by Carol Culver
“Right on,” Lindsey said. “I told him about this meeting too.” She turned to me. “Hope you don’t mind, Hanna. I thought it was only fair. So if he had any guts he’d be here.”
There was a moment of silence while everyone turned and looked at the door. Nothing. No one. A second later there was a loud knock.
I swallowed over a hard lump in my throat. There was a communal gasp. Had Heath Barr answered the summons? We were all pretty brave without him around, but if he actually walked in now would we really tell him what we thought? That he was all talk, he had no taste, he didn’t deserve to be a food critic and so forth and so on. Or would we politely ask him for his credentials, if he didn’t mind, and tell him we hoped he’d come back Saturday and give us another chance? Or …
The knocking was louder and more insistent. I went to the door. Technically I closed at six, so it couldn’t be a customer at this hour. I yanked the door open. Sam was standing there looking grim. As I said, he’s not ever Mr. Smiley, but he looked especially stern tonight.
“Oh, hi Sam,” I said. “I hope nothing’s wrong. Has one of my fellow food vendors violated an ordinance by parking on the wrong side of the street or did someone leave their parking lights on? If there’s been an infraction, hand me the ticket, I’ll take care of it. Sorry to bother you when you’re off duty. We’re just having a little business meeting.” I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, which caused me to run on that way. I hoped it wasn’t an official visit.
“Who’s we?” he asked.
“We’re all food vendors.”
He held up a folded newspaper. “Would they be the same vendors that Mr. Barr criticized in his column.”
“Some of them are. We’re just exercising our right to peacefully assemble under the first amendment. Nothing wrong with that.” My nerves were on edge and Sam’s long silence didn’t help to calm me down. What did he want and if he didn’t want anything special why didn’t he leave?
I smiled politely and put a hand on the door as if to close it, but he put his foot in the way. “This is serious, Hanna. You can assemble all you want, but I’d like to come in and ask some questions. Like where were you and your friends early this evening when Heath Barr was murdered.”
I stepped backward and almost lost my balance. “Murdered?” I felt my knees buckle. “Are you sure? How?”
“With a serrated knife.”
I stared at him. The whole room behind me waited in hushed silence. Had they overheard? “Then it was murder,” I muttered. No sense hoping he’d committed suicide. I tried to picture the scene, as awful as it was.
“Where?” I managed to say when I found my voice.
“Across the throat.”
I gulped. “I mean where did it happen?”
“In his office at the Gazette,” Sam said. “Before you ask when, why don’t I come inside?”
Knowing Sam, I had no choice, so I stepped aside and he walked in. As usual, he wasn’t wearing a uniform so I addressed the group. “Everyone,” I said loudly so they could hear me over their animated conversations, “this is our police chief, Sam Genovese, with a … a …” A question? An accusation? An inquiry? I looked at Sam. What was the word I was looking for? “An announcement. Mr. Barr, the local food critic was found dead in his office at the newspaper this evening.” I was proud of myself for keeping my voice steady. I purposely didn’t say murdered, but murder had to be on all our minds. “No doubt it was while we were all assembled here,” I said pointedly. Thus giving us all an alibi.
The room was eerily silent. I hoped Sam noticed that they all looked properly shocked and dismayed. He couldn’t possibly think that one of us … We were all right here at least for the past hour. And yet who else wanted the guy out of our hair more than we did? Why else would Sam be holding the Monday Gazette in his hand? From just a glance, he looked like he’d gone so far as to highlight our names.
As the chairman of this gathering, I thought it best to first introduce the group to Sam. As if we had nothing to conceal. As if we were all eager to help him solve the crime. After all, murder in Crystal Cove could hurt us all where it mattered, in the pocket book. Who wanted to come to a farmer’s market if you were afraid you’d be stabbed with a saw-toothed blade for sale in that very market? None of us wanted any damaging publicity concerning our fair. Surely Sam understood that.
