Chapter 3
Technically, I shouldn’t stash the cake in the pantry at the restaurant. My shop still hadn’t had a health inspection, and I hadn’t heard back on my business license application yet. The decorating, which I did in the grocery store bakery—there are advantages to Honey’s connections—and piles of paperwork to make everything legal, had kept me busy all week. I hadn’t taken the time to clean the shop downstairs. Unable to settle after the events of the day, I changed out of my white chef’s uniform and headed down to put things to rights.
I started by making a list of everything that needed to be done. I’d already ordered a commercial oven and a nice range, and placed an ad in a regional restaurant website to sell the grill.
I’d worked for half an hour when Honey showed up, changed from her bright, flowered dress into faded jeans with non-factory created rips in them, and an old, faded T-shirt with the grocery store logo on it. She had her cornrows pulled back from her face in an elastic, making her cocoa-latte features more pronounced. She had a gorgeous face with the perfect mix of her Jamaican and French ancestry. “I figured you’d be digging in to work and could use some help, and sustenance. Since your ovens aren’t here yet, I brought something along.” She opened the pink box to expose four chocolate éclairs.
My favorite. “You know me so well.” My recipe would be better, but I wasn’t about to complain—“any éclair in an emergency” is my motto. “Are you staying around to help, or are you leaving me with three?” I asked as I washed my hands at the sink.
She chuckled. “George’s mom took the kids for the day, so I’m free, at least until seven.”
Three hours would easily suffice for us to finish these babies off. I boosted myself onto the counter—something I wouldn’t allow myself to do once the bakery was cleaned—and selected my first pastry. “So how ’bout that murder?” I took a big bite, closed my eyes, and savored the flavor. With all the excitement, I’d forgotten to eat, so this tasted extra good.
“Is it too cliché to say I’m shocked?”
“Only if it’s too cliché that I nearly passed out when I found the body.”
“I’m safe, then.” Honey picked out a pastry for herself. “Analesa did say she wanted it to be an event everyone would talk about for years. I think she got her wish, though I don’t think it’s quite what she had in mind.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said, as if the outcome was one of the possibilities anyone might have expected. “Can you believe the way she acted, though? I couldn’t decide if she was upset about Valerie’s death because she was a friend, or if it was about losing her maid of honor because the line would be messed up, or the ruining of her wedding day. Like it wasn’t a far worse day for Valerie.”
Honey laughed outright, covering her mouth since she’d just taken a bite of éclair. “I can’t believe you said that. Oh, wait, it’s you—of course I can. But you’re on target. She was upset about all three, and I’m not certain the death was the strongest pull. Tad seemed genuinely upset, though—such a sensible man would have his priorities straight. And his mom is a rock; pale, looking like she was ready to crumple, she instead marshaled the troops and got everyone in line.”
“Sweet woman, too,” I agreed. “I think she’s uncomfortable in public and that’s why she’s so formal with everyone. I’ve been mulling over the way she acts with Tad. I think her kids are her world, and the social face she put on was just that. I could be wrong, but I’d bet I’m not.” I dealt with people and relationships every day in my job. They fascinated me. “Valerie’s little girl though, it nearly killed me, seeing how upset she was.” Her tear-streaked face was going to haunt me for a long time.
The bell over the door pealed and Detective Tingey walked in. “I hoped I’d find you here,” he said to me. “I had a few more questions for you. One of the wedding party said they saw you arguing with the victim last night. Can you tell me about it?”
I blinked at him for a moment. The conversation had completely blown out of my head after I discovered Valerie’s body. It took me a minute to remember what he was talking about. “Right, she argued with Analesa about something, then came over and took a brownie off the tray I was arranging. When I asked her not to mess up the presentation and suggested she should wait for the rest of the party to join them for dinner, she made a snarky comment and ate it anyway. She insulted my food, saying it wasn’t as good as Roscoe’s. He’s such a moron.”
