10. Quoth

That evening, I sat across from Mina while she added string to her duck-napping board, connecting Stanley Clarke with a timeline of events in James Pond's disappearance. A list of questions had been taped in Braille next to him, including ‘Council report? Footprint? A tool used to cut wires?'

"I called Pleasure to Meat You today," she murmured as she worked. "I wanted to see if anyone had come in with a dead Peking duck to butcher, but Harris said the only birds he'd seen recently were Mrs. Ellis and her friends. Apparently, they all think our local butcher is quite handsome. So this means that if the duck-napper killed James Pond, they buried the evidence…"

"I have to ask this, artist to artist," I said. "Should you really be throwing yourself into a case so close to the wedding and the?—"

"I wonder if we could sneak Oscar into Stanley's garden to sniff around…" Mina tapped her phone screen.

"—book launch? Are you sure that you're not trying to distract yourself because you are nervous?"

"I'm not nervous." She glared at me. "I'm not."

"Mina."

"So what if not a single person from the book industry cares about my novel? So what if I really am unrelatable? So what if there's a distinct possibility we ordered all those scones from Oliver and no one shows up to eat them? At this rate, I think that I might cancel it, maybe do it a bit later in the year when I'm more prepared, after I've done some more editing."

"No, Mina, you're not thinking of editing the book like Jen said? It won't be the story you want to tell."

"What does it matter if it's my story when no one will read it?" Mina chewed on a strand of her hair. "Besides, I'm too busy with the James Pond case to worry about it now. Do you think you could head out tonight and ask some of the local birds?—"

"Quoth, can we have a minute?" Heathcliff called from the stairwell.

"I'm just about to go help Mina look for the duck?—"

"This is important."

There was no point explaining to Heathcliff that the duck was important to Mina. I followed him and Morrie downstairs. Heathcliff unlocked the shop door and led the two of us out into the street.

"I figured she won't hear us out here," he whispered. "We need a debrief. Quoth and I spent most of the day putting out fires up at Lachlan Hall. We didn't get to do any investigating about the note, but I have finally found a place that will rent us enough chair covers. They could only do pink ribbons, so Iwan is at his house now, sewing us enough gold ribbons for the ceremony. That man is a lifesaver."

"Why don't you marry him?" Morrie sniped.

"Trust me, I considered it," Heathcliff shot back. "Morrie, do you have an update for us about Wayne Bryant and Dorothy Ingram?"

"I do," Morrie rubbed his palms together. "I haven't got to Wayne yet, but I've taken care of Dorothy."

Unease stabbed at my chest. What exactly did Morrie mean by that? "You didn't?—"

"Relax, birdie. All I did was remind her about the dirt we have on her, that if she doesn't want her little secret splashed across the front page of the Argleton Gazette, she needs to leave the wedding alone. She denied everything, but she canceled her prayer meeting and Father Clarence said that she left the village to visit her sister in Grimdale. Problem solved. The wedding can go ahead, and we don't have to worry about any more rotten little notes?—"

"Heathcliff, there you are! I need to talk to you."

We turned toward the voice. Oliver ran from the bakery, his face coated in flour, his features grim.

All my soul within me burned with unease.

"It's about the wedding cake," Oliver began. "Something's happened."

Heathcliff went very still, his hands balled into fists at his sides. He turned slowly, and I sensed that Oliver was in grave danger. "What kind of something?"

"I've been working on it all week. A five-tier cake made to look like a stacked bookshelf, with all of Mina's favorite books, and a black raven on top. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to sculpt a black raven out of icing? Anyway, I did it, and it was amazing, but?—"

"Was amazing?" Heathcliff said, his voice eerily calm.

I swallowed down my dread.

"I can't explain it…" Ollie screwed up his face. He stepped backwards, holding the door to the bakery kitchen open so we could see inside.

I peered around Heathcliff's shoulder and gasped.

Every surface of Ollie's usually pristine kitchen was covered in cake. There was cake smeared on the ceiling and dribbling down the walls, cake wiped across the floor in giant swoops, and cake dripping from the light fixtures and extractor vents like delicious stalactites.

"I don't understand how this could have happened," Ollie stammered. "I stepped out to help the delivery man with my flour order. I left this door open for a moment, and when I came back inside, I found this horror show. It must've been a huge gust of wind to topple a heavy cake like that and smear it everywhere."

I looked at Heathcliff. We were both thinking the same thing.

This is no accident.

Heathcliff glared at Morrie. "What did you say about Dorothy Ingram not being a problem anymore?"

"I'm so sorry," Ollie rubbed his eyes. "I've been working my ass off on that cake. I think it was the greatest thing I'd ever made. And on top of all the trouble we've been having with the new delivery service. The ordering app is janky and someone keeps stealing our deliveries off people's doorsteps before they can get them?—"

"Oliver, we don't care."

"Right, yes, not your problem. Again, I'm so sorry guys, but your wedding is the day after tomorrow, and I have to go down to London for my sister's baby shower. I don't have time to start again. I can put you in touch with a couple of local cake designers, and you can see if they're available, but it's a busy time of year so you may not be able to get something as elaborate."

Morrie patted Ollie's shoulder. "I offer you my forgiveness…and a piece of advice."

"What's that?"

Morrie glanced over at Heathcliff, then back to Oliver. "Run."

Oliver opened his mouth like he might apologize again, then thought better of it and broke off into a run, disappearing across the town green.

I stared down at the carnage of what had once been a triumph of the art of icing. A long, mournful ‘croooak' escaped my throat.

"What do you propose we do now?" Morrie said.

"We do what's in our nature," Heathcliff growled. "We get villainous."