A Taste of Death

by Suzanne Rossi

  Anne shook her head. “Becky Lawrence comes to mind, but she wasn’t there—at least not that we know of. I wonder how many other members’ husbands Fran tried to seduce.”

  “Trying isn’t necessarily a killing offense. Succeeding maybe. We should be looking in that direction. Does Gil know about our former president’s affair?”

  “I mentioned the rumor to him and he said he’d check it out.”

  “Check out what?” Gil said walking up to them.

  “Becky Lawrence and whether or not her husband had rekindled his affair with Fran,” Anne replied.

  “I left a message a while ago. Haven’t heard back from her yet. You guys ready to view some tape?”

  “As soon as Rose gets here,” Nancy said.

  At that moment the doors opened again and Rose breezed into the station.

  “Am I late?” she asked.

  “Nope. Right on time,” Gil said with a smile. “Let’s get started. There are a lot of tapes.”

  Gil led them back to a cramped room with several video machines along the walls. VCRs might not be used in homes any more, but they still had a place in police work.

  Wonder how long before law enforcement goes digital. Or if digital recording will ever replace tapes. And will shopkeepers, hotels and such will be able to afford to change the systems if they do.

  Anne and the others took seats around a monitor. Gil brought them all cups of coffee.

  “Before we start, could you give me a quick rundown on the meeting schedule?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Anne said taking a cautious sip from the Styrofoam container. For machine coffee it wasn’t bad. “The meeting begins at ten-thirty in the morning with an informal meet-and-greet session. Those who haven’t pre-paid can do so when they arrive.”

  “Does that happen often?” he asked.

  “Not really. Most members send their money in with their reservations via an electronic payment system.”

  “And who collects the money if they don’t use that?”

  Rose replied as Anne sipped more coffee. “The treasurer. In this case, that would have been Jane Whittaker. She usually just sits at a table in the room and collects what’s due as she checks off names on a list. Past treasurers have set up sign-in tables in the hallway.”

  Nancy took over the narrative. “Just prior to eleven, the president generally makes a brief welcoming announcement, and then lunch is served.”

  “After that the president calls the meeting to order. We go over old business followed by new business,” Anne said. “As soon as that’s done, the speaker for the day is introduced and makes his or her presentation.”

  “Any time frame on this part of the program?” Gil asked.

  Anne shook her head. “Not really. Sometimes the business portions of the meeting take a while, but we try to keep it to less than an hour. Presentations are generally anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour. The meeting is adjourned around two.”

  Gil nodded and shoved a cassette into the machine. “This is the main lobby. The tape begins a new twenty-four loop at six in the morning. I’ve fast forwarded it to ten-fifteen Saturday morning.”

  He pushed a button and the tape rolled showing people coming and going, including chapter members with some in costume. Anne stifled a yawn. It was boring.

  Fran appeared in the film at ten-thirty.

  “There’s nothing out of the ordinary,” Nancy told him. “I arrived at ten-fifteen and went directly upstairs.”

  “As you can see, I came in at ten-forty,” Anne said.

  “And I was right behind her at ten-forty-three,” Rose chimed in. “Who are all those guys in tuxedos?”

  “Some opera lovers’ meeting. I guess they all come dressed as Enrico Caruso or something—even the women,” Anne replied, shooting a glance at Gil.

  He nodded. “They meet once a month, usually on the main floor.”

  Gil switched the tapes. “This one is the hallway outside your meeting room also beginning at ten-fifteen.”

  Anne watched the tape, not expecting to see much of anything. Fran, Susan, and Jane arrived within a few minutes of each other. She kept her eyes open for the ghost who put in her first appearance at ten-fifty passing Anne and Rose in the hallway. They watched as the minutes passed. This tape clearly showed the activity between Anne, Fran, Susan, and Barb. It also showed the ghost lifting lids of various meals several times.

  “It’s almost as if she’s peeking to see if it’s salad or an entrée,” Anne commented.

