Murder in the Elfth Degree: A Camellia Cove Cozy Mystery Book 2 (A Camellia Cove Mystery)

by Jessica Preston

  Steve Delacourt crossed the hall and loaded his plate with roast beef and took it to a corner table by himself. He forked pieces of meat into his mouth, but his sharp eyes never ceased roaming the crowd.

  A shadow crossed his face when he spied Ethel wandering around. Could he have killed Simon after all? What if Tanya dropped off Simon’s costume, and then Steve came along and killed him afterwards? Kim still couldn’t believe a man with so many connections to the scene of the crime could be totally innocent. Heck, the two of them might have planned and executed the murder together.

  Kim shuddered. More and more guests settled down at the tables with plates of food. Candace was right. They would finish eating soon, and Kim had to set up her dessert service to be ready for them. The kitchen was almost empty except for one pimpled high school boy working the dishwasher. Kim grabbed Betts and headed for the door.

  She found the boxes of cookies she stashed in the walk-in the day before and commandeered Betts to carry them to her serving table while she fetched the cakes from the car. She laid everything out just as Aaron strolled up. “I heard you were looking for me.”

  Kim smiled up at him. “I know who killed Simon.”

  He made a face. “Again?”

  “This time I’m sure,” she replied. “It was Tanya Morris.”

  “What happened?” he asked. “I thought you had your eye on Steve Delacourt.”

  Kim blushed. “I did....I mean, I do....I mean, I think I do. I was trying to find you to tell you I found a witness who can place Tanya Morris in the men’s locker room right before Simon died.”

  “If that’s true,” Aaron replied, “then your witness was in the men’s locker room right before Simon died, too. How do we know the witness didn’t kill Simon?”

  Kim waved her hands. “Because Tanya had the Santa costume with her, and it still had its cover on it. I think we’ll all agree my witness couldn’t have killed Simon.”

  “Who is the witness?” Aaron asked.

  Kim hesitated to say the words. “My grandmother.”

  His eyes flew open. “Your grandmother? She’s the witness? You want me to hang a murder case on something your grandmother saw?”

  Kim glared at him. “There’s nothing wrong with her eyes.”

  “I know,” he replied, “but still, she could have mistaken what she saw.”

  “She saw a youngish woman with black hair and a clip board bring the Santa costume to Simon in the locker room,” Kim shot back. “What mistake can you find in that?”

  Aaron shrugged. “All right. I can’t find a mistake in that. But what about Steve? You were all-fired sure he was the killer, and now you’ve switched to Tanya.”

  Kim waved to the corner of the hall. “Well, there he is. Why don’t you go on over there and ask him?”

  “I didn’t come here to question suspects,” Aaron told her.

  “I thought you were a cop,” Kim told him. “Do you want to catch this killer, or don’t you?”

  Aaron hesitated and glanced in the direction of Steven Delacourt. As he did so, Steve got up and carried his plate to the kitchen window, where he set it into the bus tub set out for the guests’ dirty dishes. He strolled over to the dessert table and eyed up the cakes. “Well, what have we here?”

  Kim turned bright red, and Aaron made room for him at the table. “This one is cherry chocolate. This one is pumpkin spice, and this one is brandy pudding.”

  Steve licked his lips. “Wow.”

  “And these are all my cookies.” Kim handed him a brochure from Pembrooke Bakery. “This brochure lists all the varieties. You can take your pick.”

  Steve scanned the brochure. “I’ll start with a slice of the brandy pudding first. Then I’ll come back for a sampling of the cookies. They look fantastic.”

  Kim handed him the pudding on a plate with a holly-decorated napkin tucked underneath. “Thank you very much.”

  Steve turned away, and Kim jerked her head at Aaron. He hung back and didn’t say a word. “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you ask him about the murder.”

  “This isn’t the time or the place,” Aaron replied. “If I have to question him, I’ll do it at the station.”

