It’s hard to come back to Sugarcube Corner. Seeing the happy little bakery with its windows darkened and the front door shut made it looks dead somehow. The half-closed shutters are tired, sleepy, mourning. In its gloom, it blends into the fog choking Ponyville. The chipper “sorry, but we’re closed!” sign smiles at me as I walk up the front steps. I give four quick knocks on the door of unhappiness and put out my cigarette. I contemplate grinding it into the ground. Not in front of this place, I decide. I stick the butt into my pocket.
When the door slowly unlocks and an eye looks at me through the crack in the frame, I feel like a trespasser.
“Mrs. Cake?” I ask, removing my hat.
“Yes?” she croaks weakly. I know she recognizes me, but she wants to hear the words come out of my mouth.
“I’m Detective Sideways, with the PPD. I’d... like to ask you a few questions.”
She stares at me blankly, as if I’d spoken a different language. The door opens a little bit wider. Her plump, happy face is ashen, shadows staining her eyelids. The jovial baker is little more than a spectre. “Questions?” she says uneasily, sniffling.
“I know this is a bad time, but I...”
“No, no, please. I’m sorry. Come in.” She opens the front door fully, stepping aside so that I can enter. I lower my head as I cross the threshold. It’s like entering a tomb.
It’s unnaturally dark inside. The curtains are closed, as if the Cakes had reason to fear the sun, and it’s as if nothing’s been touched since... the last time I was here.
“Sweetie,” calls out Mrs. Cake. It sounds like a cry for help. “Detective Sideways is here. He says he wants to talk to us.”
There’s a shuffle from the kitchen, and Mr. Cake, looking as skeletal as his wife, limps out into the foyer. He tries for a smile, but it looks awkward and crooked on his face.
“Detective,” he says with false cheer. “So glad you could come here on... such short notice!” He looks to me, then down at one of the chairs sitting by the counter. He waves to it as eagerly as he can manage. “Please, have a seat.”
I give him a nod and do as he asks. He wastes no time in fetching two more chairs, easing his wife into hers first, followed by himself. Another crooked smile. Mrs. Cake stares down at the floor.
I clear my throat. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. Cake. Pinkie Pie was a brilliant, intelligent, strong mare. She was a friend to everyone. A friend to me. I’m sorry that this had to happen.”
The couple look caught between that horrible, nauseating place between laughing and crying. Mrs. Cake cradles her head in her hooves, and her husband wraps a foreleg around her.
“Thank you,” he says, speaking for them both.
“I know that this hard for you both,” I console, straining to use what little experience I had on such a touchy subject, “but right now I need you to be strong, and help me get to the bottom of this. I need you to remember everything you can about what happened to Pinkie Pie the day before she... died.” The word hurts to say, but they don’t flinch at it.
Mr. Cake looks to his desolate wife, and then back up. Before he can speak, however, Mrs. Cake cuts him off with a hoof on his shoulder. She takes a deep breath, then looks me in the eye. She nods, and I slowly take my notebook out of my trench coat pocket. I watch her carefully when she begins speaking.
“It was just like any other day. Carrot and I were busy with a big order. We’d been asked to cater for a party in Trottingham while the twins were off in Canterlot with their aunt and uncle. Pinkie... came down for breakfast as she usually did.”
“A bolt of energy,” chuckled Mr. Cake, shaking his head. It gets a smile out of his wife. A weak one, but it was there.
“She ate well. She was never a fussy eater. A stack of pancakes, juice, some fruit. The doctor’s been telling her to eat more fruit. She’d been getting a bit of a pudge as of late, you see. So half the pancakes went to Gummy, who didn’t really ever mind. She always thought about others. She... Oh...”
I look up to a light tapping on the floorboards. Tears are rolling off Mrs. Cake’s cheeks, falling like liquid diamonds through the air. She covers her face, her back shaking as she tries with all her soul to stop crying. Mr. Cake holds his wife close, whispering soft reassurances.
“She left the house around eight in the morning,” he says, taking over for his wife. “She said she was going to the library to help out Twilight Sparkle with organizing her books. It was Sunday. Re-shelving day. We spent the rest of the day baking. Time flew right by. The next time we saw her was at about eight in the afternoon.”
He points at the front door. “She ran inside, carrying a basket. She’d been crying. You could always tell when she’d been crying.”
“What was in the basket?” I question, scribbling a few more notes down.
