Streetlights cast pools of yellow onto the wet sidewalks. A few lights still shone from behind curtains on Lakeside Drive. New carriage lamps had been installed on the gateposts at the property at the end of the street and glowed with a welcoming yellow light. The gate was secured by a section of chicken wire loosely tossed around the frames on the top rail, but it wasn’t locked. A small branch flopped across the top of the gate, blown there by the wind, a twig caught on one of the bars. I got out of the car opened the gate, went back to the car, drove through, got out of the car again, and shut the gate, securing it with the wire, got back into the car, and finally drove up the lane. The branch on the gate hadn’t been disturbed, and the rain began to fall harder.

  Vicky’s Miata was parked in front of the closed garage doors, but Mark’s car was gone. A light burned above the front door. The door was open, and Vicky and Sandbanks stood there. My friend was in her pajamas, a cute pants and T-shirt set featuring yellow cartoon characters. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted a sparkling dark purple.

  “Tea’s made,” Vicky said. “What’s so vitally important you’ve come out at this time of night? And in the rain.”

  As if to emphasize her point, the rain increased, and the wind picked up its pace. Branches growing too close to the house scratched against the walls and windows.

  She stepped back and I came inside. Sandbanks sniffed my shoes and pant legs, catching up on the news from Mattie. I shook rainwater out of my hair. There wasn’t yet a table in the entrance hall, so I tossed my bag onto the floor. “You told me you’ve had no more incidents of strange noises in the house since Jim Cole died, right?”

  “Yes. Nothing. The police conclude he was responsible for all that nonsense, and Mark and I agree.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Is it possible someone else was poking around here, and his death scared them off?”

  “Anything’s possible, Merry. I’m just happy they’ve stopped. Whoever they were.”

  “Stopped. For how long will it stay stopped? The person might get their nerve up again and come back when the attention dies down.”

  Vicky twisted the lock on the door behind me, and we walked together down the long hallway to the kitchen. A teapot emitting aromatic steam sat in the center of the table, along with two cups and containers for milk and sugar.

  Vicky plopped herself into a chair. “Tea?”

  “Sure.”

  Sandbanks gave me a final sniff and wandered out of the room. Vicky poured the tea and passed me a cup.

  I cradled the warm cup in my hands. “With all that’s been going on, the Jim Cole murder in particular, we’ve lost sight of a minor issue that might turn out to be not so minor. Someone tried to break into the bakery a few days ago, right?”

  “Yes. The alarm went off, the police were called. Whoever tried to break in was long gone by the time the cops arrived, and they hadn’t gotten inside.”

  “The police said there hadn’t been any other break-and-enter attempts on Jingle Bell Lane that night.”

  “The person got scared off.”

  “That word again. I can’t stop wondering if that incident could be somehow related to what was going on here earlier. Did the police have anything more to report about it?”

  “No,” Vicky said. “They took fingerprints around the door but found nothing other than those of me and my staff. And, by the way, yours. Some scratches in the doorframe where the person tried to wedge the door open. That must have been what set the alarm off. They told me to let them know if it happened again. As though I might forget to call. ”

  “The attempts to get into this house were pretty clumsy, along with noises in the night, which you’d think any barely competent wanna-be thief would try to avoid. When the cops searched the house and property after Jim’s death, they found signs of previous attempted break -ins, right?”

  “Recent ones, yes, but they couldn’t say how recent. This house has always been a magnet for bored kids.”

  “But now someone’s living here. That should be enough to end the spooky element kids are looking for. No other houses on this street have reported incidents.”

  “I don’t know about that, but so what?”

  “Hear me out. Let me hear my own self out. This is all just coming together in my mind. Why would your bakery be the target of a break-in? What do you have worth stealing?”

  “I have a great deal of expensive equipment, Merry.”

  “Yes, you do. The stoves, the fridges, high-end industrial mixers and such. Not the sort of thing a midnight prowler can carry away without making a lot of commotion and needing a moving truck. Baking trays and cake pans. Flour and sugar. Not usually the object of random theft, compared to say the jeweler’s or the electronics store.”

