As I’d promised, I gathered Mom, the Professor, and Carlos later that evening for a long conversation about how to restructure my workload.
Ramiro played the role of waiter, bringing plates of fresh lemon and spring pea pasta salad, grilled asparagus, and herbed focaccia outside to the deck nestled in by the towering redwood trees. Grizzly Peak was drenched in peach sunlight. Shimmery hummingbirds flittered between the feeders hanging along the deck, sipping sweet nectar. Carlos opened a bottle of crisp riesling, and Ramiro (clad in black with a white apron tied around his waist) filled our water glasses.
“Can I get you anything else?” he asked, pretending to check our orders on a pad of paper. “Chef has a special dessert for you that I’ll bring out in a moment. My shift is ending soon, but you’ll be in good hands with Chef.” He swept a lanky arm toward Carlos.
“Bravo.” The Professor clapped. “This is a feast fit for a king.”
“And such exceptional service,” Mom added with a wink.
“Enjoy.” Ramiro turned to go back inside, tucking the notepad under his arm.
“Excuse me, waiter, there is one more thing I need to discuss before your shift ends.” The Professor held up his index finger to get Ramiro’s attention. Then he reached into his jacket and removed two twenty-dollar bills. “Your tip.”
Ramiro turned around. His face cracked into a wide smile when he spotted the money. “No, no. A tip is not necessary.”
“Ah, but I insist.” The Professor waved the bills.
“No, it was just for fun that I played waiter tonight,” Ramiro protested, his cheeks flushing with color. “I’m going to pizza with friends now.”
“And it’s customary for grandparents to pay for that pizza,” the Professor retorted, reaching for his wallet again. “Come to think of it, you probably need a bit more to cover dinner for your friends.”
“Don’t forget about dessert.” Mom nudged the Professor. “They’ll need ice cream at Scoops after pizza.”
“You’re correct, my dear. Pizza without ice cream is like leaving Romeo and Juliet before the final act. It leaves you satisfied yet longing for that sweet final touch,” the Professor agreed, pulling out more cash.
Ramiro looked at me with his mouth hanging open. I nodded, encouraging him to take the money. Mom and the Professor had both shared on numerous occasions how much they enjoyed getting to spoil Ramiro, and I certainly wasn’t going to dissuade them.
He kissed them both. “Thank you.”
“Have a wonderful time,” the Professor said, beaming with pride. “And if I might suggest, order the cheesy garlic bread as a starter. It’s absolutely divine.”
Ramiro left, and we dug into our dinner.
Carlos filled the Professor’s wineglass. “You are too kind to him.”
“They say that becoming a grandparent is a second chance. That you have an opportunity to put into practice what you learned—the good and bad—with parenting. But for me, since I never had children of my own, Juliet is the daughter I never had, and Ramiro is the grandson I always wished for.” He looked at Mom, who reached out her hand in a show of support. He laced his fingers through hers and continued. “It’s nearly impossible for me to articulate how grateful I am to have you all as my family. I didn’t dare to dream that I would be this lucky, so I hope you’ll let me indulge in my role as a doting grandfather.”
Carlos raised his glass. “Salud por eso.”
I held my glass of sparkling water and clinked it with Mom’s glass.
“We know we’re biased, but he is seriously the most amazing young man on the planet,” she gushed. “What are we all going to do when he flies home to Spain?”
“Follow him there,” I suggested.
“That might be the only solution,” the Professor said, raising his glass in agreement.
I took a bite of the cold pasta salad packed with peas, spicy garbanzo beans, rotisserie chicken, and veggies. The lemon dressing gave it a tangy zest. “Speaking of family and support, I want to thank all of you for keeping an eye on me and also discuss plans for doing some restructuring at Torte.”
“We are understaffed and overdue for extra hands in the kitchen,” Carlos replied, brushing a pine needle off the table.
“I couldn’t agree more.” Mom set her fork down. “Sterling is the obvious choice for managing the kitchen, but if he agrees to a promotion, you’re definitely thinking of hiring a replacement sous chef, right?”
“Yeah,” I said through a mouthful of pasta.
We tossed around the idea of promoting Sterling to kitchen manager, hiring another sous chef, and looking for some additional part-time help, particularly over the summer months. For the next hour, we enjoyed our meal as the sun set over the sepia-toned hills. We lingered over decaf coffee and a plum almond tart, sketching out roles and budgets. I could practically feel the tension falling off my body. This was exactly what I needed—what the bakeshop needed.
