When the buzzer finally sounded, he had already removed his apron and cleaned up his area.
The audience cheered as everyone stepped away from their stations. Once more members of the television crew came forward to fetch their creations and the extra to serve to the audience who wanted to taste what had been created on the stage. Benny beamed in Jessyka’s direction. Today she was by herself. His aunts planned to drive in on Friday for the final round if he made it that far. They had agreed to come and draw straws as to who would stay in the hotel room with the kids if he was still in the competition.
Like last time, all of the contestants were escorted to center stage to await their judgment time. He conversed with Cathy and commiserated with her over her burnt andouille sausage. When she was called out to be judged first he wished her luck. She gave him a sweet yet wavering smile. When she returned five minutes later, he was happy to see she was still smiling. She announced that the judges had really enjoyed her gumbo and even though there had been a hint of burnt flavor they appreciated her attempts to put together such a complicated recipe in such a short amount of time. It was good to see she still had hope.
While she had been out, he chatted with two other contestants. The woman named Rachael Bromley made minestrone like the Jewish man, Nathan Rosen, from Connecticut. She felt confident but was a little worried because someone made the same thing. He told Rachel the man from Connecticut seemed nervous. She smiled hopefully. He also chatted with Christie Brown. She made a fall pumpkin soup. He had to admit that her choice had been creative. She was called next to be judged. And when she came back she looked a little disappointed. She explained that the judges thought the basil had overpowered the pumpkin. She was nervous now. Benny didn’t have time to comfort her though because he was called next. Now it was his turn to be judged and to see if he would make it into the quarterfinal round.
CHAPTER 11
Benny and Jessyka were still reeling from the win later that evening when Tawny Sassacus came to see them. They felt bad for Racheal who had made the minestrone. They judges liked it but pronounced the other minestrone better. Nathan’s worry had been from someone else making the same soup. The judges also sent Bert Hoffa home. He made Pasta Fagiole and the judges felt he had been too heavy handed with the basil. The man stormed off the set when that was announced.
Tawny smiled broadly when she approached the table, but Benny who had met her briefly yesterday when she had seen them with Jewel, saw worry lines in the corner of the woman’s eyes. Her smile wasn’t reaching her chocolate colored almond shaped eyes.
She had passed along a message to him through her daughter-in-law that she was looking into the possibly tainted onions and would keep him informed. He wondered if that was what had her looking so concerned.
He got up from his seat to ask her to join them, but she shook her head in the negative. They were having dinner at one of the hotels finest restaurants, the one in which Jewel cooked. In fact, she had cooked for them that evening. She’d just returned to the kitchen when the matriarch of the hotel, showed up at their table accompanied by a large burly man.
“It’s wonderful to see you both again; I just wish it was under better circumstances.” She looked behind her and Benny noticed the man in the suit looked grim faced as well.
“I’m sorry. But what’s the matter, Mrs. Sassacus?” Benny asked, still standing by the chair he had pulled out for her.
“Tawny please. And I’m afraid I’m here about those dreadful onions. Your instincts were right. They had been tampered with.”
Benny looked sharply at Jessyka. They had talked about this earlier. They thought perhaps a contestant had sabotaged them. Both he and Cathy would have lost if that were the case as they selected some of the Spanish onions.”
“I can’t believe it. Aren’t the ingredients under lock and key?” Jessyka asked.
“Yes, they were,” the older man who still stood behind Tawny stated.
“Excuse me. Let me introduce my companion this evening. This is Chief Daniels.”
Benny reached out to shake the older man’s hand. He had a strong firm grip and Benny estimated his age to be somewhere in his fifties. His hair was jet black as were most Pequot Indians, with just a hint of grey at the temples. Benny wondered if he was the chief of the reservation or the chief of police. The man was not in uniform, and there were no other identifiers that he could see. But he didn’t have to wonder long. It was as if the Sassacus family matriarch read his mind. “I’m sorry that I’m just interrupting the rest of your meal but Chief Daniels is our Chief of Police on the reservation and this casino is in his jurisdiction. We had the onions sent downtown to him and after he had his lab look at them, he returned to the casino. He has questions for you both.”
