When the Cat's Away

by Molly Fitz

  The cop scribbled a note and turned back to Liam. “Mr. O’Conner, you were the leader of this food tour?”

  Liam tried to answer, but Victoria Kinsley put in her two cents toward Lisa. “His girlfriend wasn’t even here when it happened. You’ve been trash-talking Clive all day, so if they should look closer at anybody, maybe it should be you.”

  Detective Gibson, who had been listening in from nearby, stepped up to Lisa. “Ms. Lorenson? May I have a word with you over here, please?”

  Lisa’s eyes widened, first at Victoria, and then up at the police officer. “I—I was inside the whole time. Just ask Mallory!”

  Lisa looked to me for confirmation, but as with all crime scenes, it seemed an automatic response to put my business hat on and emotionally distance myself from anyone involved. “I’ve already spoken to the detective,” I told her. “Just tell him the truth.”

  Lisa took a deep breath and followed Detective Gibson across the restaurant to a table in the corner. I could no longer hear them, but by the way Lisa animatedly pointed back at Victoria, it wasn’t hard to guess who she now suspected.

  Victoria continued to speak to her husband about the awful situation, no longer throwing blame, but speaking loud enough that everyone at the table could hear. “I just think it’s horrible that anyone would do that to anyone.” She didn’t go so far as to use Clive’s name or comment about his character, as that would have given a clear indication of her own motive.

  Everyone ignored Emile Dubois, who sat quietly at the end of the table, reading something on his phone. No, he didn’t look or act like a cold-blooded killer, but in my experience, that didn’t always mean anything.

  The brash older cop walked through the door. “Haven’t you got this place cleared out yet?” He shook his head and strode for the kitchen area, where the restaurant staff huddled together whispering.

  Juliana shook her head at the cop and motioned to her neck. When the cop questioned her further, all of the waitresses seemed to speak at once and all motioned to their necks.

  I wished I were closer so I could hear whether they were talking about Clive being strangled with Mardi Gras beads, or if they were telling him the story of the pendant our waitress had asked him to remove.

  A younger cop strode for Liam. I continued taking my time with the food assembly to listen in, but a moment later, he led Liam to a table near where Amber sat. I had to decide quickly if it was more beneficial to stay and listen in on anything Victor, Victoria, and Monsieur Dubois had to say, which seemed the better plan, but for some reason, my instincts told me to follow our food tour leader. I hadn’t spoken much to Liam on the tour, and I didn’t know what kind of insight he had into the tour participants, but I followed my instincts, bringing one full platter of sandwiches back to Amber.

  “Those look good,” she said, but I held a finger to my lips. With my back turned to them, I motioned toward Liam and the cop as I slid into my chair.

  In truth, our sandwiches looked a little past their prime already, which reminded me of my culinary arts teacher who called old food “mort.” This reminded me of our waitress, but when I checked over my shoulder, the gruff police officer had already finished interviewing the wait staff.

  I sighed back into my seat, straining to hear the conversation behind me. Amber glanced over my shoulder at regular intervals and leaned in, miming as though whispering to me, for the cop’s benefit.

  The cop asked Liam for a list of the full names of all the food tour participants and everything he knew about their relationship to Clive Richards. I sucked in a breath and held it when he started with my name.

  “Mallory Beck and Clive Richards were winners in our magazine’s recent original recipe contest. They were both awarded a tour for two people as well as a three-nights hotel stay.”

  But then Liam added something I didn’t know. “Emile Dubois contested Mr. Richards’ win, claiming the recipe came from his restaurant. He wanted our magazine to print a public correction, but our magazine editors feared litigation. Instead, we offered him a spot on the food tour.”

  “Was Emile Dubois still upset about this turn of events, in your opinion?” At least this cop was on the ball, going after Monsieur Dubois’s motive. I wanted to turn around and tell him about the bad review Clive Richards had given of Monsieur Dubois’s restaurant, but I kept myself rooted firmly in place, hoping to hear more.

