Pop Goes the Murder

by Kristi Abbott

  “I don’t care what you call it. It wasn’t what he meant.” I didn’t see Jason being extra forthcoming because Dan was giving him a hard time.

  Dan shook his head. “Fine. You took pity on her and had some champagne. What then?”

  “Well, it seemed like it went to her head pretty fast. She got a little giggly and then a little unsteady on her feet. She stumbled and I caught her and then all the sudden her tongue was so deep in my mouth I thought she was fishing for my uvula.” Jason leaned back in his chair like a man relieved of a terrible burden.

  Marisela gasped. He reached for her. “I’m so sorry, babe. I swear, I didn’t kiss her back, but it was hard to get her off me. It was like peeling the skin off a tomato.”

  “Then what happened?” Dan asked.

  “I got out of there as fast as I could that night. I expected her to apologize the next day. Make some excuse about the champagne going to her head. I don’t know. Something. But instead she acted like it didn’t happen. So I did, too.” Jason licked his lips as if they were dry.

  Dan cocked his head to one side. “And that was the end of it?”

  Jason snorted. “I wish. No. It wasn’t even close to the end of it. I figured it would be smart to stop saying yes to the overtime offers. Give her a little time to cool off. Maybe find someone else to focus on.”

  “Did she?” Dan asked.

  “No. Instead she went and had a little talk with Antoine.” He shook his head. “Told him I was slacking. Made it sound like I was leaving early and coming in late. I ended up with a reprimand and a warning. Shape up or look for another job.”

  “Why didn’t you look for another job? Or tell Antoine what was going on with Melanie?” I asked. Dan shot me a look, but I didn’t care.

  “Jobs aren’t so easy to come by unless we wanted to move back to Los Angeles and, frankly, I don’t. That city is a huge hassle. The air sucks. The traffic sucks. It’s a nightmare. We like Northern California. We wanted to stay there.” Jason turned to look at Marisela. “Right, honey?”

  She nodded, but it was about the tiniest nod I’d ever seen.

  “And talking to Antoine?” Dan asked.

  “You try talking to Antoine. If Antoine doesn’t want to hear what you have to say, good luck getting him to listen,” Jason said.

  I knew that all too well. Even before the Minneapolis incident that led to me walking out the door, I’d been trying to talk to Antoine about our marriage for months.

  “So you went back to doing the overtime when asked?” Dan made a note on his pad.

  “I did, but I tried to keep my distance. Melanie is pretty persistent, though. It’s been escalating all that time and she’s even worse when we’re on the road.” Again, Jason looked over at Marisela.

  I glanced over at Dan. Had he noticed that Jason had slipped and started referring to Melanie in the present tense? It was as if her death wasn’t completely real to him. I was pretty sure if he’d seen Melanie floating in that tub, it would be real to him. Unless he was that deeply in denial. Maybe seeing Melanie in the tub had been so traumatic he’d blocked it out like it hadn’t happened.

  If Dan noticed, he didn’t give me any indication. He went on questioning Jason. “Is that what happened on Wednesday night? Did she go too far?”

  Jason covered his face with his hand. “She did. She went way too far. When we got back to the hotel, she asked me to check on one of the tripods. She said she thought it wasn’t stable. It was just a ruse to keep me out in the parking lot after everyone else went inside. Once we were alone, she told me that I’d better show up at her hotel room by nine o’clock ready to, uh, service her.” He glanced over at Marisela, who’d let out a strangled sob, and a tear leaked out of his own eye. “She wanted me there right after she took her bath.”

  “Her bath?”

  “Yeah. She always took one when we were on the road. It was kind of a ritual.”

  “So you decided to take care of her once and for all? Was that it? You were tired of being sexually harassed and decided to end it?” Dan asked, still in that conversational tone, as if he was asking Jason if he liked football.

