by Trent, Gayle
“No matter what, the person who did do the murdering now believes Pauline knows the truth, right?” Juanita looked at China. “Is that not what Myra told us?”
“That is what she told us,” China said. “Either way, there’s still a killer on the loose, so you be careful out there, Daphne.”
I promised her I would. “I’m going to run over and see Pauline for a minute. I’m hoping to deliver her trophy to her. I think that would cheer her up. While I’m at the hospital, I’ll try to find out exactly what she knows . . . or thinks she knows.” To make Myra happy—because I knew word would get back to her—I said, “And I’ll ask her if the doctor ordered anyone to run a tox screen.”
China nodded. “Good idea. Let us know if we can help.”
“Thanks, China,” I said. “I will.”
I approached Ms. Compton. “Hi.”
She turned and smiled at me. “Hi there. Congratulations on your successful competition.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. “I’m going over to the hospital to check on Pauline. Would you like for me to take her prizes over? They might cheer her up—especially the trophy.”
“They very well might. That would be wonderful,” said Ms. Compton. “Please tell her I’ll be over to check on her later this evening if she hasn’t been released when I finish up here. And please also let her know I’ll box up her prize-winning flowers as soon as they’re photographed, and I’ll keep them safe for her.”
“I’ll do that.” I started to go pick up the trophy and prize basket but stopped and turned back to Ms. Compton. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Do you have any theories on who murdered Chef Richards?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “I honestly don’t. I know people can get awfully upset and protective of their craft. And you can hurt someone’s feelings in an instant about their work and not even realize you’ve done so. But I believe this was more personal. For a person to kill a man, I would think—hope—there would be something more valuable at stake than a cake, or a technique, or a criticism.”
“So would I.” I picked up the trophy and prize basket. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Take your time, dear,” she said. “It will take at least two hours for all the cakes to be photographed.”
BEFORE GOING TO the hospital, I went by my house to drop off my trophies and prize baskets and to feed Sparrow. The cat came running to greet me when I unlocked the door. For a stray that wouldn’t come near me before I’d spent weeks coaxing her with prosciutto, she now looked forward—albeit cautiously—to my presence.
“Hey, Sparrow,” I cooed. “How’s my pretty girl, huh?” I set the prize baskets on the counter and went back out to get the trophies.
“Check these out,” I told the cat when I returned. “First place in the novelty cake category and third place in the wedding cake category. Not too shabby, huh? No, it’s not shabby at all.”
Sparrow meowed her agreement . . . or her hunger. More than likely, it was her hunger.
I opened a can of cat food and poured it into her dish. Then I filled her water dish before going into the bathroom to freshen up. First things first—I washed my hands in case any of the smelly cat food juice got onto them. Next I touched up my makeup.
Ben hadn’t been subtle about his hope that dinner in the room he’d rented would turn into an overnight stay, so I packed a bag just in case. I was still a tad miffed about his lying to me about the surveillance footage, but I knew his heart had been in the right place.
Considering the placement of Ben’s heart led me to wonder if he was any closer to making his decision about leaving Brea Ridge for Kentucky . . . and Nickie Zane.
I dropped a rollerball dispenser of his favorite perfume into my overnight bag. Hey, Nickie wasn’t getting him without a fight.
Not that I’d kill her over him. . . . If he didn’t choose me on his own, I didn’t want him. Really. Really.
Kimmie Compton had made a good argument earlier. People seldom kill over mere hurt feelings like criticism of their string work or their icing techniques. People kill when something they truly care about is threatened—a career, a loved one, a lifestyle. Who had something that Chef Richards had threatened? Or what did Chef Richards have that someone else wanted?
As I brushed my hair, I decided to start with what Chef Richards had that someone else might want. He had a lucrative career as a celebrity chef. Lots of the decorators who came to the first annual Brea Ridge Taste Bud Temptation Cake and Confectionary Arts Exhibit and Competition wanted that.
