By Cook or by Crook

by Maya Corrigan

  “She didn’t mention anything to me, but I found a strange e-mail message on the printer. I’ll show it to you. Maybe you’ll know what it’s about.” He took a paper from an antique secretary desk in the corner, handed it to Val, and went back to his easy chair.

  She read the message: Hi Nadia, We love our vacation house on the bay. Thanks for helping us get it at a price we could afford. I ran the two samples you gave me through my gas chromatograph. Except for the red dye in the pink sample, the components in both are the same. They match what’s in a product we supply to drugstores and small resellers. Let me know if you need more information.—KC

  According to the message header, kcarlson at obp-labs had e-mailed it early Monday morning. Val wrote down the sender’s e-mail address and “gas chromatograph.” She handed the paper back to Joe. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. Did you try contacting the sender?”

  “Nah. I hate to bother somebody just to satisfy my curiosity.”

  Val had no such qualms. She’d follow any lead, however remote, to help her cousin. She put the spiral notebook away, hoping to encourage Joe to talk off the record. “It’s wonderful that you and Nadia stayed friendly after your divorce. You didn’t hold it against her.”

  His neck and head moved forward like a turtle’s. “You mean that she didn’t hold it against me.”

  “The divorce was your idea?”

  “Yeah, I pushed for it. Things had gone stale after fifteen years. It might have been different if we’d had kids. We had a baby who died. Neither of us could get past the loss.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. We tried everything, including the test-tube approach. Didn’t work.” He interlaced his hairy fingers. “We just found out my fiancée’s pregnant. That’s one reason I called Nadia Monday, to let her know the good news.”

  Val’s mouth dropped. “How did she take the news?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell her on the phone. I figured I’d wait until the next time I saw her.”

  Okay, that made him less than a hundred percent dense and self-centered, just ninety-nine percent. Yet Nadia stayed friendly with Joe after he abandoned her for someone fertile. Maybe the divorce was a relief for both of them. If what he’d just said was true, Joe didn’t have a motive for killing his ex-wife. He was a man on the verge of marriage, looking forward to having a child.

  Val stood up. “I won’t keep you any longer. I know you’ve had a bad week. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.”

  “I was going to ask you to stop by anyway. Nadia’s will says that her friends should each choose a knickknack to remember her by.” He gestured at the shelves holding Nadia’s collection of miniature houses. “Take your pick.”

  “I really wasn’t such a good friend. I don’t feel I should—”

  “The people she played tennis with were some of her closest friends. Please. Take something.”

  Val approached the shelves. The brownstone tempted her as a reminder of her first home in New York. She started to reach for it but switched course. Her hand closed over the Victorian house that resembled Granddad’s. “Thank you, Joe. I’d like this one.”

  He walked her to the door. “Take care, Val.”

  She took his advice literally. On her way home she checked the rearview mirror several times. No blue sedan trailing her now. Good. The ground had shifted under her enough for one day—Gunnar telling her to leave town and Granddad recruiting her as a recipe ghostwriter, tough Bigby shedding tears and nice Joe dumping his wife, Chatty striving for disinformation and arriving at the truth. On top of that, this morning’s Gazette article increased the pressure on Monique. The day had brought tremors rather than seismic shifts, but tremors often presaged an earthquake. A big shakeup opening new ground might be just what the situation needed. Otherwise, the police would arrest Monique, and the media would try her in short order.

  Val pulled into the driveway and joined her grandfather on the front porch.

  He sat in a wicker armchair, his feet propped up on a matching ottoman. “I was snoozing out here, opened my eyes, and saw you drive up in a mutant banana. I figured I was dreaming.”

  She laughed. “It’s Monique and Maverick’s old car. I’m borrowing it until mine’s fixed.” She sat on the porch railing. “You’re going to have to cross some suspects off your list. Maverick has an alibi. He’s on surveillance tapes in Atlantic City casinos at the time of the murder.”

  “Hmph. Does he have a twin brother?”

