by Fiona Grace
Just then, a hubbub broke out from behind. Ali and Sebastian dipped their heads around the side of the palm tree to see a cop walking out of Seth’s store with her arms full of bottles of oyster sauce. They were black bottles with gold writing, instantly recognizable as the same brand that had been found at the scene.
Detective Elton looked thrilled. “We need to get Seth Best down to the station for some questioning.” She looked around. “Where’s Callihan?”
Ali glanced over at him. His jaw was clenched with evident frustration.
He marched out from behind the tree. “I’m here. You want to issue a warrant for Seth Best’s arrest?”
Detective Elton regarded him skeptically. “Yes.” Then her gaze went to the tree.
Ali ducked back out of sight, but it was too late. She heard the detective’s boots thud against the boardwalk, then she appeared in front of her.
Her eyes narrowed with distaste. “Miss Sweet, I was going to send someone out to ask you a few follow-up questions. But you’ve saved me a trip.”
Ali gulped as Detective Elton advanced on her like a dark, looming shadow.
“What questions?” she asked, trying to hold her ground and sound confident.
“It’s come to our attention you withheld information from us regarding Mr. Best being another chef at the event,” Detective Elton said, and an unreadable expression crossed her face. Her smirk turned into a malevolent grin like the Grinch. “Nothing would give me more pleasure than to charge you with attempting to derail an investigation, so perhaps you’d like to explain to me why you thought it was a good idea to lie to a police officer?”
Thanks to Sebastian’s heads-up, Ali knew the question was coming, and she already had the answer on the tip of her tongue.
“Actually, we weren’t asked who the chefs were. We were asked which premises the food was prepared at. And we gave the answer—my bakery, Seaside Sweets. After that, no further questions were asked. Neither Emilio nor I lied.”
Detective Elton turned sharply to face Callihan and glowered. “Is this true?” she snapped.
Callihan floundered. “Um… yes. Actually, it is true. That’s as far as the questioning went.”
Ali felt relieved to have dodged Detective Elton’s revenge. But of course the detective wasn’t about to leave it there.
“Yes, I remember the EMTs showing me the official report. Emilio Rossi was the chef, and Seaside Sweets was the official premise. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And you cooked everything for the entire event in your little bakery kitchen? In that tiny little space, you, Seth, and Emilio were able to cook five hundred buns and a thousand hot dogs?”
Ali hesitated. She knew lying now was a bad idea. She’d have to come clean. “The hot dogs were cooked in Emilio’s pizzeria.”
“How interesting,” Detective Elton replied. She smiled at Detective Callihan. “We have another scene to search.” Then she turned on her heel and marched away.
Sebastian watched her go, then took a deep breath and turned his focus back to Ali.
“Go home, Ali. Please. And I’m begging you, stay out of this.”
*
Ali headed home as instructed, with Scruff in tow. And that was where her compliance with Sebastian’s warning ended. There was no way she was staying out of this! It was time to do some armchair sleuthing of her own.
She grabbed her laptop. Since her interrogations hadn’t yielded any fruitful results so far, Ali decided to take a different approach. She started by researching Mad Frank’s origins.
The first contest started over twenty years earlier, in New York City. It was an advertising gimmick for Mad Frank’s hot dog stall, with the original prize being a year’s free hot dogs. But as Ali continued reading she was astonished to see that these days, the prizes were now huge cash lump sums. For the Double-Dog Chow Down taking place in Willow Bay, first place for winning the competition was $25k, with $10k for the runner up. Which meant Bob’s movement from second position to first had more than doubled the handout he’d received.
Ali was shocked. She had no idea there was that kind of money in competitive hot dog eating. And the more she looked into it, the more surprised she became. Some of the highest earners in competitive eating had three-figure incomes from just a few contests a year.
She wondered about Gilbert. He was the undisputed king of competitive eating according to everyone at Mad Frank’s and he’d been doing it since the beginning.
She typed Gilbert Brown worth into the task bar, and pulled up a site about famous people’s earnings.
“Two million dollars!” she exclaimed as her gaze found the figure.
She kept scrolling through the information. Gilbert had been married but was divorced and single at the time of his death. He had one child from his marriage, a son, Scott, who was now nineteen.
Ali hated to think this way, but that meant there was a sole inheritor of his estate. Could Gilbert’s son have decided to kill his father for his fortune?
As a family member, he would certainly have known about his father’s deadly allergy. Perhaps he’d used the contest as a cover, knowing suspicion would fall on the chefs rather than himself.
Ali clicked on the images tab, and scrolled until she found a photo of Gilbert with his son. But when she clicked on the image to enlarge it, she jumped with surprise. She knew that face! It was the jerk who’d bumped into her at the contest and spilled her drink. The entitled guy in the STANFORD UNIVERSITY ROWING TEAM T-shirt.
“Scruff!” Ali cried to the pup sitting on the couch beside her. “You know what this means, right?”
He leapt to attention and wagged his tail excitedly.
“The sole heir to Gilbert’s fortune was there on the day of his murder! Right place. Right time.”
