A Sleuth Is Born

by Pepper Frost

  “I’m still working one other lead,” Pat continued. “The website where the pictures were posted. The domain is masked—but sometimes you can get the host to cough up the owner if you pay a little money. I might be able to track down our Betty hater that way. You cool with covering that expense?”

  “Heck yeah,” said Bea. She grinned as she imagined a cloak-and-dagger deal with some nefarious character—a real noir scenario. “Long as we do that together.”

  “The IP address of the blog appears to be in San Francisco—like the pawn shops. Not much to go on. If we can get the registration data, that will give us a starting pont. We’ll have a little hope, anyway.”

  “We can do it. Jessica Fletcher solves crimes with a lot less.”

  “Would you give it a rest with the Jessica Fletcher?!” Pat grumbled. “If this were Murder She Wrote, the culprit would simply incriminate themselves and Jessica would just happen to be the only person there to hear it! Detecting isn’t like that in real life.”

  “Sheesh. No need to get so oversensitive.”

  “Sorry. It’s just if I had a dime for every time a client expected me to work miracles like a TV sleuth… well, let’s say I wouldn’t be working here with you. If we were on TV, the review bomber would helpfully drop his phone right in our laps,” Pat said, getting worked up again.

  “We don’t technically know it’s a ‘he,’” said Bea.

  “Ugh!”

  “No need to be sexist.”

  A knock on the door of Bea’s suite provided a welcome interruption. Jackson had come by with Bea’s new card key.

  “Thank you, Jackson. Sorry for the trouble. And listen—could we keep this between the two of us? I know it’s a lot of work to keep creating these cards, and Angela will worry it’s bad for security—”

  “It’s no trouble at all,” Jackson said. “There is a risk of someone finding your card and using it. But the system can tell us if anyone entered your room using the lost one. And we can easily make you a new card and deactivate the old one.”

  Bea thanked Jackson again and shut the door behind him. His comment about the card key system gave her an idea. She called Aseem and asked him to come help her and Pat with a little tech project—and to bring his laptop.

  “So how about our other mystery?” Bea said as she walked back into Pat’s suite. “Any luck finding connections and dirt on our suspicious poker people?”

  “Not yet. I haven’t gotten too far. I started looking into links between the players. There doesn’t seem to be anything at all on the internet about Walter Wells, real estate developer. If I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes, I’d say he doesn’t exist.”

  “Lee did call him ‘reclusive,’” Bea said.

  “True. I’ll keep digging on that, and the other players. But I also started looking into Mrs. Glastonbury’s children’s charity—another complete mystery.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” said Bea, chuckling. “I’ll try to remember to ask her tonight. Could it be registered under a different name?”

  “Possible,” said Pat. “But it’s not the first possibility that leaps to my mind. What’s up with the peanut oil? Since you wore a glove, I assume we won’t be popping corn later.”

  “How are you with fingerprints?”

  “Not great. Like I told you, private detecting’s not like you see on TV. Most of my work is done right here,” Pat said, pointing to her computer screen.

  “I get it. No fingerprint analysis. I was planning to start with internet research, anyway. First thing I wanted to find out is whether peanut oil is the same as peanuts when it comes to allergic reactions. I was also wondering where you can buy this brand. Is that something we could find out? It looks like it’s packaged just for restaurants.”

  “You are starting to sound like a detective. Those are all questions we can dig up answers to. Why peanut oil? And what’s so special about this particular bottle?”

  “Maybe it’s nothing. But I think somebody might be using it to make it appear our chef caused Eddie’s death. Lee found the oil, and she says it caused the reaction. But the chef says in no uncertain terms that he didn’t use the oil. He even quit over it.”

  “Huh. If everyone’s assuming the death is an accident anyway, why would someone need to make sure it looked like the chef’s fault?” Pat said. “What if it wasn’t an accident—but pinning it on the chef was meant to make it seem like one?”

