Cake Tastings and Killers

by A. R. Winters

  I knew Charlie had gotten worse, but a drug addict?

  "Maybe he wasn't as far gone back then," Jason said. "People change."

  "How did he keep something like that quiet in Paraiso?" I asked.

  "People will keep a lot of things quiet if they like their glass house enough." Jason glanced at the door then leaned closer to me. "He had me deliver things to him at a few of those parties. Told me it was a work errand. You wouldn't believe the things I saw."

  I wouldn't, and more to the point, I didn't need all those dirty images in my head. "If it wasn't a work errand, what was it?"

  Jason snorted. "A drug run. No kidding. I thought I was carrying a prototype or a contract. But when I got there, he popped the case open. It wasn’t that. If you ask me, it was the drugs that killed him."

  Bingo.

  Wait, no.

  Detective Reid said Charlie died by arsenic poisoning, not an overdose. Could he have been wrong? Did he lie to me?

  The glass door swung open. Jean walked through, clasped her hands in front of her, and smiled tightly. "Mr. Lambert asked me to tell you he won't be able to meet with you today."

  Jason rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Sorry, Laura, I tried.”

  "No, it's fine." Actually, it was perfect. I needed time to think through everything Jason told me before I got more information from Simon. And I should probably write it down.

  "He also said he and Ms. Delany will be in touch about the wedding soon." Jean’s smile turned nasty.

  Jason rolled his eyes. "Like I said, charm. This is the last big project before time off with Caroline. I'm sure he'll get back to you."

  I nodded, but my heart sank into my stomach. Clients had a million ways to blow off vendors they'd changed their minds about working with. Never-ending meetings were an entrepreneur's favorite excuse.

  There was no point in denying it anymore. The odds of the Paradise Bed and Breakfast hosting the Delany-Lambert wedding had gone down. Caroline may have already made up her mind. Simon may have put his foot down. They may have all decided there were too many bad memories there.

  Until I spoke to Caroline or Simon, there was nothing I could do to save the contract.

  But the odds of eliminating myself from the suspect list had gone up.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was still on a high by the time I got out to my car.

  Finding a way to capture everything I'd learned during my talk with Jason was priority number one.

  Getting enough caffeine to survive the drive home was priority number two.

  I found a receipt from the camera store that was blank on the back and suitable for notes. But after five minutes of searching, I couldn't find a pen, pencil, or even a highlighter.

  Well, who said I had to take notes by hand? Detective Reid did, but that was probably part of his quest to look professional. Unless someone had an event or a cute animal for me to photograph, I wasn’t on a job.

  I pulled up the note app on my phone, but I hesitated when I started to take notes. Suddenly, that didn't seem like the best thing to do with the information. What could it really do on my phone? I closed the app and pulled up my contacts, scrolling to Reid.

  He answered after just two rings. “Conner Reid, Major Crimes.”

  "Detective, I just spoke to Jason Delany. Did you know Charlie Porter was a drug addict?"

  "What? Who is this?" he asked.

  "Laura Fisher."

  "Why were you speaking to Mr. Delany?" he asked.

  I took a breath and realized my heart was racing. "His future brother-in-law is getting married at my sister's venue. I thought maybe I could up-sell him a photography package."

  "You made a sales call to a murder witness?"

  "Open murder investigations are bad for business, Detective," I said. "Can I just tell you what Jason Delany said before I forget?"

  The detective heaved a heavy sigh. “Go ahead.”

  I nodded, satisfied that Reid was finally taking me seriously. "Jason told me Charlie used a lot. He didn't say addict, but he said it wouldn't have surprised him if Charlie overdosed."

  “But you know he didn't,” Detective Reid said flatly. "And why would he volunteer that information?”

  "No idea. But he also told me that Charlie sometimes tricked him into bringing him drugs."

  "He was facilitating drug buys for Charlie Porter?" Reid didn't bother to hide the disbelief in his voice. "And he just told you that freely?"

