Chapter 24
I spent the next morning working on the Yeast of Eden website, starting with the history of the bread shop. Olaya’s speech the night before had given me the inspiration I needed. It had shown Olaya’s vision and passion, so all I had to do was refine it.
The end result, after some editing and fine-tuning, communicated everything Olaya had said succinctly to Mack Hebron, and was in her voice. I moved on to a section about the Bread for Life program, then to the profiles of the core people at the bread shop, starting with Olaya, Felix, Maggie, and myself, as well as the rest of the morning baking crew who worked tirelessly with Olaya to bake every loaf to her standard.
I edited in real time, which allowed me to flip back and forth between the dashboard and the site itself, adjusting spacing, headings, and other style choices as needed. I set up the blog, but skipped doing an entry in favor of focusing on the Bread tab and all the core offerings at Yeast of Eden. Olaya had given me a list of the breads she wanted featured. We’d also spent hours setting up cutting boards, condiments, and knives so I could shoot photos of each variety. The next step was creating hierarchical pages for all the bread, each main page designated by the photos I’d taken. From there, I needed to create connecting pages for each individual loaf, which would include a brief description of it and the photo. It wasn’t hard work, but it was tedious and time-consuming.
I started with loaves, adding them one by one. I moved on to petite loaves, then to flat loaves, baguettes, and bâtards, rolls, rounds, and sliced breads. I was just entering the two gluten-friendly options Olaya wanted added. She’d spent six months baking and perfecting them and now she was ready for them to join the weekly menu. We couldn’t say gluten-free, since cross-contamination was a thing, and flour powder abounded in the kitchen, but we baked them in a separate section so they were as free of gluten as they could reasonably be in a gluten-filled bread bakery.
My cell phone rang just as I uploaded the last photo. I grabbed it, my stomach instantly clenching as I saw the Unknown Number note on the screen. I debated with myself. I didn’t have to answer.
So I didn’t.
I hit Decline and set the phone back down. It rang again three seconds later. Once again, I declined the call. We played the game three more times before I gave up and answered with an annoyed, “Hello?”
Nothing. No heavy breathing. No creepy voice. No threat. Just silence.
My hackles were up so I went with my gut. “Heather, you need to back the hell off.”
I listened intently. Was that a shallow gasp I’d just heard? Aha! “Heather. I don’t have any interest in Luke. You can have him. He’s all yours.”
Her voice came at me, frenetic and raspy. “I don’t believe you, Ivy. He came to see you. He told me you want him back.”
Luke Holden, that liar! I sucked in a steadying breath. “He showed up, that’s true, but I didn’t ask him to come, and I don’t want him back. I’m in a relationship with someone else. I have no interest in revisiting the past. With Luke,” I added, because I was revisiting the past with Miguel. He was my past, present, and future, whereas my ex-husband was just ancient history.
Heather didn’t say anything for a minute. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. Timid even. “Really? You don’t want him back?”
I exhaled quietly, but my chest felt tight, like a length of twine encircled it. “I don’t want him back, Heather. He’s all yours—if that’s what you both want. Please stop calling me and following me. And do not break into my house—”
“I didn’t break into your house.” She sounded indignant, like how dare I accuse her of such a thing, but her words didn’t ring true. Now I didn’t believe her. I decided not to push it with her, instead reviewing the stalking incidents in my mind. “Did you rear-end me?”
She sighed. “Don’t hate me.”
“So you did?”
“I followed Luke out there a while back. When he said you wanted him back, I lost it. It wrecked the rental car.”
“And the phone calls.”
“Yeah. You swear. You and Luke are over?”
“I swear, Heather.” At least she seemed relatively sane, as stalkers go. “No more calls then. You need to back off.”
“I will.”
“And I want my electric toothbrush back,” I said.
“Whatever, Ivy.”
My blood ran cold. She’d said she didn’t break into my house and I didn’t believe her, but what if? If she hadn’t, then who had? Like a Ping-Pong ball, my thoughts immediately bounced to Ben Nader and Sandra Mays. I’d witnessed the hit-and-run and I’d been asking around about him by the time I’d discovered Sandra’s body. Then there was the slow drive-by when I first went to Crosby House.
I shoved the thoughts away. Murder was getting under my skin.
“Leave me alone, okay?” I said to Heather.
“I said I would. Sheesh.”
She was getting attitude? “Bye, Heather,” I said, but she’d already hung up. Instantly, she was gone from my mind. I immediately opened a new tab on the computer, and typed in Ben Nader’s name. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but something. The most current listings were all about the hit-and-run and Ben’s recovery in the hospital. I skimmed each entry, looking for a clue of some sort. One reporter likened the accident to the fatal one Ben’s son had been in, mentioning that Ben and his wife, Tammy, were the guardians of their grandson, Kevin. I scrolled down through listing after listing of Ben and his work at the local news station, then on regional cable shows. Eventually, the listings became years old. I came to one that reported the accident that had killed his son. Like Em had said, the accident had taken place in Europe. London, specifically. They’d planned to be married there, then return to the United States as husband and wife. The accident had devastated Ben and Tammy Nader. The police had no clues and no one was ever charged in the manslaughter death of Grant Nader. Grant’s fiancée and the mother of his child, Margaret Ryan, had survived the accident.
My brain slammed to a stop. I reread that part of the article, zeroing in on two points. Ben and Tammy were raising their grandson, but Margaret Ryan, the mother of the child, had survived. Why, I wondered, was the baby’s mother not raising her child? Had she been too severely injured? Had she died later? I typed in her name. The same article popped up, but nothing else.
I had one thought, and one thought alone. Could Margaret Ryan have changed her name?
The accident that had killed Kevin Nader’s father had happened close to ten years ago. He’d been an infant, so that put him at nine or ten years old now. I picked up my cell phone and searched the note I’d typed Mrs. Nader’s phone number on for Olaya. I dialed it now. Tammy Nader answered right away. “Ben is doing so much better,” she told me when I asked after him. She caught me up on his progress. He’ll be in a wheelchair for a while, but he’s able to get around a little bit. We’re so thankful.”
“I wanted to invite you and your grandson to the bread shop. Olaya makes these amazing cookies,” I said, talking about the skull cookies she hid amidst the loaves of bead for the children of Santa Sofia.
“He’ll like that. Kev’s been out of sorts since the . . . accident.”
“I can only imagine.” We agreed to meet at five o’clock. That gave me plenty of time to get Mrs. Branford to help me do a little legwork.