Sweets, Suspects, and Women Sleuths Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

“You’re just making things up now,” Yvette replied.

  Joe decided to tackle things from a different angle. “By the way, why were you and Claude getting divorced in the first place?”

  For the first time, since the questioning began, Yvette stopped filing her nails. She hesitated as she answered.

  Just as she opened her mouth to reply, a thud was heard coming from the back of her house.

  Joe and I both turned our heads towards the direction of the sound.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Yvette quickly dismissed the noise. “Nothing. My neighbor is probably messing around in his shed.”

  Her answer only aroused more suspicion in my mind. “No. That sounded like it was coming from inside your house.”

  Joe didn’t wait for Yvette to explain herself. He got up to investigate the noise himself.

  Yvette tried to stop him. “Please don’t.”

  “Mrs. Giraud, why do you look so panicked?” Joe asked.

  He didn’t wait for her to answer. Joe and I headed down the hall towards the back of Yvette’s house. There was a closed door at the end of the hallway.

  Joe swung it open, revealing an unmade bed and little else. His curiosity wasn’t satiated. He headed over to the closet then opened it. That’s when the source of the noise became apparent.

  Vincent Castelli, a handsome, muscular, twenty-seven-year-old man was standing in the closet, half-dressed.

  Chapter Eight

  Joe and I suddenly had a slew of new questions for both Yvette and Vincent. To start, Vincent wasn’t just some random twentysomething guy. He was a server at Mario’s Italian Restaurant. The same Mario’s that Yvette’s husband was about to lacerate in a review. That had some very interesting implications for this case.

  The funny thing was, Joe and I had spoken with Vincent an hour earlier at Mario’s restaurant. Since he was working last night, his alibi for the time of the murder checked out. Conversely, his presence in Yvette’s closet only pointed the finger of suspicion harder at her.

  Yvette had a lot of explaining to do. She tried to downplay things. “I just want to say, this is not—”

  I knew exactly where she was trying to go with this. That’s why I cut her off. “Don’t even try to tell me this isn’t what it looks like. You’re sleeping with a guy who works for Mario Donatelli, the same man your husband couldn’t wait to eviscerate in a new review.”

  Yvette lowered her head. She had no snappy comeback for that one.

  “We’d heard that Mario believe Claude’s review was biased. Now it looks like that might have been the case. I guess the question is, would Claude have been so eager to rip Mario’s restaurant apart had you and Vincent not been sleeping together?” I asked.

  Once again, Yvette didn’t reply. At that moment, she refused to even make eye contact.

  Joe’s mind went off in another direction.

  “You tried to pretend like you didn’t have a motive, but he’s sitting right in front of us. Claude was the one to file for divorce, wasn’t he? And knowing that you were cheating on him, he didn’t want you to get anything in the divorce, did he?” he said.

  She didn’t respond.

  Joe tried again. “Did he?”

  Yvette still didn’t give him anything to work with.

  Joe continued. “There was a chance you could lose everything. But with the divorce not finalized, with him dead, you’d stand to inherit everything. Now there’s a motive.”

  Yvette finally looked up. “I told you, I didn’t do this.”

  “Your word is meaning less and less to me the more you speak,” Joe said.

  For much of the conversation, Vincent had sat in stunned silence. He decided to get a few words in. “Can I just say something?”

  “Go ahead,” Joe replied.

  “You’re saying all these things about Yvette, but that’s not the Yvette I know. The Yvette that I’ve fallen in love with is an amazing woman. She’s sweet and kind and caring, not some killer. She wouldn’t even hurt a fly,” Vincent said.

  After Vincent was done gushing about his lover, Joe brought things back to reality.

  My brother had the most dismissive tone in his voice as he replied. “I will take that with the grain of salt it deserves, considering how extremely biased your opinion is. Now, back to your motive, Mrs. Giraud.”

  “I know this doesn’t look good,” Yvette said.

  “That’s probably the most spot-on thing I’ve heard all day,” I joked.

  “At the same time, it doesn’t prove I did anything,” Yvette said.

  Unfortunately, she was right about that. At the same time, there was a flip side to her statement.

  “It doesn’t exactly make you look innocent, either,” I said.

  Yvette had been teetering on the brink throughout the entire conversation. She had finally reached her limit.

  “Yeah? Well unless you can come up with something to prove that I’m guilty, I’m done talking to you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Joe could have easily detained Yvette. The problem was, even though our level of suspicion about her was high, hard evidence proving she was guilty was sorely lacking. Like with Mario Donatelli before, Joe gave Yvette a stern warning to not leave town, hoping to scare the daylights out of her. We then left her rental bungalow and decided to chase down another lead.

  Our instincts took us to Claude’s workplace next. As we strolled into the main office of the local newspaper, I prayed that we’d encounter significantly less friction from here on out.

  My prayer was not answered. After getting some sass from the newspaper editor’s assistant, we were finally granted access to interview the editor of the paper, Eric Langfield.

  Eric had a sizable office, which would have looked even bigger had it not been so cluttered. For a man who put the finishing touches on a daily newspaper, he sure worked in a mess of an office.

