Bake, Battle & Roll (A Lexy Baker Bakery Cozy Mystery)

by Leighann Dobbs

  “Looks like we’re having cannoli for dessert!” Nans navigated the kitchen, carefully stepping on the rubber mats. Ida, Helen and Ruth followed along behind her.

  “Hi!” Lexy greeted the ladies. “What brings you here?”

  “Oh, you know, we were in the neighborhood …” Nans gave the kitchen a sweeping glance, then leaned in toward Lexy and lowered her voice. “We were wondering if you made any progress.”

  Lexy frowned. “Not really, but I’m working on it. Do you guys want some brownies? I’m just about to take them out of the oven.”

  Nans held her hands at chest level, palms out. “None for me, thanks.”

  Ruth, Ida and Helen shook their heads. Lexy narrowed her eyes at them. It wasn’t like the ladies to turn down a dessert.

  She left Deena to the cannoli shells and went to the oven. She was bent over, trying to lift the large pan out when she sensed someone behind her. Straightening, she spun around, her heart jumping when she find Brad standing there.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a not very friendly way.

  “I see you’re still here even after yesterday,” he said.

  Lexy put her hands on her hips, anger pulsing in her veins. “And why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, it’s just that it’s awfully suspicious that you stormed off after chef yesterday and then he ends up dead … with his blood on your shirt.” Brad glanced over toward her knife set.

  “Yes, my knives are all there,” Lexy said taking the brownie pan out of the oven and slamming it on the counter. “So my knife was not the one that killed Dugasse.”

  “Really?” Brad raised an eyebrow at her. “It sure seemed like you were mad. And you had the opportunity. You could have used any of the knives from the kitchen …”

  Lexy ignored him, turning back to the oven.

  Brad glared at her. “What’s a’matter? Don’t have a snippy answer for that one eh?”

  “Don’t you have some work to do?” she shot over her shoulder.

  Brad started toward the front of the kitchen then turned back to Lexy. “Enjoy what time you have left in the kitchen … I heard Payne is here and he might be ready to make an arrest.”

  Lexy’s heart clenched. Surely Payne didn’t have any evidence to arrest her with?

  “What was that all about?” Nans stared at Brad’s retreating back.

  “I have no idea. Yesterday he made a big deal out of telling Payne that I had stormed out after Dugasse vowing to stop him once and for all … or something like that.”

  “And did you?”

  Lexy cringed. “Well, I guess I did … but I didn’t mean I was going to stop him by killing him!”

  “Oh, so you didn’t kill him?” A voice behind Lexy made her jump and she whirled around coming face to face with Detective Payne in a white polo shirt and a new pair of plaid Bermuda shorts—these in purple and yellow.

  “No. I. Did. Not,” Lexy said, taking another tray of brownies out of the oven and slamming them on the counter.

  Payne’s eyebrows went up. “Are these brownies?”

  “Yes.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “Are you going to cut them?”

  “Yes.”

  Payne grabbed a plate from the stack near the sink and held it out to Lexy who felt her mouth hanging open. Was he serious? She was about to give him a piece of her mind when she remembered Nans’ old saying about catching more flies with honey then vinegar. Maybe if she kept giving the detective pastries, he wouldn’t want to arrest her.

  She took the plate, grabbed a knife—not a chef’s knife like the one that killed Dugasse, a smaller one—and cut neat rows in the pan. Then she removed an extra-large brownie, put it on the plate and handed it to Payne, forcing herself to smile in the process.

  “So, Detective … what brings you here? Do you have more questions?” Lexy asked after he’d taken a few bites and mumbled his approval.

  “Mmmm …” Payne put the plate down and blotted his lips with a tissue he took from his pocket. “Yes, of course. I did come here for a reason. It seems some new evidence has come to light.”

  Lexy’s stomach clenched. “It has?”

  “Yes.” Payne turned to face the rest of the kitchen and raised his voice. “There is a new suspect … someone who has been seen sneaking up to the kitchen on several occasions.”

  The kitchen grew silent, everyone stopping their tasks and turning to look at Payne. Lexy’s heart thudded with anticipation.

