Murder At The Bake Off (Celebrity Mysteries 3)

by Zanna Mackenzie

  “Now, I just need to figure out who would want Cherry dead,” he replies, his tone of voice more akin to announcing he’s going to take the car in for a service or pop out for a bottle of wine, than track down a killer.

  This is what Jack’s trained to do, I silently remind myself. This is what he loves to do. Usually, he’s not on the suspect list himself though. “Are you taking on the case in an official capacity? Has her family appointed you?”

  Jack shakes his head, and already I can see he’s lost in thought, probably drawing up his list of potential suspects as we speak. “No, this time it’s personal,” he eventually replies.

  Something has been bugging me since we left the police station. “How come the police don’t want to question me, too? I was at the Roseby with you. OK, you made out that I wasn’t in Cherry’s room, but still…”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. I’ve made sure you’re kept out of this,” he replies without a beat of hesitation.

  “How?”

  “It doesn’t matter how. The main thing is, you’re not going to be dragged in as a suspect. I saw what that did to you before, when we first met, and I won’t let that happen to you again.”

  I sigh. Relieved I’m not going to be subjected to police interrogation but still concerned as to how Jack managed to pull that particular manoeuvre off. “So, were do we start?”

  He shoots me a dubious look. “We?”

  “Well, you didn’t think I was going to sit at home and let you solve this on your own, did you?” I say with an encouraging smile. “We teamed up to clear my name before, and now we’ll do the same to clear yours.”

  He taps his fingers thoughtfully against the table. “Yes, I remember it well. Two years ago, you were running away from your scumbag ex-boyfriend and your life in London, thinking you’d get a nice peaceful life up here, running Eskdale Top.”

  “True,” I concede, noticing he’s trying to change the subject away from me helping him with this case.

  “I seem to recall saying one day we should take a trip to London so you could introduce me to your ex. I think he and I have some unfinished business. Payback time for what he did to you.”

  Right. Tempting as the idea is of Adam getting his comeuppance, I don’t think it would be a good idea for Adam and Jack to meet. Ever. “One day,” I say noncommittally.

  “That’s what you said before. You’re just trying to fob me off.”

  In an attempt to change the topic of conversation from something awkward and uncomfortable back to something equally as awkward and uncomfortable, I say, “So, shall we start planning our investigation? Oh, and I think I should be the one in charge this time.”

  Jack leans across the table and plants a kiss on my lips. I know what he’s up to. Earlier, I tried to distract him so he didn’t discover my latest baking disaster, now, he’s the one trying to distract me. “Not going to work,” I say as soon as our lips part. “I know all your distraction techniques and the way your mind works, Jack Mathis.”

  He grins back at me. He’s so cool, calm and collected about the whole visit to the police station thing and being a suspect in a murder investigation. “No distraction. I just wanted to kiss you. If you want to be in charge of this investigation, then OK. You’re the boss.”

  I pull back from him, surprised. “I am? Seriously?”

  “Sure. Then you can carry on with the investigation if I get dragged down to the station again.”

  Hmm. He does have a point.

  Unfortunately.

  I grab a notebook and pen, thrilled he’s invited me to be a part of his investigation. “So, who do we have as likely suspects? Where do we start?”

  “We start at the Roseby, with that CCTV footage.”

  “The police will still be crawling all over the hotel, you can’t just walk in and ask to see the security footage,” I reason. “They’ve banned you, remember?”

  “I’m not planning on walking into the place. Not as me, anyway.”

  “What then? You’re going to disguise yourself with a wig and moustache and get in that way?” I half-joke.

  “There’s a company in Delamere imaginatively called Hotel Laundry Services who do a daily drop off and pick up service at the Roseby. They follow pretty much the same schedule every day.”

  “You’re going to hide in the back of the van when they go to the Roseby?”

  “Yep. The guy who runs the business owes me a favour. There should be time to get onto today’s run. The Roseby drop off time is usually the last of the day, as it’s on the van driver’s way back to the laundry premises.” He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through his contacts. “Let’s give him a call right now.”

