by Libby Klein
“She did give scathing reviews to everyone except Philippe—you would think he paid her off for good scores. Let’s see.... In less than three days, Oliva put the evil eye on her for saying she underseasoned her entrée. Louie had to go meditate when she said he would be more successful if he marketed his hot sauce as an alternative to paint thinner. Adrian broke a blood vessel in his eye when she told him his duck was worse than a fried bat she ate on a trip to South America. He was furious, and we’ve already seen his temper in action. Maybe he should be the prime suspect.”
Sawyer’s face reddened and she shot back, “Well, she also said Tim’s risotto was so dry he should send letters of apology to all his customers and give them their money back. I didn’t see him laughing it off.”
I couldn’t believe Sawyer’s gall to attack someone who had been a friend to her for most of her life, in defense of a guy she’d just met a few days ago. “Tim isn’t violent. Adrian threw a heavy pan across the room.”
Sawyer was leaning over the edge of her seat. “Not violent?! What about that tackle two nights ago when Adrian was trying to protect the rest of the chefs from the sabotage?”
“Are you out of your mind?! He accused Tim of cheating in front of God and everyone. They aired it on the eleven o’clock news.”
“That’s because Tim ruined his class ranking and his chances at a good internship. He has a pattern.”
“Tim said that never happened. It’s Adrian’s word against his, and I believe Tim.”
Aunt Ginny held her hands up. “Girls! Either get ahold of yourselves or go get the boxing gloves before one of you wears a hole in the chintz. You’re defending two men that neither of you know as well as you think you do.”
Figaro pinned his ears to his head and threw us a reproachful look for disturbing his whipped-cream scheme.
I bristled at Aunt Ginny’s unfair commentary but said nothing. Sawyer and I gave each other a look that said I’m still irritated with you, but I love you enough to end this now and bring it up again later, right where we left off.
“Besides,” Aunt Ginny said, flattening Figaro’s ruff back down. “Nothing is worse than what she said to that poor little Southern girl yesterday when she made her cry.”
“That’s true.” I sat back against the chenille throw. “She told Vidrine her cooking was worse than a first semester, community college student’s, and she should do herself a favor and just go back to Haiti now.”
Sawyer shook her head. “Why was she so mean?”
Aunt Ginny shrugged. “Sometimes people are mean because they’re unhappy. Life didn’t turn out the way they wanted it to, and they take it out on everybody else.”
“Well, at least Vidrine was over it yesterday by the time I ran into her at the arena.” Sawyer took a sip of her coffee while Aunt Ginny and I stared at her openmouthed. “What? What’d I say?”
“What do you mean you ran into her?” I gave Sawyer a pointed look.
“Remember when Ivy asked me to go get her schedule?”
I nodded.
“When she promised me the Mariah Carey tickets?”
“Yes.”
“Well I met Vidrine coming out of the kitchen on my way in.”
“But the competition had been over for hours by then.”
Sawyer shrugged. “I think she had been practicing or something. She was covered in flour or baking soda or something powdery.”
“That’s against the rules. No one is allowed in the arena between events because of the sabotage. She could be disqualified.”
Aunt Ginny tipped her chin. “Maybe sabotage is what she was doin’. How did she react when you ran into her?”
Sawyer chewed her bottom lip. “Nervous. Surprised to see me. Maybe a little guilty.”
“Why didn’t you tell Ivy when you brought her notes back?” I asked.
Sawyer was looking more uncomfortable by the minute. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. I was so focused on those Mariah tickets. I didn’t really put two and two together that she was somewhere she shouldn’t be.”
“Well, no one seemed to be sabotaged at today’s event,” Aunt Ginny said. “Other than Bess, of course. But then the afternoon was kind of overshadowed, what with her dropping dead and all, so we could have missed something.”
“Still, I think we need to find out what she was doing there.” I sipped my mocha. “It could have been nothing.”
“Or,” Aunt Ginny pointed out. “She could have been making Bess a special entrée with a side of cyanide.”