“She insulted you?” He scribbled something in his pocket-sized notebook.
“Yes. Well, she insulted my food, which was almost the same thing. If you’d ever tried those brownies, you’d agree. Roscoe,” I put as much of my detestation as possible into my voice, “doesn’t have half my flair for pastries.”
The officer gave me a commiserating look. “Okay, I want you to tell me what the two of you said, as close to word for word as you can remember. You don’t mind if I record it, do you?” he asked, pulling a small recorder from his pocket.
I didn’t like it, but I agreed, and did my best. When he ran me through it again, I wondered what he expected me to remember. Then he asked what I did after I left the hotel last night. I told him I’d gone to the grocery store, finished work on the cake and headed home before ten.
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone. I’m single, I live by myself. Alone.” And after the breakup with Bronson, that didn’t look like it would be changing anytime in the near future.
“Hmmm.” He wrote something in his notebook. “I bet you were fuming after the things she said. Artists like you have killed for less.”
Secretly, I agreed with him, but I saw where he was going, so I pretended not to understand. “It was a petty slight,” which had reached its mark, “and completely wrong.” Okay, so maybe the last comment was over the line if I wanted him to believe I was innocent. I couldn’t help myself.
“Sure. Petty slights are the cause for lots of accidents these days.”
“Are you calling her death an accident? Because I don’t think she crawled under there, knocked herself on the head with a vase, then stabbed herself with the broken shard.”
His brows lifted. “How do you know how she was killed?”
“I saw the shards. I noticed the vase last night when I was there, almost knocked it on the floor. Might have been better for Valerie if I had.” Except there had been another one on the other side of the door, so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.
“Mmmhmmm.” He made another note. “So you’ve touched the vase?”
I felt my eyes widen as my heart rate picked up. “Yeah. I did. Oh, man.” I felt light-headed and was glad I was seated.
“Really? Hmmmm.” He scratched the pencil across the paper again, his face unreadable.
“Is there anything else you need?” Honey asked, breaking her self-imposed silence for the first time in twenty minutes. I’d never known her to be so quiet for so long except when she was asleep, and even then she tended to hold conversations with imaginary people. We’d had plenty of sleepovers while we were growing up.
He studied the notebook for a moment. “No, I suppose that’s all for now.” He looked at me. “Don’t leave town. I’m sure I’ll need to speak with you again.” He turned and pushed back through the front door.
I stood gaping after him. “He thinks I killed her. My fingerprints are on the murder weapon. I’m totally going to get nailed for this.” The thought of going to jail for something I hadn’t done made me shiver. Not to mention that I’d look horrible in an orange jumpsuit.
“How can he think that? You’d never kill someone.” Honey pushed away from the counter and crossed the undersized kitchen.
“Because she insulted my brownies—our brownies. How messed up is that?” I started pacing the customer area. “I’ve never hurt anyone for insulting my food—even when they deserved it way more than Valerie. Not that insults are a reason to kill someone . . . ” I stopped because Honey didn’t care what I said and I was only making a bigger fool of myself.
“We can’t let this happen. He so cannot pin this on you. You have to open this place, and stay here, and meet some nice man and have a dozen babies so we can grow old together.”
I put my hands up at that comment, completely pulled out of my moment of panic. “Hold on—there’s no way I’m having a dozen anything more time-consuming than goldfish.” I wouldn’t mind meeting a nice man, but it could wait a while—like until the word ‘man’ didn’t make me want to throttle one in particular.
She nodded as if conceding my point. “What did you think of the paramedic who helped you? He’s divorced.”
“Jack? Nice at first, ornery once I started to feel better. Idiot.” I whirled back to her. “Why are we talking about guys? I’ve got to prove this wasn’t me. I didn’t kill the obnoxious Roscoe-lover.”
Honey met me on the other side of the counter, folded her arms across her chest and smirked. “Then we’ll figure it out. Where do we start?”