by Mary Kennedy
“We certainly didn’t,” I said ruefully. “No one could have predicted it. It all went downhill at the television taping.” I explained that the impromptu book signing had been arranged when Sonia’s private jet had developed engine trouble. Sonia, ever the self-promoter, wanted to wring every bit of publicity out of her visit to Savannah, and had asked Olivia to set up a quick photo op. The book signing at our candy shop seemed like the perfect opportunity; who knew it would end with Sonia’s death?
• • •
“I am so sorry,” she said in her French accent. Caroline is an elegant woman in her mid-fifties who moved to Savannah from the south of France.
She ran a much larger restaurant with her husband, but when he passed away, she decided to close it and open the smaller Bay Street bistro. Sweet Caroline’s has a friendly, relaxed vibe to it. The chalkboard menu changes daily and all the items are fresh and of high quality. Caroline’s chef and sous chef go to the docks and markets each morning at the crack of dawn to secure the most flavorful fish, fruits, and vegetables.
Caroline is an excellent cook and makes the soups herself from scratch; the house specialty is a special pistou soup with beans from the south of France. It’s so popular with the patrons that Caroline gave it a permanent spot on the menu. Unlike many restaurateurs, Caroline refuses to allow any prepackaged products in her kitchen and never reheats anything in the microwave. All Caroline’s food is fresh, and labor intensive, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Come, let me show you to your table,” she said, her voice warm with sympathy. “Your friends Noah and Sara are waiting for you. I told the sommelier to bring a very nice Pinot Grigio, compliments of the house. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
“Thank you, Caroline,” Ali and I said in unison.
Noah stood up and gave me an appreciative glance as I scooted into my seat. I admit that I took extra care tonight, wearing a classic little black dress I’d picked up at a sample sale in town and wearing my hair loose and tousled, the way he liked it. I could tell from his expression that my efforts had paid off. I kept telling myself not to get emotionally involved with Noah again, but my heart didn’t always listen to my head.
Ali is convinced Noah and I will end up together some day, but Ali is a true romantic who believes in happy endings. I’m older and a little more jaded by life. I’ve learned that wishing for something doesn’t make it so, and that relationships can be fraught with danger. Ali falls in love at the drop of a hat, and seems to recover from failed relationships just as easily. I’ve learned not to give away my heart too quickly. Would I be satisfied having a deep friendship with Noah instead of a passionate love affair? Only time would tell.
“Have you brought Noah up to speed?” Ali asked Sara, as she reached for the bread basket. I opened my mouth to ask the waiter to remove the tempting basket of sliced baguettes and the little plates of seasoned olive oil, but Ali closed her hand over my wrist. “Don’t even think of it,” she said. “The bread stays.” She had a surprisingly strong grip and I smiled to myself. When there’s fresh-baked French bread involved, Ali can be surprisingly assertive.
“I wasn’t, really,” I teased her. “I was going to ask for two more wineglasses.” She smiled at my feeble excuse. She wasn’t buying a word of it.
As if he’d read my mind, the server appeared and placed two glasses on the table. “Would you like any appetizers?” he asked.
“Thanks, but we’re fine for now,” Noah said, waving him away. Noah hadn’t taken his eyes off me since I’d sat down, and although his attention was flattering, it was also a little disconcerting. The look in his eyes made it hard to believe that he was content with the status quo: for the time being, we were just friends. Not even friends with benefits, as Ali liked to tease me. I reminded myself that this was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it?
“So tell us the deets,” Sara said eagerly. “You two went to some little backwater town called Blessing, and what did you find?”
“We found a story,” Ali said feelingly. “Almost a Lifetime movie.” She dipped a small slice of a baguette into seasoned olive oil.
“Really?” Sara looked incredulous. “Well? Are you going to keep us in suspense? What’s the big event that happened in the tiny town of Blessing?”
I took up the thread of the story. “We found a chatty waitress at the local diner—”
“Always a good call,” Noah said approvingly. “You’d be surprised what you can find out at a diner—who’s sleeping with whom, who’s running a scam, and sometimes you can even figure out who’s buried a body.”
