Murder Love on the Menu

by Dyann Love Barr

  Relief swamped Tilly, making it difficult to speak. “I’ll make the travel arrangements this morning and make sure someone meets you at the airport with a car. You’re the greatest.”

  Ruby snorted. “Greatest fool, maybe. I’m goin’ back to bed for some shut-eye. Call me with the details.”

  “Will do.” The call ended, and Tilly sank into the blue chair.

  Sarah came down the hall, drying the ends of her hair with a towel. She stopped in the middle of the living room.

  Tilly sat stone quiet. Last night’s storm would look like a spring rain compared to the tempest she planned to unleash. Ruby’s warning came back to haunt her.

  A faint flush of pink stained her daughter’s cheeks. She knew lightning was about to strike. She smiled and pointed to the sofa bed. “I’ll get all this folded and put away.” She never volunteered to clean or pick up around the house. That was another black mark on Tilly’s parenting ledger, but one that she planned to correct ASAP.

  “Nice try. I know all the tricks, like trying to switch the focus. It always ended up with me on the wrong end of Daddy’s belt. Next comes the tears. I was really good with those. Defiance works for a while—until you find yourself between a rock and a hard place. Because, sweet pea, that’s where you are now.”

  Sarah’s nose went up. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, let me punch that ticket to the clue train.” Tilly stood and paced, hugging herself. “Do you know you could’ve killed Ruby with those sleepin’ pills? What if she took another one before she went to bed?”

  Sarah’s blush turned bright red before her face paled with shock. “I—ah—I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry is for fools.” Tilly’s anger built until it came out in a flood of rage. “I was sorry I ever let Jake Fillmont talk me into sleepin’ with him. He said he was sorry but still left me holdin’ the bag.” She scrubbed at the tattoo on the side of her neck. “I was sorry and scared when I told my parents I was pregnant. I got thrown into the streets at fourteen. Sorry didn’t get me anything but hurt and humiliation. So you think either of us would be alive today if Ruby hadn’t become my foster mother? The only thing I’ve never been sorry about is bringing you into the word.” She gave her child a sad smile. “I love you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll put up with any more of this crap.” She turned and placed her index finger on Sarah’s chest. “You have the rest of the school year to be the model student. I want you to improve your grades, clean up after yourself, and do everything Ruby, Jordan, or I tell you, or—”

  “Jordan? What does he have to do with anything?” The snot-nosed brat was back.

  “He’s a big part of my life. Yes, I’ve slept with him—because I love him. He’s even tried to propose, but I stopped him because I was unsure about how things would work out with you and Ruby. I’m still unsure, but that won’t stop him from being a part of the picture.”

  “So you slapped me because I was right?”

  “No. Because you were acting like a pissy little bitch.”

  Sarah paled. “So what are you going to do if I don’t like your conditions?” She snorted in derision mixed with a big chunk of bravado. “Ground me? You can’t keep me at home.”

  Tilly stopped pacing and stood in front of Sarah. “No. I spent a sleepless night searchin’ online for boardin’ schools. There were a couple in Switzerland that looked promisin’.”

  Her daughter’s face went gray. She stumbled and dropped into the red chair. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Try me.” This was one battle Sarah wouldn’t win.

  “You’re treating me like a child.” Sarah looked up at her with tears of frustration and disbelief in her eyes. She got up and stomped around the room as if that would make Tilly change her mind.

  “Hello—according to the law you’re still a child. My child. I refuse to let you turn into a heartless person who only thinks of herself.”

  “You don’t own me.” The crying started in earnest.

  Tilly refused to be moved. “No, I don’t. However, it is my responsibility to help you grow up into a young woman of whom I can be proud. I’ll admit I’ve fallen down on the job lately, but like I said—it stops now. So what’s it going to be?”

  “I don’t want to go to school in Switzerland. The girls there can bully me in several languages.”

