Battered to Death (Daphne Martin Cake Mysteries)

by Trent, Gayle

  “After.” His voice took on an edge. “It was after you dumped me for your perfect guy, Todd. Todd the football player. Todd the big man on campus. Todd, the abusive jerk you married. Todd, the man who tried to kill you.”

  At about the third “Todd,” I was wishing I’d chosen to discuss the issue later. But, I’d insisted on talking about it, so I couldn’t very well back out simply because the conversation was becoming uncomfortable for me.

  “I get it,” I said. “You and she dated after you and I broke up.”

  “We didn’t exactly date, but she helped me get over you.”

  “Did you fall in love with her?” I asked.

  “A little. I was closer to falling in love with her than she was to falling in love with me,” he said. “Unlike you, she chose to stay with her high school sweetheart . . . to give their relationship a fighting chance.”

  “You don’t have to continue to throw my past mistakes in my face,” I said softly. “How many times do I have to apologize for them?”

  “None. What good would it do anyway?” he asked. “I’m sorry. Our lives took the paths they took—yours, mine, and Nickie’s. She married her high school sweetheart, and they were happily married for sixteen years. They have two beautiful daughters.”

  “You said were. Have they divorced?” I asked.

  “He died. Eight months ago.”

  “I see.” Here came that rush-to-judgment thing again. Had Ben been settling for me because he’d thought his beloved Nickie was happily married to someone else? Now that she was free, was he ready to run to her side? Tears pricked my eyes, but I fought them. No way could I let Ben think I was crying over him . . . especially if he was going to throw me over for Nickie the Wonderful.

  “She needs me,” Ben said. “She’s trying to get this magazine off the ground. It was a dream she’d shared with her husband—they never suspected that he wouldn’t be here to help her see it through.”

  “So you’re just supposed to step into her husband’s shoes, huh?”

  “It’s not—”

  “Let me finish,” I interrupted. “She might need you, but so do I.” I took a deep breath and put my heart on the line. “I love you, Ben.” I groaned on the inside. Being the first to say the L word was tough for a proud woman like me . . . especially without the reassurance that Ben felt the same way. But I was doing what I felt I had to do. “Your choices are your own, Ben, and I don’t want to influence you . . . but I thought you should know how I feel before you make your decision.”

  “Daph, I—”

  “Don’t say anything right now, all right? It’s late, and we both need to get some rest. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Good night.”

  Okay? Good night? That was quick. No “wait, just let me say I love you too”? He was giving in awfully easily.

  I firmly reined in my emotions and said, “Good night.” Then I ended the call.

  I slumped in my chair and finally let my tears fall. Had he been going to tell me he loved me before I’d interrupted him? Maybe. Or maybe not. But as much as I’d like to have heard those words right then, I needed actions more. I needed Ben to stay in Brea Ridge.

  4

  MY ALARM clock went off Friday morning, and I immediately hit the snooze button. When it went off the second time, I hit it again. I hadn’t slept terribly well the night before, and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to another episode of the Chef Jordan Richards’s This Is Your Pathetic Life show.

  When the alarm shrilled a third time, Sparrow stepped into the doorway and meowed. She wasn’t comfortable enough with me yet to risk jumping onto the bed to see what was wrong with me, but she’d check things out from across the room. Being a former stray, she might never be willing to jump up onto the bed. But this morning, I was okay with that. I had enough problems without having tuna breath wafted in my face.

  This time, I shut off the alarm, stretched, and got out of bed. Yawning, I stumbled into the bathroom and started filling the tub.

  Sparrow followed, watching me intently.

  “Yes, Sparrow, I’ll take the time to feed you before I leave.”

  Seemingly satisfied, Her Majesty went to the kitchen to await the filling of her bowl.

  I took a quick bath, slipped on my robe, and fed Sparrow. I then returned to my closet to stare in despair at my clothes. Nearly all the other students had worn chef’s uniforms yesterday. I didn’t have a chef’s uniform. I didn’t have any kind of uniform. Part of the joy of being self-employed was being able to wear whatever I wanted.