  “Yes. Wait. No. Not how you mean. I told her I wouldn’t. She went nuts. She screamed at me. She told me she’d get me fired and I’d never work again. I told her I didn’t care. She said she’d make me care.” Jason’s voice rose. “She told me she knew I’d make the right choice after I thought about it and that she would be waiting for me.”

  “Tell us what you did, Jason. It’ll be easier for everyone.” Dan kept his voice low and quiet. “Had you already bought the blow-dryer? Had you already altered it? Or did you do it that night?”

  Jason looked almost surprised. “I went to my room, shut the door, put the security lock on, drank two shots of whiskey and went to bed.”

  “Was anyone with you?” Dan asked.

  “No. That’s the point. I don’t want to be with anyone except Marisela.” He took her hand again. She didn’t pull away.

  Dan shut his eyes and I could almost hear him counting to three. “Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts? Did anyone come to your room? Talk to you on the phone?”

  Jason shook his head. “No. I’m not a big drinker. Two shots of whiskey and I’m out.”

  “So we only have your word that you went to your room and stayed there?” Dan started to shut his notebook.

  “No. You don’t only have his word. You have mine,” Marisela said.

  The attention of everyone in the room shifted to her. Jason said, “But you didn’t even get here until this morning.”

  She blushed. “Not exactly.”

  “I saw her in the coffee shop at the hotel the morning I found Melanie,” I said. “I saw her in the alley behind my shop and running down the sidewalk on Main Street.” I straightened up from where I’d been leaning against the wall. I looked over at Dan. “Not everyone believed me that you even existed, but I saw you.”

  Dan threw his hands up in the air. “Can you blame me? Until you tackled her in the field this afternoon, no one else had seen her.”

  “Faith saw her!” I protested.

  “Faith would say she saw Santa Claus if you asked her to. Plus you were the one who insisted that you saw a ghost in the girls’ bathroom in elementary school so they’d close it and let you use the teachers’ bathroom.”

  “That was fourth grade, Dan, and that bathroom was disgusting.” It had needed remodeling to even make it to nineteenth-century standards.

  “Once a fabulist, always a fabulist, Rebecca.”

  I hated it when he called me Rebecca. “That is so . . .”

  Huerta cleared his throat. Loudly. We both looked over at him. He nodded his head toward Jason and Marisela.

  “You tackled my wife?” Jason asked, starting to rise from his chair.

  “Technically, my dog tackled her. I was trying to get her to tell me what she was doing here and why she was always lurking.”

  Jason took his hand away from Marisela’s. “You’ve been here all this time. Why didn’t you tell me? What were you doing?”

  She blushed even harder. “I knew something wasn’t right. The late hours. You showering when you got home. I knew. I knew.” She buried her face in her hands and began to weep.

  Dan pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Marisela. Once she settled down a little, he said, “So how do you know he stayed in his room the rest of the night?”

  “Once he went into his room, he was there all night,” she blurted out.

  “How do you know that?”

  She blushed. “I, uh, put a piece of tape across the edge of the door and the doorframe. It was still there the next morning before I went for coffee. Once he went in, he stayed in.”

  “You did what?” Jason turned to his wife, clearly horrified.

  “I put a little pi
ece of tape on your door. It wouldn’t have stopped you from getting out if you needed to.” She shrank away from him a little.

  “That’s not the point, Marisela. It’s crazy enough that you followed me here. It’s ten times crazier that you’re using weird spy techniques on me.” Jason pushed his hands through his hair.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I knew something was going on and you weren’t telling me what it was.”

  “Because I didn’t want to worry you,” he protested.

  “Yeah, well, how’d that work out for you, Jason?” she asked, a new sharpness in her tone.

  He dropped his head into his hands. “I can’t believe this.”

  Dan shut his notepad. “You might not, but I do. You maybe should say thank you. She just made sure you were cleared of any murder charges.”

  “You didn’t seriously think I could have killed Melanie?” Jason’s eyes widened.

