Wedding Cake Read online

  “I’m so glad I got to see the cake before Jane ruined it. She can never destroy my memory of how fabulous it looked.”

  Rachel shook her head as though still unable to comprehend what had happened. “I can make you another one.”

  Sadie was touched by the offer—made for the second time—but hesitated to accept it as she pictured the cake again and shuddered. She remembered the scene of Mrs. Wapple’s house when she’d gone in and found the red paint that looked like blood all over the floor. This was so similar. Too similar. Mrs. Wapple had been unconscious when Sadie found her. What if Jane had hurt Rachel like she’d hurt Mrs. Wapple?

  She didn’t, a voice said in her head.

  But what if she had?

  Were the people around her in danger because of Jane’s vendetta? If Jane was the one who’d withdrawn Shawn’s money—and it was hard to imagine any other explanation—then she’d already started targeting people close to Sadie. What would she do next? Where would things go from here? The confidence Sadie had felt about going about her day as though nothing had happened was feeling pitted and weak. Had she been wrong about this? And yet, wasn’t she drawing Jane out just as she said she wanted to?

  The bell above the door jingled, and Detective Malloy came in. He wasn’t nearly as good with his bland detective face as Pete was, which was why Sadie could see his satisfaction at being needed. It made her angry to think he would be anything but concerned about what had happened.

  “Back here,” Pete said from where he held the swinging door open.

  Malloy nodded and headed in Pete’s direction. After Malloy passed into the back of the shop, Pete looked at Rachel. “Did you have the back door propped open this morning like it is now?”

  Rachel nodded, instantly sheepish. “It gets so hot when the ovens are going.”

  Pete smiled, likely to help assuage her regret. “I just wanted to make sure. We’ll only be a little while longer.”

  While Malloy and Pete were in the back, Sadie and Rachel helped three more customers, and with each transaction, Rachel seemed to come back to herself a little more. One of the customers picked up a cheesecake, and Sadie shared Pete’s compliments of it, which, after the customer left, led to a comparison between Sadie’s recipe and Rachel’s. Rachel’s recipe didn’t use cornstarch but that seemed to be the biggest distinction, which led to a discussion about what, exactly, cornstarch would do in cheesecake. The more they talked about baked goods, the more Rachel perked up. When Malloy and Pete were finished, Malloy took turns talking to Rachel and Sadie and then summarized his findings for all three of them.

  Malloy suspected Jane had come in through the back door, found the food coloring, which wasn’t difficult to locate, and used it and the knife to ruin the cake. Officially it was trespassing and destruction of property, but there was no proof Jane did it, just strong supposition. Malloy said he’d talk to the owners of the shops that shared the alleyway with Rachel’s Bakery to see if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary. Then he told Rachel to crack a window instead of the door in the future.

  A photographer was on his way to take photos of the cake and the door—Rachel was to steer clear of the back until that was finished—after which time the police would dispose of the cake, and Rachel could get back to business as usual.

  Sadie felt it was hardly a comprehensive investigation, but she kept her thoughts to herself since she didn’t want to complicate the situation. Plus Rachel seemed more relaxed with the police presence.

  Malloy and Pete went outside to wait for the photographer while Sadie said good-bye to Rachel, who restated her offer to make another cake.

  Sadie hesitated again, realizing that her knee-jerk reaction to what Jane had done was to call everything off: the wedding, the cake, everything. But she didn’t trust herself to be thinking rationally right now. “If you can make something else by tomorrow, that would be wonderful, but if you don’t have time—”

  “I can make something else,” Rachel assured her. She sounded relieved to have the chance to make things up to Sadie even though the cake disaster wasn’t her fault.

  “Don’t let it interfere with any other orders,” Sadie said. “And I’ll pay for both cakes.”

  Sadie gave Rachel one more hug and was heading outside when she had an idea. She popped back in and discussed the possibility of a wedding cheesecake. Rachel loved the idea—she’d done them before, she said—and it would be easier to put together by tomorrow than a traditional frosted cake.

