Pop Goes the Murder

by Kristi Abbott

  “Not sure. Long enough to have set up a radio interview and long enough that he could drive to Grand Lake and back.” Now came the hard part. “There’s more you should know.”

  “More?”

  I nodded. “Antoine thinks that the line of spices Sunny is launching are based on recipes of Antoine’s.”

  “Does he know how Sunny got the recipes?”

  “He thinks Melanie stole them and sold them to Sunny. That’s what that voice mail he left on Melanie’s phone was all about. He didn’t even know about the money she was embezzling. He read online about Sunny’s spices and saw how similar they were to his. According to Antoine, the only other person with access was Melanie.”

  Cynthia rubbed at her lower lip. “Sunny and Melanie spoke the day before she was killed.”

  Now I sat up straight. “They did? How do you know?”

  “Cell phone records. The police requested Melanie’s cell phone records when they were investigating so they were discoverable. Anyway, Sunny and Melanie spoke for close to five minutes. I wondered what that conversation was about.” She leaned back on the couch. Sprocket rested his chin on her leg. “We need to talk to this Sunny. Do you know how to reach him?”

  “I have an e-mail address.”

  “Send him a note and try to arrange something non-threatening. Like a coffee or something.”

  “He’s going to be suspicious. We’ve never socialized. Mainly because Antoine hates him so much and I suspect the feeling is mutual.” Sunny didn’t show it as much as Antoine did, but I saw the way his muscles tightened up when Antoine was in the room.

  “Yes, but he doesn’t hate you. Maybe it would be some kind of coup to be dating the ex-wife of his hated rival?”

  “Dating? You want me to ask him out on a date?” Garrett was literally going to pop something. A gasket or a blood vessel or something.

  She shrugged. “It won’t be a real date, but maybe he could think it was.”

  “I’ll try him, but I’m only asking him to meet me for coffee.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Better yet. Why don’t you see if he’ll visit Antoine in jail? Play the pity card. Talk about how lonely Antoine is and how depressed. If they really hate each other, Sunny might want to get an eyeful of that!”

  “Talk about appealing to someone’s basest instincts,” I said.

  She leaned forward to scratch Sprocket under the chin. “Because people so rarely disappoint when I do that. Right, Sprocket?”

  The traitor licked her nose.

  * * *

  The phone call to lure Sunny to visit Antoine in Grand Lake was both easier and harder than I’d expected. My heart was beating so hard as I dialed his number I was afraid the assistant who answered the phone would be able to hear it. I managed to talk my way past that assistant plus one other and finally got to speak to Sunny himself. That’s when things got complicated.

  “Antoine has specifically asked that I visit him?” Sunny asked, the incredulity plain in his voice.

  I leaned back in my office chair. “Yes. I told him that you were nearby and he looked really wistful. Sunny”—I dropped my voice—“he’s not eating. I’m sure you can imagine what the food in prison is like.”

  There was a little gasp. “The poor man. It must be like torture to someone with as refined a palate as Antoine.”

  “Bologna with Miracle Whip, Sunny. Miracle Whip.”

  This time there was absolute silence for at least two beats, then he said, “I will be there by two this afternoon. I will bring a clafouti.”

  “I can’t imagine anything that would raise his spirits more,” I said. More like his ire. The custard had better be smooth as silk or Antoine would be more likely to spit it across the room than swallow it.

  As it turned out, it didn’t matter. We never managed to get to the clafouti. I wasn’t even that sad. You really need to serve those still warm from the oven before they fall and I didn’t want to eat one with a sfork anyway.

  * * *

  I met Sunny down the street from the Sheriff’s Department. He saw me and waved, his face brightening for a moment. “Rebecca, so lovely to see you. You were always Antoine’s better half.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Sunny had that effect on people. “How are you, Sunny?”

  “Excellent, as always.” Sunny was, indeed, always excellent. At least, that’s what he told people.

  “I had no idea you were in Ohio until I heard you on the radio. What brings you here?” I asked.