“Well, if she did, I sure don’t know how she pulled it off. She was on camera the entire time. And everything Bess ate during the competition was shared by at least three other judges. Not to mention the fact that Ashlee, Tess, and Ivy sample most of the dishes off camera. No one else was poisoned.”
Sawyer drew her feet up under her. “Couldn’t she just poison one plate of food and not the others?”
I thought about it for a minute. “I guess you could sprinkle something on the food at the last minute. Like arsenic in a salt shaker, or strychnine in the cinnamon.” I thought about the cinnamon I’d gotten, from Gia and swallowed hard. “But Ivy and Roger take the plates to the judges. The chefs have no control over which judge gets which plate.”
Figaro swiped a paw full of whipped cream from Aunt Ginny’s coffee.
Aunt Ginny nudged his paw and smashed the cream into his face. He shook his whiskers and gave her a glare. “Maybe one of those two put something on Bess’s plate before giving it to her.”
“I guess that would be possible, but what motive could they have for killing Bess? I don’t think Ivy would do anything to jeopardize the broadcast. She acts like her entire career hinges on its success.”
Sawyer pulled out her phone and scrolled through the feed. “Yeah, but the exact opposite is happening. Everything that goes wrong on the show only increases the buzz on social media.”
“Increases it how?” I asked.
“Look here.” Sawyer showed me the Twitter feed on her screen. “Everyone is talking about it. ‘Cape May Cut-throat Cuisine.’ ‘Artisanal Death.’ ‘Local chefs are killing it at Restaurant Week.’”
Aunt Ginny took out her cell phone. “Whoo-wee, look at all the scuttlebutt about the contest on Google. Ashlee Pickel has six video links about the mess-ups on page one alone.”
“Okay, so I was wrong. Even bad publicity is apparently good for ratings. But would that really be a strong enough motive for murder? I mean, this is a small-town, local show, watched by tens of people.”
“Don’t underestimate how little there is to do here in the winter.” Sawyer put her phone back in her purse and picked up her mug. “A lot of the chefs involved in this thing have big followings. Besides, have you considered that she may have been poisoned here at the house, and it just kicked in at the college?”
I shuddered. “Oh God, don’t say that. That’s all I need right now.”
Aunt Ginny tipped back her mug of coffee and left a whipped cream mustache in place. “Didn’t that weird psychic lady say death and dead bodies would follow you wherever you go?”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I don’t think those were her exact words, no.”
Sawyer nodded. “But it was something like that, wasn’t it?”
“It might have been, I don’t know. There was a lot going on right then, and I couldn’t focus entirely on her.”
“Well maybe you need an exorcism or something.” Aunt Ginny put her mug down and gave me a weird once-over.
“I do not need an exorcism. This is silly. That lady was a whack job. I don’t know why you’re even thinking about her right now. That’s it. I’m not going to get involved this time. As far as I’m concerned, Bess’s murder—or whatever it was—has nothing to do with me. I’m staying out of it.”
I was so busy beating my dead horse that I jumped when there was a knock on the door. Most likely a guest with a forgotten key.
Aunt Ginny got up to le
t them in. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
“I think you’re right.” Sawyer patted me on the knee. “We don’t need anymore drama. Let’s just focus on our own stuff for a change.”
“I’m going to mind my own business, and fly under the radar for this one.” I nodded to myself, comfortable in the finality of my decision. “Let’s just get to the end of Restaurant Week and quietly go on with our lives.”
Aunt Ginny peered through the peephole. “Well, that will have to start tomorrow, Cagney and Lacey, because right now, the cops are here.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sawyer and I tried to hurl ourselves off the couch. The combined motion of us both flailing around at the same time only threw us back with our feet in the air like turtles spinning on their shells. I finally heaved myself up and made it to the foyer. I flung the front door open, and Amber shoved a court order in my face. “I have a warrant, McAllister.”
I yanked my shirt down over my hips, stepped to the side, and swept my arm in an arc. “Gentlemen, I believe you already know where everything is.” Three uniformed officers filed into the foyer and went off in different directions.