  “Not that I was aware.” Liam’s accent had become much less garish while talking with the police. “Victor and Victoria Kinsley signed up for the tour through our website. As far as I know, they’d not met Clive, but a quick tension developed there.”

  “What sparked the tension?”

  Liam went on to explain Victoria Kinsley’s food needs and Clive’s annoyance. “To be fair, the lad was annoyed with lots of things: choice of restaurants, the Kinsleys’ eating habits, and even young Amber’s age.”

  I stiffened at the mention of Amber’s name, but thankfully, the cop went on to ask, “Was there tension between you and Mr. Richards?”

  A pause followed, and it was all I could do to keep from turning to see Liam’s reaction. Liam had been exceedingly frustrated with Clive and perhaps even worried that Clive would get him fired.

  “I wanted to see Mr. Richards satisfied, just like with any member of the tour,” he finally said.

  I looked forward to a time when I could add my own thoughts to the police’s investigation. Not that I thought Liam O’Conner had killed Clive Richards. In fact, my impression from all the talk at our table was that Mr. Kinsley and Liam could vouch for each other’s presence in the kitchen, and the chef would be able to confirm that. No one had spoken much about Victoria’s whereabouts, which made me wonder if she was only pointing fingers at Lisa to deflect attention from where she had been during the murder.

  There wasn’t much else to learn from Liam. The cop seemed to realize this quickly, too, but before he could get his next interviewee into the chair behind me, Detective Gibson hovered at our table.

  “We need to clear people out as soon as they’ve been questioned, so I’ll walk you to your hotel now.”

  My heart dropped. I wanted to stay and figure this out. “Could I just, uh, pack these sandwiches up to go?”

  “This is a police investigation, ma’am. I’m afraid we don’t have time for that.”

  I bit my lip, feeling silly. Then again, the longer I stalled, the less chance of finding any stray green beads on the hotel’s lawn.

  “Okay, let’s go.” I stood and led the way to the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Clive’s body had been removed from the scene. Cell phone to his ear, the gruff cop paced back and forth along a small patch of the alleyway, talking loudly.

  I stopped in place. “Oh! Just let me make sure I have my phone.”

  I checked through my purse as Amber let Hunch down on his leash. He immediately strained toward the crime scene tape.

  “Slow-acting poison?” the gruff cop said into his phone. “If that’s the case, couldn’t it have been administered earlier today or even yesterday?”

  Detective Gibson moved closer to his superior, and that gave Hunch a chance to get under the crime scene tape without notice. He sniffed around a small wet patch where Clive’s face had been.

  “Likely today?” The gruff cop relayed the information to Detective Gibson as he confirmed it into his phone. “You’ll do a full autopsy and that’ll reveal the timing, but you suspect within the last two hours?”

  I bent down to elongate my purse search, but my head snapped up when the gruff cop said, “Hey! Get your cat away from there!”

  My time was up. I stood, holding up my phone as though I’d just found it.

  “I’m taking these ladies to their hotel to confirm the presence of some Mardi Gras beads,” Detective Gibson told his superior.

  His superior nodded. “Then question Mr. O’Conner about the earlier stops on the tour. I’ll hold him until you get back.”

>   Detective Gibson led us toward the busy street at the end of the alley. I quickly caught up beside him. “I think you should look more carefully at Emile Dubois. He was on the tour with us and owns his own local restaurant.”

  Detective Gibson gave me a side-eyed glance, which was all the encouragement I needed.

  “Apparently, Clive Richards worked as a food critic and had given Monsieur Dubois’s restaurant a scathing review. Plus, Clive Richards had stolen the recipe that had won him this food tour. He’d taken credit for it in a magazine. It’s a pretty strong motive.” I barely left a breath of space, for fear the detective wouldn’t want to hear my theories. “Clive Richards was not an amiable guy. The Kinsleys also disliked him. And Clive had threatened to try and get Liam O’Conner fired earlier today.”