  Eric was an old school editor, the kind that still wore suspenders to work. He had a crew cut, a clean-shaven angular face, and a distinct lack of body fat. With all the running around on his job, did he just sweat the weight off? It was hard to tell how old he really was, but the stress lines on his face made him look like he was in his early seventies.

  The nosy part of me wondered why he was still putting in the taxing hours that were required of a newspaper editor at his age. If the late nights staring down stiff deadlines weren’t bad enough, the stress of running a printed newspaper in the digital age was undeniable. Yet, there he was, sitting at his desk with no quit in him.

  An image flashed in my brain of an article I’d read about seniors who shunned retirement. People believed hanging up their work suspenders was for suckers and that the minute they slowed down and took up golf was the minute they started dying. I, for one, thought a retirement on the beach would be splendid. Or tending to a nice garden. When my golden years came, I fully intended to wind down.

  Then again, my opinion was neither here nor there. More importantly, Joe and I hadn’t come here to debate Eric’s life decisions. Questions about Claude were on the docket, and it was time to get to them.

  “Did Claude have any enemies that you knew of?” Joe asked.

  Eric let out a big belly laugh. “Of course he did. That’s why I hired him.”

  Joe’s face scrunched up in confusion. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  Eric explained himself. “Claude wasn’t afraid to tell people off. That’s rare in this day and age.”

  “Have you been on the internet lately? There’s a lot of people getting told off there,” Joe replied.

  I piggybacked on my brother’s point. “That, and plenty of cute cat videos.”

  Eric narrowed his eyes. “The internet is the enemy of print.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but the internet is winning,” Joe said.

  I had a different follow-up. “Don’t you publish a digital edition?”

  “Because I have to, not because I want to. The news wasn’
t meant to be read on people’s phones,” Eric grumbled.

  He was even older school than I thought. It could easily have devolved into a rant about the frustrations of the digital age, but Joe was eager to right the ship.

  “Let’s get back on track here. You mentioned that you hired Claude specifically because he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind,” Joe said.

  “Absolutely. The man ruffled a lot of feathers, and nothing sells papers like controversy,” Eric replied.

  “I can’t argue with that. At the same time, all those feathers he ruffled might have been what got him killed,” Joe said.

  Eric tried to eschew any blame. “He was the one to stir up the controversy. I just paid him for it.” He continued deflecting. “Look, the guy got into plenty of problems on his own. Ask his estranged wife.”

  “We did,” Joe said.

  Eric seemed a little too eager to push the conversation away from the paper.

  I stopped him cold. “Did Claude have any enemies here at the paper?”

  Eric gave a quick and concise answer. “No.”

  “That would make this the only place in his life that didn’t swirl with controversy then,” I said.

  “He knew better than to jeopardize his paycheck,” Eric replied.

  “So, you two got along well?” I asked.

  “We did.”

  Once again, Eric’s answers seemed to come a little too quickly. So much so that it drew my suspicion. Before I had a chance to follow up again, Eric cut me off.

  “Ask around if you don’t believe me,” he said.

  “Don’t think we won’t,” I replied.

  Eric clearly didn’t have people challenge him very often. As the boss, he may have been used to getting his way, but I was prepared to go toe to toe with him.

  Joe seemed to feel that chasing down other leads would be more beneficial. “Back to these restaurants that Claude got on the bad side of.”

  “What about them?” Eric asked.

  “Do you think any of those restaurant owners would be angry enough with him to be driven to murder?” Joe said.

  “With all that I have seen and reported in my career, I wouldn’t put anything past anyone,” Eric replied.

  That somehow managed to be both vague and menacing at the same time. Eric was turning out to be a regular shark in suspenders.

  Joe continued his questioning. “Any names come to mind?”

  “A couple,” Eric said.

  “What are they?” Joe replied.

  “Steven Zell and Carl Dempster.”

  “Why them?”

  Eric snickered. “Read the reviews Claude left of their restaurants. That’ll give you all the answers you need.”

  With that, Eric looked like he was done talking to us, regardless of whether we’d finished all of our questions.

  He continued. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work. There’s a deadline calling my name.”

  Chapter Ten

  We could have forced the issue, but it didn’t seem like it was worth it. Eric wasn’t going to volunteer any further information, and we didn’t have any leverage to make him talk. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if there was enough reason to believe he was a suspect. Sure, he’d been guarded with us, but that alone was far from a sign of guilt.

  Joe and I decided to leave Eric to his deadline. There were a number of more concrete leads to follow up on. That being said, we would have been remiss in our investigative duties if we left the newspaper offices without poking our heads around a little.

  Eric had given us the go-ahead to do some digging around the office. He may have said it offhand, but we took it to heart. Joe and I headed directly to Eric’s sassy receptionist, Tracey, curious to see what insights she could give us.

  It turned out the answer was none. That was highly disappointing. The receptionist’s desk was often the hub of gossip in an office. On more than a few occasions, the boss’s receptionist actually knew more about the boss’s life than his own wife did.

