Free Trick or Treat by Kerry Greenwood

Nice, normal. Humdrum. Humdrum is soothing. The bread cooked, smelling superb. There was a sharp scent of fruit as Jason compounded his raspberry icing.
    Ordinary. I like ordinary.

C HA PTER FIV E
    Too good to last. The baking proceeded with efficiency and dispatch, the loaves went into the oven flabby and came out shiny, the muffins smelt heavenly. The little cakes rose evenly and when Jason went out for breakfast I ate one with my next cup of coffee. The compounded fruit icing was sharp and almost sour, setting off the sweetness of the cake beautifully. The icing doesn’t last well, but then it usually doesn’t hang around for too long.
    Time to open the shop. I had my hand on the shutters when someone spoke, far too close and directly behind me, and I jumped a mile. If I had been Horatio I would have sprung up into the curtains.
    ‘Miss Chapman? Are you Corinna Chapman?’
    ‘Part of her,’ I said, putting a hand to my breast to check that my heart was still inside. It was. I could tell from the way it was thumping. Two blue-clad ladies looked at me evenly.
    ‘Senior Constable Bray, Constable Vickery. Can we come in?’
    ‘Surely,’ I said, unlocking the shutters and letting them
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    slide up with a click. I unlocked the bakery door and allowed the officers to enter.
    The speaker, SC Sharon Bray according to her nametag, was a small, stocky woman who looked as though she had survived an eventful childhood with three older brothers and was consequently not going to be frightened of anything, ever again. She was good-looking, with humorous brown eyes and cropped, curly brown hair. Constable Helen Vickery was thinner, paler and solemn. They both sniffed appreciatively as they became aware of the divine scent. Jason peeked out of the bakery and slid back into it like an eel into mud. Despite his present state of virtue, Jason did not like cops.
    ‘Well, what can I do for you on this cold morning?’ I asked. ‘Cup of coffee and a muffin?’
    ‘We’re asking about the girl in the alley,’ said Sharon Bray. ‘And coffee and a muffin would be very nice. It’s been quite a night. And it’s still not over.’
    Kylie came in, dressed in a long strange garment appar ently made of purple fishing net with feathers knitted into it. She widened her eyes at the sight of blue uniforms in the shop and hastened to supply coffee and two of the new jam-filled muffins. There was a pause as proper reverence was given to the pâtissière’s art, then the senior constable put down her cup and produced her notebook.
    ‘Tell me about it,’ she said, and I told her everything I had observed, including the odd scent of the girl’s skin. Sharon Bray made notes. Constable Vickery poked around the shop, picking things up and putting them down again in a manner calculated to drive the guilty into confession. And the innocently nervous into conniptions.
    ‘The ambos said this was the eleventh,’ I told my interrogator. ‘Is there something new on the street?’
    ‘Yep,’ she replied soberly. ‘Something very nasty. Trouble is, none of them have been able to tell us what they took. I’ve seen stuff that sends them mad, but with this stuff they stay mad. Tox screens are coming back with “unknown compound” in them.’
    ‘That’s bad,’ I said inadequately.
    ‘Have you seen anyone hanging around, perhaps dealing?’ she asked. ‘You’re here very early, aren’t you? Patrol says you start at four.’
    ‘So I do,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t seen anyone in the alley except the people who are usually in the alley—you know, the night people, security guards, cops, the paper boy, no strangers but the ones who collapse on my doorstep. I wonder...’
    ‘You wonder?’ she asked sharply.
    ‘I wonder why here?’ I reasoned it out. ‘I mean, this alley only leads into the arcade and the arcade is closed from about eleven until eight am. But there is a little linking back alley where the rubbish men come to collect. That