Three Blonde Mice

by Jane Heller

  She smiled. She was missing an incisor, poor thing. Didn’t a socially enlightened institution like Whitley provide its employees with dental coverage? “This not your cottage, Elaine,” she said oddly but, of course, accurately.

  “Sure it is,” I said. She’d never seen me before and vice versa. On the other hand, she may very well have seen the Gumperses go in and out.

  Sonia shook her head, her hair platinum blonde with black roots. “It belong to fatty peoples. Very nice. Leave good tips.”

  The Gumperses were tipping already? I never tipped housekeepers at hotels until I checked out. I’d always leave some cash on the dresser next to the TV remote and then wonder if it was enough. “Okay, yes. You must mean Connie and Ronnie. They’re friends of mine. They asked me to come and get something they left behind this morning. We’ve been cooking chocolate desserts today. I wish I’d brought you a chocolate peanut butter ball.”

  Sonia stood there with a skeptical look. “Can’t let guest into other guest’s cottage. Don’t want to lose job,” she said. “Have two kids and husband that love vodka.”

  I took the liberty of reaching out to touch Sonia’s arm in a gesture I hoped would convey my sisterly empathy. “I feel your pain. I have a boyfriend who’s afraid to get married,” I said.

  “Give me purple top,” she said as if she were making perfect sense.

  “Purple top,” I repeated because I still wasn’t grasping the situation.

  “Don’t have money to buy nice clothes.” She pointed to my blouse. “So I take top and you take key to cottage.”

  She was giving me the key? “I thought you were worried about losing your job, Sonia.”

  “I am excellent housekeeper, Elaine. Won’t lose job.” She clucked with the confidence of someone who made shakedown deals like this every day.

  “I don’t know. The top is my favorite piece of clothing. It has sentimental value,” I said, deciding to up the stakes since she was willing to bargain. Nothing ventured and all that. “My mother got it for me for Christmas, the day before she fell and shattered her hip, had a stroke, and lost the ability to speak. She can only blink when I visit. She’s in a nursing home now and, well, let’s just say it breaks my heart every time I see her.” My mother was in perfect health and I hoped I hadn’t just jinxed her. “So I’ll give you the top if you give me the keys to all the cottages, not just this one.”

  She arched her right eyebrow, which, by the way, was as black as her roots. “All cottages? What for? You are thief, Elaine?”

  “Hardly,” I scoffed. “I’m a guest here.” I pulled my own key out of my jeans pocket and showed it to her. “It’s just that it’s almost the end of the Cultivate Our Bounty week at Whitley and I’ve gotten very close to the other guests I’ve been cooking with. I wanted to leave each of them a surprise in their cottages—a handwritten note telling them how much I enjoyed the time with them.”

  “Why not leave notes at front desk?”

  “Too impersonal,” I said.

  “No. Can’t give you all keys,” she said.

  “No keys, no purple top,” I said, amazing myself with my brazenness. Still, I had nothing to lose except a two-year-old article of clothing purchased at Bloomies during their 20 percent off friends and family sale.

  “Okay, okay. You give me top, I give you keys,” she said. “I finished cleaning cottages for today anyway. You return keys to housekeeping office when you finish, and I go home to kids and drunk husband.”

  “Oh, thank you, Sonia. Thank you very much,” I said, thrilled that she was agreeing to hand me access to the personal belongings of all the suspects. “Just one thing: If I give you my top, what will I wear?”

  She untied her white bib apron and shoved it into my arms. “I’m done today. Don’t need. Put it over camisole and say you’re housekeeper if anybody asks.”

  “Good thinking.” I pulled the blouse over my head and exchanged garments with Sonia. All things considered, it seemed like a win-win.

  “Too bad they don’t pay me to think,” she said.

  “Where’s the housekeeping office for when I return the keys?” I asked when I’d finished outfitting myself in her bib. I looked like I’d wandered in from Red Lobster.

  “Over there.” She nodded toward a weathered barn that presumably was not populated by cows or chickens. “Return keys and keep apron for funny souvenir from vacation. Hotel has plenty more.” She laughed and took off.

