Fudging the Books (A Cookbook Nook Mystery 4)

by Daryl Wood Gerber

  Off to my right, I caught sight of Neil Foodie. He wasn’t serving customers. He was doing, of all things, a card trick for a couple. What in the world? Had he given up his comedy act and was now working on a magic show? Neil fanned a deck of red-toned cards toward the woman. She tapped a card. Neil nodded and began to shuffle the cards. He pulled them apart like an accordion, but as he attempted to restack them, they fluted upward and spewed everywhere. Neil turned the color of the deck of cards and apologized profusely. He bent to retrieve the mess. While crouched, he whipped his head right and left. Was he worried that Simon would fire him on the spot? And why shouldn’t he? Neil was neglecting his duty. A number of customers tried to snag Neil’s attention.

  Our waitress appeared with the bill tucked into a leatherette folder. “Don’t mind Neil,” she said, setting the tab on the table. “He can be a goofball. Have you ever seen him pull the gallium spoon trick?”

  “The what?”

  “Gallium spoon trick. Gallium is this super soft metal that can be molded into a spoon shape, but when the spoon heats up, it melts and disappears into a beverage. Poof!” She showed me with her hands. “Neil just about lost his job over that. His mother would have been ticked.” The waitress laughed and moved away.

  I didn’t laugh. His mother? Mother’s Chocolate Bombs. Ingrid had called Neil a Mama’s boy. Neil had moved home. He was taking care of her. Was it possible he wanted to get into the cookbook business to please his mother? Did Neil, a semi-delinquent, steal into Sweet Sensations and swipe some of Coco’s recipe cards? Not all of her family recipes were published in one of her books yet. Did he hope to pawn them off as his own? Had his sister figured it out?

  I drummed my fingertips on the table. No, Neil was a wag, a comedian. Yes, he was a thief; he’d stolen the pot of doubloons. But I doubted he was an aspiring chef, and deep down, I didn’t think he was capable of murder. He wasn’t sly enough.

  Neil rose and fanned the playing cards again. Simon glanced in Neil’s direction. His face ticked with anger. He tucked the note card to which he’d been referring into his shirt pocket, rubbed his fingers against his pant leg to rid them of chalk dust, and started for Neil.

  The action triggered a vivid memory. As an advertising executive, I’d had to pay attention to what we in the business referred to as continuity. We might shoot a commercial out of order, but the action had to remain coherent. An actor couldn’t pick up a full glass of wine in one shot and hold a half-empty glass in the next. An actress couldn’t tuck a hair over her right ear in the master shot and then slip it over her left ear in the close-up. Details mattered.

  I ran my finger down the stem of my wineglass as I imagined facets of Alison’s murder that I hadn’t been able to make sense of before.

  It’s in the cards, Deputy Appleby said at the Sweet Sensations crime scene. He hadn’t been talking about recipe cards, but right now, that was what I was thinking about—specifically the mess of cards after the break-in as well as the temporarily missing cards from Coco’s private stash.

  Coco’s mother and grandmother had handed down the recipe cards. Someone had filched a few, and, if my intuition was right, had replaced them. Why?

  I peeked at Simon. Brushing chalk off his trousers.

  That’s it, I thought. Not the chalk. The action. Swiping his fingertips against his pant leg.

  Coco’s family recipe cards were old; stains were inevitable. Would new stains be noticeable? Would a lab be able to determine whether any stains were caused by, say, peanut oil? If there was oil on the Chocolate Bombs recipe card, it wouldn’t have come from Neil’s fingertips, because he was allergic to peanuts. But it could have come from Simon’s hand. He handled peanuts on a regular basis at Vines. Would the recipe card or cards that had magically reappeared at Coco’s shop be contaminated with not only peanut oil but also Simon’s DNA?

  No, my theory was off. Simon had been with Coco at the time of the murder. Their rendezvous lasted until the wee hours of the morning. Or had it? Yes, it must have. Coco wouldn’t have lied about that. She had been over the moon to spend time with him.

  I sipped the last remnants of my wine as a more sinister scenario came to me. Did Coco and Simon carry out the murder together? No, even in teetering heels, Coco walked with clod-stomping loudness. Her entrance would have awakened Alison from her nap. Simon, on the other hand, was stealthy. I recalled observing bird-watchers outside my cottage the other day as they sneaked up on the egret. Simon was a bird-watcher, trained to be quiet. He could have tiptoed to Alison and stabbed her in the back long before she roused.

  Simon came across as an easygoing soul, but he had stepped out on his wife. He wasn’t good to his mother, either, according to his wife. During the argument with Gloria on the steps outside The Cookbook Nook, she had blamed Simon for letting his mother down. Gloria ranted that Simon was a recipe for disaster.

  The conversation with the book club ladies at Sweet Sensations a few hours ago rang out in my mind. Lola mentioned that her cookbook at Foodie Publishing might be shelved. Gloria had chided Simon about a project being shelved. She ordered him to un-shelve it.

  I flashed on another exchange. With Dash. A few days ago. He told me Alison was halting production on a number of books, including the Wine Country book. Was that Simon’s work? Simon’s great-grandfather owned a vineyard in the old country.

  Had Simon included recipes in his manuscript? Did he run out of ideas? Did he turn to Coco for inspiration? Simon visited Coco at her workplace. Often, she said. Did he make a play for her in order to steal one of her recipes? Did he then break into and trash Sweet Sensations so he could reinsert the cards he had pinched?

