“Not if I got here first.”

  This, I realized, must be Louise Ferguson, Jim’s either ex- or his last girlfriend.

  “I had a nice long talk with the detective in charge of Jim’s case,” Trish said. “I told her all about you. She’ll have questions for you.”

  “Then she can come and find me. I’m not hiding.”

  Trish turned to me. “You can tell your boss she’s here. We’ll wait.”

  “My boss? I don’t— Oh, you mean Detective Simmonds. I’m not with the police.”

  “You couldn’t even get that right.” Louise laughed. “Take some advice from me, Trish honey. Don’t make even more of a fool of yourself than you already have.”

  “I’m not taking any advice from the likes of you.”

  “It hurts, doesn’t it, knowing you need advice from someone as young as me. Give it up, Trish. Go back to Florida, where you belong. With all the other retirees.”

  “I’m not leaving without what I came for,” Trish said.

  “What you came for? You mean Jim’s money? Sorry, babe, but he forgot you a long time ago.” Louise picked up her coffee and took a step toward the door. “I’m at the Caroler’s Motel,” she threw over her shoulder to me. “If the police want to talk to me, I can tell them all about how she tried to manipulate Jim into giving her a payout when he dumped her for me.”

  “Manipulate!” Trish’s hand flew out, and she sent Louise’s cup flying. I hopped out of the way as hot coffee sprayed in all directions.

  “Hey!” Marjorie yelled. “Vicky, we need you out here.”

  Vicky ran out of the kitchen, very formidable indeed with her five-foot-ten height, gripping a wooden rolling pin and bristling with indignation. “What’s going on? If you two want to have a disagreement, take it into the street.”

  Taylor stood behind Vicky, holding a broom and looking unsure of what she was supposed to do.

  The two women ignored Vicky. Which is never easy.

  “If anyone manipulated Jim, it was you,” Trish yelled. “Playing your silly, childish games. Getting him at his weakest. Convincing him to leave me. He came to his senses soon enough, didn’t he? He phoned me only last week—did you know that? He begged me to forgive him, to come back to him.”

  “As if,” Louise sneered. “Lies, all you have are lies.”

  “Is that why you killed him?” Trish yelled. Her eyes were wild with rage, and her face had turned a frightening shade of red. Her fists were clenched, and a vein pulsed at the side of her neck. “Because you couldn’t accept that he wanted me after all. A mature woman, not a simpering, brainless gold digger like you.”

  I glanced at Vicky. She’d tucked the rolling pin under her arm, taken her phone out, and was snapping pictures of the women’s faces. “I’m ordering you both to leave the premises. Now. Or I’m calling the police.”

  Louise threw herself at Trish. She pulled her right hand back and slapped the older woman across the face. The blow landed with such force the echo of it bounced around the room. Vicky, Marjorie, Taylor, and I gasped. Trish was knocked backward, landing against the shelf displaying items for sale. She recovered faster than I might have expected. She grabbed a jar of strawberry jam and swung it at her enemy’s head.

  It connected, the jar shattered, jam flew everywhere. Louise snatched a cake stand off the counter, one last lonely slice of carrot cake left, and threw it, platter, lid, cake and all at Trish. Trish dodged the projectile, and it hit the wall behind her, shattering into a shower of thick pieces of glass and once-delectable cake.

  Marjorie and Vicky were both yelling into their phones. Vicky threw her phone onto the nearest table and wrenched the broom out of Taylor’s hands. I dropped my sandwich bag and take-out cup of iced tea, and took the rolling pin from Vicky. Thus armed, my allies standing steadfast next to me, I braced myself and faced the combatants.

  I had absolutely no idea what to do. Could I wield the short but heavy rolling pin like a battle-ax? Bash one or both of the women over the head? I waited for Vicky to act first.

  Trish had lost her clip, and her hair hung around her face, showing a line of solid gray roots. Her lipstick was smeared, and black mascara dribbled down her cheeks. Louise didn’t look a heck of a lot better.

  They watched each other, chests heaving, faces choked with hatred, circling like two long-past-it prize fighters stepping into the ring for one last bout.

