Wined, Dined and Dead

by Stacey Alabaster

  She looked a little unimpressed while she offered me a limp handshake and an even limper smile. Justin took the chance to scurry off. It didn't look like he enjoyed being caught in Bianca's presence. Darn it. He was still my best shot for an in with Tyson.

  I could tell that just like Tyson McCall, Bianca expected me to already be familiar with who she was. In reality, she was completely unfamiliar to me. I didn't recognize her at all. "I'm a big fan," I said with a bright smile. "Of yours and Tyson's."

  She rolled her eyes, just a little. Not enough to spoil her perfect makeup. "Oh," she said flatly. "You're one of those. A Tyson fan girl. Well, I hate to break it to you but he is not as charming as he appears on TV." She lowered her voice and muttered under her breath, "Believe me."

  Oh, she didn't need to worry. I was well aware of how much charm Tyson McCall possessed in real life.

  "I'd just like to say hi," I said hopefully. "Is he around?"

  Bianca let out a long sigh. "I wish." She stopped and considered that for a moment. "Well, actually, I'm not sure about that. But he's not here."

  "Tyson isn't here yet?" I asked, surprised. "But it's almost time to go to air."

  Bianca shook her head and adjusted one of her earrings. "Called in sick today." She rolled her eyes. "Probably just has a cold, knowing him. He can be SUCH a diva. But, you didn't hear that from me, right?"

  "Oh. Right."

  "Well, I guess this was kind of a waste of time," I murmured, walking back toward Pippa. But I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Tyson never showed up to work. It meant we wouldn't get a chance to stop him running the story…but if he wasn't there, it also meant that he couldn't possibly run the story...right?

  When Pippa didn't answer me, I said, "Pippa? Did you hear me?"

  I noticed that she was on the phone. She held a finger up for me to be quiet for a moment so I complied.

  I only heard her say one thing.

  "Marcello, you're a genius."

  Well. I was very certainly surprised to hear that.

  Pippa ended the call. "You are not going to believe this, Rach, but it looks like Marcello has actually come through with the goods. Maybe that husband of mine is not completely useless after all."

  I couldn't think what Marcello could possibly have come up with in the last half an hour that was going to make me forgive him for flooding my bakery and putting me out of business for at least a week.

  Pippa's eyes were glowing. "We didn't need to worry about coming down here. Tyson is definitely not running that story. Believe me, it is the last thing that Tyson McCall wants on the news."

  Bianca stomped past us again in high heels, asking us if we intended to leave any time soon. "Sorry, we're leaving in a moment—" I said as she rolled her eyes again and stomped away.

  "Hang on," I said, shaking my head, unsure I had heard Pippa correctly. "Tyson is not running the story? But why not?"

  Pippa raised an eyebrow. "Because he knew Paul. Paul had worked for him before." A wide grin broke out on her face. "And let's just say, they didn’t part on great terms."

  "No wonder he didn't come in today," I said way too excitedly. And way too loud. "Now that he is the number one suspect in a murder." I trailed off when I saw Pippa shaking her head, her eyes wide.

  Justin was standing right behind me. He'd heard everything.

  Uh-oh.

  Chapter 8

  The hills of Belldale Heights loomed before me. They seemed dark and forbidding with the sun rising behind them. Turn back now, they seemed to command. But there was really no turning back, as much as I wanted to pump the brakes right then.

  "Put Marcello on speaker," I said as I put my foot down on the accelerator. Pippa was chatting to her husband about Lolly's sleeping schedule, but I needed to talk to him about something far more important—Tyson McCall's killing schedule.

  "He says he doesn't know how to put it on speaker..." Pippa said worriedly.

  "What? No." I shook my head. “Marcello doesn't need to put it on speaker on his end. You need to put it on speaker so that I can speak to him!"

  Geez, they really were perfect for each other, weren't they?

  I looked at the time on the car clock. 6:00am. "Pippa, please hurry. It's the button in the center."