  The guests filed past her table, and Kim got busy serving them. When she glanced up, Aaron was still standing there, watching her. He made her hands shake, so she did her best to ignore him. She sent Betts back and forth to the kitchen to replenish her supplies of desserts, and every time she looked over, she expected him to be gone. But he was always there. Didn’t he have anything better to do?

  Then, suddenly, Kim froze. There in front of her was Tanya Morris with her hand outstretched for a slice of cherry chocolate cake. Kim stared at her, and Tanya fixed her with a cold, hard glare. Kim glanced over at Aaron. He hadn’t moved, and his eyes twinkled at her. He wasn’t going to do anything about the murder case here, so she had no choice but to do it herself.

  “Merry Christmas, Tanya,” Kim began.

  “Merry Christmas, Kim.” Tanya’s voice grated through her iron jaws.

  “I didn’t know you liked cherry chocolate cake,” Kim stuttered.

  “What’s not to like?” Tanya shot back.

  “I have a cookie called the Chocolate Cherry Bomb.” Kim waved toward her friend. “It’s Betts’s favorite.”

  Tanya scowled at Betts. “In that case, maybe I’ll have the pumpkin spice.”

  Kim started talking faster. “Are you still mad at Betts for ruining the Christmas program at the mall?”

  “No one else ruined it,” Tanya snapped. “She killed Simon Cox in cold blood.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Kim replied. “Betts was nowhere near the men’s locker room that day.”

  “I told you I have a witness who saw her there,” Tanya told her. “My witness will place her at the scene of the crime.”

  “You made that up, Tanya,” Kim replied. “Betts was in the women’s bathroom the whole time. First, she had to change into her elf costume, and after that she....had to attend to a personal matter. There never was any witness to implicate Betts, but there is a witness who can place you in the men’s locker room with Simon right before he died.”

  Tanya hesitated. Her eyes flickered one way and then the other in a hurried search of her memory. “You don’t mean that kooky old lady, do you?”

  “Well, she was there,” Kim stammered. “She saw you with Simon in the locker room.”

  Tanya burst out laughing, but the sound set Kim’s nerves on edge. “She’s out of her mind. She came there to ask Santa Claus for a new food processor. Did you know that? She’ll make a great witness.”

  Kim shifted from one foot to the other. “Then how do you explain your whereabouts at the time of the murder?”

  Tanya cocked her head to one side. “You were there, Kim. You saw me come into the mall through the main entrance and walk over to your cookie table. If I killed Simon, I would have come to your table from the men’s bathroom, which is in the opposite direction. How do you explain that?”

  Kim thought fast. Then her shoulders drooped. “You’re right. I forgot about that. I guess you couldn’t have killed him after all.”

  “Whoever killed him must have gone out through the locker room door into the parking lot,” Tanya pointed out. “That’s the only way they could have avoided being seen by all the people at the Christmas program.”

  At that moment, Steve Delacourt bellied up to the dessert table with his plate held out in front of him. “Give me a slice of the cherry chocolate cake and a couple of those oatmeal raisin cookies. They look divine.”

  Kim turned toward him, but she made no move to serve him any dessert. “You killed Simon Cox. You must have. You’re the only one with a key to the outer locker room door, and you knew how to get into the locker room from outside without being seen. You must have met him there and killed him with the plastic cover from his Santa costume.”

  Steve gasped. “I never killed anybody. I never even knew the guy w
as there.”

  “You knew he was there, all right,” Kim shot back. “You knew the Christmas program was on that day. You must have had some beef with Simon Cox, and you took the opportunity to kill him. What was it? Did he mess around with Marlene when she had him for chemistry in high school? Is that why you did it?”

  Steve shook his head. “I knew the Christmas program was on, but I didn’t know Simon Cox was going to be in the locker room playing Santa. Simon was Marlene’s favorite teacher in high school. He’s the reason she got interested in science and is now a big-shot microbiologist at the Coors Brewery in Colorado.”

  Betts muttered into Kim’s ear. “I’ll bet he was her favorite teacher.”

