Dial M for Mousse

by Laura Bradford

  Uh-oh.

  Winnie considered various damage control options but before she could settle on one, Bridget continued, the agitation in her voice morphing into something that sounded a lot more like hurt. “I realize you don’t have the same affection for me that you do for Parker, but is it really too much to ask that you think of me every once in a while, dear?”

  “I think of you all the time, Bridget,” Winnie protested.

  “Oh?”

  Uh-oh. Times two.

  “I suppose that’s why the pain and suffering that held me prisoner in my home yesterday warranted a phone call, as well as a personal visit to see if I needed anything.” A well-placed pause was quickly followed by, “Or am I remembering that incorrectly, dear? I do tend to slip into delirium when I’m too weak to get out of bed and properly hydrate.”

  “Bridget, I’m sorry. I told Parker because he was sitting on the porch when I got home. And when we were all done talking, I pretty much locked myself away in my apartment for the rest of the night.”

  “You could have invited me over to have takeout from Luigi’s with you and Renee . . .”

  She started to question how Bridget knew Renee had stopped by with dinner but let it go as the view of her driveway from the woman’s front window filled in the momentary blanks in her brain. “I didn’t know she was coming, Bridget. She just showed up in my apartment with dinner.”

  “What did she bring?”

  “Bring?”

  “For dinner.”

  “Oh. Wow. I don’t really remember—wait. Yes, I do. She brought a ravioli for herself and a farfalle for me.”

  “Were there leftovers?”

  “Yes, but she brought them home for Ty.” Winnie turned left at the next four-way intersection. “So are you feeling better today?”

  “Yes. I rebounded from death’s door shortly before dawn.”

  Winnie nibbled back the laugh she knew would seal her fate with the woman, and instead gave what she hoped were appropriate clucking noises. “Was it your sciatic nerve again?”

  “No, that was Sunday evening, dear.”

  “A flu?”

  “No.”

  “Cold?”

  “Since when has a cold incapacitated me, dear?”

  Last week? The week before that?

  Before she could speak, Bridget got back to her original point. “No, dear, I had something much more severe. So severe, in fact, the doctor is unsure of its name.”

  “I’m so sorry, Bridget. I hope Dr. Whitman can identify what it was.”

  “As do I, dear. I’d hate to see anyone else suffer the way that I did last night.”

  Winnie made a left onto Main Street and found herself instinctively glancing in the direction of the storefront that had once played host to her own bakery, Delectable Delights. At the time, faced with rent she could no longer cover, she’d been certain her lifelong dream had met its demise. But now, looking back, she couldn’t help but see that moment in time as merely the end to one life chapter and a springboard into the next.

  After all, if she hadn’t been forced to close the bakery, she wouldn’t have started the Emergency Dessert Squad. And if she hadn’t started the Emergency Dessert Squad, she might not have met Jay.

  Then again, she could think of one person who probably wished she hadn’t . . .

  “Winnie, dear? Are you still there?”

  Shaking her thoughts back into the moment, she slowed for a pedestrian and then continued down Main Street. “Hey, I’m half a block from your office. Any chance you might like to do lunch?”

  Movement from the passenger seat pulled her gaze off the road just long enough to find Lovey staring at her, wide-eyed.

  “Oh, wait. I can’t do that. Lovey is with me.”

  “Bessie, our receptionist, loves cats,” Bridget insisted. “Lovey can stay with her while we eat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. I’ll have her walk down to the main lobby with me now and she can take her while we go off to lunch.”

  “Don’t you want to check with her first in case she doesn’t want a cat hanging around?” Winnie asked.

  “Bessie will be fine. I’ll bring her back dessert from wherever we go to lunch.”

  There was no denying the excitement in Bridget’s voice over the notion of being asked to lunch and, for a moment, Winnie felt a wave of self-imposed guilt wash over her from head to toe. She’d been so busy the last few weeks with the Dessert Squad and Jay that she hadn’t really stopped to assess how little time she’d spent with the elderly woman.

