The Bell Mark Case

The newsroom looked like it had been assembled from spare parts and secondhand hopes. Cables coiled under desks, a window unit breathed cool air with a wheeze, and a hand‑lettered sign above the coffee machine read, Please return mugs to the land of the living. Tessa Quill swung her backpack onto her chair and slid her headphones off one ear. The midday city leaked through the cracked window: traffic, a bus brake sigh, a vendor calling out fresh peaches three floors below.

“You promised me something with sizzle,” Leo Park said, appearing beside her monitor with a folder and a sandwich he didn’t remember ordering. He had a permanent squint that made him look like a lighthouse trying to focus. “Rent surge story is good, but I need a hook. Faces. Names.”

“Faces, names,” Tessa echoed, scanning her inbox. A listener had sent a voicemail tip at dawn, voice low and urgent. She saved it to her desktop and clicked play. A faint clatter, street noise, then a steady whisper: “Look at the baker on Alder Street. He won’t sell. Someone wants him to.”

Jax wheeled her chair over from the audio booth, braids tucked under a baseball cap. “If it’s the place with the sugar dust in the air, take me with you,” she said, grinning. “We need the sound of kneading. People love it.”

Tessa checked the station’s field recorder, popped fresh batteries in, and slung the strap across her chest. “Petrov & Sons,” she said, recalling a story she’d done last year about the alley’s painted shutters. “He gave me rye bread when my bike chain snapped. He said carbs solve everything.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Leo replied, making a note. “Go now. Catch him before he closes for the afternoon. And bring me smell in words.” He stepped sideways to let a volunteer haul in a crate of printed flyers.

Tessa clicked off her monitor, pocketed a notebook, and tucked a small camera into her bag out of habit. The screen on it was scratched, the strap worn smooth where it had rubbed her shoulder for years. She locked eyes with her reflection in the glass door just long enough to flatten a cowlick, then took the stairs two at a time.

Outside, heat was rising from the asphalt in shimmering waves. Bikes ticked past with little bells and baskets full of basil. Tessa unlocked her own bike, a sturdy blue thing with chipped paint and a radio sticker on the frame, and pushed off into the flow. She coasted downhill toward the water where the air smelled faintly of salt and engine oil, then cut inland toward Alder Street. The city gathered itself around her: glass towers with mirrored faces, low brick buildings with murals of swallows and bees, shoelaces of laundry strung between fire escapes.

Artisan Alley arrived the way rain does, all at once and everywhere. Chalk arrows pointed toward studios. A violinist tuned on a stoop. Flour dust glowed in the sun as if the air itself had been sifted. Tessa braked at the corner and steadied one foot on the curb. The bakery’s awning striped the sidewalk in blue. In the window, a tray of golden rolls cooled beside a jar of handwritten IOUs. A bell hung over the door on a little chain.

She tied her bike to a stand shaped like a pretzel, brushed her shirt, and went in, recorder ready. The bell gave a small, honest ring that made the back of her neck relax, just a little.