Bebe joined me on the front porch. We stared up the hill.
“No flames,” she said. “No smoke. What do you think it is?”
I shrugged and headed for the bathroom. A good long hot shower would make me feel more human. Hopefully.
Freshly washed and semi-awake, I poured milk and cereal into my bowl and cut up part of a cantaloupe for garnish. My favorite breakfast-crunchy granola and cool, juicy fruit. A few bites and I finally felt like myself again.
“Heard anything yet?” I asked Bebe as she came in to join me.
She shook her head.
“It’s been a long time and they’re still up there,” I noted after looking up the hill again. “Those lights are still flashing.”
“You’re right,” she said, biting her lower lip. “We really ought to stay here. We would only be getting in the way if we went up there.”
I nodded. “It’s none of our business, really. But…but we are neighbors. And it’s only neighborly to show up when bad things happen. Just to help out, I mean.”
She looked at me. I looked at her. We both knew what that meant.
“Shall we use bikes to go up, or shall we take a car?” she said, reaching for a jacket.
I remembered the last time I’d taken a bike trip up that hill. “Car,” I said. “Mine is right outside. Let’s go.”
A uniformed officer tried to wave us away but Bebe knew a seldom used back road to get us into the compound area and we took it, sliding in anonymously and quickly abandoning our vehicle between two others that belonged there. We managed to blend in with the group of people heading for an area near the entrance to the restaurant – mostly compound residents and restaurant workers, with a few employees from the vineyard below as well. I saw Sandy nearby and Gwen looking annoyed and one of the bus boys from the night before. The way we all stopped and began to mull about seemed to indicate it was where the authorities had asked people to wait. So we were waiting too.
Out on the driveway, a paramedic ambulance stood with red lights blinking. As we watched, the doors were slammed shut and the vehicle began to drive off. Whatever it was taking away, it had happened before we’d arrived and so far we were no wiser about what had gone on here than we’d been when on Bebe’s front porch half an hour before.
I craned my neck looking around the compound, thinking about how different it looked in the morning light than it had been around midnight. I was looking for any sign of Sami first of all, but also for Detective Roy McKnight or Captain Stone. I didn’t see any of them.
“What’s going on?” Bebe was asking a worker from the vineyard, someone she happened to know from her contacts with the grower community. “What happened?”
The dark-eyed worker smiled at her, then bent close to tell her what he knew – so close, I couldn’t hear a word. I had to wait until she chatted with him for a few minutes and turned to me, finally free to relay the information my way.
“Okay, nobody really knows for sure. When they brought the body out…”
“Body!” I said in complete surprise and much too loudly.
Everyone nearby turned and frowned at me as though I’d just made a major faux pas and I cringed, wishing I could take it back.
“What body?” I whispered to Bebe, as though that could make up for it.
“The ambulance just left with it. The face was already covered when they carried it out, but it looked like, whoever it was, they got the body from Marguerite’s cabin.”
I gasped and turned to look at the compound, a bit up the hill from where we were gathered. There was the cabin in question, looking calm and neat and just like all the rest. But last night I’d seen Chef Bianchi leaving it rapidly, and a pan full of something thrown after him along with angry words. Then later, I’d seen that man sort of sneak up and….wait! Suddenly the truth came to me. That man I’d seen the night before was Nigel Champaine—the same face I’d seen in that portrait in the Italian Kitchen’s office. I saw him arrive at the compound and disappear inside Margerite’s bungalow where it looked like he was an expected guest.
I grimaced, wondering if I should tell Bebe, then decided against it for the short run. Too many people around. But I had been there during the night and I had seen things—some pretty interesting things. The only problem was, who could I tell about any of that? I’d done it with Dante. I’d done it under a spell of sorts. Who was going to take that seriously? In other words, I was stuck with inside information no one was going to buy. What strange hell was this anyway?
We hung around for awhile and then they began questioning everyone, taking them into a private area one at a time, and we realized we’d placed ourselves in jeopardy in a way. We weren’t really witnesses. We were just neighbors, and here we were in a line of people waiting to be questioned. Bebe gave me a look and I nodded and we both tried to slink off. It might have worked if Roy had been there, or if Captain Stone had showed up, but they both seemed to be still off in San Francisco, so we were doomed to deal with uniformed agents who didn’t know us from any other looky-loo.
“We’ve got to find a way to get out of here,” Bebe whispered to me.
I nodded, then jerked my head toward the compound above.
“Let’s make a break for it,” I said softly. “Up this way.”
We slipped out of line and headed for the stream.
“Hey,” came a shout from below. “Where are you two going?”
We didn’t answer. My heart was beating a mile a minute, but I kept climbing and in moments, we were weaving in between the cabins of the compound.
“Hey.”
Someone was coming after us.
“Hey!”
I gasped as I realized that last call was from someone in the compound, someone with her door opened to let us in.
“Come this way,” she called in a low, hoarse voice. “I’ll hide you.”
It wasn’t until we were inside her cabin that I realized it was Gwen, the head waitress. We slipped into her place and she closed the door and giggled as we sank onto her couch like refugees from the prison gang.
