“Brett, we need to get over to the parade,” Damien called out as he made slicing gestures across his neck.
Sherry yanked Erno’s shirt from behind, sending him stumbling back a step. “I’m sure we’ll see you over there.”
“That’s the report from the Ruggery,” Brett announced. “We’re going to break for commercials now. Be sure to join us as we follow the youngest citizens of Augustin parading around the town green.” Brett handed the microphone back to Kirin, who shoved it in her belt.
“Paladin, stay on script,” Damien Castle barked. “Follow me, everyone.”
“We better go, too, Dad. Amber, are you sure you’ll be okay here? We could close up shop and all go to the ceremony together.”
Amber pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t mind that, actually. I’m feeling a bit unsettled right now.” Amber laid a cloth over the display table, shrouding its contents from view. “Is this going to work?”
“That’s fine. Come on, Dad. Let’s get over to the green.” Sherry’s quivering hand rested on her father’s back.
Chapter 20
When the future men and women of Augustin finished skipping, giggling, marching, and roughhousing in semi-formation, people began to file toward the folding chairs that had been set up facing the deluxe stage in the middle of the town green. The news crew was clustered on the side of the stage, along with those being honored. Sherry and Erno stood beside Remington, the past Olympian, Lonnie, the fitness instructor and published author, and Colton, the dog trainer, whose graduates included two canines with lucrative movie careers.
With the seats full, with the exception of a few in the front row, Larson Anderson positioned himself center stage. “Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Augustin’s Founder’s Day celebration, and thank you for attending the first ever Trivselbit ceremony. We’re joined by a special group of Augustin citizens this afternoon. It’s my honor to award these folks with Distinguished Citizen medals for their service to our community and for upholding the high standards expected of an Augustinian.”
Sherry nestled closer to her father as Larson engaged the crowd with his history of the town’s founding. Amber was in sight, seated at the end of the third row with Chutney and Bean’s heads protruding into the aisle. Standing a few feet from her, under an expansive oak tree branch, was Detective Bease.
“Andre August Dahlback laid the foundation for this town with his hard work and strong values, and it’s in his memory we give these awards out each year to individuals we feel personify the man’s legacy. Before we hand out the medals, I’ve invited one of our local celebrities to say a few words,” Larson said.
Sherry’s breath caught at the base of her throat as she watched Ruth and Frances take their seats in the front row. She turned her attention to her father, who she caught winking. She touched his side with her elbow, and he let loose a soft murmur.
“Brett Paladin, please come join me.” Brett accompanied Larson at center stage. Before Brett had time to put his microphone up to his lips, Larson continued, “I led you to believe I asked you here to give the Trivselbit its proper introduction, but that was a ploy.”
Sherry guided her father back a step as she leaned across him for a better vantage point. Brett’s face screwed up into a scowl as he dropped the mic to his side.
“We’d like to present you with an honorary lifetime achievement award. On behalf of the Founder’s Day nominating committee, let me call up our representatives Frances Dumont and a woman you know very well, Ruth Gadabee. Come on up, ladies, and don’t forget the medal.”
Ruth and Frances made their way from their seats and brushed past the Trivselbit honorees to reach center stage.
“Welcome, ladies.” Larson shifted to give the women room on either side of Brett.
“This is unnecessary, Mr. Anderson. I’m merely here to introduce the festivities.” Brett attempted to ooze out of the center of the lady sandwich, but his exit was blocked.
“Brett’s my stepson, as many of you might know, and it gives me pleasure to award him with the Lifetime Achievement medal this year,” Ruth announced. “Frances Dumont, someone I would consider my lifetime achievement award, has your medal right here.” The audience rumbled with laughter.
“Lifetime achievement awards are for people who have one foot in the grave. That’s not me.” Brett thrust his hand up, putting the brakes on Ruth.
“Your father would be so proud of you and how far you’ve come in the business he loved so much.” Ruth raised her hand and swiped Brett’s away.
“Please accept this and wear it with pride as the bearer of the Gadabee legacy, if not in name anymore. The way you conduct business here in your hometown of Augustin would make your ancestors proud.” Larson plucked the medal out of Frances’s possession and hung the hardware around Brett’s neck.
