Chapter 22
Sunday night proved sleepless for me. My brain circled round and round a list of suspects. Finally, I hauled myself out of bed, grabbed a sheet of paper, and jotted it all down to get it out of my head. I divided the list into two headings: one for Ben Nader and the other for Sandra Mays. I listed suspects and their possible motives. It was a short list.
BEN NADER SANDRA MAYS
Suspect Motive Suspect Motive
Tammy Was Ben having an affair? Tammy Same—affair?
Sandra Retaliation for different career goals Ben No, he was in the hospital
Esmé What is the connection between them? Esmé No motive!
Mack Hebron No motive! Mack Hebron Their volatile relationship?
I sat back to study what I’d written. No wonder my mind was mush. Nothing about the situation made any sense. If the two incidents were connected, Tammy was the only one with a possible motive for both, but that was only assuming there’d been an affair that didn’t actually appear to have happened—or if there was something else we hadn’t uncovered yet.
I came back to Sandra. It would have been risky for her to stash a car, don a disguise, and pray that no one recognized her or got any information on the vehicle when the street was filled with people. It was pure luck that it had played out that way, but I just didn’t think Sandra Mays would take the chance and potentially ruin her entire career.
Esmé might have a motive to try to silence Ben, but as of now, I had no idea what it could be. He’d been in her room at Crosby House. Had he been telling the truth that it was to measure for paint, or was there something else? But Esmé had no connection to Sandra.
And then there was Mack Hebron. No obvious motive for the attempted murder of Ben, but plenty of potential motive for Sandra. Was it possible that Mack may have overheard something about the ladder to the roof when Miguel and I had first discovered it with Ben?
Unless this whole thing had to do with Tammy exacting revenge on Ben and Sandra for having an affair—or to do with their opposing aspirations, which was a stretch—then, as we’d done the night before at dinner, I had to look at the two incidents as separate. I felt like I had a bunch of loose ends that led nowhere and I didn’t know how to weave any of it together. And it was making my head hurt.
I went back to bed, my mind clear of the clutter. With my thoughts down on paper, I was able to shut down and rest. Still, morning came too soon. Working in my volunteer hours at Crosby House took some finagling of my schedule, but it was a priority, not only because I was committed to helping the women there in any way I could, starting with the keyhole gardens, but also because I knew it was central to the investigation into what had happened to Ben and Sandra.
Olaya had recently started closing the bread shop on Mondays, so today was part of my weekend. Miguel closed Baptista’s on Mondays, too. That didn’t mean either Olaya or Miguel was not actually working, though. Olaya was probably trying out variations to her tried-and-true bread recipes, while Miguel was most likely tending to the ever simmering batch of mole that he used in the same way a sourdough starter operated. He had created the base when he’d reopened the restaurant. Since then, he kept it at a continual low simmer, adding a combination of chilis, nuts, chocolate, and spices to it as he built in layers and layers of flavor and complexity.
He might be out and about, though. He surfed occasionally, but more often than not, he took his bike and rode for an hour or two. Cycling was his favorite form of physical activity and something he loved to do in the mornings when the air was cool and the world felt fresh against his face.
We’d arranged to meet for lunch at the Shrimp Shack, which never took a day off. After being there Friday afternoon, I’d been craving their shrimp poppers . . . or their shrimp and grits . . . or their grilled shrimp kebobs. Basically, I needed some shrimp and I wasn’t going to be too picky.
I arrived at Crosby House ready to pull whatever weeds may have managed to grow in the short time the keyhole gardens had been in place, to encourage more composting—because I figured it would take the women at the facility a while to get into the swing of things—and to suss out what I could about Esmé and Ben.
What I found were the keyhole gardens completely weed-free, with the vegetables we’d planted already taking root and growing quickly, and the compost cylinders layered with kitchen scraps, cardboard, eggshells, coffee grounds, and grass clippings. “It’s going great,” a voice said from behind me.
I turned to see Angie wearing a pair of garden gloves, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’d spent a little time helping the day I’d been here to set up the gardens and had seemed mostly uninterested, but now it seemed she’d taken a robust interest in maintaining them. “I can see that! They look amazing. Everyone’s into the composting?”
