Wined, Dined and Dead: A Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery

by Stacey Alabaster

  Pippa sounded confused. "We know what happened. He left to get the bottle and then the chef, Scott, yelled at him."

  "Yes, but, Pippa, was it Scott?"

  "What are you talking about? It was the head chef. He was wearing a tall head chef's hat. So it had to have been Scott, right?"

  I let out a heavy sigh. "Did you actually see Scott's face, though?" I asked.

  Pippa was quiet for a moment. "No," she finally said.

  I shook my head. "All this time we've been assuming it was Scott who threatened Paul. But, Pippa, what if we were wrong?"

  I knew, logically, that less than ten hours had passed, and that it wasn't like we'd invested weeks, or even days, believing the wrong thing. And we had no time. We couldn't go back in time and start over, looking for the right suspect.

  I looked at the time. 8am.

  I felt like we were back at square one. We had no idea who the chef imposter was. Scott had been very clear about one thing: only he ever wore the head chef's hat. Actually, he'd been clear about another thing as well: he hadn't been anywhere near the kitchen nor the bar when the incident had happened. He hadn't even been anywhere near the restaurant.

  "So who was it in the bar?" I'd asked him. "A mirage?"

  Scott had shaken his head. "I only arrived after my manager phoned me to tell me what had happened. I'd only intended to come in for the end of service, to make sure my customers were all happy and that everything was fine for Valentine's Day."

  "What about the sous chef?" I'd asked Scott. "Would he wear your hat?"

  Scott had answered no. "He wears a black hat. He's not the head chef. It's not the protocol. Not in my restaurant, anyway."

  I quickly tried to explain the situation to Pippa, though it was difficult with Lolly crying in the background. There was also a crashing sound that drowned out her voice for a few moments. I tried not to let my imagination run wild thinking about what Marcello might have broken.

  "So who is our mysterious chef?" Pippa asked when she finally got a chance to reply.

  "I don't know," I said. I was trying not to panic. "Do you remember any details about him? At all? Besides the white hat, obviously."

  "I only saw him from the back," Pippa said. "All I remember is that he was tall."

  I sighed. It was 8:15. We had less than three hours to go. At least we weren't already past deadline, the original one anyways. I intended to hold him to that since the news story never ran at 8:00, which seemed like a very small victory right then.

  "Is anything else the matter?" Pippa asked. "You sound super stressed, Rach. Maybe just take a few seconds to breathe."

  "I had a huge fight with Kenneth." I shook my head. "It was really bad, Pippa. It happened in the middle of the street."

  I could hear the interest in Pippa's voice—and was that also happiness I detected?—which she tried to downplay when she spoke. "Was it about that cake you ruined?"

  "No. I still haven't told him about that."

  "What did you fight about then? Hang on, how did you even manage to see him this morning?"

  Ugh. I really didn't want to tell her about the date—I mean, about the coffee—with Jackson.

  "Just...Valentine's Day stuff," I said, before walking over to the curb and taking a seat. "I don't think the fact that I haven’t had any sleep is helping, with either my love life or the murder investigation."

  Pippa sounded sympathetic. "And is running around town after a ghost chef, a guy we know nothing about, actually going to achieve anything?"

  I stretched my feet out into the street and sighed, shaking my head as I looked up at the now bright sky. "Probably not," I finally relented.

  "Come on, Rachael, why don't you just come home?"

  It was 8:30 by the time I got back to our house. I noticed that someone had thrown a sheet over the stained carpet in the baby's room, but I still knew what lay under it. Canary yellow paint, forever staining the snow white carpet below. I tried to ignore it and rested my head against the sofa, closing my eyes just for a second.

  I hadn't even realized how tired I was until I closed eyes and almost fell into the blackness.

  Man, it would be so easy just to fall asleep right now...and for the rest of the morning...heck, how about the rest of the day.

  I snuggled into the sofa and pulled a blanket over me. I'd just nap for a few minutes, a quick beauty nap, before I tried to untangle this case.

