Murder on the Half Shell (A Red Carpet Catering Mystery Book 2)

by Shawn Reilly Simmons

  “Penelope, that’s still not solid evidence against Emilio,” Shane said in an accusatory tone.

  “Who else would have keys to that padlock, Mr. Guthrie?” Joey said, slipping out of vacation mode and into his homicide detective voice.

  “I do, and the foreman on the construction team. And Emilio, of course. The construction crew isn’t coming over until tomorrow to set up. I gave the film crew tomorrow off so Emilio and I could spend the day walking the site with the foreman and attending the building planning meeting.”

  “And you’re sure no one else has access to the building?” Joey asked.

  “I bought that lock myself. It came with two keys and I had two extra keys made for it. It’s in the construction agreement that we allow the city council access, something to do with emergency fire codes because we’re not year-round residents. But I haven’t given them the key yet. I trust the construction manager and the town manager.”

  “Trust is an interesting word to use in this situation,” Dominique said cryptically. The fine features of her face looked pained, her green eyes welling on the verge of tears. Penelope had never seen a more flawless complexion on a grown woman. Dominique looked like she’d jumped off the pages of a skincare ad in a fashion magazine into this rundown mansion. Judging from her French accent and dark complexion, Penelope guessed she was Creole.

  Shane walked to the back wall of the kitchen and cranked open the middle section of the dirty slated windows, his flip flops slapping the tile floor. The windows opened out onto a small deck and an overgrown yard tangled with mangrove and orange trees.

  “Did you see Emilio talking with anyone after the party broke up?” Penelope asked.

  “Yes,” he said, continuing to stare out of the windows. Dominique snorted out a quick harsh laugh.

  “When was the last time you heard from Emilio?” Joey asked. Dominique seemed lost in thought, shaking her head slowly back and forth. She didn’t appear to have heard what Joey said.

  “I spoke to him this morning,” Shane said. “He was going to take another look around the site, make sure everything was set for our meeting with the architect and construction workers. They’re bringing all of the plans and blueprints for our approval. It’s a big day for us.”

  “Mrs. Babineau,” Joey said, turning to Dominique. “You didn’t attend the party on Friday night?”

  “I wasn’t on the island yet. I only came over yesterday. I’ve been doing the same thing they’re doing for the restaurant for the house, meeting with the remodeling team, approving designs and colors, and I had a meeting in the morning before I came. We rent a condo in Miami…I’m really not comfortable sleeping here yet, especially not on my own. If Emilio is here, then sometimes I can rest.”

  “Where did you guys have lunch yesterday?” Penelope asked.

  “The Shrimp Shack on the beach. Why?” Shane said, turning to face them again.

  “I was just wondering. Emilio mentioned having lunch with you,” Penelope said.

  Shane looked confused for a minute, then nodded at Dominique. “We all met at the Shrimp Shack after Dominique arrived on the ferry. Emilio was running behind, but he eventually showed.” Dominique nodded in agreement.

  Penelope remembered something, then pushed it aside. She placed her hand on Dominique’s forearm, the skin cool under her fingers. “I’m sorry to have been the one to tell you this. But Emilio wanted me to come and bring the paperwork to you in person. I hope everything works out. We should get going and let you get in touch with him.”

  Joey nodded at them and followed Penelope back down the hallway.

  “Penelope,” Shane called after her.

  “Yes?” Penelope said, turning back towards the kitchen.

  “Keep this to yourself, okay? I’m sure Emilio has nothing to do with any of this. We don’t need any bad press on the set.”

  Chapter 11

  Back in the Range Rover, they brushed a few leaves that had fallen through the sunroof off of the tan leather seats.

  “Well, that was weird,” Joey said. “Did you get the feeling that Babineau’s wife wasn’t completely surprised he might be involved with young girls?” He started up the truck and backed out of the narrow gravel driveway.

  Penelope nodded as she pulled her seatbelt into place. “This isn’t the first time he’s had problems. He was accused of inappropriate behavior with a couple of students back when I was in school.”

  Joey cut his eyes at her as he pulled onto the road. “Is Emilio an old flame of yours, Penny? A campus romance from long ago?”

  “No,” Penelope said sharply, her expression serious. “I heard the rumors about him, and I know he socialized with his students once in a while, but I never believed he acted improperly with the girls back in school. The allegations were dropped. Both of the girls took back what they said, even the one who said they were romantically involved.”

  “Whatever happened to them?” Joey asked. “Might be interesting to find out, see if there are any similarities.”

  Penelope nodded, and pulled her phone from her purse. “I’ll Google them, see what comes up. One of the girls involved back then was Summer Farrington. We roomed together first term, but then got shuffled away from each other in the next lottery.”

  “They made you change roommates every semester?” Joey asked, eyes on the road.

  “Yeah, well, after each term, and our school terms were about four months long. The school years are set up differently than regular universities. It’s an intensive study, and they think moving people around and having them live and work with different students helps build better chefs.”

