Chapter 10

  Danyl took his hacking manual and walked off the bus. Pappy sat back down in the driver's seat, rubbing the back of his neck. Then his foot began to bounce up and down just like Anais when she is impatiently waiting for me. But I don’t think that it is impatience, I think he’s worried or conflicted.

  “You know Pappy, it might help to talk about it, as a matter of fact, Willow asked me to talk to you about your decision. I’d be happy to, if that is alright with you. But if you want me to mind my own business, then I promise to do that as well.”

  “I think I'd like to talk about it.”

  He was gripping the steering wheel of the immobile bus so hard his knuckles turned white.

  He continued, “I’m scared Laura. I always knew the cops could come for me at any time and I was fine with that. I mean at our age we could keel over and die any day and we have to be alright with that. Otherwise we’d just stay in bed, the safest place in the house. You’d think anyways, but I read about this Canadian woman who was awoken in the middle of the night her mattress was smoking. A meteorite had passed right through the roof of her house and straight through her mattress. If she had slept on the other side of the bed she’d be dead. That doesn’t really matter, I just thought it was interesting. When I get scared, my brain just races, from one weird thought to the next. I haven’t been scared like this since just after Willow’s dad had died.”

  “Why did that make you scared pappy, did Willow's fathers death make you think about your own mortality?”

  “No, it wasn’t anything like that, it was, I was afraid of what might happen to Willow, if I was in prison and couldn’t be there for her. She didn’t have anyone else for her back then. I mean the writers in her collective are nice and all but they don’t stick around. Four or five years tops and then they are gone. But you’ll look after Willow, now so I’m not worried about her. But now Cinnamon, err Phoebe, has turned her life upside down for me. So I don’t want to make her regret her choice.”

  “Pappy, you & I could die tomorrow, but Phoebe is not going to regret her choice, not for one second. If she waited since nineteen sixty eight for a date with you, she’ll wait for a few weeks if you wind up having to go to Chicago to clear up this warrant. The fear that you feel right now about your decision, your fate. Well, Willow and Phoebe feel that same thing, every time you step off of your property. Willow is worried sick about you, and she’ll continue to worry about you until you get that warrant cleared. When that man overdosed here Friday night, one of the first things I started to worry about. What if by inviting you here, I get you arrested? But I felt better after talking to Eve, because that woman knows her stuff. This cop wanted to arrest me for murder. Eve dared him too, she told him that she would rip him apart in court and that the false arrest lawsuit would not just be filed against the town but against him personally. He didn’t dare arrest me. So he wound up arresting Monique, well Eve couldn’t defend us both, so what she did was to tell her public defender exactly what to do to get her released. It worked out just like she said it would. So instead of worrying about what might happen if they do extradite you to Chicago. Instead start dreaming about where you are going to take Phoebe, after you win your lawsuit against them, because you’ll be rich.”

  “I don’t want to be rich, Laura.”

  “Me neither, Pappy, but if someone has to be rich, it should be the people that don’t want to. It’s like who would make the best president, the person who least wants the job, because he’ll be happy to leave when his time is up. People like Hiltler and Trump might even truly believe they are the only people that can fix a broken system, but those are the guys you have to fear, because they won’t walk away from power without a fight. But I have a feeling that you’d make a fine rich person, because it wouldn’t go to your head, and one good thing about being rich is you could always give it all away.”

  “Yeah, it could be fun giving away money. It would also be nice, not looking over my shoulder. Maybe I could even get a license, drive Urge so Phoebe doesn’t have to drive all the time.”

  “Yep, it’ll be great, Pappy. But you also get to call Willow and tell her, no need to worry about you, you are free and clear.”

  “I’ll do it, Laura, I’ll do it for Willow. I never got to have any kids, but if I had, I’d have wanted them to be just like Willow.”

  “Smart.”

  “No, kind.”

  “Yep, Pappy, I agree. Kindness is more important, and anyone can do it, I wonder why so few try to. It seems like everyone is trying to be smart but no one is trying to be kind.”

  He slowly smiled, “It’ll be alright, now no matter what happens to me, you’ll look after Willow and Willow will look after Phoebe. Who looks after you?”

  “Amy, and Anais, we kind of look after each other and Willow too. Willow and I have a signed contract to be excellent to each other”

  “Ahh, Bill and Ted, now those two are the ones that should be in charge, Laura. I’m sure the great historical figures would agree.”