The audience clapped while Brett kept his head bowed.
“Do you have any words you’d like to say, Brett?”
Brett took a step forward and raised the microphone to his mouth. “There is something I’d like to say.”
Sherry sucked in a deep breath. Erno turned to face her. She put her finger up to her lips.
“Some people may think I’m at the end of my career.” Brett scanned the audience until he pinpointed a destination for his searing glare.
Sherry followed his line of sight to Beverly Van Ardan, who was standing a few feet from Detective Bease. She matched Brett’s intense expression with a return leer so heated it could have melted the shaved ice sold at the Frozen Fantasies concession stand.
“Those same people seem to want to hijack the town’s reputation for their own personal and financial gain. But neither will happen any time soon, and I’ll tell you why. Two murders have taken place at our beloved News Twelve, and I’d like to use this opportunity to place the blame on the Van Ardan family.”
The audience gasped. Sherry spun her head around toward Mrs. Van Ardan. Detective Bease had his arm extended, blockading her at the waist.
“Brett, I’m sure you don’t mean that,” Ruth chirped. “The Van Ardans aren’t the villains they’ve been portrayed as. As a matter of fact, their relative Knut Eklind saved this town from ruin when Andre August Dahlback had nowhere else to turn.” Ruth leaned into Frances’s arm.
“It doesn’t seem odd to investigators that every time the Van Ardans called a meeting at News Twelve, a murder followed soon thereafter? For all I know, I was next on their hit list because I refuse to let the station my family built from scratch go up in smoke.” Brett lowered his chin and wrestled the medal and its thick red ribbon over his head. He chucked the shiny medallion in the air, and Larson snagged it. “And your friend Erno Oliveri was most likely an accomplice, Ruth. All evidence points to that. You may want to make better social choices.”
“Brett, why are you fighting the truth so hard? You know you’re related to the Eklinds.” Beverly called out from the audience.
Brett pivoted around toward Ruth. With his nose by hers he shouted, “This is all your fault. No one is supposed to know that. If you hadn’t taken up with this murderer, everything would have remained as it was meant to be.” Brett hurled his pointed finger at Erno. “Yes, my father and plenty of others in this town can be traced back to the Eklind family. They seem to have been prolific breeders and had plenty of marriages and lots of children. But I’m not one of them. I’m my father’s son, and I want what he wanted.”
Frances snatched the microphone from Brett’s hand. “Brett, your father was on the verge of selling out before he died. Take a look at the set of papers on the Van Ardans’ table, and you’ll see his signature on the seller’s line of a MediaPie purchase contract. After he died, the document was never filed out of respect for his widow.”
Sherry nodded toward Amber before whispering in her father’s ear. When he tipped his head, she stepped forward, urging one foot in front of the other until she got her muscles to fully cooperate. Despite the quivering in her legs, she managed to reach cen
ter stage with only one misstep.
“May I say a few words?” Sherry was handed the microphone. Her trembling hand lifted it to her parched lips. Her paralyzed tongue, secured to the top of her mouth with dry saliva, thickened her words. “I think Brett should be recognized for his cooking prowess, too. He can follow a cookbook recipe perfectly.” Sherry lifted a cookie high in the air.
“When I said save the cookie for later, I meant after the ceremony,” Brett hissed. “And what do you mean, ‘follow a cookbook recipe’? Those cookies are made from my own recipe.”
“Amazingly, the same recipe exists in the Good Kettle Cookery cookbook, page twenty-six in the ‘hearty way to start your day’ chapter. I’m very familiar with the cookbook, and I recognized the recipe for your breakfast cookies, better known back in the day as Goodly Oat Hand Cakes. I made them once, but they were a bit too hearty for me. You might want to be advised that changing the name of a recipe doesn’t make it yours. Cooking contesting one oh one. And changing your last name doesn’t sever the ties to your ancestors, either.”
“That’s impossible,” Brett said. “It’s one hundred percent my recipe for Breakfast Energy Boost Cookies, before you forced me to make changes, that is.”