  A few minutes later, as I’m pacing the kitchen wondering if Jack’s going to end up in big trouble for all this, he walks back into the room. “All arranged. The van is already out on its afternoon run. Its last pick up and drop off before the Roseby is at the Lake View Hotel on the edge of Delamere, so I’m meeting the van there and hopping on board. Just before it gets to the Roseby, he’ll stop so I can jump in the back. The laundry is delivered to a housekeeping building behind the hotel near the new spa at the Roseby. I can get into the main hotel building from there easily enough without anyone seeing me. No worries.”

  “What time are we meeting the van at the Lake View?”

  Jack raises a questioning eyebrow. “We?”

  “Ten minutes ago, you said I could be in charge of this case, so I’m coming with you! I can be your look out and minimise the risks you take—and the amount of trouble you could land yourself in.”

  Jack opens his mouth to protest.

  I hold up a silencing hand. “I’m going with you. I’ll only sit here worrying if I don’t. It’s better if I’m with you and know what’s going on, rather than sitting here imagining all sorts of dreadful things.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  It’s now a dull, damp and dismal February afternoon as we wait in the car park for the van to show up. A part of me is nervous, but the other part is actually excited and also relieved to be doing something constructive to help clear Jack’s name. We need to get to the bottom of this case and pin down who murdered Cherry.

  The Hotel Laundry Services van arrives bang on time. Once it has finished its work here at Lake View, we hop into the cab and accompany the driver, a cheery Polish guy who speaks excellent English and sings along to the radio, on the way to the Roseby. Five minutes later, he pulls the van over to the side of the road a mile or so before the gates of the Roseby.

  “Not looking forward to this,” the driver says. “Newspaper people are waiting at the hotel gates all the time since the scary murder. They block the driveway. I cannot easily get into hotel.”

  Wonderful. We’ll have to brave the world’s media as well as dodge the police on this assignment.

  As the Roseby is the last hotel, thankfully there’s plenty of room in the back of the van. Jack and I crouch behind a large wicker basket of fresh bedlinens and towels so that we are out of sight in case the police decide to do a quick spot check on the vehicle. Luckily, they don’t, and after being jostled around in the back of the van and feeling a bit car sick, not to mention battling a touch of claustrophobia, I breathe a sigh of relief as the vehicle comes to a stop and the driver bangs on the side to let us know we have arrived.

  Our plan is for the driver to go ahead inside and chat with the hotel’s housekeeper in the storage building for a few minutes, giving us chance to sneak out of the back of the van and creep over to the room in the main hotel where the CCTV footage can be viewed. After waiting a moment for him to get into position, we push the door open and jump out. Sprinting for the cover of some trees in the hotel’s extensive landscaped grounds, we pause to check the coast is clear before heading for the staff entrance at the back of the Roseby itself. Jack knows the code for this door. He punches it into the keypad and we’re in. Now, we just have to get to the office to view the footage. Easy peasy. Hope
fully. I feel as though we should be skulking along these corridors and hiding behind doors when we spot members of staff walking towards us, but Jack strolls through them looking surprisingly relaxed. “Don’t we need to be careful?” I ask.

  “Outside, yes, where the police might have spotted us, but in here, we’re fine. Everyone knows me and they know I had nothing to do with Cherry’s death.”

  We pause to let a young woman with a cleaning trolley get past. She smiles at us and nods her thanks.

  “Will the police have told everyone you’re banned? What if they’ve asked people to report to them if they see you around the hotel?”

  “I spoke to the hotel manager earlier and he assured me his staff won’t say a word to the authorities. They want me around so I can get to the bottom of this murder and help the hotel keep its name in the clear.” He strides confidently towards a door and I rush after him.

  Peering through the window of the door between the staff area and the reception and general office, we see a uniformed policeman walk past. Ah. Maybe things won’t be quite so easy then.