  “Those places probably have better security than the bakery.”

  “Maybe. How about this house? You guys have a TV and your own computers, but you haven’t fully moved in yet. No art on the walls, for example. No heirloom silver. No one would think you or Mark have much worth stealing. You’re just a young couple starting out, without all the stuff older people accumulate.” I thought of my parents’ house. My mother’s jewelry, mementos of her travels, the gifts she’d been given by adoring fans or fellow artists.

  “Your point is?“

  “What do you have in this house, and in your place of business, no one else has?”

  “Sandbanks?”

  “Recipes.”

  “What?”

  “The recipes you’re developing for your book. The notes you’re making about them. You have the outline of the book on your laptop, but most of the recipes themselves are on paper, right?”

  “Yeah. I always work off paper when I’m following a recipe. I can fasten the page to something metallic at eye level, rather than trying to scroll through a screen. I can make notes with a pencil in sticky hands I wouldn’t want to touch a device with. What of it?”

  I said nothing. I watched my friend process all I’d been saying. “The recipes are on my laptop though,” Vicky said at last. “All of them. It’s backed up to the cloud regularly. My latest notes might not be recorded right away, but anything that recent would still be in my head. If someone stole my recipe folder or the computer, all I’d have to do would be download them again. Why then—” The light dawned. “Someone wants my recipes to put out a book of their own.”

  “That’s what I believe. Recipes can’t be copyrighted, right? I checked into that before calling you.”

  “It’s possible but difficult to do. There must be hundreds, thousands, of recipes for chocolate cake out there in the world, and all anyone has to do is make a simple change to make the recipe their own. Like ask for a quarter teaspoon of salt instead of a half. Plenty of recipes float around between friends and within families; no one can trace where it began ,to make a claim on it. If the recipe is completely unique and can be proven to be so, it can be copyrighted, but that’s hard to prove and harder to do. None of mine are anything like that. Most of my recipes are old favorites updated. My mince tarts, for example, are my grandmother’s recipe. Half the women on my mother’s side of the family make them exactly the same way.”

  “Who’s lately been showing an excessive amount of interest in your baking, Vicky? Who’s been trying to analyze your pastry? Who’s been hanging around your place watching what people are ordering? Who asked me what my favorite and least favorite desserts of yours are, as though she was doing a survey or something?”

  “Brittany Pettigrew. She who wants to be the pastry chef of the Muddle Harbor Café.”

  “Bingo.”

  “She asked what’s your least favorite thing I make? What did you say?”

  “I don’t think that matters right now, Vicky. Brittany makes no secret of her ambition to be a pastry chef, and not just a pastry chef, but one of great renown. She doesn’t want to go to the trouble to learn the necessary skills. She wants to do it all right now. She wants to have it all right now. Her own aunt told us Brittany wants to do things the quick and easy way because that’s the way it worked when she was the popular girl at school. Yes, she can make a few standard things herself, like the blueberry pie she brought out at the café, but she has nowhere near enough to put in a book, and no amount of small-school popularity is going to come to her aid this time. When you interviewed her, she told you she was planning on writing a holiday-themed baking book, but only after you mentioned you were working extra hard because of your own book. Was that true, or did she suddenly decide to do it because you put the idea in her head? Regardless, she intends to use your recipes. To do that, she has to get her hands on them.”

  Vicky thought for a long time. “You might be onto something, Merry. If so, she’s been scared away from the house by the police attention around the death of Jim Cole, but she’ll likely be back.”

  “I think it’s more than that, Vicky. I think Brittany killed Jim.”

  “Why? What possible reason would she have to do that? Did they know each other?”