  Kim elbowed her hard. Betts squeaked, but didn’t say anything else. She retreated out of range of flying elbows. Kim faced front again. Aaron’s eyes bored into her from the other side of the table. He saw everything she did and heard everything she said. She had to bring this case to a conclusion. It was now or never.

  She rounded on Steve. “Do you really expect us to believe you weren’t in the locker room that morning? You were working that day, weren’t you? You would have been in and out of there a dozen times.”

  “I wasn’t working that day,” Steve told her. “I had a dentist appointment in the morning, and I had to take my car to the shop in the afternoon, so I took the whole day off work. You can check the roster in the management office if you don’t believe me. I gave my keys to her so she could get in and out to get ready for the program.” He jerked his thumb at Tanya.

  Kim gasped. “Tanya! So you had the keys to the locker room door!”

  Tanya clenched her jaw.

  “So you could have gone out through the locker room to the parking lot and then come back around to the main entrance to the mall,” Kim went on. “That’s how you made it look like you came in that way in the first place when you’d been in the locker room all along.”

  Tanya looked around, but when she spotted Aaron standing behind her, she faced Kim. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You had the Santa costume with you,” Kim went on. “You went to put it in the locker room, but you found Simon already there. He was talking to my grandmother. What happened after my grandmother left and you were alone with Simon? Something must have set you off, and you killed him with the plastic costume cover.”

  Tanya glanced first at Betts and then back at Kim. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

  She spun around to walk away, but quick as a flash, Aaron caught her by the arm and held her still. “You’re not going anywhere until you explain where you were and what you were doing when Simon died. What were you doing in the locker room with him when Ethel saw you there?”

  Tanya yanked at her arm. “You don’t know anything about it. You can’t do this to me.”

  Kim sighed. “Did he mess with you in high school, too? Is that why you did it? Did he hurt you when you were young, and you took your chance to pay him back when you found him alone in the locker room?”

  A hoarse moan rumbled out of Tanya’s throat. “You don’t know anything about it. He ruined my life when I was in high school. I was a nobody, and he said he could make me a somebody. He used me, and when he was finished with me, he moved on to some other loose skirt running around the school. He was the lowest scumbag on the planet.”

  “So you killed him. I understand.” Kim started to turn away.

  “I never planned to kill him,” Tanya cried out. “I could forgive what he did to me in high school, but he tried to do it again in the locker room.”

  Kim’s eyes popped open. “What?”

  Tanya turned to Aaron. “You have to believe me. He came at me in the locker room when I dropped off the costume. He said we could have one more roll in the hay for old time’s sake. I freaked out and tried to run away, but he grabbed me and dragged me back into the room. I didn’t know what to do, so I fought back. I pushed him away, and he slammed his head against the lockers and knocked himself out.”

  Aaron let go of her arm. “How did he wind up in the men’s bathroom, then?”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Tanya whimpered. “He was lying there unconscious. I didn’t know if he would die. I thought he might tell people I attacked him. I wasn’t thinking. I tied him up and put the plastic over his head, and I dragged him into the bathroom stall. Then I ran out through the back door. You have to believe me. I never meant to kill him.”

  Aaron nodded. “I’ll still have to take you down to the station to give a complete statement.”

  He put out his hand to take hold of her arm again, but at the last second, Tanya whipped her arm away and bolted. She shoved Steve out of the way, and he toppled into the dessert table. Cookies scatted over the floor. One of the cherry chocolate cakes went flying and landed face down a few feet away.

  The other cherry chocolate cake flew the other way and hit Betts in the side of the head. Chocolate frosting spattered in her hair and covered her eyelids. She tried to run, but she skidded on the cookies and landed on her soft backside on the floor.

  Tanya hit Candace in the stomach with her shoulder, and Candace stumbled backwards. She caused a domino effect with the other guests waiting to get to the dessert table, and one after the other toppled backwards until three or four dozen people fell into the dinner tables. Plates and wine glasses shattered and flew into the air. People cascaded over one another in heaps.