  I spot Andrew, the guy we’d spoken to on reception on the day we’d arrived to meet Cherry. At the memory of finding Cherry, a shiver runs through me, from the top of my ponytail through to my desperately in-need-of-a-DIY-pedicure toes.

  Andrew heads for the door we’re lurking behind. There’s a pause as he enters the staff security code, and then the door flings open, narrowly missing squishing us against the wall.

  “Hey, watch out,” Jack says, making Andrew jump a foot in the air.

  “Jack? What are you doing back here? Last I heard the police had taken you off in handcuffs.”

  Handcuffs?

  “Wicked gossip,” Jack says, with a good-natured shake of his head. “Look, I need a favour.”

  “Absolutely,” he says, his face taking on a serious expression. “Anything I can do to help, I will. I know there’s no way you killed that baking woman.”

  Jack points towards the door. “Can you distract the policeman out there for five minutes? Tell him you think you saw something useful to the case in the corridor near Cherry’s room or something. I need to get into the office behind reception so I can check the CCTV footage.”

  “Of course, like I said, anything for our local private investigator,” he says, turning and heading back out into the reception area. Sure enough, he whisks the policeman off in the direction of the stairs, and we creep through and into the general office.

  I’m so grateful Jack knows pretty much everyone at the Roseby, because trying to do this in a place where you’re a stranger would be nigh on impossible. We need the hotel employees to help us pull this off. Five minutes later we are hidden away in the little room off the back office where the CCTV footage can be viewed. Abigail, who is manning reception, let us in and is ensuring nobody else comes near until we’re done and sorted.

  Harold, one of the hotel’s duty managers with the responsibility for security, is fuming that somebody crept into the hotel on his watch and he helps us sort out the controls to view the footage. “Trouble is,” he explains, “there’s no camera coverage on that corridor of the hotel. The CCTV is all on the main entrances, plus reception and some of the public areas, and the garage we use to park guests’ cars in.”

  “What about the kitchens?” I ask. “Was the food delivered to Cherry’s room on an official Roseby tray using hotel crockery?”

  “Yeah, it was,” Jack replies.

  “The police had the kitchen staff checking inventory to see if the items were definitely from here, or just faked to look as though they were,” Harold adds.

  “And? Were they from here?” I’m eager to find out.

  “No,” Harold says. “Somebody set all of this up, doing their proper research beforehand. They must have stayed here, or visited the restaurant, to see what plates and cutlery and cups we use. That, or they somehow got into the kitchen to scope it all out that way.”

  “Let’s take a look at the camera footage we do have for that timespan,” Jack says, flopping onto a seat in front of the desk. “I assume the police have already gone through all of this?”

  “Yeah. There’s nothing on here though, so they weren’t interested,” Harold says, pressing a button to start the viewing session.

  “Maybe they missed something,” I suggest hopefully.

  Thirty minutes later, we’ve come to the same conclusion as the local police. There were no suspicious incidents and nothing suggesting a person with murder on his mind was creeping along the corridors of the hotel on a mission.

  “So, it was somebody already in the hotel, like another guest or a member of staff. Or it could even have been somebody Cherry knew and was meeting, or at the very least expecting, that afternoon,” I clarify.

  “Unless…she opened the door because she was expecting us to arrive and the afternoon tea to be delivered,” Jack says. Turning to Harold he adds, “I’m going to need…”

  “A list of hotel guests and any people who visited Cherry that day,” Harold replies, finishing Jack’s sentence for him. “I’ve already compiled that list for the police. I’ll get you a copy.”

  Five minutes later, we’re back in the laundry van. The driver sweet-talked the housekeeper into a cup of tea and slice of cake in the staff quarters to buy us some extra time to do our stuff. Another nausea-inducing ride in the back of the van, and we’re out of the Roseby, hopping into Daisy again (we thought it would be more discreet to use my car than Jack’s for this little operation) and on our way back to Eskdale.

  In the kitchen at Eskdale, we open the piece of paper with the list from Harold and peruse the names. There are none we recognise.