I continued to function as best I could in hostess mode. Granny would have been proud of me.
“Officer Genovese, you already know Tammy and Lindsey.”
He nodded. We were all in high school together and Sam currently lived in a bungalow next door to Lindsey.
“Jacques is the French cheese vendor from the Artisan Cheese stand.” I wasn’t sure Jacques was French at all, but he definitely looked European except for his all American Hippie Birkenstocks. He reached out to shake Sam’s hand and said something like “enchanté.”
“You know Lurline, I believe,” I said.
She gave him her usual perky smile as if we were just here to have a party. Better than looking guilty, of course, which she probably wasn’t. I couldn’t picture her slitting the critic’s throat on her way to the meeting, but then who could I picture? I looked around the room. And came back to Lurline. Sam being one of the few eligible men in town, Lurline had zeroed in on him some months ago. I’d seen her flirting with him, but then she flirted with everyone, eligible or not.
“Bill and Dave run the Primo Pork and Sausage Stand,” I said.
They nodded as Sam checked off something on the paper he held in his hand.
“This is Martha who raises free-range chickens.” I gestured in her direction.
She straightened her shoulders, stood, tilted her chin and looked Sam in the eye. “Any questions about Barr you can ask me. I sold that scumbag one of my chickens last Saturday, they’re farm raised you know, and he had the nerve to say they were overcooked and overpriced. Sure they’re expensive, but they’re cooked perfectly and worth every penny. Come out to the ranch and I’ll give you a tour. I have nothing to hide. I didn’t kill Barr, but after I read that review I wanted to.”
I nodded vigorously. “She’s right,” I said. “Her chickens are superb. I know because I ate half of mine for dinner that night. And I would have cheerfully stabbed him after reading what he said about my pies. But I didn’t,” I added quickly.
Sam wrote something on a pad of paper. I wanted badly to look over his shoulder. Was he making a list of suspects? Was I on it?
“You see, Sam, we’re all professionals in the food business,” I said. “And speaking as an unbiased judge of food I can say that everyone in this room has reason to be proud of his product. I’ve tasted them all. Mr. Barr was wrong. He obviously had an ax to grind.”
I stopped when I realized that he’d been killed with an ax-like serrated knife. “I mean, he had no business trashing our food at the fair. We didn’t deserve it. He was wrong, dead wrong.”
I bit my tongue. Dead wrong? What was wrong with me? Blurting the wrong words at the wrong time. Nerves, that’s what. I felt a bout of hysteria coming on. The harder I tried to control myself the more likely I’d have an attack of inappropriate laughter. I took a deep breath. I had a horrible irrational feeling that Sam’s presence here suggested he already suspected one of us in this room of killing the food critic. Even though I told him we’d been having a meeting and even if we were available, we were not homicidal. But deep down somewhere I too was thinking maybe someone in this room had killed him. I wanted to, they must have too. Sam never said what time he was killed. So could any of us have done it?
“Thanks, Hanna,” Sam said in what I thought was a deceptively off-hand way. The others didn’t really know his modus operandi, but I wondered if Sam was actually trying to put everyone in the room at ease and off guard and then pounce on them, demanding to know where they were at such and such an hour. Which made me wish he’d tell us what hour did this so-called murder occur and where was I at that time? Th
at’s the problem with living and working alone, I might not have an alibi.
“I apologize for interrupting your meeting like this,” Sam said. “Sorry it has to be an unfortunate circumstance that brings me here tonight. But my job is to investigate crimes and misdemeanors. As it happens those are few and far between in our little town. Usually what I investigate is a fender bender, a missing pet, or a lost wallet. Yesterday it was a broken clothesline and someone driving on the golf course, which you’ll see if you read my weekly column ‘The Crime Beat’ in the Gazette. But today, this time we have a murder on our hands.”
He looked around my small shop. Everyone appeared to be suitably horrified. Some were wide eyed with pale faces and nervous fingers tapping on small tables. The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with one of those serrated knives someone used to slash Heath Barr’s neck.