  Dan stared at Jason until Jason looked back down. Then Dan looked around at the group, then threw his hands in the air. “Is there anyone who didn’t want to kill that woman? Anyone at all?”

  I resisted the urge to say, “Bueller?” when no one answered.

  “Well, I can tell you who else came to see her,” Marisela said.

  Dan sighed and picked up his pen. “Who?”

  “Sunny Coronado.”

  I must have made some kind of funny noise, a squeak or a squeal, because everyone turned to look at me. “Excuse me. Hiccups.”

  “The Sunshine Chef?” Huerta asked. “What would he be doing going to see Melanie? Aren’t he and Antoine bitter rivals?”

  Marisela shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know that after Jason went into his room, Sunny showed up.”

  “Did he go into Melanie’s room?”

  “I don’t know. I went back to mine. He could have done anything. I just saw him knocking on her door.” Marisela pressed her lips together as if she was literally keeping herself from saying anything else about men knocking on Melanie’s door.

  “What about Antoine?” Dan asked. “Did you see Antoine that evening?”

  She laughed. “It’s hard to miss Antoine.”

  Didn’t I know it.

  Marisela continued, “He banged on her door before Sunny showed up.”

  Dan turned to me. “Did you know anything about this?”

  I bit my lip. “I heard Sunny on the radio the other day, but I didn’t know anything about him coming to see Melanie.”

  “Are you sure, Rebecca?” Dan leaned in toward me.

  I was sure. I just wasn’t sure that Antoine didn’t know anything about Sunny coming to see Melanie. “Maybe I should talk to Antoine.”

  Eleven

  Huerta ushered Jason and Marisela out, leaving Dan and me alone in the conference room. “Do you believe her?” I asked.

  “I do,” he said.

  “It would explain why Melanie’s room looked like she was getting ready for a date. She was expecting Jason to show up.” I chewed on the edge of my thumbnail.

  “Except he didn’t. Someone else showed up and whoever that someone else was killed her,” Dan said.

  I shivered. Then a thought occurred to me. “Dan, how did whoever killed Melanie get into her room?”

  “You said the door was ajar when you got there. Maybe she’d left it that way.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Antoine said he tried the door when he knocked on it. It was locked.”

  “We still don’t have a definitive time of death,” Dan said, rubbing his chin. “We don’t know if she was still alive when Antoine knocked on her door and was just hiding from him or if she was already dead.”

  “Who else had the key card?”

  “Derek Wade would have,” Dan said.

  “I thought we believed him about not being involved with Melanie’s death, just with her thievery.”

  “If evidence points me in another direction, I’ll follow that faster than I’ll follow my gut,” Dan said.

  As a chef, I wasn’t sure that was a good plan. People following their guts was my bread and butter.

  “And what does that mean for me, mon ami?” Antoine said as he walked into the room accompanied by Huerta.

  Dan looked at me and shook his head, then looked back at Antoine. “It means you’re damn lucky, mon ami,” he said with a sarcastic edge to the ami. “Because my gut says that you’re still not coming clean about something, but I don’t have any proof of that yet.”

  Antoine smiled. “So you will be letting me go?”

  “Not yet,” Dan said. “You’re still a flight risk and you’re still the main suspect. Means, motive and opportunity, Antoine. They all add up to something.”

  Antoine opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. I knew he wouldn’t back down and the only thing he would accomplish would be irritating Dan, which wasn’t in his best interests whether he could see that or not. “Dan, could I talk to Antoine alone for a minute?”

  Dan looked back and forth between us and shrugged. “Why not?”

  I waited until he left and the door clicked shut behind him. I stared at Antoine for a minute or two. If you’ve ever done it, you’ll know how long that can feel like. The first ten seconds rush by, but then time slows. At first, Antoine apparently thought I was ready to profess my love for him again and reached across the table to try to take my hands.

  I moved them away.

  Truth was, I was thinking. Dan was right. There was something that Antoine wasn’t telling us, something that had to do with Sunny Coronado, something that had to do with Melanie.

