Éclair and Present Danger Read Online Free Page B

Here I am, chilled to the bone over Bart’s passing, yet my abdomen is strangely warm. My blood must not be flowing properly.”
    Winnie crossed back to the couch and claimed the cushion closest to Bridget. Lovey popped up from her peaceful slumber (against Bridget’s abdomen) and whirled around to glare at Winnie. Her attempts to soothe the feline via a soft pet were met with two short hisses and something that sounded an awful lot like a growl.
    Ahhh, that’s nice . . .
    Giving up, she squeezed Bridget’s hand, instead. “I’m sure the police will figure out who did this to Bart and why.” Yet even as she said the words, she knew the likelihood of them being true was slim to none. The Silver Lake Police Department was small—as in
really
small, and deduction and logic weren’t their forte.
    Bridget looked up. “Please tell me that Detective Wyatt at least
pretended
to ask good questions?”
    She cast about for some sort of positive spin she could use to deliver her answer, but there was none. Besides, Bridget was sharp; she knew the drill. “Not really, no.”
    â€œHe asked if he could eat that peach pie, didn’t he?” Mr.Nelson released his hold on the curtain and let it drift back across the window, momentarily inhibiting his view of the action. At Winnie’s nod, he waved his cane in the air. “I hope you didn’t give it to him, Winnie.”
    â€œHow could I say no?” She fidgeted with the hem of her powder blue top and tried to think back on the conversation she’d had with the detective. He’d confirmed that Bart’s door was unlocked . . . he’d asked if she saw anything unusual . . . and he’d asked if Bart could have simply fallen, pulling the pillow with him as he went.
    Rising to her feet once again, Winnie made her way back to the now-unmanned window, her gaze searching for (and finding) Detective Wyatt and the handful of officers who’d arrived on the scene with donut powder on their uniforms. Maybe they’d figure out what happened to Bart; maybe they wouldn’t. Either way, she refused to let Bridget, Mr. Nelson, and the remaining dozen or so elderly folks on Serenity Lane live in fear.
    Besides, it wasn’t like she had anything else to do with her time at the moment.
    â€œWe’re smart,” she said without turning around. “We can figure this out.”
    â€œFigure what out?” Mr. Nelson hobbled back to his spot next to Winnie.
    â€œFigure out who did this to Bart.”
    This time, when she looked back at Bridget, she saw hope pushing through the fear—hope that Winnie was right and that she would deliver on her word.
    And she would.
    One way or the other . . .
    *   *   *
    I t was ten-thirty by the time she and Lovey finally made it upstairs to their apartment. She was tired, the cat was hissy, and Bridget and Mr. Nelson were safely tucked away behind locked doors in their respective homes.
    Now that Winnie was finally alone (save for Lovey, of course), and able to have the cry she’d been fighting off since she locked the bakery’s door for the very last time, there were no tears.
    Sure, she was still sad—devastated, even. But seeing Bart’s lifeless body stretched across his linoleum kitchen floor and hearing Bridget’s subsequent fear that she or Mr. Nelson could be next had put things in perspective, at least a little.
    Did she still want her bakery back? Without a doubt.
    Was she still at a complete loss for what to do with her life? Head-spinningly so.
    But wallowing did nothing.
Baking
did.
    From the time Winnie’s line of vision was able to clear the countertop in her mother’s kitchen, she’d loved baking. Her favorite picture books as a pre-reader had been those containing desserts. Once she started reading, she’d shunned the fiction books favored by her peers and devoured