  “What’s with the outfit?” said Simon as he popped up next to me while I was trying to open the Gumpers’s door. The lock needed some WD-40. “Not that I mind it,” he went on, appraising my apron. “Just the opposite. It’s like one of those French maid costumes only without the little skirt.”

  “I’d explain, but it’ll take too long,” I said, opening the door at last. “Let’s get started.”

  The Gumperses weren’t the neat freaks I was. Their cottage was strewn with discarded clothes, wet towels, and empty packages of Doritos, Cheetos, strawberry Pop Tarts, and beef jerky.

  Wishing I’d brought surgical gloves, I began to pick through their detritus in search of any hint that one of them had written the letter to Chef Hill, while Simon poked around in the dresser and closet for concealed weapons. He didn’t find any. We looked for DVDs of Terminator 2 and Ghostbusters, the movies mentioned in the poison pen letter, and didn’t find those either.

  “They’ve got matching laptops,” I said, pointing to the desk, “But there’s no printer, so how did the letter find its way into my tote bag?”

  “Maybe they used the printer in Whitley’s business center,” said Simon. “Or more likely, they wrote the letter before coming here.”

  “Oh wow. Look at this, Simon.” I waved him over to Connie’s computer. There was a folder marked “Chef Hill” in which there were scanned copies of his biography, his tour itinerary, his TV appearances, and his headshot.

  He leaned in closer to examine the photo. “She put an x across his face.”

  “My God. Who does that?” I said, my heart pounding. “Somebody who wants the person in the photograph dead, that’s who.”

  “It does make her seem a little deranged.” He moved on to Ronnie’s laptop. After a few clicks of the mouse, he opened a Word document entitled ‘Hit List.’ “Looks like he put together the names of the chefs who were voted the top farm-to-table chefs in America.”

  “You took me to Dan Barber’s Blue Hill once,” I said, referring to one of the chefs on the hit list.

  Simon glanced up from the computer screen. “You ordered the Brussels sprouts appetizer, and the horseradish sauce made you sneeze. It was the daintiest sneeze I’d ever heard—a soft little ‘tch’ instead of a loud ‘ha-tschoo.’”

  “Sweet of you to remember,” I said before refocusing on Ronnie’s document. “Well, what do you know? Jason Hill is at the top of his hit list. He probably intends to take out each chef, one by one, in order to restore America to the land of Olive Gardens and Applebee’s.”

  “It’s a stretch to imagine someone killing someone over restaurant trends, but if the week here has taught me anything, it’s that people take this foodie stuff very seriously.” He checked his watch. “We need to shut down both computers and get going.”

  “Right.”

  We hurried over to Lake and Gabriel’s cottage, which was antiseptic compared to the Gumpers’s. Not a stray article of clothing on the floor or errant hair in the bathroom sink. No bags of amaranth. No crossed-out photos of Chef Hill or hit lists on their computers, either. But a document in Lake’s sleek white Kate Spade carryon bag caught my attention.

  “Simon?” I motioned him over, waving the pages. “Judging by all the ‘whereases’ and ‘heretofores,’ it’s some sort of legal document that’s dated a month ago.” I handed it to him.

  “Cushman & Wakefield,” he said, pointing to the letterhead. “That’s where Gabriel works.”

  “And Planet Empire is Chef Hill’s corporation,” I said. “We’re
looking at an agreement between the two companies, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s a lease,” said Simon. He gave it a quick read, then looked up. “And it’ll blow your mind.”

  “Tell me, tell me.” I jumped up and down like Crazy Connie.

  “Jason Hill has leased space in New Jersey in the Paramus Park Mall,” Simon explained, shaking his head in amazement. “He’s opening a fast-food restaurant called Burger Mania—your basic McDonald’s.”

  “No.”

  “It’s right here.”

  “So the farm-to-table king is a sell-out?”

  “Let me read the post-it that’s attached. It says: “Dear Gabe. I understand you were reluctant to handle this transaction, but I’m glad you did. Paramus Park has been a valued client for many years, and our job is to lease space that’ll promote growth for all the businesses in the mall. Our personal opinions about the businesses themselves are of no importance. Please keep that in mind. Remember, too, that this transaction is confidential unless and until Jason Hill’s people decide to announce his involvement. Your discretion in this matter is appreciated. That being said, it’s rather hypocritical that a chef who personifies clean, healthy eating would be launching a chain of greasy burger joints. I guess he’s more interested in making money than saving the planet. Such is life. Regards, Adam.”