  They discussed crusts and presentation for a few minutes, finally settling on a twelve-inch base, an eight-inch middle layer, and a four-inch top layer. A champagne-colored topping for each cake would add a hint of color, and the same flowers intended for Sadie’s original cake would still be the topper, tinted to match the off-white color of the cheesecake layers.

  Since Pete loved Rachel’s cheesecake, he’d love the surprise, and this cake would be different enough from the one Jane had destroyed that they wouldn’t be reminded of the first cake so much. Rachel promised that she could cook the tiers today while she worked on her other orders and have it ready by noon tomorrow. When Sadie finally left, Rachel was focused and positive.

  Malloy cut off whatever he’d been saying to Pete when Sadie stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the bakery. They were either talking about something Malloy didn’t want her to overhear, or they were talking about Sadie herself. Either way, she didn’t want to talk to Malloy anyway. She passed them, heading for Pete’s car still parked at the curb. She planned to get in the car and wait for Pete to finish, but he ended his conversation by telling Malloy he’d check in with him later.

  Sadie scanned the other side of the street to make sure Jane hadn’t come back. Pete used the key fob to unlock the doors, and she slipped into the passenger seat. What would have happened if she’d caught up with Jane in the breezeway? Would she have been able to take Jane down? Could this be over now? Or had Jane planned an attack Sadie couldn’t counter?

  She remembered what she’d told Pete that morning about coming out of hiding because she’d prefer an encounter over not having a life. Was she willing to put other people at risk so she didn’t have to hide?

  “You okay?” Pete said after he started the car. He checked the street for a break in traffic and pulled away from the curb.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” Sadie said as Pete fell into line with the other cars on Main Street.

  “Go to Pep Boys?”

  Sadie shook her head. “No, I don’t want to do any of this. I should have stayed at the hotel like Malloy wanted.” She felt emotion rising and blinked back tears of surrender.

  “Do you think that would have changed anything?”

  Jane had already hacked Shawn’s accounts by then and must have already had a plan in place for the cake. Being in the hotel wouldn’t have changed those things, but Sadie felt foolish regarding her earlier certainty that she could handle whatever Jane had in mind. The burden of feeling responsible for other people sat heavy on her shoulders, in her chest, and in her head. Sadie wiped at her eyes discreetly as the frustration and regret she felt transformed into tears. Like crying would help anything right now.

  Pete noticed her emotion and put on his blinker, pulling over to the side of the road and parking. He reached across the seats to smooth her hair behind her ear. She leaned into his touch automatically, eager for comfort even though she hated that she needed it so much.

  “This isn’t your fault,” he said in a soft voice. It didn’t surprise her that he knew why she was upset.

  “There were only a few minutes between when Rachel and I left the back room and when Rachel discovered what Jane had done. She was probably right there when Rachel and I went into the back. She likely listened to every word and then destroyed the cake as soon as we left. Hours and hours of work. What if she’d hurt Rachel instead? What if Rachel had gone into the back alone while Jane was there?” Sadie let out a breath and stared through the wi
ndshield. “She’s here because of me—we all know that. If I weren’t here, Rachel wouldn’t have had to face that today.” Sadie didn’t want to sound as though she were finding reasons to make other people’s hardship—Shawn’s and Rachel’s—all about her, but she felt so accountable.

  “You are not responsible for what’s happening here,” Pete said, scooting as close to her as possible across the seats and putting his hand on her arm. “This is Jane. It’s always been Jane.”

  “But she’s here to prove something to me, and people are getting caught in the cross fire. That cake . . . was so awful.”

  “And dramatic,” Pete pointed out. “It was actually pretty silly—juvenile even. She wants you to feel scared, and she hasn’t hurt anyone. More than that, you feeling responsible interferes with your ability to hold her accountable. Don’t let her do that to you.”