“This wasn’t quite that dramatic,” I told him, “but we did find out that Trudy Carpenter might be Sonia’s daughter, not her niece.” I quickly told Ali and Noah what we’d learned about Sonia showing up at the local hospital with a baby and walking out empty-handed.
Noah whipped out his tiny notebook and a pen. “What’s the name of the hospital? You say it’s in a town called Blessing?”
I shook my head. “That’s a dead end. The hospital closed years ago. All we have is the word of the waitress, plus the fact that Trudy is the spitting image of Sonia. She doesn’t look at all like her mother, Clare Carpenter.”
“Wow, you accomplished a lot,” Sara said. We stopped the conversation to give our orders. Everyone wanted Caroline’s signature dish of caramelized onion quiche with a side salad. And we couldn’t resist asking for more of the bread rounds.
“What does this give us?” Noah said thoughtfully. “Besides a motive for Trudy—or maybe her boyfriend—to kill Sonia. They knew they’d inherit a fortune.”
“What’s the latest on Reggie Knox?” Ali asked. “Did the police pick him up for questioning? As far as I’m concerned, he’s at the top of the suspect list.”
“Actually, they did bring him in.” Noah stared at me over the rim of his wineglass and I felt a little spark of pleasure coil through me. “I talked to my cousin at the Savannah PD and he said Reggie claims he has a rock-solid alibi for the time Sonia was at the book signing.”
“Really?” I felt let down. I was fairly sure Reggie was involved in Sonia’s murder, at least as an accomplice or a coconspirator. I just had a bad feeling about this guy, and over the years, I’ve learned to trust my instincts. “What’s his alibi?”
Noah snorted. “The crazy thing is, he won’t say. He clammed up and insisted on getting a a lawyer. They didn’t have anything to hold him on, so they had to release him. If they want to bring him in again, they’re going to have the PD’s office assign someone to him. They really don’t have any evidence he’s involved in Sonia’s death in any way. He’s on their radar screen, but that’s about it.”
“I still think he’s connected with her death somehow. Just a gut feeling,” I murmured. “Maybe Reggie knew that Sonia was really Trudy’s mother, and he was blackmailing Sonia.”
“Then why would he kill her?” Sara asked. “No sense in slaughtering the goose that lays the golden egg.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe she stopped payments, or something like that. Or maybe she was going to do something to land him back in jail. Is the Savannah PD looking into Sonia’s financials? If there was a trail of payments going out to Reggie, that would be pretty conclusive, wouldn’t it?”
“I think they’re on it,” Noah said. “Let’s run through the suspects again,” he suggested, flipping open his notebook once more. “Does anyone like Etta Mae for the crime?”
“That’s a tough one,” I told him. “My feeling is that she’s not capable of murder, but I have to admit, she can be volatile and she had plenty of reason to resent Sonia. She really believes Sonia stole her family recipes and wants her day in court.
“It might be that Sonia was completely innocent in this whole cookbook caper and didn’t know anything about it. After all, she was the head of a gigantic empire; she couldn’t be responsible for k
eeping up with every little detail.” It would be ironic, I thought, if Etta Mae was furious enough to kill over the cookbook and then ended up killing an innocent person.
We were quiet for a moment, sipping our wine when the server arrived with our dinners. We all tucked into the quiche, and for a moment, all thoughts of murder and mayhem were forgotten.
“Who else are you looking at?” Sara said, breaking the silence.
“There’s Jeremy Watts,” Ali said. “Sonia’s lover.”
“What’s his motive?” Noah asked.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Sonia might have issued an ultimatum: marry her or else.”
“But would she really want to go public with the news that she’s dating a married man?” Sara said. “She’s America’s sweetheart. That’s not going to help her image, is it?’
“No, I suppose not. And I don’t think Jeremy was going to move up in the company if something happened to Sonia. It seems pretty clear to me that Olivia was the power behind the throne. She was probably going to run the company if Sonia was out of the picture.”
