Battered to Death (Daphne Martin Cake Mysteries)

by Trent, Gayle

  “—we should be able to find her surname through an Internet search,” I said.

  “I’ll let you take care of that. I’m not all that hot on computer stuff.”

  “Okay.” I bit my lower lip in concentration. “Rival bakers should be added to your suspect list. I don’t know who all is in town for this event, but there are bound to be some that Jordan Richards has angered at one time or another.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Myra ran a finger down her list. “Our suspect list has grown to ten students, one assistant, and possibly hundreds of bakers.” She shrugged. “Who knows that someone didn’t sign up for this cake competition with the sole intention of coming to town, killing Chef Richards, and leaving with no one being the wiser?”

  I blew out a breath. “What a nightmare.”

  Unfortunately, my nightmare had only just begun. There came a rap at my front door. Friends use my side door. Solicitors, census takers, and heavily armed police officers use the front door.

  Myra and I shared a look of dread. She nearly upset the coffee tray as she scrambled out from under the table. She tucked the notepad into her bra.

  I opened the door. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the officer in front. He was the same patrolman who’d approached me in the parking lot. His nameplate said he was BAKER. How weirdly coincidental was that?

  Officer McAfee stepped to the forefront. “Hello, Ms. Martin. Remember earlier when I told you we were going to have to question all the students?”

  “Of course,” I said, stepping back to allow them into the living room. “Please come in.”

  “Actually, we’re going to need to take you down to the police station for questioning,” he said.

  “Oh.” I looked at Myra, and my eyes filled with tears.

  She hurried over and put an arm around my shoulders. “Now, look here, Officer McAfee, you’ve not even read Daphne her Mirandas. I know all about the Mirandas because I’m an avid watcher of both Psych and Rizzoli & Isles. Sometimes I watch Law & Order, and I usually watch The Mentalist—that little Simon Baker is a cutie—but I’m not as faithful watching those as I am the other two. They’re my favorites. And, you know, I used to love—”

  “Ms. Jenkins, we aren’t arresting Ms. Martin,” Officer McAfee gently interrupted. “We’re only asking her to come to the police station for questioning.”

  “Why can’t you question her here?” Myra demanded.

  I rested my head against hers. My surrogate mom.

  “We need to have her look at a piece of evidence that we can’t take from the police station,” said Officer McAfee.

  She furrowed her brow and gave this some consideration. “Oh, all right, then. Just don’t be rough with her.” She jerked her thumb toward Officer Baker. “Him, I mean. I know you won’t. You’re sweet.”

  Myra had a little crush on Officer McAfee because he reminded her of the guy who played Agent Morgan on Criminal Minds. I’m surprised she didn’t quote that as one of the crime shows she avidly watched so she could tell him—again—of his resemblance to Shemar Moore.

  She patted my shoulder before dropping her arm from around me. “Well, you go on with them, honey. I know Officer McAfee will take care of you. I’ll come and give you a ride home if you need for me to.”

  So much for me and my Mirandas. I looked at Officer McAfee. “May I follow you in my own car? That way I won’t have to impose on anyone for a ride home.”

  He nodded. “That’ll be fine.”

  Myra squeezed his forearm. “Have you ever seen that show Criminal Minds?”

  5

  I PULLED INTO the parking lot behind Officers McAfee and Baker. Officer Baker got out of the patrol car and directed me into the spot where he wanted me to park. Then both he and Officer McAfee waited to escort me into the building.

  I left my purse in the car, taking only my keys inside with me. I didn’t want the police searching my bag. I had a feeling this interrogation was going to be intrusive enough without the officers pawing through my tampons and breath mints.

  With Officer McAfee on my right and Officer Baker on my left, we strolled down the hallway of the Brea Ridge Police Department, which was conveniently attached to the Brea Ridge Correctional Facility. If they decided to arrest me, we’d have a short walk over to my new accommodations. Yay.