  Four customers piled onto the bus. I started to get off but before I got to far I heard one of them exclaim, “Holy crap, look at the ceiling. I love that artwork, it’s all from Yes albums. This bus is trippy.”

  ***

  The filming was just about to begin, I hope this wasn’t going to turn into another infomercial. So I hurried to the tent. Buoyed by my talk with Pappy. That guy no more belongs in prison than the Dalai Lama does. But if the Chinese government could get their hands on him, that might be just where he’d wind up. Still better to be considered an enemy of China, than of Putin’s. Putin’s enemies have a history of being poisoned.

  The world would probably be better off if there was no Russia, China or United States. But if all three super powers were just suddenly removed, would peace reign or are people just too violent, too tied up in their religions and pursuit of wealth and power. Would Iran attack Israel? Would North Korea attack South Korea? Would Britain restart her empire or maybe France. Would the European Union suddenly start gobbling up territory?

  I waved to Amy, she smiled and winked.

  Roberta stood in the center of all the kitchens. Then the camera light lit and Roberta began her introduction.

  “Welcome back bakers to round two of the Superb Lake Placid Bake Off. We have quite the challenge today. Continuing on with our bread theme from round one. For round two we’d like you all to bake a Focaccia Bread. All the ingredients you need to make this incredible Italian flatbread are located there on your station.”

  Roberta then began giving detailed instructions to the seven bakers

  “Bakers, gather your ingredients: 4 cups flour, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 teaspoons instant yeast, 2 cups water.

  Alright, bakers next whisk together the flour, salt, and yeast first, when that’s well mixed it’s then time to add the water. Use a spatula to stir the water along with the dry ingredients together. Then drizzle with olive oil.

  Then one by one please bring your dough up to the judges table to be scored. After we have scored your dough, you will be given, dough that our staff mixed together two days ago and that was allowed to rise in the fridge until fifteen minutes ago.”

  This was like baking for ten year olds, mix three dry ingredients together then add water and stir. Then they give you dough they already made. Who came up with these challenges? This wasn’t going to be interesting to the typical audience that watches baking or cooking challenges. It might be alright for people who weren’t looking for a competition.

  All seven of the bakers had handed in their dough and been scored, and picked up a new bowl of dough, made by the producers.

  Then Roberta resumed her spot in the center of the event’s kitchens.

  “Now bakers, you’ll want to deflate the dough, next you place the dough in the nine inch pie plates, but first of course you’ll need to grease the pie dish. Then bring your final assembled items to the Judge’s table so they can rate you rising bread. When you will be given identical pie plates of dough that have risen for three hours for you to bake.”

  This was more like an auto assembly line than a baking contest. The bakers each brought up a pie plate full of dough and were scored on how good their dough looked I guess. I can’t wait to see what Amy thinks of this and how she can possibly score raw dough. After the baker had been scored, they were now handed a risen version to bake.

  Once all the bakers were back at their stations. Roberta again took center stage and then told them exactly how to bake the focaccia.

  “Alright bakers, now dimple your bread and pour two tablespoons of olive oil over the top then sprinkle fresh rosemary and sea salt and bake at four hundred and twenty five degrees for twenty five minutes or until golden brown.”

  Someone yelled cut. Roberta smiled and smoothed down her skirt and walked over to talk to the director. I walked over to talk to Amy, while the mayor left his judges seat to go speak to his wife. We had attracted a large crowd of spectators. I hope they were also visiting Urge and buying lots of books from Pappy. Lucy was hoping that it would boost our sales as well, but I didn’t really care about our sales. Ever since we had joined up with the Rabbit Hole we have been doing more than enough business to pay all of our employees and to put some money aside for improvements.

  “Amy, how can you possibly judge them on bread that all they had to do was to bake? It’s almost like using crescent rolls from the supermarket isn't it?”

  “Yes Laura, it’s insane. I don’t know why they choose a bread that has to rise for a couple of days, to test the bakers on it doesn’t make any sense. Especially that first part where they came up and showed us just the mixed ingredients, absolutely insane.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Maybe people will just like it because it is so odd.”

  “I suppose that is a possibility, Laura. I hope the writers don’t see this, they’ll never want to eat my cooking again."

  “Are you kidding me, the food at the collective has never been as good as the day you started. The writers will never let you go. You know Monique is always looking for authors to write while she just does the artwork for her graphic novels. I think that you two should talk about doing a graphic novel cookbook. Cooking manga is really popular in Japan and China. I think it’d be great for you both and who knows you might even have a breakout hit on your hands.”

  “I can’t write, Laura.”

