18: One Way or Another

 

 

The Sweet Life bakery wasn’t set to open for the contestants until nine a.m. Yet I was standing in the alcove of the door waiting for Gordy and Morales before eight o’clock. I had been scheduled to help Mina until ten, but when I told her I needed to leave a little early to help with the show, she’d ushered me out the door excited to hear all about it the next day. The show, not the murders. She didn’t know about those, thankfully. I glanced around, freezing my face off and growing irritated that Gordy hadn’t arrived yet.

Ten near-frozen minutes later, he finally rolled up in his unmarked cruiser. Morales waved at me from the passenger seat, a grin on his face. I was not grinning. Morales and Gordy riding together put me in the backseat, like a criminal. I’d ridden in that seat too many times over the last few months for it to be novel. Glaring at them both, I walked over to the car and yanked open the back door.

“It’s a good thing I got here on time,” I grumbled as I slid into the seat and reluctantly closed the door. I didn’t like knowing I couldn’t get back out on my own.

“I got delayed.” Gordy glanced back at me and suddenly looked even more annoyed than I was. “No coffee or muffins? Didn’t you just come from Mina’s?”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I raised an eyebrow at him. “You were late, so I ate and drank everything to keep warm. It’s December. In New York. And I ride a motorcycle…in case you forgot.” 

He knew I was lying about having eaten everything, but he looked at least a tiny bit apologetic for leaving me to freeze. Morales got a pouty look on his face, mainly about the food I was pretty sure, and glanced at his superior in chastisement. In reality, I simply hadn’t had time to make anything for them. This close to Christmas, the bakery orders were rolling in like crazy and we were barely keeping up. I felt guilty for leaving Mina there by herself, but this case couldn’t wait. As it was, I had no idea how I was going to manage to bake Maleficent Megan’s baby shower cupcakes in time.

“Why are we here so early anyway?” I asked.

“Updates,” Gordy said.

It was about time. Everything I’d reported back to Gordy, he kept saying he’d look into or question so-and-so and that was the last I’d heard on the majority of the topics. Rather than opening up the conversation himself, he gestured for Morales to start. The kid was more than happy to take the lead.

“The proximity card readers work on a UHF radio frequency. When the cards get near the scanner, it puts off a signal it can read, and if the data matches it sends a signal to the wiring that controls the lock and tells it to unlock the door. Once the door closes, it automatically relocks,” Morales explained. “If the components that control the lock are sabotaged when the lock is open, it won’t relock.”

That all sounded fairly understandable, but there was a key piece missing. “But how was it broken?”

Morales got even more excited. “The guy we had look at the broken one said the wiring for the locking mechanism wasn’t secured as well as it should have been and it looked like an electrical burst fried the wiring.” He grinned. “You were right, most likely. It was probably a device that emitted a pulse strong enough to damage the wiring.”

“Which we did not find in Pamela’s locker, or apartment,” Gordy added.

It really hadn’t seemed like Pamela was involved, but whoever was would have been incredibly dumb to have kept the device onsite or sitting on their kitchen table. Even still…. “What about everyone else’s lockers?”

“That’s what Morales will be spending the morning doing.” Gordy looked rather pleased about that while his younger counterpart did not.

Searching lockers you knew were highly unlikely to contain anything helpful did sound boring, but the broken card reader was hardly the only thing I wanted an update on. “What else?”

“The contract for the show is up for renewal at the end of the spring season. Mia wants more control and Salma wants all the control back. Negotiations aren’t going well, and from what I could tell Salma is ready to walk away if she has to.”

Both mine and Morales’s eyes widened. Sweet Life was a successful bakery in its own right, but giving up the show would be…a lot of money to pass on. Plus, all the show staff would lose their jobs. Salma wouldn’t get nine a.m. starts to her days anymore either. It would be a huge change in lifestyle all the way around, not to mention the loss of fame and possible backlash from customers angry about the show ending. It could ruin her and the bakery.

“That doesn’t get shared beyond this car, got it?” Gordy said, mostly looking at Morales with his warning.

I nodded along with him anyway. Not saying something wasn’t going to be easy. The show was so many people’s livelihood, it was hard to believe Salma could just end it. Then I remembered her anger and frustration over all the incompetent people Mia had hired. Sweet Life was her baby, and she’d almost completely lost control over it.

“Did you find out whose idea it was to hold the contest?” I asked.

Gordy confirmed my suspicions with his answer. “Mia’s, and Salma had quite a lot to say about it. None of it good.”