  “Then I suggest you get crackin’ on learning French, Spanish, German, and Italian. Now grab your bag. I’ve got to get to work.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jordan lingered in the hallway outside the prep kitchen waiting for Tilly. The tape was gone from the door, and Gretchen had informed him they wouldn’t need to use his restaurant anymore. Everything was back to normal, or as normal as it could be with two murders associated with the Culinary Channel.

  He glanced down at his watch and decided to go to the elevators instead. It was almost ten, and Tilly should have been here by now. Hurt and annoyance pulled a heavy sigh from him with each step he paced. Maybe he should’ve stayed—Tilly should’ve demanded he stay. His skin crawled at the memory of the crying and yelling coming from the living room. The kid had caught them asleep in the same bed. Yet it felt wrong to take the out Tilly had thrown at him and leave her to deal with the situation by herself.

  The elevator chimed and the door opened to reveal Tilly and Sarah. The kid looked as if she’d been grounded for life, and the expression on Tilly’s face wasn’t much better.

  Oh, yes, things did not go well. Too bad for the kid.

  He had a big job in front of him if he planned to set things right. Hank had been no help at all, so Jordan decided to do what he did best—he could yell and shake the house down like his Italian mother, or charm them like his Irish father. He flashed a smile.

  “Good morning, ladies.”

  “Jordan.” Tilly’s terse reply to his greeting withered his good intentions. “I’ve got a lot to do.” She picked up her pace toward her small office. Sarah double-timed behind her mother with a forsaken cast to her features.

  “I need to talk to you.” He wanted to ask her about last night—how things went with Sarah. The tension between mother and daughter was as thick and dark as two-day-old coffee. The kid looked positively grim. He could understand being homesick, but Sarah overplayed her hand, and she’d come out on Tilly’s bad side. Not a comfortable place to be.

  Tilly gave him a quick nod but kept her eyes focused straight ahead. “Do it while I’m walking.”

  He decided a change in tactic was needed. “I need to talk to you about the case. Hank had some new information.”

  “Oh?” She slowed down and glanced over at him with a glimmer of interest.

  “Yeah, I went to Hank’s place early this morning. I fed him bagels, and he fed me information.”

  She stopped in front of her office and unlocked the door. “Let me get Sarah settled and we can talk outside.” She ushered her daughter into the tiny eight-by-eight shoe box of a room. “You are not to move out of this office unless you have to pee. I will call or have someone check on you every fifteen minutes. Restrooms down the hall and to the right.” Tilly scribbled a number on a Post-it note. “Here’s Jerry Manner’s number. He’s the floor manager at the studio. Call him if you need to get in touch with me.”

  “I can’t call your phone?” Sarah’s lower lip wobbled.

  “I’ll be taping and working with Gretchen on the format of the new show.” Tilly stowed her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk. “No shenanigans. Got it?”

  Sarah bobbed her head in agreement.

  “Now. What do you have to say to Jordan?”

  The kid’s breath shuddered in her thin chest, and she glanced in his direction. “Mr. Kelly—”

  He could tell her apology was bogus the minute the first words came out of her mouth. “Look, kid. You don’t have to tell me you’re sorry, because we both know you don’t mean it.”

  “I truly am sorry.” This time sh
e tried for innocent and coy, but it didn’t hold an iota of sincerity. “Truly. I—”

  “You can stop.” He held up his hand to cut her off before she embarrassed herself. “No, really. I remember when Hank and I beat up Joey Spano for bullying Bobby Flannery because the kid was so smart. He irked all of us for skewing the grading curve. However, it didn’t give Joey a free pass to torment the kid. Our mothers made us apologize to Joey because we should’ve reported it instead of using our fists. Still burns me to this day.”

  “Bullies think they’re all that.” Sarah sat at the desk chair and swiveled back and forth, kicking the floor each time with her sneakers to get more spin. “I hate them—all of them.”

  A world of hurt poured out in her simple statement.

  Tilly started to say something, but he shook his head.

  He perched on the edge of her desk. “Yeah, I feel you, but it worked out okay.” He picked up an ink pen and flipped it back and forth between his fingers. It was a trick he’d mastered in high school to look cool. All it got was ink stains between his fingers and no girls. “Bobby now owns a multimillion-dollar software company, while Joey is a grease monkey. Nothing wrong with being a mechanic, but I hear he’s a bad mechanic.”

