by Tegan Maher
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I did as she suggested, and Nikki said she'd meet us there in twenty. That gave us plenty of time to get there.
The cool, dark interior of the bar was welcome after the heat, and we settled into our favorite spot at the bar.
"Hey ladies!" Annie called from the end of the bar. "Long time no see, at least socially. You doin' beer or tea?"
"Beer, please," I said, and Dee seconded me.
“I don’t care if it is only noon,” she said. “It’s five o’clock somewhere, and this is a day-drinkin’ kind of day.”
Annie got them for us, then leaned her elbow against the bar. "Have they made any progress with the murder case?"
I snorted. "Yeah, but in the wrong direction, we think."
Dee picked at the edges of the label on her bottle. "It really bugs me that Gabe isn't giving more weight to what we said. I mentioned the possibility that the motel door didn't close all the way, and he sort of blew me off."
I nudged her with my elbow. "That doesn't necessarily mean he didn't listen. Gabe's a lot of things, but he's not stupid. We've already proved we're decent at picking up clues, and he was hardheaded on the last case—so much that he totally missed the killer because he didn't believe us. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, okay?"
"Yeah," she replied, but her heart wasn't in it. "It's just ... I don't know how we can go out and have such a great time, but then when we offer a valid suggestion, he doesn't take us—me—seriously. I really like him, but that could be a huge problem."
“I don’t know,” I replied carefully. “He didn’t really knock us down like he did last time. I feel like he listened to us.” At heart, Gabe was a good guy, but he did have some issues. I didn't know whether they were control issues or if he was just so sure of himself that he couldn't see past his own hubris.
Maybe he'd just gone it alone for so long that he wasn't used to listening to someone else. At any rate, he needed to figure it out, because Dee wasn't the type of woman to play second fiddle to anybody. She was more of a duet kind of girl, and that's what she deserved.
“He actually used the term Scooby Doo investigation,” she reminded me.
"Give him time," I said, taking a long pull from my beer. "For all we know, he sent somebody straight to the motel to check it out after we left."
"I hope so," she said, then shook it off. "But if not, we did learn a few other things."
Annie raised a brow. "Oh yeah, like what?"
"Well, before we even get to that, first we need to tell you about Faith."
The front door swung open, and the fourth member of our little club strode in. She was brassy, with big hair, lots of fashion-forward bold eye makeup, and a grin that would knock the devil off his throne.
"Hey, chickies! What's up?" she said, swinging her giant fringed purse up onto the bar.
I grinned and gave Nikki a one-armed hug from where I was sitting, and Dee did the same.
"Beer or tea?" Annie asked.
"Beer, I wish,” she said, “but I better stick with tea. I have three little old ladies in a row coming in for perms this afternoon and heaven forbid I set their tongues waggin' about what a lush I am."
We ordered thirty wings and waited as Annie dropped them in the fryer. While she was gone, Nikki turned to face us.
"So what's going on in the big bad world of murder and intrigue? I hear Gabe caught his man ... er, woman. Is it a sure thing?"
"I don't think so," I said as Annie made it back to her spot. "I think the girl's being set up. She's sweet as pie, which I realize doesn't necessarily mean she's not capable of whacking somebody with an iron skillet, but my gut says no. The problem is that we don't know who really killed her. There are at least two people with better motives and worse tempers."
She nodded. "I've heard pretty much the same thing at the salon, at least from the people who think Gabe has the wrong girl. Since you have today off, a lot of the contestants have trickled through for mani-pedis. This woman must have been something. I didn't find a single person who didn't like her."
Dee nodded. "She was awesome. As a matter of fact, she was one of the people who inspired me to branch out on my own with a bakery because she opened her first one with nothing. And her actions and level of success did that for a lot of people. Ms. Bella could be hard-nosed from what I've heard, but she has a reputation of being kind and generous with her knowledge."
"Just like she was being when she brought Faith into her room to encourage her," I said.