Benny was really confused. What would the Chief of Police want with him or Jessyka? He discovered the onions, and the tampering, but other than that he didn’t have a clue what was going on.
The older man cleared his throat looking contrite, but serious at the same time. “Yes, as Tawny said, I’m very sorry to interrupt your meal like this. But once she called me this afternoon and mentioned your concerns and suspicions with the onions, and once my technician found that they were poisoned, I wanted to come check out the situation myself. And see what I could find. This casino is very important to our people, and we don’t take kindly to people tampering with or harming others here. What was in those onions was not just some concoction to make people ill, or for your food to taste bad, it was deadly.”
Benny’s heart began to hammer. “Poison?” he asked in shock. What in the hell was going on? He was about to ask just that when the chief spoke again after his quick nod.
“I think we should move this conversation to someplace a little more private.”
Jessyka interrupted. “So my husband was right then? Someone intentionally injected something into those onions?”
Benny noticed her coloring. She had visibly paled. He couldn’t blame her. He remembered his intuition. Twice now, he’d felt like someone had been watching him. He wondered if that was part of this.
At the chief’s nod to his wife, Benny spoke up. “I wasn’t sure what it was; I mean, the onions smelled off, and then I saw those small holes through the skin. It just struck me as odd.”
“Well, you have a good nose, young man. And it probably saved your life and countless others. But, I really don’t want to talk about it here. I do have questions as Tawny stated, so I was hoping you and your wife would accompany us upstairs for a moment. The casino’s security officers are there. It would be private.”
“Absolutely.” Benny immediately agreed. He wanted to get to the bottom of this as well. He could have been killed. He wondered exactly what was injected into those onions. He thought about Ice, aka Caroline, and how she had done a similar thing once. He knew she would have been very proud of him for noticing the odd smell. She had saved countless people’s lives by detecting a funny odor on an airplane. “Just let me get the check,” he stated and waved toward a waiter.
“I’ve already taken care of it,” Tawny announced, waving the waiter away. “But if you will accompany us now, perhaps we can figure out what is going on.”
Benny nodded and quickly walked over to Jessyka to help her to her feet, but the Chief was quicker. “Two inches,” he commented as Jessyka took her first few steps.
She gave the chief a puzzled look. “The lift in your shoe.”
She gave him a surprised expression. He smiled and stomped his foot down. “One and a half,” he stated letting her know how he knew she had one shorter leg.
Jessyka smiled. The man was perceptive and fatherly. She liked him, and knowing he was the Chief of Police despite what some might call a disability made her warm to the man right away. Like her, he let nothing stand in his way, it seemed. She had accepted her condition long ago, but she never let it limit her. She was proud that so many others, many more people than she’d realized, were afflicted with this condition–a fluke of
prematurity–all went on to live fully productive lives. Like her.
Benny took over the escorting of his wife, as the Chief led Tawny out of the restaurant and then through the lobby to a private elevator. Tawny waved a key card in front of the electric eye on the panel and the door silently opened. Inside, she hit a button to take them up to the second floor, and the trip was done silently and quickly.
On the second floor, the doors slid open to reveal an open area and then a suite of doors that led to a hallway with various offices labelled on either side of the long and large corridor. There was one set of very large doors labeled security, and that was where Tawny was leading them. Just as they got there, the door swung open and a very large man, with broad shoulders, and light blond hair emerged. He smiled at the Chief and Tawny, and then took in Benny and Jessyka.
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer. I’ve been expecting you.” He winked at Jessyka and then confessed. “I’m the head of security here at the casino, and I just saw you come up with Mrs. Sassacus on our monitors.” Benny nodded and then took the man’s firm grasp. He saw the tattoo, the Navy insignia peep from out of the man’s suit cuff. He had been Special Forces. It made Benny glad to see a brother in arms, albeit former, but a brother nonetheless. Tom Watson was the name on the tag of his dark blue suit. He also looked to be close to fifty, Benny would have guessed.