  Her life was richer because of Mr. Nelson and Bridget. They’d been her biggest cheerleaders since she’d moved to Silver Lake and, more specifically, Serenity Lane. She owed them the same in return, regardless of how busy her life got.

  “I’m pulling up now and . . .” The words fell away as she spied Bridget’s stout frame and crop of snow-white hair already standing in the lobby door. Beside her stood a beanpole of a woman with curly red hair and horn-rimmed glasses. “Okay, I see you.”

  Swinging wide, Winnie claimed the first open parking spot she could find and then turned toward her regal passenger. “Be a good girl for a little while and I’ll get you home as soon as possible, okay?”

  Lovey’s answering hiss morphed into a purr as Bridget opened her door and extracted her from the seat with a series of soft coos. “You’re going to have a wonderful time with my friend Bessie, aren’t you, sweet girl?”

  “Hi, Bessie.” Winnie stepped onto the pavement and smiled across the top of the Dessert Squad at Bridget’s coworker. “Are you sure this is okay? Bridget and I could always do this another—”

  “Nonsense! It’s perfectly fine, isn’t it, Bessie?”

  Bessie looked from Lovey to Winnie and back again, shifting her nonexistent weight from one foot to the other as she did. “I—”

  Bridget whispered something in Lovey’s ear and then handed the animal off to Bessie. “If you find yourself starting to sneeze, just open that window between editorial and advertising and take a few deep breaths. We’ll be back after a while. Winnie and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Wait. Bessie is allergic to cats?” Winnie asked.

  Hooking her hand inside Winnie’s upper arm, Bridget tugged her toward the sidewalk that lined their side of Main Street. “If we don’t dawdle, we’ll be back before the hives start.”

  • • •

  Winnie set the remains of her sandwich back on her plate and helped herself to a chip from the basket in the middle of the table. “Now that I’ve gotten you up to speed on my part in finding Sally Dearfield, is it okay if I ask you a question?”

  “Of course, dear.” Bridget set down her soup spoon and smiled at Winnie. “Is this about your man troubles?”

  “Man troubles? What man troubles?”

  “Renee pulled up a picture of Jay’s ex-wife on her phone the other day and I can only imagine how worried you must be.”

  “I—I’m not worried,” Winnie protested.

  Liar, liar, pants on fire . . .

  “Good. Because Jay is a smart man. He knows that sincerity is more important in the long run than beauty . . .” Bridget dabbed at her lips with her napkin and then leaned across the table in Winnie’s direction. “So just hang in there a little longer and be glad there’s almost an entire country between them most of the time.”

  Bookending her face with her own hands, Winnie closed her eyes just long enough to take a deep, fortifying breath. “Actually, I just wanted to ask whether you’d heard anything about one of those TV reality shows possibly casting out at Silver Lake Artists’ Retreat later this week . . .”

  “A reality show? Casting in Silver Lake?”

  Winnie helped herself to another chip. “Well, I think it fell through for some reason, but did
you hear about it before it fell through?”

  “If it had been a plan to begin with, I would have known. Shows like that want the media to know.” Bridget shoved her empty soup bowl off to the side with her left hand and thumped the spot where it had been with her right. “What do you know that I don’t, Winnie?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “You must know something to be asking these kinds of questions.”

  Winnie took one last chip and then pushed the basket just out of reach. “When I was out at the Silver Lake Artists’ Retreat this morning talking to Colin Norton, he—”

  “I thought you said you made your deliveries to the resort yesterday,” Bridget mused. “Which is why you were there to witness the moment Sally Dearfield hit the ground.”

  “I did, although the second part of your statement isn’t entirely accurate.”

  Bridget’s chin dipped to afford a crystal clear view of Winnie atop the upper rim of her reading glasses. “Winnie, dear, you told me just a few moments ago that you were there.”