“I think we should move Olivia up to number one on the suspect list,” Sara said. “Especially if this Reggie Knox comes through with an airtight alibi. Olivia had a lot to gain.” She stopped to pass a basket of bread the server had just put on the table. Between the French baguettes and dinner rolls, it was carb city.
“What do we know about his wife?” Sara asked.
“Not very much. Her name is Leslie,” I volunteered. “She seems to stay out of the picture, although she did come to the taping of Sonia’s show. We met her briefly, and I saw her chatting with some of Sonia’s staff. Everything looked okay. She seemed friendly and pleasant.”
Noah arched an eyebrow. “She was there for the taping? I’d think that would be the last thing in the world she’d want to do. Doesn’t she know about the affair? I thought it was common knowledge.”
“It is, but some women”—I shrugged—“just decide to look the other way. It doesn’t make sense to me, but maybe that’s how she’s decided to play it. I suppose she had to see Sonia from time to time socially at company events, and she was okay with it. Maybe she just pretended nothing was going on. And, of course, Sonia never said a word, either. Outwardly, everything’s fine.”
“Sonia was something of a control freak,” Ali interjected.
“So they say,” I added. “Actually, Lucinda reconnected with Leslie at the taping,” I said to Noah. “I think I may have mentioned this earlier, but she seemed happy to run into her. I think Lucinda feels sorry for Leslie. They didn’t talk much about Jeremy, but everyone seems to know the gossip. It’s no secret that Sonia had her claws in Jeremy and she wasn’t going to let go of him.”
I stopped talking for a moment, my thoughts buzzing. So Jeremy was cheating on his wife with Sonia. Was he also cheating on both of them with Olivia? Hadn’t Jeremy and Olivia looked a little too friendly in the restaurant and outside of the taping? Or was I imagining things? I made a mental note to ask Lucinda for information on Leslie, if she had any from her Academy days. Maybe she could shed a little light on Jeremy and his affairs.
We wrapped things up quickly with promises to touch base in the next few days. Noah looked like he wanted to spend some time alone with me, but he had to meet a new client and reluctantly said good night. I nodded and told him I had to leave, too. After all, I’d promised Ali we’d spend some time on the cooking classes. I knew I’d have trouble focusing on donuts and cupcakes, but a promise is a promise.
21
Sam Stiles called the moment we walked in the door to the apartment. I hadn’t heard from her, and I was eager to hear the latest developments in the case, especially the final toxicology report. What Sam said next matched perfectly with the initial findings Noah had dug up when we first started investigating Sonia’s death.
“Sonia’s stomach contents show no trace of peanuts, but there’s evidence of sesame seeds,” she said without preamble. “We sent the pastry samples off to the lab for analysis and stomach contents revealed sesame seeds along with flour, sugar, and butter. Do you know what that could be?” Sam asked. “It sounds like cookies, doesn’t it?”
Shortbread cookies! That was what Lucinda brought to the book signing. And it was one of Sonia’s recipes, straight out of her cookbook. Would Sonia have knowingly included sesame seeds in one of her own recipes? I immediately discounted the idea; it was impossible. She knew she was deathly allergic to peanuts, and peanut allergies and sesame seed allergies go hand in hand. Surely she would have known this. I listened as Sam went on with her description.
“Everything else seems pretty straightforward,” she said. “There also was evidence of cream cheese and cherries.”
“The cherry cheesecakes! That’s what Ali and I made, mini–cherry cheesecakes. It’s one of Sonia’s favorite recipes, and it’s right out of her cookbook.” I hesitated, bracing myself for what could be coming. “Was there anything else?”
“It’s hard to say. Nothing else was out of the ordinary. Sonia had eaten pancakes for breakfast. She’d ingested a large amount of coffee, and something that looked like lemon pudding. It was only partly digested, so she must have eaten it at the signing.”
“Lemon bars,” I said quickly. “That was the other recipe Ali and I prepared. And that recipe was also straight out of the cookbook.”