  I didn’t want to wear black pants again. I couldn’t wear jeans—I didn’t want Chef Richards to call me sloppy like he had Mr. Conroy. I certainly didn’t have any snappy one-liners to come back at Chef Richards with. And even if I did, I was sure that he would somehow get the upper hand.

  If I wore a pencil skirt, would it appear I was trying too hard? Maybe I could wear a houndstooth pencil skirt, a red blouse, and black flats. The flats, rather than heels, would make the look more suitable for a day of being on my feet and thus it wouldn’t appear that I was trying too hard.

  I growled under my breath at myself for being so concerned about Chef Richards’s assessment of my appearance. I’d gone through years of being debased by Todd Martin, and I’d finally broken free of that. Was I really going to let this stranger . . . this bully . . . come into my life and tear down in two days what little self-worth I’d spent the past year trying to build up?

  I huffed out a breath. It was so easy to lose ground . . . so easy to hear Todd’s taunting voice in my head. In fact, it was harder to ignore Chef Richards’s scathing voice in my mind than it was to make myself hear the voice of the self-confident, independent woman I was still struggling to become. At forty, you’d think I’d be better at self–pep talks. But I wasn’t. I’d heard my negatives extolled all my life. Those negatives were difficult to replace with positives, no matter how hard I tried.

  It was those numerous negatives that had made me feel so insecure when I’d looked at those photos of Nickie Zane . . . especially the one of her with Ben. All those venomous voices in my head kept telling me that of course Ben would choose her over me. Why wouldn’t he? What did I possibly have to offer him that she could not?

  I put aside those feelings. I didn’t have time to ruminate on Ben, Nickie, and the fate of our futures. I had eight hours of Australian string work class with an insufferable teacher to get through.

  ABOUT A HUNDRED yards from the Brea Ridge Inn, there was a roadblock. I saw a fire truck, an ambulance, and at least three police cars within the roadblock, all with their strobe lights on. I figured someone had been in a traffic accident. I was sorry for them, but I checked my watch. Chef Richards wasn’t the type to forgive tardiness despite your having an excellent reason like being unable to make it to the inn.

  I still had a little leeway before I became ensnared in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, so I went down a side street and parked at a convenience store. Hopefully, I could take a quick break sometime throughout the day—we got thirty minutes for lunch, although that was taken in the classroom—to come out and move my car before it got towed.

  I grabbed my purse and hurried up the sidewalk to the inn, glad I’d decided to wear flat shoes. I went through the grass and around to the back parking lot in order to both avoid the scene of the traffic accident and to try to make it to class on time.

  I was surprised to find that there were police officers in the back parking lot too. One of them stepped forward as I approached.

  “Ma’am, what are you doing back here?” he asked.

  “I’m trying to get to my Australian string work class,” I said. “I’m one of Chef Jordan Richards’s students. The class is part of the first annual—”

  “The class has been canceled for today,” the patrolman interrupted.

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding! He’s only here through Sunday,” I said. “When is he going to make this up to
us?”

  Officer McAfee, with whom I was familiar and who happened to look like a younger version of Denzel Washington, joined us.

  “Officer McAfee, what’s going on?” I asked.

  He took my elbow and began walking me away from the parking lot. “Chef Jordan Richards is dead, Ms. Martin.”

  I stopped walking and gaped up at him. “What?”

  He nodded. “Somebody cracked him over the head with something hard and then drowned him in a big bowl of cake batter. That’s how he was found . . . with his face submerged in cake batter.”

  I hadn’t thought my eyes could get any wider, but apparently they could. And all I could seem to say was, “What?”

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you back to your car so you can go home. I’ll probably be talking with you later. In fact, we’ll be talking with all of Chef Richards’s students as soon as the crime scene has been processed.”

  As he led me to the front of the building and past the barricade, I tried to make sense of the whole Chef-Richards-was-murdered thing.