  “Wait for it,” Gil responded.

  Sure enough, the ghost lifted a lid, moved to and looked around the corner toward the freight elevator, then made her way back to the service cart. She placed two plates off to the side, and moved her hand over one of them before replacing the lid. Next, she once again cast a gaze around the deserted hallway, and then moved quickly down the corridor where she entered the room via the entry closest toward the front. A moment later she slid out by the rear entrance and around the corner never to be seen again. Within a few seconds, a waiter came into view, scooped up the meals set aside, and entered the meeting room. He came out less than a minute later and also disappeared around the corner. The time showed eleven-thirty.

  “Oh my God,” Rose said with a gasp. “It’s a team!”

  “A man and a woman?” Nancy speculated.

  “Not necessarily,” Gil replied. “A stocky woman could have served.”

  “I wish the tape quality was better,” Anne said. “It must be a man. The image shows someone fairly tall.”

  “Becky is about five-seven,” Nancy said.

  Anne sighed. “That ghost getup was perfect—no way to discern height or weight. I don’t recall any of the waitresses that day resembling the server on tape. Plus, Jane Whittaker definitely claims she was served by a man.”

  “Or by a woman with really rough dishpan hands,” Rose added. “I’m not sure I’d trust Jane all that much. She’s not the most observant of people.”

  “Gil, what does the waiter who was a no-show look like?” Anne asked.

  “Six feet, around a hundred and sixty pounds, dark hair, and still not returning my calls.”

  “So this could have been him. He sneaks in, serves only two dishes, making sure Fran gets the tainted one, and then leaves again,” Nancy surmised.

  “And the hall is empty because the real servers are in the room,” Rose said. “And because they’re busy they don’t notice an extra server.”

  “From the ghost doing his or her thing to the serving, took less than two minutes,” Gil replied. “In and out.”

  “Did they use the freight elevator?” Anne asked.

  “Nope, there’s a stairwell next to it, and I’ll give you one guess where it comes out,” he answered.

  “That little hallway with the out of the way restrooms,” Anne guessed.

  “This is from the angle near the remote hallway restroom.” Gil once again changed the tapes. The view was from a longer distance since the camera was set up at the junction of the hallways.

  This was the tape Anne was waiting to see. At ten-forty-five a person wearing shorts, an oversized T-shirt, a baseball cap pulled low so the bill obscured the face, and carrying a large tote bag walked through the parking lot door and directly into the restroom. A few minutes later the ghost emerged and opened the stairwell door.

  “So the ghost is a woman,” Rose concluded.

  “Not necessarily,” Gil said. “Remember what I said about how it could have been a man who knew about the cameras and wanted to throw us off by using the ladies’ room.”

  He fast forwarded the tape to eleven-oh-five. A man—or what looked like a man—dressed in the waiter uniform came in the door from the parking lot. He also took the stairs.

  The ghost exited the stairwell at eleven-seventeen and entered the restroom. At eleven-twenty-five, the person with the oversized T-shirt hurried out and into the parking lot. The waiter did the same a few minutes later.

&
nbsp; “Wow,” Nancy said.

  “The point is do you recognize either of them?” Gil asked her.

  “Not a chance in hell,” she replied.

  “Can’t even come close,” Anne answered.

  “Nope,” was Rose’s comeback.

  “You know, something looked odd about Fran in the lobby tape,” Anne said. “Can I see it again?”

  Gil ejected the last tape and reinserted the first one, and then rewound it to ten twenty-five.

  Anne frowned. “Look, Fran’s not coming from the entrance, but from another direction. Where was she?”

  He rewound the tape several times until she finally showed up at eight o’clock, walking across the lobby and out of frame.

  “Eight o’clock? Why so early for ten-thirty meeting?” Nancy wanted to know.

  Rose shook her head. “And where was she all that time?”

  “What’s in that direction?” Gil asked.

  “The dining room,” Rose told him.

