Battered to Death (Daphne Martin Cake Mysteries)

by Trent, Gayle

  Besides, we’d already called the police once and had them come when we thought Gavin Conroy was going to give us trouble. They’d rushed right over, and it hadn’t amounted to anything, and they weren’t terribly thrilled with us over that. I wasn’t anxious to get them involved again until we were absolutely positive something big was going down.

  “We need to find Fiona before she checks out of this hotel and makes it across the border, never to be heard from again!” Myra said.

  Myra could be a little dramatic when excited. Unless the woman had a supersonic jet waiting for her in the parking lot, there was no way Fiona could make it to any border—other than a state border—tonight. And I’m fairly certain all of these United States extradite criminals to other states in the union in which they are wanted for questioning in a murder investigation.

  Mark calmed Myra sufficiently for Ben to make the call to the Brea Ridge Police Department. Once the phone call had been made and Ben had reported that there were deputies on their way over, Mark told Myra that she could now go from room to room kicking in doors and overturning mattresses.

  Her eyes brightened. “Really?”

  “No, not really,” he said. “That would take too long. We need to know which room Fiona is staying in and go from there.”

  “Of course,” said Myra. “Why kick in all the doors when only one is necessary?”

  “The only trouble is that the people at the front desk aren’t going to be forthcoming with that information until the police get here,” I said.

  “There might be a way around that.” Mark took out his phone and called someone. Within five minutes, there was a Brea Ridge Inn security guard at our door.

  “Hey, Jim,” Mark said. “Thanks for getting here so quickly.”

  “No problem, man,” said Jim. “What do you need?”

  Mark quickly explained that we were looking for Fiona and that we suspected her of murdering Chef Richards. Jim called the front desk and told them he needed Fiona’s room number. When he ended the call, he said, “Let’s go.”

  With Jim in the lead, Mark, Myra, Ben, and I strode down the hall to Fiona’s room.

  Jim knocked on the door. “Hello. I’m with Brea Ridge Inn security. Is anybody in there? If so, would you open the door, please? I need to speak with you.”

  When he got no response, he knocked again and repeated the introduction. He gave anyone inside a third warning and then said he’d be using his passkey to enter the room. There was still no response, so Jim opened the door to the room.

  The room was empty. There were no clothes hanging in the closet. There was no suitcase on the floor. There were no toiletries on the sink.

  “She’s gone,” I said.

  “We’ve got to find her,” Myra said.

  “I’ll call the front desk and see if she’s checked out,” Jim said.

  “Ben and I will check the parking lot,” said Mark. “Ladies, you should return to the room until we find out what’s going on.”

  “Return to the room?” Myra squawked. “We’re not some helpless females who need to be mollycoddled here. I’ll have you to know we’ve stopped killers in their tracks before.”

  “Killer,” I said. “It was one killer. And, as I recall, you and I did not stop anything. If the police hadn’t shown up—”

  She whirled to face me. “Whose side are you on?”

  “You know I’m on your side, Myra, but maybe they’re right. Maybe we should wait in the room.”

  She narrowed her eyes and studied me for a full thirty seconds. I know. I counted.

  “All right, then.” She turned back to Mark. “Let us know when you find out something.”

  We left the room, and the men and the women went in separate directions. The men headed for the elevator.

  “You’ve got a plan, don’t you?” she whispered when she thought the men were out of earshot. “I can tell. You’ve got a plan.”

  “It’s not exactly a plan,” I said. “It’s more of a hunch.”

  “Well, clue me in on it, sister,” she said.

  “I figure that if Chris was so sure that Pauline knew something, Fiona might be under the same impression,” I said. “I think we need to get to Pauline and warn her.”

  Myra nodded. “Good idea. Of course, it might be too late. We might find Pauline dead.”

  I seriously doubted it, but I didn’t say so. In fact, I was all for letting the men do the rest of the legwork and the heavy lifting. I would just as soon have gone back to the room Ben had rented for the two of us, dumped those rose petals in a bubble bath, and waited for him to join me. But by buying time by checking on Pauline and telling her about Fiona, I was getting Myra out of the men’s way while letting her believe she was still a crucial part of the plan.

