bu
siness dealings. She was… self-righteous and closed-minded…” Mary Lou gave a sweet smile. “Not to speak ill of the dead.”

  “No… I didn’t realize. I thought she was just like that toward me, because of the bakery. I thought you were all friends. You didn’t think I should start a bakery either. Why would you be loyal to Angela’s bakery if you didn’t like her?”

  “My loyalty does not require that I like her, my dear.”

  Erin realized she had let herself get diverted from her initial question and there were other customers waiting while she talked with Mary Lou. “I was just wondering about Clementine. About who she was friends with. I’m… trying to find a key.”

  “A key?” Mary Lou looked mystified. She stepped aside so that Erin could run the next couple of customers’ orders through the till, but stayed close enough to talk. “What key are you looking for?”

  Erin hadn’t prepared a lie. Which, of course, she should have done, since she couldn’t tell the holders of the store keys that they were suspects in the murder investigation. She deliberately ran into difficulty with the next couple of orders, trying to come up with a good explanation for Mary Lou.

  “There’s a locked cabinet in the storeroom downstairs,” she explained, dropping her voice confidentially and leaning toward Mary Lou. “I didn’t really think anything of it before, but this morning Vic and I found an old map hidden at Clementine’s house. A really old map. Civil War era, maybe. It wasn’t until then that I remembered Clementine told me years ago, when I was just a little girl, that there was a secret in the old cabinet. A clue to find a treasure. So, now I’m wondering,” Erin cut her eyes left and right as if to make sure no one but Mary Lou was listening, “if it’s something to do with this map.”

  Mary Lou’s eyes were wide. “But why would someone else have the key to Clementine’s locked cabinet? What happened to her key?”

  There was a lull in the line of customers while a young lady in a suit looked over the goods, trying to make a decision.

  “I thought maybe she gave the key to the cabinet to someone with the spare key to the store. Maybe she got her key chains mixed up and gave the one with the cabinet to someone to hold on to when she closed up the store. She might not have even remembered about the cabinet, after she got frail…”

  “How fascinating. But I don’t remember Clementine ever mentioning anything like that. About a treasure or a map.”

  “She said it was a family secret. I don’t know, maybe it was ill-gotten gains from some ancestor. You know how some of those Civil War villains were…”

  “Every family has got some bad ones,” Mary Lou agreed.

  “And you heard about my ghost, didn’t you?”

  “Melissa did mention something about that! But this shop has never had a ghost before. I would have known. Clementine would have told us.” Mary Lou shook her head slightly.

  “Maybe the ghost is Clementine. That’s what Officer Piper thought. Or maybe Clementine or I somehow disrupted a ghost that hadn’t been active before.” Erin tried to remember what Melissa had suggested. She hoped she didn’t sound too flippant. How would she talk if she believed in ghosts? “Maybe someone… disturbed it.”

  “By taking the map home?” Mary Lou suggested. “Maybe it was the map that was in the cabinet. Are you sure there is still something in there? I can’t imagine her closing up the shop and leaving something that was potentially valuable behind.”

  “Maybe,” Erin agreed. “But why lock the cabinet again if it was empty?”

  Mary Lou withdrew slowly, turning toward the door. “Well, you just let me think on it. I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  “Do you really think that map is to a buried treasure?” Vic asked when they closed up to have their lunches. Obviously, she had heard at least part of Erin’s conversation with Mary Lou.

  “No, of course not. Why would she put a treasure map in the recycling? It wasn’t something valuable to her. I just thought… I needed an excuse to be asking around for keys to the bakery. And I already had the map on my mind, I guess, so I just concocted a story around that.”

  “Oh.” Vic nodded. Erin wondered if she detected disappointment in the girl’s expression.

  “Sorry. Were you all ready to go hunting treasure?”

  “Yeah, kinda. It sounds like fun.”

  “Well, according to that map, there are all kinds of caves and mines around here. There must be a few places where a person could go exploring.”

  “Spelunking.”

  “What?”

  “Exploring caves? It’s called spelunking.”

  Erin gave a shiver. “That makes it sound creepy. I have visions of slimy cave walls and white fish in a pitch-black underground lake.”

  Vic nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Ew. I’m not sure I’d be up for that. But we should ask around, there are probably a few caves that a novice could explore without a bunch of expensive equipment… and blind white fish.”

