Dial M for Mousse

by Laura Bradford

  “And you don’t think that name is going to, um . . . I don’t know . . . maybe raise suspicion when you hand it to this Norton guy?”

  Winnie snapped her fingers toward the living room and watched as Lovey lowered her leg and came running over to the door. “That’s just the behind-the-scenes name. For Colin Norton, it’s simply going to be referred to as Cannoli Imagine What You’re Going Through.”

  At Renee’s gaped mouth, Winnie added, “I talked to Greg last night before I went to bed. He told me he was pretty sure the five people in that room are going to be required to stay in town until the investigation into Sally Dearfield’s death is completed.”

  “So Chief Rankin is going to investigate.”

  “In his own way, I suppose.” Winnie opened the door for Lovey and followed the cat down the stairs to the front door. “I’ll be back. You can help yourself to a few thumbprint cookies if you want—just excuse the ones that went all the way through to the plate. I was still working through a little bit of frustration at that point.”

  “You’re a nut. You know that, right?”

  “I’ll have to take your word on that.” Winnie stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waved up at her friend. “If an order comes in, you know where to find me.”

  • • •

  They were on the main road on the way to the lake when she finally relaxed her hold on the steering wheel. “So what do you think, Lovey? Think we’ll learn something from the resident poet that will crack this case wide open?”

  Lovey looked at her and blinked.

  Progress . . .

  “Hey, I’m sorry I was a little cranky with you last night after Renee went home.” Winnie tried to focus on the road and the lake they were approaching on her left, but try as she did, her thoughts kept circling back to the reason her first batch of cookies had been virtually mutilated by her overzealous thumb. An image of Jay’s ex-wife had kept appearing in the middle of each and every tablespoon of dough she rounded onto the baking pan. “I mean, I knew he wasn’t going to be able to escape this little trip out to California without having some dealings with her . . . but dinner? And breakfast? And getting sidetracked from our phone call by her showing up again?”

  She fixed her gaze on Lovey for a split second and released the sigh she’d been holding back all morning. “I don’t want to lose him, Lovey. He’s . . . perfect for me.”

  And it was true.

  In fact, until the moment she walked into Jay Morgan’s office to make her first-ever dessert rescue, she’d been perfectly content with the notion of a life made up of baking and elderly friends. But the six-foot classically handsome college professor changed that with little more than a smile and a genuine desire to get to know her and the people and things that mattered to her most.

  Yes, his sixteen-year-old-daughter, Caroline, had done her best to cause problems for them, but somehow, someway, the teenager’s best efforts had failed to cause any sort of rift between them.

  So far, anyway . . .

  “She’s been without her mom for eleven years, Lovey. Eleven years. Why the sudden need to reconnect now? With a woman who traded her for fame and fortune and never looked back?” Winnie mused only to settle on an answer that was as plain as the little pink nose on Lovey’s face. “Because she wanted it to cause problems for me and Jay . . .”

  At the sound of Jay’s name, Lovey’s ears noticeably perked.

  “I know,” she whispered. “I miss him, too.”

  She turned left just beyond the lake and then lost herself in mental images of the first man who’d ever made her dream about something other than chocolate, puff pastries, and how to combine the two in deliciously innovative ways. Yes, she still dreamed her way through the kitchen, but now it was a tour often interrupted by flashes of light brown hair with a sprinkling of gray around the temples . . . a strong chin . . . blue-green eyes . . . an infectious smile . . . and the memory of a warm hand cupping her cheek . . .

  Shaking her head, she made herself focus on the road in front of them and the turnoff that was little more than two car lengths away. There would be time to think about Jay later. After she delivered the cannoli to the first of five suspects in her mind’s notepad.

  “Okay, Lovey, here’s how this is going to go.” She slowed to a near crawl as pavement gave way to gravel beneath the ambulance’s tires. “You’re going to be a little difficult about getting back under the gurney when the rescue is complete. You don’t have to totally disappear, just be a little cagey. That way I can make small talk that segues into some out-and-out question asking, okay?”

  A quick glance at Lovey yielded another blink.

  “Just know that if you let me down, you’re getting nothing but dry food tonight. Got it?”

  Hisss . . .

  “So much for progress.” She steered around a rut in the middle of the driveway and slowed to a stop in front of the first cabin. With a turn of her wrist, she cut the engine and then deposited the keys into the inside pocket of the rescue jacket she’d donned before backing onto Serenity Lane. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  Less than five minutes later, she rolled the cannoli-topped gurney to a stop at Colin Norton’s front door and knocked, once, twice. But instead of the sound of footsteps, she heard a window lifting to her right.

  “Hello?”

  She stepped back in an effort to see the window and was rewarded for her efforts with a visual of the man who’d announced Sally’s demise via a poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye. “Mr. Norton?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have a delivery for you.”

  “I didn’t order anything.”

  “I know that.” She left the gurney and sidestepped her way over to the window. “I ordered it for you.”

  “But I don’t know you.”