I thought it was something Fiona wanted, but I wasn’t sure. Either she wanted to be the celebrity, or else she wanted to work for the celebrity . . . doing much of the work but getting none of the glory. That was confusing to me. Fiona was confusing to me. It had appeared that she’d wanted to enter the cake contest—and goodness knows her work was above par—but Chef Richards had kept her too busy to give her time to prepare a cake for the competition. Had he kept her too busy on purpose, not wanting her to get a taste of success? Had he truly kept her that busy? Or had Fiona used Chef Richards as an excuse not to enter the contest because she’d been afraid she might fail? Also, Gavin had accused Chef Richards of hiring Fiona just to “get in her pants.” Had Fiona and the chef been having an affair?
Pauline Wilson definitely would have loved to have unseated Jordan Richards as the reigning celebrity chef. But seeing that she was in the hospital recovering from a near heart attack caused, in part, by a congenital defect, would she have had the strength to hit Chef Richards hard enough to knock him out or to drown him in cake batter? I kind of doubted it.
Gavin Conroy was certainly strong enough to knock out Chef Richards and then suffocate him in the cake batter, but did he want to be a celebrity chef? He didn’t seem as eager to please the television executives as Pauline had. Of course, Pauline had taken things to the extreme, but still, Gavin simply hadn’t appeared to be impressed by them at all. Were Mark and Myra right? Was Gavin interested in Lily Richards? And if so, why would he feel the need to knock her former husband over the head in order to pursue a relationship with her?
Still, even though the couple were either separated or divorced, Ms. Richards seemed dedicated to Jordan. But Fiona had called her a horrible flirt and claimed that Ms. Richards had lied about Jordan’s drinking problem. Fiona had told me that she didn’t have a current partner. Was she holding out hope for a serious relationship with Chef Richards? Maybe she thought they’d make the perfect celebrity chef couple. But if that were the case, she wouldn’t have killed the man . . . not unless he’d told her in no uncertain terms that they would never be a couple—celebrity or otherwise.
Fiona hadn’t wasted any time asking Lou if he needed an assistant. On the other hand, she hadn’t wasted any time asking me if I needed one. Maybe Fiona was desperate for money. Had Chef Richards not paid her? Had he cheated her somehow?
I let out a growl of frustration as I turned off the bathroom light and carried my overnight bag into the kitchen. How did one narrow down a field of suspects from the list of people who despised Jordan Richards? He could have possibly constituted a threat to at least two students with regard to their careers and/or their personal lives. I thought a moment. And Chef Richards had been a threat to Alex. In fact, he’d been more than a threat to Alex. He’d caused the child to have a setback in his emotional development. But wasn’t Chef Richards already dead when Alex, his mother, and his uncle had arrived in Brea Ridge?
In addition to all the people I knew of who might’ve wanted to kill Chef Richards, there were hundreds of other visitors to the first annual Brea Ridge Taste Bud Temptation Cake and Confectionary Arts Exhibit and Competition who might’ve come here just to do the old boy in. The police might never catch Chef Richards’s killer.
23
I DROVE TO the hospital, planning to ask Pauline about the argument she overheard between Chef Richards and Gavin Conroy. If sh
e knew something that could possibly implicate Gavin in Chef Richards’s murder, she needed to come forward with it before it was too late . . . before Gavin left Brea Ridge.
When I arrived, I asked the nurse in the emergency room how Pauline was doing.
“She’s doing just fine,” said the nurse. “In fact, I’ll be bringing her paperwork in soon. She needs to look it over and sign a couple of things, and then she’ll be free to go.”
“Great. She’s staying at the Brea Ridge Inn, and I’ll be going back there,” I said. “I’ll be happy to give her a ride.”
“Excellent.” The nurse smiled. “I was planning on calling her a cab, but you know how slow those things are around here. The only ones we have are those driven by Winnie Amos and Jack Griffin, and getting either one of those to roll off the couch on a Sunday afternoon is like pulling teeth.”
I laughed. “Thanks for taking such good care of Pauline.”