“If that’s true, what’s that piece of paper in your coat pocket?” Sherry patted Brett’s blue silk blazer, and the mic broadcast a crackling. “May we see? Beverly Van Ardan saw you rip a page out of her cookbook when you thought she was distracted. Maybe you were afraid someone would discover your recipe was plagiarized? Lucky for you, not many people read cookbooks cover to cover like you do. Unlucky for you that I do. And doubly unlucky my father has the only other existing copy of the very same cookbook; he received it as a gift from your stepmother. When I first tasted your cookie, I knew it seemed awfully familiar. They’re not the tastiest cookies, but cookies in the old days meant something different than they do today.”
“Is there a point to all this because you’re boring the audience to tears,” Brett scolded as he pulled the paper from his pocket and crumpled it up.
“No, it’s fascinating,” a baritone male voice called out.
“You can make me cookies any time, Brett,” a woman shrieked.
“I’m with Brett. I think the Van Ardans are the evil empire,” a gravelly voice exclaimed. “This town is better off without their money and booze.”
“Thank you,” Brett acknowledged the audience with a nod. He faced Sherry. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you people. You have to take what Sherry and her father say with a grain of salt. She may be trying to deflect attention from her actions by bringing up this cookie issue, which is truly a nonissue. Ms. Oliveri chooses to play favorites by using her amateur celebrity status to promote whomever serves her needs. Right, Fletcher? Your kid-friendly veggie-eating invention is a pretty good idea, but how do we know that wasn’t plagiarized? You might want to investigate that, Sherry.” Brett turned his attention to the side of the stage where Truman stood motionless, mouth agape. “If we’re done here, I need to get back to the station.”
“Oh, and one more thing, Brett.” Sherry cleared her throat. “The morning of the News Twelve cook-off, you ripped your pants when you slipped on some chickpeas I spilled on the studio floor. Do you remember that?”
“I have a very busy schedule. I can’t be expected to remember every trivial detail of my day.” Brett’s hand traveled down to his pants pocket.
“Something very sharp pierced a hole in your tropical weight silk and wool blend slacks. It was an expensive repair. One hundred and seventy-five dollars, to be exact. I know all this because Steele Dumont was the one who searched out a tailor who could perform such a hurried repair, and he shared the story when I asked him if I could pay for your pants to be mended. You guys use Steele for your personal errands way too much, you know. At least he gets to drive your nice cars. That’s small pittance for the overworked, underpaid intern.”
“Are we getting our awards?” Colton, the dog trainer, barked from the side of the stage.
“When is someone going to explain what trivselbit means?” Lonnie, the fitness instructor asked as she performed a sun salutation.
Sherry forced the edges of her mouth up into a smile. Her parched lips remained stuck to her teeth. “Very soon.”
“Has anyone ever told you a road map is needed to figure out where your point is headed, Sherry?” Brett remarked with a sneer.
Detective Bease sidestepped toward the center of the stage. “Her point is that the fabric fibers that made up that custom patch matched fibers found imbedded in the punch tool that was in Carmell Gordy’s neck. Brett Paladin, I’m here to arrest you for the murder of Carmell Gordy. Officers, right this way.”
“Stop right there. This is ridiculous. Why would I kill my co-anchor?” Brett scanned the audience, his cheeks swelling red. He reached inside his blazer and yanked out a plastic bag filled with brown discs. He took aim and hurled the bag point-blank at the detective, who clutched his assaulted face. “See if you like those cookies,” he shouted. As Brett made a move for stage right, Sherry rifled her cookie across the deluxe wood planks that made up the stage. Brett’s smooth-soled dress shoes were no match for the unforgiving nuggets of overbaked Hand Cakes, and he went down.
Damien and Truman followed the officers onstage and formed a human barricade around Brett, Sherry, and Detective Bease.
“With Carmell gone, you had a hope of holding on to the way things used to be,” Damien said. “You couldn’t handle her ambition and her forward thinking. You couldn’t handle her growing alliance with MediaPie’s vision for the future of News Twelve. It’s the right move, Brett. They have our best interests in mind. Why would you throw it all away to stay stagnant?”
