Death of a Kitchen Diva (Hayley Powell Food and Cocktail Mysteries)

by Lee Hollis

  “How do you know? She might have just been talking to her grandkids or something.”

  And at that moment, Hayley saw the flashing blue lights of a police cruiser turn the corner heading straight toward the Rivers’ house.

  Liddy didn’t notice at first because she had already raised her head high enough to get a peek inside the house, and was staring right into the face of Ted Rivers, who at that exact moment was looking out the window to see why the cops were pulling up in front of his house.

  Ted Rivers jumped back and screamed. Liddy screamed. Sissy Rivers dropped the ceramic bowl she was about to hurl at her husband and screamed. Everybody was screaming. Except Mona, who Hayley caught a glimpse of looking out the open backseat window of Liddy’s Mercedes, with the biggest “I told you so” expression on her face that she could muster.

  Donnie and Earl got out of the cruiser and ambled over to where Hayley and Liddy were crouched down together underneath the window.

  “Evening, Hayley,” Donnie said, tipping his hat.

  “Evening, Earl, Donnie, how are you boys doing tonight?”

  “Just fine. No complaints.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Only one complaining tonight is Mrs. Wentworth, who lives across the street,” Earl said. “Said she spotted some prowlers casing the neighborhood. Said one of them looked a whole lot like Liddy Crawford and the other one resembled that nice lady who writes the food and wine column at the Island Times.”

  Another uncomfortable silence.

  Ted and Sissy Rivers raced out their front door. Whatever conflict had been brewing between them was momentarily sidelined while they investigated who was outside their house stalking them.

  “Liddy Crawford, what are you doing skulking around my house at this time of night?” Ted demanded to know.

  “I’m not skulking,” Liddy said, climbing to her feet and brushing off the twigs and dirt from her blouse. “It just so happens I had an out-of-town buyer inquire about your house today and I was just stopping by to see if you might be interested in selling.”

  Nobody said a word. They didn’t have to. Liddy’s on-the-spot excuse wasn’t going to fly with any of them.

  Earl stepped forward. “Maybe we should discuss this further over at the station.”

  “I’ll radio the chief and have him meet us all over there,” Donnie said.

  Hayley went to stop him. “Now, Donnie, I don’t think we have to bother Sergio about this.” She went to grab his arm, but her hand ended up pulling at his gun holster, which snapped open. Donnie jumped back in surprise and stumbled, before drawing his weapon from the holster and pointing it at Hayley.

  “She just went for my gun!” he wailed in a high-pitched voice.

  “I did not!” Hayley said.

  “Earl, you better cuff her,” Donnie said, eyeing Hayley warily.

  “Cuff me? Why, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Hayley said, laughing.

  But Earl was already behind her pulling her wrists together and snapping handcuffs on her.

  Liddy charged forward. “Let her go!”

  Donnie intercepted Liddy, yanking her arms behind her and holding her tight. She struggled, trying to shake his grip, but he was too strong for her.

  “Ma’am, please don’t resist arrest,” Donnie said softly.

  “If you don’t want me to resist, don’t call me ma’am. I’m not old enough to be a ma’am, Donnie.”

  “Yes, Ms. Crawford, now hold still while I snap these on you.”

  “You’re arresting me, too? I didn’t go for anybody’s gun!” Liddy cried.

  “I didn’t either! It was an accident!” Hayley yelled.

  Donnie turned to Ted and Sissy Rivers. “Would you folks mind getting dressed and meeting us over at the station?”

  “Not at all, Officer,” Ted Rivers said, eyeing Hayley and Liddy suspiciously.

  Then he and his wife went back inside the house as Donnie and Earl escorted Hayley and Liddy to their cruiser.

  Mona was already out of the back and getting into the driver’s seat of Liddy’s Mercedes. “I’ll follow behind you and meet you there.”

  Mona got behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and the Mercedes roared to life.

  “I’m really not comfortable with her driving my car,” Liddy said as Donnie put a hand on top of her head and lowered her into the backseat of the squad car.

  “That’s really not our biggest problem right now, Liddy,” Hayley said as Earl did the same to her from the other side.