  “And that person is in the room right now.” Payne slowly looked at everyone in the room, his pencil poised in the air as he surveyed the area.

  “Who is it?” someone asked.

  “It is …” Payne suddenly stopped, then whirled in the direction of Nans and her friends. He stabbed his pencil out toward them.

  “Ruth Weston!”

  Chapter Six

  Payne’s words hit Lexy like a punch in the gut and she whirled around to look at Ruth along with everyone else in the kitchen.

  Ruth’s hand fluttered around her throat, her face turning an unhealthy shade of red.

  Nans, Ida and Helen all said “Ruth!” at the same time.

  Lexy turned back to Payne. “That’s got to be some sort of mistake. Why would Ruth be sneaking up to the kitchen?”

  “It is no mistake. I have it on good authority.” Payne picked up the plate and shoved the rest of the brownie in his mouth.

  Lexy narrowed her eyes at the room wondering who would have said such a thing. Her gaze game to rest on Brad who was leaning against the sink, arms crossed on his chest, a smirk on his face.

  “Ruth, tell him that’s not true,” Nans said.

  “I … well … I can’t,” Ruth stammered.

  “What? Why can’t you?” Nans asked.

  “Because,” Ruth looked down at the floor, “it’s true.”

  “What?” Ida gasped. “But why would you be sneaking around here?”

  Ruth’s chest heaved as she took in a deep breath. She looked up at Nans. “I was sneaking rolls.”

  “Rolls!” Helen said sharply.

  Ruth’s face turned even deeper red.

  Lexy’s brow creased. “Why would you have to sneak up to the kitchen for rolls?”

  “Oh, it’s this darn Paleo diet. It’s killing me!” Ruth said.

  “What? What Paleo diet?” Lexy cut her eyes to Nans.

  “We’ve been on the Paleo diet. You know eating like a cave man? It’s supposed to be very good for you and help slow down aging. God knows we can use all the help we can get in that area,” Nans said.

  “So, we’re sworn off baked goods. We agreed to eat only meat, fruits, nuts and vegetables. Didn’t we Ruth?” Helen turned to Ruth whose face got even redder.

  That explained why they didn’t want the brownies, Lexy thought.

  “But what’s that have to do with Chef Dugasse?” Lexy asked.

  “Nothing,” Ruth said. “I didn’t even know the chef. I was just sneaking over for rolls. Jules would give them to me.”

  Lexy looked at Payne. “This seems pretty flimsy. Why does that make Ruth a suspect?”

  “My source told me she was very sneaky like she didn’t want to be seen. In my book, that’s suspicious.”

  “Well, maybe Jules can corroborate Ruth’s story.”

  “Which of you is Jules?” Payne bellowed out into the room.

  A young, blonde girl stepped forward, her eyes flitting around the room.

  “I am,” she squeaked.

  Payne made circling motions with his pencil. “Well, tell us. Did you give Ruth the rolls?”

  “Yes, she came the past three mornings. Early. Said not to tell anyone.”

  “And did she fraternize with Chef Dugasse?”

  “No, sir.” Jules picked at the strings fraying from her apron pocket. “She just poked her head in the door and asked for a couple of rolls and some butter.”

  “At the back door?” Payne pointed his pencil to the door that led out to the du
mpster.

  Jules nodded.

  Payne turned to Ruth. “And did you see Chef Dugasse … or anyone else out there?”

  “No.” Ruth shook her head.

  Payne looked up at the ceiling, tapping the eraser end of his pencil on his lips in the familiar gesture that Lexy took to mean he was “thinking”.

  “What time was this?” he asked.

  Ruth glanced at the other ladies. “I wanted to eat the rolls and get back before Helen and Mona got up so I always came at seven thirty on the dot.”

  Payne did more pencil tapping on his lips. “The medical examiner places the time of death between seven forty-five and eight fifteen. So that would be too early to kill the chef … unless you lurked around the dumpster, killed him and then went back to your cottage.”