  I knew him. I knew him so well. Not just as a person, either. I knew who he was as a chef and as a businessman. I’d been there as he’d made the business plan he was still following.

  Then I thought about all the things I’d learned recently. I’d learned that Melanie was short for cash, that there’d been a big payment not too long ago.

  “Melanie sold your spice mix formulas to Sunny, didn’t she?” Antoine’s pasta sauces had launched a few months ago. His business plan called for him to launch a new product line every two years. We hadn’t specified exactly what those product lines would be—Antoine hadn’t wanted to have his creativity hemmed in—but spice mixes had been on the long list of products he was considering. Antoine was precise, nearly scientific, in his approach to cooking. He didn’t rush the development process. He would have already been working on his next products already.

  Antoine’s face went ashy. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. It all just fell into place for me now. That’s what your phone message was about. Not money. The spice mixes.” I felt a little pang. I had actually been the one to encourage Antoine into starting his first product line. I’d been in on the ground floor of all of them, even the pasta sauces that launched after we’d divorced. I knew nothing about these new spices. “Sunny has always wanted to expand his business the way you have, he’s just never managed to come up with anything before you did. No way he would scoop you without some serious help.”

  Antoine leaned forward. “Yes. That’s exactly what I thought when I saw the announcement of his new line. I was going to confront Melanie and then contact the police, but she didn’t answer her door and by the next morning she was dead.”

  “This is bad, Antoine. You realize that this gives you a heck of a reason to kill Melanie.” We would have to get Cynthia in here right away.

  He nodded miserably. “On the surface, yes, if her death looked like a crime of passion, of anger. Rewiring a blow-dryer and dropping it into the tub during her nightly bath? That requires planning.”

  I rubbed my forehead. He was right. “You’re sure it was her?”

  He slumped down in his chair. “Yes. We two were the only ones with access to the formulas. We were still that early in ou
r development phase.”

  “But Sunny is already going to market!” Generally, these things take time.

  “He must have rushed it through. Crashed it, as they say. All done to scoop me so I can never introduce spices of my own without looking like I’m copying him.” Antoine looked like he might be sick at the thought. “What’s more important is finding out why Sunny is here. Why would he be anywhere close to where we were filming? I would think he would want to be far, far away, to disassociate himself completely.”

  He had a point and it was sharper than the tip of a boning knife. What was Sunny doing here?

  There was a knock on the conference room door. I opened it and Vera held out my phone. “It’s buzzing like crazy.”

  Five messages from Haley. I sighed. “I’ll see what I can find out,” I told Antoine, and headed out.

  I slid out the side door more successfully this time and called Haley.

  She didn’t even say hello. “Please don’t tell me you were visiting Antoine again.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Rebecca, are you there?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say since I’m not supposed to tell you I was visiting Antoine.”

  “You were, weren’t you? You were visiting Antoine.”

  “To be fair, it didn’t start that way. I started out helping Dan question someone.”

  She sighed. “Are you out now?”

  “Yes. Are you in labor?”

  “No. I still want you to come home, though.”

  “I have to pick up Sprocket from Garrett.”

  “You have your boyfriend dogsitting while you visit your ex-husband in jail? Rebecca, what are you thinking?”

  Again, I didn’t have an answer. “See you in a little bit.”

  I called Cynthia’s office and left a message for her to call me in the morning and headed to Garrett’s place.

  * * *

  Garrett lived on Birch Street in a two-flat that had once been a two-story Craftsman bungalow. Mrs. Patrick, who had been my eighth grade homeroom teacher, had the bottom flat and Garrett lived on the top floor. Mrs. Patrick hadn’t liked me in eighth grade and she didn’t like me much better now. I felt she’d been inordinately interested in exactly when I arrived at school in eighth grade and she seemed to take an even more inordinate interest in exactly when I arrived at Garrett’s apartment. And, of course, when I left.