  Officer McAfee, his left hand on my right elbow, led me to an interrogation room. It consisted of a table with an office chair pushed up against the side nearest the door, a metal folding chair across the table but pointed in the direction of the opposite wall, and another office chair—this one with casters—facing the metal chair. The setup was inclined to make me believe that the Brea Ridge Police Department was hurting for funding and that they’d just thrown a mishmash of furniture into the room, but Myra wasn’t the only one who watched crime shows. I knew that the furniture was situated in such a way as to make me—the person being questioned—as uncomfortable as possible so I’d want to tell the police everything I knew and get out of the interrogation room. Well, little did Officers McAfee and Baker know, they could’ve put me in the most comfy rocker/recliner in town with my feet up and a masseur working out the knots in my shoulders, and I would be no less eager to leave the jail than I was at this precise moment.

  As expected, Officer McAfee indicated I should sit on the hard, uncomfortable metal folding chair. He sat on the office chair in front of me and rolled closer, effectively hemming me in . . . as if I were planning on bolting out the door. I might’ve considered it were I not innocent . . . and if Officer Baker—who was much smaller than Officer McAfee—had taken that chair rather than the one across the table from me.

  Officer McAfee nodded at Officer Baker and the other officer picked a cardboard box up off the floor and sat it onto the table. It was a rather large, square box, and I wondered . . . dreaded . . . what was inside. From my perspective, it couldn’t be anything good. It was certainly not a bakery box—I doubted there were donuts or cookies or pretty cupcakes inside. This was just a plain brown box with a red EVIDENCE sticker on the side.

  Officer Baker lifted a porcelain cake stand with a metal turntable out of the box. The metal turntable was dented.

  “Ms. Martin, have you ever seen this cake stand before?” Officer McAfee asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Or, at least, I’ve seen one like it. We were all issued cake stands just like that one to use for the duration of Chef Richards’s Australian string work class. He supplied all the materials we’d be using himself. Of course, they weren’t ours to keep . . . they were only ours to borrow.” Great. Now I was babbling like Myra.

  “We being . . . ?” Officer Baker prompted.

  “The ten students in the class,” I answered. “And Chef Richards . . . he had one of the cake stands too, naturally.”

  “Was there anything to distinguish the cake stands from each other?” Officer McAfee asked. “How would you know which one was yours?”

  “The one sitting on the table next to my name card was the one I was assigned to use for that class period,” I said. “Otherwise, they all looked the same.” I tilted my head. “Until now, anyway. Someone has ruined that one.” I turned my head in the other direction and kept talking despite my better intentions. “Well, maybe not ruined. Somebody might be able to get that dent out of it—it’s not that big of a dent—and then it would be fine. I’d hate for that cake stand to simply be discarded. Those are fairly expensive, and—”

  Officer McAfee interrupted me with, “Ms. Martin, your fingerprints are on this cake stand.”

  “Oh, then it must have been the one I was using,” I said. “But it wasn’t dented yesterday. Someone must’ve knocked it off the table after I left.”

  “No one knocked it off the table, Ms. Martin,” he said calmly. “This cake stand was used to bash Jordan Richards over the head. He was hit hard enough to daze him—probably even knock him out—and then his face was submerged in the cake batter until
he suffocated to death.”

  “That may be,” I said, “but I’m not the one who did it. When I last saw Chef Richards, he was fine.”

  “And when was that, Ms. Martin?” Officer McAfee asked.

  “Yesterday at about a quarter to five in the afternoon,” I said.

  Officer McAfee shared a look with the round-faced Officer Baker. Officer Baker took over questioning.

  “Ms. Martin, do you know a Pauline Wilson?”

  “If she’s the Ms. Wilson who was a student in our class, then I met her yesterday,” I answered.

  “Did she also use this cake stand?” Officer Baker asked.

  “No. She had her own. We all did.”

  “Did she use the same table as you?” he asked.

  “No. My table mate was Lou Gimmel from South Carolina,” I said.

  “Ms. Wilson never came over and asked to borrow your cake stand or to look at your work?” asked Officer Baker.

