Pop Goes the Murder

by Kristi Abbott

  I texted back: Is it time?

  She answered: No. Still need you to come home.

  Sprocket and I skipped our lighthouse visit. It might not be time yet, but it sounded like Haley wanted me home sooner rather than later. I let myself into the house. It was filled with an amazing aroma. Sprocket growled. “Something smells amazing. What are you making, Haley?”

  Haley peeked around the corner of the living room. “It’s not me.”

  Haley and Dan were the only grown-ups living in the house so if Haley wasn’t cooking, that left Dan. Dan is great at a lot of things. He can throw a baseball straighter than anyone I’ve ever seen. He can fix a flat bike tire with chewing gum and a ballpoint pen. He can make me feel better about nearly anything by simply looping his arm across my shoulders. He can’t, however, really cook that well. Plus, his car wasn’t in the driveway. “Then who is it?”

  Before she could answer, I heard Antoine call from the kitchen. “Miss Haley, do you not have a proper zester? If not, we must rectify this as soon as possible. You need the right tools to get the right results.”

  I turned to Haley, speechless for a moment. Then I whispered, “Why is my ex-husband making a daube in your kitchen?” Between the aroma and his need for a zester, it had to be a daube. It really couldn’t be anything else.

  She shrank back a little into the living room, motioning for me to follow her. Evan was splayed out on the floor pushing cars around a plastic track. I picked one up and ran it down his back and over his bottom. He giggled. “Auntie Bec, there’s a funny man in our kitchen. Mama says he knows you so it’s okay.”

  I looked up at Haley. She shrugged as she sank down onto the couch. “It was the best I could come up with on short notice.”

  “Why are you letting him do this?” I knew how Antoine manipulated me and his crew. I hadn’t thought he’d have the same hold over Haley. She didn’t like him. She’d never liked him. She hadn’t even liked him before we got married.

  “I couldn’t stop him. He showed up with all these things. He said he thought maybe if he cooked in the kitchen where you were brought up, he would soak in some of your essence and get his mojo back.” She crammed a pillow behind her lower back.

  “He said mojo?” He really must be losing it.

  “No, he said a bunch of other stuff about you being his muse, but I’m pretty sure what he meant was mojo.” She patted the couch next to her and Sprocket came over and put his head on her leg. She scratched behind his ears.

  She was right. He meant mojo. “Does Dan know?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I was hoping Antoine would be done before Dan got home. Dan’s been so tense. I’m afraid it would push him right over the edge if he comes home and finds Antoine trying to soak in essences in our kitchen.”

  “Dan really isn’t himself, is he? He left a rake on my steps sometime last night. So not like him.” Even as a kid Dan had been an a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place kind of guy. His Hot Wheels collection was legendary in its organization.

  “A rake? Really? Weird. He hasn’t even been doing any yard work.” She shook her head. “Can you get Antoine out of here before Dan gets home?”

  A daube takes a while, but Antoine might make it. Or he might very deliberately not. “Rebecca,” he called from the kitchen. “Come taste this.”

  I went to the kitchen because I really didn’t know what else to do.

  * * *

  Dan came home minutes before the daube was done. “Wow. Who’s cooking?” he called as he walked in. The door slammed and I heard his footsteps coming through the entryway. I made sure the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room was swung shut, but it didn’t help.

  “It is I, Sheriff Dan!” Antoine called back before I could stuff something in his mouth to stop him.

  The footsteps stopped. I went out into the dining room, letting the door swing shut behind me. Maybe he hadn’t heard Antoine. Maybe the door muffled the sound. Maybe pigs were flying again. “Hi, Dan. Welcome home.”

  He stared at me. “What is he doing here?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Making a daube.” I knew it wasn’t what he was asking, but it was actually the best answer I could come up with. I wasn’t sure if Dan knew what a daube was or how much effort and energy went into making one. I’m not sure he’d care.

  “Of course.” His forehead creased. “Why?”