  “Do you guys know who did it?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Again, we’ll be talking with you once our crime scene techs have gathered evidence.”

  “But do you have suspects?”

  “From what I hear, Chef Richards wasn’t Mr. Popular. Everybody who has ever been in contact with the guy could be a potential suspect,” Officer McAfee said.

  “Well, yeah . . . I imagine that’s true.”

  He looked around. “Where did you park?”

  “Oh. I parked at the convenience store. I can get back there on my own,” I said. “Thanks for escorting me this far.”

  “No problem,” he said, assessing my eyes.

  I tried to keep my expression blank.

  “You aren’t too shaken up to drive, are you?” Officer McAfee asked.

  “No. I’m all right. Thanks, though.” I hurried toward my car and thought about Ben’s words from the night before. Bullies usually wind up meeting their match. Chef Jordan Richards had obviously met his.

  I WAS SHAKING when I got home. A man I’d learned from, been humiliated by, disparaged, and yet somehow admired for everything he’d accomplished in his baking career was dead. And not just dead—he’d been murdered. I shivered involuntarily. Had someone followed Chef Richards to Brea Ridge to murder him? Or had it been unplanned—someone acting out in a fit of rage? Had one of my classmates killed Chef Richards?

  I put my keys and my purse on the island in the kitchen and then went to sit on the sofa in the living room. I didn’t sit there long, though, before I got up, grabbed the phone, and called Ben. My call went straight to voice mail. Not really knowing what to say, I hung up.

  I paced, phone in hand. I called Violet. Again, the call went straight to voice mail. I was beginning to get paranoid. Was everybody that busy or were they ditching my calls? I realized that Ben and Violet weren’t “everybody,” but in my little corner of the world, they were just about everybody . . . especially when I was in a panic and needed someone to talk with.

  I continued pacing and decided to call Myra. Before I could dial the number, she knocked on the kitchen door. I knew it was her because she generally taps out “Shave and a haircut, two bits.”

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” I said, throwing open the door to let her in.

  “What’s wrong? Are you sick? I saw you come home early. You didn’t deck the nasty little troll, did you?”

  “I’m not sick,” I said. “And I’m not the one who decked Chef Jordan Richards.”

  Her jaw dropped. “You mean somebody really did? Tell me all about it!”

  “Somebody did more than deck him. Somebody hit him over the head and then shoved his face into a big bowl of cake batter.”

  “Well, good!” She laughed. “He had it coming. Did he have a big knot on his head? Did you sneak a picture with the camera on your phone?”

  “Myra, he’s dead!”

  She staggered backward, clasping at her chest. “Oh, no! And I said he deserved it! I didn’t mean it!” She looked skyward as if she were afraid of being struck by lightning.

  I took her shoulders. “I know you didn’t. You thought he just got knocked around a little bit.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “I didn’t dream he’d been killed.”

  “Let me make us some coffee, and we’ll go into the living room and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  She nodded. “Sounds good. The sooner Mark and I can get to work on this, the better.”

  I busied myself with the coffeemaker to keep Myra from seeing me roll my eyes heavenward. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate her enthusiasm for detective work, but I figured that one, she was out of her league trying to investigate a murder, and two, Mark would wisely leave the investigation to the police. After all, he didn’t have a dog in this fight. And without a client paying him for his time, wouldn’t he rather focus on those clients who were paying him?

  “I’ll need a notebook and a pen,” Myra said.

  “There are several pens and a notebook in the caddy by the refrigerator,” I told her.

  “Thanks.”

  I heard her fishing the items she needed out of the caddy. I took two mugs out of the cabinet.

  “Sugar and creamer?” I asked. That’s how Myra usually took her coffee, but sometimes she only wanted sugar . . . or artificial sweetener . . . that depended on whether or not she was dieting that day.

  “Please,” she called. She’d already gone into the living room and, I imagined, set up her home-away-from-home detective office.