  “He’s an only child. Nadia’s ex, Joe, is also in the clear. He hasn’t been nursing a grudge. Contrary to what everyone thought, he divorced Nadia, not vice versa.”

  “She’s not around to contradict him. Unless there’s proof of that, I’m keeping him on the list—him and Monique, Bethany, and Gunnar.” He ticked off his suspects on four fingers and pointed his thumb up. “I could use one more. Five’s a nice round number. How many suspects do you have?”

  “A single definite one. I’m still rooting for Bigby.” Today she was less certain of his guilt than yesterday. She at least had Irene as a backup if he came up with an alibi. And now, thanks to the e-mail Joe had shown her, Val had a new angle to pursue. She opened the screen door. “I’ll be working on the computer for a while. Then we can tackle dinner.”

  “Plug in the phone if you want to answer it. I unplugged it to stop it from ringing. Too many people want to talk to me now that I’m a newspaper columnist.”

  She waggled her finger at him. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  She plugged the phone in, turned on her laptop in the study, and found a website for OBP Labs, where Nadia had sent samples of something. OBP stood for Organic Beauty Products. The company manufactured cosmetics and personal care products for resale under private labels. Resellers could buy OBP products in gallon or even five-gallon jugs and decant them into smaller containers.

  Val and Nadia both knew someone who sold organic beauty products—Chatty. Could Nadia have sent one of Chatty’s products for analysis?

  Val studied images of the empty bottles and jars OBP marketed to resellers. The small ones looked exactly like Chatty’s containers for facial products. The larger bottles resembled those on display at the big drugstore in the Midway Shopping Plaza. No wonder Chatty had snatched back her bottle of “pink silky stuff” when Val pointed out its similarity to what she’d bought at the store. Chatty offered services that stores didn’t—a free facial and lots of gossip. That entitled her to charge more, but perhaps Nadia thought Chatty was ripping her off.

  Val calculated the return on a gallon of moisturizer divided into four-ounce bottles and sold for the price Chatty charged—eight hundred dollars on an investment of a hundred dollars. A similar product, possibly the same one Chatty sold minus the dye, cost a third as much at the drugstore. Nadia might have made the same calculation. Most people would merely stop buying an overpriced item. They wouldn’t go to the trouble of proving they were being overcharged as the meddling Nadia had done.

  She routinely checked e-mail at every opportunity. She’d probably read the OBP Labs message Monday morning before hitching a ride to work with Chatty. Had Nadia demanded a refund from her or threatened to expose her high mark-up? Chatty would lose customers if Nadia broadcast that a nearby store carried the same products at a much lower price. How far would Chatty go to save her reputation and her business? Val’s queasiness returned at the thought of Chatty as a possible killer. All along she’d assumed someone she didn’t like or barely knew would turn out to be the culprit, not a woman on her tennis team.

  The hall phone rang. Its computer-generated voice announced the caller’s ID—Luke Forsa. Maybe he was calling, like everyone else in town, to congratulate Granddad. She answered the phone.

  “Hey, Val. It’s Luke. You going to the concert at the park tonight?”

  She hadn’t planned on it. But if she stayed home, she’d just brood about Chatty. Listening to music would give her a
chance to relax and take her mind off the murder.

  “Why not?” she said into the phone. “What kind of music?”

  “A jazz group. Can we meet there? They start playing at eight, but I might be stuck at the diner ’til eight-thirty.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you there.” She’d have no trouble finding him. This time of year, it stayed light until nine. “I’ll sit somewhere near the fountain.”

  She clicked the phone off. She ought to check for messages that came in while Granddad had the phone disconnected.

  Most of the messages were for him. She saved those. Gunnar had called her and suggested they go to the concert in the park that evening.

  Rats. She’d have preferred his company to Luke’s. On second thought, a dose of Luke could be an antidote to Gunnar. Luke wasn’t stagestruck. He didn’t dramatize. He wouldn’t spend the evening talking about sabotage and urging her to leave town.

  She called Gunnar back, left a message that she’d already made plans for the evening, and suggested they get together tomorrow.

