Pop Goes the Murder

by Kristi Abbott

  Dario dished up a small bag.

  “It’s on the house,” I said when he went to ring it up.

  Janet looked around the empty shop. “I’m not sure you can afford to be giving stuff away, Rebecca.”

  “I’m not sure I have a better way to say thank you.” I managed to say it without my voice wobbling, but only just.

  She waved her hand at me as if she could wave away the compliment. “I’ll be going, then.”

  Dario went to hold the door open for her as she maneuvered the stroller out. In unison, they both said, “Uh-oh.”

  “What kind of uh-oh?” I asked.

  Neither of them answered. Dario clapped his hand over his eyes.

  I walked to the window to peek outside at the street through the blinds. A new group had joined the throng in front of the shop. This group wore blue shirts. I couldn’t actually make out the logo embroidered on the breast pocket, but I didn’t need to. I knew what it was as soon as I saw that Mediterranean blue. It was BB. It stood for Belanger Bunnies. Antoine’s supporters. They had arrived in Grand Lake and a group of around twelve of them stood across the street holding signs with my face on them, but with devil horns and goatees added with thick black ink.

  “Rebecca is the root,” they chanted. “The root of all evil. Rebecca is the root. The root of all evil.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said.

  We all jumped when a sharp knock sounded on the back door. “I’ll see who it is,” Dario said. “You stay here and stay out of sight.”

  Janet waved. “Good luck, Rebecca. Let me know if I can help.”

  Dario came back in with Lucy and Jason.

  “Hi,” Lucy said, a little breathless. “We thought we’d come in this way to avoid the media out front.”

  “Good thinking, but what are you doing here?” I asked Lucy. Then I asked her again. Then I nudged her. Then I turned to see what she was staring at. It was Dario. He was certainly stare-worthy. “Stop drooling,” I whispered in her ear.

  She startled. “We wanted to shoot some footage of you working in the store.” She turned to Jason. “Get some footage of the people who come through the store.”

  “Lucy, do you really think the segment is still going to run?” I didn’t mention that Antoine’s whole show could be canceled as soon as the network figured out he’d been arrested for murder and certainly would be canceled if it actually went to trial.

  “Sure. I talked to the boss this morning. He said you lined him up with an awesome lawyer and he’ll be out in no time. The only thing this little episode will do is get him more publicity. The show will be more popular than ever. I mean, look outside at all the media and the Bunnies.” Lucy spoke quickly. Maybe too quickly. Almost as if she was trying to convince herself as much as me. “It’s going to be fine. Just fine.”

  I blinked as if that would make the picture before me come clear. It didn’t. “I’m really glad that Antoine has a lot of faith in Cynthia, but don’t you feel this is a little premature?” And a little weird.

  “I know it probably seems that way, but the crew is all here. Because of Antoine’s . . . situation, we’ll probably have to put the episode together faster than usual. We might as well get all the film we can without him. It will make it all simpler in the end.” She smiled. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  It was one of those weird situations where the person’s logic flowed seamlessly, but somehow their original premise—in this case, that Antoine was going to be out of jail any second—seemed flawed. I never knew how to argue in those situations and decided it would be easier not to at this moment. I might as well let them do their jobs while I did mine, assuming I could keep mine with no customers coming into the store.

  Flashes started going off like strobe lights at the front of the store. I turned to see what had gotten the camera people out there all excited and saw Brooke talking to Yolanda Barnett of WCLV News in Cleveland. I cracked the door open so we could hear. “We are all confident that Antoine will be released very soon. He is, of course, completely innocent and the entire situation is simply a travesty.”

  “What do you know about the evidence against Mr. Belanger?” Yolanda asked.

  “I doubt there’s any evidence against him. He didn’t do it. It’s really that simple.” Brooke nodded her head for emphasis.

  “Is that why you’ve decided to go ahead and film here at his ex-wife’s popcorn shop?” Yolanda gestured to POPS and the camera panned in our direction.

