Conversation Starter

“Conversation Starter”

Maybe it was from watching too many episodes of CSI on television or all of the crime and detective movies he’d seen, but the crime scene that Aaron had walked through that Monday morning was disappointing. There was no dead body, no signs of a struggle and no missing cash. The only indications that a crime had been committed at all was the rear door that had been pried open and kicked in and a safe in the office, its door also pried open. It had only been two months since he’d passed his detective exam. It was the reason he’d joined the police force and he was eager to dig into a big, juicy mystery of some kind. This wasn’t it. When the phone call had come in from the bakery owner the shift lieutenant forwarded it to Aaron with the comment, “Sorry, man, it doesn’t look like what you were hoping for.”

The owner of the bakery, Warren Franks, had called to say there’d been a break-in and he thought something was missing. He didn’t say what it was. When Aaron stood in the tiny office in the rear corner of the kitchen, looking around to assess the situation, he couldn’t decide if a crime had really been committed. The safe was an inexpensive, office supply store grade built into the wall, its door still hanging open and exposing the interior. Aaron put on latex gloves and carefully looked over the contents. Neatly arranged on the left side was some miscellaneous paperwork held together with a binder clip, a strand of art glass beads in a wooden box and a small stack of bills, mostly fifties and hundreds with a thick rubber band around them. To the right of the items was a large empty space.

He stepped back out into the warmth of the kitchen. Franks stood near a large oven. Two women clad in white stood quietly on the opposite side of the room. Aaron wasn’t sure how to start the conversation except to state the obvious. He looked at the man and asked, “Mr. Franks, was that stack of currency in the safe before the robbery or did you put in there afterward?”

Before answering Franks looked at the women and said, “Okay, let’s get these ovens filled up, we open in two hours.” While they began pulling trays from the cooler Franks turned his attention back to Aaron. “First of all that’s not our safe, I mean it’s not the bakery’s safe. It belongs to my Aunt Sadie, Sadie Hart. She started the bakery back in the eighties and she’s pretty much retired now. I run the place. That office is sort of her private space. Nobody goes in there but her.”

”So you don’t know what she kept in the safe?”

“No, not really, it’s all her stuff. When I got here at six o’clock I saw the door had been broken in. Her office door was open which was strange because usually she only comes in at night after we’re closed. I walked in and saw the safe hanging open. When I saw the empty space in it I figured whatever had been there was what the thief was after.”

Franks’ response did nothing to answer the big question. Aaron paused to choose his words carefully. “So… whatever it was, it was…somehow more important than a pile of cash. A pile of cash sitting no more than six inches away from it.”

Franks seemed to be as confused as Aaron was. “Yeah, I guess. It seems strange to me too but that’s Sadie’s little world in there and I don’t know much about what goes on in it. I’m not sure what else to say.”

Aaron’s first case wasn’t proceeding the way he’d hoped it would and it didn’t seem that Warren Franks would be of much help in solving it. The logical place to turn next was a conversation with Sadie Hart. Franks wrote down her phone number and address and after Aaron had taken a series of photographs of the back door, office and safe he got into his car and headed for her house. He knew he had to check in with his lieutenant to give him a progress report but it would be a report with a big hole in the middle of it so he decided to wait until after he’d spoken with Sadie. It took him awhile to find her house. It was a small bungalow-style cottage set back in a dense grove of trees that made it hard to see from the road. He stood by his car and looked around for a moment before he walked up the sidewalk and rang the doorbell.

A few moments later a slender, barefoot woman with long gray hair, wearing blue jeans and a flowered blouse slowly opened the door, but only wide enough to see him. “Can I help you?” she asked warily.

“Uh, yes, ma’am, I’m Corporal Hastings from the Santa Clara police department. I’m investigating a break-in at your bakery.” He handed her his business card, looking for her reaction.

She hesitated before opening the door wider. She was clearly shocked. “When? What happened?”

“Well, Miss, or is it Mrs. Hart?”

“It’s Ms. Hart, I’m divorced.”

“Okay, Ms. Hart, sometime last night someone pried open the backdoor and entered the kitchen. They also went into your office and pried open the safe. I spoke with your nephew, Warren, and he told me that you were the only one who ever used the office. I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”

Her shocked look remained and she seemed unsteady on her feet. “Yes, please come in.” She led him into the living room and said, “Please sit down right there.” She motioned toward an ornate armchair upholstered in bright, geometric fabric and then sat down cross legged on a wicker peacock chair. Aaron looked around the room. The scene was like something right out of a 1970s movie.