  That is truly what I thought I was doing . . . right up until the instant that Myra and I saw Fiona slipping furtively into Pauline’s room.

  25

  MYRA STARTED slapping my forearm and pointing. I nodded to let Myra know that I too had seen Fiona sneaking into Pauline’s room.

  “What do you think she’s doing?” Myra hissed.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “We should call the guys.”

  “By the time we call the guys and get them up there, Pauline Wilson will be as dead as four o’clock yesterday,” she said.

  “A.m. or p.m.?”

  “Both. Now, stop stalling. If you’re not going in after her, Daphne Martin, then I most certainly am.”

  “All right, all right. Just don’t go marching up to the door half-cocked,” I said. “We need to have a plan.”

  “I have one,” said Myra. “I’m going to knock on that door and when Pauline lets me in, I’m going to tackle Fiona.”

  “Myra, that’ll never work!”

  My words fell on deaf ears. By the time they’d left my mouth, Myra had already begun pounding on Pauline’s door.

  “Open up!” she called. “This is the police!”

  Okay. That was the part of the plan she’d neglected to mention.

  “If you don’t open this door within ten seconds, we’ll be forced to use our battering ram to knock it down,” Myra threatened.

  I groaned. She was going to get us both killed . . . and probably Pauline too. I texted Ben: Get to Pauline’s room. Now!

  I got to Myra’s side at the precise moment that Fiona flung open the door. Naturally, she was brandishing a small pistol.

  “I knew you weren’t the police.” She spat the words right into Myra’s face. “Since when does the police department hire old women?”

  Myra came around with a left hook that neither Fiona nor I saw coming. When Myra’s fist connected with Fiona’s face, the younger, less stable woman staggered and dropped her gun. I quickly scooped it up and trained it on Fiona, who I was now positive took advantage of another brawler’s quick temper to seize the chance to kill Jordan Richards.

  “Nobody calls me ‘old,’ ” Myra growled.

  It was very Sam Elliott of her. I was proud. I felt like the Sundance Kid to her Butch Cassidy. I was thrilled out of my mind when Mark and Ben arrived in moments, and Mark pried my fingers off the handle of that gun.

  “ALONE AT LAST,” Ben said as he unlocked the door to our room.

  “I’m sorry I spoiled your original plan,” I said.

  “I’m glad we can put the entire Jordan Richards’s murder behind us and move on with our lives.”

  We stepped into the room.

  “The rose petals are a wonderful touch,” I said. “Earlier, before Myra and I saw Fiona sneaking into Pauline’s room, I was thinking of how nice it would be to fill the tub with bubble bath and some of those rose petals . . . and me . . . and you. . . . ”

  He began kissing my neck. “That would be nice.”

  I smiled. “I’ll start the water.”

  I stepped into the bathroom and started filling the tub. As I started back into the bedroom to get my overnight bag, Ben met me in the doorway.

&nbs
p; “I meant to do this in a special, romantic way, but . . . ” He got down on one knee and took a small blue velvet box from his pocket. “All of a sudden, I’m just desperate to do it.”

  I gasped and immediately felt tears prick the backs of my eyes. “Ben—”

  “You’re everything to me, Daphne. Will you marry me?”

  By then I was crying so hard, I could only nod. I finally managed to squeak out a “yes.”

  Some time later, after we’d mopped up all the water that had overflown from the tub and had called down to the front desk and requested more towels, I lay in Ben’s arms and traced his jawline with the back of my hand.

  “I thank God every day that I was given another chance with you,” I told him. “I’ll make you the best wife ever.”

  “I know you will,” he said. He kissed me softly. “I love you, Daphne. I think I’ve loved you all my life.”

  “And I’ve loved you all of mine,” I said. “I just made a stupid mistake.”

  “We all make mistakes, babe.”

  “What about Kentucky?” I asked. “Did you make your decision?”

  “Yep.” He smiled. “I think I’m much better suited to life here in Brea Ridge.”

  “Oh, Ben, thank you!”

