Free The Baker's Wife by Erin Healy

database! Her own prints were visible to the naked eye on the edges where she’d so gingerly handled it. Even Diane knew what to do about that . Geoff hadn’t touched the thing, then made the mistake of trusting that she would turn it over to the detective on her own.
    When was the last time someone had trusted her?
    Audrey had seemed startled by the discovery of the phone, and Geoff seemed to be anticipating a disaster he could not prevent. Whatever catastrophe those two were headed toward, she couldn’t afford to become entangled.
    The detective’s failure to appear became a sign to her that she could choose her next steps of her own free will. She’d given him a fair amount of time to show up.
    At eight fifteen there were half a dozen customers in the store. When she believed she could leave unnoticed, Diane picked up the phone and used the cotton T-shirt under her sweater to wipe down the edges where she’d handled it. She put her uneaten baguette into her backpack. The tissue liner in her basket was a tiny bit greasy. She shook out the crumbs and wrapped the phone in it, then set the bundle in the pack next to the baguette.
    Without the clothes, her burden was light. She left the bakery quickly and slipped into the fog, which was less dense now. The moist air would do what it wished, and though science could explain some of it, no one could control it. She moved away from the scene of the accident. She had planned not even to look at it, but then she thought that ignoring it so totally might be more suspicious than a quick glance.
    She looked without seeing. Counted one, two, three , then returned to her straight-ahead march.
    Five doors down from the bakery storefront there was an alley access through a parking lot on the other side of the watch repair shop. At least it had been a watch repair shop when she and Donna last used the shortcut. Diane had no idea what it was now and didn’t care enough to look when she passed it. Her breathing and her pace were too fast. She needed to concentrate on measuring both, even if the fog did shield her somewhat from anyone who happened to be looking.
    It was longer for her to go this way, but safer, farther away from the accident that the baker’s wife had caused.
    Diane passed through the shadowy parking lot and made her way to the back of the buildings, where she emerged into the alley. In the center of the passage, halfway between where she was and the bakery, was a storm drain with a grate on it that had swallowed many of her precious quarters and Super Balls over the years. Once Donna had even crammed her sister’s ice-cream sandwich down the drain, petty revenge for Diane’s failure to return a favorite pair of jeans. A bully had ruined them when he ambushed her with a paint gun.
    The grate was plenty airy enough to accept a cell phone that was smaller than a deck of cards.
    The risen sun still hadn’t found its way over the tops of the buildings that shared the alley. But the light was gray enough and her memory vivid enough to allow her to proceed.
    Her foot left asphalt and landed on metal exactly where she expected. She knelt, lowered her pack, and unzipped it before she realized that the sieve-like grate had been replaced sometime in the past two and a half decades by a solid manhole cover.
    Diane swore.
    The cover would not come up. Of course it wouldn’t. Not without a hook or a magnet or whatever newfangled thing they used these days to pry metal disks out of the street.
    She swore again, and stood, then yelped when a soft weight pressed against her leg. A skinny old cat rubbed its body across her ankles and mewed. Diane shoved it away. “Shoo.”
    The tabby’s affection vanished and he marched off, his erect tail snooty.
    She had other options. There were plenty of Dumpsters bordering the alley, though some had locked covers or sat behind secure enclosures. But a Dumpster was not the brightest spot to leave