by Dawn Eastman
“Let me get dressed and we can go get something to eat,” I said. “Are you going to confront him?”
Mac was silent for a moment. “I haven’t decided. I don’t know whether this is related and I hate to ruin this guy’s life. On the other hand, he’s been committing fraud and I feel like I have to delve deeper.”
I knew he had more to say and waited.
“This isn’t my jurisdiction and as far as I know, he hasn’t done any harm. If he is faking his identity, then it’s likely Jessica doesn’t know, which means not only will he lose his job, but potentially his fiancée. I hate to throw a bomb into someone’s life like that for no good reason.”
“I guess you’re right, but it seems suspicious to me,” I said.
Mac paced the hallway from the turret entrance to my door. “It may be none of our concern. I’m barely in charge of this murder investigation. I don’t have any authority over restaurant licensing.”
“If your person was able to find out overnight, it can’t be that well hidden,” I said.
“The officer who found the information has connections in the Upper Peninsula. When René Sartin popped up as a U.S. citizen, not French, he followed the trail and called his contact,” Mac said. “That guy remembered the story—but it’s been wiped from any easy search engine—even the local newspaper has deleted all references to the accident.”
“Maybe that’s how a Cordon Bleu chef ended up at a small bed-and-breakfast in Western Michigan instead of a big city. Maybe he was hoping no one would ever look into his credentials. I think Jessica has a right to know what she’s getting herself into before she marries him.”
Then I remembered my strange conversation with Linda the night before. I told Mac that she suspected Clarissa and René might have been involved somehow.
“It sounds like René had all sorts of trouble headed his way. Maybe we’ll be doing her a favor by letting her know,” I said.
“You’re right, but we should talk to him first.”
I slipped back into my room and quickly got dressed. As I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, it hit me. What if Clarissa had found out about the real René? She didn’t strike me as someone who would balk at a little blackmail, especially if it also messed around with her cousin’s life. If she was blackmailing René, that gave him a pretty good reason to kill her. Maybe there wasn’t an affair, as Linda seemed to think. But Clarissa could have ruined his whole life if Jessica was unaware that he’d been passing himself off as his brother.
I quietly slipped back out into the hall. I opened my mouth to tell Mac when I noticed a new gleam in his eyes.
“What if Clarissa was blackmailing René?” he said.
“Just what I was thinking,” I said. “It seems like a pretty good motive for murder.”
Mac took my hand. “Let’s go have a chat with the chef.”
We walked down the stairs, cut through the dining room, and knocked on the kitchen door before entering. René and Emmett were busy cooking eggs, bacon, and pancakes. My stomach growled.
“Mr. Sartin?” Mac said. “Can we speak with you a moment?”
The chef glanced up with a scowl on his face. He rearranged his expression when he saw us. He gestured at Emmett to take over pancake duty, wiped his hands on a towel, and followed us out into the dining room.
“What can I do for you?” he asked after we sat.
Mac took a breath, but I cut in ahead of him.
“One of the hardest parts about a murder investigation is that we have to look at everyone. Unfortunately, many secrets are revealed whether they relate to the crime or not.”
René sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I told you everything I know. I was busy in the kitchen when Clarissa was killed. I don’t know anything.” His accent was in full force and I almost felt admiration for his acting skills.
I leaned forward.
“But you do have a secret,” I said. “We have to ask you about your past.”
He rubbed his arms and glanced toward the kitchen door.
“There’s not much to tell.” He shrugged and didn’t meet my eyes. “I grew up in Paris and went to the Cordon Bleu school—”
He stopped when Mac held up a hand. “Please, don’t make this worse by lying.”
René’s cheeks turned pink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” Mac said. “We have no interest in revealing your secret to anyone unless it relates to Clarissa’s murder.”
“You think I killed Clarissa?”
“We think you aren’t who you say you are, which makes us wonder what else you’re hiding,” Mac said.
Loosening the collar on his chef’s tunic, René let out a breath of air.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Maybe you should just tell me what you think you know.”
I was impressed by the way he stuck to the story. It almost had me thinking Mac’s source had made a mistake. That’s probably how he’d gotten away with it for so long.
“Okay,” I said. “We know that officially René Sartin is dead.”
The chef’s face went from pink to white almost instantly. He seemed to shrink into his chair.
The door from the kitchen opened and Emmett came through, his arms full of serving platters and food. He grinned in our direction, unaware of the tension around the table.
René lowered his voice.
“How did you find out?” he asked. The accent fell away, and I felt like I was meeting him for the first time.
“We’re detectives,” Mac said.
“It’s not what it looks like,” René said. He put his hands up as if to hold us back.
“It never is,” Mac said. “Why don’t you tell us your story?”
Fake René leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“René was my brother,” he said. “My grandmother raised us all on her own in the Upper Peninsula. She was from Quebec and had come to Michigan when she married my grandfather. She was an incredible cook and taught us all the old recipes from the time we were both young.” He stopped and cleared his throat.