  “That’s why I was working last night and couldn’t be here with you,” he said. “I’d made a promise to Nickie to help her get her magazine off the ground. And last night, I completed three articles for the first issue. She’s paying me for my time, and I told her that I was hoping the payment for those three articles would go toward paying for our honeymoon.”

  I drew in a breath. “You told her that?”

  “I did. And she wished us well,” he said. “About that honeymoon . . . where would you like to go?”

  “As long as I’m with you, I don’t care where we go,” I said. But the longer I lay there considering it, the more I got to thinking about how nice it would be to go to some tropical island. “How much do you think we’ll have to work with?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me where you want to go, and we’ll see what we can do,” said Ben. Then he chuckled.

  “What?”

  “If we don’t have enough, maybe we can persuade the reigning welterweight champion Myra Tyson to go a few rounds in a charity event,” he said.

  Epilogue

  THERE’S A lot of excitement around Brea Ridge these days. Ben and I are planning a late summer wedding. Violet and Leslie are thrilled and are helping me look at gowns, wedding invitations, and decorations. I, of course, will be making the wedding cake.

  Lucas, Leslie, and Alex are television stars! Okay, not really, but they did make an appearance on John and Joni. It was a very small role, but all three of the kids were thrilled. And they all got autographed photos of John and Joni. It turns out John and Joni are cute teenagers pretending to be younger than they are, and Leslie is now head over heels for John and certain that she’ll marry him someday. Hey, you never know.

  Both Lucas and Leslie have kept in constant contact with Alex since the first annual Brea Ridge Taste Bud Temptation Cake and Confectionary Arts Exhibit and Competition. Alex has returned to cake decorating and is doing really well. Molly says he’s happier than he was even before that fateful competition and the horrible episode with Chef Richards.

  Chris had to spend three months in jail but was allowed to serve the time in a Georgia facility on a work release program that wouldn’t interfere with his job. He also had to attend an anger management class and pay a fine.

  Myra and Mark are still dating and doing well, although Mark now has a competitor for Myra’s affections. When Myra went home that Sunday night after decking Fiona, the “demon” Chihuahua was waiting on her porch once again. I guess Myra had decided she’d had enough of everybody’s guff that evening, so when the dog ran barking at her, she barked right back at him. He ran and hid under a bush. Then Myra went into the house and got the dog some roast beef. She named him Bruno, and now he adores her. The feeling is mutual. Although Bruno is fed “that dog food recommended by the vet,” he still gets his roast beef on a regular basis.

  Fiona is in jail awaiting trial. After hours of questioning, she finally confessed to the Brea Ridge Police Department—my money is on Officer McAfee as the interrogator—that she took advantage of Chef Richards’s unconscious state to finish him off in the cake batter. She says she didn’t really intend to kill him . . . that it just sort of happened.

  “I began to think about how he’d always treated me . . . how he had more money than the Queen of England . . . how he took credit for my hard work . . . how he acted like I was so inferior to him . . . how he wouldn’t help me get ahead in the pastry world . . . how he’d used me and cast me aside. I looked down at him lying on that kitchen floor, and I despised him,” Fiona had told the police. “I wanted him dead. And I took the bowl of cake batter, and I shoved his face in it. Then I wiped off the bowl and the cake stand, and I ran all the way to my room. I wasn’t even sure he was dead until I went to check on him about an hour later. Then I called the police.”

  Residents of Brea Ridge waffle back and forth between wanting the formerly pink-haired waif (whose hair has now faded to a dull, lifeless brownish gray) to plead insanity and walk away scot-free to wanting her to get life imprisonment. The ones who want her to plead insanity and be released from jail are the ones who are familiar with Chef Jordan Richards.

  Still, as Lily Richards would point out, none of us truly knew the man. Not even she knew him as well as she’d thought. She has set up a scholarship in Chef Richards’s name benefiting students who want to study the culinary arts.

  I’m sitting in the living room looking at a bridal magazine when Ben comes in and sits down beside me.

  “So, have you given any more thought to our honeymoon destination?” he asks, nibbling my neck in a way that makes it hard to think about anything.