  “She was either having breakfast—although why when lunch would be served in three hours—or she went in to do some writing. I’ve done that before,” Anne informed them.

  Nancy had continued to watch the screen. “Oh my God, look. It’s Terry Whiting.”

  The last conference chair entered the lobby and headed for the dining room, too.

  Rose sat back in her chair. “You don’t suppose they had breakfast together, do you?”

  Nancy gave her an astonished look. “For what purpose? They hated each other.”

  “They did?” Gil said in a quiet tone.

  “There were a lot of public accusations and finger pointing regarding the conference last spring. I heard they had to be separated from an out and out cat-fight at a board meeting not long after. I don’t think Terry was anywhere close to burying the hatchet,” Anne told him.

  “Unless it was in Fran’s head,” Nancy murmured. “Oops, wait a minute, I didn’t mean that literally.”

  “Thought she looked familiar. I remember her from the conference. Sounds like I need to add Ms. Whiting to my list of people to talk to,” he said.

  “Why don’t you let me do it?” Anne suggested. “She was at the hotel, but certainly not at the meeting.”

  “That you know of,” he reminded her.

  “True, but if Terry was going to kill Fran, she’d have done it last spring after the conference. Like Nancy said, they had words.”

  “What kind of words?”

  “Fran blamed Terry and another woman for everything. Just let me talk to her.”

  “She’s a possible suspect,” he said.

  “So, we’ll both talk to her.”

  Gil sent her a long stare, and then heaved a sigh. “All right, but I’ll also be interviewing her here.”

  Rose looked at the clock on the wall. “Damn, it’s almost eleven-thirty. I have to get home. Are we done?”

  Gil popped the tape out of the machine and put it in a plastic evidence bag along with the others.

  “Yes, we’re finished. Thank you for your help.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think we helped much,” Nancy said rising from her chair.

  “Well, you did come up with Ms. Whiting’s name,” he replied. “Thank you all for coming. Can you find your way out?”

  “Sure, we’ve been here often enough to do it blindfolded,” Nancy drawled.

  Rose and Nancy walked ahead while Anne lingered. “I’ll call Terry as soon as I get home.”

  “Be discreet. And I thought you’d like to know that we contacted a Doctor Mary Smith in Highcrest. She says she’s never heard of the Southeast Florida chapter and can barely write her own name, let alone a book. I looked her up in the AMA membership. There was a photo. She’s African-American.”

  “The woman at the meeting was Caucasian.”

  Gil leaned down and kissed her. “I was afraid of that. Let me know what Ms. Whiting has to say. Unfortunately, any cameras covering the dining room will have rerecorded. I’ll tackle it from another angle.”

  “What angle?”

  He kissed her again and smiled. “Have a good day. I’ll call you later.”

  Anne stood for a moment after he left. The tapes had been enlightening, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d missed something. It nagged at her, yet no clear answer presented itself. And it was frustrating that the ghost couldn’t be identified.

  She rejoined Nancy in the waiting area. “Rose gone already?”

  “Yeah, she said she wanted to put the sitter out of her misery.”

  Anne told her about the doctor.

  “Maybe the woman wasn’t a doctor at all,” Nancy said.

  “But why say you are when I talked to her earlier, and then try to help when Fran was obviously in crisis?”

  “I have no idea. It does, however, explain why she never showed up at the hospital.”

  “Good heavens, you don’t suppose that whoever killed Fran paid off this person to pretend to give CPR and delay any professional medical personnel from doing the real thing, do you? I mean, Fran could have been saved if 9-1-1 had been called even a couple of minutes sooner.”

  Nancy frowned. “It’s certainly something to think about.”

  “Lunch?” Anne asked.

  “Can’t today. I’ve still got to call the women who sat at Fran’s table. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Eleven-thirty at Rafferty’s?”

  After confirming the time, both women walked to their cars and left.

