Chapter 34
Josie swept into the bread shop, Coach Bruno holding the door for her.
“Josie!” I’d been sitting at one of the tables, laptop open, flipping through photos of the park. I jumped up. Her arms came around me like a life-giving cocoon. “What are you doing here?”
“We heard everything. The second poisoning. The apprehension of the killer. Quite a week for Santa Sofia.”
It had been, and I sincerely hoped things would now settle down. I wanted to bake bread. Take photographs. Get married. Maybe have a child with Miguel. I’d be happy if murder was never again in the mix.
“We just came from the sheriff’s station house,” Josie said. She tapped Coach Bruno on the arm. “Tell her what you discovered.”
He pressed his lips together and gave his head a little shake, as though he still couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “I scoured the books with the school’s bookkeeper. The numbers didn’t match. Josh . . . he swindled the boosters. With the treasurer, Cheryl Fitzwilliam. They stole thousands. Tens of thousands.”
I slapped my hands together triumphantly. “I knew it! I mean I couldn’t prove it, but, yeah, I suspected.” I told them what Nina had said about the spreadsheets and the doctored set of books.”
Coach Bruno’s lips thinned. “That bastard.”
“And you went to the authorities,” Josie said to me as she patted her beau on the arm. A statement, not a question.
I nodded. After leaving the hospital, I’d rounded up Nina and taken her to the sheriff’s station house. I suspected Sean Fitzwilliam would give his ten cents, too, when called upon. “Emmaline’s bringing in a forensic accountant to audit the books.”
Josie and Coach Bruno shared a look. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?” I asked.
“It explains why we felt like we were preaching to the choir. It wasn’t a surprise to them.”
“Just icing on the cake of Josh Prentiss’s character. He had us all fooled.”
Sharon had come by the bread shop after she’d read the Marcus Brolin piece in The Scout. It had exonerated Yeast of Eden of all wrongdoing, and he’d even gone so far as to issue an apology for throwing the bread shop under the proverbial bus. “They’ve been able to trace all the money to some offshore account,” Sharon said with a disbelieving snort. “That man should rot in hell.”
I didn’t know about that, but all his crimes would be publicly revealed, one by one, and his victims would get their recompense. I hoped that would be enough for Sharon and the others.
For Julia, it was too late.
Coach Bruno’s head rotated on his thick neck. “This is going to make national news. ‘Treasurer and controller take boosters to the cleaners,’ ” he said, making air quotes around the headline.
Well, then. I thought back to my conversation with Sean Fitzwilliam. It looked like Cheryl had bet on the wrong man after all. My heart went out to the jilted husband.
Josie and the coach got in line for bread. “A rare treat,” Josie said.
I put my things away under the counter and stood at the register. I threw in an extra croissant for the coach and a morning cookie for Josie, then said goodbye with air kisses and a wave.
Coach Bruno held the door open for a woman coming in at the same time. She had chestnut ringlets, streaks of blond woven throughout. Her hair was pulled into two low ponytails, and square-framed glasses perched on the top of her head. I immediately recognized the crate under her arm. The pristine patterns Nina had discovered. “Did you get those at the mini-mall?” I asked the woman when she made it to the front of the line.
She glanced at them, her face breaking into a wide smile. “That place across the street? Yes! Do you sew?”
I spread my arms wide. “No, no. I bake. Not like Olaya, but I try. But I saw them the other day. Nina said they’re quite a find.”
“Oh my goodness.” She gazed at them with open adoration. “Such an amazing find.”
“I take it you sew.”
“Oh yes. All my life. I have a little shop in a small little town in Texas. You’ve probably never heard of it.”
“I went to UT,” I said with a wink. “Try me.”
“No! Small world, right?”
“Right,” I agreed.
“I live in Bliss. It’s a little place. Quaint and colorful. “
“I’ve heard of it! Kind of like Granbury.”
She beamed. “Exactly. I have a dressmaking shop there. Buttons and Bows.”
“You’re a long way from home,” I said.
She turned to glance at the man coming up behind her. Tall. Olive-skinned like Miguel. Baseball cap backward. And a wedding band. He took the box from her to hold. “We’re on vacation. My great-grandmother, Loretta Mae, once told me about this bread shop. And”—she spread her arms wide—“here it is! She said the bread is”—she leaned in and lowered her voice—“magical.”
I laughed. “A lot of people say that.” And it was a lot better than people thinking our bread was poisonous. Thankfully, those rumors hadn’t spread far and wide. This couple from Texas proved that point.
She pulled something from her wallet. A business card in the shape of a dress form. BUTTONS & BOWS / HARLOW CASSIDY, DRESSMAKER.
“If you’re ever in Bliss, look me up,” she said.
“I definitely will,” I said, and I meant it. I felt an instant kinship with Harlow. They picked their bread and left the shop. All the while, I kept thinking about what Nina had said. “The right person will find it.” She’d been talking about the box of patterns.
Maybe she was talking about people, too.