Chapter 32

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” I ripped off the nitrile gloves I’d been wearing. “Can you handle things?”

“Of course,” Zula said. She didn’t ask me any questions, clearly seeing how desperately I needed to go.

“I’ll help, Mama!” Ella jumped up.

“Me, too!” Pilar followed Ella to the counter. Her smile was genuine, her excitement real. There would continue to be a lot of ups and downs, but for the moment, Olaya would be so happy to know Pilar was having an up moment.

I ran past the line of customers to the front door. Out onto the sidewalk. I searched the street in both directions, looking for the tall, thin blonde. Looking for Julia.

I didn’t know what I would have done if I’d seen her. Tackle her like one of Coach Bruno’s football players?

She wasn’t anywhere. Where had she gone?

I couldn’t answer that question, so I let another thought take over.

I exhaled. Coach Bruno was innocent! Martina was innocent! Sharon and Linda and the rest of the women Josh had manipulated and stole from were all innocent.

Even Taylor, who by all accounts was a rather horrible young woman, was innocent.

The second those thoughts passed through my mind, another one slid in. Panic careened in right behind it. Mae was still in danger. If she awoke from the coma she’d been in, she’d be able to identify Julia as the person she’d met with at the deli, and as the person she’d seen putting something in Josh’s coffee.

I raced back into the bread shop and through the kitchen, grabbing my purse and car keys on my way out the back door. I sat in my car, heart thumping, nerves ratcheting as I thought and reprocessed the events of the last week.

I’d been so intent on proving Martina’s innocence that I’d done exactly what Captain York had done to Miguel—I’d glommed on to the idea that Taylor was guilty, and I’d viewed everything through that lens. Taylor—the one who’d been wronged by Josh and who’d gotten her revenge. Taylor—the one who’d been fearful of whatever Mae knew or saw and who’d tried to shut her up. Taylor—the one who’d shot daggers at Josh.

But now I was seeing things in a completely different way. I replayed the moment of Mae stumbling into Yeast of Eden’s kitchen. In my mind’s eye, I saw her peaky skin, her unnaturally dark eyes, and her parched lips. She’d started to say something before she’d crumpled to the floor. “J-J-J.” I’d thought she’d been trying to say Josh’s name. That she’d been poisoned, just like he was? J-J-J. My mind stuttered. What if she’d been trying to say Julia?

I thought about how Josh’s death came about. Everyone had been blaming Olaya’s bread. The kid from the deli said Mae had met Julia at lunch. She could have easily dripped poison into Mae’s cup when she wasn’t looking. It could have been the same with Josh.

One thing kept coming to mind. Sleight of hand.

Julia making a quarter materialize out of thin air from behind little Tara’s ear. Making the crayons in a box vanish. Turning a scrap of paper into a dollar bill.

Julia, who’d bumped into Josh’s table. It had been a distraction! The broken plate. Everyone’s attention on Josh and the broken plate, and not on her putting something into Josh’s coffee cup.

Everyone except Mae. She had been there, chasing her mom around the dining tables. She could have seen the incident at Josh’s table but not even realized what it meant. Yet.

I’d never been able to place Julia’s age. Somewhere between thirty and mid-forties. Kristin had also said the woman Mae had been meeting with was blond, tall, and thin. Taylor hit the mark on the first two. She was curvy, though, with a booty that would never be described as small. Julia, on the other hand, was almost stick straight.

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. Something about her had been familiar at the time. My mind had gone to Taylor, but it had taken me in the wrong direction.

The cogs that had previously fallen into place rearranged themselves. The book. Carter Beats the Devil. “My dad was an amateur magician,” Julia had said when I’d asked her about the quarter trick. I plunged my hand into my purse and pulled it out. For the first time, I flipped it over and read the back. It was about a magician. A true story about Charles Carter, an American stage magician.

Julia had had a book when she’d arrived. She’d surreptitiously left it with Josh. A proclamation that she was a magician, he was the devil, and the message inside telling him that he’d get what he deserves.

Yet again, I replayed the scene from the bread shop the morning Josh had died. Mae had chased her mother around, but it was the moment after that which now drew my attention. Josh said he felt something hit him in the back of the head. It made him jump. Bump into Julia. The vignette played like a movie in my head. Julia crouching to pick up the broken plate. Josh helping her stand. Julia yanking her hands free of his. At the time, I thought she’d looked abashed, but her emotions must have run much deeper than that. Somehow, he’d screwed her over, too. But how? He’d flirted with her, like she was someone he’d like to get to know, not someone he already knew. She couldn’t be one of his victims.

I broke every speed limit in Santa Sofia as I rammed my foot against the gas pedal and sped toward the sheriff’s station house. I jerked the wheel, making a hard turn into a parking spot, then raced into the squat beige building.

The same deputy who had been on duty the last time I’d been there looked up from her computer. She had the most edgy haircut I’d ever seen on someone in law enforcement. It was shaved close to the skin on either side of her head, a mop of curls growing in a stripe down the center. It was almost a mohawk, except she let the curls fall over the closely shorn skin. We were on a first-name basis now, or at least she was with me. She was still Deputy Hall to me. She took one look at me and stood. “What’s going on, Ivy?”

“I need to see the sheriff! Or Captain York!” I said, trying to catch my breath and tame my racing pulse. “I—I—I—” I caught my breath. “I think I know who killed Josh Prentiss!”

Deputy Hall’s thin eyebrows rose up. “What’s that?”

“I think I know who killed Josh Prentiss,” I repeated, more in control of my breathing this time.

“Ivy, they’re both in the field. I’ll call them—”

But I was already running toward the door.