  “It’s quite expensive to have a crew on the road,” Brooke said, adjusting her glasses. “We decided to make sure we got whatever film we could so we’d be ready to finish the segment when Antoine is released.”

  “She’s making it sound like it was her and Antoine who decided to film today,” Lucy said. “The nerve!”

  “Wasn’t it?” I asked.

  “Of course not. I was the one who went to the jail this morning. I was the one who spoke to him. I can’t believe she’s taking credit on television for my decisions.” Lucy stamped her foot. “I was Melanie’s assistant. Not her. I was the one who was always at her beck and call. I was the one who always had to fetch and carry for her.”

  “We are as committed as Antoine to making sure our show continues to run smoothly even without our executive producer, although we, of course, mourn her passing. We feel we’re honoring her by making sure the show does go on. Melanie would have wanted it that way.” Brooke bowed her head for a second.

  Lucy gasped. “As if Brooke would know what Melanie wanted! She was so scared of Melanie she’d barely ask her for her coffee order. Melanie relied on me. She talked to me.”

  “Let it go, Lucy,” Jason said from behind her. “It doesn’t matter who gets credit. It just matters that we get the work done.”

  Lucy shot him the kind of side eye that would make a lesser man wilt. If he noticed, he didn’t let it slow him down. He stood up from where he was crouching over a piece of equipment in a case. “Mind if I mike you up?”

  Somehow it sounded dirty coming out of his mouth. I’d bet a lot of things sounded dirty coming out of this guy’s mouth. It was that kind of mouth. Full and sensual without being in any way feminine. His thick black hair was cut short, but you could still see the flecks of gray in it. What was it about those little flecks that made a guy irresistible? Was it the promise of experience? Or was that just me? None of it was hurt by his broad shoulders and square jaw. He really belonged in front of the camera instead of behind it. “Sure,” I said. “Mike away.”

  He laughed and something inside me quivered. I shivered a little as his broad blunt fingers brushed against my collarbone when he affixed the small microphone to my blouse. “Tell me what you had for breakfast,” he commanded.

  “Black coffee and a cranberry white-chocolate popcorn breakfast bar,” I blurted.

  He checked the gauges on his equipment and winked at me. “Perfect.”

  Brooke came in through the front door of the shop.

  “What was that about?” Lucy demanded.

  “I was doing a little PR work, making sure they knew that Antoine is absolutely not guilty.” Brooke started rummaging through one of the equipment cases.

  Lucy loomed over her, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Who elected you to do that?”

  Brooke looked up at her. “No one, I guess. It needed to be done so I did it.”

  “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to decide to go talk to the press without consulting Antoine.” She gestured to herself and Jason. “Or the rest of the crew.”

  “Antoine’s not here to consult, in case you haven’t noticed.” Brooke didn’t even look up at her.

  Lucy flushed bright red. “I did notice. That’s why I visited him in jail this morning. I know what he wants us to do and not do. I’m the one who gets to say when we talk to the press.”

 
Brooke straightened up. The two women were much too close, both of them leaning in toward each other. “I don’t recall anyone making you my boss.”

  Lucy glared and opened her mouth, but before anything else came out, Jason interrupted. “A little help here?” He gestured around the shop and then to all the equipment.

  Lucy and Brooke both backed away from each other. Next Brooke was holding a light gauge by my face and taking readings. “A little hot in here, but I think we can compensate.” She patted my shoulder. “Just pretend like we’re not even here. Do your thing.”

  I didn’t have a lot of choice. Suddenly, a large group of people pushed through the door to the shop. At first I thought it was the media taking the next step and actually coming in. Then I thought maybe it was the Belanger Bunnies coming to physically attack me and I shrank back behind the counter. Then I realized that Faith was at the head of the line with her two daughters.

  “We just finished soccer and the girls need a snack.” She marched up to the counter. Behind her were Olive Hicks, Aaron Woodingham and Carson Jenkins. Mayor Allen Thompson held the door open for everyone.