  A smile twitched at the corner of Sarah’s mouth. “Karma.”

  “Exactly. It took a long time coming. Sometimes things work out that way.”

  “Maybe Mark Guthrie and Jessica Parkwill end up on a deserted island.” Sarah warmed to the game of envisioning horrible ends for the bullies at her school. “They would eat each other alive.”

  He flipped the pen one last time and replaced it in the pencil holder on Tilly’s desk. “Or scooping up elephant poop at the circus.”

  “How about working at a rendering plant?” Tilly wrinkled her nose. “They’d never get the smell out.”

  Sarah laughed. It was as bright and pure as her mother’s and made Jordan wonder what Tilly was like at that age. She’d said she was a wild child, but he couldn’t imagine it.

  “Why don’t the two of you come to the prep kitchen for lunch?” He glanced up at the weird cat clock with the pendulum tail. It was close to ten, and they had a meeting with Gretchen. Both of them were taping after. “Say, around one. I’ll try out my new burger and fries recipe I’m making for the Fourth of July show.”

  “As long as there’s nothing strange on the burgers.” Tilly scrunched up her nose as if she’d driven past a rendering plant. “I’m a straight-up cheeseburger gal.”

  “I know. I know.” He waved her objections aside. “What about you?” He glanced down at Sarah.

  “Umm—I guess so.” She stopped swiveling the desk chair and looked him in the eye. “You need Mama to show you how to make my favorite. Cheese-stuffed burgers with guacamole, jalapeños, and chipotle mayo.”

  Jordan glanced over at Tilly. “Okay.”

  “Oh! And fries smothered in melted pepper jack and sriracha sauce.”

  “The girl likes it hot!” Jordan pumped his fist in the air. “Your mother is a—”

  “A weenie with anything spicy.”

  “I like to keep the lining of my mouth intact, thank you very much.” Tilly’s smile warmed his heart.

  “Weenie,” he and Sarah said with laughter at the same time.

  He didn’t know what happened. It was a small thing, but in that moment, a tug started in his heart—not unlike the tug he got when he realized how important Tilly was to him. The sensation was different, but no less intriguing.

  “I’ll see you at one.” He smiled and pointed at Sarah. “Anyone can give you directions to the prep kitchen.”

  “Okay.” She glanced over to her mother for permission and grinned back at him when Tilly nodded her head. “One o’clock sharp.”

  He stood and walked Tilly to the door. “We can talk on the way to our meeting.”

  …

  “I don’t know what you did in there.” Tilly’s heart lightened with each step toward Gretchen’s office. “That’s the first time I’ve seen my real child since she showed up on my doorstep.”

  Jordan’s face scrunched up in puzzlement. “I couldn’t tell you.” He ambled down the hall to the elevator, distracted and thoughtful.

  “Let me know when you figure it out.” She sighed at the memory of the cab drive to the studio—it was World War Three with a big dose of teenage attitude. “We’ve been going at it all morning. You should’ve seen her face when I told her I would send her to a boarding school in Switzerland if she didn’t clean up her act.”

  “That’s harsh.” Jordan reached out to punch to up button but stopped. His puzzlement turned into a scowl. “Maybe all she needs is to have you around. Maybe living in New York would solve the problem.”

  “But her home is in Tennessee. She’s going to a good prep school in Lewistown.” It was bad enough trying to explain everything to Sarah; she didn’t have to justify herself to Jordan. Sarah wasn’t his child. “I hire a driver to get her there and back every day.”

  He finally hit the elevator button and glanced upward as if staring at the lighted arrow would make the car come to their floor by sheer willpower. “So you have someone drive her all the way from Possum Trot to Lewistown? What’s wrong with the local high school?”

  “Possum Trot doesn’t have a high school. All the kids are bussed over to Lewistown.”

  He stared down at her, his face serious and full of question. “Have you ever asked her if she wanted to go to regular high school instead of the tony joint she’s in now?”

