by Sofie Kelly
I rubbed the back of my neck with my free hand. “You’re not going to get in trouble. I just want to know whether or not someone offered you money to drop out.”
Dorrie made a sound that was halfway between a groan and a sigh. “Fine. Yeah. I needed the money and I didn’t really care about taking the cooking course that’s part of the prize. So I said yes. That’s not really wrong, is it? I mean, it’s not against the law or anything?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “How much money are we talking about?”
She hesitated once again. “Twenty thousand dollars.”
“Twenty thousand dollars?” I repeated. How had Ray gotten his hands on that much money?
“Yeah,” Dorrie said. “And she gave it to me in cash so the IRS wouldn’t find out.”
A loud thumping sound filled my ears—the sound of my own heartbeat. “She?”
“She. Kate. Kate Westin. That’s who we’re talking about, right?”
“Umm, right.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“So do you wanna know anything else?” Dorrie asked.
“No,” I said. I was trying to make sense of what I’d just found out.
“And just so we’re clear, I’m not going to get in any trouble for this?”
“Not from me.” That seemed to be enough for her.
“Okay, well, I gotta go.”
“Thank you,” I said, but Dorrie had ended the call and I wasn’t sure she’d heard me.
I set the phone down on the table. It seemed I was wrong about Ray. Or at least about him being the one who had gotten rid of Dorrie Park.
My spaghetti was cold now and my appetite was gone anyway. I pushed the bowl away. I thought about Kate telling me how her modeling career had ended. I remembered the bitterness in her voice and the pain in her eyes. Was that why she’d gotten rid of Dorrie? Did she see winning the Baking Showdown as her only chance at a new career?
Owen was still moping around by my feet.
I reached down and stroked the top of his head. “You’re not hurt,” I told him. “You don’t need stitches. You don’t have a concussion. But if you really feel that bad I could arrange an emergency visit . . .”
I didn’t finish the sentence and Owen gave me a quizzical look.
A visit to the emergency room. That’s what had started the confrontation that had ended with Caroline upending that bowl on Kassie’s head. I closed my eyes and tried to picture the video one more time. I tried to focus on every detail, every facial expression, every word, every sound.
And finally I knew who had killed Kassie Tremayne. It made sense. It fit the timeline. It fit the circumstances.
A wave of nausea rolled from my stomach to the back of my throat. I put a hand on my abdomen and took slow, deep breaths until it passed. Then I picked up my phone and called Marcus. All I got was his voice mail. I remembered that he had court tomorrow. He was probably meeting with the prosecuting attorney. “Call me, please, as soon as you can,” I told his phone. “I know who killed Kassie.” It wasn’t until I set my phone on the table that I realized I hadn’t told him who the killer was.
I washed my dishes, stopping several times to make sure the ringer on my phone was working. Where is Marcus?
I hunted all over the house for Hercules. I finally found him sitting on one of my Adirondack chairs in the backyard. “Want to go see Ruby again?” I asked.
He’d been staring off into the distance but his furry head swiveled in my direction the moment I said Ruby’s name.
I gestured with one hand. “C’mon then.”
He jumped down and made his way over to the steps.
“I just have to grab my bag and my keys,” I said.
He put one paw on the bottom step. I half expected him to start tapping it impatiently.
I was glad to have the distraction of taking Hercules to class with me, but I couldn’t help thinking about Kassie’s murder. I couldn’t see how I could be wrong. There was just one question I didn’t have the answer to. I wasn’t even sure it mattered, but . . .
I looked at my watch. I had a few minutes. I turned toward the community center.
There was a parking spot close to the back door. Even more important, Russell’s rental car was there. “I won’t be very long and then we’ll go see Ruby and Maggie,” I said to Hercules. “Stay here.”
I should have known he’d ignore me. He jumped up onto the dashboard and nonchalantly walked through the windshield. I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed but there was no one around.
I didn’t have time to argue. I picked him up and started for the back door.
Harry was at the desk. “Hi, Kathleen,” he said. He looked at the cat. “Hello, Hercules.”
The cat murped a hello back.
“Is Russell still here?” I asked. “I saw his car outside.”
Harry nodded. “He’s here. He brought down a piece of strawberry tart about half an hour ago. Stacey’s with him. Everyone else is gone.”
I thanked him, signed the log and headed up the stairs. This conversation would be easier to have face-to-face.
I found Russell and Stacey in Eugenie’s office, just getting ready to leave. He was winding a scarf around her neck and I thought they looked as though they had genuine feelings for each other.
Russell smiled when he saw me. “And you brought Hercules,” he said.
Stacey smiled at the cat. “Hello, Hercules,” she said. She looked at me. “It’s okay, Russell told me I can’t pet him.”
“What are you doing here?” Russell asked. “Everyone’s gone.”
“There’s something I wanted to ask Stacey.”
“What is it?” She looked a little uncertain.
“Did you give Kate one of your pills the day Kassie was killed? I know what happened on the set when you were all filming the promos. I know Caroline dumped a bowl of flour on Kassie and Kate broke a jar.”
