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Midnight without a ledger
At twelve minutes past midnight, Mara Venn came downstairs for her green apron and found seven pastry boxes occupying the place reserved for tomorrow's accounts. Her blue recipe ledger was gone. Outside, Bellwether Quay's lamps drew neat yellow commas on the water. Inside, somebody had made crescents she had not sold for twenty years.
At sixty-eight, Mara could recognize her own work without claiming every good thing in her bakery. These crescents were excellent, and not quite hers. Ivo, her night baker, was in the washing room. She had approved a trial bake; she had not expected this one. Nobody had entered secretly. That made the empty bookstand more puzzling.
A box marked seven stood beside a loop of blue thread. Mara tied her apron, then untied it. The pastries offered one beginning; the empty bookstand offered another.