As a junior member of the Brown baking empire, Skip’s job was to hawk the family wares and, as in this case, make sure bread aficionados up and down Haymill and greater Brooklyn got their bread fix at their earliest possible convenience, preferably in the early morning.
Skip, a liberally pimpled young man, obviously didn’t follow the old marketing shtick that to sell a product, you have to be a product of your product: he looked more like a stick insect than the nicely globular shapes his father and uncles and all the other Browns aspired to. If the Browns were bowling balls, Skip was the only bowling pin, a fact which often irked him.
What also set him apart from the other Browns was the fact that he possessed no baking talent whatsoever, which was one of the reasons his family kept him as far away from the actual baking operation as possible. A non-baking Brown could only jinx things and screw it up for the rest of the dynasty.
And Skip was steering his trusty steel steed along the busy streets of Brooklyn, not far from where the Browns plied their trade, when he happened upon a disturbing scene.
He’d just delivered a small white to Beatrix Yeast, and was on his way to Safflower House to provide Cassandra Beadsmore with her usual order of a dozen assorted buns, muffins, cinnamon rolls and croissants, when he passed a dead-end alley, where some form of altercation was in progress.
Usually Skip liked to keep himself to himself, something he’d learned on these mean streets of Brooklyn. But ever since his good friends the Flummox triplets had started a neighborhood watch, he’d been itching to get in on the action and help make Haymill a safer, more pleasant environment. And part of that was not to pass by a confrontation in a creepy back alley between a black-clad stranger and a large man who was crying out for help.
Skip placed his bike against the graffitied wall and hurried over to lend aid and support.
If the fat man was being mugged by the black-clad figure, he was here to make sure justice was done and the miscreant faced the Brown wrath.
Just to make sure he was up to the task, he’d taken a firm grip on his bicycle pump in his left, and a baguette in his right hand. They were the only weapons at his immediate disposal, and he swung them both in a menacing fashion, calling out, “Hey! Leave that man alone!”
The black-clad figure slowly turned to face him. Well, perhaps not exactly face him, as the assailant’s visage was obscured by some form of black mask.
“What’s going on here?” Skip asked, his heart now beating a mile a minute.
He suddenly found himself wishing he’d taken that self-defense course at the community center his mom had told him about. He could have taken out this person with a leg sweep or a cool move and that would have been that.
Now, seeing that the stranger was holding a very large, very shiny, very scary-looking knife, he lost some of the exuberance that had led him into battle.
“Um, you better drop that thing, buddy,” he called out, starting to feel particularly ill-equipped to take on this hoodlum. Wasn’t there some sort of saying or folk wisdom about bringing a bicycle pump and a French baguette to a knife fight? The general consensus seemed to be that it was probably not a good idea. Unless you were Jackie Chan, of course.
“You better stay out of this, Skip Brown,” said the stranger in a strangely hissing voice. He almost sounded like a snake—if snakes could talk—which, apart from Disney and Harry Potter movies, they obviously couldn’t.
“Back off, buddy,” Skip said, swinging the pump and baguette combo like he meant it.
“You’re going to have to choose,” hissed the man, who was of slight build he now saw. “Do you want to be part of the problem or the solution? If the latter, you better skedaddle.”
“Well, I’m not skedaddling,” said Skip bravely. “You’re the one who should be skedaddling if you know what’s good for you—you-you hoodlum.”
He now glanced at the fat man, who was lying on his back on top of a pile of garbage, his breathing stertorous and obviously in a great deal of pain.
“Are you all right, sir?” he asked, and then proceeded to experience the shock of a lifetime. The fat man wasn’t just any fat man. It was his uncle Gus!
“Call the cops, Skip!” his uncle said in a wheezy and labored voice. “Make sure they catch this bastard!”
“Too late,” hissed the black-clad figure, and produced what could only be described as a sort of sinister chuckle. Then, as if the laws of the natural world didn’t apply to him, he moved away from Skip at breakneck speed, and was soon swallowed up by the darkness that covered the back part of the alley.
“Hey! Where did he go?” Skip asked.
His uncle looked up at him with a pleading expression in his eyes. “Skip, son, I’m not feeling too good. Better call an ambulance.”
Uncle Gus lifted his hand from his belly for a moment, and to his horror Skip saw there was a great deal of blood covering his uncle’s substantial gut.
“He cut me, Skip,” lamented his uncle. “The bastard just gutted me like a friggin pig.”
Skip quickly took out his phone and for the next few seconds busied himself apprising the nice lady from 911 of the facts pertaining to the case.
A hand stole out and his uncle grabbed him by the pant leg. “If I don’t make it—tell your aunt Adelaide I love her,” he said in a croaky voice.
“You can tell her yourself, Uncle Gus,” Skip said, kneeling down next to his relative. “You’re going to be just fine.”
But then his uncle’s round and ruddy face displayed a pained grimace, and he wheezed, “I’m not too sure about that, Skip. I don’t mind telling you I don’t feel fine. In fact I feel downright lousy.”
And then, before he could respond, the light went out in Uncle Gus’s eyes.
Chapter One
Samuel Barkley squeezed out of his Toyota Yaris with some effort and a lot of grumbling on his part. The car—the latest addition to the NYPD motor pool—was a bit on the small side to accommodate Sam’s sturdy frame. Pierre Farrier, his trusty partner and sidekick, had far less trouble emerging from the passenger side of the vehicle.
Then again, Pierre was built along the lines of a sickly grasshopper, while Sam looked like he’d just swallowed the reigning boxing heavyweight.
Sam, his brown hair neatly in place, his piercing blue eyes surveying the scene, and his anvil jaw working, shook his head. “Damn shame,” he said.
“You can say that again,” said Pierre, fingering first his pepper-and-salt mustache and then the small scar on his brow, just beneath his receding hairline. It was the last remnant of the incident that had put him in a coma not that long ago.
“Stop touching your scar,” said Sam, fighting the urge to slap his partner’s hand away.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” said Pierre. “In times of great stress it starts throbbing.”
“Throbbing?” he asked. “You mean you can still feel the scar?”
“Oh, yes,” said Pierre. “It sends me messages.”
Sam looked up at that. “Messages? What kind of messages?”
Pierre shrugged. “Well, the message that something is seriously wrong. Like now, with this poor schmuck being struck down in this nasty alley.”
“Oh, right,” said Sam. “For a moment there I thought you were going to say you received direct communications from Lord Voldemort or his faithful pet snake Nagini.”
Pierre directed his soulful eyes at him in an expression of hurt. “That’s not funny, Sam. The scar really hurts.”
Sam held up his hands in a gesture of apology. “I’m sorry, buddy. I believe you. And no one is happier than me that you came through this whole ordeal more or less unscathed.” He clapped the other man on the back. “Now why don’t we solve ourselves a murder, huh?”
“Yes, let’s,” Pierre said softly.
It was obvious he was taking this particular crime to heart. As an aficionado of bakery goods in general and Brown’s Bakery in particular, the murder of Gus Brown had hit Pierre very hard. Apparently the man had been something of a latter-day genius with the rolling pin, spatula and piping bag.