  I poured the coffee into the mugs, added creamer and sugar to both, and put the mugs on a tray with a saucer of biscotti. I needed a little something to gnaw on, and I preferred it not be my fingernails. I carried the tray into the living room.

  Sure enough, Myra was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table with her back to the sofa. She was using the coffee table as an oversized lap desk. In my pencil skirt, I couldn’t very well slink under the table with her, so I put the tray on the edge of the coffee table and sat on the pink-and-white gingham chair.

  “The first thing we need to do is make a suspect list,” she said.

  I glanced at the paper in front of her and noticed that it had SUSPECT LIST written right at the very top. My brows rose when I saw that the first name on her suspect list was mine.

  “Me?!” I made an indignant yelp. “Why is my name number one on your list?”

  “Because yours is the only name I know,” she said. “You’ll have to tell me the other students’ names.”

  “Myra, do you honestly think I’m a suspect?”

  “Yes, honey, because you are. Trust me. The police will be looking at every student in that class as a suspect.”

  She was right. I ran a hand over my face. “Okay. So now what?”

  “Tell me the names of the other students.” She took a sip of her coffee before dipping a piece of the biscotti into it. She bit the cookie. “Mmm. This is good. Did you make these?”

  I shook my head. “No. They’re store-bought.”

  “Well, they’re still good. You know, sometimes store-bought is just as good or better than what you can make yourself and even a better value once in a while.”

  “I guess,” I said absently.

  “Oh, honey, I know. Let me tell you, my grandmother Tilly couldn’t cook worth a hill of beans, but not a one of us knew it until the day of her funeral.”

  I frowned. “How’d you know it then?”

  “Because other than family and church members, the only mourners were chefs and bakers,” Myra said. “They were gonna miss Nana Tilly. She’d kept them in business for years. See, she had all these ‘special recipes’ we thought she’d come up with on her own. At the funeral, my brother Alfred was moaning, ‘Who’ll make my favorite red velvet cake now that Nana’s gone?’ And Earl Watkins, who ran Watkins Bakery over in Damascus at the time, handed Alfred his business ca
rd. Alfred asked, ‘What’s this for?’ And Earl patted Alfred on the shoulder and said, ‘Whenever you want your Nana’s red velvet cake, you call the shop, and I’ll make you one.’ ”

  “But didn’t Alfred just think that Nana Tilly had given Earl her recipe? Or that Earl was offering to make him a cake like the one she’d made?” I asked.

  “At first, he did. But then others started coming up and saying things like, ‘And when y’all get a hankering for Nana Tilly’s chicken and dumplings, let me know.’ Or ‘I’m the one who makes the lemon meringue pie Carl Jr. enjoys so much.’ We figured out pretty quick that Nana Tilly was doing well to boil water on her own.” She looked pensively up at the ceiling. “I reckon that’s why she got so skinny after the Department of Motor Vehicles took her driver’s license away. She’d told us she was too depressed to cook. Truth was, she couldn’t very well have us drive her all over the country getting her famous dishes without giving her secret away, could she?”

  “I guess not,” I said. Part of me was dying to ask why the DMV took Nana Tilly’s driver’s license away, but the other part of me was wise enough to keep my mouth shut and not ask a question that would lead her off on another twenty-minute tangent. After all, I was eager to have my name not be the only one on Myra’s suspect list.

  “So.” She tapped the notepad. “Who are the other students?”

  “I don’t know all their names,” I said. “But there were ten of us. There was Gavin Conroy—he was the one Chef Richards called a slob. There was a Ms. Wilson—I’m not sure of her first name, but Chef Richards almost made her cry. My table mate was Lou Gimmel from South Carolina.”

  “Slow down a little,” Myra said. “I’m writing as fast as I can.”

  “Put down Fiona,” I said. “I don’t know her last name. And she wasn’t one of the students. She was Chef Richards’s assistant. Naturally, he treated her too like something offensive that he’d stepped in. Like I said, I don’t know her last name, but unless there’s a lot of turnover in his kitchen—”

  “I imagine there is,” Myra interjected.