I felt a knot form in my stomach. It was easier to believe Mia could be in on the murders, but Salma was looking more and more likely by the second. “Do you think she’s involved? Would she go that far?”

Morales looked slightly hurt by my suggestion, but a second later set his mouth in a grim line. “We can’t discount the possibility. Millions of dollars are at stake. Sabotaging the contest could lead to Mia being fired.” His mouth fell into a scolded puppy frown. “That would undoubtedly get Salma what she wants. Full control.”

“If the network even decided to renew,” I argued. “A disaster this big could end the show faster than stalled negotiations. Mia has done a stellar job of keeping the first three murders under wraps, but if it gets out to the public I can’t imagine the show would even be offered a new contract.”

Now Morales really looked defeated. “Which would also give Salma what she wants.”

My shoulders fell, too. “Yeah, true.”

Gordy took in our dejected expressions and shook his head. “Nothing useful came up in any of the cast or bakery crew interviews, and the only thing I could find out about Salma’s past business relationships was that a previous partner filed a lawsuit against her. The civil settlement was sealed, though. Apparently, that wasn’t the first or last time she’s ended up in court over business dealings, but I haven’t been able to gain access to anything yet. Spencer’s working on that right now.

“In the meantime, Eliza, I need you to listen to everything that goes on today. Mia has threatened everyone associated with the crew that if they leak information about the murders they’ll be in breach of the nondisclosure agreement and she’ll fire them on the spot. That’s not going to stop them from talking amongst themselves, though. I want to know every piece of gossip floating around the bakery today, and I want you to see if you can get Pamela to point out the guy who told her about the broken door.”

“No luck on the security cameras narrowing down the possibilities?” I asked.

Looking apologetic, Morales shook his head. “Pamela literally talks to everyone. Figuring out who else knew the door was broken would be easier than questioning every single person she talked to that morning.”

Which, since Morales was stuck on locker duty, would fall to me. Nothing got people talking more than accusing them of working with the murderer. Great. “Please tell me the list of lost or stolen cards was at least helpful.”

Gordy huffed. “Keep hoping.”

“There were five cards lost over the last month, but I talked to the security office for the network and he said a lost card is immediately deactivated and a new one issued,” Morales explained. “None of the ones reported lost could have been used to access the bakery to murder Alice.”

“What about cloning a card?”

Morales’s expression grew weary. “It’s possible, but the only way to know which card was cloned would be to go back through the keycard logs and find a card used to gain entry twice, or at a time it shouldn’t be able to.”

That made my head hurt just thinking about the keycard logs. What Morales just said presented a whole other problem, though. “So a cloned card would still show up as belonging to the original owner?”

Nodding, Morales looked disappointed as well. “The guy I talked to couldn’t explain why there’s no log entry for the murderer entering the building that night. Something should have recorded an opened door, even if it had been opened by brute force. He’d like to know if we figure it out, though, so he can prevent it from happening again.”

“As for Cassie,” Gordy said, bringing up the last big topic we’d all been wondering about, “she’s not a suspect.”

“Really?” I questioned.

Gossip around Sweet Life made it pretty clear Cassie had been pissed about being passed over for the opening after Lori jumped ship. She’d been angry enough to walk out in the middle of shooting and never come back. Sabotaging the contest seemed like pretty good payback—minus the killings—since her coworkers didn’t think her capable of taking it that far. Even so, I couldn’t imagine how Gordy had managed to rule her out already.

Sighing and scrubbing at his forehead, Gordy said, “She’s dead.”

Clearly Morales hadn’t known this beforehand, either, because his eyes popped open wide. “What? When?”

“The day after she walked off the show,” Gordy reported, “which was more than two months ago.”

“Was her death related to all of this?” I asked.

Gordy shrugged. “It doesn’t appear to be, since she was visiting her parents in Boston at the time and was shot during a botched mugging.”

“But?” I asked.

He shook his head. “But it seems too coincidental. There’s something about it…about this whole case that just feels off. We’re missing something.”

I echoed that statement. It felt like the critical clue was somewhere just out of reach. If we could figure out why the murderer wanted the boxes and what they were hoping to accomplish with their plan, I suspected the killer’s identity would then be obvious. Until we figured out both, we were feeling around in the dark.

“I requested the file on Cassie’s death. I don’t have high hopes of finding anything but…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged. It was another straw we could grasp at.

“We’re running out of time,” I said, more to myself than anything. The live show was less than seventy-two hours away, and I think we all knew this case would come to a close before the cameras turned off, one way or another.