  Luckily when they all arrived at the station, Sergio was already there and intervened just in time to stop Donnie and Earl from booking Hayley and Liddy on a number of charges. Liddy was quickly dismissed and sent home, and Donnie ushered Hayley into Sergio’s office, where she was brought a cup of coffee and told to sit tight until Sergio was finished interviewing Ted and Sissy Rivers.

  The wait was interminable. But maybe her misguided attempt to expose Ted Rivers’s affair with Karen Applebaum would somehow lead to the truth of what really happened. If anybody could grill a suspect, it was Sergio. He came off at first as this naive foreigner who hadn’t quite mastered the English language, and gave the impression he could easily be manipulated, but before you knew it he was backing you into a corner with the facts. He was a master of getting you so scared and off-kilter, a full confession would just fall right off your tongue. There was a reason he was made chief at such a young age.

  Hayley gulped down the last of her coffee and was peeling away the Styrofoam from her cup out of boredom when the door to the office finally opened and Sergio walked inside.

  “Did you get him to confess about his affair with Karen?” Hayley asked, sitting up in her chair.

  “No,” Sergio said. “He very emphatically said he didn’t have that kind of relationship with her.”

  “He’s lying,” Hayley said.

  “I honestly don’t think he is.”

  “Well, then what were he and his wife fighting about tonight?”

  “She was angry because he wasn’t drying the dinner dishes properly.”

  “What? Now that’s a whole lot of crazy! She was throwing dishes at his head! Over something silly like that? And they live in a mansion! They don’t have a dishwasher?”

  “It’s on the fin,” Sergio said, a serious look on his face.

  “What fin? How did we get onto the topic of fish? Oh, you mean fritz. It’s on the fritz. The dishwasher is broken.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. According to Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, they have a very voluptuous and passionate relationship and sometimes fighting is an afro conditioner.”

  Okay. Hayley didn’t need a translator for this one. Sergio meant the Rivers have a volatile and passionate relationship. And sometimes fighting is an aphrodisiac. She wasn’t about to correct him. She was in enough hot water as it was.

  “Okay, Sergio, suppose they’re telling the truth. Suppose Ted Rivers wasn’t sleeping with Karen. And he’s completely faithful to Sissy. If all that’s true, then what was he doing at Karen’s house on the day before she was murdered?”

  “It was a business meeting.”

  “What kind of business meeting?”

  “She wanted legal advice.”

  “About what?”

  “Karen was going to get married and she wanted to discuss the ins and outs of a pre-natal agreement.”

  Pre-nup agreement.

  “I don’t believe this,” Hayley said, slack-jawed. “Karen was going to tie the knot? To whom?”

  “She didn’t mention a name to Ted and he didn’t ask. He said it wasn’t any of his business. He just gave her information on what kind of financial considerations there should be.”

  This floored Hayley. Karen Applebaum was by no means a rich woman, but she was certainly comfortable. Her father had left her a nice chunk of change when he died, and she certainly made out well in her divorce settlement with Martin. She probably had a nice little
nest egg collecting interest at the First National Bank. So whomever she had fallen in love with might have been of lesser means, and she wanted to protect her portfolio if the marriage went south. If the mystery man wasn’t Ted Rivers, then who was it?

  Chapter 34

  As Hayley drove home from the police station—luckily for her, a free woman—she thought about the facts and was certain of only one thing. The man who sent that big bouquet of flowers to Karen’s funeral most definitely had to be the man she was planning to marry. But, according to Sergio, he had already spoken to the owner of the local florist, and the flowers were not from her shop. And there was no company logo on the card. It was plain white. All she had to go on was the handwritten inscription on the card.

  Hayley blew through the back door of the house to find Gemma and Dustin polishing off the last remnants of a macaroni and cheese casserole, leftovers from a few days ago, having already polished off the pizza they ordered earlier. Hayley suddenly felt like a bad mother. Her kids were eating scraps, while she was out tracking down a killer.

  Gemma reassured her. “If you made us a homemade meal every night the way you’d like to do, we’d just be another statistic for the childhood obesity epidemic.”

  This made Hayley feel a bit better.