The next morning at Torte, I wrote up a job description along with salary ranges for each of the new positions. I wanted to speak with Sterling first. Once I had a sense of whether he was interested in taking on a bigger role, then I would post the job offerings. I wasn’t worried about finding help. With SOU in town and high school students looking for summer income, I had a feeling that we would have a line out the door for interviews.
I’d almost forgotten about Ed when Rosa came downstairs to refill a tray of black sesame chocolate and lemon Earl Grey cookies.
“Jules, there’s a man upstairs looking for you. He said his name is Ed.”
“That’s right. Thank you. I’ll grab his order and take it up for him.” Lance hadn’t specified what kind of pastries he wanted, so I put together a box of one of everything we had in stock.
Ed was hanging by the door, scanning the bakeshop like he was casing the place.
“I believe these are for you,” I said, handing him the box.
“Yeah, Lance wanted them for morale. I don’t know that jelly donuts are going to help, but I guess it’s a nice gesture.” His tool bag was looped over one shoulder, weighing down his left side.
“Is morale low?”
“Yeah, painfully low.”
“Can I get you a latte or an Americano?”
He checked his watch and hesitated for a minute. “I guess I could be talked into a coffee. Our meeting is in thirty minutes and I’d never turn down a latte.”
“Great. Grab a table, and I’ll be right with you.”
This was becoming a habit. Soon I was going to need to start carving out hours for our investigation services at the bakeshop. Ed picked a table outside. I brought him a cherry blossom latte and a slice of tomato and caramelized onion quiche.
“You didn’t need to go to any trouble.” He tore his gaze away from the blue awnings of the police station across the street.
“It’s the least I can do. I feel so bad about everything that’s happened.”
“It’s not your fault.” He pushed his tool bag to the side with his feet.
“No, but with owning the vineyard and being the person who found Jimmy’s body, it’s almost impossible to take myself out of the situation.”
An insincere smile tugged at his mouth like he was trying to give me the impression that he agreed. But his hardened, questioning eyes told another story. “You found the body? I hadn’t heard that.”
“Yes.” I was under the impression that everyone knew that by now, so his question took me off guard.
His posture stiffened. “When?”
“I don’t know for sure. It wasn’t long after the end of the show. I was needed in the cellar, and when I went down to open it, that’s when I found Jimmy.”
“Huh.” Ed nodded his head, but his skepticism lingered in between us like an unspoken secret.
Why didn’t he believe that I’d found the body? And why did it matter?
“I heard that you were in the tasting room then, too.”
Ed flinched. He stabbed the quiche with his fork and slowly lifted a bite to his lips like he was buying time. “Where did you hear that?”
“I don’t remember. Someone mentioned that they saw you, but honestly, everyone seems to have been there. I’m still shocked that Jimmy was killed. It seems risky to have killed him with so many people around, don’t you think?”
“Not for the killer.” Ed whipped his head in the direction of the police station again. “They probably had enough and killed him in a fit of rage. They weren’t worried about being seen. They just wanted to silence him for good.”
Was he speaking from personal experience?
“Were you there?” I pressed, hoping that Ed would confirm what I’d heard from other people.
“I don’t know if I was there when he was killed, but yeah, I came to the house after the show to get some tools. During the run of the show, a board came loose that I needed to nail down before one of the cast or crew tripped.” He shot a brief look at his tools. “This production has been a headache. We’ve had a string of bad luck. Broken set pieces, the wrong props. I know this is a new company and we’re bare-bones in terms of staff, but I haven’t been sleeping well because I’ve been worried that someone is going to end up hurt.”
That didn’t sound like the sentiment of a killer.
“Why was your tool bag in here?” I asked, unable to disguise my shock over that part of his statement. “Don’t you keep your tools backstage?”
A brief look of panic flashed on his face. He recovered by taking another bite of the quiche. “Usually, but one of the cast borrowed my tool kit before the show. I saw it in their dressing room earlier.”
“Really?” I wondered if he had told the Professor the same story. What possible reason would a cast member have for taking a tool kit into a dressing room?
“It was Bertie,” he replied without emotion.
Was that supposed to answer my question?
“Bertie borrowed your tool kit?”
“Not in the cellar. In the tasting room,” he corrected me. “She said she would bring it right back, but then she forgot about it in the whirlwind of opening a show, and when I asked her about it, she said I could find it in the second dressing room upstairs.”