  “To see her dead body, yes. But I suspect it hit the ground before Renee and I stepped into that room.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I think one of the people in that room put the cyanide in Sally’s teacup and—”

  Bridget’s gasp was so loud it not only drowned out the rest of Winnie’s sentence, it also drew the attention of more than a few of their fellow diners. “Did you just say cyanide?” she half hissed, half whispered.

  Nodding, Winnie held her finger to her lips. “Greg said there was a strong smell of bitter almonds in her mouth when he tried to resuscitate her.”

  “But that would mean she was . . . murdered.” Bridget leaned forward, studied Winnie closely, and then plucked a notebook from her purse and flipped it open. “Tonight, when we have more time, I’ll chastise you for keeping this from me earlier in this conversation. For now though, I’ll take your apologies in the form of details.”

  “Look, I only know this from a conversation I had with Greg. I’m thinking, if you haven’t gotten wind of it at the paper, it’s not official yet. So please, don’t use me as your source.”

  Bridget narrowed her best stink eye on Winnie. “What kind of reporter do you think I am?”

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to get Greg in trouble.”

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, Winnie.”

  “First rodeo?” she repeated, laughing. “Where did you get that expression?”

  “The coffeehouse. It’s where all the young people hang out.” Bridget uncapped her pen and pointed it at Winnie. “So you didn’t see Sally hit the ground?”

  “No. But everyone in the room gasped as if it had just happened when Renee and I stepped into the doorway.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Her teacup was shattered on the ground next to her body. Abby Thompson, one of the artists in the room at the time, told Chief Rankin that Sally dropped it when she fell. But Renee and I never heard it fall despite the time it took for us to get into the building, locate the room they were all in, and get to it.”

  A flash of understanding registered in Bridget’s dark eyes just before the tip of her pen started moving across the open notebook page. “So the gasp was for your benefit.”

  “Looking back, it sure seems that way.” Swayed by the pull of the chip basket, Winnie helped herself to one more.

  Bridget asked a few more questions, wrote down Winnie’s answers, and then popped her head up once again. “Do you have a guess on who might have done it?”

  Winnie leaned back in her chair and let her gaze travel across Bridget’s shoulder to the window and the sidewalk beyond. “Not yet.”

  “Not yet? What does that mean, dear?”

  “They used me, Bridget. They used me and Renee to paint a very different picture of reality. I’m not okay with that.”

  “But if the gasp was for your benefit and there were five people in that room when you arrived, how can you narrow it down to just one? Wouldn’t it seem as if they were all involved?”

  It was a point she hadn’t necessarily pondered, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hold merit. “Maybe. It’s certainly something to consider. But I definitely got the sense Colin had a real distaste for Sally.”

  “Do you know when this group of artists arrived?” Bridget asked.

  Winnie paused at the question. “Sally didn’t say. But I got the impression they hadn’t been there long. So maybe two or three days at most?”

  “So she was around them for two or three days at most before someone killed her? That doesn’t make much sense.”

  Bridget was right. It didn’t. Sure, a person could get under your skin after a few days. Heck, some people could do that in a matter of hours. But was three days of an annoying personality enough to make someone kill you? Probably not.

  “Maybe the killer knew her before this week.” Winnie sat up tall as her brain caught up with her own supposition. “Wait! When Colin made mention of this reality show audition that wasn’t, I got the sense that’s why he came here.”

  “Maybe she made it up to get bodies in the cabins,” Bridget suggested. “Bodies are money, I imagine.”

  “Maybe. But in the next breath, he referred to Sally via that quote about hell having no fury like a woman scorned.” She took a moment with that memory and then looked across the table at her elderly friend. “None of this makes any sense.”

  Bridget tapped her pen against her chin and then shot it into the air. “It does if Sally lured them here out of anger.”

  “Anger?”

  “Think about the quote, dear. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ If this Colin fellow was referencing Sally as the woman scorned, she was angry.”