Her pink cheeks and guilty expression told me yes before she spoke.
“She was so upset she was shaking and she couldn’t seem to stand still. I . . . I didn’t know what else to do. I gave her two.”
I reached out and touched her arm. “Hey, you were just trying to help. It’s okay.”
“Is that it?” Russell asked.
“It is,” I said.
“Let’s go, then.” He flipped the light switch, closed the door and we started down the hallway.
“Kathleen, we’re going over to Fern’s,” Stacey said. “Would you like to join us?”
“Merow,” Hercules said. It seemed he’d forgotten we were meeting Ruby.
“Yes, we know you would,” I said, scratching behind his left ear. I smiled at Stacey. “Thank you, but we’re going to tai chi.”
“I didn’t know cats did tai chi,” Russell said.
“Are you kidding?” I said with mock surprise. “You should see his Cloud Hands.”
My phone rang then. Marcus, finally. “Go ahead,” I said. “I need to get this.” They headed for the stairs.
But it wasn’t Marcus. It was Abigail. “I’m sorry to bother you, Kathleen,” she said, “but I’m having trouble with that monitor again, the one closest to the front desk.”
“Have a good night,” Russell called from the end of the hall.
I waved and he and Stacey were gone. “Whack it with the heel of your hand on the right side right in the middle of the top edge,” I said to Abigail.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Just try it.”
I heard a thump and then Abigail exclaimed, “It worked!” She sounded surprised.
“Well, one of these days it won’t,” I said. “And it probably won’t last. I have another cable I can try. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Abigail thanked me and said good-bye.
“I’m going to take you over to Maggie and Ruby and then just run over to the library for a minute,” I said to Hercules.
He wasn’t listening. Something behind me had caught his attention. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as I turned around.
Kate was pointing a gun at me.
chapter 19
Maybe I could bluff.
“Kate, you scared me,” I said. “Could you put that down, please?”
She smiled but there was nothing warm about it. “Seeing as how I’m planning on shooting you, no, I can’t,” she said. She held out her free hand. “Give me your phone.”
Bluffing wasn’t going to work.
I handed her my cell. She turned it off and put it in her pocket.
I glanced over my shoulder. The stairs were half a hall away. “Harry will hear you if you shoot me.”
“I’m not going to shoot you here,” she said. “C’mon, I’m smarter than that. After all, I killed Kassie and no one figured out it was me—well, except for you.” She was wearing another of her long loose sweaters and her free arm hugged her midsection. “Besides, at this time of night Harry will have closed the doors at the bottom of the stairs. They’re fire doors. You could kill someone up here and no one would hear a thing. Ask me how I know.”
“You found out that Kassie was connected to the woman who owned the skincare company that made the mask you had the allergic reaction to,” I said.
“Monique Le Clair. They’d been friends since high school. Kassie told my lawyer that she had no idea where Monique was, but I knew that was a lie.”
“That morning when you were all filming the promo on the set and Kassie was on Caroline about being a helicopter parent, she mentioned Saint Barthélemy. You finally knew where Monique Le Clair was.”
“Eugenie showed you the video this morning. I walked past the door. Neither one of you noticed me.” Her eyes narrowed. “How did you figure it out? I knew it was just a matter of time before you did, but what gave me away?”
My mouth was dry. “The glass jar you dropped.” Maybe if I kept her talking Harry would wonder what was taking me so long.
Kate frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I kept thinking about what happened. Caroline upended the bowl over Kassie’s head; the jar slipped out of your hands; Ray pulled a pot off his stove and bolted toward Caroline. I was replaying it over and over in my head and I realized that the sound of the jar hitting the floor came just a fraction of a second before Caroline tipped over that bowl. It was like a storm. You always see the lightning before you hear the thunder because light travels faster than sound.”
“She said, ‘No harm was done,’” Kate said. “She was the one who suggested putting chemicals in what was supposed to be a natural product. Kassie and her friend ruined my life and it was like it was nothing. And she was trying to do it again. She was trying to undermine me on the show, for no good reason, just because she liked to stir up trouble.”
“The show was your way to get close to Kassie. To find out what she knew. You paid Dorrie Park to drop out of the qualifying competition so you’d be in the top three.”
Kate gave a sigh of exasperation. “And she just had to go to Paris and put a whole bunch of photos online. What is wrong with people?” She gestured with the gun and I put my free arm protectively around Hercules as if it could somehow stop a bullet.
Kate noticed the gesture. “I won’t hurt him.” She seemed almost offended. “I’m not a monster. Kassie was the monster.”
“Why didn’t you tell Elias, tell everyone?”
She gave a snort of derision. “Like that would do a lot of good. Elias wouldn’t have done a thing. Do you know what Kassie’s real name is? Do you know who her father is?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“Then you know telling Elias, telling everyone, would have been a waste of time. It’s not like I had any actual proof.”
I glanced over my shoulder again.