  He blushed. “Oh, this and that. You know how it is when you have a television show. You must go here. You must go there. A trip gets planned and somehow you don’t even know why.”

  I did know how it was to work on a television show. Trips don’t just get planned. Sunny’s schedule was as packed as Antoine’s. He probably didn’t go to the bathroom without an agenda. “Congratulations on the new spice line. I didn’t know you were moving into product lines.” That had always been much more of an Antoine thing. His precision in the kitchen lent itself to reproduction more than Sunny’s more freewheeling ways.

  “Yes, yes. Always trying something new.” Sunny started to look a little like I had after chasing Marisela Santos, a little sweaty. I took Sunny around the back way into the Sheriff’s Department. Vera met us and went through the basket Sunny carried, then walked us down the corridor to the interrogation room where Antoine and Cynthia were waiting. He froze just a step into the room. I quickly shut the door behind us.

  “What is this?” he asked. “Who is this woman?”

  Cynthia stood. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Coronado. I’m Monsieur Belanger’s attorney. We have a few questions for you about your dealings with Melanie Fitzgerald.

  “With who?” Sunny asked, but none of us were fooled by his feigned nonchalance.

  “Antoine’s assistant. The one from whom you purchased the formulas for the spice line that Monsieur Belanger was planning.” Cynthia pulled out a chair. “Please. Sit down. We have much to discuss.”

  Sunny turned around. “I don’t think we have anything to discuss.”

  I leaned against the closed door with my arms crossed over my chest. “You’ll have to go through me to leave,” I said. “Antoine has been accused of murder. Murder! This is serious stuff. We know what you did. We need to ask you some questions.”

  Sunny’s shoulders slumped. “How do I know you won’t have me brought up on industrial espionage charges?”

  “Largely because I am here in a jail cell and do not really have the means to do so,” Antoine said. Not exactly comforting words, but he did have a point.

  “Fine. I bought the formulas from her, but it’s not like they did me any good.” Sunny plopped down in the chair Cynthia had offered him.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Sunny ignored me and directed his answer directly to Antoine. “Either you, Antoine, have lost your touch or Melanie was more of a thieving little bitch than either of us knew.”

  “The spices were no good?” Antoine sat up straight.

  “Bah! They were terrible. They made the marinades and meats inedible. I can’t even describe what they did to the fish,” he said. “We rushed the announcement of the line to make sure to beat you to the punch. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on advertising and promotion already.”

  “Didn’t you test it?” Antoine asked.

  “Of course I tested it! Do I look like an idiot?”

  No one said anything for a moment. Then Cynthia spoke up. “Mr. Coronado, if you tested it, why didn’t you realize it wasn’t any good?”

  He waved his hand in the air. “I figured I’d messed up the proportions.” He pointed at Antoine. “He’s such a stickler for exactly this and exactly that and make sure this and never ever that. I’m not so big on the exact measuring thing. I go more by feel. I figured my feeli
ng had been wrong this time. Plus I thought he would have tested it all before me! Why would I waste time? I had a ticking clock. I needed to get my line of spices on the shelves before he even announced his so he would look like a second-best copycat.” Sunny pulled a small glass bottle out of his basket. “Here. Taste this.”

  Antoine dipped a pinky finger into the bottle and licked it. Then he nearly spat it out. “Vile! Disgusting! Who would put so much tarragon in anything?”

  “I asked myself the same question when I saw the recipes, but decided you were probably starting some new tarragon trend and instead I would be the promoter of tarragon.” He sat up straighter, as if he were about to receive a medal. “Everyone would talk about how I started the tarragon fad.”

  “You are an idiot,” Antoine said, sounding tired. “A greedy idiot.”

  Sunny shrugged. “But generally a successful greedy idiot.”

  “So you realized that there was something wrong with the recipes that Melanie had sold to you and you decided to confront her.” Cynthia said this as a statement, not a question.

