Free The Cakes of Wrath by Jacklyn Brady Page B

do it alone? You must be joking.” I opened the bottle of ibuprofen. Swallowed two. Okay, three. And hoped they’d do the trick.
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    For the next hour, Edie directed traffic from a lawn chair on the loading dock and I stood by and gave her moral support. Aquanettia had taken one look at me and ordered her son Isaiah to stay and do the heavy lifting. I was grateful for the help, but felt a little guilty at the same time. None of the work would have been challenging under normal circumstances. I should have been able to stack a few cases of water. But Isaiah seemed to be in front of me every time I tried to help.
    He was a good-looking young man, tall, with dark mocha-colored skin and a broad, friendly smile. “Let me, Miss Rita,” he said for the hundredth time. “You shouldn’t be doing that heavy work, especially after what happened last night.”
    I laughed and stepped away from the pallet. “I feel useless just standing here. The water’s not that heavy, and there’s not that much else to do.”
    After spending the past half hour with Isaiah, I couldn’t seriously consider him a suspect in the almost-hit-and-run. His brother Keon, now, was a different story. He’d come with Aquanettia and Isaiah to deliver several cases of water, a bag filled with boxed pastries from the dollar store, and some rusty garden tools. While Isaiah had gone to work with high spirits, his younger brother had grumbled louder with every step. I wasn’t sorry when Keon disappeared with his mother. I just hoped Isaiah could tell me if I had anything to worry about where his brother was concerned.
    Isaiah moved past me with a grin. “You aren’t useless, Miss Rita, but I do think you’re trying to get my ass whupped. That’s what Mama’ll do to me if you don’t sit down and let me move all this stuff where it goes.”
    I laughed softly. “Far be it from me to get you in trouble with your mother. But are you sure you shouldn’t be at work? I hate to take you away from the store if your mom needs you.”
    He shrugged and picked up two cases of water at the same time. “It’s not that busy today. I was supposed to pick up a load of stuff from an estate sale, but I won’t be able to get over there until we get the van back anyway. Might as well do something productive, right? You just sit down and rest. I got this.”
    He disappeared into the storeroom, no doubt thinking the conversation was over, but he couldn’t say something like that about the van and expect me to just sit there. I trailed after him and stood in the doorway while he stacked the water. “Something happened to your van?”
    He stacked the water and turned back toward me with a slight frown. “Nobody told you?”
    It felt like we were playing a game of twenty questions. I could have straight up asked him whether his van had been the one that almost hit me, but I really wanted to hear what he had to say on his own. So I took my turn at the game. “Told me what?”
    Isaiah rubbed his face with one hand and his shoulders sagged. “Somebody stole the company van last night—right out of the parking lot.”
    Which meant that Edgar was right about what he saw. “Is it a plain white van?”
    â€œYeah. Just like the one that tried to hit you.”
    Had it really been stolen? Or was Isaiah trying to cover for someone else, like his brother? I tried to recall if Keon had been there at the time of the accident, but I couldn’t remember seeing either of the brothers.
    Isaiah didn’t look like a crazed killer who’d offered to stack water so he could kill me on the loading dock, but crazy isn’t as easy to spot as some people would like to believe.
    â€œDid you report the van stolen?”
    â€œYes ma’am. Mama did that this morning, just as soon as we realized it was gone.”
    â€œYou didn’t