  “Technically, that’s true. But I delivered one of my rescue desserts to you yesterday.”

  The man’s rounded face pressed forward against the screen. “The s’more-flavored fudge? That was from you?”

  “It was.”

  “The title you gave it was very, very clever . . . although writer’s block is not something I’ve ever had to contend with.” His brown eyes slid down her uniform and then turned right toward the front stoop. “So? What did you bring me this time?”

  “Cannoli.” She cleared her throat and hit the silent reset button on her answer. “Or, rather, Cannoli Imagine What You’re Going Through.”

  “Cannoli Imagine What I’m Going Through?” he echoed.

  “That’s right.”

  “Meaning?”

  “With what happened here yesterday . . . with Sally Dearfield.” When he showed no reaction, she continued. “It had to be such a traumatic experience to watch someone drop dead like that in front of you.”

  Unless that was your plan . . .

  He leaned forward until she was fairly certain he was going to break the screen and then stepped back. “Cannoli, you say?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll meet you at the front door.” Reaching upward, he braced his hands on the inside edge of the window and slammed it closed with a thump.

  Chapter 6

  Engaging the foot brake on the inside of the gurney’s back right wheel, Winnie straightened her uniform coat and turned to face the man who’d followed her down the hallway and into the tiny kitchen. “As I said outside, I Cannoli Imagine What You’re Going Through in light of yesterday, and I hope that, if nothing else, this lightens your burden a little.”

  A hint of pure glee lit Colin’s dark brown eyes just before he leaned around Winnie and helped himself to a cannoli. “Oh wow. This looks delicious . . .” He took a bite and moaned almost immediately. “I thought the fudge was good, but this—this is divine.”

  “That’s music to my ears.” She balanced the rescue bag on the edge of the gurney and worked its zip
per around to the back. When the contents were exposed, she grabbed a napkin and a plate and offered both to the man. “Or should I say poetry instead of music?”

  He stopped, swallowed his second bite of cannoli, and studied her across the piece that remained in his hand. “Victor Hugo said, ‘Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.’ But it was Gustave Flaubert who said, ‘There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.’ So I leave it up to you”—he dropped his gaze to her name tag—“Ms. Johnson, to decide which would be more apropos.”

  “Call me Winnie.” She removed the remaining plates, napkins, and plastic utensils she included with each rescue and set them on the small dinette table in the corner. “Did you always dream of being a poet?”

  “From the moment I wrote my first haiku in second grade.” He wiped his hands on his napkin and stood erect, like a soldier. “No two are alike, making a blanket of white, snow is so pretty.”

  She stopped midway back to the gurney and began to count in her head. “Five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables . . . Very nice!”

  “That was my first dalliance with poetry, and I haven’t looked back since.”

  Retrieving the cannoli plate from the gurney, Winnie instead deposited it onto the tiny kitchenette table, her ever-growing smile accompanying her every step. “That’s kind of how it was with baking for me. I made my first-ever batch of cookies when I was five years old. Something about putting all those ingredients together to create something completely different was fascinating to me. Add in the reactions I got to what I’d made and, well, I was sold. And, just like you with poetry, I haven’t looked back, either.”

  “Then it seems we have something in common.”

  “You mean besides what we saw yesterday.” She made a show of zipping the rescue bag closed and placing it on the makeshift shelf below the gurney’s mattress.

  “Saw?” he echoed only to swat the question from the air with a flick of his wrist. “Right. You mentioned Dearfield’s death. I’d almost forgotten.”

  She forced a nervous giggle from her lips. “I wish I could forget. But the last thing I expected to see when I stopped to speak to Sally was her dead body.”

  “Yes, that had to be rather unfortunate.”

  Unfortunate? Really?

  “Anyway, I must get back to my work.” Colin gestured toward the gurney and then the door. “Can I help you to your—”

  “What’s that like?” she asked quickly. “To be able to capture a moment in time and then write about it in such a way that the person reading your work can feel as if they are right there with you, living that same moment?”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “An awe-inspiring gift.” She peeked into a tiny parlor with a single armchair, a matching ottoman, a basket of magazines, and a desk. Strewn across the desk were letters—some out of their envelopes, others still inside. “Is that fan mail?”

  He followed the path forged by her index finger, his throat moving with a hard swallow. “Why, yes . . . yes it is!”

  “But you just got here.”

  “I . . . I bring them with me.” He elevated his chin with an inhale. “For . . . inspiration. Now, I’d be happy to walk you out to your car if you’d like.”

  Seizing the opportunity afforded by the man’s momentary distraction, she employed the tip of her shoe to nudge Lovey off the makeshift shelf between the gurney’s wheels and onto the ground. When the cat obliged, she feigned surprise. “Lovey? What on earth are you doing here?”

  Colin spun around, his gaze following Winnie’s down to the floor and the bored-looking feline now sitting in the middle of the kitchen. “That’s a cat!”

  “I know, and I’m so sorry. She must have gotten into the car when I wasn’t looking. She’s a bit of a pill like that.”