“My brother worked three jobs to save enough money to go to France and train there as a chef. I was only nineteen when he left. He went to the Cordon Bleu school and came home with his certificate. About two weeks after he got home, he was in a car accident and died.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He tilted his head at me, and cleared his throat. “My grandmother and I knew that René wouldn’t want all that work to go to waste and she said she always thought I was the better cook. We arranged to cover up his death and I would take his name and his credentials so that I could get a job as a chef.”
I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. How did he think he would get away with it?
“Who else knows about this?” Mac asked.
René shook his head. “No one. I took a job in Traverse City and learned everything I could. Then my grandmother died of a stroke.”
He passed a hand over his face. “She was so proud that a Sartin was working in a ‘fancy’ restaurant. After her death, I headed south and ended up here. Linda and Jessica were wonderful to me. They let me have free rein in the kitchen to set the menu and experiment. It was a dream come true.”
“They have no idea that your credentials are fake?”
He shook his head. “After a while, I decided I should tell them, but then Jessica and I started spending more time together and she was so impressed that I had grown up in France . . .”
He held his hands out to us. “I just didn’t want to disappoint her and by that time, I didn’t want to lose her. I was in too deep and felt like I couldn’t tell her the truth without her feeling like our whole relationship was a lie. So I kept quiet.”
“And no one ever found out?” I said.<
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“No one until Clarissa,” René said to his shoes. “She went through all the employee files when she came here six months ago. I guess Linda had never looked into my credentials, but Clarissa did. She traced my brother’s information and found out that he didn’t grow up in France, which led her to discover his car accident. She must have put the rest together somehow.”
“Was she blackmailing you?” Mac asked.
René nodded, and studied the floor.
“She wanted to renovate the whole hotel and open a fancy spa. She threatened to expose my secret if I didn’t take her side. I told her there was no way Jessica would buy it. I’ve worked for the past five years for our reputation. Jessica knows I wouldn’t give it all up to open a spa, but Clarissa wouldn’t listen.”
“So you tried to convince Jessica to go along with the spa plan?” I asked.
René hung his head. “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to lose Jessica even more than I didn’t want to lose the restaurant. I think she thought Clarissa and I were having an affair. She got very touchy over the past couple of months and criticized Clarissa every chance she got.” His hands went up in a placating gesture and he briefly met my eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I had nothing good to say about Clarissa, either, but it put a strain on our relationship. So, ironically, my plan to go along with Clarissa and buy her silence was backfiring and causing more trouble with Jessica.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rested his head in his hands.
“It sounds like Clarissa’s death will work out in your favor,” Mac said.
René’s head snapped up. “I didn’t kill her. I may not have liked her, but I didn’t kill her.”
“So you didn’t see her after she left the dining room on Thursday night?”
René shook his head, but wouldn’t meet our eyes.
“We have a witness who heard you arguing with Clarissa in her room that evening,” I said.
His face drained of color even more and he looked like he might be sick.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, and closed his eyes briefly. “Okay. I saw her that night—she was agitated over a meeting earlier in the week and wanted me to convince Linda to sell some of the antiques to support the spa.”
Mac stared at him and waited.
René looked at me and then sighed. “It was before we served dinner, maybe around six forty-five. I snuck up the back stairs, talked to her, and came back down. I saw her later in the dining room talking to the guests and then I focused on serving dinner.”
“You were in the kitchen or dining room the rest of the time?” I asked.
René nodded. “Except for a few minutes when I went to the basement to get the dessert. I did not kill her. I may not have been honest with Jessica and Linda, but I’m not a murderer.”
“Okay, Mr. Sartin, we may need to talk to you again,” Mac said.
René glanced at the door again and lowered his voice. “Please, don’t tell Jessica,” he said. “I know she has a right to hear the truth, but I’d rather it come from me.”
“We have no reason to tell her anything right now,” I said. “But if you had anything to do with Clarissa’s death, we can’t guarantee your secret will stay safe.”
René nodded. “Thanks, I’ll tell her . . . soon.” He stood and strode back toward the kitchen.
33
“What did you think?” Mac asked.
We walked toward the buffet that Emmett had set out, talking quietly.
“It’s hard to trust someone who has lied to everyone he knows for years, but he lied in order to do something he loves, not to hatch an illegal plot.”
“True, but it makes me wonder if he’s telling us the truth now about his relationship with Clarissa.” Mac took the mug of coffee I handed him and began dumping sugar and cream into it.
“You think they were having an affair?” I asked.
“Not necessarily, just that he seemed very forgiving of a blackmailer.”
“Jessica has been upfront about not liking her cousin; maybe she had a reason to really hate her if she thought Clarissa was seducing René.” I piled my plate with cheesy scrambled eggs and sausage. I needed to stockpile before Seth arrived.