  Granddad came in from the porch. “Who phoned?”

  “Luke. He asked me to meet him at the park tonight for the concert.”

  “Hmph. In my day, we picked up our dates. We didn’t invite them to meet us places.” Granddad stroked his chin. “Luke. He’s my fifth suspect. I should have thought of him sooner.”

  Val laughed. “I see a pattern here. Gunnar and Luke show an interest in me. I go out with them. Therefore they must be murderers. Or do you have some other reason for thinking Luke killed Nadia?”

  “You gotta watch out for men who don’t treat their mothers right. He makes Rosie do too much. Restaurant work is for young people. She should retire.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to retire. She’s like you. She wants to keep her hand in. Speaking of which, we’d better start cooking dinner. Did you pick out a recipe?”

  Of course not. He left it up to her. She chose an Orange Pork Tenderloin recipe and modified it for chicken tenders. She made him do most of the work. After dinner, he patted himself on the back and offered to drive her to the park for the concert and pick her up.

  “I don’t want you going anywhere alone after all the trouble you had the last few days.”

  She should have taken Gunnar’s offer to serve as a bodyguard, given that her alternative was a man in his seventies.

  As they were about to leave the house, she spotted the family that lived down the street. They carried lawn chairs and a blanket, probably going to the outdoor concert. “I’ll go with them, Granddad, and come back with either them or Luke. I promise I won’t go anywhere alone.”

  She hurried out of the house before he could object and fell into step with nine-year-old Tiffany, a tomboy who reminded Val of herself at that age. As she chatted with the girl, Val glanced behind a few times to check if anyone had followed her in a car or on foot. She saw no one.

  The family stopped at the ice cream parlor. Val licked her double chocolate ice cream cone with chocolate sprinkles and felt some of the tension leave her body.

  Tiffany’s family joined some friends at the park. Val sprawled on her grandfather’s army blanket. The sound of water splashing in the fountain relaxed her. She watched the crowd gathering for the concert.

  Bigby O’Shay picked his way around strollers and folding chairs, stopping now and then to glad-hand someone, like a politician bent on reelection. Val went on alert when she saw him coming toward her.

  The evening wouldn’t be as relaxing as she’d hoped.

  Chapter 21

  Val scrambled to her feet as the man who’d been her number one murder suspect for the last few days approached her. She didn’t want him standing over her or, worse yet, sitting next to her on the army blanket. “Hello, Bigby.”

  He fingered the gold chain around his neck. “I have to talk to you. I—uh—want to explain.”

  “Explain what?”

  “Why I was rude to you the other day. I thought you were out to smear Nadia, but Bethany tells me you’re helping the police find her murderer.”

  Val groaned. No wonder she’d become a target with Bethany spreading that rumor. “Bethany’s wrong about that.”

  He hooked his thumbs on his belt loops. “She said you’d deny it.”

  Darn. Any direct questions to Bigby, such as where he was the night of the murder, would only confirm what Bethany had said. Indirect probing might work though. “This morning’s service for Nadia was very moving, everyone talking about her charity work and how much they’d miss her. You looked like you were missing her too. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Bigby inhaled loudly and focused on the fountain. “I didn’t realize how much she meant to me until she was gone.”

  Val forced herself to look sympathetic. “People often don’t realize things until it’s too late. Whoever sent Monique an anonymous note about Maverick’s affair with Nadia would be shocked by what happened as a result.”

  His bloodshot eyes bugged out. “What do you mean?”

  “Monique was upset about the note and told everyone what Nadia had done. After that, people shunned Nadia. Someone burned a racket at her place. Then she was murdered. One person made an accusation, and everybody jumped on the bandwagon. Like the Salem witch hunt.” Okay, she’d left logic in the dust, but Bigby didn’t seem to notice.

  “I . . . I wrote that note.”

  “You did?” Val’s surprise was genuine. She hadn’t expected him to admit it. “Why?”

  He gulped as if swallowing a big bitter pill. “To break them up. I didn’t have a chance with Nadia as long as Maverick was around. But once his wife reined him in, I figured Nadia would be lonely.”