I handed Aunt Ginny the warrant. “Here, put this with the others.”
“Sure.” Aunt Ginny crumpled it into a ball and tossed it over her shoulder.
Amber huffed. “You do know that is a legal document. I could make your life very difficult for doing that.”
Aunt Ginny held up two clenched fists. “This one’s six months in the hospital, and this one’s sudden death. Which one do you want today?”
“Heh heh heh.” I put out my arm and slid Aunt Ginny behind me. “She’s only joking. Not threatening an officer at all.”
Figaro prowled over and flopped at Amber’s feet. His whiskers and nose still covered in white foam.
Amber jumped a foot in the air and reached for her sidearm. “Oh, dear God, that cat has rabies!”
“No! No, he doesn’t.” I picked Fig up and wiped his mouth off with my sleeve. “It’s whipped cream. We were drinking mochas.”
Amber holstered her weapon. “Your whole family is getting to be a menace.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what you’re looking for. Maybe I can help you. I assume you want to see the room where Bess Jodice was staying?”
Amber peered at me through slanted eyes and tilted her head to the right, then the left. “Okay. If you could show me which room the victim was in, that would be helpful. But don’t try anything.”
“What am I gonna try?” I handed Figaro to Sawyer and retrieved my master set of keys from the kitchen. Then I led Amber up the stairs. “Bess was in the Swallowtail Suite. No one has been in her room since she arrived. Not even Mrs. Galbraith, my chambermaid. She’s had the DO NOT DISTURB sign up the whole time.” I turned to make sure Amber was still with me and got caught in a four-man pileup with Amber who was being tailgated by Aunt Ginny followed by Sawyer still holding Figaro, who was in her arms washing the remnants of whipped cream off his face. “Why are you all coming?”
Aunt Ginny gave me a pointed look. “Because I want to see what’s going on.”
I looked from her to Sawyer. “I don’t want to stay downstairs by myself.”
Amber huffed again. “Can we just get this over with?”
“Fine.” I reached the top of the stairs and turned left on the landing. I unlocked Bess’s suite and eased the door open.
“Holy cow!” Sawyer cried. “Would you look at this mess!”
I was stunned speechless. Ms. No-restaurant-is-high-enough-quality-for-me had left a disaster of carnage. Bags of Oreos, boxes of Little Debbies, a giant empty container of Cheetos, and two cases of Diet Dr. Pepper. The motif was Sunday afternoon in the sorority house.
Aunt Ginny stood silently at my side, her chin hanging down to her chest.
Amber pushed her way past us, pulling on a pair of blue latex gloves. “Please don’t touch anything. There may be evidence in here.”
“Evidence that she was a slob.” Aunt Ginny finally found her voice.
“And a phony,” I added. “She turned her nose up at my linzer cookies, saying she would only eat jam if it were made from raspberries out of her own garden. I know those Pop Tarts didn’t come from her garden!”
Amber was systematically going through Bess’s luggage. “So, I guess this suitcase full of Cheez Whiz and Ritz Crackers would seem odd to you as well?”
“Unbelievable. We couldn’t make anything that made her happy, could we?”
Aunt Ginny shook her head no, trying to take in the explosion of convenience store shelves before us.
“And the competition! The way she treated the other chefs. She said their food was barely edible.”
Sawyer nudged a bag of Starburst with her toe. “To think, the whole time she was secretly up here eating like this.”
Amber used her pen and held up a baggie of lumpy brown goo. “Any idea what this is?”
I cringed. “Oh, dear God! I don’t want to know.”
Aunt Ginny reached out and grabbed the baggy and opened it. She sniffed. Then she stuck a finger in and tasted it.
“I really don’t think you should . . .” Amber trailed off.
Sawyer made a sound like she was about to hurl.
“Why would you do that!?” I hollered. “You could get Ebola or rickets or something.”
Aunt Ginny looked in the bag with a quizzical expression and smacked her lips. “Fig jam.”
