Macaroni and Freeze

by Christine Wenger

  We all hunched over, comparing them both, until I was convinced. It was plagiarized.

  “Mabel stole everything from me. Don’t you see?” Dottie began to sob in earnest. “I used to be one of her closest friends in Sandy Harbor. Sid and I and the kids would visit her in California all the time. Then Sid, my husband of fifteen years, ran off with her and left me to raise Louise and Mark alone.” I handed her several sheets from a roll of paper towels, and she paused to blow her nose. “Priscilla stole him away from me. I loved Sid, and Priscilla knew that. They both broke my heart.” She sniffed. “And the worst part about it is that she was my friend.”

  Oh, my! I wondered if Dottie held a grudge against Priscilla after all these years.

  I swallowed hard. “What happened after you found out, Dottie?”

  “I moved away from Sandy Harbor to avoid all the embarrassment and small-town chatter such a scandal would cause, and moved my family to Poughkeepsie to live with my cousin.”

  We waited patiently for her to regain her composure. ACB put an arm around her.

  “That stinks, Dottie. I’m so sorry,” I said.

  Dottie blew her nose. “I—I didn’t know Sid and Priscilla were having an affair behind my back until Sid said that he was moving to California to be with her. I was shocked, and then I fell apart.”

  “You don’t have to say any more, sweetie,” Marylou said.

  “Strangely, I feel like a weight is being lifted off my shoulders, sitting in this warm kitchen and enjoying the lunch.” She dabbed at her eyes. “I can say it now: I tried to kill myself with sleeping pills. My daughter found me and called nine-one-one.” Dottie smiled weakly. “But as you can see, I lived to tell the tale.”

  “Priscilla must have divorced him later. She had a handful of husbands, didn’t she?” I asked.

  “No. They never got married. Their relationship didn’t last very long after he left me for her. After Priscilla was done with him, I took him back, but things were never the same. I—I tried everything I could to make us into a happy family, like we were before Sid abandoned us, but I couldn’t please him. You see, he kept reminding me that I was no Priscilla. Can you imagine that? After a while, I wanted to kill him, but I wanted to kill Priscilla even more. I was angry. Angry for many, many years. I ended up hating Sid. And Priscilla . . . Well, Priscilla got richer and richer. Even though she destroyed my family and my life.”

  There was dead silence.

  Dottie took a break to catch her breath. “And then, to add insult to injury, she plagiarized the Saint Dismas cookbook. My cookbook! I was the one who compiled it. I was the one who sold it on behalf of the church. And she stole it. She took my husband, and she took my cookbook. To top it all off, my cookbook was much better than anything she published throughout the years.”

  I exchanged glances with ACB. It seemed that we were both wondering if Dottie had acted on her anger.

  Marylou look stunned, and I assumed she didn’t know Dottie’s entire story. She’d probably thought she was just taking a bus trip with the Saint Dismas group to demand recompense from Priscilla for the lost revenues.

  Marylou had gotten more than she’d bargained for.

  Dottie might have gotten just what she wanted. Revenge.

  “I’m so sorry.” Dottie shook her head. “I don’t know what came over me. What on earth possessed me to carry on like that?”

  “Don’t you give it another thought,” I said. “There’s nothing like sitting around the kitchen table for baring the soul, huh?”

  What else was I supposed to say?

  ACB nodded so hard that I thought the glow-in-the-dark bait worm would break off of her fascinator and take a swim in my pea soup.

  Marylou and Dottie must have been thinking the same thing, as we all giggled at the same time.

  When the luncheon was over, ACB and I walked Dottie and Marylou to the front door.

  “Remember the pizza party about seven o’clock tomorrow.” I had invited them earlier, while we were eating dessert.

  “We’ll be there,” Marylou said. “I’ve heard that the pizza at the Silver Bullet is fabulous.”

  “It can’t be missed,” I added. “Cindy is a sculptor with her pizzas.”