  Penelope tapped a few things on her phone and said, “Here she is. She’s chef de cuisine at Saciar in New York.”

  “The fancy Latin place in Midtown?” Joey asked, sliding his eyes towards her phone.

  “Apparently. She looks the same,” Penelope said, nodding. She widened a picture on the screen of her phone to look closer at Summer’s face.

  “She reminds me of you a little,” Joey said, taking another quick glance, then pulling his eyes back to the road.

  “Yeah, we joked about that our first year, that they roomed us together on purpose because we looked like sisters,” Penelope said, remembering. “It was my first time away from home. Everything was so new, and we were under this incredible pressure to succeed or be asked to leave the institute.”

  “Is Summer the one Emilio was supposedly romantically involved with?” Joey said, his jaw tightening.

  “Yeah,” Penelope said just above a whisper. “But then later she took back her story, made a deal with Emilio and the school. We weren’t roommates anymore when all of that was happening, and she would never talk to anyone about it afterwards, even when Emilio had already left the institute.”

  “Looks like she turned out okay,” Emilio said.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes.

  “What about the other girl?” Emilio asked. “Can you find anything about her?”

  Penelope went back to tapping on her phone. “No…I’m not seeing anything. Her name was Christine Sullivan. Nothing is coming up as far as her working as a chef anywhere that I can find on Google.”

  “She has a more common name,” Joey offered. “Also, she could have gotten married and changed it.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know how I’d find her if that’s the case,” Penelope said. “Unless…” She pulled open a new search tab on the screen. “The institute has a listing of all students and where they work on their site, not for the public but for fellow students. You can log in and look for classmates, for jobs or referrals, that kind of thing.”

  “Are you finding her in there?” Joey asked, slowing the truck down to take a turn.

  Penelope shook her head. “She’s not listed in here, not that I can
see. There are a couple of Christines…”

  “Jot down their names and do a search; if they have pictures online at the restaurants where they work, you might be able to recognize her.”

  “Good idea,” Penelope said, pulling a pen and paper from her backpack and scribbling down a few names.

  “Hey, do you think I caught Dominique and Shane off-guard when I asked about lunch yesterday?” Penelope asked suddenly, looking up from her paper.

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” Joey said. “Lunch at a public place isn’t very hard to confirm, so why would they be cagy about it?”

  “Maybe they weren’t trying to be evasive, maybe they were just curious why I was asking,” Penelope said. “I’m pretty sure Emilio told me that Shane picked him up at the house for lunch though. Why would he lie about that?”

  “Unless he was locking two girls in his construction site before he met them,” Joey said darkly.

  Penelope paused, unsure of how to feel. She finally said quietly, “Joey, I just know he wouldn’t hurt them.”

  Joey glanced down at the list of names in her lap and then back at the road, staying silent.

  After a moment of silence, Penelope said, “It felt weird being the one to tell Dominique that her husband had been arrested.”

  “You get used to delivering bad news after a while,” Joey said quietly.

  Penelope laid her hand loosely over his on the center console as they drove back towards town, her eyes flicking from the road to the list of names in her lap.

  “Something has me thinking,” Penelope said.

  Joey slowed down to maneuver a curve in the road up ahead. “What’s that?”

  “Emilio told the detectives he called his wife Friday night after he got home from the party, but she didn’t mention it,” Penelope said. “I hope he’s not lying about that.” Her stomach began to twist, wondering if Emilio was digging himself into a bigger hole by lying to the police.

  When they got back on the boat, Penelope and Joey headed to her cabin. Penelope tossed her backpack on the bed and pulled a silver laptop from her overnight bag. “Before we go swimming I’m going to email that detective the employment info on the girls. Go ahead and get changed.” They’d decided to stay on the boat with Max and Arlena and swim off the side for the rest of the day. She felt the boat shift beneath her as it powered away from the dock and out to sea.

  Joey pulled a pair of swim trunks from his suitcase and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Penelope powered up the laptop and logged into the film production website, a shared server that all of the managers on the movie had access to. In her employment folder she located the scanned permissions and electronic time cards for the girls. She found Detective Torres’ card in her backpack and emailed her the information with a short note that said, “Attached please find the documents we discussed. Let me know if I can help with anything else.”

  Penelope bit her bottom lip and opened her browser, typing Rebekkah and Sabena’s names into her search engine. A page or so of results filled the screen, linking to the girls’ Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts.

  Joey came out of the bathroom in his trunks holding a bottle of sunscreen. “Can you get some on my back? I can’t reach. What are you looking at?”

  She waved him over. “I was checking to see if there was any update on the girls. There’s nothing about what happened today, but here’s an article on Facebook about their school’s volleyball team making it to the semifinals.” She clicked the link leading to a local news website. A photo of eight girls in volleyball uniforms filled the screen. Sabena and Rebekkah knelt next to each other in the front row, fists on hips.

  “Go back to their profiles,” Joey said. He sat on the bed behind her and looked at the screen over her shoulder.