  I didn't know how long I'd been asleep when Lolly's screams broke through into my dreams, dragging me back to reality.

  I jumped awake, throwing the blanket off me. "Pippa! Why did you let me sleep for so long! Or at all!"

  "I thought you could do with the rest after the night you've had." Pippa looked at me apologetically while she bounced Lolly up and down on her shoulder, trying to soothe her. "Anyway, Lolly woke you. So you can thank her."

  "Thank you, Lolly," I said, jumping up from the sofa and pulling my coat back on. "But is Lolly going to tell me who the mysterious chef is?" I threw my hands up. "Is she going to give me back my lost time?"

  Pippa shrugged a little. “I think you’re freaking out over nothing, Rach. It’s only nine. You only slept for thirty minutes. And maybe it's better this way. Maybe Jackson is right; you should just let this one go. Let the cops do their thing. You're exhausted. Get some sleep."

  I had to bite my tongue right then. She was right, I was exhausted, and there was a big danger I could say something regrettable. Her husband was the reason I couldn't just take a break and get some sleep right then.

  Marcello entered the room with his arm outstretched. "I made you some coffee, Rachael."

  I peered into the black liquid skeptically, assuming that it would be burned, or sweetened with salt, or something equally as regrettable.

  "You can try it," he said. "I've been practicing. In the hopes that I can get a job in a restaurant."

  Assuming it was going to be either scalding hot or so cold it may as well have been iced, I braced myself before I took a sip, preparing myself for the assault on my taste buds that were sure to follow.

  "Oh!" I said, surprised. I had to take another sip just to be sure. Maybe I was so tired that any coffee at all would seem amazing, even if it tasted like sludge in reality. Nope, I was right the first time. "Marcello, this is actually great. It's...the perfect cup of coffee."

  "See?" Marcello beamed at Pippa. "I told you I was learning how to make coffees. I am going to be hired in no time."

  She quickly looked away without responding to that. I could see that she definitely wasn't convinced that was the case. One drinkable cup of coffee didn't suddenly make him the model hospitality employee.

  And as for me, he wasn't totally forgiven just because he made one good cup of coffee. I'm not quite that easy to win over.

  Marcello looked a little confused. He must have seen the look on my face. "What's wrong, Rachael? The coffee doesn't seem to wake you up?"

  I shook my head. "It's just this case." I sighed and sat back down on the sofa, still gripping my coffee. "I don't suppose you happen to remember what the chef looked like last night, do you?"

  Marcello looked at me like I was the stupid one. "Yes, I remember what Scott looks like. Did you forget already?"

  "Not Scott," I said quickly. "There was an imposter working there last night. Whoever was wearing that chef's hat was not Scott. I have no idea who it was." If neither Pippa nor I had been able to ID him, I had no hope that Marcello could. "And no hope of finding out. At least, not within the next five minutes." Which was about all the time I had.

  "Huh..." Marcello placed one hand on his hip, deep in thought. Or, he seemed to be deep in thought. With Marcello, it was difficult to tell if he even had deep thoughts. He could have been thinking about kittens or puppies for all I knew and completely forgotten that we were in the middle of a conversation.

  "I did think something was strange," Marcello said.

  "Strange about what?" Pippa prodded. She was nursing a now very
peaceful and sleepy Lolly, whose pacifier fell to the ground as Pippa rocked her back and forth.

  Marcello thought it over for a second. "Well, I thought it was a little strange that the head chef of a restaurant should be wearing an eyebrow ring..."

  Pippa and I looked at each other. An eyebrow ring?

  "Chefs aren't supposed to have any sort of jewelry on or on display while they are working," I said, frowning. An eyebrow ring. Who had I seen recently with an eyebrow ring?

  "That's because he definitely wasn't a chef," Pippa said, walking over to put Lolly down in her crib.

  "Eyebrow ring, eyebrow ring..." I murmured over and over again. I was so tired that my brain was having difficulty making connections, but I just knew that there was something there.

  Marcello nodded. "Only person I know who has an eyebrow ring is Paul's old roommate...that guy I meet at the party..."