  Tanya barreled through the crowd to the front entrance. She broke out of the convention hall and put on an extra burst of speed when she caught sight of the door. Another few steps and she would be free. But at that instant, Ethel stepped from behind a screen and into her path. The old lady kept her eyes fixed on a point somewhere above Tanya’s head. Ethel didn’t see Tanya at all.

  Tanya was moving too fast to stop. She plowed straight into Ethel, but the old lady’s tiny frame never budged an inch. Tanya bounced off and spun the other way. She slammed into the reception desk near the entrance of the Chamber of Commerce, where Kim had left her extra cakes until she needed them.

  Tanya’s arms flew across the desk and knocked the cakes flying. They landed on the floor, and the brandy pudding spilled its syrupy sauce at Tanya’s feet. The hard heels of her pumps slipped on the wet tiles, and she lost her footing. She crashed down onto her knees and fell prostrate into the mess of cake. Her face came to rest in the middle of a ring of pudding, and her straight black hair fell down in a circle around it.

  Only a muffled groan issued from the pudding. Aaron strolled over and took hold of Tanya’s hand, but he didn’t help her up. He twisted her arm behind her back and handcuffed her wrists together. “Tanya Morris, you’re under arrest for the murder of Simon Cox. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  Kim turned back to her shattered dessert table. “Is everyone alright?”

  A few guests helped pick up cookies and the odd cake that landed upright on its plate. The rest of the dessert service was completely demolished. Betts sat in a corner of the room, wiping chocolate frosting and cherry syrup off her face and neck with her finger. She put her finger in her mouth and smiled. “Mmm!”

  Chapter 11

  A few days later, Kim and Betts sat in Kim’s living room and sipped egg nog and munched cookies. At least, Betts munched cookies. Kim ate popcorn and deviled eggs.

  Betts waved her mug in the air. “Merry Christmas, darling. I hope next year is as good for you as this year was, if not better.”

  Kim tapped Betts’s cup with her own. “Thanks. You, too. I’m glad I'm spending Christmas Eve with you and not running around town with boxes of desserts.”

  Betts drained her egg nog and took another cookie from the plate on the table. “I’m surprised they gave you Christmas Eve off. I thought you'd be slaving away at some party or something.”

  “I planned it that way,” Kim replied. “That’s the great thing about being in busine
ss for yourself. They don't give you Christmas off. I decide what days I'm taking off, and I planned a long time ago to keep Christmas Eve for myself.”

  “That was a smart move,” Betts told her.

  “I’ve been burning the candle at both ends these last few weeks,” Kim went on. “I figured I could use a break right about now.”

  “Do you have a lot of business lined up for the rest of the holidays?” Betts asked.

  Kim nodded. “I’ve got the most brutal schedule you can imagine. No one is allowed to die until the end of January, because I don't have time to work on any more murder cases.”

  Betts tucked her feet under her on the couch. “I hope no one dies again, ever. I don’t think my nerves could handle it.”

  Winslow stopped in front of Kim and mewed up at her. Kim picked the cat up and set him on her lap. “Merry Christmas to you, Tubby. No, you can’t have anymore cookies. The vet said you're borderline diabetic. You're cut off.”

  Winslow howled and fought to reach the cookie plate. Betts watched Kim do her best to restrain her cat. “Aw, give the poor creature a break. Can’t you see he wants to share the Christmas cheer like the rest of us?”

  “You’ve got nothing to talk about,” Kim shot back. “Look at this cat. If he eats another cookie, he won’t be able to walk. I'll have to roll him down the street to the bakery in the morning.” She put the cat back on the floor. “Go eat your cat food. It's good for you.”

  Betts watched Winslow go with a wistful expression. She hugged her own cookie tighter. “I’m surprised your mother and grandmother didn't come over. Your mother would have a fit if she knew you were spending Christmas alone.”

  “I’m not alone,” Kim replied. “You’re here.”

  “I meant alone—except for me,” Betts explained.

  “Well, I’m not spending it alone except for you,” Kim told her.

  Betts frowned, but before she could answer, a knock sounded on the door. Kim opened it, and Aaron strode in. “Merry Christmas everybody.”