Ditched 4 Murder

by J. C. Eaton

  Rochelle turned her head toward the pastry aviary and shrugged. “What do you mean?”

  “You see . . . er . . . uh . . . oh, what the heck! Antoine’s not who he says he is.”

  “Huh?”

  “His real name is Tony Marciano and he used to work for Feltons’ Pavilions, Tents, and Awnings.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’ve been working side by side with Antoine, and he’s a skilled pastry chef. Polished . . . Precise . . .”

  I finished her sentence with one word: “Pretend.”

  Then I told her the whole gruesome saga about how Roland had embarrassed and humiliated Tony and how Tony sought out and got his revenge. “It wasn’t so much a planned act of murder but more like someone reaching their breaking point and snapping. Crack! Like that!”

  Rochelle’s face flushed. “Julien’s going to snap when he finds out! Don’t tell me you’re going to send one of those deputies in here. That’ll be a disaster for La Petite Pâtisserie. See for yourself. Julien and Antoine are getting ready to serve up the aviary.”

  “Serve up the aviary?”

  “Yes. Each guest approaches and selects his or her bird. Every bird has its own handwritten card revealing the ingredients. My favorite is lemon pastry with tart blueberry filling.”

  “Do they also break off a piece of the branch as well and put it on their plate?”

  Rochelle looked at me as if I’d suggested decapitating one of the birds. “No. Of course not. The plates are made of a special chocolate blend and are edible. They look like mini nests. Please, Miss Kimball. Speak to those deputies. Speak to your boss. Tell them to hold off. Julien doesn’t need any bad publicity.”

  I really couldn’t see the harm in waiting until the reception was over. I mean, it wasn’t as if Tony was a dangerous assassin about to massacre the wedding party.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  “Thanks. I’ve got to get back over to Julien and Antoine.”

  In all of the madness, I hadn’t even touched the food and my stomach was rumbling nonstop. I’d sample a small platter of the breakfast delicacies and then go off to find Nate and my mother. I was certain they were jabbering away with the deputies in the parking lot.

  “Where have you been?” Kirk asked when I sat down. “Do you really have indigestion or are you using that as an excuse to get out of here?”

  Judy shot my cousin a dirty look. “Kirk! That’s a terrible accusation to make. Why would Phee lie about something like that?”

  I saw the smirk on my cousin’s face. “I’d feign dysentery if I thought it could get me out of this reception. While you were outside, we had to listen to Louis and my mother’s poetry readings on love and eternal life. Between that and the stuffed eel, I thought I was going to heave.”

  Judy and I couldn’t help but laugh. At least the main meal from Saveur de Evangeline was pretty decent, right down to the hollandaise sauce Cecilia and Myrna had tasted. As I helped myself to another bite of the eggs Benedict, something brushed against me. It was my mother.

  She yanked her chair from the table and plopped herself down. “It’s a damn good thing I went out there, Phee. What were you and your boss going to do? Wait until the killer decided to sign a confession?”

  “You didn’t have to chase him down the footpath, Mom. Nate had things under control.”

  “Well . . . now he does. He’s talking with the deputies. That man . . . the one I chased . . . which chef is he? They’re taking him into custody.”

  “Sebastian from Saveur de Evangeline, why?”

  “I wanted to make sure he wasn’t the pastry chef. With the main meal served already, I didn’t want anything to interfere with the desserts.”

  “Yeah, well . . . about that . . . there’s kind of a situation with one of their chefs.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s another killer. Who on earth did my sister hire for this wedding? Murder Incorporated?”

  Suddenly I was poked in my back.

  It was Shirley from the next table. “Psst! I don’t want to alarm you, Phee, but why are those two deputies blocking the serving line to the bird desserts? And look! Your boss is over there, too.”

  No, no, no! This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. Antoine can come unglued at any moment, and then what?

  I jumped up from my seat, mumbled a few words to Shirley, and raced over to the Aviary Atop the Tree. Nate had all but promised the deputies would be discreet. Too bad he couldn’t make that same guarantee for La Petite Pâtisserie’s pastry chefs.