  “Well, they are really delicious. I mean, smell that. Makes your mouth water, doesn’t it?” I sniffed at the air.

  Dan sighed and sank down into one of the dining room chairs. “Why here? In my house?”

  “To soak in my essence and get his mojo back.” Dan might as well know how crazy the whole thing was.

  He shook his head. “You really need to set some boundaries with that man.”

  “You try it! He has no respect for them. I put most of a very large country between us and it still has no effect!” I really had tried in so many ways and so many different times. Antoine was like the irresistible force. Or maybe the immovable object. I’d nearly flunked physics in high school and they don’t make you take it in culinary school, so it was a little fuzzy.

  Antoine might have been immovable and irresistible, but Dan was implacable. “You need to get him out of here.”

  “I’ve been trying for an hour. The daube needs maybe five more minutes and it will be done.” I checked my watch.

  Dan crossed his arms over his chest. “And in fifteen, Garrett will be here.”

  I grabbed my bag and my car keys and went back to the kitchen. No way was I going to make Garrett feel like I’d made him feel the night before. “You’re done,” I said.

  Antoine pulled the daube from the oven. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  I put the food in a container and hustled him out the door.

  * * *

  I managed to drop Antoine at the hotel without going in, despite his protests. The food would be ruined if it wasn’t served correctly. It wouldn’t be the right temperature. It would pick up the flavors of the plastic container.

  I kept repeating that it wasn’t my problem.

  “Here,” he said when I came to a stop at the door. “Taste it.”

  I let him feed me a small bite. It was sensational. “What did you do to it?”

  He laughed. “I added a new spice combination. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  There was nothing to do but agree with him. “So do you think your cold streak is over?”

  He turned suddenly serious. “Only because I was near you.”

  “You made most of that while I was still at POPS,” I pointed out.

  “But I was in your kitchen,” he countered.

  “Haley’s kitchen,” I corrected.

  He shrugged. “The kitchen where you learned to cook.”

  “That would actually be Coco’s kitchen,” I corrected.

  He waved a hand at me. “You may nitpick and argue all you want. It was your influence that allowed me to do this.”

  “Fine. I take all the credit. Now get out of my car, okay?” I made a shooing gesture with my hands.

  He went.

  I turned the Jeep around and squealed out of the parking lot. There was no way I’d make it back to the house before Garrett got there, but I could be close. Maybe we wouldn’t have to explain anything to him. It wouldn’t be lying to not mention Antoine being in the house, right?

  It didn’t end up mattering. I didn’t have time to explain. I had barely made it back inside the house when my cell phone rang.

  “Rebecca, I need you,” Antoine said.

  I banged my head softly against the doorframe. “We’ve been over this and over this, Antoine. You do not need me. Your cooking block is all in your head. I was joking when I said I took credit for the daube. Get over it.”

  “No. No. It’s not the
cooking. It’s . . . it’s Brooke.” He sounded rattled.

  She was a pushy little thing. Maybe he was regretting promoting her. Lucy seemed more tractable and more in Antoine’s thrall. “What about her?”

  “She’s . . . I think she might be dead.”

  “I’m on my way. Call 911.”

  * * *

  I arrived pretty much simultaneously with the paramedics. I saw Eric Gladstone hustling into the hotel and hustled right after him. They raced for the stairs, not waiting for the elevator, so I did, too. Sprocket leapt up the stairs behind me. I’d dashed out of the house so fast, I didn’t even think about taking him or not taking him, so he was just there.

  I burst out of the stairwell right behind the paramedics, breathing hard. How the heck did those guys do that carrying all that equipment? None of them were even panting. They thundered into the open door of the room. I stopped at the threshold.

  Brooke lay on the floor, pale with sweat beaded on her forehead. The paramedics swarmed her. I swiveled back into the hallway, back pressed against the wall, heart pounding. I shut my eyes. Let her be okay. Let her be okay. Let her be okay. Maybe if I kept thinking it, it would come true. I didn’t like Brooke, but I couldn’t take another dead body. I just couldn’t.