  “I have,” I tell him. “Do you think we could go to Hawaii . . . and then swing back by Tulsa for the Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FIRST OFF, I’m thankful to God for His many blessings. I’m also thankful to my family: Tim, Lianna, and Nicholas. Your love and support and patience (around deadline time!) is terrific. Thank you, Robert Gottlieb, agent extraordinaire. Thank you, Kerry Vincent, for your unwavering support and encouragement. Thank you, Rosemary Galpin, for contributing the recipes found in Battered to Death’s “Daphne’s Kitchen Recipes” section. And, thank you, Dean Koontz, for your kindness and generosity.

  Rosemary Galpin’s Royal Icing

  (For those of you who might be unfamiliar with royal icing, it sets up to a hard, smooth finish.)

  INGREDIENTS

  3 pasteurized egg whites (at room temperature)

  1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

  1 teaspoon piping gel or light corn syrup

  4 cups confectioners’ sugar

  Yields approximately 2 1/2 cups

  DIRECTIONS

  In large bowl, combine the egg whites, vanilla, cream of tartar, and piping gel and hand mix until well blended.

  Add confectioners’ sugar gradually and continue to hand mix until sugar is incorporated and mixture is shiny, approximately seven to ten minutes. You can use a hand mixer on low, but do not overmix as this will incorporate air and cause bubbles and breakage when applied with bag.

  Add food coloring if desired.

  Strain mixture through a white knee-high stocking to remove any lumps before use.

  Store unused icing in the refrigerator for up to three days, in an airtight container with a damp paper towel covering the top.

  Rosemary’s Carrot Pumpkin Pecan Cake

  INGREDIENTS

  1 package white cake mix

  1 package butterscotch instant pudding mix

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

  3/4 cup canned pumpkin

  1/2 cup milk

  3
large eggs

  1/2 cup canola oil

  2 cups peeled, finely grated carrots (pat between paper towels to remove excess moisture)

  1 cup raisins

  1/2 cup chopped pecans

  DIRECTIONS

  Preheat oven to 350°.

  Lightly grease and flour two 8-inch round cake pans.

  Combine cake mix, pudding mix, spices, pumpkin, milk, eggs, and oil in a large bowl and mix on medium speed until smooth (approximately two to three minutes).

  Add carrots, raisins, and pecans and mix until well blended.

  Split the batter evenly between the two pans. Tap the pans on a hard surface to level the batter.

  Bake forty minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  Cool ten minutes on wire racks then remove from pans to cool completely.

  Hint: For even cooking and to prevent doming of centers, invert a stainless steel flower nail in the center of each pan before adding the batter. Remove the flower nail when the cakes are turned out of the pans.

  Ice with cream cheese frosting.

  RECIPES SUBMITTED BY ROSEMARY GALPIN

  Rosemary Galpin is the owner of Memory Makers Specialty Cakes of Luling, Texas. Rosemary is the 2012 OSSAS Grand Wedding Cake Competition silver winner. Visit Rosemary on Facebook at www.facebook.com/memory.makers.cakes.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  TO PROVIDE the Australian string work instruction in Battered to Death, I used the tutorials provided by Pauline Bakes the Cake (www.paulinescakes.com/2010/04/australian-string-work-rolls-royce-of.html) and Cake Walk (www.melcakewalk.blogspot.com/2010/06/oriental-stringwork-part-4.html).

  I very loosely used the structure of the Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show to serve as a template for the First Annual Brea Ridge Taste Bud Temptation Cake and Confectionary Arts Exhibit and Competition. The Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show (www.oklahomasugarartists.com) is held each year in Tulsa in conjunction with the Tulsa State Fair. The Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show will celebrate its twentieth year in 2013. The event is hosted by Kerry Vincent, Food Network Challenge judge and master sugar artist. In 2004, Ms. Vincent was inducted into the International Cake Exploration Societé Hall of Fame, and she was inducted into the Dessert Professional Hall of Fame in 2010. In addition, Ms. Vincent has also created her own unique sugar craft techniques, including Vincent Marquetry.