Chapter Seven
Inside the bakery, Bell had to take a moment to recover. Her assistant, Sugar, had flipped the Closed sign in the window. All the customers had fled during Chestnut’s cupcake attack anyway.
My nerves were so frazzled that I downed the fortifying mug of eggnog Sugar handed me. Usually I found eggnog a little nauseating, but Sugar had laced it with brandy, cutting the gluey consistency.
Bell knocked hers back. “Did you hear what he called me?” she asked. “Murderer!”
“The stress of finding Wink this morning must have gotten to him,” I said.
“Hmph.” Bell folded her arms. “Sheer deflection, if you ask me. The first thing someone with a guilty conscience does is try to point the finger of blame at someone else.”
Sugar shook her head. Bell’s helper, now that I got a good look at her, looked around the same age as her boss, that is to say, around forty-five or fifty. They were wearing matching silver aprons over light green tunics, with the bells and ribbons logo of the store on the bib of the apron. Side by side, Bell and Sugar looked more like sisters than employer-employee.
“It was like he just snapped,” Sugar said. “He was never like that when he worked here.”
“He snapped, all right.” Bell drummed her fingers. “But that shouldn’t let him off the hook. He’s calculating that folks will think I’m so jealous of his fancy new store that I would do a diabolical thing like hurting Wink. Accusing someone without proof is almost as evil as the murder itself.”
She was right, yet I couldn’t forget her glaring across the street at Chestnut’s Cake Emporium, and the anger and betrayal in her eyes when she’d spotted me considering getting in line. And I was just an occasional customer of hers. How much angrier must she have felt toward Wink, her employee who’d defected along with Chestnut?
Could Bell have been the elf in the parka Algid had seen arguing with Wink in the middle of the night?
“Did you ever have words with Wink about his leaving?” I asked.
She poured herself some more eggnog. “When Chestnut announced that he was going to open his own shop and take Wink with him, I admit it—that hurt. I’d taught them everything about the bakery business and nurtured their talents, and there Chestnut was, announcing that he was opening a shop right across the street from mine. Sure, I was upset, and I told them so.”
“But what about more recently? In the past few days, say.”
“Until today, I hadn’t spoken to Chestnut in weeks, or Wink, either.”
“You didn’t talk to Wink late on the night before he died?”
She blinked in confusion. “No . . .”
The front door banged shut. Through the glass front, we watched Sugar begin clearing up the cake-splattered snow with a shovel and a pail.
“Frankly, I didn’t care if I never spoke to Chestnut or Wink ever again,” Bell continued. “My employees were always more than just workers to me, Mrs. Claus. I like to think we’re family here at the Silver Bell Bakery. But even though he did betray me by defecting to Chestnut’s store, there’s no one more upset about what happened to Wink than I am.”
If Bell was sincere and she really had considered Chestnut and Wink to be family, wouldn’t that make their defection all the more painful and any violence toward them easier to justify to herself?
My imagination was off and running with this Bell-as-culprit theory. I had to remind myself that here, now, Bell was the victim.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I said.
She was not soothed. “I won’t be attacked and accused. And I won’t rest easy until whoever’s responsible for what happened to Wink is exiled to the darkest corner of the Farthest Frozen Reaches.”
The door opened and Crinkles bustled in, puffing as if he’d just run a marathon. “We got him!” From the pride in his voice, you’d think he’d just collared Al Capone instead of a cupcake-lobbing baker. “Ollie is taking him back to the constabulary now.”
“Good,” Bell said. “In my opinion, you’ve got Wink’s killer, as well.”
Crinkle’s eyes bulged. “Really, who?”
“Chestnut,” Bell said, enunciating the name as she would to someone half deaf, or half witted.
The constable rocked back on his heels, overwhelmed by his own achievement. “That’s the fastest I’ve ever caught a killer.”
I pinned my gaze on him. “Constable, can I speak to you outside?”
“Of course,” he said.