  “Not that I’m aware, but I don’t think it matters. Jim Cole was looking for a way of overturning his aunt’s will. That’s the game he was playing, anyway. Did he know he was wasting his time and money, but didn’t care? That’s possible. Lawsuits were as much an addiction for him as gambling is for some people. He was compelled to keep doing it. Then again, he was out of money, and although his late cousin wasn’t wealthy, Emmeline’s estate would have realized some value from the sale of this house. She intended to leave all of it to a women’s charity, not to her only surviving relative.

  “As has been pointed out, this house is now legally yours and Mark’s. I don’t know enough about the laws of inheritance to know if you could be forced to sell the house back to the estate if the will was overturned, but that doesn’t matter. Jim never showed the slightest bit of interest in the house before Emmeline died, so I consider it unlikely he wanted the house itself. He wanted the money you paid the estate for it. The only chance he had of overturning the will was if he could prove Emmeline was not in her right mind. One way of doing such would be to show that she was mentally unable to take responsibility for her own property. Specifically, the upkeep of this property. Simmonds found pictures of the exterior of the house and the grounds on his phone. Pictures taken the day he died, at night and not exactly showing the place in its best light. Jim Cole was obviously here once. No doubt about it. As for the other times? I don’t see it. He wouldn’t have needed to come into the house for the proof he was after, and even if he did, all he had to do was knock on the door and ask to see the old family home one last time. He would have had no reasonable explanation to give you for wanting to take pictures of the desolate garden late at night. So, he came without asking permission or letting you know he was here. I speculate he saw Brittany creeping around at the same time, trying to actually get into the house. Did he attempt to blackmail her? He wasn’t above doing that. Did he suggest they join forces, and something went wrong? Possible.”

  “Can you prove any of this?”

  “Not a single word. But we have enough to have a chat with Detective Simmonds in the morning. Once she starts pulling on one thread, she’ll eventually unravel the entire ball of wool.”

  Our tea sat between us, ignored. From the other room came the sound of Sandbanks snoring with great enthusiasm.

  A bell rang. I just about leaped out of my skin. “What was that?”

  “The doorbell. Mark had it installed yesterday.” Vicky stood up. “He must have forgotten his keys. No one would be calling at this time of night without texting first.”

  “I’m going home,” I said. “You get up first, so why don’t you call Simmonds in the morning and arrange a time for us to talk to her?”

  “Will do.”

  We walked down the hallway together. The window set into the front door showed nothing but darkness and rain beyond. Vicky stretched her hand toward the lock.

  Mark worked at the Yuletide Inn. The inn was on the outskirts of town, several miles from here. Mark would not walk to work. Vicky’s car had been the only one in the driveway when I arrived, and the garage was currently stuffed full of moving boxes and construction equipment. Mark must have driven to work. Surely, he, like everyone else in the world, kept his house keys on the same chain as his car keys.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  Vicky half turned at the same time as she twisted the lock. “What?”

  I tried to shove my friend out of the way, get to the opening door, but I was too late. Brittany Pettigrew stepped into the hall. Her dark hair was dotted with rain, her eyes glowed with satisfaction, and she gave us a big smile. She held a chef’s knife in her right hand.

  Chapter Twenty

  Vicky and I stared at the intruder. Brittany smiled back at us. Rainwater puddled on the floor around her.

  Vicky was first to recover her wits. “Hi, Brittany. Sorry, but this isn’t a good time for a visit. You know what it’s like—what time we bakers have to get up in the morning to get the bread dough rising. Merry’s leaving.”

  “I don’t make bread,” Brittany said. “That’s next on my list to learn.”

  “A good skill to have.” Vicky stretched her arm toward Brittany. Brittany slapped it away with her free hand. She held up the other, the one holding the knife. “I’m sick and tired of fooling around. I tried to do this the nice way, but I’ve run out of patience. Give me the recipes you’re developing for your book, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Not likely,” Vicky said.

  “Maybe we can talk it over,” I suggested.

  “Nothing to talk over,” Vicky said.

  Brittany held the knife in front of her face. Madness gleamed in her eyes. The door behind her was open, and the rain continued to fall. Her foot was only inches away from my bag. The bag I’d tossed onto the floor, the one containing my phone.