  “Where have you been all night?” Dustin asked.

  “At the station. Visiting with Sergio. We never get any one-on-one time anymore, what with Randy always around, so I thought I’d go hang with him for a bit tonight.”

  Gemma and Dustin exchanged dubious looks.

  “What?”

  Gemma pointed to the police scanner Hayley kept plugged in on top of a shelf above her stovetop to keep abreast of all the goings-on in town. “We heard everything. Two women prowlers on West Street. One wearing a lavender blouse. I said to Dustin, didn’t we give Mom a lavender blouse for Christmas last year? And wasn’t she wearing it when she went out tonight?”

  Dustin laughed. “And the other woman with auburn hair? That has to be Aunt Liddy!”

  “Where was Aunt Mona?”

  “In the car,” Hayley said, giving up. “She was the lookout.”

  Hayley wasn’t the only amateur sleuth living at this address.

  “I’m not even going to ask what you were doing,” Gemma said. “Are you going to be in the Police Beat? Is the whole school going to know you were arrested for trespassing?”

  “Nobody got arrested. Okay, I was in handcuffs, but only for fifteen minutes. They took them off as soon as Sergio saw me.”

  “Our mother, the role model,” Gemma said, cracking up.

  “You’re right. I screwed up. Again. I never said my strong suit was leading by example. But you know why I’m doing this. If they arrest me ...”

  “We’ll have to go live with Dad,” Dustin said. “Believe me, none of us wants that!”

  “So did you find any helpful clues on your little adventure tonight?” Gemma asked.

  “Not really,” Hayley said, sighing. “Well, we did learn that Karen was planning to get married.”

  “Who would marry that old hag?” Dustin asked, scrunching up his face and looking disgusted.

  “Dustin, please, we’ve already talked about this,” Hayley said, folding her arms. “The poor woman has died. Show some respect.”

  “You hated her!” Dustin cried.

  “You’re right. I did. When she was alive. But now she’s dead. So I can’t anymore. I think it’s a sin or something. We have to be nice.”

  “Fine,” Dustin said. “I’ll start over. Who was the fine upstanding gentleman who was going to carry Karen off into the sunset to live happily ever after?”

  “Well, don’t overdo it,” Hayley said, grabbing a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and popping it open. “We actually don’t know.”

  “Do you at least have any idea?” Gemma asked.

  “I thought I did, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. The only thing I have to go on is an unsigned card that came with a bouquet of flowers sent to Karen’s funeral. It said, I will miss you forever. Today. Tomorrow. And always. With all my heart. Oh, and whoever it was dotted their ‘i’s’ with little hearts.”

  “Kendra Mitchell,” Gemma said, not even blinking.

  “Excuse me?” Hayley asked, confused.

  “That’s Kendra Mitchell. She’s in my class at school. Her parents own Mitchell Florists in Ellsworth. She works there on weekends taking orders over the phone and she always dots her i’s with little hearts. It’s, like, her signature.”

  Hayley couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her daughter had just produced the most solid lead yet. She reached out and grabbed Gemma by the cheeks and planted a big wet kiss on her. “I don’t tell you how much I love you nearly enough!”

  “It’s okay, really,” Gemma said, wiping her mother’s spittle off her cheek.

  “Will Kendra be there tomorrow?”

  “Yes. She’s there every weekend.”

  Hayley’s mind was racing. “How about we go shopping in Ellsworth tomorrow, Gemma, and I’ll buy you that new Land’s End jacket you’ve been squawking about for weeks?”

  Gemma was onboard immediately.

  “We can have lunch, buy your jacket, and, if we have time, we can pop in and say hello to your friend Kendra,” Hayley said, grinning.

  “Like I’m dumb enough not to know this is all a bribe to pump Kendra for information. But who cares? I’m getting a new jacket!”

  Gemma began dancing around the kitchen.

  “What do I get?” Dustin said.

  “A mother’s undying love,” Hayley said.

  “I’d rather have my Xbox 360 back,” he said, wandering out of the room.

  “Once you’re caught up with your schoolwork, you’ll get your wish,” Hayley said before ushering the kids to their rooms for the night, as it was getting late.