  Pippa and I gasped at the same time.

  Mikey.

  "Marcello!" I shouted, leaping up. My coffee spilled everywhere, all over my lap and onto the carpet. "You're a genius!"

  He grinned back at me. "I'm always trying to tell everyone that. It's just that no one ever believes me."

  Chapter 12

  I ran out the door so quickly that I forgot my purse and coat and had to go back in to fetch them. By the time I got out again, I was in such a rush that I almost ran right into a man standing there in my driveway.

  Kenneth.

  He was holding a bouquet of flowers but his face was anything but rosy.

  "Er, Happy Valentine's Day?" I said a little unsurely. I had no idea if him being there meant he was still angry or not. The flowers said I was forgiven, the look on his face said I was still in the bad books. The silent treatment seemed to agree.

  "Um, are those for me?" I asked hesitantly when he still hadn't said anything. There was no way I was going to assume anything right then.

  "I bought them before I saw you at the cafe," Kenneth said before he shoved them into my hands. "I've got no use for them and they'll just end up in the garbage otherwise."

  "Um, thanks," I said, standing there a little awkwardly as I took the roses from him. They were yellow... I had no idea what that meant. Aren't you supposed to give red roses on Valentine's Day? I decided I wasn't really in the position to have a go at him over what was and wasn't romantic.

  In fact, it was time to just swallow my pride. I'd been in the wrong.

  Pippa suddenly spotted us and stepped back through the front door of the house. I was almost certain she was watching us through the window, however.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "About what you saw before. And about the fact that I was having coffee with Jackson while ignoring your texts. That wasn't cool of me at all. You have every right to be upset about it."

  Kenneth nodded before softening a little. He scratched his forehead. "At least you're admitting you've been kind of a terrible girlfriend the past twenty-four hours."

  I looked down at the concrete. "You didn't deserve to be treated like that. I was distracted with the case, but that's no excuse for ignoring you."

  "Is that all it really was? The case?" Kenneth didn't look so sure.

  "What else would it be?" I finally looked up at him.

  "I'm not sure, Rach. You've kind of been acting a little strange the past few days. Every time Valentine's Day got brought up, you changed the subject. But that's just one example of you acting weird."

  Ugh. I really didn't want to be having this conversation. And it wasn't exactly great timing. I spotted Pippa watching and waiting out the window.

  9:30.

  "Can we talk about this later?" I asked, my voice practically pleading with him.

  "Huh," Kenneth scoffed and looked up at the sky. "It's always later. It's never a good time for you to talk to me. I can't help but get the feeling I am at the bottom of your list of priorities, Rachael."

  "That's not true," I said. "And it's not fair either. Look, I am in the middle of a very important investigation and I'm standing here talking to you, aren't I?"

  "Yes, and I can tell this is the last place you want to be," Kenneth said.

  "That's not true. And it's not true that you’re my last priority. It's just..." Gosh, he was really going to make me come out and say what was bothering me, wasn't he?

  "It's just that you sort of have this habit of correcting me every time we bake, or discuss baking."

  Kenneth looked completely shocked. "What? No, I don't." That was the problem with coming right out and saying these things in relationships: the other person often has no idea that what they've been doing has been upsetting you. That makes them get defensive.

  Which only causes a fight.

  Hence why I hadn't wanted to bring it up. "You do. It's like how you corrected me about the soufflé last night at Scott's," I said. "That was just one example of you being weird," I couldn't help throwing back at him.

  "I…I..." Kenneth was completely speechless. "I didn't realize I was doing that," he finally relented.

  "Well, you do. You do it all the time," I said. "It kinds of makes me feel nervous around you sometimes."

  "Nervous?" Kenneth said. "Why would you feel like that?"

  I shook my head. "I didn’t want to tell you this, but I ruined that wedding cake that you left me in charge of earlier in the week. I had to make it again, from scratch."

  "But when I came back a few days later to see you, you said that everything was fine."