  Dropping her head into her hands, Winnie batted Bridget’s words around in her thoughts. Was Sally a bitter woman? Hell-bent on being nasty for the sake of being nasty? Or was it something far more specific to this particular group of—

  She smacked her hand to her mouth as Sally’s voice took center stage in her head.

  I’m hoping the prospect of being penniless and publicly mortified is all the motivation they really need. But a clever little rescue dessert for their respective craft certainly can’t hurt. Especially if it’s timed just right.

  “She was out to get them, Bridget!” Then, realizing she was speaking far too loud for their surroundings, she leaned across the table and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Now I just need to figure out why.”

  Bridget pinned Winnie over the top of her glasses. “How do you propose doing that?”

  “That’s a good question,” she said. “And certainly one I need to work through. But for starters, I think we need to figure out what, if anything, these five artists have in common.”

  “We?”

  Winnie answered her friend’s questioning eyes with a teasing shrug. “I’m sorry, Bridget. That was awfully presumptuous of me to assume that with all your health issues you—”

  “I’m in!”

  Chapter 8

  Winnie was back on Main Street and heading home when Lovey and the seat she was sitting on began to vibrate. Reaching past the now-irritated cat, she hit the Speaker button. “Does this mean you have something for me?”

  “Hmmm. I’m feeling a bit used at this moment.”

  She returned the grin she heard in her caller’s voice with one of her own and raised it with a laugh. “I’m sorry, Greg. You’re right. How are you this fine day?”

  Greg Stevens, aka Master Sergeant Hottie, cleared his throat, mumbled something unintelligible, and then followed it up with a loud click on his end of the line. “Okay, that’s better.”

  “What’s better?”

  “I stepped out of the break room so I could have a little much-needed privacy.”

  At the next traf
fic light she turned right. “I take it it’s been a quiet shift at the ambulance district?”

  “I’ve been trapped in the break room with Chuck and Stan since we got back from the retreat house yesterday afternoon. I’m ready to strangle one, if not both of them.”

  “Considering that would result in a call and, therefore, something to do, maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” she quipped, turning left at the second four-way stop.

  “Unless, of course, I’m successful from the start.”

  “You got called yesterday for a dead body . . .”

  “True.” Greg exhaled into the phone and followed it up with the kind of chuckle capable of weakening knees all across Silver Lake. “Anyway, I thought you might like to hear the word on the street. Or, to be more accurate, the recent e-mail chatter from the ME’s office.”

  She piloted the Dessert Squad onto Serenity Lane and instantly slowed to a crawl out of respect to her neighbors. “Tell me.”

  “I was right. Cyanide was detected in and around the victim’s cup, and the preliminary tox report pretty much seals it up.”

  “Wow. So it’s really true,” she murmured. “Sally Dearfield was murdered.”

  “No doubt about that one. And whoever did it, wasn’t worried about being shy.”

  “Shy?”

  “About the amount of cyanide they used.”

  “Ahhh . . .” She pulled into her driveway, shifted the vintage ambulance into park, and turned off the engine. “I imagine Chief Rankin knows about this?”

  “I’m sure he does, though it doesn’t appear he’s in any hurry to finger a suspect, from what I can see at this exact moment.”

  Pushing the door open, Winnie slid out of the vehicle and snapped for Lovey to follow. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I’m standing here in the bay, looking out at the sidewalk, and the chief is sitting on one of the benches outside, talking to one of his hunting buddies. And, by the looks of it, I’m guessing they’re swapping their best jokes.”

  “I wish I could say I’m surprised but, alas, I cannot.” A visual inspection of the section of porch she could see from the driveway yielded an empty chair in front of Mr. Nelson’s chessboard. A glance at her watch filled in the gaps—Mr. Nelson, like virtually every other resident of Serenity Lane with the exception of Bridget, was taking a post-lunch nap. The snores that greeted her approach via the open first-floor windows simply served as confirmation. “I know you could probably get in trouble for telling me this stuff, Greg, but thanks for knowing I needed to hear it. I’ve thought of little else since it happened.”