  “That’s impossible.” Nans cut in earning a raised eyebrow look from Payne. “We have our alarms set for seven fifty am precisely and Ruth was already there when mine went off. So she wouldn’t have had time to kill the chef and get back to the cottage.”

  Ruth turned to Nans, Ida and Helen. “I’m so sorry if I let you down. But I just couldn’t go without bread!”

  Helen grabbed her hand. “That’s okay, Ruth. To tell you the truth, I snuck a Mounds bar the other day.”

  “I ate some animal crackers at the beach,” Nans added.

  “And I snuck one of Norman’s scones,” Ida confessed.

  “Ladies! Ladies!” Payne waved his arms. “Let’s stick to the morning of the murder.”

  Nans, Ruth, Ida and Helen turned their attention back to Payne.

  “Now, you came from the parking lot to the back door?” Payne asked.

  Ruth nodded.

  “You didn’t come up the path by the dumpster?”

  “No.”

  “And did you see anything unusual while you were there.”

  Ruth scrunched up her face. “I’m not sure this has anything to do with your investigation, but the parking lot is usually quite empty at that time of morning … except yesterday there was a very unusual car in the lot. It stuck right out.

  Payne made impatient circling motions with his pencil. “Are you going to tell us what it looked like?”

  “It was a pink Cadillac. I’ve never seen one before. It was quite striking.”

  “Who here has a pink Cadillac?” Payne said looking around the room.

  No one fessed up.

  “No one knows who owns such a car?”

  Everyone shook their head. Payne scribbled in his notebook. Lexy tapped her foot impatiently.

  “Are we done here?” Lexy asked.

  “Not quite …” Payne eyed the brownies.

  “But Ruth is free to go, right?” Nans asked.

  “Yes, I suppose she is in the clear,” Payne said reaching into his pocket and producing a business card which he handed to Ruth. “If you remember anything else that might be useful, give me a call.”

  Ruth took the card and the women started toward the door with Nans miming instructions to Lexy to meet her at their cottage when she was done.

  Lexy tried to go back to cutting the rest of the brownies only to be interrupted by the annoying detective.

  “I do have some bad news for you,” he said to Lexy. “Sylvia Spicer says she found you standing over the body so if there’s anything you want to tell me …”

  Lexy felt her cheeks grow warm, she glanced over at Sylvia her stomach tightening with anger.

  “Why would I kill him?” She turned back to Payne. “If you ask me, Sylvia had more of a motive—with Dugasse gone, she gets promoted to head chef … and I saw her heading in the direction of the door right before I went out and found him dead.”

  Payne’s brows shot up, he scribbled in his book. “She said she was in the freezer.”

  Lexy shrugged. “Well wouldn’t you say that, too, if you didn’t want to be suspected of murder?”

  Payne tapped the eraser on his lips. “Yes, I guess I would.”

  He reached over, took another brownie and then started in the direction of the door. After taking two steps, he turned around jabbing the brownie in her direction.

  “I still have more clues to put together, but I’d say it doesn’t look so good for you. I’ve done some digging and I know you’ve been involved in other murders.”

  Lexy started to protest and he held his hand up to silence her.

  “I know, you were never charged with any of them, but it seems rather suspicious to me that you’re always around when a dead body shows up.” He leaned in toward her, his dark eyes drilling into hers. “I’m going to be looking into you very carefully. Rest assured that if you had something to do with this murder, your detective boyfriend won’t be able to get you out of it this time.”

  Chapter Seven

  It was noon by the time Lexy and Deena stuffed the last cannoli shell with her sweet ricotta recipe. She threw her apron into the bin, said good-bye to Deena and grabbed a cannoli on her way out the door.

  She took the same path to Nan’s cottage as she had the day before. This time she was more focused on the sweet creamy pastry than the scenery. The hours spent over the Fry-O-Lator had paid off. The shell was perfectly crunchy. They were sure to be a big hit at tonight’s dinner. Speaking of which, Lexy realize she’d better hurry if she wanted to have some beach time with Jack before they had to come back to the dining hall to eat.