  “I haven’t had coffee yet,” Carson said from the back of the line. “Well, not good coffee.”

  I pushed through the crowd to take a look out the door. Janet Barry was running interference between the media people and the townspeople, using her double stroller alternately like a battering ram and a bunker. Angelina Choi had joined her with her umbrella stroller. Teri Daniels ran down the street with her jogging stroller in front of her. It was like a wall of strollers.

  The line was getting longer, and while Dario was magnificent in so many ways, he couldn’t do it all. I did my thing and the next hour slid by with me hardly noticing the cameras and microphones, except for when Jason stepped backward, tripped on a chair and almost took out one of my few tables.

  When the customers finally were served and chatted with about the weather, I made a fresh pot of coffee for the crew and we all sat down. “Did you get what you needed?” I asked Lucy.

  She nodded. “If it’s not everything, it will be easy to shoot around it. Honestly, we’ll be able to shoot Antoine’s part in an afternoon, I think. As soon as he’s out of that jail cell, we can be on our way.”

  “You’re pretty sure Antoine didn’t do it,” I said.

  She laughed. “You are, too. You’re the one who got him the fancy lawyer lady, aren’t you?”

  True enough. “Who do you think might have done it?”

  Lucy went very still. “I’d rather not speculate.”

  Something about her tone made me look at her a little more closely. “What does that mean?”

  “Look. Melanie wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. I’m not saying that that makes her a target for murder, but it does mean that there are probably a lot of people who are not all that sorry to see her gone.” She twirled a strand of her hair around her index finger.

  I looked around my shop and saw Melanie’s co-workers less than seventy-two hours after her death, enjoying coffee and snacks, chatting and laughing. No one seemed particularly broken up. I’d been more upset than they seemed to be. “Do you think someone from the show could have done it?” I whispered.

  Lucy shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. If any of these people didn’t want to work with Melanie, all they had to do was get a different job. We’re not the only cooking show out there, you know.”

  I did know. I also knew that Antoine’s show was one of the most prestigious and most profitable and came with some fun travel opportunities. Not all their shoots were in small towns in northern Ohio. I looked around at them again. No one seemed to be mourning, but no one seemed to be crushed by guilt, either. I’d seen what that looked like. It wasn’t pretty.

  “I still can’t believe Melanie would steal from Antoine like that, though.” Lucy sat down.

  I turned to look at her. “Wait a second. You were the one who said no one liked her.”

  “Yeah, no one liked her, but no one doubted her loyalty to Antoine. I thought she’d bleed Belanger Blue if you pricked her. Although . . .” Her words trailed off.

  “Although what?” I asked.

  Lucy shrugged. “She hadn’t been at the top of her game lately. She’d been . . . slipping. Forgetting little things. Mixing things up.”

  That didn’t jibe at all with what Antoine had said. “I thought Antoine relied on her absolutely.”

  “He did.” She leaned in. “I’d been covering for her a lot. I figured it was a phase. You know, with the breakup and everything. Plus, it gave me a chance to see a little more of her job. You know, in case there was ever a chance to step up, I’d already have the experience. I’d been consulting with her almost every night.” She made a face. “Sometimes even while she took her evening bath.”

  The group made their way out of the shop through the kitchen. Lucy looked around the kitchen. She got a funny look on her face when she saw the photo of the woman that Dan had thought might be my dark-haired lady. “Why do you have a photo of Marie Parsons?”

  “You know that woman?”

  She nodded. “You do, too.”

  “She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.”

  “Really? I suppose she was just revving up into higher levels of crazy when you left.”

  It suddenly came to me. “You mean Antoine’s stalker?”