  Vicky hefted the broom and waded into the ring. I gripped my rolling pin and lifted it high. Vicky put herself between the two women, using the broom as a weapon and a shield. “Stop this! The police have been called.”

  “You saw what happened,” Trish said, “She attacked me! I’m defending myself.”

  “Is that what you call it?” Louise snarled. She grabbed the end of the broom and tried to wrench it out of Vicky’s hands. Vicky held firm. I darted forward and gave Louise a good shove in her more-than-adequate chest. She lost her balance, fell back, and landed solidly on her flat rear end with a whoosh of shock. I heard the distinct sounds of thread and fabric tearing as the seams at the seat of her jeans gave up the battle to keep everything together.

  Unfortunately, while our attention was on Louise, Trish had taken the opportunity to resume the attack. She snatched at jars of preserves and began throwing them in a steady volley. Louise crouched, her arms held protectively over her head. Glass broke, and jams and jellies spattered the floor. Fine china cups and teapots followed.

  I threw aside the rolling pin, took one leap, and crashed my entire body into Trish’s side. She was knocked flat, taking me along with her. I lay on top of her, feeling her deep breath and her rage, along with a rainstorm of china and glass. She bucked and squirmed, yelling at me to get off her. I was aware of Vicky using her broom to force Louise into a corner.

  Marjorie had run to the door, where she stood jumping up and down, yelling, “Help, help! They’re killing each other!”

  And then the police were in the room, and strong arms were pulling me to my feet. “Stop that!” Candy Campbell yelled at me.

  “I’m not doing anything!” I yelled back. “Arrest her! Arrest them! They’re out of their minds—the both of them.”

  Vicky threw her broom aside.

  “Vicky and Merry were only defending the place,” Marjorie said. Fine china crunched beneath her feet as she crossed the floor. The tiles were sticky with blue and red jelly and stepped-on remains of one slice of carrot cake. Shards of glass sparkled like diamonds in a night sky made of jam. My bag of sandwiches had the outline of a footprint stomped into it, and the empty cup lay in a puddle on the floor.

  “That was really something,” Taylor said.

  Louise and Trish continued to throw death stares at each other, watched over by two police officers.

  “She started it,” Trish said.

  “I truly do not care who started it,” Candy said. “Vicky, what do you want us to do?”

  “Arrest them. Charge them. Send them down the river for the rest of their miserable lives. I expect them to pay for all this.”

  “I’m a grieving widow,” Trish said.

  “Ha!” Louise said. “More like a vengeful ex-wife who lost her meal ticket.”

  Trish took a step forward. Candy jerked her back. “Let’s go.”

  Detective Diane Simmonds stepped into the bakery. Behind her, I could see a substantial crowd gathered on the sidewalk, trying to see what was going on. “What have we here? Ms. Dawson.” She looked at Louise. “Ms. Ferguson, I presume.”

  Louise nodded. She half turned to the detective. Thin straps of a pink thong peeked out from the substantial tear in the rear of her jeans, doing absolutely nothing for any dignity she might be struggling to retain.

  Simmonds spent a long time looking around the bakery. Vicky, feet apart, still clutching her broom. Me, cradling my side, where I’d hit the floor when I brought Trish down. Marjorie and Taylor, wide-eyed. All the damage. “Here for the funeral of your husband and partner are you?” she said at last.

  “You can be sure I’m not catering that,” Vicky muttered.

  “Ex-husband and ex-partner, from what I hear,” Simmonds said.

  “We were having a temporary break from each other,” Louise said.

  “Is that what you call it? These two ladies and I will have a chat down at the station,” Simmonds said. “Officer Campbell, after you’ve escorted us, come back and get statements from the witnesses.”

  After the police and the miscreants had left, to the accompaniment of an excited babble of voices from the sidewalk, Vicky, Marjorie, Taylor, and I dropped into chairs.

  “That was … weird,” Taylor said.

  “You did pretty good there, Vicky,” Marjorie said. “Merry too. Did you play football in school?”