Scruff barked with triumph and turned a circle.
Ali turned the new theory in her mind, trying it out for size. Scott Brown was set to inherit his father’s wealth, which gave him the motive. As a family member he knew about Gilbert’s allergy, which gave him the means. There was just one piece of the puzzle missing, and that was whether he had the opportunity.
She and Eunbi had already determined that it had been an inside job, that only someone with access to the backstage area could have planted the sauce. And Bob had given her a rundown of everyone who had access to the backstage area.
Or… had he?
Ali gasped as she cast her mind back to their conversation in the corridors of the Willow Bay Inn. Bob had been reeling off a list all the people who had backstage access but she’d interrupted him when he’d mentioned Mad Frank and had gone off on that whole tangent. What if she’d jumped in preemptively, before he’d had a chance to finish his list and tell her that family members were also allowed backstage? He might have been about to give her the clue she needed to crack the case wide open, and she jumped in too early, derailing the investigation.
Frustrated with herself, she grabbed her cell phone. There was one person who could clear this mess up. Eunbi.
She called her new friend.
“Are family members allowed backstage?” she asked, the moment the call connected.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Sorry, what?”
“Family members. Are they allowed backstage? I know staff, camera crew, and competitors can get backstage passes but what about family members?”
“Yeah…” Eunbi said in a small, suspicious voice. “Family members are allowed backstage. Why?”
Ali’s heart leapt into her throat. That was it. Confirmation. Gilbert’s son had been at the contest, right time, right place, with the means, motive, and the opportunity. For the first time, Ali was confident she knew what had happened to Gilbert “The Gobbler” Brown. Now she just had to prove it.
“Ali?” said Eunbi’s voice in her ear. “Why are you asking about family members?”
“No time to explain,” Ali said. “Just call it a hunch.” The
n with a hurried “Thanks,” she ended the call and looked at Scruff. “Come on, boy, time for another road trip.”
Scruff’s tail instantly began to wag, and he barked with excitement. Ali was excited too, to have finally found her strongest lead so far.
It was time to pay Gilbert Brown’s son a visit, and see what he had to say for himself.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was early evening as Ali pulled up in her car alongside Redwood City creek. In the water, mid-practice, was the Stanford University rowing team.
“What do you think, Scruff?” she asked the stray in the passenger seat beside her as she watched the boat slice the water. “Is Scott Brown a trust fund kid, reaping the benefits of his father’s work at an expensive school?”
Scruff barked in the affirmative.
“That’s what I thought too,” Ali replied.
She parked her car and shut off the engine, then she and Scruff exited the vehicle. It hadn’t been hard to track the boy down. The Stanford University rowing team had a bunch of information online, including both the location of their practices—Redwood City Creek—and the schedule. Luckily for Ali, it seemed the university took rowing very seriously; they practiced every day, and late on into the evening.
She rested her behind against her car hood and watched the boats racing out then back in again. As the boats drew closer, she singled out Scott Brown. He looked so different from when he’d been at the contest—older, more serious and mature. Perhaps she was seeing the effects of grief on his face? Or perhaps she was seeing a guilty conscience instead?
The boats stopped by the jetty and the rowers climbed out one by one. They conversed together for a short while, then took off in different directions.
Ali followed Scott with her eyes as he made his way slowly up the hill toward the harbor-side road where she was parked. As soon as he was close enough to hear, she made her move.
She pushed off the car hood and walked boldly up to him. “Hi, Scott. Remember me?”
He looked her up and down suspiciously, then his gaze roved all over her face. “No. Should I?”
“You spilled a drink on me during Mad Frank’s hot dog eating—”
“Shh!” Scott interrupted, and he took her by the elbow and steered her away from the rest of the rowing team.
Talk about suspicious, Ali thought as he marched her away.
Scruff followed, his fur standing on end, his teeth bared, and he yapped angrily at Scott’s rough treatment of Ali.
“Can you shut your dog up?” Scott said between his teeth, as he shoved her behind a tree out of sight.
“He’ll shut up just as soon as you let go of me,” she replied, coolly, glancing down at his hand still latched tightly around her arm.
Scott huffed and let go. Scruff instantly fell silent.
“So what is this?” Scott demanded. “Did you drive all the way here over a spilled drink?” He looked as incredulous as he sounded.
Ali put her hands on her hips. “No. Although I’m glad you recognize me. My partner certainly gave you a scare.”
She referenced the moment Detective Callihan had flashed his badge in a way she hoped implied that she was also in law enforcement. Scott had responded well to it before, and it may give her some headway here.
“I came all the way here because your dad was murdered yesterday,” Ali continued. “And you’ve come back to the university acting like nothing happened.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” Scott snapped. “My life doesn’t stop just because his did.”
Ali winced. Scott was coming across as cold and callous, and his behavior was making her a thousand times more suspicious of him than she’d been before she set out on this journey. He was exactly the spoiled trust fund kid she’d anticipated him to be. But whether he was also a cold-blooded murderer was an entirely different question altogether.
