She raised a quizzical eyebrow, and I wondered if she hadn’t thought it through yet or if she was simply surprised I’d asked the question. “I don’t know, Rachel. Not right now.”
“One more thing.”
Mary let out a sigh.
“I’ll get the bill, okay? You can dash in a sec, but I need to know why the blackmailer sent you a copy of your second mortgage.”
“I didn’t know Clay took out a second mortgage,” she said with a pained expression. “The house is in his name. He told me Isak fronted more than half of the gallery money, but apparently not. Our home did the job. Someone’s trying to tell me they know everything about me, Rachel.”
Mary made a beeline for the front door. I swallowed the last of my coffee and left a bill large enough to cover it, Mary’s tea, and a tip.
On the sidewalk outside Wyatt’s I stopped and lifted my face to the sun and the bluebird sky, wanting to enjoy them while I could. Darkness came early in January, the sun dropping like a steel door behind the mountains, and a cold front laden with snow—and wind—was bearing down on northern Colorado.
Get moving, get your errands done, and go home.
Next stop, Holly’s Sweets. I started walking. Not only did I need to replenish my cream puffs, but I had to tell Holly what Gilroy had told me at breakfast. I also figured she’d heard an earful on Laura Patchett from the bakery’s morning crowd, her most reliable when it came to gossip.
And I was right.
The second I entered, she waved me to the back of the shop and asked her husband, Peter, to take over for a few minutes.
“Six cream puffs?” Peter asked as I made my way around the counter.
“Yes, sir. And a dozen peanut butter cookies for James, please.”
I’d addicted my husband to baked goods, the poor man. Well, he could share with the guys at the station. Underhill and Officer Travis Turner practically salivated at the sight of a bakery box, and glazed donuts had been known to loosen the tongue of the already garrulous Underhill.
Holly dropped into a stool behind her stainless work counter and gestured for me to sit too. “First, tell me what Gilroy told you last night about Laura Patchett.”
“We didn’t talk about it until this morning.”
Her dark eyebrows arched in surprise. “What happened to you dragging it out of him?”
“We had pizza and watched TV instead.”
“Nice. Much better. Was it definitely murder?”
“Laura was stabbed in the throat with a palette knife.”
Holly unconsciously put a protective hand over her own throat. “One of those spatula-like things?”
“Right. The killer stood directly in front of her, eye to eye, they think. Gilroy said it looked like Laura tried to make it to her phone after she was attacked but died before she could. Either that or she was stopped from getting to her phone and died on her studio floor. A neighbor found her.”
“Laura storms out of the brunch and an hour later she’s murdered. Rachel, it had to be someone at the Blackwells’ house.”
“Gilroy’s going to interview all the guests at the station. I told him what we discovered in the paintings yesterday afternoon—and by the way, guess what I found out? Dalton and Aspen Leaf Gallery have websites, both designed by Shasta Karlsen.”
“Get out of here. The Shasta who had an affair with Dalton?”
“The very one. Maybe that’s how it started. All that close work over the computer.”
“Shasta saying, ‘Oh, that painting’s brilliant, Dalton.’”
“I don’t think she’s ever liked his artwork.” An unwelcome picture—Shasta and Dalton as passionate lovers—popped into my mind. I shoved it back out. “She doesn’t like him now—in fact, she detests him—and I can’t imagine her ever liking him. For one thing, he’s about twenty-five years older than she is.”
“Money and fame overcome age.”
I grimaced. “Maybe.”
She rose, grabbed a mitt, and opened a stainless-fronted oven. Instantly the air filled with pastry smells: chocolate, sugar, yeast, cinnamon. “Want to share one?”
“How long have you known me? Tell me what you heard this morning.”
As Holly cut a dark, glazed donut in half, a thin layer of chocolate cream oozed. I hadn’t taken bite one and I was hooked. She put my half on a napkin and slid it across the counter.
“Some of my customers already knew about Laura’s murder, even though it happened too late in the day to be in the paper. Somehow word traveled.”
“Juniper Grove doesn’t need the Post. We have word of mouth and your bakery.” I took a bite. Mexican hot chocolate, I was familiar with. And Mexican chocolate ice cream. But Holly’s combination of dark chocolate and spice, of cakey donut and creamy filling, was to die for. “This is amazing. Is it a new recipe?”
“Mmm.” She wiped her mouth with a paper towel. “My version of Mexican chocolate donuts. What do you think?”
“I think my cream puffs have found a competitor.”
Her face broke into a smile. “I made a royal boatload, so take some with you.” She held up a finger. “I’ll box them back here while I tell you what I heard. Peter’s going to come looking for me if I don’t move it.”
While she put three of my new favorite, or second favorite (I hadn’t decided), pastries into a box, she told me that a Jane Fisher had told her that Laura hated Dalton, and vice versa, and that the two were competitors in a strange way. Strange because Laura didn’t possess one-quarter of Dalton’s money or notoriety.
“Well, Dalton’s a competitive man,” I said. “And insecure, I think. Laura, I don’t know. At the brunch she seemed more self-assured than Dalton, until she flipped out over the painting.”