  “She’s still breathing,” Eric yelled. “Heart is tachy. Starting an IV now. Then let’s get her to the hospital.”

  I blew out a breath of relief. She was alive.

  In minutes, they were rolling Brooke out of the room strapped to a gurney with tubes going into her arms and oxygen going into her nose. They were still moving fast, but not as fast as they had on the way up the stairs. They actually waited for the elevator to go back down. It seemed strangely quiet once they were gone. I peeked into the hotel room. Antoine stood in the center of it, looking bewildered and sad.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Garrett.

  He answered on the first ring. “Dead body?” he asked.

  “Not quite yet.” There was a catch in my voice.

  “Do you need me there?”

  “No, not yet at least. Will you explain everything to Haley?”

  “Count on it.” I hung up and turned back to Antoine. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I needed to discuss the next steps in the production of the episode. I texted her, but didn’t get a reply. So I came to her room and knocked. She didn’t answer. All I could think of was Melanie. How she had been inside that room all night with no one. I called the front desk and they came up with a key.” Antoine dropped his face into his hands.

  “Does she have family you should call?” I asked.

  Antoine thought. “Probably. Maybe she mentioned something. A mother? A sister?”

  “Do you have any kind of emergency contact information?” I asked.

  “Melanie always kept all of those forms,” he said, looking helpless.

  “So if Brooke is the new Melanie, they should be here in this room.” We both looked around. Between the mess the paramedics left and the general detritus of a woman living on the road, it felt hopeless.

  Antoine looked up suddenly. “Lucy would know. She would know where to look. I’ll call her right now.”

  Lucy arrived, breathless and flushed, in less than two minutes. “What happened? Where’s Brooke?”

  Antoine opened his mouth to speak and for once words appeared to fail him. He looked over at me.

  “She’s ill. Very ill. The paramedics have taken her to the hospital,” I said.

  Lucy took a step back. “What happened?”

  “We have no idea, but we think someone should contact her family and then Antoine and I are going to the hospital,” I said.

  Lucy put her hands on either side of Antoine’s face. “You poor, poor man. This is awful. Go to the hospital. I’ll find the emergency contact information and her insurance information and meet you there. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll take care of it.”

  Antoine slid Lucy’s hands off his face, but kept them between his two hands. “Thank goodness for you, Lucy.”

  Her face flushed pink.

  I made a noise and indicated the door with a head nod. Antoine nodded back. Lucy was already going through the papers on Brooke’s desk before we were out the door.

  * * *

  Three hours later, Brooke was out of the woods. Her stomach had been pumped. Her heart had stabilized. I left Antoine and Lucy sitting by her bed and went outside the hospital. Relief washed through me. I didn’t have to see another dead body. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  I seriously hoped not ever.

  I felt more tired than I’d felt for a very long time. I pulled out my phone and dialed.

  “Hello,” Garrett said after one ring.

  “Now,” I said. “I need you now.”

  He was there in five minutes.

  * * *

  Dario took one look at me the next morning and said, “You look rougher than chipped beef on toast.”

  “I feel rougher than chipped beef on toast.” I unlocked the door and we went in. “I spent most of the night at the hospital.”

  Dario straightened. “Did Haley have her baby? What flavor? How big? Is she doing okay?”

  I shook my head. “No Peanut. Not yet. Brooke was poisoned.”

  Dario stared at me. “How?”

  “They’re not certain yet.” I slumped down at the kitchen table and rested my head in my hands.

  “Will she be okay?”

  A vision of Brooke’s pale face loomed in my mind. “They’re not certain about that yet, either. If Antoine hadn’t called the front desk and demanded to be let into her room, she’d probably be dead.”

  Dario ground coffee beans. The noise of the grinder made my head pound, but the scent of coffee in the air was the first promise of the world still having good in it that I’d seen since Antoine called me the night before.