Out on the sidewalk, I buried my hands in my coat pockets and gave him the bad news. “I don’t think Chestnut killed Wink.”
He frowned. “Why not? It would have been easy for him to poison something Wink ate. Piece of cake, in fact.” He chortled at his own joke. “He even admitted to preparing the lethal cupcake batter.”
“Algid said Wink wasn’t poisoned.”
“What?” Crinkles’ face fell. “Doc Honeytree didn’t say anything to me.”
“Doc’s been tending to an emergency in Tinkertown this afternoon. What’s more, Algid said he overheard Wink having a loud fight with a woman the night before.”
“Why haven’t I heard any of this?”
That’s what happens when you go sleigh riding instead of conducting an investigation.
His mouth twisted. “Well! A female elf. That’s almost half of Santaland. How am I supposed to narrow down that suspect list?”
“You could start by talking to Bell—she’s harboring some strong resentments against both Chestnut and Wink.”
A look of dread crossed his face as he glanced back at the bakery. I half expected him to dig his curly-toed booty into the ground and whine, “Do I have to?”
Instead, he muttered, “I guess you’re right.”
Belatedly, Bell’s words from earlier echoed in my head: Accusing someone without proof is almost as wicked as the murder itself. Had I just done something wicked?
But I didn’t actually accuse Bell. I’d just told Crinkles he should question her. He should be questioning a lot of people.
Crinkles shuffled reluctantly back inside and I was close on his heels when Sugar called out my name, waylaying me. She’d moved on from shoveling to wiping icing off the bakery’s window. Her expression was apprehensive as she flicked a glance inside. “Is Crinkles here to arrest Bell?”
I drew back. “No, of course not. Why would he be?”
Her expression didn’t give anything away. “I was just worried. . . .”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “he was half convinced by Bell that Chestnut killed Wink.”
“But that’s all wrong!” Sugar tossed her cleaning cloth in the bucket. “Completely wrong! Chestnut would never hurt Wink.”
“Do you know someone who might have?”
I could tell that she regretted having said anything. Which of course made me all the more curious about what she knew. Especially when she flicked an anxious glance toward the bakery’s interior.
“Do you think Bell could have had anything to do with Wink’s death?” I asked.
Quickly—almost too quickly—she gave her head a frantic shake. “I didn’t say that.” She stopped, then looked down at the snow. “I mean, sure, she does have a ferocious temper. . . .”
I was beginning to wonder if that was a trait that all bakers shared.
“Bell’s been really mad these past weeks, ever since she found out about Chestnut’s shop, and his taking Wink with him. But that’s understandable, right? I know she feels cheated. But it’s been hard to watch.”
Sugar had had a front row seat to Bell’s resentment. I felt sorry for her.
“Didn’t I see you at Peppermint Pond, moving ice blocks?” I asked.
She nodded. “The city called for volunteers.”
Sugar was a helper—one of those citizens that communities depended on—that employers depended on. A worker bee, not a queen bee.
A word Sugar had used earlier snagged in my brain. Cheated.
That was the word Algid had mentioned overhearing during the late-night argument.
“Do you know if Bell had spoken to either Chestnut or Wink recently?” I asked.
“She told me she’d given Chestnut a piece of her mind.”
“When?”
She thought back. “I’m not sure when the conversation occurred. She told me about it”—she bit her lip—“yesterday.”
Now that was interesting. Bell had lied to me. What else was she lying about?
“I’ve been working for Bell for almost a decade,” Sugar said. “Longer than Chestnut, and certainly longer than Wink. But I don’t want to stay here if Bell’s . . . unstable.”
Was she? I kept reminding myself not to let my suspicions run away from me. With a former coworker murdered, though, I could see why Sugar would be nervous.
Crinkles emerged from the bakery. I wasn’t sure if he’d gotten any answers out of Bell, but he was walking away with something even better: Chestnut’s snowball cake.
He caught me staring at the cake carrier and shrugged sheepishly. “I’m taking it back to the constabulary. It’s evidence.”
The tastiest evidence ever.