“Are we under suspicion?” Dave, the thin sausage maker, said with a worried frown.
“At this point I plan to talk to everyone who had dealings with Mr. Barr. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.”
“We have nothing to hide,” Bill said emphatically. “Say what you want about making sausage, but we only use the best ingredients. Come out and see if you don’t believe me.” Obviously a super salesman as well as a dedicated artisan, Bill immediately reached into his pocket and handed out business cards to everyone in the room, including Sam.
I wondered if Sam had read that somewhere about nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Nothing to hide? Everyone had something to hide. Especially Sam. He’d spent years in the city before coming back as police chief and had never disclosed much of what happened to him before he became our police chief. Somehow he’d managed to have a career as a big city cop and he’d also made a fair amount of money while he was gone. However he did that, it wasn’t by working in law enforcement. That I was sure of.
It turned out Sam asked if they would mind stopping by his office for a very brief interview tonight, since they were here in town anyway. But if it wasn’t convenient, he’d be glad to re-schedule.
Everyone agreed to do it then and there. No one wants a visit to the police station hanging over their head. I sure didn’t. And so went the evening. The evening we’d planned to get back at the food critic ended in a different way altogether. Somebody got back at the critic all right, but I didn’t think it was one of us.
One by one the group filed over to Sam’s office at the police station across the street. When they came back they seemed deflated. Not the way you want to start out a weekend of pushing your products. Standing on your feet for eight hours smiling and greeting customers, peddling your pies, your sausages, or whatever takes a lot of energy. And a strong belief in yourself. Selling all day is exhausting, if you’re any good at it that is. As Kate said, you’re selling yourself as much as your product.
By the time it was my turn to sit in the hot seat across the desk from Sam, I was already feeling drained and on edge at the same time. I wasn’t ready for tomorrow’s Food Fair yet. I also had a problem keeping my mouth shut when I should, and I knew by now that Sam would take advantage of that. So I waved goodbye to my new friends and told myself to button my lip and only answer his questions with yes or no.
Three
The police station was empty except for Sam. He had a couple of deputies, but they were only on duty when there was an emergency. I assume a murder qualifies, so maybe they were out interviewing suspects. If there were any besides us. Or was his staff at home with their families? I couldn’t picture Sam with a family. If he had one, would he be as good a police chief as he was? The only thing he’d ever told me about the years he’d spent away from Crystal Cove was his tragic story about losing his partner in the line of duty. It was obviously a painful subject so I would never bring it up again and neither would he. Especially if we never got together to talk about anything but a local murder.
Sam’s office was small and sparsely furnished, but his desk was large, with stacks of files off to one side. His window was open and the cool air that wafted in smelled as fresh as the ocean. He waved at the chair opposite the desk. I sat, but he didn’t.
Instead he leaned against the wall that was painted utility gray and covered with awards and diplomas and pictures of policemen looking proud and serious. He crossed one leg over the other. After a half dozen interviews he looked totally at ease and at home except for telltale worry lines between his eyebrows. He hadn’t returned to quiet Crystal Cove to solve murders, but this one had landed square in his lap. Was he worried about his ability to solve it? If so, he never let on. I have to add that Sam, whether worried or not, is more gorgeous than any policeman had a right to be. Since this was his office, I guess his looking at home there shouldn’t be surprising. I wondered if he’d learned anything important in the past half hour, like who he suspected of killing the up-tight, super-critical food critic. If he had, I’d be the last to know.
“Go ahead,” I said, instantly jettisoning my plan to keep quiet. “I know what comes next. You’ll ask me where I was at such and such a time. Whenever Mr. Barr was killed.”
“I don’t have a time frame, but if you’d like to tell me where you were this afternoon, I’m all ears.”
“In my shop baking where I am every afternoon. I have the pies to prove it, some may be still warm from the oven—Dutch Apple, Lattice-topped Strawberry-Rhubarb, Open-face Apricot …”
“Okay, okay I got the picture,” he said holding his hand out to stop me.