“That’s what we’re here for.” She nodded toward the trophy. “What did she win?”
“First place in the floral sugar craft competition,” I said.
“Well. Good for her.”
I went into Pauline’s room. I wanted to be discreet in case she was getting changed, so before stepping around the curtain into her area, I called, “Congratulations!”
Based on the nurse’s report, I expected to see Pauline dressed in the clothes she had arrived in this morning rather than in the hospital gown. Instead, she was not only still wearing the gown, but she was clutching the blanket up around her chin so tightly that her knuckles were white.
“Pauline, what’s wrong?” I asked, placing her trophy and prize basket on the table. “I thought you’d be getting ready to go. The nurse told me it was only a matter of getting the paperwork filled out before you can leave. Are you feeling sick again? Should I go get the nurse?”
She rapidly shook her head as her eyes darted to the right.
I followed her gaze but didn’t see anything. “Why don’t I get the nurse?”
“No! Please . . . don’t. I’ll be fine.” Again, her eyes darted to the right.
I noticed the toe of one sneaker behind the curtain. I gasped.
Despite Pauline shaking her head like crazy, I asked, “Who’s there?” When I didn’t get an immediate response, I pulled back the curtain. “Chris? What’re you doing here?”
“I . . . came by to . . . talk with . . . her,” he said.
“Why were you hiding?” I asked.
He shrugged.
It seemed unlikely that he had been about to pop out and yell Surprise. What could he possibly be up to that would make him feel that he should try to hide in a hospital room?
Before I could ask him, the nurse brought in Pauline’s paperwork.
“I’ll step outside while you’re taking care of that,” Chris said.
“I’ll go with you,” I told him. I didn’t want him to leave, and I was determined that he was going to tell me what he was doing hiding in Pauline Wilson’s hospital room.
After he and I stepped into the hall, I asked him again, “What are you doing here, Chris?”
“I was afraid Pauline was going to implicate me in the murder of Jordan Richards,” he said.
“Why would you think that?”
“At the awards ceremony, Myra said that Pauline overheard a certain someone arguing with Chef Richards,” he said. “She looked right at me.”
“Myra was just bragging,” I said.
“You mean Pauline didn’t hear anyone arguing with Chef Richards?”
“She did. She heard Gavin Conroy and Chef Richards arguing but that was right after class on Thursday.” I frowned. “So you’re saying you argued with Chef Richards too?”
“Uh . . . yeah . . . I did.” He shrugged. “Molly, Alex, and I got into Brea Ridge on Thursday evening. We were staying at another hotel, but I went to the inn looking for Jordan Richards. I wanted to make him apologize to Alex for the way he’d treated him. I wanted Richards to make things right with Alex . . . to tell Alex that he was a good cake decorator.” He ran his hand over his face. “Alex has struggled so much since that incident at the cake show a few months ago. The kid hasn’t been the same. I just wanted my nephew back.”
“What did Chef Richards say when you confronted him?” I asked.
“He told me I was an idiot and he asked if I really expected him to believe that he’d done irreparable harm to a child simply by telling the child that his work was too good to have been done without help,” said Chris. “He said most kids would’ve been flattered by that. I told him Alex wasn’t most kids and that I didn’t care whether Chef Richards believed it or not. I explained that Alex had Asperger’s Syndrome and that he hadn’t decorated since Chef Richards had been so rude to him.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’re not telling me Chef Richards refused to apologize to Alex, are you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. And I told him he was going to apologize to Alex first thing Friday morning—that I’d be bringing my nephew to his class. I told Chef Richards that if he didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of his students, he’d better step out into the hallway when he saw us at the door. So, uh, yeah . . . he and I had a pretty heated argument.” Chris put his hands in his pockets. “I thought that Pauline had overheard us and that her testimony, combined with that surveillance footage, would put me in the kitchen close to the time Chef Richards died and that I’d take the blame for hitting him on the head with that cake stand and then shoving his face into the vanilla cake batter.”