  "Well, I hid the cake from you so that you wouldn't know. And I just pretended that everything was fine so that I didn't upset you."

  Was that what I was doing now?

  "Rach, you should have just been honest with me."

  That was easier said than done.

  "I'm sorry as well then," I said, nodding. "You're right. I should have been."

  Kenneth walked over and hugged me. "I'm sorry if I can be a bit of a know-it-all when it comes to baking. You've got to remember that I work alone, and usually run my business from home. Sometimes I don't know how to deal with people. Especially when they are my girlfriend. I should learn to be a little less of a jerk."

  I smiled up at him. "You're not a jerk."

  "Just a know-it-all." Kenneth smiled at me. But just for a second, he looked a little concerned. "So are we all good now?"

  I nodded and snuggled into his chest. "We're all good, I promise."

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, bringing me back to reality. "Shoot, I’ve really got to go now." I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed Kenneth goodbye. "We'll meet up for lunch, though, I promise."

  This should all be over by then.

  It felt as though I hadn't slept in a week.

  Pippa reached over to the driver’s seat and shook me. "Hey, don't fall asleep at the wheel. Do you want me to drive?"

  I shook my head. "We're almost at the university." I opened my eyes wide and tried to concentrate on the road. Surely the adrenaline would kick in when we finally arrived and came face to face with Mikey. And his stupid eyebrow ring. I smacked my own cheeks just to give it a head start.

  "I hope security is going to let us through the gates," I said as we approached the gates that only hours earlier we'd been chased out of. "At least we don't have Marcello with us again." Lolly had fallen asleep right before we'd left and Pippa didn't want to wake her for anything. She was so peaceful in her crib, so sleepy.... Oh, no, thinking about sleep was NOT a good idea. I hit the brakes—half to jerk me awake, half for tactic's sake. "Let's walk in like we are just regular students," I said, hurrying out of the car. "Without a baby on your hip, that is going to be a lot more believable."

  "It's almost ten," Pippa said worriedly as she slammed her car door and headed after me. I didn't know the campus very well, but I followed a thin stream of brave students who had signed up for a morning class. Finding Greek Row, where Mikey lived, would take a little time on foot, but it was better than having to get through the security gates.

  "Don't worry,"
I said reassuringly. "We've still got an hour before the deadline. That's plenty of time." Well, it wasn't plenty of time, but it felt like an eternity after the tight time frame we'd been working to previously. An extra hour felt like a luxury.

  "No, I mean, ten is way too early to be trying to talk to college students," Pippa said. She pointed at the slumped over, slow moving students around us. "And these zombies are the ones who are already allegedly awake."

  I let out a little laugh as I followed the trail, looking around to try and find directions. Or get my bearings. It all looked so different during the day. "Yes. Well, I don't exactly mind if we annoy Mikey by waking him early. I'm not really concerned about not getting invited to any of his parties in the future."

  Pippa stopped and held her hand up to shield her eyes against the sun, which really did seem unbearably bright when you had had absolutely no sleep. "Rach, wait, I think we're going the wrong way." She pointed to a map and I groaned when I saw that Mikey's frat house was on the other side of campus.

  It took us almost ten minutes to get to the same tree-lined street we'd been on the night before, and that was with both of us traveling as fast as our high heels could take us; we just ignored the strange looks from students and faculty members as we jogged along the pebbled paths, past the tennis courts and the canteen, past the English and Science faculties, until we reached the residential part of the campus.

  By the time we got there, I was beyond exhausted. But I'd been right about one thing: adrenaline had kicked in.

  I spotted the tall white house that Marcello had been kicked out of hours earlier. Here we go. Enjoy your last few minutes of sleep while you can, Mikey.

  Away from the center of the university where the early morning classes were being held and far up Greek Road, everything was completely silent. There was no music, no parties, no one streaking naked around the lawn. Just a strange eerie silence like we were entering a ghost town.

  At least it allowed Pippa and I to sneak in to the house undetected. No one stirred as we pushed open the heavy wooden door and tiptoed over the floorboards.