“Give it up, Brett. Time has run out,” Truman said. “You borrowed my punch tool the day of the murder to open your breakfast yogurt and never returned it. Now the proof is in. We know what else you used it for.”
The detective snapped handcuffs on Brett’s flailing wrists.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Brett yelled. “Everyone here is guilty except me. This town is headed for disaster.”
Brett was shuffled off stage toward a waiting police car.
“Now, will someone please explain trivselbit?” Lonnie asked.
Larson watched the squad car pull away just beyond the audience. “The custom is that the last piece, morsel, or crumb be left on the serving plate. You do not want to be the one who takes the last morsel. Whether the taker would be cursed, as some mythology suggests, that’s hard to say, but leaving the last morsel is said to represent comfort and security. That’s the ideal we think our town best represents. A place of comfort and security.”
“The way his luck is going, Brett must have taken the last piece of something,” Erno whispered to Sherry as she took her place beside him.
Chapter 21
“Amber, remind me again what’s fun about doubles tennis.” Sherry executed an aggressive forehand with her racket as they proceeded down the hallway.
“Hey, watch where you’re swinging that.” Amber ducked.
Sherry held the door open for Amber as they entered the tennis facility’s locker room.
“It’s social. That’s its redeeming value,” Amber suggested.
Sherry parked herself in front of the changing room’s expansive mirror. She fiddled with her hair clips, adjusting the hair holders to show more forehead, less forehead, more ear, less ear, before settling on an arrangement that best showcased her new golden highlights.
Sherry squinted at her reflection. “Not bad. Not as cute as Chris Evert, but not bad.”
When she was done prepping her hair, Sherry reached for an abandoned tennis ball that lay on the counter beneath the mirror. She rolled the fuzzy yellow orb back and forth across the slab of faux marble.
Amber joined Sherry at the mirror. She smoothed down a strand of flyaway hair. “If you were any more lost in thought, I’d have to send out a search pa
rty.”
“I was thinking about what Ray said when he called to tell me the case against Brett Paladin appeared to be airtight.”
“What did he say?” Amber slipped a pink sweatband on her wrist.
“He said if I hadn’t recalled my chickpea cooking error, the case could have taken much longer to solve. When Ray used the word error in association with my cooking, it stung like lemon juice in a paper cut, but a direct result of my goof-up was the over-roasted mini cannonballs tripping up Brett Paladin, leading to his fall, in more ways than one. When Patti Mellitt described how Brett reacted when she saw him go down, red flags were flying all over the place.” Sherry held the ball still and backed away from the mirror.
“Brett slipped on your appetizer, went down in a heap, and the murder weapon punched a clean hole through his pants. But his mistake was sending Steele Dumont out to have them mended.” Amber practiced her backhand stroke.
Sherry bobbed her head in rhythm with her pulsing thoughts. “One too many personal errands for the intern. Ray went on to say Brett confessed to trying to silence Steele because he thought Steele suspected him of Carmell’s murder. What was the chance Steele would have Lucky go in the supply closet for him that morning?”
Amber pinched up her forehead. “Did Ray tell you the motive that pushed Brett to the point of no return with Carmell Gordy?”
“Carmell was being wooed by MediaPie, and she was convincing other employees to join her when she switched teams. Dad finally told me that the day of the cook-off when many believed he had argued with Carmell what was being observed, in actuality, was her exuberant reaction to his delivery of a message from the Van Ardans. Carmell was being offered a lucrative position in the MediaPie family. Beverly convinced Dad to deliver the written offer since he was coming to the station for the cook-off. With Carmell’s transfer secured, the station changing hands was a done deal. Those employees that didn’t care to make the move, like Truman Fletcher and Kirin, had other career options. Brett’s world was shrinking to nothing. When Carmell placed the mug on her anchor desk and spun the MediaPie logo toward the camera instead of hiding it, Brett recognized it as a pronouncement that time was up for the News Twelve he knew and loved. Unfortunately, his young coworker was the one he took his anger out on.”
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