Free 1 Nothing Bundt Murder by Leigh Selfman Page A

eyes, but instead I forced myself up.
    “Well, I guess we need to check that flash drive,” I said . “I just hope I got the right files.”
    I grabbed my laptop out of the bedroom and came back, taking a seat next to him on the couch. Then I took the flash drive out of my pocket—the one I’d put Doug’s files on—and put into the USB port.
    I had to admit, Casey’s proximity to me, the smell of his expensive musky cologne made it a little hard to concentrate. But I forced myself. This was life and death.
    Saved by the murder investigation.
    Luckily the files on the flash drive were dated and I had no trouble finding the ones from the night before the murder.
    I clicked on one from that date and pressed ‘play’ and there it was: footage of Babette and me in the kitchen of the store, earlier that same evening. I was just about to leave for the day and we were chatting about, of all things, Casey himself!
    Babette was telling me what a snake he was and that I should beware of him and I was agreeing wholeheartedly. Then the conversation moved on to Kevin, my boyfriend who cheated on me and how I was sometimes tempted to go back to him.
    As soon as I realized what the footage was, I tried to fast forward through it, but I wasn’t quick enough. Casey heard it all. I could feel his eyes on me. Burning through me. But I didn’t acknowledge him.
    “We have to focus on the murder investigation,” I said with as much dignity as I could while I kept my eyes focused on the screen. I fast forwarded to footage of Babette baking the gluten-free Bundt later that same evening.
    For a long while, Babette was in the kitchen alone, working on different versions of the Bundt cake she was baking for Dahlia. I knew that could go on for hours so I scanned through that footage at quadruple speed, looking for the part where she opened the back door and walked out of the store.
    “That’s it,” Casey said. “Back up.”
    I rewound the footage and hit the play arrow. We were now watching just what Babette had described to me: It was three in the morning and she was standing at the counter, pouring the batter for the purple cake into the Bundt mold. “Finally,” she said to herself with a satisfied smile as she looked at the consistency of the batter she was making. 
    But just as she was about to open the oven door to put it in, she looked up startled. She frowned as if listening, then she put the Bundt cake mold back down on the counter and headed out the back door of the store.
    “Look!” I said to Casey. “That must be when she heard the cat howl and went outside. Just like she said.”
    He nodded. “It does look like it.”
    We watched closely as the kitchen remained empty for several minutes. Then, as if it were a fictional suspense thriller rather than a real life crime, the back door of the kitchen began to slowly open.
    I gasped.
    A figure, dressed all in black, headed into the kitchen. His (or her) face wasn’t visible beneath the hoodie that was pulled down low over it. The person in black looked around, in a jumpy, nervous fashion, then pulled something…it looked like a vial…out of his hoodie pocket.
    He poured the liquid from the vial into the frosting bowl and mixed it with the spatula. Then put the bottle itself into a cupboard and walked to the back door.
    Casey and I looked at one another, stunned. We’d just seen the poisoning actually happen.
    “We have to get this to the police,” I said but then my attention was drawn back to the footage on the screen which kept playing.
    The figure in the hoodie was about to open the back door of the bakery and leave, when he froze suddenly. It was as if he heard someone or something outside. He flattened himself against the wall and waited there hiding, scratching his wrist, nervously. When no one came in after a few moments, he pulled his hoodie down low and hurried out.
    The kitchen remained empty for another minute or two until Babette came back inside. She was