  “Mark will be home soon,” Vicky said.

  “He’ll be delayed tonight. He has a flat tire to deal with.” Brittany made a cutting motion with the knife. The light from the hall lamp gleamed off the blade. It looked as though it had been sharpened recently. “Recipes?”

  “Say I give them to you. Then what?” Vicky’s voice was perfectly calm, a woman in control, not bothered in the least. But her hands were clenched at her sides, and her shoulders stiff with tension. “You have to know I’ll call the police soon as you leave and tell them you broke into my home and threatened us.”

  “I didn’t break in,” Brittany said. “You unlocked the door when I politely rang the bell. I tried breaking in before, though. The boards over those old windows are a heck of a lot stronger than they look.”

  “A technicality,” Vicky said. “I am asking you to leave. Please do so.”

  “I tried climbing a branch to get to the second floor. Branch broke, so I didn’t try that again. I might have broken my neck.”

  “That would have been most unfortunate,” Vicky said.

  “Vicky,” I said, “let her have what she’s after and be on her way. What does it matter? Recipes can’t be copyrighted.”

  “You won’t call the cops.” Brittany ignored me. “Not if you don’t want your boyfriend charged with murder.”

  “What does that mean?” Vicky said. “You just told me you cut Mark’s tires. He’ll have to call a tow truck, and he’ll have witnesses.”

  “Not the murder of you, you idiot. I need you alive in case something’s wrong in one of those recipes.”

  Involuntarily I took a step back. My mind raced as I attempted to assess the situation. Two of us. One of her. Brittany had a knife, and she looked as though she had no compulsion against using it. Mark’s complete set of chef’s knives—minus the one he’d taken outside when he found Jim Cole’s body—was in the kitchen, but I’d never get to them in time. Sandbanks was unlikely to come to our aid. He was losing his hearing in his old age. He was still snoring happily, dreaming of when he’d been a carefree young puppy bounding across the lawn in pursuit of squirrels.

  “I can get him arrested for killing that Jim Cole,” Brittany said. “I have pictures of Mark crouching over Jim Cole’s body. Pictures of him holding a rock. He looks angry. Angry enough to kill.”

  “Mark never touched that rock,” Vicky said.

  “Photographs don’t lie,” Brittany said. “Isn’t that what people say?”

  Brittany was not a very clever criminal. The only reason she’d gotten away with the death of Jim Cole, so far, was because she hadn’t been on anyone’s radar for the killing. It was nothing but a coincidence that she’d crossed Jim Cole’s path that night. However—whyever—he died, she had been hiding in a clump of bushes when Mark found Jim. She took pictures, thinking she might have an opportunity to use them some day. She’d kept the pictures, foolishly not realizing those pictures could be used against her in court to place her at the scene. Mark hadn’t touched the rock that killed Jim, meaning if Brittany had such a photo, she’d photoshopped it into his hand. Probably exaggerated the anger in his features too. No sloppy, amateur photoshopping job would fool police experts for more than a couple of minutes. By then, however, it might be too late for us.

  “We can’t let that happen, Vicky,” I said. “Give her the recipe book.” I stared at Vicky as hard as I could, trying to send a message. Give the book to Brittany now, and let the police take care of her.

  Vicky gave me a nod. “Okay. I hate the very idea. But I’ll do it. For Mark. How do I know you’ll destroy the pictures of Mark and Jim?”

  “I give you my word,” Brittany said.

  Vicky snorted. “Like that’s worth a lot.”

  “Up to you to find out.” Brittany used the knife to indicate the dark hallway. “Get them. I’ll keep an eye on your meddlesome friend here, in case you try a fast one.”

  Vicky led the way to the kitchen. Brittany jerked her head at me to follow. I did so, and she fell into step behind me. Brittany was a good bit taller than me, and she was able to hold the knife comfortably against the side of my neck. I did not like the feeling of it resting there.