  It made sense when he said it that way, but she still felt bad about everything.

  “What we need to do,” Pete said, “is find her. Anything that gets in our way of doing that works in her favor.”

  Like having an emotional breakdown on the side of the road? Sadie thought. She felt a pinch of resentment toward Pete for not letting her take a time out, but it lasted only a moment because he was absolutely right. Every person had only so much energy to expend at any given time. If Sadie focused her energy and attention on fear and regret and embarrassment, she would have less to funnel into finding Jane.

  A common bit of wisdom she heard over and over as a child at church came to mind about how happy the devil was when God’s children were sad. Sadie remembered being a young girl and taking that very seriously; when she was happy and doing the right things, the devil—the ultimate bad guy—was mad. When she was mean or unfair, the devil was happy. Sadie had no doubt that Jane would love knowing how overwhelmed Sadie felt right now. Just like little-girl Sadie not wanting to make the devil happy, grown-up Sadie did not want to expend energy that played into Jane’s sense of satisfaction.

  “You’re right,” Sadie said. “But how do we catch up with her? Everything she’s done is so calculated.”

  “She’ll make a mistake,” Pete said with a shrug of forced casualness. “She probably already has. We just have to find it and take full advantage of it. She isn’t smarter than all of us, Sadie. She isn’t.”

  Sadie wasn’t so sure, but Pete’s point hit home. It had never been Sadie’s idea to play this game of cat and mouse, it was Jane’s. They had to find a way to outsmart her and turn things around.

  “How do I protect the people I love in the meantime, Pete?”

  “Find her as quickly as we can—whatever it takes.”

  Sadie was silent as she thought about that. What could they do that wasn’t chasing her? “We need to get ahead of her somehow,” she said, her eyebrows pulled together as she considered their options. “Do something she doesn’t expect that puts her on the defensive.”

  “I agree,” Pete said. “I just haven’t figured out what that is yet.”

  Sadie started to shake her head to indicate that she hadn’t figured it out either, then stopped as an idea presented itself. She met Pete’s eyes. “She’s been around town—last night to get that phone and then the ATMs as well. So she must be staying in Garrison, right?”

  “Possibly,” Pete said. “She could be staying out of town and coming in as needed. Though there aren’t that many options within less than an hour’s drive of Garrison.”

  “Could Malloy do a search of the hotels?” She frowned as soon as she said it. “But she wouldn’t sign in under the name of Jane Seeley.”

  “No, but she would have to interact with desk clerks and staff,” Pete said, looking thoughtful. “The more people we ask about her—even if they haven’t seen her—the more people will be on the lookout. Garrison isn’t a big town. She can’t hide completely. Checking the hotels in Fort Collins and Sterling wouldn’t be difficult to do either.”

  Sadie pondered a moment, her brain moving past hotel clerks to a larger group of people. “Our chances of finding her increase exponentially with every person in town who knows we’re looking for her. What do you think about putting something on Facebook? Put the whole town on alert to look out for her?”

  Pete nodded. “I’ve seen it done with missing persons cases several times, and it’s had great results.”

  “Except, we don’t have a picture of her,” Sadie said, feeling her excitement dwindle. It had been one of their biggest hurdles in trying to determine Jane’s true identity: no photos.

  Pete was quiet for a few seconds, then looked at her quickly. “What if we did a composite drawing instead? The art teacher at the high school, Ray Meyers, has done a few for us over the years when we couldn’t get the guy from Denver up here. He’s good and he’s fast.”

  “A drawing?”

  Pete nodded. “Not as good as a photo, and useless in regard to the facial-recognition software we’ve wanted a photo for in the past, but it’s an image all the same. It could be spread around the Internet just like a photo could.”

  “It could work,” Sadie said, feeling hopeful. “And a composite drawing gives the impression she’s a criminal.”