  "It didn't sound like he bought them. And it sounded like he didn't usually know what he was bringing Charlie until after the fact." I let my head fall back against the headrest. “With the way Charlie treated him at the cake tasting, I can picture him opening a case full of drugs in front of a party just to embarrass Jason. He seemed to enjoy that.”

  “Well, that’s the difference between a detective and a photographer, Ms. Fisher. You can take all the pictures you want, but I have to go on evidence. Was that all you wanted to tell me?”

  "Not even close!" I reached down, pulled the lever on the side of my seat, and leaned back. I told Detective Reid everything Jason Delany told me. Charlie's poor business practices, Simon shifting responsibility in the company, everything.

  "What do you think, Detective?" I asked. "Is that enough reasonable doubt to take me off the suspect list and let me move on with my life?"

  I reached for the gear shift then paused. The sky had already begun to shift from blue to mauve, and if I was going to drive during golden hour, I needed a jolt of liquid focus.

  But as much as I wanted a coffee, it was probably a bad idea to drive while talking to a cop on the phone.

  He sighed. "You would have been, if not for this conversation."

  Reid's words were like a bucket of ice water dumped over my soaring mood. I sat for a few seconds in stunned silence before I could manage a soft, "How?"

  “There's nothing suspicious about a small business deciding to become a family business when life turns that way,” he said. “Especially when their last partner had a history of drug addiction and irresponsibility. Assuming everything you've told me is accurate.”

  “You're the one who keeps bringing up evidence. Were there drugs in Charlie's system? I didn't smell anything.”

  "There were, but––Ms. Fisher, do you even know what drugs smell like?"

  Guilty. Adulthood had only driven Charlie Porter and me onto more drastically different paths. I had never had anything stronger than high-proof rum.

  "That still doesn't explain how me talking to you keeps me on the suspect list," I said.

  "It's not our conversation, Ms. Fisher," he said. "It's the conversation you had with Jason Delany and tried to have with Simon Lambert."

  "I already explained that, Detective Reid."

  "And I don’t believe you. You drove all the way to Key West on a slow day to pitch a photo package? Email was invented for those kinds of pitches, Ms. Fisher."

  I winced. "Like I said, my sister's business is in trouble. Face-to-face meetings are pretty standard last-ditch efforts in my line of work, Detective."

  “Sure.” He didn't sound convinced. "You're a photographer, Ms. Fisher. That’s it. The fastest way to get what you want is to stay out of my way and let me do my job."

  Days of frustration and pressure that had been building in my body exploded. Tears welled in my eyes. What Detective Reid was telling me made sense, but it meant going back to the place I'd been that morning. The dark place where everything spun out of my control, where my family and I could only watch helplessly as things unfolded.

  I'd been in that dark place for days. Waiting hadn't solved my problem. Now Reid was telling me trying to prove my innocence made me look more guilty?

  Yeah, of course it did.

  I slouched lower in my seat, defeated. "Will you at least look into the things I found out?”

  "That's my job," he said. "But unless it’s business directly related to the running of Paradise Bed and Breakfast, I'm going t
o have to ask you to stay away from the other witnesses. Barring your family, of course."

  "Right." My family. As long as I was on the list of suspects, me being in Florida just made things worse for my family.

  Detective Reid's side of the line was silent at first, and then he sighed. “You're moving down the list, Ms. Fisher. The system works slow, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

  I wanted to believe him, but my family was caught in the fire, and I didn't know how much longer we could hang on.

  After I ended the call with Detective Reid, I drove straight to the coffee shop. It was a long drive back to the Paradise, and from the look of things, it was only going to get darker.

  Chapter Twelve

  After I'd gotten home from the coffee shop, I reviewed the notes from my conversation with Jason. Then I added everything else I knew. Charlie bullied Jason in front of strangers at the cake tasting, employees no less. He'd humiliated him by opening a briefcase and revealing a cache of drugs to the unsuspecting Jason. Knowing Charlie, he'd done it before a crowd of adoring lackeys.

  Disrespected in public, stifled at work, and access to Charlie's drug stash. There was something there, but was it enough to push Jason Delany to murder?