“Mr. Taylor isn’t coming to rescue you,” she said. “And as far as he’s concerned I left a little while ago. I was on the sidewalk when you got here. I had a feeling you’d figured everything out so I came back.”
“How did you get back in the building just now without Harry seeing you?” I asked. At some point soon Harry had to wonder why I hadn’t come back out.
Kate smiled again. “There’s an alarm on the other door now. But not on the windows. Sloppy, don’t you think?”
The only thing I could think of was to keep her talking. Maybe she’d have second thoughts about killing me if she had some time to think about what she was planning on doing. “So what happened the night Kassie died?” I said. “I know you’d taken her phone earlier in the day and then pretended to find it.”
“Oh, so we’re going to do the Miss Marple thing.” Kate looked around. “Well, it’s not an English country manor house but this will have to do. Yes, I borrowed her phone. There wasn’t anything useful on it.”
“But that’s how you knew Kassie had a son.”
“I knew that was a mistake as soon as I spoke.”
“You went down to Eric’s with everyone else.” I glanced at the nearest office door. What were the chances it would be unlocked?
“Yes. Then I walked back because I didn’t feel like socializing. The thing is, when you’re quiet, people don’t notice when you’re gone.”
“Why did you come back here? Why didn’t you just go back to where you’re staying?”
She brushed a stray wisp of hair off of her face. “Because I wanted to bake. It’s what I do when things or people make me feel crazy. And by the way, I’m not crazy.”
“I know that,” I said. “You’re smart. You can think on your feet. So why did you come here to cook?”
She held up her free hand. “Because the oven in my apartment isn’t working right. You know, if it had been, I would have just gone home and Kassie might be alive now. Imagine that.” She studied my face for a moment. “How does that saying go? ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost?’”
“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of the shoe, the horse was lost; for want of the horse, the rider was lost; for want of the rider, the battle was lost; for want of the battle, the kingdom was lost; and all from the want of a horseshoe nail.”
She nodded. “That’s it. Benjamin Franklin?”
“He often gets the credit,” I said, “but there are variations of the words in both German and French literature that go back hundred of years before him.”
“I knew you would know that.” Kate smiled. “For want of an oven a life was lost.”
Something was broken inside her.
I shifted Hercules from one arm to the other. His head was cocked to one side now and he seemed to be listening to every word Kate said. “One thing I couldn’t figure out was how did you get in that night? I knew there was some confusion when everyone left at the same time and Zach wasn’t good at keeping track of people. But how did you get past him the second time?”
“Did you know Elias has a master key so he can use that other door?”
I nodded.
She shrugged. “He should have taken better care of it. Anyone could have copied it.”
“Why didn’t you show up on the security footage the way Elias did?”
She answered my question with a question. “Did you know there’s a basement door into this building? No cameras there. Not then, anyway.”
“Somehow you drugged Kassie.” It was a detail I hadn’t been able to figure out.
“No, I didn’t,” Kate said. “Not on purpose.” Anger flashed in her eyes and the gun jerked in her hand. “Not on purpose. I’d start shaking whenever I thought about what Kassie had done to me. When Stacey first gave me those pills I . . . I didn’t want to take them, but I didn’t think I would ever be able to stop the shaking if I did
n’t.”
Her hand was starting to tremble a little now. Even though she was holding a gun on me, even though she wanted to kill me, part of me just wanted to wrap my arms around her.
“So what happened?” I asked. “How did Kassie end up taking them?”
“I don’t like to swallow pills so I made hot chocolate and I put them in it. Then I realized I’d left my bag in the washroom. I went to get it and when I came back Kassie had my drink. She thought everything was hers. I guess she didn’t have the same tolerance for that kind of medication as I do.”
I shook my head. “I would have been so angry at her.”
She nodded in agreement. “See, you get it, don’t you? I told her what she’d done to me. How she ruined my life. Those pills, they were making her sleepy, but she was the same as she always was. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anyone but herself.”
Hercules leaned his head against my chin. I reminded myself we’d been in worse situations—or close to it. Somehow I was going to figure something out.
“Do you know what Kassie said?” Kate asked. “She said I didn’t have what it takes to be a model unless maybe it was walking a runway at the mall. And then she said I was going to be eliminated in the next episode of the show. I said she couldn’t do that but I knew she could. She was slurring her words by then and she started to slump forward. She was next to the table and there was a bowl of whipped cream on it. I don’t even know where it came from. It was so easy to just put my hand on the back of her head and hold it down. She didn’t even struggle.” She tugged the front of her sweater a little closer around her body.
Hercules gave a soft mrrr.
“I took the cup with me and I smashed it later and put the pieces in the garbage. Then I just started walking. What had happened didn’t even seem real. So I pretended that it wasn’t.”
“And then you happened to come across Caroline.”
Kate nodded. “I was just walking. I wasn’t pay attention to where I was going. When I met Caroline I knew where she’d come from. I realized Caroline wanted it to seem like we’d been together and so I just went along with it. I put Kassie and all the bad stuff out of my head the way I always do.”