"Yup," Dee replied. "That wouldn't surprise me at all."
Nikki frowned. "Nobody's that squeaky clean. She has to have a body or two somewhere." She cringed when she realized what she'd said, then rolled her eyes. "Oh, c'mon. You know what I meant."
"I don't know," Annie said, shaking her head. "I've known a few truly good people in my life. They're few and far between, but they're out there. Besides, nobody said she was perfect—just that she was good."
"That's true," I said. "She did spit out Lena's icing rather than suck it up and swallow it."
Dee cringed. "I don't blame her. She would have literally been swallowing a mouthful of sweetened fake lard. Once you coat your palate with that, it takes forever to get it out of your mouth."
"Yeah," Nikki agreed, untangling her hair from one of her massive hoop earrings. "And it proves Annie's point. So the question is this—did she offend anybody else that's here?"
She curved her cheeks into the familiar expression I'd come to recognize as her I know something you don't face.
"Spill," I said. "You heard something."
"I sure did," she said. "There's another girl in your little competition that had a reason to clean Bella DaCourt's clock."
"And who might that be?" Dee asked. "Please say she already has a history of attacking people outside of motel rooms."
Nikki laughed. "Nothing quite that obvious, but a girl named Nina Miller might have a dog in the fight. She's an older lady and lost out on a twenty-grand wedding catering gig when Bella refused to taste her cake because she'd seen her taste the batter and icing then double dip back into it with the same spoon. Not once, not twice, but four different times. Apparently the bride was a good friend of Bella's and had decided to host a mini-contest between the ten interested wedding cake shops in the area to see who'd get her business."
I whistled. "Can you imagine spending twenty grand on a cake? I can't even wrap my head around it."
"It's more common than you think," Dee said. "You've seen how long it takes me to make one with just a few tiers. Imagine baking one with a dozen different tiers, all different flavors, fondant, fancy icing work—the whole nine yards. That's not an easy job. Plus, the bride probably wanted other little delicacies like petit fours, which are also time-consuming. With a wedding that grand, she'd have had to hire help if she didn't already have them. There's a reason caterers aren't cheap."
When she put it like that, it made sense.
"So would she have won otherwise?" Annie asked.
Nikki shrugged. "Of course there's no way to tell for certain, but from what I heard, she was definitely in the running. I can't imagine she was too happy about it."
I hummed a little note of agreement; even after she'd paid out any help and bought supplies, I was willing to bet there would still have been a nice little chunk left over for her piggy bank. That raised a question for me, though.
"So if she and Bella have that sort of history, why would she want to compete in something else knowing Bella was judging?"
Dee held her finger up. "Ah. I can answer that one. If she signed up early enough, she might not have known Bella was going to be judging it. They didn't announce the judges until a few weeks after they started taking registrations."
"That's weird," I said. "You'd think they'd have all that worked out beforehand."
She lifted a shoulder. "It's not so weird. And anyway, Bella wasn't the original judge slated to headline this one. She came in whe
n the other woman realized she'd double booked."
"So do you know where Nina landed in the pile after yesterday's round?" Annie asked.
I glanced at Dee, who shrugged. "I was so busy tryin' not to screw my own stuff up that I wasn't payin' any attention to anybody else." Her face clouded over. "Except that jerk Jake who was tryin' to throw me off my game."
"Speakin' of," Nikki said, "cut that crap out. I heard about that. You're every bit as good as some hoity-toity schmuck is, and probably better, so don't let him freak you out."
I combed through the other contestants in my mind but couldn't come up with any older lady. "When you say older, how old are we talkin'?"
Nikki thought for a minute. "The girl didn't give an age, but she was in her early twenties. My best guess is that anybody over forty would be considered older in her book."
"Ah, that makes a difference," I said. "There are a couple people who fit that bill, but only one of them is a woman." I turned to Dee. "Remember that super quiet lady that was two stations behind you?"
She scrunched her forehead, then nodded. "Yeah, now that you mention it. But I don't remember how her coffeecakes were. I was too busy pinching myself after the praise that I got."