  If Tracey knew anything, she wasn’t giving it up. Like her boss, she was quite guarded, careful not to volunteer any information she didn’t have to. That seemed to be true of everyone working at the paper. It was a surreal experience, interviewing a half a dozen people with little or no useful actionable information to show for it. Between the receptionists, columnists, and reporters, they all seemed to respond from the same pool of answers.

  A half a dozen times, we heard that there were no quarrels between Claude and any of his co-workers, Eric or otherwise. Finally, Joe and I gave up. Either Claude really did get along with everyone he worked with, or his co-workers were amazing at hiding their discontent. Either way, Joe and I had plenty of other leads to chase down and didn’t want to delay any longer in getting to them.

  ***

  Before hitting up the restaurant owners Eric had mentioned, Joe and I read the reviews Claude had left for their establishments. It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least. The word evisceration came to mind as I read one of the reviews. I’d never been much of a fan of Claude’s writing, and I was immediately reminded why. Part of it was because like he was too snobby for his own good. The other reason was that I’d lost my sense of culinary adventure the older I became.

  I knew of a handful of restaurants that had never served me a bad meal. That was good enough for me. Apparently, I was in the minority. Claude’s review column was one of the most popular in the entire paper. Thousands of readers cared very deeply about his opinion when it came to food. When a man had that much sway, his words could make or break a business.

  In the case of Steven Zell, it broke the back of his bistro. As I finished Claude’s review of Zell’s Bistro, I was in a state of shock.

  Joe wrinkled his nose as he looked my way. “What’s the matter?”

  “This review.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “It’s nasty. I don’t think I’ve ever read a review this bad.”

  Joe had a difference of opinion. “I don’t know that it could possibly be as bad as this one he left for Carl Dempster’s café.”

  I challenged him. “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

  “I’ll spare you the full gory details. I think the review can be summed up with these few sentences—Dempster's café is an embarrassment to good taste. I don’t know how Carl Dempster was allowed to open a place of his own. The man is unfit to flip burgers at a fast food restaurant, no less operate a supposed café.”

  I winced. “Wow. That is brutal.”

  “Do you still think yours is bad?” Joe asked.

  “Mine is still worse.”

  Joe braced himself. “All right. Let’s hear it.”

  “Zell’s bistro is a scab on the restaurant industry that refuses to heal. If I was Steven Zell, I’d give a refund and apologize to every customer that has ever walked through the door of the bistro, quit the restaurant business, and take up janitorial work.”

  Joe sat across from me in a state of disbelief for a moment.

  I ended the silence. “I told you it was bad.”

  “It was more than just a bad review, it was a personal attack.”

  I nodded. “When Eric said Claude knew how to stir up controversy, he wasn’t kidding.”

  “I guess the question is, did that controversy come back to kill him?” Joe asked.

  Chapter Eleven

  After reading the lacerating reviews of Carl’s and Steven’s restaurants, Joe and I knew we needed to pay them both a visit. As Carl’s new workplace was geographically the closest to the newspaper, we stopped there first.

  Derek’s Dynamo Dogs was a hot dog stand near the beach. It was also the unofficial signpost of Carl having hit rock bottom. As we arrived at the hot dog stand, it was clear that Carl had taken the ultimate fall from grace.

  This was a man who just two years ago had been the owner and head chef of his very own café. Now, he’d been reduced to selling hot dogs to tourists. Not that all of this was Cl
aude’s fault. Granted, Claude’s soul-crushing review had led to the beginning of Carl’s downward spiral, but Carl had taken his plight to brand-new lows.

  Shortly after the eviscerating piece about Carl’s café ran in the paper, his business began to tank. Even with the severe dip in business, the café somehow managed to limp along for nearly nine months before finally shuttering its doors for good.

  While losing his business was certainly a blow, it wasn’t the end of the world for Carl. He got a number of job offers to work as a chef in other restaurants. Unfortunately, by then he was damaged goods. His confidence was shot. He was nothing more than the shell of the former chef that he used to be.

  Carl burned through one job after another, his monstrous ego outsizing his level of talent. A lot of people were willing to put up with arrogance as long as someone had the skills to back it up. Only, Carl’s ego never ratcheted down, despite the erosion of his cooking skill. Finally, after burning every bridge he crossed, the only restaurant owner in town willing to take a chance on him was Derek Dalton.

  That’s how Carl ended up working at a hot dog stand. Ironically, for someone who spent his days in a customer service position, Carl was sorely lacking in customer service skills.

  He was a grumpy, beer-bellied, forty-five-year-old man with cold bloodshot eyes and a hangdog face weighed down by the sorrow of his broken dreams.

  “What can I get for you?” Carl grumbled.

  Joe flashed his police badge. “A few minutes of your time.”

  Carl immediately tensed up. “What’s this about?”

  “Why don’t we talk about it on that bench over there? Or, would you rather we talk about this in front of your boss?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah. All right. I have a ten-minute break coming up anyway.”

  Carl turned to his boss, Derek, who was running the register at the stand, told him he was taking his break, then met us at the bench that Joe had referenced.

  Now that he was out of earshot of his boss, Carl’s attitude changed significantly. Unfortunately, it was for the worse.