  After struggling for a moment, she finally got Marcello on speaker and sat the phone down on the dash where it swayed back and forth, almost falling to the floor. "Maybe you should just hold it."

  "Right."

  "Marcello? Can you hear me?" I shouted.

  "Yes, Rachael!" His accent was a little harder to make out through the crackle of the speaker phone, but I needed the info quickly. There was no time for me to pull over to take the call myself.

  "How did you find out all this info, Marcello? About Paul and Tyson?"

  I had to make sure Marcello hadn't gotten the info from a dodgy source. Or worse, made it up completely.

  "One of the guys in the frat house called me," Marcello answered.

  I looked at Pippa. "Really? Why would he do that?" I wanted to trust Marcello, but he didn't have the best track record for being reliable.

  "Because I left my wallet behind last time I was there....or rather, it fell from my pants," Marcello answered.

  I shook my head. Of course that was what had happened.

  "He called me to see if I could come get my things, and while I had him on the phone, I thought to take advantage of the opportunity, ask this roommate of Paul's if there was anything else he knew about him. What do you say? Anything notable? And he answers, yes. He said that Paul worked for a famous TV news presenter."

  "Well, not that famous," I replied sarcastically. "I'd never heard of him before. But, great work, Marcello." I'd almost forgotten about the ruined carpets in both my bakery and my house. Almost. "Any other details? We're just about at Tyson's house now, so anything else you can give us would be great."

  "So apparently, Paul worked for Tyson right before he started working at Scott's restaurant, but Tyson fired him."

  I looked at Pippa. "Interesting. Do you know why Tyson fired him, Marcello?"

  "He caught him stealing. Or, at least, Tyson believed he caught him stealing."

  Pippa ended the call after that. "Makes sense," she said, raising an eyebrow at me as we pulled into the driveway. "He held a grudge against Paul all this time, and when he sees he's working at his favorite restaurant—destroying his night out, no less—Tyson snaps and does something stupid."

  I looked up at the mansion we were now sitting in front of. "Looks like we're about to find out." Were we doing the right thing though, confronting him without any backup? We didn't even have Marcello and Lolly with us.

  If Tyson really was capable of snapping so quickly and resorting to violence, this could be a very stupid decision indeed.

  Especially considering that I'd accidentally told his colleagues down at the station that he was a suspect in a murder case. That couldn't work in my favor.

  "What are you waiting for?" Pippa asked me after we'd been sitting still for over thirty seconds.

  "I was just wondering if maybe we should call Jackson?" I cringed even as I suggested it.

  "Are you kidding me?" Pippa asked, dumbfounded.

  "Right," I said, shaking my head. "That was a dumb suggestion. Come on, let's go."

  Tyson answered the door wearing a suit. From the look of shock on his face I could see we were the last two people he was expecting to see that morning.

  And he clearly had somewhere else he was supposed to be. Or maybe, not supposed to be. In an outfit as slick as that he looked like he was ready for someone to call lights, camera, action.

  "I thought you were sick," I said, looking Tyson up and down. "You look perfectly healthy to me."

  He coughed. "How did you know I was sick?"

  I shrugged. "Heard it through the grapevine."

  "Actually, I am on my way to the doctor's office right now," he said unconvincingly as he grabbed hi
s coat from a hook by the door.

  "At six am?" I asked. "That's very early for a doctor's office to be open."

  "It's an afterhours service for VIP patients."

  I tried not to roll my eyes. There was no doctor’s office in the town that required a suit and tie. Not even for its VIP patients.

  "We won't keep you from your...doctor's appointment," Pippa said. "We just want to ask you a few questions."

  "I don't want to talk to either of you," Tyson said as he pushed past us to get to his car. I couldn't believe how bright the morning sun was. Was it always this bright? It was blinding me. My eyes had adjusted to the dark. It seemed almost strange to be solving this mystery during the day now.

  "Shoot, he's actually running away!" Pippa cried out. I spun around to see that, yep, Tyson was sprinting down the driveway toward his BMW. He looked absurd in his suit and tie, tripping over his perfectly shined boots as he skidded over the pebbles in the driveway.