  And Bigby would be there to catch her on the rebound. But faced with rejection, he might have decided that if he couldn’t have her, no one could. Val finally had a theory that made sense of Bigby’s behavior. Obsession, not resentment, explained why he sent the anonymous note and possibly killed her.

  “Hey, Bigby! I’m over here.” A woman waved her arm in a wide arc at Bigby. She wore a spangled hot pink halter top and short shorts with a roll of belly flesh overhanging them.

  Bigby’s date for the evening? Easy to see why he’d find the physically fit Nadia more attractive. She also had better taste in clothes than the woman in pink.

  “Coming.” He gave his date a halfhearted wave and then turned back to Val. “Nadia wasn’t an empty-headed chick. She had a lot character. I hope her murderer rots in hell.”

  He shuffled away, no longer working the crowd, his head and shoulders bowed. Val almost felt sorry for him. If he was the murderer, remorse was eating at him. If he wasn’t, she’d just given him the mother of all guilt trips by blaming him for a chain reaction that ended in Nadia’s death. Even if he hadn’t killed her, his anonymous note had kicked off a vendetta that made Monique a suspect. He deserved to feel miserable.

  Val scanned the audience as the musicians tuned up. She recognized some neighbors and a few club members she’d served at the café, but otherwise everyone was a stranger—locals she hadn’t yet met and tourists visiting for the weekend. A few loners stood out in the crowd of couples and families. A man with glasses and a gray mustache hovering at the edge of the park caught her attention. He wore jeans and a navy turtleneck with long sleeves. Most of the crowd had bare arms and legs. Maybe he’d covered up to avoid being mosquito bait.

  By the time Luke joined Val, the concert was half over, and the musicians had gone on break.

  “Sorry I’m late.” He parked himself next to her on the blanket. “I got bogged down at the diner.”

  “Business must be good.”

  “We’re short on staff. The kids who usually help us are away at beach week.” He stretched out, crooked his elbow, and rested his head on his hand. “What’s with your article on Nadia? Got any leads on her murder?”

  Great. Yet another person assuming she was on the trail of the murderer. “I’m focusing on Nadia’s life, not her
death.” Tonight, though, she wanted a break from both. One surefire way to change the subject, ask a man about himself. “Your mother said you used to live in Baltimore. What did you do there?”

  “I worked for a restaurant supplier. I had to move here after my father died. The diner leaked money for years. He dipped into savings to cover the expenses. Nobody knew ’til he died that their retirement fund was empty. And he let his life insurance lapse.”

  “Ouch.” She leaned back, resting her head on her hand and faced him, a mirror image of his position. “What about selling the place? Wouldn’t that give your mother enough money to retire?”

  “She doesn’t want to retire. She likes to cook and talk to people. The diner’s her life. I’m going to make sure she enjoys it as long as she can.”

  She heard a fierceness in his voice that contrasted with his usual breezy tone. So much for Granddad’s notion that Luke was treating his mother badly and forcing her to work. “You’re a good son.”

  “I wish my father could hear you say that. He had me down as a good-for-nothing. My sister was the perfect child. But what has she done for Mom? Squat. She came to my father’s funeral and went right back to Seattle.”

  “Mom” and “my father”—Luke’s word choices showed where his affections lay. Val sat up and wrapped her arms around her bent knees. “It’s a long way to the West Coast. My brother lives in California. We don’t see much of him or his family.”

  “Did you ever get hold of Jeremy?”

  “Not yet. You must treat him well. According to his father, Nadia tried to talk Jeremy into giving up his job for a better one, but she couldn’t convince him to leave the diner.”

  Luke’s mouth turned down with skepticism. “First I’ve heard of it. I don’t want to hold anybody back, but a better job just isn’t in the cards for that kid.”

  Nadia had either seen more potential in Jeremy or concealed her real reason for urging him to change jobs. “Maybe she thought you were going to fire him, and she wanted to spare him the humiliation.”