She smushed her lips together in a strange, frowny expression. “They are. It gives them something to do. Everyone’s been out here pulling weeds or watering or bringing things to compost. It’s kinda cool to see.”
Giddiness washed over me. “It is! So cool.”
She gave a semblance of a smile, even though in reality it was closer to her lips being in a straight line. Was she so damaged by whatever traumas she’d endured that she might never be truly happy again? She looked proud, but she definitely didn’t share my visible enthusiasm.
“Meg told me you work at Yeast of Eden. The bread shop?”
“I do. I’m kind of an apprentice. Have you been?”
“No. Never had the chance.”
An idea cultivated in my mind. If the women at the shelter couldn’t—or hadn’t—come to Yeast of Eden, I’d bring Yeast of Eden to them. The entire idea behind Olaya’s Bread for Life program was to empower women from different backgrounds and income levels. To give them a marketable skill. To celebrate their cultures, their families, and to help them cultivate something real that belonged to them and could never be taken away.
What if, I thought, we expanded the Bread for Life program, bringing it to Crosby House? Zula, Claire, Amelie, and Esmé could volunteer, if they were interested, to teach the women how to bake. Many, I imagined, already knew how and had their own stories to share. They just needed permission.
The door from the house opened and Meg and Esmé came out to the yard. Esmé, I thought, looked normal—as if she hadn’t gone MIA for a few days or had the tense conversation we’d had at the Shrimp Shack.
“I didn’t know you were coming today, Ivy,” Meg said. She smiled in a way I didn’t think Angie could. It was genuine and bright and full of pride. “Can you believe these gardens? They look amazing. Everyone is so into it.”
“That’s what Angie was saying. I’m so glad.” I wriggled my fingers over a basil plant. It had to have nearly doubled in size in the few days it had been growing. “We did good.”
She held her arm out to me. I fist-bumped her and she grinned. “We did do good. So good.”
Esmé pulled a small basil leaf off, tore it in half, and put it to her nose. “I love this smell. The entire country of Italy must smell like basil, don’t you think?”
I’d never been, but it was a great image to have in my head. “If it doesn’t, it should.”
“Meg,” Angie said. “Did you talk to Vivian?”
Meg looked at her, shaking her head. “Was I supposed to?”
“She was looking for you earlier. Something about dinner tonight, I think.”
“Oh. Right. Okay.” Dinner was a long way off, but Vivian ran a tight ship and Meg scurried off to find her.
I’d been thinking about how to broach any topic with Esmé after the Shrimp Shack Friday night. I’d worried that she’d be put off by me, or, I don’t know, hostile. But she wasn’t. She acted normal, as if I’d never told her I’d snooped in her room uninvited. The three of us stood together around the keyhole gardens in an awkward silence. I was ready to head back inside to find Vivian Cantrell myself so she could direct me in other ways I could be helpful at Crosby House, but Angie’s voice stopped me. “I heard you were there when that guy was hit by a car.”
“I was,” I said just as Esmé spoke up.
“You know him, Angie. It was Ben Nader. He volunteers here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Angie said.
“You know Ben?” I asked. It shouldn’t have surprised me—after all, the guy had spent time here—but it did. I’d been so focused on everyone else.
Angie played with the loose fingers on her gloves, pinching the fabric, tugging at it, then letting it go. “Yeah, right. He did some painting. I had to leave my room when he came to work.”
I felt like a gong had sounded and was now reverberating in my head. “He painted your room?”
“Alabaster white,” she said, naming what had to be a designer paint store color. Took him two days.”
“Plus measurement and prep,” I said, raising the inflection of my voice at the end to pose it as a question. “I’m sure it’s hard to be put out of your space.”
Esmé drew in a sharp breath. Why? I wondered. Angie ignored her and asked me, “And you discovered that body? Sandra Mays?”
Once again, I nodded. “That was horrible.”
“Do they have any suspects?” she asked.
Esmé hadn’t said anything, but I heard her exhale. Sensed her anxiousness as she waited for my reply. “The police have a few leads,” I said vaguely. “Ben has come out of his coma, so that’s good, too.”