  "Why didn't you tell us that you knew Paul?" I asked, running after him. My shoes weren't much better—I was still in the heels I'd worn for our romantic date night. But I was starting to feel like a news journalist myself, one of those dodgy ones that chase people down the street with a camera. Only there was no camera, yet.

  But I had a bad feeling it was only a matter of time. Justin wasn't exactly the kind of person to keep gossip to himself. And this wasn't any regular gossip. This was gossip that could put his much loathed co-worker in jail.

  This was big news.

  Somehow, I managed to overtake Tyson. I reached forward and shut the car door before he had a chance to climb in. He glared at me. "What do you think you're doing, Rachael? Step away!"

  "Believe it or not, I'm trying to help you." Hey, it wasn't a total lie.

  "Yeah right," Tyson replied. "I've got a story to break."

  "Yeah right," I echoed right back at him. "I was just down at the news station. I know that you're not going in there today at all, doctor’s appointment or not. Bianca told me."

  Tyson looked shocked. "You were at the station?" He shook his head and looked at Pippa and I. "No, you're bluffing. There's no way they would let either of you two through the doors. They have security to keep types like you out. We get all kinds of crazy stalker fans trying to catch a glimpse of us." Tyson tugged at his cufflinks, looking very pleased with himself.

  He was such a charmer, wasn't he? Bianca was right.

  "Look," I said, inching closer to him. "You don't want this story going to air any more than we do. At least, not until the case is solved and you are found innocent." Now it was my turn to look pleased with myself.

  And I had reason to. Tyson's face totally changed after that comment. He was no longer cocky, no longer in control. I was.

  "I am innocent," he said. I caught him glancing through the window at something in the car. Something laying on the backseat, pushed to the side. That was a big mistake on his part, giving it away like that. I quickly peered through the window to see what he was trying to hide, even though he stepped in front of me to try and block my view.

  A suitcase.

  "How is it going to look that you were there at the exact moment that your former employee—the one that you had a history with—was killed?"

  Tyson had turned a little white under his collar.

  I knew I was right. He had no intention of running the story. He was running away from the story.

  "I didn't do it," Tyson said, exhausted, collapsing against the car to hold him up as though there was no strength left in his body.

  "Then why are you trying to run away? That is what you are doing, right? Trying to get out of town?"

  Tyson bit his tongue. Sweat had broken out on his brow even though it was a chilly February day. "Because you're right—I know how it looks." There was fear in his voice as he spoke. "I suppose I have to thank you, Rachael, for giving away the story. When you came here last night, I knew something was wrong—that it wasn't just that Scott's restaurant had flooded." A little color returned to his face as he scowled at me. "Luckily, I am a journalist. So I was able to snoop around, find out what happened."

  Tyson looked up at the fresh clouds and shook his head.

  "Poor Paul," he murmured.

  I had to admit, he did seem sincere in his shock. For a moment, I almost felt bad for him and the dicey situation he'd found himself in, thanks partly to me. But, hang on a second, hadn't he fired Paul because he'd thought Paul had stolen from him?

  "I didn't think you and Paul parted on such good terms?" I said slowly.

  Tyson was still leaning against his car, his teeth gritted. "No," he said. "You could say that." He looked up at me. "But that doesn't mean that I wanted to kill the poor kid."

  "Why did you let him go?" I asked.

  Tyson shook his head. "It's not like he was a full-time employee. He was a student; he just came by to do a bit of gardening now and then. Odd jobs like that. But he was always pushing me for more work, it was...off putting, you could say."

  Yes, I was sure that Tyson wasn't the kind of man who appreciated being lectured by the hired help.

  "I guess he was desperate for money or something," Tyson said. "Because I caught him going through my wallet that I'd left on the table in the foyer." Suddenly, Tyson's memories of his former employee didn't sound so sympathetic. "So that was it. I had to fire him. Who could blame me for that?"