  Penelope clicked on Sabena’s profile first. The profile picture was her sucking in her cheeks and pouting at the camera, long blonde hair framing her face. Her background photo was an artsy shot of a volleyball net. Penelope went into the “About Me” section. “She seems like your average teenager. She likes boy bands, reality shows and the beach. Under ‘Relationship’ she put ‘it’s complicated.’”

  “Aren’t all relationships complicated at that age?” Joey asked.

  “It’s probably a lot more complicated when you’re not allowed to date,” Penelope said. She scrolled through Sabena’s pictures, not seeing any one particular man more than once, and those were all in group shots.

  Penelope clicked on Rebekkah’s profile and found much of the same. Her profile picture was a selfie of her and Sabena, their heads pressed together, both of them making the same duck-faced expression. Her background picture was of the ocean, a cameraman from the crew silhouetted against the sunset.

  “That’s from our set,” Penelope said, pointing at the picture. Rebekkah designated herself as single in her settings.

  “Click on her pictures,” Joey said. “See if either of them posted anything Friday night.”

  Scanning through the photos, Penelope recognized a few from the party, with piles of crawfish and random groups of people milling around the tables. She saw a picture of herself, Arlena and Gavin sitting at the bar. The caption read, “Hanging with the A-list tonight.” Sabena hadn’t posted anything from Friday night. Her most recent post from earlier in the week read, “Rough day. Please send prayers.” There were several likes and comments below the status update, mostly people responding that they were thinking of her or sending virtual hugs.

  “It looks like something was going on with her,” Penelope said.

  “Maybe,” Joey said. “I see posts like that all the time. I wonder why people are so vague about things going on in their lives when they share everything else.”

  Penelope stood up from the desk, stretched her arms over her head, then took the suntan lotion from Joey and spread some on his shoulders and back. When she was finished, she pulled a white bikini out of her bag and went into the bathroom to change. When she came out, Joey was sitting at the desk, scrolling through photos. Most of them were of a smiling Sabena either by herself or with other kids who looked to be around her age.

  “Find anything else interesting?” she asked.

  “Not really, your typical stuff. These kids put everything up online, it’s amazing,” Joey said, standing up from the desk. “Looks like she has a lot of friends based on how many pictures there are of her with other people.”

  Penelope grabbed her bag and pulled a pad of paper from it, looking at the different names she’d jotted down. “I’m going to search these Chef Christines. See if anyone looks familiar.”

  Joey watched over her shoulder as Penelope searched a few names, pulling up the attached images and squinting at each of them.

  “These aren’t her. This one’s way too old,” she pointed at the screen, “and the other two don’t look like the girl I remember at all.”

  “It looks like she’s not working as a chef anywhere,” Joey said.

  “I guess not, or at least not in a place where they publicly list their chefs,” Penelope said. “She hasn’t updated her listing on the institute site either.”

  “So you think she’s working in a chain restaurant or something?” Joey asked.

  “You don’t need a graduate certificate from the best culinary school in the country to work in a place like that,” Penelope said doubtfully. “I wonder what happened to her.”

  “I’ll make a call to the station. One of the guys can do a search, maybe find out where she ended up,” Joey said.

  “That would be so helpful,” Penelope agreed. “If it’s true and nothing happened with Summer and Christine back in school, it would make me more confident about believing him now.” Penelope glanced at the screen once more and then slowly closed the laptop. “Let’s go back up.”

  Max, Arlena,
Penelope and Joey spent the afternoon on the upper deck of the boat, talking and lying in the sun. The captain had taken them to a remote spot far enough out for some privacy from Andrea Island but close enough they could still see the shoreline in the distance.

  Max and Arlena had been arguing over whether or not they should worry about sharks in the water. The argument didn’t last long and soon Joey and Penelope heard splashes and laughter coming from the ocean three levels down.

  “Do you know of anyone who’d want to hurt those girls, Penny Blue?” Joey asked out of nowhere.

  Penelope turned onto her side to face him, propping her head up. “They’re sixteen-year-old girls. How many enemies could they possibly have?”

  “You’d be surprised. Who knows what goes on in the lives and minds of teenage girls? I’ve dealt with some seriously mean girls before. Some of them fight just as much as the boys do, only their fighting can be even more vicious.”

  “I never thought about that,” Penelope said. “I remember high school being rough here and there but nothing like that.”

  “It’s easy to overlook when you’re so far removed from it, but bullying has gotten way out of control, especially now with all this online stuff. Kids are ganging up and harassing others through Facebook and Twitter. We don’t have any control over it. And the parents…they can’t be bothered sometimes.” Joey shook his head.

  “I suppose the police will be looking into all of that, right?” Penelope asked, sitting up all the way and facing him, cross-legged on her chaise.

  “Maybe. Maybe not if they’re convinced of Emilio’s guilt. It depends on how good the detectives are, what evidence they find.”

  “So much revolves around technology now. Whenever the girls were on a break they would sit behind the tent and text, or listen to music together. It struck me as funny, because they’d be sitting right next to each other and not talking, but texting on their phones…maybe to each other, who knows?”