  ACB adjusted her muumuu. “See you tomorrow at the pizza party. We can catch up more. Right, Dottie?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  As I shut the door behind them, I felt like taking a nap. I was mentally exhausted. But I’d gotten a lot of good information and filed it away in the back of my brain to act on later.

  And Dottie had jumped to number one on my suspect list.

  Chapter 13

  I was running on empty. I wanted to take a nap, or just sleep outright, but I couldn’t, so I resorted to pacing in my bedroom and picking out the squeakiest boards to play “Chopsticks.”

  The suspects were twirling around in my head like Blondie chasing her tail. I picked them out one at a time to think about.

  First there was Dottie. If anyone had a reason to kill Priscilla, she did. Her husband, who she loved dearly, had run off with Priscilla, her old friend. Priscilla, the nice gal that she was, sent him back to Dottie when she was done with him, but things were never the same, and poor Dottie had to move away.

  But why now?

  Why would Dottie kill Priscilla after all those years? Had the recent cookbook trauma finally sent Dottie over the edge? Was it because their paths had finally crossed in Sandy Harbor and the opportunity was there?

  And then there were the two chefs. Walton DeMassie had already lost his TV chef job, and he’d lived to tell the tale. He’d had high expectations of a return to fame by appearing on TV with Priscilla.

  Maybe that was just speculation on his part, or wishful thinking.

  DeMassie was a hothead, but I ruled him out. There didn’t seem to be any reason for him to kill Priscilla. Peter was the one he wanted to beat up so he could get his bribe money back.

  Now, Christopher “Kip” O’Malley, the jail chef who took a cooking correspondence class, had more to lose—especially if Priscilla told his employer about his criminal record. He wouldn’t be able to work in the jail, and then he wouldn’t be able to pay back the thirteen thousand dollars he owed in child support.

  But all his dreams of fame and fortune and credibility as a chef died when Priscilla did. Even though Jill vowed to find another chef who would be willing to put the winner on TV, no one matched the caliber of Miss Priscilla Finch-Smythe.

  Then again, when Priscilla died, his secrets were safe and sound.

  Peter McCall was a wild card. He’d come back into Priscilla’s life a couple of years ago and started battling with Jill, like Godzilla versus King Kong. Priscilla’s favorite person to inherit her empire was anyone’s guess at this point, but maybe Peter and Jill were slated to share it.

  I had to get ahold of that envelope from the lawyers. Maybe that would answer the question as to who would reap the benefits of Priscilla’s lifetime of work!

  And then there was yours truly. I had shot my mouth off and would have loved to win the contest and appear on TV, too, but I didn’t kill anyone, and Ty knows it!

  His telling me not to leave the house was his way of helping me to get some rest and of having ACB keep an eye on me.

  As if I’d listen to him and stay put!

  Okay, four suspects. How do I narrow them down?

  I’d love to bounce things off Ty, maybe exchange information with him, but that wasn’t going to happen. As he kept telling me, he was bound by law.

  But I wasn’t.

  And neither was my partner in crime solving, Antoinette Chloe Brown.

  “Antoinette Chloe?” I knocked on the wall that separated our rooms. “Are you awake?”

  “How can I sleep with all that infernal squeaking? You must have walked a hundred miles. What�
�s bothering you?”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Let’s talk,” she said. “Your place or mine?”

  “I’ll meet you in the kitchen. I’d like some tea and donuts.”

  I slipped into my old reliable pink chenille bathrobe and my slippers and went downstairs to put the teakettle on the stove. I liked nothing better than a late-night tea party with lively conversation, and ACB could always be counted on to provide lively conversation.

  ACB appeared in a floor-length muumuu covered with sleeping birds—or dead birds, depending on your point of view. On her feet were glittery flip-flops with a huge sunflower covering most of her toes.

  She was fascinator-less, but she wore her hair up in a ponytail on top of her head, secured with a leopard-print elastic band.