  I’d mainly known about Marie from news accounts. No wonder she’d seemed familiar. I’d been gone before things got out of hand. She’d started out as another one of the Belanger Bunnies. She’d show up at tapings of Cooking the Belanger Way. She’d be at book signings of Antoine’s cookbooks. She’d eat at L’Oiseau Gris. Well, not often. It wasn’t a cheap restaurant to eat at and it wasn’t particularly easy to get reservations.

  Then things got a little weird. She started making special little items for Antoine. A special scrapbook of the launch of his salad dressings. A painting of him in his kitchen done from a photograph we weren’t sure how she’d taken. Sweet, but a little over the line. Then she started dropping them off at our house in Napa. That’s when Antoine started getting nervous.

  After I left, she escalated. A lot. It was as if she thought she could move right into my spot next to Antoine. Like literally move right in. She actually showed up at the house with a U-Haul full of her stuff.

  What followed was a series of restraining orders that she would then violate and I believe finally some jail time.

  “Yeah,” Lucy said. “That’s totally her. We’ve all been shown her photo dozens of times so we remember to watch out for her. She was released from jail a few months ago.”

  “But there’s still a restraining order in place, right? She’s not supposed to be anywhere near Antoine.” I turned the photo around to look at it again myself.

  “If she obeyed restraining orders, she wouldn’t have done the jail time, Rebecca.” She picked up the photo. “It still doesn’t explain why you have her photo here.”

  “Dan brought it over to see if she was the dark-haired woman I’d seen the morning I found Melanie. She was the only dark-haired woman staying at the hotel who wasn’t part of your crew.” Could this woman have something to do with Melanie’s death? It wouldn’t be the first time a stalker had turned violent.

  “She was at the hotel?” Lucy’s eyes went wide.

  “That’s what Dan said.” I chewed my lip.

  Lucy grabbed my hand. “Where is she now?”

  “Dan said he tried to find her, but she wasn’t in her room. I’ll call him right away.”

  The crew slipped out the back door to shoot some more scenic backdrops for the show. I had a feeling that if this particular episode ever aired there were going to be a lot of scenic backdrops with voice-overs from Antoine. After they left, I slipped out the back to take out the morning’s garbage before calling Dan and, fra
nkly, to clear my head for a second. There was a little too much hustle and bustle going on for my new small-town tastes. I came out onto the porch. A woman stood with her back to me. I froze for a second, not sure what to do. What was she doing back here? “Can I help you?” I asked in my best “I don’t want to help and never will” voice.

  She whirled around. It was the woman I’d seen going into the café and by the lighthouse when Antoine was filming and maybe coming out of Barbara’s shop.

  “No,” she said, backing away like I might take a swing at her with my giant Hefty bag. “Just leaving. Sorry to bother you.”

  “What are you doing back here?” I stepped toward her. Maybe I would take a swing at her with my Hefty bag. “Who are you?”

  She turned and scurried down the alley.

  “Wait. What’s your name?” I called after her.

  She didn’t turn. I dropped my Hefty bag and started walking after her. She glanced over her shoulder and took off running.

  After retrieving my garbage and depositing it in the Dumpster, I went back inside. Dario was taking off his apron. “Okay if I take off, Rebecca?”

  “Absolutely. Thank you so much. You haven’t even been here a week and you’re already saving my life multiple times over.”

  He laughed. “I sold some food to people and made some coffee. Lifesaving is his bag.” He nodded his head out toward the front of the shop.

  I peeked out. Eric stood in the middle of the room, looking around as if he’d never seen the shop before. “Hey, Eric.”

  “Hi, Rebecca. How’s Dario doing?” he asked.

  “He’s magnificent.” In oh so many ways.

  He chuckled. “I’ve heard him described that way before.”

  Dario slipped out from behind me. “Oh, you,” he said and walked up to Eric and kissed him. On the lips.

  Ah, that was why Eric had blushed when he described Dario as his friend. He was an extra-friendly friend.

  I said good-bye to Eric and Dario and called Dan. “That picture you showed me earlier? The one of the dark-haired woman who was at the hotel?”

  “Yes.”