Ali needed to know more about Scott. He was already proving himself to be hot-headed and quick to temper, and she was confident that the more she got him to speak, the more she turned up the heat, the more she got under his skin, the more he’d show his true colors.
“Do they even know?” Ali asked, nodding over to the group he’d tugged her away from.
“My rowing team?” he said, gruffly, mopping his sweaty neck with his towel. “No. Why would I tell them?”
“Because they’re your friends?”
He shrugged. “We’re teammates. That’s all.”
“Your father’s been murdered,” Ali stated. “And you don’t want anyone to know?”
Scott was starting to look stressed now. “It’s not that. It’s the whole…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “…competitive eating thing I don’t want them to know about.”
Ali could hear the anxiety in his voice. Was he ashamed of how his father had made his fortune? So ashamed he’d rather keep his father’s murder hidden than risk anyone working out the source of his wealth?
“So you didn’t tell anyone where you went yesterday?” Ali asked. “And you came straight back to school afterwards because you knew if you missed practice they’d ask questions?”
He nodded. “I was supposed to go down the night before straight after practice. I had a room at an inn. But my roommates stayed up drinking and I couldn’t get away unnoticed. In the end, I left campus before anyone else in my dorm woke up. I got to Willow Bay pretty early and hung around in the backstage tent, then went out to watch the contest just before it started, which was when I spilled the soda on you.” He paused. “Sorry about that, by the way.”
Ali regarded him with suspicion. It seemed that now the floodgates had been opened, Scott Brown had plenty to say. So she stood back, giving him space and time. He readily filled in the blanks.
“Look, I know you think I’m just some heartless frat boy. But I’m not. I love watching my dad compete, I just never told him.” He looked down at his feet and sighed heavily. “And now I’ll never get the chance.”
Ali really didn’t know what to make of any of this. Had Scott worked out why she’d really come to see him, because she suspected he was the killer, or was he really as clueless as he seemed? Had he spun a story, trying to prove he had no motive and accidentally placed himself at the scene of the crime—backstage—at the right time, just before the contest started? This whole conversation could simply be an act. Maybe he was trying to present himself as a kid who hadn’t grown a backbone yet. She would have to dig deeper if she wanted to get to the truth, and try to catch him in a lie.
“You were in the competitors’ tent?” she queried. “Before the contest started?”
“Yes. Why? Why are you asking?”
“Because I’ve spoken to all the competitors who were there. Everyone is everyone else’s alibi. But no one mentioned your name.”
“Wait…” Scott said, as a look of dawning overcame him. “What do you mean alibi? Why do I need an alibi?” Then fury descended upon his features. “Do you think I killed my dad?”
He stepped toward Ali, but Scruff went back on his haunches and growled angrily. Scott halted in his tracks, looking pained and confused.
“Did you?” Ali asked.
Scott ran his hands through his mop of hair. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “I can’t believe you’re even asking me this!”
He looked shifty, and he’d failed to give her an alibi to prove he wasn’t the killer. But before Ali had a chance to ask him any more questions, her cell phone started to ring.
She held a finger up to Scott, gesturing she’d be one minute, then retrieved her phone from her pocket. Sebastian Callihan’s name was flashing on the screen.
“I have to take this,” she told Scott, making a mental note of the look of relief that washed over his face. The phrase saved by the bell sprang to mind.
She paced away and answered the call. “Seb? Is everything okay?”
“I need you at the bakery.”
She glanced over at Scott, who was pacing back and forth
looking stressed under the watchful eye of Scruff.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” she said into the phone. “Can it wait?”
“Not really. Elton has a warrant to search your premises.”
Ali’s chest sank. “Oh.”
“Exactly,” Detective Callihan replied. “So you’d better get here ASAP.”
Ali glanced around her at Redwood City Creek. She was a whole three-hour drive from home.
“Bit of a snag,” she confessed. “I’m not in Willow Bay.”
On the other end of the line, she heard Callihan inhale sharply. She could just picture his stern, disappointed face.
“Ali,” he said in a strained voice. “Where are you?”
“Redwood City…” Ali replied, meekly.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally, Callihan spoke, sounding weary. “I’ll stall as long as I can.”
The call cut out.
Ali slid her phone back into her pocket. She looked at Scott.
“I have to go,” she said. “But this isn’t over. I’m not stopping this investigation until I find out once and for all who killed your dad. And trust me when I say, if you’re hiding anything, I will find out.”
And with that, Ali marched away back to her car.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ali drove back to the bakery at breakneck speed, her mind turning over the heated conversation with Scott the whole way. She hadn’t gotten the answers she’d wanted, and if anything, she had ended up with more questions than she’d started with. Scott’s behavior had seemed suspicious, and something about his story didn’t quite add up to Ali. The whole thing about staying overnight at the inn but not being able to leave until the morning didn’t make sense to her, almost as if he’d shoe-horned it in because he assumed everyone would think the food was contaminated with oyster sauce during the cooking process, rather than being tampered with in the morning. By spinning a bizarre story, he’d only drawn more attention to himself. And he’d put himself at the scene of the crime…