  “I wanted my money back. I could still come up with spice mixes on my own, but no way did I want that little liar and cheat to have my money if I was still going to have to do all the work,” Sunny said.

  “What did she say when you asked her to return the money?” Cynthia looked up from her tablet on which she was taking notes.

  Sunny shook his head. “She said it was all gone. That she’d used it to pay other debts. That I couldn’t get blood from a stone.”

  “And what was your response?” Cynthia asked.

  Sunny shrugged. “I know some people.”

  I stared at him. “What kind of people?”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. It wasn’t a good look on him. It gave him a little bit of cleavage. “The kind of people who know how to get people to pay their debts.”

  “You had someone beat her up?” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice. It was so brutal. So animalistic.

  “Beat is an ugly word. I had someone convince Melanie that it would be in her best interests to find the money she owed me quickly,” he said.

  I looked over at Cynthia. “That would explain the old bruises on Melanie.”

  She nodded. “But Melanie didn’t pay, did she?” she asked.

  “She begged for two more weeks to try to come up with the money. The two weeks were up last Wednesday.”

  Wednesday. The night she was killed.

  “And that’s why you came to Grand Lake? To collect your money?” Cynthia asked. “What happened when you got to Melanie’s room?”

  Sunny looked down and tapped on the table with his index finger. “What do you mean?”

  Cynthia cocked her head to one side. “You drove all the way to Grand Lake. Surely you at least knocked on the door of Melanie’s hotel room.”

  He nodded. “I did. Well, I didn’t exactly knock.”

  “What does that mean?” Cynthia asked.

  “Melanie had, uh, sent me a key.” He looked down at his hands on the table, a faint flush on his cheeks.

  “Why would she do that?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t she just answer her door if she was expecting you?”

  Antoine made a little noise in the back of his throat.

  I turned to him. “What?”

  He shrugged and said, “Nothing.”

  Sunny snorted. “Is she truly that naïve?” he asked.

  “Perhaps. I did not give her a reason to not be trusting and naïve,” Antoine replied.

  “Excuse me. What am I being naïve about?” I hated when people talked about me like I wasn’t in the room.

  Antoine glanced over at Cynthia, who laughed a little and said, “Explain it to her.”

  Antoine shifted his chair so he was facing me more directly. “It is a thing some women do. They send their hotel room key to a man with the room number on a note. It is . . . an invitation.”

  I felt like several gears had shifted. I turned to Sunny. “Melanie was going to sleep with you to get you to forget about the money you’d paid her?” Maybe she’d been getting dressed up for Sunny rather than Jason.

  He shrugged. “I believe that was her intent. But fifty thousand dollars for something I can get for free so many other places?” He shook his head. “Not a good deal for me.”

  “Wait. It was only her intent? Nothing happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing could happen. She was already dead when I walked into the hotel room.”

  I gasped. “And you did nothing?”

  Sunny’s eyes suddenly didn’t look like warm deep pools of dark chocolate. They looked like a shark’s eyes. Utterly without light or feeling or connection. “What was there to be done, Rebecca? She was dead.”

  “You need to talk to Dan,” I said. “You need to tell him what you saw.”

  “Dan?”

  Cynthia sighed. “Sheriff Dan Cooper. I’ll go get him now.”

  “No!” Sunny jumped up to block Cynthia’s way out the door.

  She cocked one hip and rested her fisted hand on it. “Please move out of my way, Mr. Coronado.”

  “No. I cannot allow it. I will not say any of this to the sheriff. None of it.” He shook his head like an angry bull.

  “I’m afraid you must,” Cynthia said, her voice calm.

  He shook his head again, then looked around wildly. “I will deny everything I have told you. There will be no proof. No one will believe the three of you. You are all in cahoots together, trying to frame me for the murder that Antoine committed.”

