Murder By A Cupcake
Trigger Warning: Physical & Emotional Abuse, Sexual Assault.
Read: Part One of Murder by a Cupcake in The Scribe‘s March Newsletter
“Why is this happening to me?”
I’m a young woman trying to escape my past and turn my love for baking into a career. My eyes felt heavy, so, I place my head down on the table and close my eyes for a while.
Two hours later. I’m emotional because I had a dream about my ex-boyfriend putting his hands around my throat and how I begged him to let go of me. Thinking about it now, I thought he would kill me that night. Deciding to leave him and run away from Chicago is the best decision I made for myself, but I miss my home and my parents. Hopefully, my parents will understand when I have the courage to tell them, only my sister knows the whole story.
A police officer runs into the room. “Miss., are you all right?”
“Yes, Sir! I’m fine. I fell asleep and had a bad dream.”
“Okay!”
“Wait! Sir, can I use the bathroom?”
“Sure, let me get the key for your handcuffs. Be right back!”
It only took him less than three minutes to come back, but it seems like hours. I wish I could run to the bathroom because I haven’t gone in hours, but I have to wait for an escort. The woman police officer who brought me water and a granola bar earlier escort me to the bathroom, and back to the room, I have been sitting in all day.
“Do you know what time it’s?”
The woman police officer says nothing to me again. “What’s her problem?” I mumble under my breath.
Tears pour down my face, and I don’t know why — my chest aches from so much anxiety. The nerves inside my body are burning up. I think about one of those cartoon characters who face gets all red, and smoke comes exploding out of their ears.
Sitting in this investigation room makes me angry like one of those cartoon characters. I wipe the tears from my face with the sleeve of my shirt. Detective Blackwood walks into the room expressionless. Detective Blackwood has me puzzled. Does he believe my story or not?
“My team and I have surveillance video from the Farmer’s Market on Broadway. We attempted to zoom in on the gentleman you described earlier.”
Detective Blackwood turns his tablet around and plays the video. I look at myself in the dairy section, and I watch the person follow me, and something about him seems familiar.
“Detective, did you notice the writing on the hoodie? The writing is by the right shoulder.”
“It looks like something is there. Let me see if our analyst can remove the blur so, we can make the writing transparent.”
Looking at the video made me think of Dylan. My sister introduced us, and he’s the brother of my sister’s best friend, Abby. Every time we went out on a date, he would wear this black hoodie, and it said, “Life or Death, Brothers Forever.” I began to have an upset stomach, what if he found me?
“Okay, I’m back. Our analyst used software to make the video clearer.” He played the video again, and I screamed bloody murder when I those words show up on the black hoodie.
“Laura, what’s wrong?”
“It’s him; he found me.” My body is shaking from head to toe. My throat is closing, and I can’t breathe. I open my eyes and see a woman with red hair in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck.
“Laura, Laura, can you hear me? You’re at New York Presbyterian Hospital.”
I blink my eyes twice. “What happened?”
“Detective Blackwood brought you in after you collapsed. I’m Doctor Johnson.”
“How is she, Doctor Johnson?”
“It’s possible she had a panic attack. Ms. Sprinkles, can you explain your symptoms?”
“Yes, shortness of breath, a tingling sensation throughout my body, and I felt like I would collapse on the floor, and then I did.”
“Hearing from you and Detective Blackwood, I conclude a panic attack because of whatever Detective Blackwood showed you made you relive the trauma.”
“I was showing her a video of a person who might have been following her around town. She screamed when she saw the writing on the person’s black hoodie. Why did you scream?”
“I screamed because my ex-boyfriend Dylan Coffey wore a black hoodie with that saying on it. He used to abuse me physically, and I moved away after I put him in prison.”
“Laura, I’m so sorry.” Detective Blackwood put his hand on top of mine.
“My biggest fear has been that he will find me and hurt me again.”
His phone rings, and then he says, “be right back!”
Five minutes later. Detective Blackwood runs into my hospital room. He tells me someone has broken into my food truck, and all I could think about is my baby sister Lilly.
“Please check on my sister!”
Three nights later, I’m watching Netflix and eating pizza on the sofa with my sister. Three police officers are barging into my apartment. The handcuffs go on my wrist again; they read the Miranda rights to me and show me the syringe they found in my food truck. My sister shouts I will rescue you as they put me into the police car. Somehow, I knew someone was framing me for murder, but not until I was wearing the ugly prison orange jumpsuit sitting across from her.
“Hi Laura, did you think you would see me again?”
“Why are you doing this to me, Abby?” I would punch her right in the face to get that smirk off her face if I could.
“I will tell you the story,” says Abby Coffey.
“A few weeks after you vanished. My parents and I got a phone call from the Metropolitan Correctional Facility. They told us that Dylan was dead. A guy named Danny from when Dylan became involved in drugs, stabbed him ten times in the abdomen. I couldn’t stop telling myself that Dylan wouldn’t have gone back to prison if it wasn’t for you.”
“Abby, your brother hurt me. He grabbed my throat and threw me on the bed. He forced me to have sex with him when I wasn’t ready for that yet.”
“My brother changed; he isn’t that guy anymore!”
“I sense he turned to drugs again. He wasn’t acting right. I had to do something, Abby. I became scared for my life.”
“I don’t care! You got my brother killed!”
“It was you following me at the farmer’s market.”
“Yes, I followed you and wore my brother’s black hoodie so, you would think he found you! I placed drops of cyanide into the cupcakes while you were loading catering supplies into your car.”
“You poisoned my cupcakes! You killed Mayor Johnson!”
“You will spend the rest of your days behind bars like my brother. Perhaps you will see the white light sooner than you think,” says Abby with a huge grin on her face.
The End