  Julien Rossier looked like a cartoon dragon with his nostrils flaring and his face turning beet red. “This is an outrage! An outrage! I must ask you to leave at once. I can assure you my esteemed pastry artist, Antoine Marcel, has nothing to do with the untimely and unfortunate death of Saveur de Evangeline’s cook.”

  He spit out the last word as if it was a piece of dirt.

  “Mr. Rossier,” one of the deputies started to explain, “I’m afraid Mr. Marcel is not who he claims to be and that he is indeed responsible for the actions leading up to Mr. Roland LeDoux’s death.”

  “Nate,” I whispered. “Do something.”

  Nate immediately turned to the chamber musicians, who were seated near us, and motioned for them to make the music louder.

  I was frantic. “That’s not what I meant. What good is that going to do?”

  What happened next came so fast and so unexpected that I was still trying to figure out how we missed it. Julien stepped in front of the two deputies and in a loud voice announced, “La Petite Pâtisserie is pleased to begin serving our delectable winged delicacies from the Aviary Atop the Tree. Once we have served Mr. and Mrs. Melinsky their white chocolate cake doves with vanilla Bavarian cream, we welcome the guests to line up by zodiac table signs to select their dessert.”

  With a brisk wave of the hand and one clap, Julien stepped aside for Antoine and Rochelle to begin serving. No sooner did he take that one step when the deputy closest to me shouted, “Cuff him and read him his rights!”

  I grabbed Nate by the arm. “This is awful! They’re going to arrest Antoine. Right here in front of everyone. And your loud classical music isn’t going to help.”

  Actually, nothing would have helped, except maybe a giant meteorite slamming into the crimson bhurj tent. The deputy’s voice was so strong it could be heard well into the next county. “ANTOINE MARCEL, WE ARE TAKING YOU INTO CUSTODY REGARDING THE DEATH OF MR. ROLAND LEDOUX.”

  “You can’t do that!” Rochelle shouted. “He has to serve the pastry birds.”

  I was now in a full-blown panic and tugging at Nate’s sleeve. “Can’t you do something about this?”

  “Like what? Serve the birds myself?”

  And those were the last recognizable words I heard before my aunt Ina let out a scream from hell and charged toward the aviary as if it was Bunker Hill. It was complete and total pandemonium. People shouting, people whipping out their cell phones to take pictures, and people rushing toward the aviary to see what was going on. At first I thought my aunt was overreacting to Antoine’s arrest. That was before I realized why she was screaming in the first place.

  It was dawn. Sunrise. The time when bats returned to their caves or roosts or wherever they lived. Bats! The last thing this wedding needed. A large bat must have gotten confused and entered the tent. It was now swooping down all over the place and threatening to wreak havoc with the pastry birds.

  Most of the guests were waving their arms in the air as they screamed, but others were ducking under the tables.

  I ran to the nearest deputy. “You have a gun. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

  His response was curt and to the point. “I’m not about to kill an endangered species, ma’am.”

  Again with the “ma’am.” What is it with these young deputies?

  By now, Cecilia Flanagan and Lucinda Espinoza had made their way to the dessert table, and both of them were screaming, “KILL IT! KILL IT! BEFORE IT GIVES US RABIES!�
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  Nate tried ushering the two of them away from the desserts, but it was futile. Meanwhile, the deputies were trying to put handcuffs on Antoine but had to stop when they got dive-bombed by the bat.

  Julien kept yelling, “You’re making a mistake,” but no one was listening.

  Then came a voice that could engulf a stadium—my mother’s. She couldn’t help it. Loud voices and facial hair ran in my family. In this case, I was grateful she inherited the sturdy vocal chords and not the latter. “OPEN THE FLAPS TO THE TENT! IT’S ONLY A BAT. OPEN THE FLAPS AND IT’LL FLY OUT OF HERE!”

  A few brave souls left their seats and pushed open the side flaps before ducking to the ground in case the bat decided to pass by them on the way out. It didn’t. Instead, it did something far worse. Something that sent my cousin Kirk into gales of laughter while everyone else reacted with horror. The bat crashed right into the Aviary Atop the Tree, sending pastry birds to their death. Not one crash. Many. It was as if the poor bat couldn’t figure out how to escape the wall of birds. As a result, the floor of the pavilion/tent was strewn with cake crumbs and slippery fillings. From buttercream to boysenberry sauce, it was impossible to take a step without wondering what was underneath your shoe.