  She then crawled into her own bed with Leroy snuggled into her side. Finally, she thought as she drifted off to sleep, she could see a little progress just off in the distance.

  The following morning, Hayley roused Gemma out of bed shortly before eight, and gently pushed her to take her shower and eat some breakfast as she wanted to hit the road to Ellsworth. By the time Gemma dragged herself downstairs, rubbing the sleepy seeds out of her eyes, it was going on nine. After throwing some frozen waffles in the microwave for Dustin (she wouldn’t mention that in her next column), she steered Gemma toward the car and they were finally on their way.

  Hayley and Gemma arrived fifteen minutes before the shop opened, so Hayley parked the car across the street. She saw some movement inside, but wasn’t about to arouse suspicion by forcing her way in before store hours and hammering Kendra with a barrage of questions. This situation demanded diplomacy and a light touch. Hayley thought she and Gemma could enjoy some mother–daughter quality time while they waited, but Gemma was too busy texting her friends. So Hayley turned on the radio, a soft-rock station, featuring a classic from Air Supply.

  Gemma groaned. “Really, Mother? Must we?”

  Hayley shut off the radio. Normally, she would have told her daughter to just deal with it, but she needed her help when the store opened and couldn’t risk starting an argument.

  Hayley checked her watch. Two minutes after ten. She tapped her right index finger on the steering wheel impatiently.

  Gemma looked up from her cell phone. “Relax, Mother. It means Kendra is the only one working today. She’s always late for school and getting written up. She has no sense of time.”

  Good sign. It was better if Kendra was alone.

  Finally, at ten after ten, Hayley spotted a young girl around Gemma’s age, with long stringy brown hair, spindly arms and legs, and an expressionless, can’t-be-bothered face, unlocking the front door of the shop and flipping the CLOSED sign over so it read OPEN.

  Hayley was out of the car in a flash and raced into the store. Gemma had to run to catch up. Inside, Kendra had already moved back behind the counter and was immersed in one of the Twil
ight novels.

  “Gemma, look who it is!” Hayley said in a booming voice that startled Kendra, who jumped back slightly on the stool where she was sitting.

  “Dial it down a notch, would you, Mom? You’re going to scare her,” Gemma said under her breath. And then she turned to the still somewhat shaken girl. “Hey, Kendra, how’s it going?”

  “Oh, hi, Gemma,” she said, eyeing Gemma’s hyperactive mother warily.

  “We’re here because my mother’s birthday is next week, that’s Gemma’s grandmother ... ,” Hayley said with a big smile.

  “Yeah, I kind of got that,” Kendra said, glancing at Gemma as if to say, “Your mother’s weird.”

  Hayley had a single focus. She knew she was close to finding out who sent the flowers. She had to calm down. Take things slow. She was happy Gemma was there with her to help. She decided to pull back and allow Gemma to take the lead.

  “We were thinking a spring bouquet, lots of different colors. You have anything like that?” Gemma asked.

  “Oh, yeah, we’ll put together something real nice,” Kendra said. “What do you want the card to say?”

  Gemma turned to Hayley. “What do you think, Mom? Something like ‘Happy Birthday, Gram! Have a wonderful day and we wish we were there to help you celebrate. Love, Hayley, Gemma, and Dustin’?”

  “That sounds very nice,” Hayley said.

  They both watched as Kendra grabbed a card and started writing it all down. Sure enough, Kendra dotted all her “i’s” with little hearts.

  “What a nice touch, drawing those little hearts,” Hayley said.

  Kendra stopped and looked at the card. “What? Oh. Right. I’ve been doing that for so long, like since the third grade. I’ve stopped thinking about it.”

  “Well, it’s very sweet,” Hayley said.

  “My mom told me about the flowers at Karen Applebaum’s funeral and I knew it had to be you who had written the note,” Gemma said.

  Kendra looked up at Gemma, a bit confused. “Who?”

  “You know, that lady who died from eating the poisoned clam chowder?” Gemma said.

  “Oh, her! Yeah, what a way to go. And I read they think your mom ...” Kendra caught herself.