  “Chef says he not only didn’t use peanut oil, it can’t even trigger an allergic reaction.”

  “If he’s right, we can catch a killer in a good old-fashioned frame-up!” Even Pat was getting excited about the prospect of a murder case. It would be a heck of a lot more interesting than digging up divorce dirt.

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” Bea said. “I don’t want to get my hopes up, but it’s looking more and more like we’re in the middle of a real-life murder mystery.”

  “That reminds me, I spoke with my hospital friend. She said while it’s likely Eddie just had a secondary reaction—a repeat of the first attack, like they told Angela—it’s possible he was exposed to another allergen at the hospital. That’s why the doctor’s interested in the autopsy.”

  “That fits with what I was thinking,” said Bea. “What if someone triggered a new reaction on purpose—because the first one didn’t finish the job? They might try to cover their tracks by making it look like it was the chef’s fault.

  “Perry and I figure all the poker players could be suspects. They all benefit from Eddie’s death—one less competitor for the big money.”

  “Even if they eliminate a player,” said Pat, “they still have to beat everyone else to win the money. That makes the game seem like a pretty weak motive for murder.”

  “I agree. If players are secretly teaming up, though, the motive’s clearer. Take Frank forfeiting to James last night—it seemed plain weird, but it’s not if they’re splitting their winnings. If they’re splitting their winnings, they only have to make sure one of them wins.”

  “Aren’t these guys all mega-rich? Are they going to kill someone for a hundred grand?”

  “Good point, that part doesn’t fit. There must be more to the story. There’s plenty of other weird behavior. Like Foxy—he’s been nosing around in everyone’s business. I wonder what that’s about.”

  “If anyone, I’m wondering about Lee,” Pat said. “Since she’s the one who found the oil.”

  “The silent but deadly theory?” Bea said.

  “As in, ‘the one who smelt it dealt it,’” Pat said. “It’s a multi-purpose rule. And an important concept in detecting.”

  “But the ‘he who denied it, supplied it’ corollary points the finger back at the chef,” Bea said.

  “Lee seems more likely to have a motive. What happens if a player can’t claim their winnings? Could be her charity gets a big windfall donation,” Pat said. “I wonder if that’s ever happened. Could be another piece of the puzzle, and I bet there are more.”

  A knock at Bea’s door interrupted them. Pat popped her head out of hers and greeted Aseem and invited him in.

  “So Aseem,” Bea said, “Can you keep a secret? A big one. You have to keep it even from Angela.”

  Bea explained how she and Pat came to believe that one of the poker guests might have exposed Eddie to peanuts on purpose—perhaps going to the hospital before dawn to finish the job—and whoever it was might now be trying to pin the crime on Chef Ming. Could the card key system track the guests’ comings and goings? Could the system say whether anyone left in the wee hours and returned to their rooms later that morning—sometime after Eddie died?

  “Angela would not approve,” Bea said. “She wouldn’t like us spying on guests, and even though we’re trying to catch a killer, the possibility of a crime would freak her out—so mum’s the word.”

  Aseem nodded. He opened his laptop on Pat’s desk and logged onto the server. “The system only tracks when keys are used,” he said. “It can tel
l us when people enter their rooms, but not when they leave. But it’s a start.”

  The room access log showed that from an hour after the tournament ended until just before 10 in the morning, none of the guests entered their rooms.

  “Only Angela used her room key during that period—that must have been after she took Bijou for a walk.”

  Bea raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m staying out in the casitas, right on their path. At one point, I heard the dog barking.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re stalking her,” said Bea. “Even if maybe she’d like you to.”

  Aseem opened his mouth to respond, but seemed to think better of it.

  “I’ll mind my business,” said Bea. “Back to the matter at hand. Does this mean we’re at a dead end? It’s possible some guests left their rooms, am I right? But, if so, none of them reentered during the night. Which means it’s likely our guests were all tucked in their beds—does that sound right, Aseem?”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Fudge!” said Bea. “Thank you anyway, though.” Before shutting the door behind him, she reminded him not to tell Angela she and Pat were nosing about the guests’ comings and goings—or that they had suspected one of the guests might even be a murderer.

