The Baker's Wife (12 page)

The shut-down view was no less disappointing to her than her shut-down life. Even if she could get through this wall of heavy boxes and pull the curtains back off the view again, she feared the exercise would be pointless.

No view, only a silver mirror of fog.

No new life.

No diamond pendant.

It was the pendant that she needed most of all. It was more important than the view or her life, because it was the pendant that was responsible for everything that had happened and was about to happen. Recovering it and returning it to its rightful owners was the only solution that had endured these twenty-five years, though she feared the rock would be long gone by now. For that matter, she didn't even know if the people it belonged to were still alive.

What did she know at all, really? In that moment, her own stupidity smacked her into awareness. She might have kicked in that window over a baby's bassinet, or dropped into the crib of a drug gang armed to the teeth. She might have frightened an old lady into her grave.

She might have come face-to-face with her own parents, and what then?

Diane sank onto a red plastic tub between the kitchen and the living room. She was not thinking far enough ahead to keep herself out of jail for very long. The Bofingers would find that broken window and the police would find the phone, and they'd all march up those stairs, cuff her up and cart her off just like last time, only now with a breaking-and-entering charge attached to yet another death. Because the person who had dropped the phone was most certainly dead; Diane's bad luck dictated it.

She sat there, a dumb lump, within ten feet of what she'd come for. Even if she had time to move all those boxes, where would she put them?

She rested her cheek on her fist, weary and indecisive.

Diane had a vision of Geoff and Audrey Bofinger standing in the apartment's open doorway, arms crossed, scowling at her as she sat in the mouth of the dark kitchen.

“I'm sorry for breaking your window,” she said to the illusion.

“Why didn't you use the stairs?” Geoff said, and Diane shrieked at the sound of his voice. The couple were truly standing in front of her! Not scowling, but—she didn't know how to read the serious expressions. Anger? Acceptance? Audrey propped the door open with a smaller cardboard box. Maybe she was afraid of being shut in with Diane.

“Please don't call the cops,” Diane said.

The corner of Geoff's mouth twitched, but she thought it was friendly rather than mocking. “I think the police will be in and out of here long after we wish they were gone.”

Diane stood. “They're coming up here?”

“I was referring to their being in the bakery.”

“It was locked,” Diane said.

“The bakery?”

“The front door. Downstairs I mean. You asked me why I didn't use the stairs.”

“Ah. That's right. But why were you so desperate to get in?”

“I'll pay for the window. As soon as I can.”

The kitchen counter formed a prop for Geoff's backside as he crossed his ankles. “I'm not too worried about the window for now. Why didn't you tell me what you needed the first time you tried to come up here?”

“I told you I just got out of prison.”

Audrey looked alarmed. “You didn't tell me that,” she said to her husband.

“I didn't think it was important. But I'm sorry.”

Both Diane and Audrey stood there blinking at him. Diane waited for one of them to ask what she had been in for, and for how long.

When they didn't say anything, Diane filled the silence. “Sort of ‘just.' It was two months ago, actually.”

Geoff said, “I'd like to hear the story sometime. But for now, why don't you tell us what it is you need. Maybe we can help.”

Audrey said, “Geoff, she has a record
and
Julie's phone. We can't—”

“I don't have that phone. Anymore.”

“But you didn't give it to the detective like you said you were going to,” Geoff observed, and Diane wondered why his remark didn't put her on the defensive in the same way that Audrey's body language did.

“I'm trying to get back on track. I told you, I found the phone in the street, and I picked it up. I was curious. But no one will believe that. They'll think I did something that I
did not
do. It's always that way.”

Audrey said, “Were you trying to hide the phone up here?”

Diane decided that she would only talk to Geoff from this point on. She looked at him. “No! Not up here. But it fell out of my backpack and into the trash can, right before they picked it up. It's just as well, right?”

“Not exactly,” Audrey muttered. At a glance from her husband, however, the woman softened.

“I needed a place to stay,” Diane said. “It looked like there might be rooms up here, someplace I could . . . get out of the cold.”

“It was an apartment at one time,” Geoff said. “But you can see we use it for storage now.”

“I can pay rent. Work a little? Wash your bathrooms, your dishes?”

“We really can't afford—”Audrey started.

“No money, just a trade. Just for a little while. Until I can . . . move on.”

Geoff said to Audrey, “Maybe we can clean out the back bedroom. Make enough space for her to use the bathroom and the kitchen.”

“I really don't think that's wise.”

“I won't steal from you, if that's what you're worried about.”

Audrey's eyebrows went up. “That wasn't top on my list of concerns.”

“Let's give it a week,” Geoff said. “It won't hurt us to help her out.”

“She's already hurt us! Jack thinks we took that phone and killed his wife.”

“He hasn't said that.”

“Geoff!”

He laid a hand on his wife's shoulder. “This bakery is a place for second chances,” he said. “And not just for us.”

“We're being fools,” Audrey said, glancing at Diane.

Shame flushed Diane's cheeks. She had to agree.

“For all we know
she
had something to do with what happened to Julie.”

“I didn't do anything. I don't even know who Julie is!”

“Her name is Julie Mansfield,” Audrey said, and her teeth bit the words at the ends. “And she's the detective's wife. Jack Mansfield.”

Julie. And Jack. A good couple-name. Still, she didn't know them.