  I shook my head. “No. As far as I know, she had no contact—at least, during class time—with the cake stand that I was using. Why?”

  “Because her fingerprints are also on this cake stand,” he said.

  I looked from Officer McAfee to Officer Baker and back again. “Well, there you go. I should be in the clear. If another person’s fingerprints were found on the cake stand I was using, then that person obviously made use of it either before or after I was finished with it.”

  Officer McAfee rolled closer to me in his wheeled office chair. “Or that particular cake stand was being utilized by Pauline Wilson during class, and you’re the one who picked it up either before or after the class was over.”

  “I’m telling you, I didn’t see Chef Richards before or after the string work class,” I said. “If you want me to take a polygraph test and tell you that again, I will do so.”

  “Some of the other students told us that Chef Richards antagonized some of you during the class,” Officer Baker said. “Is that true?”

  “I would have to say that he antagonized all of us at one point or another,” I said. “And he antagonized his assistant, Fiona, too.”

  “Chef Richards brought up your past relationship with your ex-husband and the attempt Mr. Martin made on your life, did he not?” Officer Baker asked.

  “Yes, he did.”

  Officer McAfee leaned forward. “He brought that up in front of the entire class? That must have been humiliating.”

  “It was,” I said. “But it was nothing I can’t handle . . . nothing I hadn’t been through before. Besides, everyone in Brea Ridge knows about my past. So what if Chef Richards brought it up?”

  “But it wasn’t just people from Brea Ridge in that class, was it? It was fellow bakers from all over the country . . . or, at least, the eastern part of the United States. I mean, you said your table mate was from South Carolina, right?” asked Officer McAfee.

  “That’s right.”

  “These were your peers. And Chef Richards didn’t just bring up your past history with your husband,” Office McAfee said. “He made a joke of it—made a joke of you—in front of the entire class. He personally attacked you. Isn’t that true?”

  “He personally attacked all of us,” I said. “Did you talk with Mr. Conroy, whom Chef Richards called a slob?”

  “Not yet,” Officer McAfee said. “But we will be interrogating all the students.” He rolled even closer into my personal space. “However, since your fingerprints—and those of Pauline Wilson—are on the murder weapon, we will be taking a closer look at the two of you.”

  “Well, just don’t look at me so hard that the real killer gets away,” I said, praying that the two officers in the room didn’t realize that my bones and every muscle in my body felt as if they’d turned to jelly.

  “We’re going to let you go now,” said Officer Baker. “But don’t leave town.”

  “I’ll be right here in Brea Ridge.” I hoped I’d be able to stand up and walk out of this room without my legs giving way.

  I WAS WEARY when I got home. I started to finish my orchids for the cake I was entering in tomorrow’s competition, but I figured what was the point? I might be in jail by tomorrow morning. I might just take a bath and then curl up in my bed underneath the covers and hide. So what if it wasn’t even noon?

  Myra’s car had not been in her driveway when I’d pulled into mine. I was a tad relieved. I wasn’t ready to talk things over with her yet. I didn’t know whether or not I was ready to talk them over with anyone, which is why I ignored the frantic blinking of my answering machine light.

  Sparrow brushed around my ankles.

  “Thank you,” I said softly. That’s one of the good things about pets. They let you know they’re there, but they don’t needle you to talk about your feelings. They don’t ask intrusive or scary questions. They don’t speculate with you about what your fate might be if Chef Richards’s killer isn’t found and the Brea Ridge Police Department finds a way to pin the crime on you.

  I adamantly did not want to talk about my feelings, answer any questions, or do any speculating. Any of the aforementioned activities would have me falling apart. I was a strong, independent woman. I was not going to fall apart.

  As I was making this affirmation to myself, someone tapped lightly on the kitchen door. I turned to see China York standing there, looking like a cross between a wood nymph and Willie Nelson. She had gray braids that hung to her waist, and her tiny frame was swallowed up in a pair of jeans and a blue flannel work shirt.