“But I didn’t have any customers after two women came in and bought a quiche for lunch.”
“That’s too bad,” he said.
“Too bad that I don’t have more customers, or too bad because now I’m a suspect?”
“Both,” he said.
“Oh, come on, Sam. You know I’m not a murderer.”
“Personal feelings have nothing to do with my job.”
“I didn’t know you had any.”
“That’s the way I want it. I deal in facts, not feelings. And if I had any …”
“You’d keep them to yourself, I’m sure,” I said. Why did I even try to crack this man’s façade? It was hopeless. Even when there was no murder in Crystal Cove, he was still all business. He still found material for his “Crime Beat” column in the Gazette. But with a real crime on his hands, he was impossible.
I sighed. “What do you want to know?”
“I’d like to see your saw blade.”
I reached into a canvas bag I’d slung over my shoulder. I hoped to see some flicker of surprise or admiration for my toting the supposed murder weapon without being asked in advance, but all I saw was a brief raised eyebrow as he donned a glove and reached for the handle of the tool.
“I guess you’re surprised,” I said. “You thought I’d refuse to surrender my knife or I’d have to dash across the street and retrieve it before I cleaned off all the blood.”
“Nothing you do surprises me anymore,” he said, exhaling loudly. Then he sniffed the red stain on the sawtooth blade and said, “Obviously you’ve contaminated your knife.”
“If you mean I used it, yes. That’s not blood by the way, it’s raspberry from the tart I cut up for you. I know you don’t eat dessert, but I continue to hope I can change your mind.” I reached into my bag again and handed him a generous slice of a ruby-red fresh raspberry tart. “I thought you’d be glad I hadn’t cleaned the knife. I guess I was wrong.”
He stared at the piece of pie for a long moment. Was he trying to decide whether to use it as evidence of God-knows-what or whether he should eat it?
“The crust is puff pastry,” I said, “then a layer of raspberry jam with fresh raspberries and a glaze on top. It should be served with ice cream or crème fraiche, but …”
“Thank you,” he said brusquely, setting the pie on his desk. “I appreciate the thought and the tart and the tool, but let’s get back to your whereabouts this afternoon.”
“I didn’t have any
whereabouts. As I told you I was in my shop. If you’d looked in from the street you would have seen me in the kitchen. What about the others, did they have alibis?”
“I can’t answer that,” he said with a frown. “That’s confidential information.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I had a weapon and I had a beef with the victim so that puts me under suspicion. If there’s anything I can do to clear my name, I’d be glad to do whatever … or …”
He shook his head. “Thanks but no thanks, Hanna. All I want you to do is answer my questions. I understand where you’re coming from. I know you have a lot of energy and drive. I understand why you’re motivated to get to the bottom of this crime. But you have enough on your plate without worrying about my investigation. Your job is to channel your talents into your pie baking and my job is to solve crimes. Just relax, stand back, and let me do what they pay me to do.”
I hated hearing that condescending tone he used. If I didn’t know him, I’d even call it a holier-than-thou tone. But he really wasn’t holier than anyone. Actually he sometimes almost looked a little sheepish when pulling rank. If you’d asked me if Sam resembled an animal, I would have said wolf, but not now.
He’d obviously forgotten that I’d been helpful in solving a murder at Grannie’s retirement home only months ago. The only murder anyone could remember in the history of the town. Until now. He could act like I was a simple pie baker with homicidal tendencies, but I don’t think he believed it.
“Just for the record,” I said, “I wouldn’t kill anyone no matter how much they trashed my pies. In fact I’ve never seen this Barr guy. I don’t know what he looks like. I don’t suppose you have a photo?”
“You don’t need to see what he looks like. I have your statement. I have your cutting tool. Let me know if you come up with an alibi for your afternoon. A customer who came in or a friend who called you. Anyone who can verify your story.”