Chapter 5: The Baker's Dozen
The bell over the door of The Sweet Spot jangled with a tired, metallic despair. Shawn walked in behind Gus, his skin still feeling two sizes too small, the phantom scent of Shout cleaner and sweat clinging to his memory. Every nerve was raw, twitching at shadows.
Gus, meanwhile, was in heaven. He inhaled deeply, his eyes fluttering closed. “Do you smell that, Shawn? That’s the smell of artisan butter and unprocessed grief. This is a crime scene with a ninety-three percent Yelp approval rating.”
The bakery was a symphony of forced cheer. Pastel pink walls. Faux-gilded mirrors. A display case gleaming with rows of flawless, jewel-toned macarons and croissants so flaky they looked like they’d shatter at a loud noise. The air was a cloying blanket of vanilla, sugar, and something sharper underneath. Cinnamon, maybe. Or desperation.
Behind the counter stood a man who looked like he’d been marbled into the wrong setting. Derek was all blunt angles and coiled tension, his thick arms covered in intricate tattoos of rolling pins and thorny roses, stark against the flour dusting his forearms. His apron was stained with what looked like raspberry coulis. Or blood. With bakeries, it was a coin toss.
“We’re closed,” he grunted, not looking up from violently piping cream onto a profiterole.
“Your sign says ‘Open,’ my man,” Gus said, already peering into the case. “And those passion fruit curd tarts are calling to me. They’re saying, ‘Gus, don’t let our short, beautiful lives be in vain.’”
“The sign’s wrong.” Derek finally looked up. His eyes were the color of burnt coffee, bags under them so deep they could hold spare change. They flicked from Gus to Shawn, lingering on Shawn’s disheveled hair, the slight tremor in his hands. “You’re not food critics. You’re not regulars. So, you’re trouble. Get out.”
Shawn leaned on the counter, forcing a grin that felt like a cracked plate. “We’re consultants. Psychic detectives, actually. We’re here about Barry Houseman.”
The name hit the room like a dropped mixing bowl. Derek’s hand stilled. The piping bag drooled a little extra cream onto the pastry. “Barry’s dead. What’s it to you?”
“The police are… preoccupied with a departmental flu,” Shawn said, the lie smooth and oily. “We’re picking up the slack. We heard you and he had a thing. A professional rivalry. Like Rocky IV, but with more butter.”
Derek’s laugh was a short, harsh bark. “A rivalry? That implies we were playing the same game. Barry stole from me. For years. A recipe here, a supplier there. He was a magpie in a cheap suit.” He wiped his hands on his apron, leaving sticky streaks. “But I didn’t kill him. Didn’t need to. His own crap was gonna catch up to him eventually.”
Gus, now holding a tiny sample square of something lemon-poppyseed, paused. “His ‘crap’?”
“The man was a hack chemist playing with things that needed a lighter touch.” Derek’s gaze turned inward, calculating. “He came sniffing around my Baiser du Diable six months ago.”
“The… Devil’s Kiss?” Gus translated, his pharmaceutical sales brain whirring. “That’s a proprietary blend? An ingredient?”
“A compound,” Derek said, his voice dropping. “My own. A natural aphrodisiac. Not that synthetic garbage he was peddling to gym rats. Mine worked on suggestion, on scent, on the belief that something could make you feel more. He wanted the formula. Wanted to mass-produce it, strip out the soul, sell it in plastic bottles next to the protein powder.”
Shawn’s mind, still scrambling from the visceral proof of the compound’s power in Vick’s office, snapped into focus. The connection was a live wire. “You argued the night he died.”
It wasn’t a question. Shawn’s eyes had been darting around the shop, taking in the details Derek hadn’t cleaned up. A single, men’s leather glove, too fine for bakery work, was tucked behind the cash register. A faint, smudged footprint near the flour bin had a distinctive tread pattern—not a work boot. A dress shoe. Barry’s.
Derek froze. The affable baker mask dissolved, revealing the hardened face beneath. “He came here. Late. Buzzed on his own supply, talking big. Said he’d cracked it. Said he’d recreated my Kiss using cheaper substrates. He was going to be a millionaire.” Derek’s knuckles were white where he gripped the counter. “I told him he was a fool. That you can’t rush certain processes. That what he’d made was a blunt instrument. It would amplify everything—the good, the bad, the rage.”
The air in the shop seemed to thin. The sweet smells turned cloying, suffocating.
“We yelled. I shoved him. He shoved back.” Derek’s eyes flicked to the floor near the oven. “He fell. Hit his head on the corner of that flour bin. Not hard. He got up, called me a jealous prick, and left. That was it.”
Shawn followed his gaze. The metal bin had a sharp, unforgiving corner. He could see a tiny, almost invisible dent in the stainless steel. And a single, dried spatter of something dark. Rust, maybe. Or not.
“You didn’t call the police,” Shawn stated.
“He walked out!” Derek insisted, but the defiance was bleeding into something like panic. “He was fine!”
Gus had quietly set his sample cake down, his appetite gone. “But he wasn’t fine, was he? He’d been in a fight. Adrenaline pumping. And then he went home, maybe took some of his own ‘blunt instrument’ to celebrate… or to calm down.” He looked at Shawn, the horror dawning. “The compound would have amplified the head trauma. The disorientation. The paranoia.”
Shawn pictured it. Barry, stumbling home, his brain swelling, chemical fires lighting in his synapses. Seeing threats in every shadow. Arguing with his wife, Marcy. The combination of injury and compound creating a perfect, lethal storm.
But something still nagged at him. The glove. The too-expensive, out-of-place glove.
“You’re lying about one thing,” Shawn said softly, his eyes locking onto Derek’s. “The fight didn’t end here. You followed him. You were angry. You picked up something to threaten him with. Maybe that fancy Italian rolling pin over there. You followed him to his lab.”
Derek’s face went slack. The flour on his skin made him look like a ghost.
“You didn’t mean to kill him. You just wanted to scare him, wreck his lab. But he was already gone, mentally. He turned, startled, and he fell. The blunt force trauma to the back of his head… that was from the fall onto his own equipment. But the glove…” Shawn pointed. “You took it off to handle the pin, didn’t want prints. But you were shaking. You dropped one. And in your rush to get out, you forgot it. You shoved it in your pocket this morning without thinking, and it fell out here. Barry never wore gloves like that. Too fussy.”
The silence that followed was total, broken only by the low hum of the refrigerated case.
Derek didn’t confess, but he also didn’t argue.
Shawn analyzed the man and realized he was innocent, however he was protecting his sister.
“Gus,” Shawn said, his voice tired. “Bad news. You may have slept with a murderer. Again…”
He looked back at Derek, who was now just a man standing in the ruins of his own sweet spot.