  When I saw her, my lips began to quiver. She opened the door and came on inside, enfolding me in her arms. I clung to her and wept.

  “It’s all right, sweetie,” she said. “I heard about that chef on the scanner, and somehow I knew you’d be right in the middle of it. But everything’s all right.” China led me into the living room, and we sat down on the sofa.

  I cried until I could barely breathe. “They . . . think . . . I . . . did . . . it.”

  “Hogwash,” she said, rubbing my shoulder. “They know better.”

  “No, they don’t.” I shook my head vehemently. “They don’t, China! My fingerprints are on the murder weapon. Well, they’re on a cake stand that the police think is the murder weapon.” I took a shuddering breath. “I’m going to go to jail, and Ben’s going to take a job in Kentucky and marry his old girlfriend Nickie Zane.”

  “Thank the good Lord I brought this,” China said, reaching into her shirt pocket for an airline-sized minibottle of bourbon. “Drink it.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.” I let out another wail.

  She uncapped the bottle and held it out to me. “Now, Daphne. You need this. Drink it and get a grip.”

  I put the little bottle to my lips and turned it up. It burned my throat, and had I not already been crying, I’d have said it made my eyes water. One more drink, and the bourbon was gone. I flung myself against the back of the sofa. “What am I going to do, China?”

  “You’re gonna quit this crying and pull yourself together, for one thing.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “You can, and you will.” She got up and went into the bathroom for a damp washcloth. When she came back, she handed it to me and ordered me to wash my face.

  I buried my face in the cloth and began to cry all over again.

  “Daphne Martin, you stop that! Get up from there and show me the cakes you’re entering in the competition tomorrow.”

  I raised my head. “I’m withdrawing from the competition. If the Brea Ridge Police Department has its way, I’ll be in jail tomorrow.”

  “Did you kill Jordan Richards?” she asked.

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “Then stop acting like you did. You hold your head up high at that competition tomorrow and keep an eye out for whoever did kill the old goat.”

  I lowered the washcloth. “You’ve got a point.”

  “Don’t I always?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, you do. The police think either I
or one of the other students killed Jordan Richards. They’re going to stay focused on me unless I can point them in some other direction.”

  “Right. Now you’re sounding more like the Daphne I know,” China said. “And although I imagine Myra would be much more of a hindrance than a help to him, I think you should get Mark Thompson to give you a hand.”

  “I can’t afford Mark’s rates,” I said. “I blew my budget all to pieces on Chef Richards’s class . . . which was cut short by a day . . . for obvious reasons, but I doubt that anyone will be refunding half my tuition.”

  She grinned. “You let Myra take care of Mark’s fee. I imagine she’ll take the case herself in order to gain some experience. He’ll be forced to do all the real work to keep her from looking bad.”

  “Well, she did come over earlier and start making out a suspect list,” I said. “Of course, I was at the top of that list. Wait until I tell her my fingerprints were on the murder weapon.”

  “What was the murder weapon?” China asked. “Did you say it was a cake plate?”

  “It was a porcelain cake stand with a metal turntable . . . kind of like the one I use when I’m decorating cakes, except mine is plastic,” I said.

  “Is there a good reason why your fingerprints were on the cake stand?”

  I nodded. “We were each given one to work with. Plus, another student’s fingerprints were found on the cake stand too.”

  “So, there you go,” she said. “You’re not the only suspect. Turn Mark Thompson loose on this other student. What’s his name?”

  “Her name is Pauline Wilson,” I said.

  “Do you think she murdered the chef?” China asked.

  “No. She just didn’t seem to be the type. He humiliated her yesterday—like he did the rest of us—and it was all she could do not to cry,” I said. “I felt sorry for her.”

  “Still, you don’t know that her humiliation didn’t turn to rage after class ended,” she said. “Maybe the woman stayed behind to confront him. No one ever seems to be the type who would haul off and kill somebody, but just about all of us are capable of it under the right circumstances.”