Murder, Money & Marzipan by Leighann Dobbs

an accounting ledger caught her eye. She pulled it out. Running her fingers down the side, she looked for a matching date. Bingo!   Comparing the numbers next to the date in the ledger with the numbers in the black book, she could see they were different. Surely that must mean-
    Her thoughts were interrupted by a noise in the hall. She shoved the ledger back in the drawer, rammed the drawer shut, and spun around just in time to see the doorknob turning.
    Lexy felt her legs go weak as she watched the door open. Evan Westmore stepped into the room. She watched his mouth drop open and his eyes go wide when he noticed her standing there.
    They stared at each other in stunned silence for a long second.
    “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
    Lexy felt dizzy, her mind spinning to come up with an excuse for her presence in his office.
    “Someone said I could find the challenge enrollment forms in here.” She blurted out the first thing she could think of.
    Westmore’s eyes narrowed. “Who said that?”  
    He took a step toward her. She shuffled sideways around the desk, holding the black book behind her.
    “O-one of the other bakers,” she stuttered.
    Westmore looked at the filing cabinet she had been leaning her back against.
    “Did you find them?” He moved toward her again and she backed farther behind the desk.  
    “N-no.”
    “What do you have behind your back?”
    Lexy felt a jolt of electricity pierce her heart. She slipped the black book into her back pocket. “Nothing.” She spread her hands at her sides.
    Westmore’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been checking up on me, haven’t you?”
    “No,” Lexy lied. Looking down at the desk, her eyes caught the notepaper she had noticed on her previous trip to his office. Suddenly she remembered Jake telling her about the expensive paper that was clutched in Saunders’s hand…specialty paper just like the notepaper she was looking at.
    Lexy felt everything click in place like the pieces of a puzzle. The book with coded numbers and dates, the expensive items in Westmore’s office, the expensive clothing Saunders had been buying, the specialty paper. Westmore and Saunders weren’t lovers - they were pulling some sort of embezzlement scam on the Bakery Battles contest.
    Lexy felt a jolt of panic - Westmore was the murder. She knew she had to get away, but her legs felt like lead.  
    She edged around the desk toward the door, praying the look on her face didn’t give away the fact that she had figured out what Westmore had done.
    Westmore moved between her and the door. The twisted grimace on his face and evil gleam in his eyes made her stomach plummet - Westmore already knew she had figured it out.

    ###

    Nik reached across her desk to grab the manila folder filled with information they had gathered on Westmore. She pursed her lips, leafing through the papers.
    “See if you can get a list of Westmore’s purchases and bank account transactions,” she said without looking up.  
    “And hurry,” she called after Jake as he ran off to do her bidding.
    Nik stared out the window, her mind racing. Westmore had a shady past. He was in the stadium when Saunders was murdered, but so were a lot of other people. Corinne claimed to have seen him the night the cake was sabotaged. Most importantly, Amanda Scott-Saunders had been clutching a piece of paper Westmore had purchased at the time of her death.  
    She tapped her fingernails impatiently on the desk. Where was Ryan with that bank account report?   If her theory proved true, then it was a safe bet Westmore was the killer, and she didn’t want to waste any time bringing him in.
    Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jake rushing across the squad room, a long piece of paper in his hand. She stood to greet him.
    “Check this out. He’s made some pretty big deposits over the past few weeks.” Jake shoved the paper in front of her.
    Nik scanned the bank account summary. “He certainly has - much more than his