Aaron waited to see if she wanted to speak first but when she just sat there staring at him he decided to start. “Ms. Hart, when I spoke to your nephew he told me that the office is yours and yours only. He said he never goes into it so he had no idea what the thief might have been after. The cash in the safe was never touched and neither was the necklace. But whatever was on the other side of the safe is gone.”

Sadie looked at him. She asked, almost as if she was pleading, “Can you find who did it? Can you get my…my stuff back?”

“Well of course we’ll do whatever we can but right now the problem is we don’t know what we’re looking for. That’s why I came to see you. Can you fill in the blanks for me?”

She looked visibly uncomfortable and didn’t say anything right away. Finally, she asked, “Do you like sourdough bread?”

Any thought that he was getting closer to an answer evaporated with her question. “Well, sure I do. Who doesn’t?”

“We make all kinds of baked goods but sourdough is the signature product. It was all I sold when I first opened.”

Aaron still had no idea where she was going with her story. “Okay, so you make sourdough. What’s that got to do with the break-in and the safe?”

Their conversation seemed to be making her increasingly uncomfortable. “Look, Corporal, this robbery has me kind of rattled. Can we talk later, maybe tomorrow?”

Aaron tried to be polite and hide his frustration. He couldn’t tell if she was truly upset or just trying to hide something. “I know this is a shock for you and I understand, but I seem to be investigating a theft that right now just looks like a second rate breaking and entering.”

She stood up, a signal that she didn’t want to talk anymore. He let out a long sigh, stood up and said, “Ms. Hart, we really want to help you and your nephew with this case and it’s going to mean that we meet again to talk about it. I need to know more.”

She looked down at the floor. “I’m really sorry, Corporal, I really am. Just give me until tomorrow, okay?”

Aaron realized there was nothing else he could do so he replied, “Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow. You have my card if you’d like to talk sooner.” She was still standing in the doorway as he backed out and drove away.

He called his lieutenant on the way back to the station. It wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. He’d spent a good part of the morning investigating something he couldn’t understand and trying to explain it made the whole thing sound even stranger. Since there was no clear definition of what had been stolen and no one had been hurt the lieutenant told Aaron to write it up as an in-process investigation and move on to another case that had just been called in. All Aaron could do was follow orders but he couldn’t stop thinking about the bakery. He decided he’d work on both cases at the same time.

He sat at his desk the following morning thinking about the many things he’d learned in his detective schooling and from conversations with veteran cops. The one overriding piece of his training that stuck with him was that you couldn’t understand the crime unless you understood the people involved in it. He’d been unable to shake the feeling that Sadie Hart was holding back something she didn’t want to talk about. It was time to learn more about her.

He started with her birth records at the courthouse. Having her complete name and birth date gave him a start for a Google search that told him she had graduated from the University of California at Berkley with a degree in Analytical Chemistry. It was an odd background for someone in the bakery business. That was where his search had gone cold. He knew if he was going to find out the whole story he’d have to talk to people who knew Sadie personally. After a side trip to investigate a burglary downtown he drove to the bakery to talk with Warren Franks. He waited for a few minutes while Franks finished up with a customer then followed him back into the kitchen. Twenty minutes of conversation gave him some interesting information about Sadie and the history of sourdough bread all the way back to the California gold rush. When Sadie had first opened the bakery she’d built a large following of customers looking for the classic sourdough flavor. Franks had walked Aaron through the baking process with an emphasis on the starter dough. He told Aaron about how the original fermented dough was created by Sadie back in 1996 and refreshed with additional water and different types of flour periodically ever since. She had been keeping a record of it in a small, spiral notebook and had shared parts of it with him. When Aaron asked him what was the secret of her recipe he replied that sourdough bakers are competitive and never reveal their secrets.

The last few minutes of their discussion focused on Sadie herself. After college she worked for a small chemical lab in San Francisco and got married. Her husband had urged her to stay at home and have children but Sadie was a free spirit and the marriage hadn’t lasted long. She lived alone and ran the bakery until she’d sold it to Franks in 2014. Since then she’d stayed out of the day to day operations but sometimes came in after the bakery closed to work on baking her own special breads.

After their meeting Aaron stood outside on the sidewalk looking over his notes. It didn’t seem as though he’d made much progress. He’d learned more about making sourdough than he had about Sadie. He’d just turned to walk to his car when a voice behind him called, “Excuse me, can I talk to you?” A well dressed man approached him and asked, “Are you the police detective that’s been helping Warren with his break-in?