  Not the Jason Delany I met at his sister's cake tasting. He seemed more confident now, but that could have been the result of having his main tormentor gone for good.

  When it came down to it, I didn't think Jason was capable of killing Charlie. I knew I hadn't, even if I couldn't convert Detective Reid into a believer. That left Simon Lambert.

  There was just one problem. As far as I knew, Simon Lambert had no reason to kill Charlie. Sure, his business partner’s departure from this world was going to lead to an insurance payout and an opening for his soon-to-be brother-in-law. But I'd learned all of that from Jason, whose primary job seemed to have been Charlie's glorified assistant and punching bag. Not exactly the best position for staying on top of company operations.

  Was their ever-shifting e-commerce company in such dire financial straits that Simon would need the benefits on his partner’s life insurance policy to cover a venue deposit? Maybe Jason wasn't in line for a promotion like he suspected. I had no way of knowing without talking to Simon.

  The exact thing Detective Reid told me not to do.

  So I closed the notes app on my phone, set it aside, and went downstairs for a helping of leftover tuna casserole.

  Following Detective Reid's instructions to stay away from his investigation was harder than I thought it would be. I spent the next day in a daze through my usual chores at the bed and breakfast. Despite months as a full-time employee of the Paradise, it still surprised me that a lack of customers didn't equal a lack of work.

  When the Paradise was empty, they left the beds stripped down to the protective case. Every day the rooms were dusted, tidied, the air fresheners checked, and the bed cover cleaned whether or not the room was occupied.

  There were six suites at the Paradise, each with their own sink, toilet, and combination shower-tub. We didn’t disinfect those if there were no guests to use them, but they still needed to be dusted and polished regularly.

  The idea, as Danielle explained it, was to be ready for guests at a moment’s notice. If need be, she could stall while Granny threw fresh sheets on a bed. Nobody wanted to wait the twenty minutes it took to fully clean and prep a room, and the Paradise might never recover from the poor first impression. Half of success in the service industry was always being ready to fulfill a client's needs––or at least looking like it.

  Granny and Danielle had developed a system before I came home. All I had to do was slot into my space.

  It normally took me two hours to finish refreshing the bedroom suites. The day after my run-in with Jason, it took me four. Afterward, I took Baby Ben on a walk while Danielle worked and Granny went to Charlene’s to catch up on the gossip.

  My walks with my nephew had quickly become one of the highlights of my stay in Paraiso. Ben had grown enough to keep his eyes open for a few minutes at a time. This new stage of development unleashed a flurry of new facial expressions, mostly variations of surprise, befuddlement, and an utter lack of amusement.

  As much as I wanted to indulge in these brief stops in the ever-moving train of my nephew’s development, I couldn’t take my mind off the cloud looming over us.

  Charlie Porter. Reid didn’t feel the same urgency for answers I did. This was only a case to him, and I kept getting in the way. I couldn't help with the case, but I could help Danielle save the wedding. To do that, I had to talk to Simon.

  Jean the receptionist said Simon would get in touch with me. Any other time a client said that, I would have taken it as a refusal. The worst thing a wedding vendor could do was come on too strong, and showing up at Simon's office again definitely fell into that category. But nothing said I couldn't “bump into” Simon while he was in town.

  Once I gave Ben back to Danielle for his afternoon nap, I drove back to Key West. When I got to town, I hit up the Cuban Coffee Hut and while I sipped my order on the multi-colored benches, I pulled up a business review app. There were four coffee shops around Simon and Jason's office. The cups Jason had the day I spoke to him didn't have labels. Two of the four stores had their corporate logo splashed over their cups, napkins, and anything remotely flat. I crossed them off the list and bookmarked the remaining two, a national chain with an upscale image and a local, small quirky coffee shop.