  I was dumbfounded. Dumbfounded! “So Mr. Purity-in-Food is a fraud, just like the murderer’s letter said. For what? To buy more yachts? Or support his coke habit? And why did the Vanderkloot-Arnolds bring the lease to Whitley?”

  “They worshipped Chef Hill and his food philosophy,” Simon said. “Maybe they feel so betrayed that they plan to wave the lease in his face and kill him.”

  “They sure pretend they still worship him,” I said. “But the letter writer boasted about doing just that.” I inhaled deeply and recalled the recent and very weird conversations with Lake and Gabriel. “Maybe writing the letter and murdering the chef was the ‘life choice’ they said they were wrestling with. Incredible, isn’t it? We have four suspects already and we’re just getting started.”

  Simon placed the document back in Lake’s carryon bag. Then he tapped his watch again. “Got to keep moving, Slim.”

  Next up was Beatrice’s cottage. The first thing I noticed upon entering was her cell phone. It was on the dresser, and I assumed she’d left it there because phones were verboten during our agritourism activities.

  “Let’s see if Mrs. Birnbaum has any messages,” I said, picking up the phone and powering it up. “Yup. She has one. Care to listen?”

  Simon put his ear next to the phone. “Ready when you are.”

  “Mrs. Birnbaum, it’s Jason Hill. I got all six thousand of your messages, and in case you didn’t notice, I’m a busy guy and couldn’t drop everything to call you back. What’s your problem anyway, lady? All I did was ask you if your son would be interested in coming to work for me when we met at that charity thing in Palm Beach. For Christ’s sake, it was at least two years ago. He was the one who told me he wanted to get into the business. When he showed up here at Whitley, I didn’t say anything about meeting him before because you strong-armed me not to. But what’s the big deal if he apprentices at the Chicago restaurant? Sure he’d have to start from the ground up—he has no restaurant experience—but it would be a nice spot for a guy who wants to change careers at his age. And if I do offer him a job at the end of the week, it’ll be up to him to say yes or no. I mean, he’s out of diapers and probably makes his own decisions. So chill out, would you please, and leave me the hell alone.”

  “And she told me she thought her son was controlling,” said Simon. “Your boyfriend’s mother is a complete loon-ball.”

  “Wait, so let me get this straight,” I said. “Jason Hill has been thinking of offering Jonathan a job in Chicago—a job that would not only take him away from his father’s law firm but leave Beatrice all by herself in Palm Beach? I’m not surprised she’s upset. Talk about a possible motive for murder.”

  “She wouldn’t have made a good mother-in-law anyway,” said Simon, consoling me with a kiss. “Have I told you I really like you in that apron?”

  “Yes.” I wriggled out of his embrace. “We have five bona fide suspects now, Simon. Five.”

  “I’m willing to wager that your boyfriend will make six.”

  When we let ourselves into Jonathan’s cottage, I showed Simon the three cookbooks. “He brought them all the way from Palm Beach. Strange, right?”

  Simon flipped through the pages of the first cookbook. “Looks like your boyfriend does have a grudge against the chef—a major-league one.”

  I gasped when I saw that a recipe in the chapter on vegetables, the one for fried cauliflower, pumpkin seeds, and glögg (whatever that was), had been circled and marked with the word “plagiarized” in bold letters. In the chapter on meats, there was a recipe for pheasant breast, turnips, cranberries, and potato-celeriac pave (whatever that was) that had been similarly circled and marked. “Jonathan is accusing Jason Hill of stealing his recipes?”

  “So it seems.”

  The other two cookbooks contained more recipes that Jonathan had deemed plagiarized. I’d heard through one of my book publishing clients that chefs were often accused of stealing each other’s recipes and passing them off as their own, but would an icon like Chef Hill steal recipes from a food blogger, particularly since he disdained bloggers?

  “Chef Hill’s cookbooks are probably cobbled together by his employees without much quality control or oversight,” said Simon. “They could be full of bootlegged content.”