  “Maybe there are cave paintings. I’ve always wanted to see some real cave paintings.”

  Erin nodded, chewing her sandwich. Cave paintings would be near the surface. Easily accessible. And they would probably be a really popular place to visit, so there would be guides and lights and railings to prevent people from falling over underground cliffs. Or into underground lakes full of blind, white fish.

  “Maybe we could do that some Sunday afternoon, after the church ladies are done their tea.”

  “We’re open on Sunday? Here?”

  “Just for the after-church social. Then we can close the doors and go exploring.”

  “I don’t think they’ll like that.” Vic shook her head slowly, dubious.

  “You don’t think they’ll like what? Us being open after church?”

  “Us going cave exploring on a Sunday.”

  “Why would they care about that?”

  “Because of the Sabbath,” Vic pointed out. “They don’t like people doing… secular stuff on Sunday.”

  “But it wouldn’t have anything to do with them.”

  Vic continued to shake her head. Erin studied her.

  “Do you believe in God?” she asked. “And the Sabbath and all that?”

  Vic was hesitant. She looked toward the front door, as if hoping someone would stop by and save her from answering the question.

  “You don’t have to answer,” Erin said. “Sorry. That’s a really personal thing to ask. I don’t care whether you do or don’t believe in God. I was just curious. Wondering how you felt about it.”

  “I believe in God,” Vic said. “I just don’t know… what kind of God. I don’t like the idea of a God that punishes people for… I don’t know, breaking the Sabbath or some other commandment. I’m not too sure about Jesus being a god on earth, but I like his ideas about loving people, even the sinners. I’ve looked a little bit into other religions, Buddhism and so on. But I haven’t really made up my mind… what it is I believe. I guess I’m still Christian… for now.”

  Erin got up to pour herself a glass of milk. She held it up. “You want one?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Were you raised religious? Christian?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, we didn’t really go to church except maybe sometimes at Christmas, which was kind of neat. But my parents taught me right and wrong… from that perspective.”

  “Meaning they punished you for breaking the rules they cared about?”

  “They weren’t really bad. I mean, a lot of kids are abused, physically beaten really bad by their parents, or one of them. I wasn’t punished like that. It was more… emotional… psychological. And then when I… strayed too far… they kicked me out. But I was old enough to be on my own. It wasn’t like I was fourteen or something. I’m an adult…”

  She trailed off and Erin wondered how close that was to the truth. It seemed like there was an ‘almost’ at the end of that sentence.

  “You’re eighteen?”

  “Uh, yeah. S
o, I’m an adult and it’s okay that I’m on my own.”

  “Except that you didn’t have anywhere to go. No job, no home, no prospects. You might be an adult, but you’re still pretty young. Pretty tough to be trying to start out all on your own when you’re that young.”

  “I guess. It’s been hard. I came here, thinking that Aunt Angela would let me stay with her until I got onto my feet. Maybe even offer me a job at her bakery. I always liked it here.”

  “I don’t understand anyone who turns a kid out on the street. Not your parents, not your Aunt Angela… I just can’t understand it. People should help each other. Especially young people.”

  “I sure appreciate the way you’re helping me out,” Vic spoke around a mouthful of sandwich. Then, realizing what she had done, she covered her mouth as she finished chewing and swallowing it. “Sorry. I’m going to pay you back for everything you’ve done for me, as soon as I can. Except I guess it’s all going to come out of your pocket, since you’re the one paying me. Kind of hard to pay you back for letting me work by giving you back the money you gave me…”

  “There’s got to be a tax advantage there somewhere. Don’t worry about paying me back. People have helped me from time to time… I just want to do the same for someone else.”

  “You’ve done more than anyone else, even the people who are supposed to know and love me.” She grinned. “And after I broke into your store and smashed your coffee mug.”

  “The coffee mug I expect you to replace!” Erin said severely, wagging her finger at the girl. Then she giggled. “We’d better open back up. I can see people gathering out there.”

  “It seems like a strange time for a rush.” Vic looked at the clock on the wall. “It shouldn’t be the lunch rush yet.”

  “Maybe everyone is hungry early.”

  Erin went up to the door, flipped the sign, and unlocked the door. She smiled at Melissa and Gema, but she felt uneasy about them both showing up at once and at such an odd time.

  “What can I get for you ladies today?”

  They walked up to the display case and alternated between looking at the products and at the board on the wall, neither one in a particular hurry.