  Lovey lifted her chin, flattened her ears, and stared straight at Winnie.

  Hisss . . .

  The anxiousness Colin had shown regarding Winnie’s departure disappeared and he crouched down to the ground, extending his hand toward Lovey as he did. “Come on over here, pretty lady.”

  Sure enough, Lovey pranced over to Colin, the purr of her personal motorboat impossible to miss in the otherwise silent room. “‘The cat went here and there / And the moon spun round like a top, / And the nearest kin of the moon, / The creeping cat, looked up.”

  You mean traitorous cat, she thought before addressing Colin once again. “Wow, that’s lovely. Did you write that?”

  A noticeable pause gave way to a slight shake of his head. “No. No. That was written by William Butler Yeats—a man many consider to be an important contributor to twentieth-century literature. What I just quoted was merely the beginning of his poem, entitled ‘The Cat and the Moon.’”

  She stifled the urge to yawn and, instead, widened her eyes in rapt interest. “It’s beautiful. I would imagine it must be nearly impossible to write with everything going on right now.”

  “I can always write,” he countered.

  “I guess that makes sense. I do some of my best baking when I’m surrounded by craziness.” Then, hoping against hope to hit on something that could assist in her quest to find Sally’s killer, Winnie continued. “So what poetic masterpiece are those letters going to inspire you to write today?”

  “Letters?” he hissed, not unlike Lovey.

  She swept his attention back toward the desk. “Your fan mail.”

  “Oh. Right.” His shoulders eased in time with an exhale he rushed to cover. “I was going back and forth between a piece about a mountain and another about a mask, but now that the audition is no longer at play, I will turn my efforts toward submitting both for publication, instead.”

  “Audition?” she prodded. “Audition for what?”

  Slowly, his eyes came back into view as his hands slipped down his face. “That’s why we all came to this horrible little place. To show the decision makers what we can do.”

  Afraid to move, afraid to breathe, she kept her voice modulated. “Decision makers?”

  “The ones tasked with selecting next year’s Do You Have What It Takes? cast.”

  She drew back. “The reality talent show?”

  He nodded.

  “They’re casting here? In Silver Lake? I—I didn’t know that.”

  His jaw tightened. “That’s because they’re not.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He clamped his mouth closed, inflated his cheeks, and then released the air they held along with a groan of angry frustration. “‘Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d / Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.’”

  Feeling him slip away, she did her best to reel him back in. “I’m familiar with that second part. What poem is that from?”

  “It’s not from a poem, Ms. Johnson. It’s a line from a play written by William Congreve in the late sixteen hundreds.”

  She could hear her heart thumping in her chest and knew it was a sign she’d stumbled onto something. Whether it was a something that was wise to explore when no one other than Renee knew where she was, though, was a little less clear. Still, another question or two couldn’t hurt, right?

  “She must have done something really awful, huh?”

  Colin pulled his hands from a second pass through his thick hair. “She?”

  “Sally Dearfield.” When Colin said nothing, she pushed a little further. “She is who you were referencing with that line from the play, isn’t she?”

  The second the words were out, she knew she’d pushed too far. Suddenly, the almost trancelike state that had kept him talking off and on over the last few minutes was gone, and in its place was a man who knew exactly where he was and exactly whom he didn’t want to be talking to.

  “It’s time for you to go, Ms. Johnson. So please collect your c
at and your paraphernalia and get out.”

  Aware of a chill making its way down her spine, Winnie snapped her fingers at Lovey. “Okay, Lovey, it’s time to go home.”

  Lovey took one look at Winnie and darted into the small sitting area off the kitchen, the tip of her tail the only thing visible as she moved between the love seat and its matching ottoman.

  “Lovey, come here right now!”

  A single yellow eye peeked around the legs of the lone end table and—winked?

  Winnie felt her mouth go slack as her thoughts traveled back to the car ride and the conversation that had brought them to that very cabin . . .

  Okay, Lovey, here’s how this is going to go. You’re going to be a little difficult about getting back under the gurney when the rescue is complete. You don’t have to totally disappear, just be a little cagey. That way I can make small talk that segues into some out-and-out question asking, okay?

  With the help of the nearest wall, Winnie steadied herself against a reality she simply couldn’t ignore.

  Lovey was following directions—Winnie’s directions.

  Granted, her timing was miserable, but at least she was—

  A sharp and fast elbow in her side cut short her proud parenting moment and she recoiled in pain as Colin strode into the room, grabbed Lovey by the back of her neck, and tossed her at Winnie. “Here. Now go.”

  Chapter 7

  Winnie pulled onto Silver Lake Boulevard and tapped the Speaker button on her phone. “Hello? This is Winnie.”

  “Imagine my surprise when, in the middle of the morning staff meeting, Frank makes mention that you—my next-door neighbor and supposed friend—are the one who called in the dead body out at the artists’ retreat yesterday.” A quick sniff was followed by a sigh that could be described only as highly agitated. “But don’t fret, dear. At least you shared that little tidbit of information with . . . Parker.”