“Well, I’m not sure anyone would blame you if you had, given the circumstances,” I said. “After getting to know Alex these past couple of days, I’d want to at least dump the cake batter over Chef Richards’s head for the way he treated that boy. I can imagine how you and Molly must have felt.”
Chris smiled. “Well, thanks for understanding. I’m going to take off. Molly and Alex are waiting for me back at our hotel. I’m going to follow them as far as their house in North Carolina tonight and then go on home to Georgia tomorrow. Please apologize to Pauline for me. I didn’t mean to scare her. I just wanted to explain what she might’ve overheard.”
“I’ll tell her,” I said. “You guys have a safe trip home.”
“Thanks, Daphne.”
As Chris strode down the hall, the nurse came out of Pauline’s cubicle.
“Ms. Wilson is dressing and will be ready to go in just a couple of minutes,” said the nurse. “I wish I’d have been off this weekend. I’d have sure loved to see all those pretty cakes.”
“I wish you had been able to come too,” I said. “There were some really beautiful ones on display.”
“That’s what Ms. Wilson was telling me earlier today,” she said. “Oh, well . . . maybe next year.” She returned to the nurses’ station.
I stepped up to the closed curtain. “Pauline, it’s Daphne. Do you need any help with anything?”
“Is that man with you?” she asked.
“No, he left,” I said.
“Good. He was creeping me out.” She pulled back the curtain. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You’ve had a horrible day,” I said. Call me Captain Obvious.
She smiled and picked up her trophy. “It wasn’t all bad.”
“I know Ms. Compton will be happy to see you.”
“You said that guy left,” she said. “He wasn’t going back to the inn, was he?”
“I don’t think so. Pauline, what did he do to make you so afraid of him? He seemed all right to me.”
“It wasn’t what he did or said. It was his attitude. He just . . . ” She blew out a breath in frustration. “He just came across as menacing. He wanted to know who I’d heard arguing with Chef Richards and what I’d heard.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“I didn’t tell him anything. I asked him to please get out of my room,” she said. “And then he heard you talking to the nurse, and he hid behind th
e curtain. Now do you see why I was freaked out?”
“I certainly do,” I said. “I can’t figure out why he’d feel the need to hide, though, if he was only here to talk with you.”
“Because he was a nut,” said Pauline. “He was so nervous about what I might’ve overheard.”
“From what I’ve seen, he is a little high-strung,” I said. “He was afraid you’d heard him arguing with Chef Richards and would implicate him in the murder.”
“What was he arguing with Chef Richards about?” she asked.
I explained the situation between Chef Richards and Alex.
“Poor kid. Still, I don’t know why the uncle would’ve thought my hearing him arguing with Chef Richards would be such a big deal,” she said. “Everyone argued with Chef Richards.”
“And yet you stabbed yourself with floral wire when you saw Gavin Conroy during your demonstration,” I said. “Do you think Gavin killed Chef Richards?”
“Do I think he did it? Yes. Like Chef Richards, Gavin has a violent temper. Do I have any evidence that Gavin killed the chef? No.” She shook her head. “I wish I did. Then you and I would be off the hook.”
“Maybe we can put our heads together with Mark—the private investigator—and with Ben and come up with some sort of trap where we could trick Gavin into confessing,” I said. “What do you think?”
“I guess it’s worth a shot. But could we do it tomorrow over breakfast?” she asked. “I’m really exhausted, and I just want to go back to the inn and crash tonight.”
“That sounds like a plan,” I said. “I’ll talk with Mark and Ben and see if both of them can meet us for breakfast.”
I DROVE PAULINE back to the Brea Ridge Inn. She took her trophy and prize basket and went to find Kimmie Compton, and I stopped by the front desk.
“Hi,” I said to the clerk. “Has Gavin Conroy checked out yet?”
The clerk tapped a few computer keys, looked up, and said, “No. Would you like for me to ring his room for you?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll catch up with him later.”