  “If that’s the way you want to play this, Mr. Coronado, that’s your prerogative. I am, however, turning over this information to the sheriff.” Cynthia pushed past Sunny, but as she did, he grabbed her arm and twisted it up behind her and then slammed her down on the table. She did something with her foot, hooking it around Sunny’s calf and shifting her weight back to throw him off balance. It looked like she might get the better of him, but I knew who could take him down in two seconds.

  I opened the door and yelled into the hallway. “Huerta! Hurry!”

  * * *

  Dan arrested Sunny on assault charges, although by the time Huerta made it to the room, it was a little unclear to me who was assaulting whom. Cynthia had Sunny on the floor with her elbow across his windpipe.

  Huerta looked her up and down as she straightened the skirt of her suit and tucked a loose lock of hair back into its bun. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  She shrugged. “I spend a fair amount of time going in and out of some less-than-savory places visiting clients. It made sense to learn how to protect myself.”

  “Smart,” he said, but the look in his eye didn’t really seem to be about Cynthia’s intellect.

  “Little help here,” Dan said, hauling Sunny to his feet after handcuffing him.

  “Sure, boss.” Huerta took hold of Sunny and marched him out of the room, but he spared one backward look for Cynthia, who gave him a little finger wave.

  Then she turned to Dan. “We need to talk, Sheriff Cooper.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” He indicated the door with a nod of his head and sauntered out with Cynthia following.

  I turned to Antoine. “Why would Melanie sell Sunny bad formulas for the spice mixes?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps her loyalty prevailed at the last moment. She could not bear to betray me.” Antoine slumped in his seat, seemingly as deflated by this idea as by any of the other outrageous things we’d heard.

  “But she did betray you,” I pointed out. “Just because she didn’t do it well doesn’t exonerate her.”

  “Not fully. Perhaps her intention counts for something. Poor girl. She must have been truly tortured.” Antoine took in a deep breath and straightened. “Do you think your Sheriff Dan will
now let me out of this hellhole?”

  “I think if anyone can get him to do it, Cynthia can.” I sat back in my chair and tried to make sense of it all in my head. The crew had arrived back at the hotel after dinner. Melanie then kept Jason back in the parking lot, where they argued. They both went inside to their separate rooms. Then Antoine saw the announcement about Sunny’s spice line and realized that Melanie had stolen the formulas and sold them. He phoned her and left a voice mail and then went to her room. Some time after that, Sunny arrived and found Melanie dead.

  Which meant someone else had to have gone to her room, someone who knew she took a bath every night, someone who knew how to rewire a blow-dryer to remove the GFCI protection, someone who was mad enough to kill.

  When Cynthia came back in, she told us that we would be going in front of Judge Romero the next day. We said good night to Antoine and headed for the exit. Cynthia wouldn’t let me sneak out the side door.

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “One of the Bunnies chased me down the street. Garrett had to rescue me.”

  Her left eyebrow went up. “Garrett rescued you? How very knight-in-shining-armor of him.” She patted me on the shoulder. “It will be different this time. Trust me.”

  “Sure. What could possibly go wrong?” I said with an eye roll.

  “Exactly,” she said and threw open the door.

  The reporters swarmed us. By this time, I recognized quite a few of them and their breakfast orders.

  “What’s happening, Cynthia?” Yolanda called. “Have there been further developments in Antoine’s case?”

  “Is Antoine turning his show over to Sunny Coronado?” Rick yelled.

  Lisa shouldered her way into the front row. “What is going on between you and Antoine, Rebecca? Are you getting back together?”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but Cynthia elbowed me hard in the ribs. After seeing how quickly she took Sunny down, I wasn’t going to argue further.

  “Monsieur Belanger will be going before Judge Romero tomorrow morning at ten. Further information has come to light that we believe exonerates Monsieur Belanger. We are certain that a man as reasonable and intelligent as Judge Romero will see that these charges should never have been brought and release Monsieur Belanger.” Then she hooked her arm through mine and plowed through the reporters to the bottom of the stairs. They parted like a loaf of bread under a sharp serrated knife.