  I had always heard the expression “watching a train wreck.” For the first time in my life, I knew exactly what that meant. The bat didn’t fly out from the open flaps. The guests did. One by one, they stepped out into the full sunshine, distancing themselves from the “celebration of bliss.”

  Chapter 32

  I’m not sure exactly when the bat made its escape, but I imagine it was sometime between Antoine Marcel aka Tony Marciano being escorted into a sheriff’s car and Louis Melinsky trying to console his devastated bride.

  Frankly, it was amazing the bhurj tent was still standing. I was out in front, shaking my head and staring straight at it when I heard Jake Felton’s voice behind me.

  “Damn good thing we got you the bhurj tent. Those suckers can stand up to anything. Can’t say for sure what would’ve happened if we got you the flimsy white tent your aunt wanted.”

  “Huh?” I turned around and looked at Jake as if he’d walked off a spaceship.

  He was still talking. “Yeah. Good thing you got the bhurj. So . . . guess the guys and I can start taking it down, yeah?”

  Most of the guests were making their way back to the parking lot and their cars. Absent from the lot were the two sheriff cars. I knew the one with Sebastian in it had left a while back but, in all the commotion, I didn’t realize the other car was gone as well.

  “Yep,” Jake went on, “this was a pisser, all right. Just goes to show you . . .”

  I wasn’t sure he was still talking to me, but there was no one else around. Nate and my family, as well as the book club ladies, had to be standing on the other side of the tent.

  “Show me what?” I said.

  “That they arrested that hoity-toity chef for killing the money guy on the golf course. And get this—Tony gets carted off for . . . what did they call that? Oh yeah . . . ‘depraved indifference.’ What’s that gonna net him? Probation?”

  “The way I see it, you weren’t so innocent yourself.”

  “Hey. All I did was move a motorcycle. And I’m gonna claim I thought it belonged to Tony.”

  “I don’t get it. You and your buddy left Roland LeDoux in that ditch where he got bitten by a snake and later died. You should be arrested, too.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ve got an alibi and you’re it. Once we got the bike in my truck and covered it with the tarp, I drove around and came back. You got there before me. How’s anyone gonna know you didn’t do it?”

  I felt like the biggest fool in the county. I got played, and he was gloating. Jake pretended to arrive at Petroglyph Plaza after I did. In a way, he was a victim, too. I mean, he didn’t arrange to meet with Tony. He just happened to show up and decided to earn some extra cash by stashing a bike and helping his old buddy cover up what he had done. But what had he done? Toss keys in a ditch? Leave Roland there to die? Jake had it right. Depraved indifference. Not murder.

  “Phee! Phee! There you are! We thought you’d headed to the parking lot.” It was my cousin Kirk. Waving for me to join him.

  Jake was already starting to untie a rope when I waved back at Kirk.

  “Phee, where were you? All of us are over on the other side of the tent trying to get my mother to stop crying. All of us, except your boss. He’s trying to get Louis to stop laughing.”

  As I looked at the huge crimson tent behind me, I shook my head. “What a disaster. What a complete and total disaster.”

  “Aw, it wasn’t that bad. Think about it. Up until the time the bat got in and the chefs got arrested, everything was going okay. Yeah, sure, the appetizers were a little weird, but the meal was pretty good.”

  “It was supposed to be more than ‘pretty good.’ Those one-of-a-kind pastries cost a fortune. Now the only thing your mother has to show for it is a tent floor filled with crumbs and sticky sauces. And to make matters worse, the pastry chef got arrested for murder. Murder! I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

  “Come on, Phee. Everyone’s waiting. We’re all going back to that godforsaken Cactus Wren. We can sort it out there.”

  As I followed Kirk to the other side of the tent, I heard a voice.

  “Miss Kimball! Miss Kimball!” It was Sylena racing toward me.

  I turned to my cousin. “You go ahead, Kirk. I’ll catch up.”