  Amber caught up, carrying Hunch. “At the Irish pub, Mr. Richards said he believed in survival of the fittest and basically if the Kinsleys couldn’t eat a normal diet, they deserved to get sick and die. If that’s not motive, I don’t know what is.”

  “Monsieur Dubois was gone for a long time, claiming to be in the restroom,” I added. “And our waitress, Juliana, had an argument with him, too.”

  Detective Gibson waved a hand. “Just over his pendant, which she claimed was cursed.”

  Cursed? That must’ve been the French word I didn’t recognize. “Couldn’t she have been involved in some way?”

  “She’d been in the kitchen, trying to get one of the other waitresses to take her table. We questioned all the staff, but once folk like these get some voodoo theory in their head, it’s hard to get them to talk about anything else.”

  I squinted at the weak excuse.

  “The Kinsleys said they were with the chef,” Amber said, “but I overheard Mr. Kinsley telling his wife to just say she was with him the whole time, which to me sounds like they planned to lie.”

  “When did you overhear this?” Detective Gibson asked.

  “When I first got sent back into the restaurant. They were all talking about how it looked like Clive had been strangled to death.” Amber turned to me. “It was when you were still talking to the police outside.”

  We arrived at our hotel parking lot, and Amber led the way across it to a small manicured green patch around the side that was lined with azaleas.

  Amber walked straight for where she must have been with Hunch. Only a second later, a few gleaming dots came into view. She pointed, but didn’t pick any up. “See?”

  The detective squatted near the beads, pulled out a plastic baggie, and scooped them up with a gloved hand.

  I hoped this would put Amber in the clear as a suspect, but Detective Gibson’s stern brow still made me nervous.

  “Please wait at your hotel until you hear from us.” He passed over a business card from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “If you think of anything else of importance, please give me a call. We’re going to instruct Mr. O’Conner to cancel the rest of the food tour.”

  I forced a nod of agreement as my heart deflated. It made sense, but it still felt like such a loss. I hadn’t even been allowed to pack up our po’ boy sandwiches to eat at the hotel. Now the only New Orleans fare we’d get was whatever our hotel offered from room service.

  “We’ll be around if you need us,” I told Detective Gibson. Amber hid Hunch under her sweater, and we headed around the corner to the hotel lobby as the detective strode purposefully away.

  Chapter Twelve

  On the way to our room, Amber and I barely spoke, both disappointed about the canceled food tour. Once we had Hunch safely inside where he could emerge from under Amber’s cardigan, she flopped back onto her bed and said, “I think we should call Alex.”

  I felt too scattered to put my thoughts about the day into any coherent order. I dropped onto my own bed and said, “Go for it.”

  She navigated to our detective friend’s number within seconds. I lay back on my bed and listened as she explained the circumstances surrounding today’s murder.

  “You two attract this sort of upheaval, don’t you?” Alex asked through the speakerphone. It sounded lighthearted, as Alex could probably hear the exhaustion in Amber’s tone, but the statement was too true for joking. We really were in the wrong place at the wrong time far too often.

  Amber went on to describe the people involved, and I cataloged them all on the notepad from my purse as she did. Thorough notetaking might have been my only superpower, but it never failed to help me find points I had been missing.

  Eventually, I chimed into the conversation, and Alex’s voice brightened in response. “In my opinion, Emile Dubois is the prime suspect. He was alone, so he had opportunity, and he had more than one point of contention with Clive from long before the tour.”

  “Did he have means?” Alex asked. “Any access to poisons that you know of?”

  I shook my head, even though Alex wouldn’t be able to see it. “But how do we know any of them had access to a poison?”

  “I’m not saying this Dubois character isn’t your guy, but sometimes the most obvious suspect can be innocent.”

  I let that turn in my head. “He doesn’t seem like a killer.” I had said this plenty of times during prior investigations. Alex sighed quietly in response. He knew I’d argue myself enough on this point.

  “What about that waitress who hated his pendant?” Amber asked. “She may have known where to find a poisonous cleaner around the restaurant.”

