Baking Spirits Bright by Sarah Fox

Author:Sarah Fox [Fox, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

ALTHOUGH SNOW WAS IN THE FORECAST FOR LATER IN THE day, the sky was clear when I walked to work the next morning. Stars twinkled overhead and I stopped on a stone bridge to look up and take in the sight of the constellations. Despite the beauty of the early morning sky, I didn’t linger for long. As the clouds had disappeared the evening before, the temperature had done a nosedive. Plus, Sawyer had warned me against walking alone in the dark. I didn’t have anyone to accompany me that morning, but I could at least not prolong my journey.

I tugged my scarf up over my nose, which felt like it was rapidly freezing from the inside out, and hurried onward to Venice Avenue. I slowed my pace, momentarily forgetting about the cold, when I noticed a faint light inside Irma’s bakery. Normally, that wouldn’t have caught my interest. Irma always arrived at work far earlier than I did. But Irma was dead and the bakery had been closed since her murder. So who had turned the light on?

I stopped outside the bakery’s front window and realized that someone hadn’t turned on an overhead light in the back of the building. The beam of light, previously steady, now bounced around. It was a flashlight, or a flashlight app on a phone. I peered through the shadows of the darkened storefront, trying to catch sight of who was in the back, but I couldn’t see anything more than the moving light.

The killer had searched Irma’s handbag and likely her cottage as well. If they hadn’t found what they were looking for, maybe they’d come to search the bakery next.

My heart kicked into overdrive. I didn’t want the burglar to spot me through the window, so I quickly dashed out of sight and fished my phone out of the depths of the pocket of my puffy coat. The icy air bit at my hands when I removed my gloves to use the phone. I called 9-1-1, and quickly explained about the intruder at the bakery. I hoped I wasn’t raising a false alarm. Maybe Juniper was at the bakery for some legitimate reason. After all, she was Irma’s heir. But if that was the case, she would have turned on the bakery’s lights. She wouldn’t be creeping around by the beam of a flashlight.

The 9-1-1 operator advised me to wait inside True Confections for the police to arrive. I gladly followed that advice. Despite my thick coat and many other layers, I was shivering and my fingers and toes had crossed the line from painful to numb.

I shut and locked the shop door behind me, but stayed by the front window, watching for the police to arrive. I hoped the burglar wouldn’t escape before they showed up. There was a chance that the intruder could take off out the back door. The True Confections kitchen had a window that looked out onto the back alley, but if I wanted a view of the bakery’s back door, I’d have to go out behind the shop.

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