After Tom Watson shook Jessyka’s hand, he led the way into the offices behind him. They passed a large briefing room, and then the electronics room fitted with a wall of monitors being viewed by over a half a dozen security guards. The system was sophisticated, Benny would give them that. A casino this size, he presumed, that dealt with a lot of cash on a daily basis, would have to have a tightly run security team. He wondered if they had been able to see anything on the monitors in the auditorium and the areas being used by the producers of The Cook Off.
“We have three viewing rooms. This room watches the hotel floors and restaurants. We have other rooms that monitor the public areas and services we offer. The last viewing room, which is twice the size of anything we have up here, is downstairs and it monitors just the casino.” Benny whistled softly. It was a huge operation.
Just then Tom turned the handle on a door Benny hadn’t noticed, and he led the way into a neat, plain utilitarian office. Benny noticed the photograph on the wall. It was of Tom, Chief Daniels, and another man. All wore Navy uniforms. All were much younger in the photograph.
Tawny must have noticed the direction of his gaze, and answered the unasked question. “My brother, Steven, Tom, and Robbie, the chief here, were all friends and were SEALs together.”
Chief Daniels spoke next. “Robbie died of cancer five years ago.” He paused, took a deep breath. “Cancer sucks.”
Tawny nodded silently.
“It sure does,” Tom agreed, glancing quickly at the picture and then looking away. He cleared his throat before inviting them all to sit down. Benny helped Jessyka to a chair in the tight quarters; they waited until Tawny sat, and then when the Chief shook his head in the negative, Benny took the last seat.
“I’ll cut to the chase. We brought the onions to my forensic chemist, and she sent them for testing, but a quick analysis told us poison. Most likely Aconite though we won’t know for a few days. Similar properties were discovered when it was put through a basic scan. It scared me enough to let Tom know to start examining tapes.”
Benny did a double take. Someone had really tried to poison the food for The Cook Off. With Aconite? He had heard of the stuff. It was lethal. It caused asphyxiation in its victims who died almost immediately. Who would do that? “Fuck? Why?”
The chief interrupted. “As I said, as soon as my lab tech informed me of her findings, I called Tom to pull up the video feed from the storage area being used by the producers of the show.”
“I’m so confused,” Jessyka stated emphatically. Benny heard the strain in her voice. “I mean I get that someone might want to win this competition. The prize is a lot of money, but to kill someone over it.” She was shaking, visibly shaking. Benny didn’t know if it was out of fear for him, or for what might have happened. But knowing his wife like he did, it was probably more like anger. The woman had rage in her. He’d seen it before. She was definitely someone you did not want to piss off. “God, I’m just so glad Benny figured that out, but why would someone do this, and why are you pulling us into this? Why did you want us to come up here?”
Again, Benny had to give his wife credit. She always knew the right questions to ask. Why were the police letting them know what was going on in what would surely be an active investigation?
“Yes, you are quite right, Mrs. Sawyer. It is the video of whoever put the poison into those Spanish onions; we couldn’t make it out, but thought perhaps you might recognize the person.”
“Me?” Her voice came out choked.
Benny was in shock. How would Jessyka know who had done this? He didn’t think that she had something to do with this? Benny began to rise, and he was about to get seriously pissed if the man thought…but Tom interrupted his thoughts as well as the words that had been about to tumble from his mouth.
Benny felt the short hairs on the back of his neck stand up as Tom began to speak. He was having another one of those seriously bad feelings.
“The image was too dark to make out the perpetrator, Mr. Sawyer. They wore a dark jacket with a hood that covered their face. We did see enough of the figure to assume it is a woman. But what really had us intrigued was who else we saw on the tape. When the figure emerged from the storage room, your wife was coming around the corner.”
Benny looked to his wife. What was she doing on the set last night?
