Cinnamon And Secrets (A Cupake Shop Mystery Book 1) Page 6

  “It’s not there,” she says, shocked, and it takes me a while to realize what she’s referring to. She means the key is not on its rightful place.

  I frown and then it occurs to me that Braiden must’ve removed it. After all, I just gave him this crazy idea. Crazy—because now that I need that key, I don’t have it.

  “What are we going to do?” Heather hops in.

  “The broken widow,” I whisper victoriously.

  “What?” she frowns, not catching up.

  “The housebreaker broke the window when we went after him. Remember?”

  “Right,” she tilts her head in an I-should’ve-known way, and we walk over the porch and to the yard, reaching the sidewall of the house and trying to figure our way in. “That’s dangerous,” Heather points. “There’s broken glasses everywhere. We might cut ourselves, or worse.”

  “Well, need I remind you it was you who came up with this idea in the first place?”

  “Please don’t. Look at you. Always so eager to find me at fault. I feel like it gives you some satisfaction or something. Sometimes I wonder if you’re really a sadist.”

  “Now is not the time for a tag line.” I say firmly.

  “How else am I supposed to get over the freight that has captured me entirely?” Heather says, while I’m running my hands along the windowsill to make sure there’s not any unpleasant casualties on our way. “Please, let me go first.” Heather begs. “I don’t want to be the one who holds your buttock while you’re climbing your way to the widows.” She must’ve calculated the effort that is going to take us to get in. The window is standing considerably high above the floor, so she’s right that we might need support.

  “Okay,” I whisper; after all I’m way more athletic than her.

  “Cool,” she responds inexpressibly, but I know she wants to pat herself on the back right now, but doesn’t because it would just miff me, which means that it’ll maybe make me change my mind.

  Heather clutches her hands on the horizontal part of the window and ascends her weight to it, lifting her leg aimlessly against the wall. I feel like she’s never climbed a thing in her life. I help her leg ascend when I feel that she’s supporting herself properly on the windowsill and then I put my palm underneath her bottom, preventing any unpleasant, unprepared fall.

  “Your legs are so smooth,” I tell her when I feel her nice skin, but then I realize that I’m just giving her motive to start talking about herself over and over as she likes to do.

  “Oh, that. I just started using this new coconut body hydrator and I think it’s working miracles on my body. I mean, it even smells amazing. Sniff it.” She presses her leg against my nose and it’s making me want to sneeze, so in terms of distraction, I let me hand go off her bottom, and since she doesn’t have anything to support her while in suspense, she falls down and crumples with me altogether on the ground. My arm is against her back, our legs mingled together, and intertwined as we are, I feel her diaphragm moving disorderly and I realize she’s laughing.

  “What part of this looks funny to you?” I ask, irritated.

  “What are we doing?” she concludes. “What are we even looking for in here?”

  “Um, whose idea was it coming here, again?” I realize I’m keeping pointing this out to her repeatedly, so she must be enraged.

  “Yeah, yeah, it was me. But aren’t you curious at all? There was a break-in taking place here a couple of days ago. It means there must be something in here that they still have not been able to find. Don’t you want to be the one to find whatever it is they’re looking for?”

  “I mean, it sounds so appalling. But…”

  “Now get up. We have a house to break in to,” she says as if we’re in the middle of a cooking season and we have to proceed if we don’t want it to be a disaster.

  This time, she tries harder. I hold her leg and help it ascend while she clutches the frame and climbs properly to the window.

  “Ouch,” she mutters angrily. “I think I cut myself.”

  “A little cut never hurt nobody. Now get up. We don’t want to be here all night.”

  While Heather finds herself on the other part of the house, I make my way into it, and I’m surprised at how easy it is for me to go in.

  “You’re like a mountaineer. Like you’ve done this before. Should I get worried?” she teases me.

  “Well, I didn’t know I had it in me either,” I assure her. “Now, do you have your flashlight?”

  “Um, nope,” she shakes her head in a who-needs-it manner. “But I have my phone.” She brings it out of her short’s pocket and lights up the room. Meanwhile I reach for my phone too, and start scrambling around the house.

  We don’t see anything suspicious just yet. Everything looks like it is on its rightful place. Maybe there hasn’t been another break-in since. Or maybe the housebreaker had been too careful not to leave any trace behind.

  “What are we looking for exactly?” I ask her, just coming to realize that it’s not like we’re here looking for anything specific. It was Heather’s crazy idea that I followed through and now I don’t even know why I did that.

  “Anything,” she says confidently as I expected. I mean, she could make the most horrible mistakes look like they’re just perfectly fine thank you. “I mean, they were running through the files on the first housebreaking. So we know that what we’re looking for must be some kind of document or worksheet or something.”

  “Very helpful,” I tease her.

  She just snubs my comment.

  I frown for a minute at myself, I’m the kind of person to never put my nose where it doesn’t belong. I just don’t like to interfere in other people’s lives, and yet here I am, sleuthing into somebody else’s house. What is happening to me? I guess when a killer is involved, then you just stop not caring anymore. You have to do something when your life, or other people’s life, is at risk.

