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Sasha wrinkled her delicate nose. “Oh, no thanks. I can’t. Not after…you know.”
Rebel frowned. “Not after I made them so painstakingly from scratch with my own bare hands?” She glanced at me. “Well, Kara did, but I watched.”
Sasha glanced at me. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. I’m sure they’re delicious. I’m just kind of weird about cupcakes after what happened to Bart and Miranda.”
I glanced at my sister and then back at Sasha. “I’m not following.”
“Neither am I.” Rebel put the tray of cakes down on the table again. “What are you talking about?”
Sasha grabbed a bottle of gin and poured a healthy dose into the bottom of a red Solo cup. “I thought I told you? Some of my crime investigation group got it in their heads that it was cake that poisoned your mom and Bart. Specifically, cupcakes.”
Rebel screwed up her face. “What made them think that? There was nothing in the autopsy report that said that, was there?”
Sasha took out her phone from the purse slung over her shoulder. “Well, no, but see here.” She pulled up a photo on her screen while Rebel and I peered over her shoulders.
I squinted at the grainy photo. “What is that? A hotel room?”
“Yep,” Sasha confirmed. “Specifically, the honeymoon suite at the hotel Bart and Miranda stayed in the night before the wedding.”
“They didn’t sleep apart the night before?”
Sasha shook her head. “Probably should have, because it really did turn out to be bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony, huh?”
I elbowed her subtly, and she bit her lip.
“Sorry, Rebel. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
Rebel waved off the comment. “Just tell me about the cupcakes.”
“It’s just a theory, but you see here?” She zoomed in on the photo. “This photo came from the police database, as far as I can tell. At least that’s what the metadata marked it as, though that can be altered. But assuming it hasn’t, some of the people in my group think these…” She pointed to something blue on the screen. “…are cupcake wrappers. We know Bart and Miranda were poisoned. We’re working on the assumption they weren’t injected with it, since an injection would be fast-acting. I believe they ate something that was laced with a concentrate.”
“Wouldn’t they have been able to taste that?” I asked.
Sasha pointed at the cupcakes on the table. “What better way to hide a poison than beneath a ton of sugar and butter?”
She had a point. The cupcakes I’d made were so sweet it would have been hard to taste much else. Plus, I’d just eaten an entire cupcake in three bites. It had taken less than thirty seconds. If there’d been poison in that thing, I probably would have swallowed it before I even noticed anything was amiss.
Rebel stared at the cakes I’d made and then at Sasha’s photo. “Did the cops investigate this theory?”
Sasha shook her head slowly. “I honestly don’t know. It was one of my group who came up with it as far as we know. I didn’t see it reported on any of the official channels. The police don’t ever listen to any of our suggestions.”
Rebel nodded. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll check with the cops and see what they say. They’ve been awfully quiet on the subject lately, unless they’re threatening me with false accusations, which also hasn’t gotten them anywhere.”
Sasha gave her a tight smile. “I’m sorry they’ve been so useless. They always are.”
“I know.”
Sasha walked away, and I put an arm around my sister’s shoulders.
“Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “No, not really.”
“Do you think she could be right?”
Rebel shrugged. “It’s not even that. It’s just that she reminded me I’ve been so caught up in everything else, I haven’t even been searching for my mom’s killer.”
I was part of the ‘everything else.’ “I’m really sorry.”
