Since I hadn’t had time to paint over the message on my bedroom wall, I made a detour to Henry’s house. I wasn’t up to pretending like I wasn’t frazzled by the threat and Henry’s big modern bachelor pad was empty and safe. I’d borrowed the spare key he kept hidden in the rock garden and let myself in, going straight for the guest bedroom.

                Too tired to worry about disrobing, I kicked off my shoes and crawled under the massive covers of the king size bed. But sleep was hardly in the cards for me tonight as all I could think about was Jackson, the case, and how much Detective Juarez pissed me off.

                In fact I tossed and turned for about an hour and a half before I sat up and decided to give up the charade of getting anything even resembling a good night’s sleep. I climbed out and paced the room, something was bothering me but I couldn’t figure out what.

                All my thoughts from the week were a disorganized jumbled mess in my brain. Add on to that, that I was so exhausted and preoccupied and it’s no wonder I was having trouble keeping everything straight. So I decided to sit down and get my rampant thoughts out on paper.

                I wasn’t sure what I’d find or why I wanted to do so in the first place since I knew that Karalyn was obviously the only one who could be the murderer, but something wasn’t adding up. So I started rifling through the night stand.

                There was the usual shit in there, Kleenex, lotion, a flashlight, and a spare pair of glasses. Upon inspection I realized the glasses belonged to Harley, Henry’s other brother who when in town would occasionally sleep over. Looking back at the bed that Harley must have slept in made me feel all warm and fuzzy, but now wasn’t the time to think about my deep childhood infatuation for my best friend’s brother.

                After another second I finally found the spiral notebook and pen I was looking for. Being the writer, Henry has this fascinating and peculiar habit of leaving pencil and paper in the most interesting places. He says it’s so he can write down an idea if he has one. Naturally this means there is a pad and pen in every drawer in his house. And in other stranger places such as above the visor on the driver’s side of his car or even odder in a large flower pot he keeps on the deck outside.

                I sat down at the metal desk that was against the wall, clicked on the small lamp, and began writing. This was how the cops did it, right:

                              Evelyn Harper’s Super Special Awesome List of Murder Suspects:

1)      Karalyn Conway: A rather large upper class housewife who was probably very unsatisfied in her marriage to Bo. Moved large sum of his money to overseas account then perhaps killed him as revenge. Had access to poison and kitchen where Bo’s cake slice was. Makes the most sense as she had most to gain. However, it most certainly could not have been her leaving ominous notes as suspicious masked person was noticeably skinny. Could she have hired someone?

2)      Allison Fleming: Overworked femme fatal with a massive grudge against Bo for reneging on promise to promote her after having relations with a man old enough to be her father. Perhaps even grandfather.  Crime of revenge? Had ample time to sneak into kitchen and poison cake when it was assumed she had left. Bo threatened to make sure she never got work. Did she kill him to ensure job security? That’s not an unheard of stretch in this kind of economy.

3)      Earl Owens: Bo’s underappreciated and big headed publicist. Originally thought to have no motive, but recently learned he was having affair with Bo’s wife. Perhaps killed in a crime of passion? But poison usage is usually less spontaneous and more calculated. Plus he’d already gotten paid so why bother with killing him at all? Why didn’t Karalyn just leave Bo for Earl?

4)      Brock Conway: Bo’s baby brother and potential partner in hit and run case twenty years ago. Gambling problem could be a reason to kill if it was for money. Also Bo threatened to reveal biggest secret to the love of his life Helen. If secret revealed already shaky marriage may have fallen apart. Could Brock have killed Bo in an attempt to keep the woman he loves? It seemed like he really loved his brother.

5)      Helen Conway: Bo apparently left majority of money to her. Could she have known in advance? Even if she did, would she have killed for it? Husband does have a notable gambling problem and blew last of life savings on addiction. Perhaps killed Bo for money but she wasn’t there that day. It’s also notable that she still had feelings for Bo.

                I looked over my sweet suspects list proud of how far I’d gotten but still confused on all the information. Even with it sitting in front of my face, there was a lot to process. And something was still wrong here. My brain was telling me that Karalyn had to be the logical murderer since she had the strongest motive and access to Bo. Unfortunately my gut and my brain weren’t on the same page and every time I tried to image Karalyn as the killer my instincts raged against it.

                I was missing something. Something important. Something somebody did or said that pulled everything into place. But I didn’t have time to retrace and question them anymore; Jackson needed me to solve this now. Who was I kidding? As usual I had no clue what I was doing. Even with all the information I was at a loss for what to do with it. Now all I could do was sit and wait for the sun to come up, hire a lawyer for Jackson, and wonder what kind of psycho would be crazy enough to poison an entire cake…

                Suddenly the image in my head of the murderer committing the crime changed drastically. This whole time I had been working on the assumption that it was the slice that had been poisoned, but a couple hours ago Manny had let slip that it was the entire cake. But why was that minor detail important? Cake or slice Bo’s still dead.

                And what kind of crazy person would poison an entire cake in a bakery knowing full well anyone could have eaten it? Well, not anyone. After all it was common knowledge of both my staff and Bo’s party prior to the event that Jackson was baking the cake specifically for the Conway’s to take home for later.

                And that’s when everything clicked. It’s like my brain suddenly went into overdrive and slid the last pieces of the puzzle into place.

                Karalyn. I thought of that sad woman and her inclination for eating when depressed. I thought of her douche bag of a husband, inevitably making her feel like shit one night and her walking downstairs to find some comfort in the form of a tasty sweet and coming across the cake. Hadn’t Karalyn said she’s been known to eat whole cakes by herself when depressed? And any woman married to Bo was bound to feel down with the way he used to talk to her. And she did say blueberry was her favorite.

                Once she was dead the cops would only naturally assume Bo killed her, since she died by poison one night alone in their gigantic kitchen. It would be so easy to do. Just bring some arsenic to Taste Teas and slip a dose on the whole cake for good measure while no one’s looking. The game only changed because the murderer hadn’t anticipated that Jackson and Bo would come to blows that day. And that Bo being the little shit he was would insist on a slice of cake right there.

                The notion that someone wanted to kill Karalyn enough to poison a cake in a bakery was sickening. So many much worse things could have happened. What if Jackson had refused to give Bo the cake out of spite? It would have probably been sliced and sold the next day. What if Lana, my teenaged waitress, had gone in the fridge and merely run a finger over the creamy whipped topping to taste it? I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t fathom that someone could risk so many lives to kill one woman.

                And why kill her at all? Unlike a certain dead anchor man she wasn’t such a terrible person that I could imagine anyone taking joy out of killing her. But then the answer was as simple as why I thought Karalyn wanted to kill Bo. The money of course. Karalyn had just finished moving all that money into another account. Almost a quarter of a million dollars in the hands of a desperate, lonely, mistreated housewife.

                I know who the killer is.

                Not wasting time I pulled on my shoes and grabbed my keys. If I was right, and I had the sneaking suspicion I was, then Karalyn was in serious danger.

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A/N: Since that month long struggle with writer's block, I have actually finished the story. I'm editing now and am putting a chapter up each day. As of 1/9/2012, the final chapter will be up this coming Friday.