  “We have to go through his files,” Heather offers.

  “I already did,” I say, uninterested.

  “There must be something you have missed. I just want to make sure,” she seems so determined and I stop for a second and admire her passion. She’s never done anything so ambitiously in a while, so I cannot stop myself but apprise her determination.

  “Why are you so interested in finding out the killer, anyway?” I ask her, while we’re both scrambling through the drawers for any clue. Until now, we’ve found nothing of interest. Just random files, bills, old mails. We’re in a dead-end, obviously.

  “It’s just…” she stops for a minute in a way that suggest she needs to breathe in hard before dealing with whatever she has to say. “It was so unfair how Mr. Gleason was killed. And clearly one of the people we know must be a murderer. I mean, if that’s not enough to spark this desire on me of finding out the truth, than I don’t know what is.”

  I mean, I feel for her. We share just the same thoughts on this, but I never expected Heather (all pumped and delirious as she is) to be reasoning like this.

  We’re in the middle of our sleuth-hound, when I hear something that reminds me of when Heather and I used the window to break in to the house. And soon I realize that it’s not just a feeling. I think someone is coming in. The killer?

  “Heather,” I mumble, terrified and by the look on her face I think that she just perceived what I did, and she is just as horrified as I am.

  “We should hide,” she offers, since the only way out is by the window, and let’s say that the window is a little occupied at the moment.

  “This way,” I lead, since I’ve been in the house many, many times before, and I can navigate myself through it better. I don’t think we’re going to be able to make it to the second floor, so we run to the storeroom instead and hide there.

  I can hear Heather’s heartbeats pumping crazily in her chest. Oh wait, it’s my heartbeats that I’m hearing.

  “What if this is the killer?” asks Heather, almost wh
iningly.

  “I think it is the killer,” I emphasize, but realize that I’m not doing much better in helping us from a latent heart attract. The freight is on its best deal right now, surrounding us forcefully, while we find ourselves without a choice but to succumb.

  “Like that’s very comforting,” she whine-whispers.

  Meanwhile, I’m looking through the little crack of the opened door, and throughout the darkness I can see the same man with the hooded sweatshirt going through the same exact place where Heather and I were looking before for any clue.

  I think he knows the place, as he very expertly reaches the cabinets and puts the file back into place once he realized it was not what he was looking for.

  When he goes through the drawer where we were scrambling before, my heart beats crazily

  He stops for a moment and I imagine him frowning at the crumple of unorganized files. What if he suspects something? What if he comes to look for us here in the storeroom?

  “Great, Heather,” I want to say, “of all the days you choose the same moment as the killer to break into the house. That’s just great.”

  While I’m all focused on spying on the killer, Heather is making herself busy observing the room.

  “Look,” she tells me, “this vase here looks very enchanting. And price-worthy. Do you think I can have it?”

  “Heather, focus!” I try to gather her attention back, since I think that now the housebreaker has taken notice of the mess in the drawers. “I think he knows somebody else is in the house.” I mutter, childishly.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because he’s coming our way,” I protest and can barely keep myself from howling with horror as if I’ve seen a ghost in the middle of the night.

  “Oh, my God,” she scream-whispers and I clutch her wrist to make her crush her scream out. I don’t want her to go out of control right now, when the killer is so close to finding us.

  “Oh, boy,” I grumble. “He’s heading to the storeroom, where we are.”

  “What are we going to do?” her freight makes her so tense. “If he really is the killer than I don’t think he would mind to get it over with us for good.”

  I don’t respond, since he’s so close to the door; and anything I’d mutter, he’d probably hear. I just hold my hand on my chest, trying to soothe my nerviness, while he looks suspiciously at the door. I hinge back in hopes that his eyes won’t catch me.

  And then I hear something. Buzzing.

  Something is buzzing. And my urge of curiosity takes the better part of me and I get back to the crack of the opened door to take a look.

  The man is looking at the phone. It’s so dark and I cannot see his face, even with the light of the screen settling upon his expression. I try to make out, but it’s hard to say.

  Suddenly he turns around, and I feel a great relief sweeping though my chest. God, the adrenaline rush was reaching level CRAZY.

  “He’s heading out,” I inform Heather, who cannot see him, while I notice that this time, while in a rush, he doesn’t go back from the window, but instead he uses the door, which would take him to have a key.

  “That’s strange?”

  “What is?” Heather just needs to know more and more since she’s so in the dark through all this situation. Literally. She’s holed up in some corner admiring Mr. Gleason’s expensive artwork that for some reason he’d decided not to exhibit around the house, but pile it altogether in the stockroom instead.

  “He just headed out,” I mumble and I’m just as shocked as I was horrified a moment ago.

  “I’m sorry, how is this strange? This is awesome. We’re free to go. Now let’s get out of here.”

  “I mean, he used the key,” I stop her in the middle of her new-found enthusiasm.

  “So what? He is thief. Or a killer. Maybe he’s a killer and a thief. No surprise a housebreaker could be good at both. Not get up. We have to go.”