  “It was less than eight hours between the end of the tournament and everyone showing up at breakfast, so I suppose they could have been innocently sleeping,” Bea grumbled.

  “Don’t forget Eddie might have died of a secondary reaction caused by the exposure he had in the ballroom—and that exposure might have been done on purpose by someone here. Nobody would’ve had to go to the hospital to finish Eddie off,” Pat said. “Say someone dosed his doughnuts. Maybe that someone didn’t want Eddie dead, but wanted him out of the tournament. Or they wanted to scare him. And now Eddie’s died from a secondary reaction, and that someone realizes they’re an accidental murderer, and they’re desperately trying to frame the chef with that oil bottle.”

  “What Ming said about refined oil is key,” said Bea.

  The two women huddled behind Pat’s laptop, searching for proof of what the chef had said about peanut oil and allergies.

  “Well would ya look at that,” said Pat. “Chef Ming was right—doctors say highly refined peanut oil is fine for most people with peanut allergy. It might not completely clear the chef—but it’s looking much more likely that Eddie was exposed some other way.”

  “I wonder if Ming even bought that oil,” said Bea. “If we can figure out where it came from, and who bought it, we’d have our framer—and our killer. That’s a project for later, though. We’re running out of time to get ready for tonight’s festivities.”

  Bea walked through the adjoining door back into her suite—then let out a squeal of delight.

  “Hot diggity!” she said, pausing dramatically in the frame of the connecting door. “I figured out how a killer could go to the hospital and come back without being tracked.”

  “I get it,” said Pat, noting Bea’s dramatic pause between their rooms. “Brilliant! The killer could have left their room and come back in through the suite next door without a key, as long as someone was there to let them in. Now we just have to see who’s rooming next to whom.”

  “Let’s hurry up and get dressed. If we’re quick, maybe you can find out what suppliers sell that peanut oil and I can figure out whose suites are connected before we head down to the event.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Congratulations—we’ve got the beginning of a theory.”

  “Is it too early to start calling me J.B. Fletcher Junior?” cackled Bea.

  Chapter 12

  As he left Pat’s suite and headed to the ballroom, Aseem considered Bea’s joke about Angela. Though he didn’t know her well, Bea had never struck him as the matchmaking type. She’d always been the cranky hermit who somehow became Angela’s favorite client. He’d always figured Angela’s affection for Bea was mostly about the work. There was nothing that motivated Angela more than proving herself, and Betty’s books had provided plenty of opportunity to show what an incredible marketing whiz she was.

  But in the months since that insane episode with Cash, the bond between Angela and Bea seemed clearer. And was it his imagination, or had Bea’s sharp edges softened a little? She’d shown a lot of gratitude for Angela’s help in building her book empire. Creating and running the new inn, and building a media business around it, was a huge opportunity, one he knew Angela was thrilled to pursue. Bea was investing in Angela’s future, and entrusting Angela with her own future, too.

  He couldn’t have been happier for Angela. Her energy and her vision were infectious. And he had a valuable role of his own to play in Betty Snickerdoodle, Inc., too, bringing smart tech solutions to their media enterprise. He laughed to himself, thinking maybe this was the big startup opportunity he’d always hoped for. OK, so it wasn’t in Silicon Valley, but he could be part of something that would one day be huge.

  Now that’s a cruel irony, he thought. If he’d known helping Angela with a startup would be a possibility, he’d never have fallen for Cash’s get-rich-quick sales pitch. But then, if he hadn’t fallen for Cash’s stupid plan, maybe the Inn wouldn’t be happening, either. The chain reaction that made the Betty Snickerdoodle brand bigger than ever was kicked off by Cash’s failed plot to steal Bea’s work.