  “It’ll take ages to cross check all of these to see if they know Cherry or know somebody who knows Cherry,” I say exasperatedly.

  “True,” Jack concedes. “So let’s ditch the needle in the haystack approach for now and instead get online and see if Cherry was involved in any scandal or had made any enemies lately,” he says, already tapping away on his phone as I open up my laptop.

  “She was a sweetheart; a much-loved baking doyen. Scandals and enemies don’t exactly spring to mind when you’re talking about the Queen of Baking.”

  “Everyone has secrets,” Jack mutters, engrossed in whatever he’s checking on his iPhone.

  I’m tempted to say, “even you?” But as I have a few secrets of my own at the moment—failed bake-off competition attempts for starters—who am I to push the subject? Besides, now is so not the time for that kind of conversation. We need to start digging into the life and times of Ms. Cherry Bakewell, baking aficionado. Jack has spoken to the organisers of the Delamere Baking Festival, and they’ve confirmed that after much debate they have decided to continue with the festival. Everything else is booked, loads of tickets have been sold and the big name replacement judge, Petula Musgrove, will be arriving in town soon. So, they’re pressing ahead with everything and have decided to hold a special memorial service for Cherry straight after the opening ceremony.

  Jack’s phone buzzes into life, and I notice the heavy frown as he spots who is calling him. He spins around and leaves the room. Hmm. What’s that about?

  I creep across the room towards the farmhouse’s back door to see if I can eavesdrop on his conversation. The look on his face before he took that call has me worried.

  “You can’t seriously think that,” I hear Jack say to whoever is on the other end of his phone. “But…”

  His sentence is cut off by the person he’s speaking to.

  “Yes. I know that, but…” His voice takes on a sharp tone. “If that’s what you’re going to do, then there’s no point carrying on with this conversation.”

  Before I can scurry out of the way, Jack opens the door and spots me.

  “I was just worried about you,” I explain unnecessarily.

  Jack surprises me by enveloping me in a tight hug. We stay that way for a few moments then he loosens his arms and steps
away, shaking his head and looking annoyed.

  “What’s wrong?” I venture.

  He lets out a long breath and rubs at the stubble on his chin as though he’s deep in thought.

  “Jack? What was that call about? Is it to do with Cherry’s murder?”

  “Yeah. That was her agent, Marvin. You know, the guy we bumped into at the police station? The one I’d worked on a case with when I was still with the agency?”

  I nod.

  “He’s still furious about what happened to Cherry. He’s blaming me, says I failed at my duty to protect her. He’s going to sue me for negligence and says he won’t rest until he’s ruined me and my reputation as a bodyguard and private investigator.”

  I reach for Jack, taking his hand. “Jack, that’s awful. When we arrived at the Roseby and found her, you hadn’t even officially taken on protection duties, had you?”

  “Technically, no. I was supposed to be looking after her during the actual festival events.” He releases my hand and starts pacing back and forth across the room. “He’s not bothered about stuff like that, though. Apparently, his lawyer will be in touch with me soon.”

  I sigh. Now, I’m even more worried about Jack. I thought that stuff Marvin had said at the police station was all generated by the heat of the moment and that he’d drop it all when he calmed down. Obviously not. We have to clear Jack’s name—and fast—before this suing business gains any momentum.

  “We’ll have this all sorted before things get to that stage,” I say to him.

  “Yeah, of course we will,” he replies, a determined look on his face.

  Right. It’s full steam ahead.

  We work in silence for the next few hours, trawling through public and secret records, official and unofficial Internet searches, trying to find out who might be holding a grudge against Cherry. I deal with the easily-found news stories involving Cherry in the public domain, and Jack logs into the various databases he uses to gather background information on people. Some sites he is legitimately logging into. On less public sites, he’s using other people’s login details, acquired from old contacts (with their knowledge) within the CCIA. And there are a few sites he’s visiting where I think he’s probably using login information he has acquired via questionable means.