  “Anyone can write and you already have it half written, you’d just need to pick the recipes that have an interesting story. Like let's say you choose Focaccia, you’d just need to do some research, find out interesting facts about it, then make up a little story. How it powered the legions that beat back Hanibal or something like that. Or a legion that refused to march out to battle until they were given their daily ration of Focaccia. Once they had eaten, they marched out and beat back the barbarians.”

  “You are the one who should be writing with her. Laura, you just made up that story on the spot, like that night at dinner when you spun out storylines for each of the writers surrounding a cooking contest.”

  The director called for places. The mayor came scurrying back. I moved off of the stage, and took up a spot near to where I was before and where I could observe everything from. It occurred that again I haven’t noticed even one bee flying around. I’m coming around to the idea that our saboteur brought the bees in just to cause a little chaos, maybe it wasn’t related to the overdose. I need to get over to talk to August and see what test results they have obtained.

  The camera light lit up Roberta and she began, “Bakers you have three minutes to get those Focaccia out of the ovens and plated so that we judges can test your final products.”

  A minute later, “Bakers you have two minutes.”

  “One minute to go bakers, remember that our judges are looking for perfection.”

  “Times up bakers. Please take your bakes and line up in a single file in front of the judges table.”

  Then Roberta resumed her judges seat. The judges wordlessly accepted a baker’s Focaccia ripped off three pieces, tried it, then handed the plate back to the baker. Then they scored how the bread looked, smelled and tasted. Before the next baker handed the judges their attempt at Focaccia. They looped through this seven times. When all the bakers were back in their kitchen stations. Roberta rose again and delivered the outro.

  “Well, this has certainly been exciting,..”

  I almost laughed out loud at this line, there was nothing exciting about that round in the least little bit.

  “Right after this little break will be back for the pressure filled third round, after which someone will be booted from the show.”

  Cut

  Then Roberta advised everyone that the next segment would begin filming at two pm

  Some of the crowd that now surrounded the tent, started to clap. As if they actually enjoyed this mockery of the GBBO. Maybe I really have crossed over into the Twilight Zone. In the GBBO they are genuinely sad that someone has to leave the tent. In the Superb Lake Placid Bake Off they gleefully ‘boot’ you off the show, like it was the Gong Show without any of the endearing qualities like Gene Gene the dancing machine. I just reminded myself that the writers would be exempt from property taxes for the next three years. All that cost was the dignity of everyone who appeared on this show.

  Danyl came over and told me he was ready to be interviewed whenever I was. So we walked down to the boat house, I went in and got a couple of lawn chairs and we walked down to the dock and made ourselves comfortable.

  “So, Danyl, let’s start at the beginning. How long have you been baking?”

  “I started baking during the covid lockdown. I was going nuts. I couldn't write more than eight hours a day, and getting good baked goods was out of the question, so at first I started on those refrigerated doughs and cookies. But pretty quickly I graduated to baking from scratch. It was hardly any more work and yet it was much more satisfying. The ingredients were also more readily available at my local supermarket. Whereas the crescent rolls and ready to bake cookies weren’t on the shelves for months after the initial supply seemed to run out. If it hadn't been for the lockdown, I very well might not have ever baked.”

  “Did you come all this way just to compete in the Bake Off?”

  “No, Laura, it was just a pleasant coincidence. I was in the coffee shop pretending to write. What I actually was doing was listening to people’s conversations. If someone says something interesting or in an interesting way, I take it down. I find this helps me find my character's voices. I’ll have a character in mind, then flip through my notes until I hit on a line of dialogue that just screams, that character would definitely talk like that. Ninety percent of the time, I pay absolutely no attention to what is said, just how and if it’s interesting, I’ll write it down. Anyway two women sat down and started talking about the contest and maybe because they hadn’t said anything very interesting, the actual meaning seeped into my brain. So I just googled Superb Lake Placid Bake Off and typed in an application while I sat there.”

  That sounded like a scene from a book that a writer would make up, not like something that actually happened. But why he might lie about how he found out about the contest, well I’ll have to think long and hard about that. Because nothing comes to mind, for why he might want to lie about it. Unless he came her to kill Niall

  “Did you meet any of the other writers before the party Friday night?”

  “No I never had the pleasure, they are all very pleasant though.”

  “How about Roberta or Bobby?”

  “I met them both at Roberta’s home, the day that they interviewed me for the show. That was the first and only time until the party Friday evening.”

  “Friday night did you see any bees flying around the tent?”