“So there were only three types of desserts served at the book signing?”
“Yes, and they were all Sonia Scott classics. Shortbread cookies, mini–cherry cheesecakes, and lemon bars. We followed the recipes exactly.”
Sam was silent. “It’s really hard to see how she ingested sesame seeds accidentally, if you’re sure that’s all she ate at the shop.”
“I know that’s all she ate, because that’s all we served.” I wondered how this news would affect our customers. The jury was in. It was no longer possible to say that Sonia hadn’t died because of what she’d eaten in our shop; in fact, it was conclusive that what she had eaten in our shop had killed her. I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me. Probably mental exhaustion, because it wasn’t that late.
“Anything else?” I asked, putting the kettle on to boil. I use tea as my “calm down” and “rev up” drink. I go through phases, and at the moment I’m hooked on a spicy mix of cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves. Ali had settled herself at the kitchen table, with Barney on her lap, thumbing through a copy of Southern Living while I paced back and forth with the phone clasped to my ear.
“We’re still keeping tabs on Reggie Knox, but I think he’s off the hook for the crime.”
“How come?” I stopped pacing, sank into a kitchen chair, and Ali looked up quizzically. “He was one of my top choices. Motive, means, and opportunity.”
Sam laughed. “Maybe motive and means, but he didn’t have opportunity. He insisted on consulting a lawyer, so we had to get one of the public defenders over to interview him. Reggie finally came clean. He was in a chat room at the time of the book signing. There’s no way he could have spiked Sonia’s food.”
“A chat room? Can you be sure about that? Maybe someone else logged in with his name. You never know.”
“We know,” Sam said grimly. “He was on Skype. It was Reggie, all right.”
“A chat room,” I repeated. “You know what I’m thinking,” I said finally. “Underage girls, sexual predator . . .”
“You might be right, but we can’t nail him on anything this time. He got in and out of the chat room pretty fast, before he incriminated himself. I think he probably has done this plenty of times before; he could be a regular in the chat room. That’s why he wanted to consult with a lawyer before telling us what he’d been up to. We’ll certainly be on the lookout for him from now on.”
“This is really a surprise.” I scrawled the word “Reggie” on a pad, scratched a line through his name, and passed it to A
li. Her eyes widened and she shook her head. I’m sure she was hoping it was Reggie as well.
That left us with Olivia, Jeremy, Trudy, Leslie, and Etta Mae. Mentally, I scratched Trudy and Etta Mae off the list. I still didn’t want to believe that Etta Mae was capable of murder, and I couldn’t bear to think of Trudy killing her own mother. It just didn’t seem right.
So we were left with Olivia and Jeremy, weren’t we? If Olivia or Jeremy didn’t kill Sonia, then everything was up for grabs. The murderer had to be someone who knew Sonia and knew about the nut allergy. My thoughts were going around in circles and my head started to pound.
“So we’ll have to see what shakes out,” Sam said. “The toxicology is clear, but without more information, the DA isn’t going to be able to charge anyone. It’s one of those cases that may not go anywhere.” I could hear heated voices in the background with a metallic sound like a chair hitting the floor and a muffled curse.
Sam’s words were nearly drowned out and I pressed the receiver closer to my ear. “Hey, put him in the holding cell,” she called to someone. “He’s too disruptive. If he tries anything else, we’ll charge him with resisting arrest.”
“Sam, are you okay?” I said worriedly. “What’s going on there?” Anyone who thinks a cop’s life is glamorous hasn’t done a drive-along with the Savannah-Chatham Metro PD. Sara and I went along one evening when she was writing a piece on the department, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.
“Sorry about the noise,” Sam said. “One of our rookie cops just broke up a bar fight and dragged both the contenders back to the station house. One of them is high on something and took a swing at the arresting officer. We’ll stick him in the tank to cool off before morning.” She gave a harsh laugh. “A night in the drunk tank is enough to make anyone adjust their attitude.”