“He did?” Esmé’s voice rose an octave.
Meg came back out to join us. “Who did what?” she asked, bending over to pick a weed from the garden.
“Ben Nader,” I said, watching the nuances of Esmé’s reaction. “He’s awake.”
I thought Esmé flinched. She was seriously freaked out over Ben. I hadn’t really thought she could be a legitimate suspect, but maybe she was.
“That’s great,” Meg said. When she turned around, she held a bundle of basil like a bouquet. She handed Esmé some of the herbs.
Esmé smelled the basil, acting nonchalant. “He’s going to be okay then?”
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Are the police guarding him?” she asked.
Why did she want to know? I wondered. I spoke slowly. “The police have a guard outside his room.”
“A guard?” Angie perked up. “Why does he need a guard? Wasn’t it an accident?”
“I think the police aren’t quite sure about that. With Sandra Mays’s murder right on the heels of Ben’s accident, I think they don’t want to take any chances.”
“So there’s a murderer on the loose in Santa Sofia?” Angie’s asked. “Is there any news on what happened to Ms. Mays?”
All three of them swiveled to look at me. “There are people of interest,” I said, “but that’s all I know.”
Meg’s eyes grew wide. “Like who? The husband? It’s always the spouse, isn’t it?”
“She wasn’t married.”
“Oh my God!” For someone who’d been so shy and reserved when I’d first met her, she’d certainly blossomed—into a bit of hysteria at the moment. “Is Angie right? Should we be worried?”
“Sandra Mays’s murder was personal,” I said, disabusing her of the notion that there was a serial killer on the loose in town.
“She is right,” Esmé said. “Someone met her up on that roof. They should look at Mack Hebron. Those two, they did not get along.”
Meg gawked. “Really? The chef? You think he could be a killer?”
“Not getting along doesn’t mean you’re going to kill a person,” Angie said. “If it did, we’d all be guilty of murder.”
The three women fell silent, but met each other’s eyes. They’d escaped similar fates. What had brought them to Crosby House bound them together.
I left them at the keyhole gardens to go find Vivian Cantrell. It was a small thing, but so much about what had happened in the last week couldn’t be pieced together in a way that made sense. Confirming the truth of the small things felt like it mattered. “Do you have a minute?” I asked Vivian when I found her at her desk in her office.
She beckoned me in. “I do. Just a few, though.”
“I’ll be quick. I visited Ben Nader in the hospital the other night. He’s awake now.”
She’d been only half paying attention, but now her chin lifted and her eyes drilled into me. “I didn’t realize you knew Mr. Nader.”
“He’s actually the reason I came to Crosby House in the first place.” I’d left that direct connection out when I’d first spoken to her, but now I needed her to know about it. “He’s part of the team working on a reality show here in town. America’s Best Bakeries.”
Recognition dawned on her face. “I knew I knew you from somewhere. You work there. At Yeast of Eden, I mean.”
I thought back, trying to remember if I’d mentioned that fact on the application or during either of my first two meetings with Vivian. I guess I hadn’t. “I do. After Ben was hit by that car, I heard he volunteered here. That’s why—”
“It sparked an interest in you to give back to those who’ve been suffering,” she said, finishing my thought more eloquently than I’d have been able to.
“It did. He did. I saw him Friday night. He’s come out of the coma he was in. He mentioned that he’d been doing some painting for you. Some of the bedrooms?”
Vivian went back to scanning the paper she held. “That’s right. He is the best kind of volunteer. He does the prep work, buys the paint, and does the work himself. I don’t know if he’ll still be able to do that after what happened, but hopefully. Eventually.”
“He was going to paint Esmé’s room?”
She pulled a file folder from a holder on her desk and flipped it open. She used her index finger as a guide as she scrolled down the information on the sheet. “Here it is. Ben painted Angie’s room. Esmé’s room. Mickey’s. Louise is next. Or, I guess we’ll see if he’s able to continue.”
He’d measured and painted. Come and gone. And, it seemed, his story of being caught by Esmé in her room checked out.