  She shoved the rest of the cannoli in her mouth, wiped her hands together and sprinted the rest of the way to Nans.

  The four ladies turned as Lexy tapped lightly on the screen then let herself in. She glanced at the white board and noticed they had added a column labeled ‘clues’ and put ‘pink Cadillac’ under it and had updated the ‘Dugasse’ column with the time of death.

  “Did Payne say anything enlightening after we left?” Nans was all business.

  “Not really.” Lexy sunk into the old slip covered sofa that faced the white board and studied the columns.

  “Let’s go through the board and you can tell us about any new information,” Nans said to Lexy.

  “Did you find out about any enemies or any rumors about Chef Dugasse?”

  Lexy shook her head. “Nothing so far. I have Deena asking around. You know how teens are, they see a lot more than the rest of us.”

  Nans nodded, then pointed to the ‘Crime Scene’ column. “Do you know what they might have found for evidence?”

  “Other than the knife? No. But Jack said, if it was his case, he would be scouring the trails for evidence and it doesn’t look like Payne is doing that. We walked a couple of them yesterday and didn’t find a thing, but there’s one more I want to check out … maybe you guys could go with me?”

  “Sure,” Nans said, looking at the others who nodded their agreement.

  “I wish we knew if they found anything out by the dumpsters,” Helen said. “It sure is a lot easier investigating these things when you have an ‘in’ at the police department.”

  Lexy nodded her agreement. Back home, Jack usually knew everything about the cases they were working on and he would give them tidbits of information. She didn’t think they’d be getting the same courtesy from Payne.

  Nans pointed at the murder weapon column on the white board. “This knife could be a clue … if we could verify whose knife it is.”

  Lexy shrugged. “Most every chef has a set of knives, but I did notice that knife was a very high end one with a mahogany handle. I haven’t seen any like that in the kitchen but I’ll keep looking.”

  Ida stepped out from the other side of the board and tapped her finger on the heading of the next column, ‘Sylvia’. “This is probably where we should focus our efforts.”

  “Yes, she seems t0 be our most likely suspect,” Nans agreed.

  “She claims she was in the freezer, that she never went outside until after I found him,” Lexy said. “Thomas, the chef she was talking to right before the murder said he didn’t see where she went, so I can’t place her at the scene
… yet.”

  “She stands to gain the head chef spot and she probably hated him just as much as anyone,” Helen pointed out.

  “I bet when she saw him yelling at the other chef, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and she got so mad that she ran out there and shoved the knife into his chest!” Ida clasped her hands together and arced them in the air in front of her, making stabbing motions.

  Ruth nodded. “Pent up aggression for how he treated everyone.”

  “A crime of passion,” Helen added.

  Helen's words triggered something in the back of Lexy’s mind. “Or maybe …”

  The four women raised their eyebrows at her.

  “What if there was more going on with Sylvia and Dugasse than just a chef and sous-chef relationship?” Lexy asked.

  Nans eyebrows shot up. “Did you see something to indicate that?”

  “Well, sort of. I did see them in some conversations that seemed to be more personal then professional. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now …”

  “A lover’s quarrel!” Ida’s eyes lit up.

  “Well, I don’t know. It’s one thing to look into, I guess. There’s another thing too.” Lexy’s brow wrinkled. “When Sylvia saw me with the body, she asked if we should hide it.”

  “Hide it?” Nans said. “Why would she ask that if she didn’t kill him?”

  “I have no idea,” Lexy said. “And then there’s the matter of Brad.”

  “Who’s Brad?” Helen asked.

  “Another one of the chefs. He’s the one that told Payne I had stormed off to ‘stop Dugasse once and for all’. And he was needling me today about being the killer.” Lexy pressed her lips together. “I have no idea why he would do that, unless he just hates me.”

  “It could be a love triangle!” Ida said.

  Lexy made a face. “I’ll have to ask around and see if anyone else noticed anything.”

  “Meanwhile, I’ll add Brad to the board.” Nans added his name under the ‘Suspects’ column.

  “There’s another thing to consider,” Ruth said. “How did his body get behind the dumpster?”