“Yes I am. I’m Corporal Hastings.”

“I’m Bob Montini. I own the jewelry store across the street there and I live in the apartment above it. I was wondering if Warren told you about the after hours stuff.”

“No, what do you mean after hours?”

“I mean when Sadie goes in at night alone.”

“Yeah, Warren told me she likes to go in to keep her hand in the dough business so to speak.”

“Yes, that might be the case but whenever she’s in there working, a car, actually a lot of different cars pull up out front and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For Sadie. They wait awhile then she comes to the door. The driver gets out and they talk, then he hands her something and she hands him a white box, a bakery box. Then she goes back in and the guy drives away.”

Aaron thought for a moment then asked, “How often does that happen?”

“Oh, about twice a week. When Warren told me about the break-in I immediately wondered if it was one of those people in the cars.”

The man’s story posed more questions than answers. Aaron thanked him for the information and walked to his car. It seemed like the time was right for another conversation with Sadie Hart, mystery baker. He’d thought about calling her on the way to her house but the idea of a surprise visit appealed to him. He was thinking like a detective.

He’d rung her doorbell twice and just when he’d figured she wasn’t home he heard the latch and saw the doorknob turning. Like his first visit Sadie only opened the door slightly. When she saw it was him she opened it the rest of the way. He noticed the same uneasy expression on her face. “Good morning, Corporal,” she said softly.

“Good morning, Ms. Hart, do you have a few minutes to talk?”

She sighed and nodded. “Come on in, and I think it’s okay for you to call me Sadie.”

They went in and sat in the same chairs in the same 1970s surroundings as they had the day before. She sat nervously while Aaron took out a small notepad. He hesitated then reached into his sport coat pocket and took out a small black device. “Sadie, would you mind if I recorded our conversation?”

She was silent for a moment then replied, “I’d prefer that you didn’t. Let’s just talk.”

Recording a victim interview was standard procedure but he backed off. “Okay, let’s talk. How about telling me about what goes on when you work in the bakery alone at night.”

The color drained from Sadie’s face and from her expression it was clear that she wasn’t expecting that question. “What did Warren tell you?”

“He just said you liked to go in at night once in a while and bake your own breads which I can understand. And he told me about the history of sourdough. It’s what your neighbor across from the bakery, Mr. Montini, told me that has me puzzled. What about all of the cars that pull up out front and the people you meet at the door with a white bakery box.” He stopped. It was Sadie’s turn to talk.

She still looked nervous but she took a deep breath and began her reply. “Okay, yesterday you asked what was taken from my safe. It was a starter, a sourdough starter to make a few loaves.” She looked at Aaron and saw the curious expression on his face. “Wait, I have an idea for how I can explain this. I’ll be right back.” She got up and walked into the kitchen. A few minutes later she returned and handed him a small, warm loaf of sourdough. “Here taste this while I explain things.”

Aaron broke off a bite sized piece and ate it while Sadie continued her explanation. “As Warren probably told you the sourdough business is very competitive. Every baker tries to come up with the perfect recipe and the perfect flavor. Each starter recipe has its own chemistry. I keep mine in here.”

She handed him a worn spiral notebook and waited while he broke off another piece of bread and then started to read. After he’d looked at a few pages he said, “Holy cow, this is like a foreign language. It looks pretty technical for a recipe.”

She smiled. “Like I said, it’s chemistry. My background is in chemistry and over the years I found ways to, well, let’s just say enhance the flavor. The starter that was in the safe was my newest recipe.”

Aaron was feeling mellow and relaxed as they talked. He’d already eaten half the loaf and broke off another piece before he asked, “So do you think whoever stole the starter could get the recipe from it?”

“No, all they might get is what I did in the basic leavening process but I hadn’t finished the final refreshments yet, my enhancements. So the fermenting still had a ways to go.”

“So it looks like that was what somebody wanted bad enough to break in and steal.” He leaned back in his chair, relaxed and smiling. “Sadie, what do you call this bread I’m eating? Is it just regular sourdough? It’s so good I don’t want to stop.”

Sadie had a smirk on her face. “That’s one of my customers’ favorites. I call it Miner’s Delight.”

“Well it sure has me feeling delighted. Can I buy a loaf?”

Her smirk turned into a smile. “Sure, stop by the bakery tonight around eleven. I’ll meet you at the front door. This one will be free, after that please pay in cash.