“It doesn’t make this case any easier knowing Clarissa ticked off everyone she knew,” Mac said.
We walked back to our table and I told Mac the rest of my story about my middle-of-the-night meeting with Emmett and Linda.
“That seems like a strange couple.”
“I don’t think they were together . . . ,” I said.
“I just mean, what is the owner of the hotel and the assistant chef doing meeting in the middle of the night?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t get the impression it was an everyday thing. Besides, Emmett wouldn’t normally be staying here overnight.”
“I guess.” Mac stared into his coffee cup. “Mrs. Garrett just strikes me as a bit snobby and fraternizing with the help doesn’t go along with that.”
“It is a really small staff . . . but you’re right. Jessica seems more down to earth than her mother.” I stirred my tea and considered Linda and Jessica.
“Speaking of the Garrett women, we’ll need to talk to them again,” Mac said. “How many people are likely to know about the tunnel to the cottage, or the secret room?”
“I suppose most of the staff might know. And maybe Isabel as well—she and Jessica have known each other for years. Unless Jessica was sworn to secrecy, a lot of people might know.”
“We seem to be adding people to our list instead of crossing them off.” Mac slathered grape jelly on his toast.
“Vi is pretty sure it’s Kirk, or maybe René . . .”
Mac snorted. “I thought you said the pendulum pointed to a knitter.”
“Hey, you’re right. I keep forgetting about that. I’ll have to ask Vi how she can reconcile the pendulum and the cards being wrong.”
“Unless she thinks Kirk likes to knit . . . ,” Mac said and smiled.
“He is really good at the yarn bombing,” I said. “Apparently, you’re a knitter, maybe we should add you to the list.”
Just then Tina, Amy, and Heather came into the dining room whispering and giggling. They stopped as soon as they spotted us.
“Hello,” I said.
They mumbled hello and headed toward the buffet.
“What are they up to?” Mac asked.
“I’m pretty sure they’re plotting ways to get Kirk to climb a ladder.”
“What?”
“I heard them talking the other day—they think he’s ‘dreamy’ and they’re pooling all their knitting to give them a reason to interact with him.”
Mac shook his head. “How did this happen? We should have been on a beach all weekend.” Even though we had both said this before, he sounded as though it was finally getting to him.
“Beach? What are you talking about?” Lucille had come up to the table quietly and Mac and I jumped.
“Just bemoaning our fate, Mom,” Mac said.
“Well, that never gets anyone anywhere,” she said. She sat across the table from us with a mug of tea and a piece of toast. She eyed Mac carefully and pressed her lips together.
“What’s on the agenda today in the workshop?” I asked to deflect the tension that seemed to settle over the table.
“I heard Isabel saying she would add a couple of extra classes since no one can leave today,” Lucille said. “Are you sure you don’t want to give it a try?” She turned to me and smiled. “It looked like you took to the continental method like a duck to water.”
“I think I should help Mac with the investigation and Seth needs help with the dogs throughout the day.”
“Your mom is going to read everyone’s cards today,” she said. “I just love your mother’s readings. She has a real talent.”
I had a sudden upsetting thought. “Did Vi put her up to this?”
“I don’t know.” Lucille set her teacup gently on its saucer. “Rose said she would do all of the knitters and I heard Vi saying she was going to invite the staff as well.”
I groaned to myself. Vi must be trying to track the murderer by having Mom read cards. This was classic Fortune family behavior. They relied heavily on hints and innuendo from the divination technique du jour and then ran with whatever they thought they had discovered. I couldn’t decide if this was a good or bad development. If Vi was busy helping Mom interpret cards, she would at least stay out of our way. But, I shuddered to think of what Mac would say. I’d been able to keep the full extent of my family’s obsession with solving crimes from him so far.
Mac tilted his head at me. “You okay?”
“Yup. Just thinking about all those tarot readings . . . ,” I said.
“When does the tarot extravaganza start?” Mac turned to his mom.
“I think she said it would be around ten—after the first workshop.” She smiled. “Are you going to join us? I think you’d really like it, Mac . . .” She stopped when Mac began to shake his head.
“Sorry, no. I just wanted to know what time to make myself scarce.”
Lucille sighed.
Fortunately, the rest of the gang arrived and we were all distracted by Seth’s stories of Baxter and Tuffy.
I noticed that Isabel sat with the table of younger knitters instead of Mavis and Selma. I would have thought that she was just trying to be a good workshop host except she was completely silent while the young women chatted animatedly next to her. Mavis and Selma cast menacing glances toward the table and it had me wondering if there had been trouble in knitting paradise.
“Mom,” I whispered across the table. “What’s up with Isabel and Mavis?” I tilted my head in the direction of their table.
Mom swiveled slowly in her chair; she did discreet the way Vi did blatant.