“What?”
“It’s my homemade fig preserves.” Aunt Ginny handed the bag back to Amber. “I know because I can taste the port. It’s my secret ingredient.”
“Why would she have a bag of your fig preserves?”
Aunt Ginny pointed to a notebook on the desk. “I think she was trying to figure out my recipe. She’d been making notes about it.” Aunt Ginny scanned the writing. “She almost had it.”
Amber flipped through the notebook. “Her handwriting was fine three days ago, then it starts to get erratic sometime after she arrived.”
“Well, it was nothing we did.” Aunt Ginny squared her shoulders.
Amber looked around the room. “What’s that?” She pointed to a mason jar with a fancy lilac bow.
I took a step into the room followed by Sawyer, who was glued to my hip. “That’s her special honey, made from her own bees. She goes through about a cup of it a day.”
Aunt Ginny gave me a lopsided smirk. “It’s probably that stuff that comes in the plastic bear.”
Amber bagged the honey and the gallon-sized zipper bag of tea leaves that was next to it.
One of her crime scene officers joined her with a small tin of loose tea from the kitchen. “This is all I could find.”
Aunt Ginny reached out to grab it. “Hey, that one’s mine. The crazy lady never touched it.”
“That’s true.” I said. “I made her a pot of peppermint yesterday because she was sick to her stomach. But other than that, she would only drink her own special blend.”
Amber took the tin from the officer and dropped it in an evidence bag. “We have to test everything. It’s protocol.”
Aunt Ginny balled a fist at her side. “I have my own protocol when someone takes my things.”
I grabbed Aunt Ginny by the shoulder and led her from the room. “We’ll wait in the library until you’re done.”
The three of us made our way back down the stairs. Figaro jumped out of Sawyer’s arms now that the excitement was over. We sat in the library in silence trying to process what we’d seen.
After a couple of minutes, I said, “That explains why she brought so many suitcases.”
Aunt Ginny and Sawyer nodded.
A couple minutes later Sawyer added, “I bet she was going to steal your jam recipe and put it in her next cookbook.”
Aunt Ginny and I nodded.
Another minute of silence passed before Aunt Ginny finally said, “Just what was in that tea?”
And we all stared at each
other knowing we were on to something.
Chapter Nineteen
Amber came down the stairs holding several baggies of confiscated evidence. “I’ve sealed off the victim’s room. I don’t want anyone in there while the investigation is open.”
“You mean to tell me you put yellow crime scene tape across one of my suites while I have guests in the house?! Is that really necessary? No one can get in there but me.”
Amber pulled off her latex gloves and stuffed them in her pocket. “That’s why I put up the tape. You and your aunt have a way of tampering with my crime scenes.”
“But what if one of the guests posts a picture of that on social media?”
“Not my problem.”
“Why are you treating us like we’re criminals? We didn’t kill her. The victim didn’t even die here.”
“It’s procedure, McAllister.”
I could feel my blood pressure rising. Amber was always so dramatic and unreasonable. It made me want to grab her blond ponytail and swing her around the room. “Could you at least clear me as a suspect. It’s completely ridiculous to think that I might be on that list, but then you have falsely accused me in the past.”
Amber leveled her gaze on me. “I wouldn’t rule anything out just yet. I’ll be in touch.” She sashayed out the front door followed by her three uniformed officers like Rizzo and the Pink Ladies, the last one slamming it shut behind them.
“Well, that didn’t go well at all,” Sawyer stated the obvious.
My cell phone played the duuuun-duh-dun-duh theme from Dragnet.
Sawyer looked around the room. “What was that?”
“I set a Google alert for every time someone posts about the bed and breakfast online.” I checked my screen. “Oh, come on! How is that even possible?! Someone tweeted a picture of the crime scene tape covering the Swallowtail Suite.”
Sawyer looked on my phone. “Who is Scarlet Dragon?”
Aunt Ginny came around the corner, chuckling.
I held up my cell phone. “What did you do?”