"She fell into the mediocre middle," I said. "I remember, because I thought her cakes looked good, but Bella said they were super dry."
"There you go, then," Nikki said. "She was seein' the whole kit and kaboodle slipping away and decided to take care of Bella once and for all."
That sounded plausible, but it was frustrating. We had three viable suspects, but no real evidence against any of them.
"I think we need to talk to Kerri over at the motel. See if she saw anybody besides Faith. I wish we had pictures to show her."
"Actually," Dee said, reaching into her giant slouch purse and pulling out a program for the contest, "we do. This has a photo and short bio on each of us."
"Then eat up," I said, dunking a wing in blue cheese. "We have a witness to question."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We plowed through the wings in record time, and I even managed to do it without wearing any of them—a new personal record.
"I'll be back at six," I told Annie. "Is there anything goin' on that I need to know about?"
She gave a smarmy smile and waved her hand at the mostly empty bar. "You're lookin' at it, doll."
"Hey!" Bill, a daily regular who'd recently retired from plumbers' union, exclaimed. "What am I—chopped liver?"
I went over and pinched his cheek, causing him to scowl. "Turn that frown upside down, big guy. You know we love ya."
He gave me a little shove on my shoulder. "Don't you have a murder to solve or something? Git, and quit pesterin' the customers. After all, I'm on my way to ownin' stock in this place."
Laughing, I said, "Good luck with that. If you call Don on it, he'll ask for your portion of the fifteen hundred bucks he's throwin' into a new flat-top grill so we can keep you in cheeseburgers."
He held up his beer glass and grinned. "I'm payin' for it one pint at a time."
"That you are, my friend. I'll see you next time."
The blast of heat that smacked us in the face when we went outside was almost enough to take my breath away, and we rushed to my SUV.
"Dang," I said, rolling down the windows to let the heat out, then cranking up the AC as soon as we got in. "If this is spring, I hate to see summer."
She laughed. "It's late spring. Early summer, really. And honestly, this is about as hot as it gets. If you haven't melted yet, you're not likely to."
Thankfully, my AC was good. It started blowing cold air almost immediately, and I turned one of the vents so it was blowing straight on me. I had no idea how people without it didn't just turn into puddles by the time they got anywhere.
"Thank every deity known to man, then," I said as I pulled out of the parking lot.
We rode in silence for a couple of minutes, then I figured we'd better get our story straight. "So what are we going to tell Kerri?" I asked. I couldn't think of a believable ruse.
"The truth," she said without missing a beat. "I've known her all my life, and she's no dummy—feeding her a line of bull won't get us anywhere."
"Honesty it is, then," I replied, feeling better right away. I wasn't good at lying, and I didn't like doing it.
"Good. She's here alone," Dee said when we pulled in. It wasn't hard to tell how she knew—aside from a beat-up green Impala sitting outside the office and a couple of nicer cars parked down toward the end of the motel, the place was a ghost town. I pulled up right in front of the doors, parking in the shade from the awning that stretched across the guest-arrival lane.
It hadn't taken me long after moving to Florida to realize that for most people, the shady parking spots were much more valuable than ones that were closest to the doors. At first, I'd found it funny that at eight o'clock in the morning, the parking lot at my local Walmart was marked with small pods of two to four cars parked in the shade of the little trees planted in the center medium between rows. Even though there were nearly always several spots open closest to the stores, able-bodied people all coveted those cool spots.
It was the same in Georgia. I pulled around to the shaded side of the building and climbed out.
"You said you know her," I said to Dee. "What kind of person is she? Is she going to be willing to help?"
She shrugged. "Kerri's nice enough, but a little hard-core. You sorta have to stand up to her, or she'll plow you over."
"In other words, don't back down from the growl?"
"Exactly," she replied, pulling the program from her purse. "But don't try to high-hat her, either. She's good people and she'll do the right thing as long as she knows we're bein' straight with her. And as long as Faith didn't get on her bad side while she was here."