  Both of us were quiet for a minute. I had to take that all in. I wanted to ask if Tyson might have been mistaken in what he'd seen. What if he'd jumped to conclusions and fired a poor kid who had no other options? And even if Paul had stolen something, it sounded like he must have been in a pretty desperate situation. Maybe frat life, keeping up with the rich kids who lived with him, had taken its toll, made him make bad choices.

  "I have something I need to admit to you," I said uneasily.

  Tyson glowered at me. "You'd better just come out and say it then."

  "While I was down at the station, I may have accidentally let something slip to the news crew. Well, not the news crew. Someone even worse."

  Tyson stood up straight. "Who could be even worse than the news crew? Oh, great, don't tell me it was..."

  I nodded. “I'm afraid so. Justin."

  Tyson looked around wildly as though the news crew—or Justin with his clipboard—might already be there, might have already hunted him down.

  And in a way I almost wanted them there myself. What if Tyson really did skip town? That couldn't be good for us. At least if the news crew turned up, he'd be cornered. Forced to face the music.

  But that wouldn't be good for us either. All I could do was hope that Justin still had some kind of loyalty to me and wouldn't leak the story until I gave him the all clear. I'd sent him ten text messages, begging him to keep the news to himself until I had a little time to clear up the mess. He hadn't replied to any of them.

  "Look," I said to Tyson, who had one hand hovering above his car door handle. "I don't want this leaking yet either...at least not until I find out who did it for sure. If you stick around, maybe you can help. They are your friends at the station. Please, ring them and make sure the story doesn't break yet."

  He glared at me. "And are you going to find out who did it?"

  "Yes. That is what I am trying to do."

  "Well, you're not doing a very good job of it."

  I sighed. Why didn't he try solving a complicated murder in a few hours on absolutely no sleep some time?

  "Fine," Tyson said in a huff. "I won't go anywhere. But if I stick around, I'd better not get into any trouble from the..."

  But it was too late. We both heard the car approaching up the driveway at the same time.

  "Oh, no," I said as the blue lights approached. I looked toward Tyson for help, which was probably completely stupid. "Where can I hide?"

  Tyson threw his hands up in the air to show me that he had no idea and I was on my own. He also looked like he was just about ready to murder me.
>
  I found a bush, but by the time I had thrown myself behind it, it was too late. Jackson had already seen my car.

  "Rachael," he said sternly as he stepped around the bush. He looked down at me with a weary expression. "I thought I told you to stay away from this case?"

  Chapter 9

  "How long are we going to have to wait here?" Pippa whispered to me as we sat on Tyson's stoop.

  "I know. It feels like an hour has passed already." I could hear my voice getting higher. In reality, we'd only been waiting ten minutes while Jackson talked to Tyson, but at that stage, ten minutes may as well have been ten hours.

  "Maybe we should make a run for it," Pippa said.

  It was tempting, but I shook my head. "Jackson would stop us before we even reached the car, let alone before we escaped the estate." Nope, we were just going to have to wait it out.

  "Do you think he's going to arrest Tyson?" Pippa asked.

  I was watching the conversation, trying to follow what was going on. Tyson was doing a very good job of looking innocent, while Jackson nodded along and made notes.

  At the end of their conversation, Jackson laughed and reached out to shake Tyson's hand. "Thanks, Mr. McCall. I'm a big fan of yours by the way."

  I couldn't believe it.

  I rolled my eyes at Pippa. "He's turned on his old fake newsreader charm to Jackson and gotten out of questioning!"

  Yep, he wasn't even going to get dragged into the station, unlike some other people. Namely me.

  I stood up as Jackson approached, ready to have a go at him. "You can't let Tyson McCall off the hook so lightly and then arrest me," I said, crossing my arms.

  "Well, I can't actually arrest you," Jackson said. "You weren't doing anything technically illegal."

  "I thought you might arrest me for averting the course of justice." I caught the look in his eyes. Right. He was trying to let me off the hook, kind of look the other way, and I was about to throw myself right back into the fiery pit.