“Oh,” Bebe said, trying to catch her breath. “They were practically chasing us! We just came by to see what was going on. We had no information to give them, nothing we’d witnessed. We really didn’t want to get bogged down as part of the investigation. We have no news!”
“Of course you don’t,” Gwen said, grinning at us as though we were all three part of a conspiracy. “Neither do I, but I know they’re going to get to me eventually. You’ll be okay. Once they lose your trail, you’ll be able to cut out and head down the hill. It won’t be long now. Can I offer you’re a cup of coffee while you wait? I make a pretty good cappuccino, if you’re in the mood.”
We accepted gratefully.
“So tell me,” Bebe said to her as she worked on the drinks. “What exactly is going on anyway?”
Gwen gave her a cautiously wise look over her glasses. “Marguerite is dead. That’s for sure. She died during the night. Looks like Chef Bianchi might have had something to do with it.”
“What?”
We both said the same thing and turned as one to stare at her.
“Are you kidding?”
“No. I’m not. It seems he took her a pan of tiramisu he’d just made. She ate some. The next thing you know, she’s out like a light.”
“Wait,” I said, truly puzzled. “How do you know this? Who found her? What were the signs of poisoning?”
Gwen shrugged. “It seems she had a regular morning date with Jarod to go running for half an hour. All through the vineyards on the local agricultural roads. I didn’t even know that and I live right next door to her.”
We both turned and looked next door. Sure enough, yellow tape was being strung all around the bungalow. And there, flung all over the low flowering bushes of her front yard, were the remnants of a pan full of tiramisu, including the now-half-empty pan itself. What a mess. And what a waste.
“And?” Bebe prompted Gwen to
get back to her tale.
“And Jarod came by at 5 am and she didn’t come to the door so he opened it. It wasn’t locked. He went in and there she was, stretched out on the floor. A plate of tiramisu in her hand.” She sighed. “Touching. You know she was after his job as chef, don’t you? And he thought he’d been promised the manager position. And somehow Nigel got that reversed.” She chuckled softly, shaking her head. “Everybody always wants what someone else has. To think she died from eating one of his dishes is a bit of a shock. He was always making her baked goodies and she just couldn’t pass them up. A pity. With a little restraint, she might be alive today.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, wondering why this woman felt so free to let her feelings for the poor murdered woman show so clearly. Her tone fairly dripped with spite.
“I’m talking about the fact that the woman was on a diet. Everybody knew. If she’d only stayed true to her convictions and stayed tough, she wouldn’t have even tasted his poisoned tiramisu.”
“Oh.”
I noticed Bebe taking up a pillow and putting it in her lap. She wasn’t feeling embarrassed by her cute curvy body type, was she? No way! I was beginning to think this Gwen lady was something of a bully.
Glancing at the wall décor only added to that opinion. There were at least five plaques celebrating Gwen’s excellence in marksmanship with a pistol, and there in the center of it all was the pistol itself, framed and named: a “Colt 45, used in The Great War”.
“It was my grandfather’s,” Gwen said as she noticed me looking at it. “Now it’s mine.”
I gave her a fleeting smile and Bebe changed the subject.
“So you think Carlo was bringing her sweets as a peace offering?”
Gwen leaned forward. “Are you kidding? I think he was trying to ruin her diet. And he obviously succeeded. It was constant warfare with those two.”
“But…if she was poisoned by the tiramisu…”
Gwen shook her head. “Look, I don’t know that. That’s just what’s being whispered around. I’m sure they’ll be doing tests and then we’ll know the truth.”
Bebe shuddered. “This is creepy, isn’t it? To think that man with all that culinary talent might actually have used that knowledge to poison someone. It’s scary.”
“And a little unbelievable,” I muttered softly.
Gwen shrugged, looking at me sideways as though she didn’t really trust me after all.
“He’s a tough guy,” she said. “I’ve known him for years. He can give as good as he gets. That’s why he and Marguerite were always at odds. Two of a kind if you ask me. They pretty much deserved each other.”
“So they were always fighting?”
“As long as I’ve known them. We all worked at Nigel’s restaurant in Santa Barbara before we moved up here. She actually went to culinary school to try to get good enough to take his job away from him. The boss—have you met Nigel?”
I shook my head and Bebe nodded hers, but Gwen went on as though she hardly cared.
“Well Nigel just wouldn’t go quite that far.” Her eyes narrowed. “There were times I thought he was actually pitting them against each other. Just for the sport of it, you know?” She shook her head. “Sounds sick, I know, but that’s what we live with around here.”
Once again I couldn’t help being put off by a certain strain of sarcastic cynicism in this woman. Just how much could you trust what she said?
“So how about you?” I asked. “How did you get along with the two of them?”
“Me?” She looked almost surprised at the question. “Carlo was my bud. Marguerite, not so much.”
“All of you seem to have known each other for years.
I mean, so many of you moved to the new restaurant from the old, though it’s still operating in Santa Barbara isn’t it? That’s kind of unusual.”