  “Plenty of cleaners are poisonous to ingest and could be slow-acting like the medical examiner suggested.” Alex took a breath. “But it would be awfully hard to conceal in order to get a victim to ingest it. Do you want me to fly down there tomorrow? I have the day off.”

  “No, I’m sure the local police will tell us to go home by tomorrow.” I sighed. “I’m not sure why we have to stay locked up in our hotel. I have a cell phone. I’d love one local meal before I go.”

  “I know if it was my investigation, I’d want to make sure all the other members of the group were safe.”

  I looked at Amber with a furrowed brow. “Why wouldn’t we be safe?”

  “No, no,” he said. “I’m sure you are. They’re probably just being cautious. If the killer thinks someone in the group heard or saw something, they might be tempted to threaten them.” He didn’t say the words “or worse,” but I heard them.

  His theory made sense.

  After we’d talked the situation to death—no pun intended—Alex told us to stay together and be safe before he hung up. I looked at my long list of notes and felt a little more clearheaded, but still couldn’t pinpoint the killer.

  “We need food,” Amber said. “Brain energy.”

  She was right. The food from our first two stops had long ago digested. I generally couldn’t eat much when working on a case, but I had to keep Amber fed. Just then a knock sounded at our door.

  I looked at Amber, but then popped up off my bed. I wasn’t about to let her answer it.

  Liam stood on the other side. Worry lines creased his forehead. “Ah, Mallory.” His voice was that overly musical version of itself again. “I’m glad I found ya. The police have arranged for a hospitality room for the rest of us to spend some time while they investigate. The hotel restaurant has sent over gobs of food. I thought you and Amber might be hungry.”

  Although I didn’t seriously suspect Liam of murder, I remembered what both Detective Gibson and Alex said about not going places alone. “The others are there?”

  “Just Lisa, so far, but the rest will arrive when they’re done being questioned.”

  I nibbled my lip. I didn’t like the idea of leaving Lisa there on her own. “Sure,” I finally said. “Let me just grab my purse.”

  Liam hadn’t been kidding about the gobs of food. Two end-to-end tables were heaped with it along an entire wall. Unfortunately, from one glance, I could tell that the hamburgers and spaghetti type of features weren’t going to stretch my palette.

  In the time that Liam had come to retriev
e us, the Kinsleys had also made their way back to the hospitality suite. They hovered over the food display, discussing every item with seriousness.

  “Why don’t you grab something?” I murmured to Amber. “Listen in for anything important. Meanwhile, I’ll have a word with Lisa.”

  Amber headed for the food display, and I moved toward where Lisa sat alone on a sofa. I wondered if she’d already eaten or if she was too distraught to eat. Liam headed back out to watch for Monsieur Dubois, but with everyone else here, I had to believe the police may have arrested him by now.

  “Did you get some food?” I sat across from Lisa on the couch.

  She shook her head. “I can’t eat. Not with everything that’s happened.” Even though I related to her on that point, part of me still wondered if it could indicate some guilt. But before I could open my mouth to ask anything else, she gave me her best theory. “You know what I think?” She barely allowed time for my shrug. “I think Scarlett didn’t even have to work today. I think she left because she was sick of the way Clive treated her.”

  Clive’s girlfriend had been completely off my radar, as she hadn’t even been in the vicinity when he collapsed.

  “I’ll bet he went outside to call her and tell her to get her butt back to the restaurant. She didn’t even mention having to work until we were outside and ready to move to the next stop. She wasn’t giving him a chance to argue.”

  Amber had taken a seat at a round table across from the Kinsleys with very different-looking plates of food. Amber’s was heaped with a hamburger and fries, while the Kinsleys’ looked to be almost all vegetables. I was willing to bet Amber would nail down the truth about the Kinsleys alibis by the time she finished her plate.

  I eyed Lisa. A bit talkative for investigative work, but her suspicious nature could work in her favor. “So you think if we went to Scarlett’s job, she wouldn’t actually be there?” It wasn’t a completely far-fetched idea. “But Scarlett didn’t tell you she lied about having to work, right?”