“I'm really sorry,” Diane said. “But I didn't have anything to do with it. I'll . . . If you let me stay—just for a week?—I'll talk with the detective and try to clear this up for you.” With any luck, she'd find the necklace and be gone before she had to do that. But if not, she would tell the truth. Maybe this one time, the truth would work in her favor.

Diane doubted her own thoughts and Audrey seemed to know it.

“I think you need to talk with Jack about whether you can stay.”

“But if you stay”—Diane believed Geoff emphasized the words for Audrey's benefit—“it seems we might all be able to help each other out.”

Audrey licked her lips and backed off. She looked at her feet and nodded.

“I'm reliable,” Diane said, not sure why she picked that particular word.

“Good. Now, come on down with us and I'll show you around, and tonight Ed and I will clear out the back room. I think we have some spare sheets for the bed that's still back there, don't we, Audrey?”

Audrey nodded again and, maybe because of her husband's insistence that Diane was deserving, seemed to have a change of heart. Audrey took a step toward Diane and held out her hand.

“I'll bring towels too, and I'll wash your clothes.” Audrey indicated the shirt whose tails hung almost to her knees. “Please forgive my . . . reservations. This hasn't been a typical morning for me by any stretch of the imagination.”

Diane matched Audrey's firm squeeze, though she worried about how icy cold her own fingers were in Audrey's warm grip.

“I understand,” she said. “If I were you I'd feel the same way.”

CHAPTER 11

Within hours of Julie Mansfield's disappearance, business at the bakery was noticeably up. As the trend stretched out into Friday morning, it was hard for Ed Bofinger to avoid thinking cynically about why. People who before had bought only a loaf of bread now purchased a pastry and a cup of coffee too, then bombarded Ed with repetitious questions and suspicious gazes.

“Just keep doing what we set out to do,” his dad instructed Ed when he grew impatient with a girl who asked for a spare paper cup with the Rise and Shine logo. “It doesn't matter why they're here, only that we're good servants while they're our guests.”

Come on
, Ed thought. The girl wanted the cup for a souvenir “in case the owners did it after all.”

Groups of gossipers gathered, speculating like nosy small-town bloggers. A few people took pictures of the view of the intersection from inside the window, or the view into the window from the intersection, and sometimes of his parents working behind the counter. Sometimes his parents even dared to smile and pose with their guests, then offered to post prints on their wall, as if the place were a celebrity hangout.

Someone started a rumor that the upstairs apartment was haunted, that someone had been murdered up there, and that perhaps it was the place where Julie Mansfield was tied up and being starved to death. Or worse. Even though Detective Mansfield and other investigators had been upstairs for a look at least twice, the Bofingers and that new employee—well, volunteer—Diane, had to be vigilant about keeping the door to the rear stairs locked.

Diane was a hard worker and washed the cups until they were spotless, but she didn't say much and never looked Ed in the eye.

But perhaps the worst rumor, and the shortest lived, because it proved to be terribly true, was delivered to the bakery on the quiet lips of Leslie Wood, one of Julie's calculus students at Mazy High.

Ed was behind the counter putting a loaf of honey-wheat through the slicer midmorning when he noticed the high school senior at a table at the edge of the room. She sat like a resting moth, silent and inconspicuous, preferring no attention. She'd come in every Saturday since the bakery opened and always took the same table. After placing an order for a croissant and espresso, she'd eat, drink, read, and leave, all without saying another word.

He noticed her today because it was Friday, and because she'd settled in without ordering anything. He supposed the disappearance of her teacher might have disrupted her routine. Her gaze rested on him while he worked, as it had often in the year before his graduation. Her studious attention had always suggested to him that she thought she was invisible. She stared flagrantly, innocent and childlike, mainly because he ignored her. No senior basketball star would give her the time of day, especially not one like Ed, who was dating someone like Miralee. This is what Ed thought Leslie thought, anyway. So he pretended not to notice the brainiac's crush, even though it did feed his ego.

Today her admiration made him uncomfortable. Her relative innocence was superior in most ways to his life experience. A girl like that needed to be protected from a guy like him.

A heavy textbook lay open on the table in front of her.

Ed's mother came out of the kitchen and noticed Leslie immediately. “Good morning!” Audrey called out. His mom was a little more cheerful than average, Ed thought, which was usually only the case when she was feeling under the weather. He looked at her face. It did seem strained, but days of trouble this complicated could do worse to a person.

Leslie took Audrey's cheer as an invitation to approach the counter. She scooted her chair back and tried to avoid the woman who had ordered the loaf Ed was bagging. “It isn't really,” she whispered. “Not for Mrs. Mansfield anyway, wherever she is. I thought you needed to know. Hi, Ed.”

“Hey, Les.”

“The team really stinks without you this year.”

He thanked her by smiling. He knew that the team was already 3 and 0, which was a better start than they'd had last season. Ed sealed the sliced and bagged bread with a twist tie. His mother wiped down the espresso steamer with a wet rag.

“Know about what?” Audrey asked. “Is there news about Julie?”

“I think she's dead,” Leslie said in such a low voice that Audrey left the coffee machine to stand closer.

“What did you say, honey?”

“All that blood was hers.”

Ed's customer took the bread, laid it on the counter, returned her wallet to her purse and then slowly zipped it closed. The women at the table in the center of the room were silently examining the crumbs in their baskets. Talking to each other would have drowned out Leslie's voice.

“Bit early for lunch break, isn't it?” Ed said lightly.