Chapter 27
It was the end of the lunch hour, but the Yeast of Eden kitchen still had bread and pastries to produce. Janae worked on hearty pretzels—a summer favorite. Felix packaged more freshly ground grain to be sold to customers. Two other men Felix had on his afternoon crew finished the sourdough bakes. And I washed bowls and dishes and anything else we’d dirtied in the last hour.
Mae had gone for her thirty-minute lunch break at twelve fifteen. She was a person of routine. As she always did, she’d gone to pick up a sandwich at a deli one block down and two blocks over. Usually she returned precisely twenty-three minutes later. I glanced at the clock. Ten after one. It wasn’t like her to be so late. Add being late as strange behavior, and the idea took root.
I’d wait five more minutes before raising the alarm. Maybe I was off base and she’d just run into her mother and was on another mission to stop her from eating carbs. The thought had scarcely passed through my mind when Mae appeared at the back-door entrance to the kitchen. Her normally pink skin had gone sallow, and she dragged in a ragged breath, as though she’d just run a mile at full speed. The air in the kitchen suddenly felt thick and . . . wrong. Very wrong.
“Mae?” I said just as Janae’s sharp voice shot out, “Are you okay, baby?” She’d been sprinkling coarse pretzel salt over the thick dough she’d twisted. For a split second, her arm froze, suspended midair, then she threw down the salt and rushed toward Mae shouting, “Felix, baby, help her.”
Mae held onto the doorjamb as she looked around the kitchen, her gaze never landing anywhere specific. There was something about her eyes. They were dark. Unseeing. It was as if she wasn’t registering anyone or anything. “I’m s-so s-sorry I’m l-late,” she stuttered. She smacked her lips, then pushed her tongue out like she wanted to catch a raindrop. “J-J—” She tried to speak but couldn’t push the word out.
It all happened so fast. One second Mae was standing. She reached for one of the stainless-steel work tables, but her hand missed, and she stumbled. I dropped the bowl I’d been washing at the sink and sprinted across the kitchen, reaching Mae just as Felix caught her. He gently lowered her to the floor. “Mae?” Her eyelids fluttered. He gently shook her. Nothing. His eyes darted to Janae. “Call 911,” he said, then he looked back at Mae. “Mae? Can you hear me?”
I crouched down and felt her forehead. “She has a fever,” I said. I pressed two fingers against the carotid artery in her neck to feel for her pulse. It raced, like a drummer playing the snare, hands flying in a blur.
Symptoms flashed in my mind. Dry mouth. Dilated pupils. Rapid pulse. Fever. Difficulty breathing. My pulse ratcheted up. It was happening to her just like it had happened to Josh, and she’d been trying to tell us. “She’s been poisoned! Oh my God, she’s been poisoned!”
Time slowed to a crawl. None of us knew what to do. Janae’s voice cut through the thick fog. Her words sounded slow and far away. “They’re onnnn theirrrr waaayyy.”
“Mae,” I said, “stay with us.” I shot a glance at Janae. “Get Olaya!”
In a flash, Janae was through the swinging doors to the front of the shop. A second later, she was back, Olaya on her heels. “What is happening?” Olaya asked, her usually calm and sanguine voice strained at seeing Mae on the floor.
“She collapsed,” Felix said.
I thought I heard sirens in the distance. “I think it’s Angel’s Trumpet,” I blurted. “Like Josh.”
Olaya stared. Blinked. Then turned and grabbed her cell phone from her office. The sirens grew louder. Through my own pounding pulse and the cacophony of other sounds, I heard a thump as Olaya yanked her filing cabinet open. From the corner of my eye, I could see her thumbing through a file. Pulling out a paper. Placing a phone call. Talking. I knew she was calling Mae’s mother.
And then Olaya was back, rushing back to the front of the shop, returning a second later, firemen and paramedics in tow.
Felix and I leapt up and out of the way as the first responders circled around Mae. One of them stayed back, beckoning to us. “What happened?” she asked. Janae told the story with far more detail than I would have managed, but I was drawn back in a minute later. The woman asking the questions turned to me. “Why do you think it’s Angel’s Trumpet?”
I flung my arms around as if the answer was obvious. She had to be living in a cave to not know about that murder that had happened just days ago. “Because Josh Prentiss was murdered with it.”