Gwen looked at me and shrugged. “I don’t know. We are what we are. I’ve known Nigel since before he owned any restaurants. And once Crystal, his wife, died and left him alone with his son Jeremy, I’ve been like a mother to that kid. Crystal was my best friend. She and Lulu—that was Sandy’s mom. The three of us—Crystal and Lulu and me were always best friends, since our surfer girl days so long ago. We all met Nigel at the same time. We all bonded in those early days. We formed a close family very quickly.” She looked dreamy for a moment. “So when people who love each other are in need, they tend to cling together. That’s where their true source of help will come from. You can’t count on everyone, but you can count on family. And we’ve been a family for years.”
“But not Marguerite.”
“No. Not Marguerite. Not Carlo either. But he’s a good friend.”
“I see.”
The way she talked about her idea of family made it seem unquestionably true. For just a moment, I felt a little sense of envy. Having a close group around you must be nice. But what was I thinking? I had Bebe and Jill. What more did I need?
Sounds of some sort of commotion reached us and we jumped up and hurried to the windows to see what was going on. The police seemed to have someone in handcuffs and were leading him down to the parking area. As we stared out the window, hiding behind curtains at the same time, we saw who it was. Carlo Bianchi, the wonderful chef, was being taken in to the sheriff’s station. We stared at each other for a long minute. Not one of us could get a word out as we digested what was going on.
But I at least had the presence of mind to realize all attention would be on the arrestee and the men marching him off.
“Come on,” I said urgently to Bebe, pulling on her elbow. “This is our chance. Let’s get out of here.”
“Come back any time,” Gwen said as we thanked her and began to sneak out. “I’ll be here, waiting for developments.”
We crept down the walkway, carefully watching for police. I glanced over at the next bungalow, looking right in through the window, and I thought I saw Sandy, the pretty blond, up on a ladder in her front room, doing something with her ceiling. It seemed like strange timing for home maintenance. I squinted, but had no time to check it out.
“Hurry,” Bebe was saying, tugging on my hand. “We don’t want to get caught up in this. Let’s get to the car and get out of here.”
And of course, that was our current goal. So I left and only began to mull over the meaning of what I’d seen later that day.
Sandy had been doing something to the ceiling panel. Hiding something behind it? Trying to cover up something that had stained it? I didn’t know. But somehow, someway, I knew I was going to go back there and take another look.
Chapter 7
I was due at work and Bebe was overdue for a meeting, so it wasn’t until afternoon that we had a chance to sit down and talk over what had happened that morning. Bebe had brewed up some delicious iced tea and we took our frosty glasses out into the back yard so that we could sit in the afternoon breezes and enjoy the fresh spring flowers along with the restful sound of the fountain as water trickled through it.
Water. Probably just about the most important element in the world. The search for the origin of the restaurant’s water was where we’d come in on this strange situation.
“Well, it’s a real shame that Marguerite was…uh…killed,” Bebe was saying, pressing her cold glass to her cheek and enjoying the crisp coolness. “I can’t say that I liked her very much the few times I had a chance to speak with her. But no one deserves that.”
I nodded my agreement. “She was definitely not warm and toasty,” I said. “No danger of grabbing the title of Miss Congeniality from the Italian Kitchen staff, that’s for sure.”
“Right.”
We were silent for a moment, both contemplating the tragic things that can happen like lightning striking out of the blue. I shook my head.
“Okay, I guess you can kind of get a feeling for why someone might want to…well, want her gone. But Carlo? That wonderful chef? I find that one tough to believe.”
“Absolutely. You
and me both. Did you taste that fruiti di mare? Heaven in a bowl. I dream of that taste at night. That man is a creative genius. He cannot be a killer.”
I nodded. “I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. How in the world was a chef going to get away with poisoning someone with his own tiramisu? No chance.”
“Well, according to Gwen, the tiramisu was meant as a taunt of sorts. A way of mocking her being on a diet. A way of tempting her to break it.”
I shook my head. “No way. Bringing her the goodies as a peace offering I can buy. Bringing her a Trojan horse full of poison….no.”
“I agree.”
“So who did it, then?”
We both pondered that one for a moment.
“Wait a minute,” Bebe said. “How do we know it was poison? Just because someone made a stab in the dark guess and everyone repeated it? What if it actually was a peace offering and Marguerite ate it as such and then…I don’t know…had a stroke or a heart attack or tripped on a pillow and hit her head. We really have no idea how she died. It could have been any of those things.”
“Right,” I said, though my mind had a flash of that pan zinging out toward Carlo’s back and that voice yelling, “Get out of here!” from the cottage. But I couldn’t bring that up without getting into the whole scene from the night before and I wasn’t ready to do that at this point.
“I wonder if anyone’s contacted Nigel yet?” Bebe mused. “Poor guy. This ought to hit him pretty hard.”
I glanced up the hill. “I wonder what’s going on up there?”
“I don’t see any activity,” she said, shading her eyes as she gazed up at the restaurant and compound. “I suppose they’ve questioned everyone by now. Do you think they’ll be searching each cabin?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
She stared at me. “But for what?”
I stared back. “Well, if it turns out Marguerite was really poisoned, they’ll be looking for the source or the stash or something like that.”
Murder and the Secret Spring Page 5