  “You should go home,” he said. “You’re going to be useless here.”

  “No. I can do it.” I stood up and tied my apron on. We generally got an influx of people after church. “I’ll go home for a nap later if you can stay.”

  He nodded. “You got it.”

  Dario probably would have been better off without me. I dropped bowls, spilled honey all over the counter and burned my thumb on a hot pan. Right before we opened the doors, Dan showed up with Sprocket. I sank to the floor and buried my face in his fur. He licked my ear. About half my heartache leaked away. I looked up at Dan. “Thanks for bringing my dog.” I’d had to leave him at home before we went to the hospital and then Garrett had taken me back to his place before dropping me at work this morning.

  “It’s embarrassing when the local constabulary gets noise complaints from neighbors. He was going to howl until he saw you.” Dan patted Sprocket’s head.

  “Sorry.” I winced. Sprocket could be loud when he was displeased.

  He shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m glad I’m not the only one trying to look after you. It’s nice to have a brother in arms.” He scratched Sprocket’s ears. “How are you doing?”

  I shrugged. “I’m okay.”

  “She’s a mess,” Dario said over his shoulder as he continued to mix the white-chocolate cranberry bars. “Doesn’t know her knee from nutmeg this morning.”

  “How about you?” I asked Dan. He hadn’t had any more sleep than I had.

  “Riding a little rough,” he admitted. Dario handed him a mug of coffee and the look of gratitude on Dan’s face was nearly heartbreaking. He sank down into a chair, closed his eyes, and took a long sip.

  “Do we know what happened to Brooke?” I asked. “How she was poisoned?”

  Dan set his mug down very carefully. “We don’t know anything because there is no we investigating this case, Rebecca. Got that? No we. This is the second woman close to Antoine who has been attacked. I’m
not going to wait for a third one to be attacked to say that there’s a pattern here.”

  I wasn’t stupid. It had occurred to me, too. Melanie was his personal assistant, his go-to person. Then Brooke stepped into her place and someone poisoned her. “What kind of psycho would do something like that?”

  “A seriously deranged psycho, I’m afraid.” Dan scratched Sprocket behind the ears. I suspected he would like to be down on the floor with his face in Sprocket’s fur, too. Sometimes dignity was overrated.

  Something that had been bothering me in the back of my mind finally made its way to the foreground. “What about Antoine’s stalker?”

  “No one’s seen her since that night at the hotel,” Dan said.

  “Just because we haven’t seen her doesn’t mean she’s not out there. Isn’t that one of the things stalkers are good at?” I pointed out.

  “We’ve been circulating her description, but haven’t had any hits. I thought maybe Melanie’s murder scared her off. I know if I was Antoine’s stalker and that happened when I was mid-stalk, I’d want to stalk from a distance for a while.” Dan rubbed his eyes.

  “But what if she didn’t run away? What if she’s just really good at staying hidden? She could have cut her hair, dyed it, bought fake glasses, put on a baseball cap. There would be tons of easy ways to disguise herself and still stay in the area.” Sprocket licked my ear.

  “I’m not sure I like how quickly you came up with ways to disguise yourself,” Dan said. “But you’re right. It makes a sick kind of sense. She could be getting rid of the women close to Antoine, thinking that she could step into their places. Didn’t she try to move into Antoine’s place after you moved out?”

  I nodded. “Showed up with a U-Haul on a Tuesday afternoon. Before that, she brought little gifts. Antoine’s been getting little gifts that no one is taking credit for.” The cards, the brioche, the magazines. Someone had left them.

  Suddenly Dan jolted upward. “Then Lucy is in danger. She’s next in line behind Brooke, isn’t she?”

  “She is. Poor thing. She’s so crazy in love with Antoine herself. She’s finally getting what she wanted and it’s putting her smack-dab in a killer’s crosshairs.” Sometimes the worst thing that can happen is to get what you thought you wanted.