  Cold comfort, though. Remembering how he’d swallowed Cash’s nonsense didn’t exactly make him feel like a genius—and it was hard to imagine it had made him look good in Angela’s eyes, either.

  Before Cash, his relationship with Angela—his girl Angel—seemed to be moving in a different direction. Like, out of the friend zone after all these years. That seemed out of the question now.

  Back in the day, before Bea and Betty consumed most of Angela’s time, they’d teamed up on all sorts of small business projects. They’d even developed a little following because of their ingenious solutions for cash-strapped small businesses. She’d bring her talents for marketing on a shoestring, and he’d supply clever tech solutions. Now, though, as he neared the ballroom, he wondered if Angela even remembered that resourceful Aseem.

  Helping Cash—however innocently—could hardly have made him seem like boyfriend material in Angela’s eyes. But even more than that, Aseem realized with a sigh, if he worked in Angela’s company, she’d be his boss. And everybody knows getting involved with the boss is a very bad idea. He had to believe Angela would never make that sort of risky mistake.

  “There you are,” said Perry, interrupting Aseem’s thoughts. “I’m dying to see that video.”

  “Sorry, got waylaid by Bea. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  “Not long. Can we get started, though?”

  “Of course. Shall I open it, or would you like to do the honors?”

  Perry nodded and touched the fingertip sensor on the control room door. “Thanks. I get a little kick out of that.”

  “State-of-the-art technology magic,” laughed Aseem.

  Once inside, Aseem sat down in front of the server and entered his password. “It’ll take a second to start up the software. Then we’ll check the video it stored last night.”

  The software’s interface appeared. Aseem clicked a few keys and opened some files. “Give me a minute.”

  After a few more clicks, his expression grew gloomy. “Let me check in another spot,” he said quietly. Finally, after more clicking and searching, he turned to Perry.

  “I don’t know what happened. No recording was saved. I’m sure I checked everything, and the test recordings from the two nights before the event started are here and they’re fine.”

  “Did someone tamper with it?”

  “That’s my question, too.”

  Aseem checked the Wi-Fi connection first. “Wireless looks fine.” He got up from his chair and checked the cables in and out of the server—they looked fine, too.

  He stepped out of the control room to inspect at the camera in
stalled above it. “Everything’s still connected.”

  “I’m… I’m baffled. And I’m sorry. I’ll test it again now and reset everything for tonight. I’ll check some user groups to see if anyone else has had a problem.”

  “Could we set up an extra system?” Perry said.

  “Like a redundant system? Good idea,” said Aseem. “I’ll check into it. I think there’s enough time to install one by tonight.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Perry said, leaving the control room and heading out of the ballroom.

  Dammit, thought Aseem. So much for restoring my image of indispensable brilliance!

  Chapter 13

  Foxy stopped at the front desk on his way back to his suite. “Can you tell me which room is Ms. Garcia’s?”

  “I’m sure you understand, Mr. Foxworth, we don’t give out suite numbers without permission. Do you mind if I call her first?” said Jackson.

  “Of course. And nice work, Jackson,” Foxy replied. “I mean, as a guest I appreciate your concern for security.”

  Permission granted, a few minutes later, Foxy was at Angela’s door. She looked anxious, but brightened as soon as he grinned and trained his gleaming chompers in her direction.

  “Come in. Can’t chat for long, though. I’m trying to figure out how to avert the next few disasters.”

  “Chef Ming?” said Foxy. “I heard.”

  “You heard? I can’t believe the word is already traveling around the Inn!”

  “Oh, well, I just happened to run into the chef—I don’t think anyone else knows yet,” Foxy fibbed. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

  Angela sat down on the edge of her bed. “It doesn’t matter now. Everyone will know when there’s no dinner in a few hours,” she said, tears welling up. She brushed them away and cast down her eyes. “Some company president I’m turning out to be!”

  “Now, now don’t overreact,” Foxy said, sitting down next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze, then gently lifted up her chin. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”