“I’m not sure... Some fabrics, I think. And a book. I tried asking her what was the matter, but she didn’t say anything. Just ran right upstairs like she had a train to catch and locked the door. We tried to get her to come out. Begged her to come out. She just told us to go away and that she wouldn’t come out until she was done. I couldn’t even get her to leave for a bite to eat. It was strange, sure, but I’d seen her do stranger. We decided to leave her alone until she calmed down. Thought she’d get hungry eventually.”
“So you left her in there?”
“Yes.”
“And nopony came in or out?”
“I don’t think so. The door locks from the inside. Unless Pinkie let somepony else in....”
“I see. Go on, please.”
Here he falls silent, staring off into space as if looking for something. I frown uncomfortably. This would be the hard part. It always would be. Mrs. Cake had stopped shaking, but her head stayed in her hooves. Sighing wearily, Mr. Cake focuses on me once more. His eyes are glistening.
“Next morning, the door was still locked. When we called for her, shouted for her to open, she didn’t give us an answer. We were scared. I bucked the door open and...”
He swallows hard, closing his eyes. A tear escapes.
“And then we found her.” He doesn’t say it so much as he spits it, as if gasping for air.
As I watch Mr. Cake try to compose himself, I wish I understood grief. When momma died, I’d felt nothing more than a sort of numbness. Where I was supposed to feel and cry and weep, there was absolutely nothing at all. Just something that was missing. I didn’t cry. I never did. I’m pretty sure I’m a psychopath, and Doc’s pretty sure of it too. That’s why this hurts the most, I guess.
Pinkie’s gone, and I suddenly feel a pain I don’t quite understand. I can only watch like a hunched gargoyle as the Cakes mourn the loss that I’ve brought back to their doorstep.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “No one should have to... Go through this.” It sounds like something the Chief might say. It seems to do the trick. Mr. Cake wipes his eyes and nods thankfully.
“Thank you.”
“And what about Pinkie’s parents? Have you heard anything from them at all?”
“No, not yet,” sighs Mr. Cake, his eyes still shiny. “The Princesses have sent them a letter personally. I can’t imagine what they must be going through.”
About as much as a parent that let their child leave home as a filly can. I don’t know why I think that, but I hate myself for it. I nod, jotting down a few more things into my notebook. Suddenly, there’s a cold nibbling at my leg, and I look down to find a tiny alligator gumming at my hoof. It looks up at me with its wide, blank eyes.
Mr. Cake smiles weakly. “I think he likes you.”
I mirror his smile, reaching down and giving the critter a scratch behind its non-existent ears. It purrs like a cat. Weird. “Gummy, right?”
“Yeah. Little fella’s been... taking it better than any of us ever could.”
Gummy gives me a few more friendly chomps, chirrups, and ambles away. He does a little circle around the carpet in the foyer, and takes a seat in front of the door. It hits me why he seems so chipper. Ignorance is sweet. And so he sits and stares.
Waiting for Pinkie to come home.
I breathe in sharply. I can’t stay here anymore. Shutting my notebook, I get up, nodding politely to the Cakes. “Thank you for your time. I’ll be in touch.”
Mrs. Cake sniffles, smiling appreciatively. I’m about ready to leave when something catches my eye. In the kitchen, not too far from the counter, a rack of black-handled kitchen knives. When do bakers need knives? The sick riddle bounces around in my head as I stare at one hole in the wooden rack. Empty.
“Have you always been missing a knife?” I hear myself ask.
Mr. Cake follows my stare, and finds what I’m looking at.
“I... don’t think so,” he says, his voice cracking with uncertainty.
The gears in my head sputter and cough as they begin to turn, shaking off the cobwebs. With another glance at the grieving couple, I don my hat and give it a polite tip before stepping out the door.
Missing knife. Missing murder weapon. I stand outside in the cold humidity of Ponyville, writing the words close together and linking them with a line. Can’t be a coincidence. Kitchen knife, standard edge.
Something in my gut twists and growls, and the bakery behind me feels like it’s breathing down my neck in time with the dank wind. I get the feeling I’m not done with this place, but for now I have another lead. I tug another cigarette into my lips, lighting up before heading down the street. For some reason, I look over my shoulder as I leave before Sugarcube Corner is swallowed up by the fog.
First, the station. Then, I think I have an appointment with the personal student of a goddess.