“Did you?” His story wasn’t adding up. He kept contradicting himself, which raised my internal alarm bells.
“Nope. It wasn’t there.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“So is it missing, too?”
“No, I got it back. It was on the stage shortly after I went to find it. She must have beaten me to it.”
That meant that Bertie had been in the house, too.
Was there anyone who wasn’t on-site when Jimmy was killed?
Ed grabbed his coffee cup with both hands. He struggled to keep it steady as he lifted it to his lips. Then he put it back on the table without taking a drink. “Look, I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
His entire demeanor changed. Instead of being closed off, he suddenly seemed jittery and on edge. His foot bounced on the pavement, shaking the table. “Lie.”
“Lie?” I was confused. “You mean about your tool kit?”
“Yeah. I mean about everything. I’m a terrible liar.” He let out a heavy sigh. “Look, it was me, okay? I was in the cellar. I took your key.” Ed thumped his chest.
I gulped and scooted my chair away from the table, trying to expand the physical space between us. Not that I thought Ed would try to hurt me in broad daylight in the middle of the plaza, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
He reached into his pocket.
My heart thudded.
Was he reaching for a weapon? A gun?
The plaza was bustling with activity. I made eye contact with Janet, who was setting out galvanized tubs of fiery red tulips at A Rose by Any Other Name. Farther down the sidewalk, a staff member at the outdoor store near my old apartment hung posters advertising a kayak training workshop.
I felt better knowing that my friends and fellow business owners had seen me with Ed.
But what did his confession mean about the accidents onstage? All of the mishaps that had gone wrong on the set—could Ed have been the cause? As set director, he would have had access to the prop guns, to everything. He easily could have placed Jimmy’s marks on the wrong spot in hopes that the actor would take a deadly tumble offstage, just like Sophie suggested. Had Lance and I gotten it wrong? Maybe we should have paid more attention to our early intuition when Carlos had mentioned seeing Ed run toward the vines.
“You don’t have to look at me like that.” Ed tossed the cellar key on the table. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to apologize.”
I stared at the key like it might explode. “I don’t understand.”
“It was me. I broke into the cellar.” He shifted on the bench, pounding his chest again as he spoke, like he was trying to implicate himself. “Technically, I guess it’s not breaking in, since I used the key, but you get what I’m saying.”
“Not really.” I couldn’t believe he was admitting this to me.
“When I went to find my tool bag, the kitchen was empty. Tom had told me about the key earlier. He mentioned that it wasn’t a smart business decision to leave a key to a wine cellar containing an expensive collection out in the open.”
That was what Tom had said to me, although I wasn’t sure why he had chosen to share that information with Ed.
“I seized the opportunity.” He threw out his hands. “I knew that everyone was outside and that I had a quick window, so I snatched the key and ran downstairs.”
My forehead felt hot and clammy. Was he about to confess?
“I unlocked the cellar and grabbed a few bottles of your expensive wine.” He reached down to his tool bag and took out a tape measure, which he proceeded to idly coil and uncoil. His words were hesitant and faltering, as if each one was a burden. “I know it’s terrible to tell you right here to your face that I stole from you, but I can’t keep it in any longer. I’m not proud of what I did, and I promise I’ll return the wine to you.”
“You took wine from the cellar?” I was trying to process what I was missing.
“Yeah, I know it’s bad, and I guess I should admit that technically it was more than a few bottles. It was a couple of cases, but I needed the money, and I didn’t think it was going to hurt anyone.” He pulled the tape measure tight, releasing it suddenly with a sharp snap. “I was going to take more, but I heard people upstairs, and I had to get out of there quick.”
“Was it Jimmy?”
“No, I swear I never saw Jimmy.” His eyes remained fixed on the tape measure, tracing the markings as if trying to measure the size of his guilt. “I took the wine, and I ran back to the stage to try and hide it before anyone realized what I was up to. I’m really sorry. I know it’s a long shot, but I hope that you’ll find a way to forgive me and accept my apology. I’ll return the wine. It’s still hidden backstage.”
Ed appeared genuinely remorseful. The tape measure slipped from his fingers, landing on the table with a clink as the metal hook tapped the edge. He picked it up and returned it to his tool bag.
The truth was, I didn’t really care about the wine, but I wasn’t sure I trusted anything he was telling me. If he admitted to stealing wine and being in the cellar, there was a good chance that he was lying about Jimmy too.
That could mean that he had seen more than he was letting on, or it could mean that I was sitting across the table from a killer.