  “Here you go, Antoinette Chloe.” I poured boiling water into a tall mug and pushed a flowered china bowl containing an assortment of tea bags over to her. Then I put a bag of sugar donuts between us, along with some paper plates, paper towels, and plastic spoons.

  I didn’t have to be fancy during a late-night tea party.

  “So, what do you think of everything’s that’s been going on?” I asked, dunking my Earl Grey tea bag.

  “You’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going on. I can tell.”

  “There are four good suspects.”

  “I know.” She loaded her tea with sugar and stirred. “Kip, Dottie, Peter, and Jill.”

  “Who can we eliminate, Antoinette Chloe?”

  “Beats me. Maybe Peter. He wouldn’t want to off his cash cow, if you will pardon the expression.”

  “But with Priscilla gone, he could get at least half of everything—that is, assuming he has to share it with Jill—not just get it doled out to him piecemeal.

  “And what about Jill?” I asked. “She has access to all of Priscilla’s accounts. As her personal assistant, she must know all of Priscilla’s business details, along with all the skeletons in her closet. Jill covered for Priscilla as she dealt with Alzheimer’s. Jill seems like a good egg, but maybe she wanted more power. Wanted to be Priscilla.” I dunked a cinnamon donut into my Earl Grey. “Am I making any sense? I guess I’m just brainstorming, but my brain is failing to storm.”

  “Brainstorming is good. Let’s take on one person at a time. Let’s investigate Kip. What do we know about him? Like his whereabouts on that fateful day?” ACB said.

  “From what I remember, and I was people-watching, Kip stayed pretty close to his mac and cheese entry. He fussed over it, turning his pan every which way and putting it under various pretty napkins for a nice display. He chatted up the judges, and when Priscilla was talking, he sat intently in the audience. There was only one time when I couldn’t find him, and he was in the men’s room with Chef DeMassie. I know that because I was looking for someone. . . . Oh, yeah. Peter McCall! I asked Ray, who came out of the men’s room, if Peter was in there, and Ray said that both chefs were in the men’s room complaining that the contest was rigged.”

  “So all of their time was accounted for?”

  I shrugged. “At least as far as I saw, Antoinette Chloe. They could have slipped out and killed Priscilla without me knowing it, but I think I would have noticed their absence. No, I guess I can’t say that. I didn’t notice them go into the men’s room.” Frustrated, I pushed my bangs back. “This is going nowhere.”

  “We’ll come up with something. Hang on, girlfriend.”

  “I got it! I have a scathingly brilliant idea!”

  ACB fished out a donut chunk from her tea with a spoon and posed with it not far from her mouth. “Do tell.”

  “I’m going to invite both chefs to cook with me at the Silver Bullet. You, too. You’re a chef. We’ll do something special for . . . what? The library! You, me, Kip, and Walton—we’ll put on a special buffet for a set price. And we’ll find out what makes them both tick. We can ask some special questions, like ‘Hey, Kip, did you think that you were going to lose your job if Priscilla ratted on you? Did that make you want to kill her?’”

  ACB chuckled. “Do we have anything on Chef DeMassie?”

  “Not really. We have to feel him out, too.”

  “I wouldn’t mind feeling him out! He’s kind of hot.”

  We giggled like two teens.

  “Trixie, the buffet is a brilliant idea, but you do realize that you are doing another fund-raiser, don’t you?”

  “Call me crazy, but I have to find out who did this. I want to get my little town, my life, and my diner back to normal.”

  “Let’s call a planning meeting at the diner tomorrow and invite the two chefs and tell them about the fund-raiser buffet.”

  “And we can get the word out quickly. The Lure goes out in two days. First thing tomorrow I’ll get Ray to work up a nice ad and drop it off to Joan.”

  “This is going to work, Trixie. We’ll either rule them out or put them at the top of our suspect list. I feel it in my bones, and my bones never lie.”

  “Think we can get some sleep now?” I said, draining my tea.

  “No way. Let’s plan the menu for the buffet.”