  Sylena was bursting with enthusiasm. “Wow! I’ve covered lots of weddings, but nothing like this. Ever! Give me your e-mail address and I’ll send you a preliminary slide show. Okay? Later on, I can do the video. And the sound track. It’ll take me about two weeks. Tons of stuff to sift through.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should thank her or apologize for the fiasco. I did both.

  “It’s fine, Miss Kimball. Really. I got some great close-ups of that lesser long-nosed bat. They mainly eat the nectar from saguaro cactus at night. Must be the scent of the pastry fillings lured him into the tent. Anyway, it was a great assignment. I’ll be in touch.”

  In front of me the book club ladies and my mother huddled. Judy and Louis had their arms around my aunt Ina, who was still sobbing, and Kirk stood a few feet back from them as if surveying the damage left by a fire or a flood. I walked toward them slowly, giving myself a chance to catch my breath and figure out what to say. The morning air was more humid than usual and my hair felt like a giant frizz ball. I was trying to flatten it when Nate approached.

  “You okay, kiddo? You look kind of—”

  “Don’t say it. Whatever you’re thinking, don’t say it. This has been horrible. Horrendous. And I look it, don’t I?”

  “You said not to say anything.”

  “Oh my gosh. I must really look a mess.”

  “You look fine, honestly. You always do. Listen, you did an amazing job with the wedding. It wasn’t your fault you were dealing with a murderer, a conspirator, and a nutcase.”

  “I’m not even sure which is which at this point.”

  “I think we can eliminate the bat. Look at the good news. Your new uncle isn’t going to be arrested for intent to commit murder, grand theft, or bigamy. I’d say that’s a plus.”

  “Yeah. I suppose. Do you think the sheriff’s office will go after Jake Felton?”

  Nate spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable. “Oh, probably.”

  “I guess I’d better get back to everyone. They’re saying their good-byes now.”

  My aunt Ina hugged each of the book club ladies and thanked them amid gasps for air and a few tears. A better theatrical performance I hadn’t seen in years. The women all agreed to meet later in the week at Bagels ’n More to catch up. Nate shook hands with Louis and wished the couple well before taking off.

  “See you tomorrow, Phee!” he said. “Got some interesting news to share with you and Augusta.”

  Terrific. Interesting news. It better not
involve murder.

  My aunt and uncle had arranged for a limousine to pick them up at the B and B and drive them to the first stop on their honeymoon—a transcendental resort hidden between Sedona and Cottonwood so Ina could rest after all the stress from the wedding.

  I wanted to scream, “What about my stress? Who’s taking me to a resort to unwind?” but I kept my mouth shut and wished them a wonderful honeymoon.

  Kirk, Judy, my mother, and I checked out of the Cactus Wren by two and headed back to Sun City West. Kirk needed “at least one night of decent sleep at the Hampton” before flying back to Boston in the morning. The four of us ate dinner at the recently opened Texas Roadhouse before calling it a night.

  “Too bad our daughters weren’t here for this one.” Judy sliced into her prime rib. “Ramona would be laughing herself silly.”

  “She might still do that. Once I get the video from the photographer, I intend to share it with the girls. Kalese won’t be able to keep a straight face either. Especially when the bat starts dive-bombing the pastry birds.”

  My mother, who was pretty quiet during dinner, finally spoke up. “I wasn’t going to say anything because we were all getting over this . . . this . . . wedding nightmare. However, my sister shared something with me and I think all of you should know about it.”

  “Don’t tell me she’s pregnant?” I poked Kirk with my elbow.

  “Worse. She and Louis plan to have a recommitment of their vows a year from now at dusk in Sabino Canyon. That’s in Tucson, in case you were wondering. On top of a mountain. You have to take a special tram to get there.”

  Judy dropped her fork. “Oh God, no! Is it a done deal?”

  My mother nodded. “She and Louis left a hefty deposit with the state park weeks ago so . . . yes. It’s a done deal.”

  Judy looked as if she’d seen the Ghost of Christmas Past, so I figured I’d better say something.

  “It can’t possibly be as involved as this was. Nothing can.”

  My mother leaned over and patted my hand. The last time she did that was when my ninth-grade boyfriend and I broke up because he “preferred full-figured girls.”