“There was a big beefy one, he’s the one that shoved me and a skinny one that looked nervous.” Lexy adjusted the peas.
Frankie’s eyes darkened. “Sal Baretti. Low-level muscle. Not smart, but mean. The thin one is Derek Novak — they call him Needles.”
Helen’s eyebrows rose. “Needles?”
“His father was a tailor. Nothing sinister — just a name that stuck because people like to assume the worst.” Frankie almost smiled. “Sal and Needles do retrieval. Things Crane doesn’t want to touch himself.”
A man appeared from the direction of the bar — wiry, mid-forties, nursing an espresso in a cup that looked comically small in his hands. He had the quick, restless energy of someone who spent his life watching exits. He slid into a chair at the end of the booth without being invited.
“This is Tony Rizzo,” Frankie said. “Tony knows every piece of stolen merchandise that moves through a fifty-mile radius. Tony, tell them what you told me.”
Tony looked at the group of women, then at Frankie, then back at the women. He took a sip of espresso. “Sal and Needles were at Mahoney’s Bar last night. Drinking. Talking loud, which is what Sal does when he thinks he’s done something impressive.”
“What did they say?” Nans asked.
“Bragging about a pickup. Said they grabbed the flour, the rocks, the whole thing. Also said they got a bunch of—” Tony glanced at Lexy and seemed to choose his words more carefully than he normally would. “A bunch of baking stuff. Bowls, ingredients, papers. They swept everything into a bag and took off. Said they were going to dump everything except the stones.”
Lexy leaned forward, the frozen peas forgotten. “Dump it? The recipe was in that bag. When are they dumping it?”
Tony shrugged. “They didn’t say exactly. But they’re not in a hurry. Sal’s got a storage unit where he sorts through jobs.Everything that’s not diamonds is still sitting there as far as I know.”
Lexy looked at Nans. Nans looked at Ruth. Ruth looked at her untouched pasta with the expression of a woman who was trying very hard not to think about what she was getting her family involved in. Ida was halfway into her dinner and barely paying attention.
Frankie leaned forward, and when he spoke again, the warmth was gone. “Ladies. I’m telling you this because Ruthie is family and someone put their hands on a woman over a bag of flour. But Victor Crane is not a man you poke at. He has people. He has reach. And he does not like loose ends.”
“We’re not loose ends,” Nans said. “We’re looking for a recipe card.”
Frankie studied her for a long moment — the kind of look that was measuring something behind the eyes. Then he shook his head slowly and almost smiled. “You remind me of my mother. She was terrifying too.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Nans said.
Frankie looked at Ruth. “Be careful, Ruthie. I mean it.”
Ruth finally picked up her fork and took a single, precise bite of rigatoni. “We’ll be careful,” she said.
Nobody at the table believed her.
CHAPTER SIX
They werequiet on the drive back to Brooke Ridge Falls, which was unusual for a car containing Ida.
They pulled into Brooke Ridge Falls at half-past two. Ruth turned onto Main Street, and Nans saw it before anyone else — partly because she was watching for it and partly because after decades of solving problems, her eyes went to the wrong thing in any picture the way a magnet found iron.
The front door of The Cup and Cake was open.
Not ajar. Open. The glass panel nearest the handle was shattered, and the door stood wide, swaying slightly in the breeze. Shards of glass glittered on the sidewalk like ice chips.
Ruth pulled to the curb. Nobody moved for a moment.
“No,” Lexy whispered.
They got out of the car and walked to the bakery in a tight group, Nans in front. The bell above the door was still attached, and it chimed when Nans pushed the door fully open — that same cheerful sound, absurdly out of place.
The bakery was wrecked. Not the casual destruction of the morning — this was thorough, methodical, the work of someone who was looking for something specific and didn’t care what they ruined in the process.
The display cases were smashed, glass everywhere. The pastry trays had been pulled out and dumped — eclairs and muffins and croissants crushed on the floor. The register was open, the cash drawer pulled out, but the money was still in it — scattered bills, undisturbed. They hadn’t come for cash.
Behind the counter, every cabinet was open. Flour bins had been pulled from the shelves and emptied onto the floor. Sugar canisters upended. The big fifty-pound bags of all-purpose flour that Lexy kept in the pantry had been sliced open, their contents spilling across the tile in white drifts, as if someone had run their hands through every one, searching.