The reality of what I was saying hit me as the words floated into the air. Someone—presumably the same person who had murdered Josh—had tried to murder Mae. The paramedics had Mae strapped to a stretcher. As they wheeled her out, I prayed they hadn’t succeeded.
* * *
It all happened so fast. One minute Mae was in the Yeast of Eden kitchen. The next minute she was in the hospital. I sat in the waiting room next to her mother. “Tell me again,” Kristin said, her voice quivering. “I don’t understand what happened.”
I pressed my hand against my thigh to stop my nervously tapping foot. I’d been replaying the moments before and after Mae collapsed to the ground. So much for the theory that she was involved in Josh’s murder. “I don’t know, Mrs. Spelling,” I said. “She was fine when she left for lunch. She came back late—”
“That doesn’t sound like Mae. She’s very fastidious. Very punctual.”
“I know,” I agreed. “And when she came in, she . . . she was sick. Pale and feverish. Disoriented.”
Kristin clasped her hands together tightly, bringing them to her lips. I could see the amount of effort she was putting into controlling her reaction. She was trying not to cry. Not to completely freak out.
“The doctor, she said Mae was poisoned.” Kristin shook her head helplessly. “I don’t understand. Who would do such a thing?”
That was the very question I’d been asking myself for the last hour. If I was right and Mae had been given Angel’s Trumpet, then it had to be related to Josh Prentiss. It had to be the same person behind both. But why?
Other than Yeast of Eden, to my knowledge, Mae and Josh had no connection at all. Maybe I’d missed something. She had gone to the funeral, after all. “Mrs. Spelling, did Mae say anything to you about Josh Prentiss’s death?”
The question seemed to send a jolt through the woman. She sat up straighter, adjusting her ample body in the chair to turn toward me. “Like what?”
“Anything at all. Did she know him outside of the bread shop?”
She frowned. Shook her head. “Not Mae. Now the other girl, she did.”
“What other girl?” I asked.
“The blond girl that used to work here. She’s been a thorn in Mae’s side, let me tell you,” Mrs. Spelling said.
Taylor? I thought. Other than Josh’s funeral, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her. I was surprised Mae would have anything to do with Taylor after their last morning together at Yeast of Eden. “Early twenties?”
“I guess. Around there. Mae’s age. Blond. Tall. Thin.—” She chuckled sadly. “Of course, next to Mae, everyone’s tall and thin, aren’t they?”
I smiled.
A few things clicked into place like cogs in a machine. Tracy McCall Prentiss had come to Yeast of Eden, looking for one of her husband’s women. She’d hadn’t said why she thought she’d find her at the bread shop. She’d said poor girl. Had she known Taylor worked there? I remembered the look Taylor and Josh shared. And then there was the book. When Taylor had been fired, the only things she left with were her purse and a book. It couldn’t have been the same book I’d found—the one with the message—but it proved that Taylor was a reader.
The message in the book materialized in my mind. You’ll get what you deserve.
Taylor, Taylor, Taylor.
Taylor had locked eyes with Josh the morning he’d died.
Taylor, who’d collided with Mae, and had no remorse. Taylor, who’d uttered those very words the day she’d been fired. Karma is a bitch, she’d said. You’ll get what you deserve.
Taylor didn’t fit Josh’s MO, though. Older women with money. That’s who he went after to manipulate. Minus Cheryl.
The image of a woman leaving Josh’s funeral surfaced in my mind. She’d been ahead of me as I’d gone out to the vestibule. I’d thought at the time it might have been Taylor. Tall. Thin. A too-short skirt. She’d left the funeral early, just like the other wronged women.
I remembered what else she’d said the day she’d been fired. The young woman was supposed to get money from her parents. A lot of money? Plenty of wealthy people called Santa Sofia home, so a trust fund was certainly within the realm of possibility.
A scenario unfurled in my mind. What if Taylor had painted herself as a young heiress? Or at least a young woman with a decent trust fund? What if Josh broke his own protocol and tried to win her over so he could get to her money?
What if he’d lost interest when he realized she didn’t actually have the money in hand?
Or . . . what if Taylor found out about his wife or one of his other women?
I’d seen the girl come unhinged. My head reeled. It had only been an inkling of an idea, but now it took root. Taylor may have been behind Josh’s murder. And if Mae suspected the same thing, Taylor may have poisoned Mae to keep her quiet.