  After I finished my café con leche, I drove to a national chain and bought water and a chicken salad sandwich. No sign of Simon. When I finished my lunch, I drove to the quirky coffee shop and ordered an iced mocha with extra whipped cream. The owner must have had trouble settling on a design theme. The store was a narrow strip that ran the length of the building with tables and chairs on one side and a serving kiosk on the other. Both sides of the serving kiosk were lined with loveseats and worn-out sofas. Every wall was so covered with framed art I could barely see the walls, but in between the frames each one had been painted a different color.

  It was closer to his office, but I couldn't see Simon grabbing a cup of joe in this space. Which was a shame, because my iced mocha was delicious.

  For the next three days, I followed the same pattern. After my chores, I checked in with Danielle to make sure Simon hadn’t returned her call. Then I left him a message, kissed everyone goodbye, and drove up to Key West. Sometimes I got coffee at the national chain and had rice and beans with a side smoothie at the Cuban coffee shop.

  I posted photos from my catalog of glamor shots of the Paradise to look busy. I never stayed at any store more than an hour and a half. And I never ran into Simon.

  The third day of my quest to find Simon Lambert accidentally marked the eighth day since Charlie’s death. I was starting to think maybe Simon drank coffee he made in the office, but Jason had more than one coffee the day we spoke. He had to be getting it for someone. I must have picked the wrong coffee shop.

  I went to the Cuban coffee shop first, figuring I could grab some lunch and a smoothie, then research more businesses near Simon's office. As I walked to the kiosk, I saw two familiar figures.

  The first was Caroline Delany, sporting a pearly white sundress with embroidered monstera leaves and matching gold monstera leaf earrings. The other was Nicholas Lloyd and he sure looked comfortable talking to her. Did they know each other?

  People with money in the keys tended to run in overlapping circles, so it was possible Nicholas and Caroline had at least met. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t interrupt a client on the street while they were in the middle of a personal conversation. But my sister's business was on the verge of collapse. These times were anything but normal.

  I plastered my public service smile to my face and walked over to Caroline and Nicholas. “Hello, strangers.”

  “Oh my gosh, Laura!” Caroline's blue eyes lit up and a warm smile spread over her lips. “You know about this place?”

  Relief washed over
me. "There's a restaurant supply store not far from here. I do some of my sister's shopping. You look amazing!" She really did. The dress fit her perfectly and the color was just warm enough to play beautifully off her tan. "Wedding planning agrees with you. How are things going, by the way?"

  “At a standstill, actually,” Caroline said. “With everything that's happened, Simon's been so busy putting out fires and covering logistics that he's barely been home. We haven't really even talked about planning since… you know…”

  I nodded. "Well, I did photography for a bunch of weddings in Seattle. The fee at the Paradise doesn't cover a planner, but since I'm not one, it shouldn't be a problem if I help free of charge."

  Caroline’s smile widened. "That would be wonderful! I didn't think the Paradise would still be available then, what with the sale and all."

  "The what?" I asked.

  "Aren’t your sister and brother-in-law selling?"

  "Danielle sell the Paradise? No way. Who did you hear that from?"

  As far as Danielle was concerned, the Paradise was Baby Ben’s inheritance. If he wanted to sell it when she and Andrew were gone, that was his business, but a sale while they were alive was nothing short of a failure.

  Caroline couldn't have heard that lie from Danielle, but I had an idea who might have put the thought in her brain.

  I turned to Nicholas Lloyd. While Caroline and I were distracted, he'd moseyed over to the gift shop. Almost like he wanted to put as much distance between him and me as possible. Smart man. I'd never been in a fight before, but I'd never wanted to smack someone as much as I wanted to smack Nicholas Lloyd.

  Caroline’s eye had turned to Nicholas too. When she looked back at me, she snorted. "It's a wonder he doesn't have to skitter back into the shadows like the other lizards. So they aren't selling?"

  I shook my head. “No, and they would never do something like that with contracts open. She'd never do that to a bride on her wedding day.”

  Hearing that seemed to put Caroline at ease. Her shoulders relaxed and her easy smile returned. "I felt that when I first did the tour. Simon never believes me, but I get feelings about people, you know? And they're usually right. I got a good feeling when I was at the Paradise, and I'm pretty sure it'll still be there."