  “No, not at all. It was shocking actually first when Grace screamed and then when Niall collapsed. I heard from one of the other bakers that his epi pen didn’t work properly and that your cook saved his life. I also heard that she was a wonderful baker and cook and that is why she is a judge. If it weren’t for your president, I’d ask for an application to join your collective. But he doesn’t seem to like Canadians very much. Plus I wouldn’t want to tussle with those ICE agents.”

  “He is not my president, I have detested the man since his ghostwritten book came out in the nineteen eighties. He’s a no-talent, egomanic, who I wouldn’t allow to lead a flock of geese, let alone a nation. Sorry, just three and a half years left then he can go back to Florida and rot. In case you can’t tell, I don’t think much of the man.”

  “I get it, hey even Canadians don’t like the guy and we like everybody.”

  “What do you think of the challenges so far?”

  “To be honest, I thought they’d be harder. The Great Canadian Bake Off is much harder than this. I’m surprised that the Great British Bake Off would agree to such easy tasks. I mean the first round basically all I did was push a button. I think it’d be harder to be a judge than a baker. How can you tell one bread machine loaf from another? This round you wouldn’t need to know how to bake. They kept giving us the next part of the bake already pre-made. How is that different from supermarket dough?”

  He seems to think Roberta actually licensed this show from GBBO. If they actually saw this show, I’m sure that they would sue immediately, this show has the potential to ruin their brand worldwide.

  “Last question for now Danyl, and it’s an easy one. If you win, how do you plan to use your prize money?”

  “Honestly, if I could I’d start a writer’s collective. You seem to have it pretty sweet here. But I know that one hundred thousand wouldn’t be anywhere near enough. But it’s enough to take a few years off from work and just write and see if I can actually make a living at this, before AI gets even better and replaces us writers entirely.”

  “I’m sorry, I know I said that was the last question but I do want to just ask about LitRPG, if I wanted to give it a shot, what book would you recommend I start with.”

  “That’s easy, the first LitRPG I read and still my favorite is Survival Quest by Vasily Mahanenko, he’s a Russian writer. It’s the first book of a seven book series called The Way of the Shaman. You will like it the best if you ever played a Japanese RPG like Final Fantasy.”

  “Thanks, Danyl, I’m going to order the series tomorrow, actually I’ll have to see if they have it on Urge, I know that I don’t have it in the store.”

  ***

  I walked into the police department and asked to see my cousin August. The cop at the desk buzzed me through the security door. He knew that I knew the way. Prior to a few weeks ago it had been years since I had been in the department. Now it seemed like I was here every few days. When I got to August’s door I knocked.

  “Come.”

  Typical August, a shortcut for everything, really how hard is it to say ‘in’. I promised myself on my way over here I wasn’t going to see August as that annoying little kid. But for that to happen, it would take every scrap of my self control. I also decided that I would share with him, first them remind him of the mayor's directive only if I had to. He probably wasn’t too happy with the mayor ordering him around.

  I opened the door and stepped inside. I could see his jaw clench instantly. Yep, I really can make August annoyed just by stepping into the room. The past few weeks seemed like one clash after another.

  “I’ve been doing some poking around, after your techs left Friday night, I found two dead bees. One was a honey bee, I found close to where Niall was standing, the other bee was a bumble bee that I found on the dance floor, close to where Grace was stung. But the funny thing is the honey bee I found near where Niall was stung hadn’t stung him. The farmer I talked to said a honey bee will lose its stinger after it stings and I later confirmed that when I researched it later that night. The other bumble bee might have stung Grace, but the farmer said that it looked like the bees had been dead for some time, longer than twenty four hours. So I was thinking they may have been planted. I also thought that maybe someone had tampered with the epi pen, putting some kind of opioid in there. But I decided that was very unlikely. First they would have to know Niall well enough to know that he is allergic and they would have to be close enough to him to get the epi pen away from him to tamper with it. He himself claimed that he didn’t know anyone in the cast or crew. I think it was a crime of opportunity, once Grace was stung, maybe by a bee released inside the tent. The person who released the bee, injected Niall with a needle containing the opioid. Niall assumes it was a bee sting because Grace was just stung. Niall needn't have injected himself at all. What do you think?”

  “We tested the epi pen, and it was fine, there was no opioid in the pen. So I agree that the most likely way the fentanyl got into his system would have been a needle and having a bee flying around even if it hadn’t stung anyone, Malone would assume a needle jab was a sting. So why is someone trying to kill Malone and will they do it again?