  “You don’t understand. Why would he have a key and use the window to get in?”

  “Well, that really sounds weird. But it’s a mystery we don’t need to resolve. Let the man do what he has to do. We have greater things to deal with. Like for example, saving our lives.”

  Getting out of the house by the door that was left open, I still can spot him running on the street. I have this undeniable feeling to go after him. I just want to know where he lives. It’s either he lives nearby, or he’s parked his car down the street just not to draw attention. Either way, I just have to find out.

  “Where are you going?” asks Heather, when I’m climbing down the stairs, heading toward the street.

  “I’m chasing after him,” I explain. “I need to know who he is.”

  “You think I don’t.” Her eyes are all bulging. “But for all I know, he’s the killer. And I don’t want to mess with him. Maybe we should just tell the police.”

  “How would we explain our being in the house?” I ask, while I just realize that I’m walking toward the path the man has walked upon, and unnoticeably Heather is leveling up.

  “Well, then let’s not tell the police at all.”

  For some reason, I don’t hear her response at all. And I realize that I want to go after him just so that I can find that he’s not the man that I suspect he is. That I can clear out all this mystery, and have the warm-fuzzy feelings toward Braiden stay untangled.

  And the path that the hooded man is chasing is not helping much.

  “Ainsley, this is just crazy,” Heather concludes, once she’s surrendered, and decides to chase me. “If something happens to us, just know that I warned you.”

  “If something happens then there won’t be room for me to remember anything.”

  “All the more reason to stop this and head back, while we still can.”

  “I can’t Heather!” I demand. “I have to find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  “That Braiden is not the killer!”

  “What? That’s just crazy? How did you come up with this nonsense?”

  “He had a key!” I reason. How would a stranger have managed to find a key to Mr. Gleason’s house?

  “He kept his key under a vase. If I wanted a copy, I could’ve grabbed the key, duplicated it and then put it back in place.” Well, I hate to admit it, but she’s right. Everyone could’ve had access to the key. And somehow that’s just comforting.

  Anything that suggests Braiden didn’t have anything to do with this is comforting.

  Anything that casts away any suspicion of Braiden being the hooded man is comforting!

  But I just have to see for myself. The shrubs on the street don’t let me take a look at the man on a black sweatshirt anymore. I just have to run faster. I do. And Heather complainingly keeps running. And at some point I know that even she wants to find out the truth. After all, the killer is a threat to the entire town.

  I try to catch a breath, since running and adrenaline are not of much help when it comes to breathing. I place my hands on my knees and inhale. And then I realize that together with me, the man has also stopped.

  He checks something into his car parked on the lot and then heads toward the house. The light on his porch puts emphasis on him, and when he takes his hood off, I just gasp.

  I was so overwhelmed with denial, I wasn’t realizing that I was standing in front of Braiden’s house and waited until I saw his face to realize that it was really him.

  He was the man on a hooded sweatshirt.

  He was the housebreaker.

  He could be the killer!!!

  I feel Heather’s hand clutching my shoulders, as I’m bending down still catching my breath and looking in a devastating way at him, “Let’s go home,” she tells me with worry.

  “Well, I’m more of a ‘struggle with decisions’ kind of person.” I make an excuse for myself, since Heather is insisting we walk down to the precinct and tell Detective Cassidy what we saw.

 
“My point is, the more we think about it, the more complicated it gets.”

  “Don’t you understand? Nothing about this screams uncomplicated. I can’t go down there and tell them Braiden is the killer. For all I know, he couldn’t—”

  Heather stops me. “You can’t deny what we witnessed, Ainsley. It’s just you’re so taken with him, you wouldn’t do a thing that would get him hurt.”

  “So what are we going to do now?” I somehow agree with her conclusion. I can’t hand the best-looking guy I know to that horrible detective. I wouldn’t do that to Braiden.

  “Well, that’s the prize-winning question, isn’t it?” Heather responds, and it feels like at some point she’s mocking me. “Personally, I’m all about resolving this case for good.”

  “I’ll tell you this,” it seems like I’ve come up with a brilliant idea. “I’ll go over and talk to him, and then we can decide what we’re going to do.”

  “Are you having a stroke? What if he’s the killer? You might get in some serious trouble if that’s the case.”

  “You are preaching to the choir. But I’m willing to hold tight to that little hope of mine that he’s not the killer. I mean, Braiden is so…sweet,” I mumble foolishly, and it’s just now that it occurs to me how really driven I am in regards to him.

  “Well, if you’re willing to take that chance, then go ahead. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She grabs her cup of coffee and takes a big gulp. Heather stayed at my house overnight, and we went off to sleep silently all along. Until this morning. She keeps insisting that what we saw is real and strange. The way how he broke in to the house and then used the door to get out, just puts emphasis to the fact that he might have a hidden agenda.

  But I mean, part of me doesn’t want to get along with this, because I don’t want to know whether or not he’s a killer. He’s just so irresistible. That’s all I care about. I mean, if he’s a killer, it means that I’ve lost him forever. But, if I spill the beans, then I’m still losing him anyway.