  “Right,” Pete said. “You and I know what Jane looks like; maybe we could do one drawing from our memory of her in Boston and another drawing of what she looked like this morning. We can include information about the cell phone thefts, breaking into the bakery, and that she hacked Shawn’s accounts. I think people could really jump on board with it. We could canvass the city.”

  The plan was growing by the moment in Sadie’s mind, then hit a red light. “Are we doing this with Malloy or on our own?”

  Pete paused long enough that Sadie realized he wasn’t entirely comfortable with his answer. “This is something we’d do on our own. Malloy won’t love it, but if it works, he’ll have a hard time arguing.”

  Repentance instead of permission; Sadie could be on board with that.

  “We could also contact some media outlets,” she said. She knew from experience how powerful they could be if they decided to help. “Maybe the editor I worked with at The Denver Post would be interested in doing a follow-up on the situation. They were all over what happened in Boston.” Sadie hadn’t loved that story—she hated having her personal life filleted and served to the masses—but it was worth the discomfort if it brought resolution. A media blitz was aggressive and uncomfortable, but it would make it hard for Jane to remain hidden in a small town like Garrison. “I can’t think of a better way to get ahead of her,” Sadie said after letting the plan build itself into a solid possibility.

  “And she’ll never expect it,” Pete said, his eyes twinkling. He sat back in his seat and pulled out his phone. “I’ll call Meyers and see if he can make time for the composite. In the meantime, are you still up to talking to Brian at Pep Boys? I’d like to do that before we work on the sketch.”

  Sadie nodded. They’d found a way to be in control of something, which restored her confidence in the planned interviews with the employees at Pep Boys—specifically Brian since Jane had stolen his phone.

  There was no time to wallow in her regrets or fear; she couldn’t risk expending that much energy. Pete had said Jane would make a mistake, that she may have done so already. The trick was to widen the scope of people who might know what the mistake was and to be ready to exploit that error as soon as they found it. In order to make that happen, they had to be at the top of their game from here on out.

  Chapter 10

  Ray Meyers taught art at the high school during the school year and painted sets for the Fine Arts Center during the summer. That’s where he was when Pete called: putting the finishing touches on the Billis Laundry set for the end-of-summer production of South Pacific.

  Pete explained the situation and offered Ray two hundred dollars if he’d do the sketch this morning. Ray told them to come to the art center any time before 3:00, although he’d be going home for lunch around 1:00. While Pete
talked to Ray, Sadie texted Shawn to check on how things were going at the bank. Shawn called her back just as Pete pulled into the Pep Boys parking lot.

  “Go on in,” Sadie said as she lifted the phone. “I’ll join you as soon as I’m done talking to Shawn.”

  Pete nodded, then got out of the car.

  “Hi,” Sadie said into the phone. “How are things going?”

  “Ugh,” Shawn said with a growl. “What a disaster.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Shawn was eager to relay the details. “Apparently she used my account access card, not my debit card, which doesn’t have the same protections. I’m going to have to go through my files when I get back to Michigan to verify it’s not there.”

  “You think she stole the card from your apartment?”

  “That’s the only thing I can think of. I haven’t seen that card for years, but I know I had it in that file box you gave me when I went away for school. The paper they mailed me with the PIN number is in the file too so she must have gotten into my apartment. With three roommates who can’t remember to lock the door, it’s not hard to imagine her being able to pull it off. Unreal.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Sadie said. “I can’t believe she planned so many details.”

  “Yeah, she knew exactly what she was doing,” Shawn said, disgusted. “The bank ran a credit check and found a credit card with a balance of almost two thousand dollars. I need to file a fraud report with them, too. As it is, the bank manager froze my credit for now. I guess I need to contact some consumer protection group for help with long-term alerts and things in case she’s filed for additional credit cards that haven’t shown up in my file yet. Some people have things coming in for up to a year. Good thing I have so much time on my hands and I’m not in a point of transition in my life where stuff like this might interfere.” He ended with a sarcastic snort.