  * * *

  The morning of the buffet, the four of us were prepping the buffet items. Juanita, my day cook, handled the regular diner orders, and we positioned ourselves on two long steam tables near the pizza oven.

  We made aluminum steam pans full of kielbasa and kraut, meat loaf, baked ziti, goulash, steak fries, mashed potatoes, steamed veggies, and—you guessed it—macaroni and cheese. I decided to let Kip O’Malley prepare his own recipe. It wasn’t that exciting. He just fried some burger, drained it, and added a hint of chili sauce to his melted-cheese mixture. That was okay, but at least ACB’s and my food had more interesting ingredients.

  We all talked and joked as we worked, and I found out that I really liked the two chefs.

  But I tried to remain neutral. ACB flirted shamelessly with Chef DeMassie, so she wasn’t much help in talking to Kip, but ACB usually came through with something good.

  “So, Kip, were you a big fan of Priscilla’s?” I asked.

  “She was okay. I took a class from her way back when, and she took a shine to me. I think she wanted to be my mentor, but when I brought it up, she looked at me like I was speaking Latin with a French accent.”

  I chuckled. “Did you read her wrong?”

  “Obviously, I did.”

  “Priscilla was a bit of a diva. Maybe you didn’t fit her mold of a TV chef.”

  “Probably not.” He cut up the steak fries faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. His correspondence class must have come with videos unless . . . “That’s fast, Kip. Did Priscilla teach you that?”

  He laughed. “One of the criminals at the prison taught me that. He went by the name of Knifeman.”

  I shuddered. “It must be tough to work at the prison day after day. You must feel like you’re doing time yourself for the sins you’ve committed.”

  I was proud of my excellent lead-in!

  “Yeah,” was all he said.

  I took a deep breath and blurted, “Have you ever been arrested, Kip?”

  That was real smooth—not!

  He flipped the knife into a potato, and it stuck. “Knifeman taught me that trick, too.” He hesitated, then let out a long breath. “If I have an arrest record, I can’t work at the prison. Dumb rule, isn’t it? I mean, the place is loaded with criminals, and I can’t have any arrests myself.”

  “That’s pretty unfair.”

  “You said it.”

  “If you have any arrests, you’d better keep it quiet or you’d probably lose your job, huh?”

  “Yeah, but that’s no great loss. I have another job to go to. Matter of fact, I sent in my two weeks’ notice.”

  “No kidding?” That was interesting. “What are you going to do?”

 
“I’m going to work at Syracuse University in their maintenance department. My brother-in-law is the supervisor, and he keeps telling me—very strongly because I owe my ex-wife a lot of child-support money—that I have a job waiting there for me. I’ll be painting dorms and that kind of thing. I’ll have great insurance, and my kids can attend college there. It’s a win-win for me and my family.”

  “But you won’t be a chef anymore!” That was too bad. For a correspondence chef, he knew his way around a kitchen.

  “I’ll cook at home.”

  “Sounds like your new job is a better deal. Does SU know about your record?”

  “They don’t care. Too bad Priscilla did. She was going to squeal on me. She told me that after she judged the contest. She said that it would be a big scandal if I were to appear on her TV show and the public found out about my record. She didn’t want that to reflect on her.”

  “I’ll bet that made you awfully mad at Priscilla.” Enough to kill her?

  “Naw, I understood. I just want my money back from Petey-boy. I borrowed it from a coworker at a high interest rate. It was a shot in the dark anyway. Besides, it pushed me to finally accept the SU job. The old broad did me a favor.”

  I was satisfied. It all made sense to me. It didn’t sound like Kip cared enough to kill Priscilla. He had a better job to go to all along.

  I looked over at ACB and Chef DeMassie. Her face was shiny and sweaty as she stirred a twenty-gallon pot full of macaroni. Her fascinator was about to make a dive into the boiling pot of water, and Chef DeMassie was trying to pin it to her hair.