  I groaned.

  “An experience never to be repeated, I hope,” Vicky said. “We’re a bakery and café, not a bar.”

  “Those two have some serious issues to deal with,” Marjorie said. “I don’t know about the younger one, but as for the older one, her behavior is nothing more than I’d expect from a girl from Muddle Harbor.”

  “You mean Trish? She’s from Muddle Harbor?”

  “Patty Dawson, she was. Pride of MH High. Not. I started to say hello when she came in, but it was clear she intended to ignore me, so I didn’t. I remember her from the girls’ softball team we played against a few times.” Marjorie chuckled. “We won every single game. No surprise considering most of their players were on the level of Patty.” She got to her feet. “The only reason our team got as far as the regional playoffs is because of our victories against MH High. As soon as we encountered decent ball players …” She swiped her index finger across her throat. “Toast.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Sorry,” I said to Jackie when I returned to Mrs. Claus’s late and empty-handed. “Your lunch got stepped on.”

  “I don’t even need to ask what that means. Marg Thatcher ran in here a few minutes ago, saying the police had been called to Vicky’s place because a riot had broken out and a gang of middle-aged women was arrested.”

  “Not exactly a riot and not quite a gang, but that’s more or less right.”

  “What happened?”

  “Two women brought their personal disagreements into the bakery with them. They refused to leave when politely asked to do so. In all the chaos, someone stepped on our sandwich bag. The tea got spilled too. Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I missed it,” she said. “We had customers until a short while ago. They all ran out to see what the commotion was.”

  “Take a break if you like. Get something for us both for lunch from Cranberries. I’ll have anything at all.”

  “You okay, Merry?” Jackie studied my face. I gave her a grin, pleased at her show of concern, but also surprised. Jackie could be amazingly self-absorbed at times.

  “I’m fine. It didn’t have anything to do with me. I was nothing but an innocent bystander.“

  “’If you think the rest of the gang’s going to be out to get revenge on you and Vicky, maybe we should close the store for a couple days. I’d expect to be paid, of course, because that’s not my fault.”

  “Nice try, but I am not closing the store. Mainly because there is no gang, as I just told you.”

  “Whatever,” Jackie said.

  Customers began returning. Once it was all over and the miscreants taken away, I’d slipped out the back of the bakery to avoid the crowd of the curious, so not many people knew I’d been involved in the action.

  “I have to say, Muriel, I thought this was a safe town,” a woman said to another as they came into the store.

  “Is any place truly safe these days?” Muriel asked, probably rhetorically. “Has any place ever been truly safe at any time? Teenagers will be teenagers, particularly when they’re on vacation.”

  “So true.” They began selecting table linens. I wasn’t sure how a battle between two women of an age to know better had morphed into teenagers on vacation, but that was a good thing. Rudolph did not need to get the reputation of a place where fights broke out in the middle of town, in the middle of the day. The town hall was located close to the bakery. No doubt town staff had quickly set to work trying to downplay the incident and calm the waters.

  Now that I was thinking of towns with reputations … So Trish Dawson was from Muddle Harbor. I’d have thought nothing of it except it reminded me I’d heard Muddle Harbor mentioned recently. Wasn’t Charles Cole’s wife, Edith, from that town? Muddites, as we called them, had been known to try to cause trouble for Rudolph in the past. I remembered the time they’d tried to promote themselves as America’s Easter Town, and the Chocolette fiasco that had followed.

  A customer broke into my thoughts. “I adore this children’s village, but it’s rather expensive. Is it possible to buy a few individual pieces rather than the full set?”

  “Absolutely. It’s designed to be added to over the years. Let me see what we have.” I turned my attention away from murder and fistfights, and concentrated on my customers and my store for the rest of the day.

  * * *

  Jackie had left, and I was about to lock the door, when someone I didn’t expect to see came in. Brittany, who’d been taking notes in the bakery earlier. At first, I assumed she was disappointed she’d missed all the action and was here to ask me about the fight, but she didn’t even mention it.