  “Maybe Jonathan found out he’d been plagiarized after he met Chef Hill two years ago at the Palm Beach function,” I theorized.

  “And he lugged the cookbooks to Whitley to confront the chef and kill him,” said Simon.

  “No, I’m not buying it,” I said. “He’s too levelheaded to commit murder. He bought me flowers and danced me around his cottage and told me I was his destiny.”

  Simon couldn’t resist a smile. “You don’t believe in destiny, Slim. You told me that the first time we made love. You also said I was too handsome to take seriously, that you thought guys who looked like me were bound to cheat.”

  “Must have been a real turn-on. Sorry.”

  “I forgive you. Want to break into Alex’s cottage and call it a day?”

  “Sure.”

  We arrived at Alex Langer’s cottage, took a quick inventory of her belongings, and discovered that she was a notetaker. Like every decent hotel, Whitley provided a pad of paper by the phone, and Alex had scribbled all over hers. Her penmanship was terrible, but I was able to make out that she’d written a “To Call” list. At the top was Rick, her fiancé.

  “It’s kind of odd that she has to remind herself to call him,” I said. “Not that I know anything about having a fiancé.”

  Simon ignored my jab. “She’s got other names on here,” he said, reading the list over my shoulder: someone named Danny, a Doctor Nash, a spa called Clouds, and Saks, Neiman’s, and Bergdorf’s.”

  “Interesting. Alex dresses like a Boho chick, but her taste in department stores is Upper East Side Princess,” I said. “Maybe Rick pays for her clothes like he paid for her week at Whitley and her diamond engagement ring, not that I know anything about diamond engagement rings.”

  “You never quit, do you?”

  “Feel free to go back and join the other agritourists if I’m too aggravating,” I said. “They’re probably still eating chocolate marquise—”

  I heard a noise outside the cottage door and froze.

  Simon reached for my hand and hustled me into the bathroom just as someone entered the cottage. As he and I hid in the rainfall shower, I prayed that the shower door, which was made of a custom glass etched and sandblasted with designs of farm animals, would obscure us in case Alex came in to pee. I also wondered why Jackie and Pat hadn’t kept her busy like they were supposed to.

  While Simon looked as calm
as a person who hid in people’s bathrooms every day, I remained rigid, frantically thinking of what our reason for being there could be if Alex did indeed find us. I had diarrhea and her cottage was nearby? Simon got sweaty and needed a cold shower? We both had something private we wanted to talk to her about? They were all idiotic reasons, so I gave up and just stood there quaking.

  “Hey babe. Miss you.”

  She must have come back to call her fiancé, I thought, perfectly happy to eavesdrop rather than have to explain our presence.

  “Yup, I’ll be ready,” she said in response to something he’d said. “Oh yeah,” she went on. “I’ve had a great time here. Wait till you see what a good cook I am now.” She laughed, then after a beat: “No, babe. He didn’t teach us how to make enchiladas or any of your other Mexican favorites.” She listened for a few seconds, then: “I know, babe. But it’ll be a celebration of us, of what a great team we are. Don’t let the details throw you. Let me handle everything.”

  So they’re planning their wedding, I thought. How sweet. I wondered if the event would be held in the city or if it would be one of those overly complicated “destination weddings” where everyone is forced to fly to some remote location they can’t afford. I wondered if Rick had a mother like Beatrice whom Alex would have to placate. I wondered if she would quit her hygienist job as soon as she was Missus Whatever-Rick’s-Last-Name-Was.

  “You sound stressed about it,” she said. “I get that it’s a big step, but it’ll all work out, I promise.”

  Wow. Rick was one nervous groom. Maybe he wanted Alex to nail down a venue, a caterer, a florist, and a photographer, never mind get invitations out on time, and she’d been too preoccupied with her screenplay to carry out her bridezilla duties. When I’d fantasized about Simon and me getting married, I pictured us doing the deed at my apartment, simply, tastefully, saying our vows in front of one of those celebrants who gets ordained on the Internet, our close friends and family beside us, a harpist plucking little heavenly notes before and after the ceremony. Of course, I now had to erase that particular fantasy from my mind because it wasn’t coming true.