I pulled one of the double glass doors open and was assaulted with that mix of disinfectant and deodorizer smell that clung to the inside of just about every motel lobby I'd ever been in. A tattooed brunette with heavy, winged eyeliner and a nose ring glanced up from the magazine she was reading.
"Hey, Dee," she said. "What's up?"
"Nothin' much," Dee replied. "This is my friend Toni. We're lookin' into that chick's murder."
"How come you're not just leavin' it to the sheriff?" she asked, giving us the side-eye. "Last I heard, you two was datin'."
Dee shook her head. "No. Well, sort of. We've been out once. But we don't think the girl he's got in jail did it. For that matter, I don't think he does, either, but with the evidence they have, he didn't have much choice but to arrest her."
"Yeah, that was a tough break," she said. "That Faith girl was in here a couple times, once for extra towels, then for a giant to-go cup of coffee. I kinda got the impression she wasn't exactly rollin' in the dough. She seemed like a good chick. She told me a little about that bakin' competition y'all are part of. I was surprised when they said she was the one who done it."
"Not as surprised as we were," I said.
"Say,” she said, setting the magazine aside, “is it true they found the skillet the killer used in her room? I know they had it on lock-down for a couple hours, but they wouldn't tell me what for."
I nodded and spoke for the first time. "Yeah. But that's the thing—she claims she doesn't cook and doesn't even own an iron skillet, let alone carry one around with her."
Kerri nodded. "Yeah, that does sound weird. Lord knows whenever I go anywhere, I stuff everything I can into my bag so I don't have to pay for checked luggage. It's already so heavy I can barely tote it. There's no way I'd throw a five-pound skillet in there, too. And Faith don't seem like she has the extra forty bucks to spare, either. I'd bet dollars to donuts all she brought was a carry-on." She looked puzzled for a second. "Plus, would an iron skillet even make it through security?"
Excellent question; I'd research it later. "So she flew?" I asked. "I thought she lived in Georgia."
She nodded. "She does, but she lives in the ot
her corner of the state, over by the beach. Said she didn't trust her car to make it all the way here, and a rental car costs more than a puddle-jumper."
"Yeah," Dee said, "the more we hear, the more we think she's innocent. We just can't figure out how that skillet got in her room. Does the door to her room drag a little? Maybe she didn't pull it all the way closed when she rushed out to go to Walgreen's, then to meet us."
Kerri thought for a minute. "It's possible. I know some of them do, but I can't remember if that's one of them or not. We can go check."
"The sheriff's cleared her room?" I asked.
She nodded as she grabbed a key from a row of hooks on the wall. "He never really sealed it. Just had a warrant and went right in. They were in there for a couple hours, but didn’t say anything to me about stayin’ out of it when they left. She even left a few things in there. She didn't stay here the night before she went to jail." She waggled her brows. "I just figured she picked up one of those hot guys from the contest and stayed with him."
Dee gave her a half smile and followed her out the door. "Nothing nearly so exciting. She stayed with us that night. Gabe came out to the lodge to arrest her."
She shook her head. "Sure can't hide anywhere around here. You don't have a single townie staying there, yet he still knew where to look."
"I know," I said. "Gabe saw her with us—or somebody did—the night before and just assumed."
We climbed the steps and walked about a quarter of the way down the outside breezeway.
"How many of the other contestants are staying here?" Dee asked.
"Six," Kerri replied, sliding the key into the door. "Two guys and four chicks. I can tell you who when we go back down."
"Any of them a little older than the rest? Like in her late forties?" I figured Nina would be the one who stood out.
"Nope. All younger." She pushed on the door, and sure enough, it dragged a little. I pushed it open and let it swing shut by itself. Unlike most motel rooms, which would slam shut before you could even remember you forgot your room key on the dresser, this one stopped just shy of being closed all the way. The only way you could really tell without looking too closely was by pushing it open.