  “You go to Victoria’s Bake Shoppe a lot, don’t you?” She took a small notebook and a pen out of her bag.

  “Yes, I do.”

  She flipped the notebook open and held the pen over a blank page. “I thought so. I’ve seen you there. Would it be fair to say you and Vicky are friends?”

  “It would. Where’s this going, Brittany? I’m closing the store now.”

  “Won’t take long. As her friend, I wouldn’t expect you to criticize her cooking, but I’m hoping you can give me a fair appraisal. No one needs to know we’ve had this conversation.”

  “What conversation might that be?”

  “What treat or dessert made at Victoria’s Bake Shoppe do you like the best?”

  I didn’t see any reason not to answer, so I did. “Mince tarts.”

  She wrote that down and added a big tick next to it. “A holiday favorite. Made only in the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s to keep interest high. What do you like the least?”

  “I like everything Vicky makes.”

  “If you had to say something, what would it be?”

  I thought. “Generally I don’t like Danishes with jam filling. Too sweet. And the jam dribbles down your front.”

  She wrote Danish and put a scratch through it. “Anything else?”

  “I like her pies. If I had to choose, my favorite is blueberry when it’s blueberry season. Also the chocolate raspberry pie. Vicky tries to use local ingredients when they’re available, and nothing beats seasonal berries.”

  A star next to blueberry pie and a tick beside chocolate raspberry. “Local fruit can be expensive, though, right? And it’s not always available. The imported stuff is often cheaper. What does it matter if it’s going to be cooked?”

  “It matters a lot, cooked or not. Cheaper isn’t usually tastier. You know she doesn’t add arsenic, right? That would be bad. She was kidding about that.”

  “I tried looking that word up, but I don’t think I got the spelling right. How do you spell arsenic?”

  I did so.

  “Yeah, that’s what I found. It’s a slow-acting poison.”

  “Right. Thus she does not use it in her baking. Or in anything else. If that’s all … it’s past closing time, and I’m leaving for the day.”

  “That helps—thanks.” She folded her notebook and put it away.

  ‘Are you writing an article for your local paper?” I asked.

  “No. I’m writing a cookbook all about baking for the holidays. I’m getting ideas of what to put in it.”

  * * *

  I wasn’t able to make my escape before I was interrupted yet again, this time by Detective Diane Simmonds. I’d twisted the lock on the door and was tidying the book rack when an excited woof came from the back, and a moment later I heard a firm rap on the door to the street.

  “Detective, come on in. What’s up? Dare I hope you’re coming to tell me one of his wives and/or lovers has confessed to the murder of Jim Cole.”

  “No, and if they had, you would not be the first person I’d tell.” She came into the store, and I locked the door behind her. She looked around. “You have some Easter things, I see. I’ve never known anyone who decorated their home for Easter.”

  “Some people take advantage of any excuse to bring out the fancy dishes. Can we go into the back before Mattie knocks the door down?”

  “Of course.”

  Mattie outdid himself in his enthusiasm when Detective Simmonds came in. She simply said, “Good afternoon, Matterhorn. Shall we go for a walk?”

  He bolted for the door.

  When I first met her, Diane Simmonds told me she’d grown up in Los Angeles, where her parents trained animals for movies and TV. She’d grown up around animals and had helped her parents as soon as she was able. I’d never asked why she became a police officer and moved to Chicago. She left that city for a new job in Rudolph during the fallout of a bad divorce to a fellow cop.

  “Let’s talk in the alley so he can have a stretch,” Simmonds said to me.

  I fastened the leash to Mattie’s collar, and we left by the rear door. We walked slowly, the dog trotting contentedly between us.

  “If this were a simple case of a couple of women getting overly argumentative and breaking a few things, I’d send a uniform to get your statement,” the detective said. “Seeing as how both women were involved with Jim Cole, I decided to ask you myself what happened this afternoon.”

  I related the story before concluding, “They each implied the other had reason to kill him, the reason being they were jealous that he preferred the other woman to her. But neither of them said anything that makes me believe they knew anything specific about his death. Did they to you?” I dared ask.