  “No. I’m the mother. I decide.” She couldn’t believe what she heard coming from him.

  The elevator door opened to an empty car. They stepped inside, and she pressed the button for the executive suite before he could.

  “She’s fourteen and unhappy.” He wouldn’t let it go. “Do you want her to do something stupid?”

  Raw hurt scalded her. “Like I did?” She couldn’t believe he would throw her past in her face.

  “No. Worse.”

  His words solidified in her heart. She knew what he meant. Drugs, cutting, even suicide.

  “You know,” he continued, “now that I think about it, she was pretty damned gutsy to travel to New York by herself.”

  “She said she was scared.”

  “A single-track mind, just like her mother.” He gave her a double-dimpled grin. “I think your kid is beginning to grow on me.”

  …

  They walked into the reception area of Gretchen’s office, and her personal assistant, Marcia, told them to go in. Gretchen might have a corner office, but it was as drab as the brown suit she wore. Beige walls, gray tweed carpeting, and utilitarian furniture. The only bright spot was several framed artworks of her seven-year-old niece, Mina, along with a menagerie of clay animals on a shelf.

  “I wanted to touch base with you about your consulting with the police. First, let me thank you for taking an interest in finding the killers. The job you did in Kansas City was outstanding and brought in some of the best ratings we had in years. People are looking forward to seeing the two of you together on our new show.” Excitement threaded through Gretchen’s voice. “I don’t know how many requests Father has had from our viewers for something along that line, and now it’s happening.”

  “We’re glad to help. Everything will go as planned once we’ve all jumped through the legal hoops with our agents.” Jordan sat back and watched as Gretchen straightened in her chair. He noticed a change in her this morning. Maybe it was the thrill of actually getting to do what she’d always wanted—without the shadow of her brother. He’d have to ask Tilly if she picked up on anything different.

  “Of course.” Gretchen smiled, but her excitement faded, replaced by her normal matter-of-fact monotone. “I want to make sure the consulting doesn’t get in the way of production.” She pulled two blue-covered documents from the pile on her desk.

  “It won’t,” Tilly piped up. “This will take priority. We’re just addin’ our eyes to
those of the police.”

  “Good.” Gretchen nodded in approval. “How are things going—do the police have a solid line on who killed Chef DuPres or my brother?”

  “We can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.” Jordan wasn’t about to screw up the investigation by letting anything Hank said get out. Everyone was a suspect except him and Tilly.

  “I’d hoped to have something to tell Father. He’s still reeling from David’s passing. He’s not sure when he’ll come back to work.” Regret filled Gretchen’s sigh. She put a hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. “Mother is still a basket case.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Tilly’s soft, sympathetic words worked magic. Gretchen came out of her momentary funk.

  “Thank you. I have these moments when everything comes crashing down. But business doesn’t stop for grief.” She handed each a document. “This is our offer on the new programming. Look it over and get back with me as soon as you can.” She clasped her hands in front of her and sighed again. “I don’t know what to do with the time slot we’ve allocated for Lena. She wanted out of her contract. I’ve decided to honor her wish to leave the network, especially because there was so much bad blood between her and David.” Gretchen sighed. “It’s better this way.”

  “What?” Tilly glanced over at him in amazement. “You must be devastated. I had the feeling she’s a very good friend.”

  “It’s true. That’s why I didn’t fight her on the contract.” Gretchen stared out the window, her eyes focused far away. “I still can’t believe everything that’s happened these last few days.”

  “You’ve been strong for everyone.” Tilly’s sweet southern drawl dripped concern like a leaky faucet. A person could drown in it before they realized what happened.

  Jordan took a chance to gauge Gretchen’s reaction. “Lena was very upset after the fight in the studio. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry.”

  “She was. We’d planned to go for coffee and a little shopping after filming her show. You know, girls’ day out sort of thing. David had to open his big mouth.” Gretchen scowled, her lips tightened into a grimace. “I’ll never forgive him for ruining everything. Lena is my friend, my best friend.”