“Last night after you fell asleep, I realized my bracelet was missing. The last time I remember seeing it was just before the show. I had gone in the green room about twenty minutes prior, but you weren’t there,” Jessyka explained. “Anyhow, I stopped and chatted with Christy Brown, and my bracelet snagged on the sofa in there. So, I thought it must be there. It wasn’t late. So I took a shot and the security guy outside let me in. He doubted it would be there, but it wasn’t in the lost and found.”
“True, we did check that out.” Tom spoke the words. “But what you did not notice was you also almost ran into the figure that had been in the storage room. Watch, look at the tape.”
Benny watched the tape play on the computer monitor on Tom’s desk which he swiveled around so they could all see. But he wasn’t happy. Jessyka had almost come across the culprit in the middle of the night. Alone. Yes, she had her tracker on her at all times. All their wives had trackers. They didn’t like to take chances with their wives, there had been too many close calls for all of them, but even Tex might not have thought her actions unusual around midnight in a casino. Tex was their good friend who lived in Pennsylvania, who watched all their movements when the men were away.
He would have to tell her to stay close. Yes, he knew she loved that bracelet. It was his first gift to her. But still, she could have been hurt by this person who was out to sabotage the show or worse. When he got her alone, he would make sure she understood that she wasn’t to do that anymore, not with this person still out there. Heck, he would also be calling Tex to make sure while they were in Connecticut and until whoever had sabotaged the show was caught, to watch her much more carefully.
Benny watched the dark figure on the grainy film emerge from the storage room like Tom said, and then there she was, his wife, scanning the carpet as she walked towards the green room for her bracelet. Then the figure that was in the storage room pulled the door back to nearly closing until his wife passed, and when the figure felt it was safe, she snuck out of the room with her head kept down and averted from any cameras. It was curious indeed. Like she knew where the cameras were. Tom repositioned the monitor of his computer and tapped a few keys. Another video came up from a different angle. But this time he saw something even more strange. The figure was closer, and when they attempted
to emerge from the back area, the woman clasped her hand to her throat when she saw Jessyka coming down the hall. If Jess had been looking up instead of at her feet on the carpet looking for her lost bracelet, she would have seen the woman. The woman, for it was a woman by the shape of her slender hand, grasped her jacket tightly, clearly spooked by Jessyka’s presence. It was like she knew her, or maybe it was just that she was so startled to see anyone there. But she stood looking in Jessyka’s direction for a few seconds before jumping back into the darkness of the room she had just left. So very strange.
Tom was tapping once more. The woman’s hand came into focus. It became larger. He hit a few more keys on the computer keyboard in front of him, and turned the monitor even more towards them so there was no mistaking what was on the screen. It was a tattoo. It looked jailhouse. It was the lettering. And it was on the back of the woman’s wrist clearly visible. It was a letter B, a letter L, and a letter T with the numbers 8801.
“Do you recognize the tattoo or those numbers, Mrs. Sawyer?”
“No…” Jessyka sighed loudly clearly as frustrated as he was. “I don’t.” She had no idea what the numbers could have been. Or those letters. She’d never seen a tattoo like that before. It didn’t even look very professional. “It doesn’t mean she knew me, it just could be that I was the one to almost discover her.”
“Very true.” The chief agreed. “It was a long shot, but worth a chance. We don’t have much to go on yet. We fingerprinted the area tonight but so many people have been in that area it is unlikely we will get something, but hey you never know.”
Tom got up from his seat. “Mr. Sawyer, I know you are probably worried, but I want you to know we have added three more details to the shows security team, and extra cameras are also being installed in the area. I could also put someone with you and Mrs. Sawyer, if you would like while you are here.”
Benny looked at Jessyka who was shaking her head. She really didn’t think that was necessary. She had the trackers after all. She pinched her earlobe letting Benny know she had them on, and silently telling him she would be careful.
Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Betting on Benny (Kindle Worlds) (Mystic Nights Book 6) Page 8