  On the drive home, Anne formulated what she’d say to Terry. She really hoped her friend had a good explanation for why she had breakfast with Fran—if indeed, she did—but declined to attend the meeting. I don’t think I can stand another friend being a killer.

  ****

  Anne hesitated, her finger poised over her cell phone as she rehearsed what to say to Terry. There was no way she could let Terry know she’d been seen on surveillance footage or that Gil may want to talk to her.

  Kinda like walking on eggs and broken glass at the same time.

  Taking a deep breath, she punched in Terry’s number and waited through four rings. A part of her hoped Terry wouldn’t answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Terry, it’s Anne. Have you got a couple of minutes?”

  “Sure. Whatcha need?”

  “Well, I was thinking about how the chapter needs a way to generate revenue. Since we no longer have a conference, I got an idea I wanted to run by you.”

  “Okay, shoot, although I don’t think the conference was ever a big money raiser.”

  “How about if we offer a one-day seminar? We could hold it on a Saturday instead of a meeting. We’d get a good speaker or maybe two. The subject matter could range for something to entice newbies and something for the experienced writers. How does that sound to you?”

  “Interesting. We could hold it at the hotel. That way anyone from out of town can stay overnight. We’d also have to deal with a lunch of some sort.”

  “Of course, but it doesn’t need to be fancy. We could offer a morning workshop, break for lunch, and then do one in the afternoon,” Anne said liking the idea thought up on the spur of the moment.

  “Good concept.”

  “Would you be willing to organize something along those lines?”

  “I suppose I could, although considering what happened the last time I organized something I’d have to ask myself why. And the speakers don’t necessarily have to come from out of town. We could make use of our own chapter talent.”

  “Excellent idea.” Anne drew a deep breath. Here it comes. “I was going to talk to you about it last Saturday, but you were having breakfast with Fran and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  Silence greeted her statement before Terry replied in a breathless tone. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I got to the hotel early and went into the dining room to grab a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. I was in a quiet corner where I could collect my thoughts and organize what I wanted to say. First day
jitters, I guess. At any rate, I saw Fran come in and sit at a table, then you joined her. I thought maybe you guys were letting bygones be bygones and didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. Fran called with just that suggestion. She said something about water under the bridge. I couldn’t make the meeting, so we agreed to meet for breakfast.”

  “So, did you patch up your differences?” Anne asked.

  “More or less. Funny we didn’t see you there. Our table was close to the dining room entrance.” Terry’s voice took on a harder tone.

  “As I said, I didn’t want to interrupt. Plus I was making a list of the meeting agenda. When I looked up again, Fran was alone.”

  “I had to be somewhere, so I ate light. Uh, look, Anne, I’ve got an appointment. Let me think this over and get back to you. It sounds like a good idea and won’t take as much time or trouble as a conference. Talk to you later.” Terry hung up abruptly.

  “Interesting,” Anne murmured. “The point is do I believe her explanation of the breakfast? And I doubt she had an appointment.”

  Fran Harrison held a grudge against anyone who crossed swords with her. And Terry Whiting had definitely crossed swords.

  Nope, Terry is hiding something. Whatever it is, she and Fran were not having a talk about reconciliation.

  She called Gil, but got his voice mail. She’d try again after lunch. As she ate a sandwich, Anne jotted down notes about the idea she’d pitched to Terry. As an excuse to talk, it had turned out not to be a bad suggestion. She liked the concept.

  She did some fast math and speculation. If we keep the hotel costs down, this could provide another couple of thousand dollars—or more—for the treasury. Holy crap, this is doable.

  It was close to three when she finally called Gil again and brought him up to date on her conversation with Terry.

  “What makes you think she’s hiding something?” he asked.

  “Fran held grudges and loved getting even with people she thought wronged her in some way. She once got on a review site and wrote twenty bad reviews under twenty different identities for a book whose author disagreed with her on some comment left on a blog. So, there is no way she called Terry to put aside their differences.”

  “Then why were they meeting?”