  What if Simon incorporated the notes from Coco’s mother and grandmother into his own anecdotal account and claimed them as his own? Alison was smart. She would have figured out the truth. Based on her assumption, did she tell Simon she was shelving his work? Prior to her visit to Crystal Cove?

  Yes, that made sense. He planned to kill her when she arrived. That was why Simon had enrolled his wife in an out-of-town conference, and that was why Simon had chosen the book club night to cement his relationship with Coco.

  I remembered Alison texting someone at the book club event. The killer had erased Alison’s text messages. If they could be recovered, would they prove Simon was the killer? Did Simon, in a text message, challenge Alison to prove his guilt? Was that why she had gone back to Coco’s, pulled up the recipes on the computer, and baked cookies?

  I balked, yet again, over the fact that Coco had been with Simon that night. I didn’t think she had lied about being with him. My aunt saw her enter the room at Nature’s Retreat. How could Simon have crept out unnoticed? I swiveled in my chair and glanced at Simon. He glimpsed me peeking and tilted his head as if questioning my interest. Quickly I plucked a credit card from my purse, popped it inside the leatherette folder without looking at the charge, and waved the folder.

  Smooth, Jenna.

  Simon winked at me, acknowledging my request. He pressed a hand at the arch of the hostess’s back and gestured toward me with his chin, after which he grabbed his sport coat from a hook and shrugged into it. He grabbed a bottle of wine from a slot by the bar and waggled it at the hostess. “I’m putting this baby in safekeeping.”

  The hostess nodded, and Simon exited the bistro. His departure seemed hasty. Where was he off to? If he realized what I’d figured out, was Coco in danger? She was his alibi.

  I thought about calling Cinnamon, but what if I was wrong? What if Simon wasn’t the killer? Cinnamon had been pretty curt with me at the end of our last conversation. I yanked my cell phone from my purse and dialed Coco’s number instead.

  “Yeah?” She sounded hazy, like she had been drinking.

  “It’s me. Jenna.”

  “Whazzup?”

  “Coco, are you okay?”

  “Uh-huh. Sure. Just lonely.
”

  Now I understood why she hadn’t wanted to return to Sweet Sensations. She’d needed to indulge in a pity party. I had celebrated enough of my own. I wouldn’t judge. I said, “I need you to focus.”

  I heard a slapping sound, as if Coco was smacking her cheeks to wake up. She said, “Go ahead.”

  “On the night Alison died—”

  “The night Simon used me?”

  “Exactly.” He’d used her. “I think Simon might have killed Alison.”

  “What?” Coco rasped. “No. He couldn’t have. Wait a second. You don’t suspect me, too, do you?” She wasn’t so loaded that she had missed that possibility.

  “No.”

  The hostess picked up the leatherette folder and departed.

  “Coco, what time did you meet Simon?”

  “Around eleven.”

  “What did you and Simon do?”

  “You know what we did.” Coco tittered.

  “Did you stay the whole night together?”

  “Until four thirty. Then I headed home to change for work and found Alison, and I . . .” Coco clicked her tongue but added nothing further.

  “Did Simon ever leave the room?”

  Silence. Coco seemed to be weighing the question.

  “Coco, is it possible he slipped out?”

  “No. At least—” She inhaled deeply.

  “What? Tell me. I want a play-by-play.”

  Coco inhaled sharply. “Jenna, I can’t.”

  “Not that kind of play-by-play. I want to know the timing of everything. From the beginning.”

  “Simon paid for the room. When I arrived, I called from downstairs. He told me the room number. I went up the elevator.”

  The hostess returned with the bill. I removed my credit card from the leatherette folder and signed the charge, and she left again. Adrenaline was rushing through me. I tapped the corner of the credit card on the tabletop. “Keep going, Coco. Then what?”

  “We drank champagne. We tore each other’s clothes off and made love. I took a bath around midnight. I might have fallen asleep in the tub.”

  “Might have or did?”

  “Did.”

  “You fell asleep? How long were you out?”

  “I don’t know. An hour. Why?”

  “Did you feel drugged?” Date rape drugs were often used to make people forget an incident.

  “No. I’m a lightweight when it comes to champagne.”

  In the deep recesses of my brain, I remembered her saying that at the book club event.

  “I get weak in the knees,” she went on. “I can drink hard liquor with no problem, but—”

  “Does Simon know?”

  “That I’m easy?” Coco snickered, then sniffed.

  “About the champagne.”

  “I might have mentioned it, but Jenna, he was there when I got out of the bath. I think you’re wrong. He didn’t do this.”

  I quickly explained my theory about the recipe cards. “You said Simon visited the store.”

  “A number of times.”

  “Did he ever go into the kitchen or the office at Sweet Sensations?”

  Coco sighed. “Yes. We, um, necked back there.”

  “When did he set up your tryst?”

  “I hate that word,” she hissed.

  Call a spade a spade, I thought. “When?”

  “After the book club and the three of us went to Vines. It was so spur-of-the-moment. I couldn’t help but say yes.” She bit back a sob. “I know it was wrong, Jenna.”

  “Coco, stop it. It’s not your fault. If it makes you feel any better, I think he invited you to the hotel to establish his alibi.”

  “I can’t believe he’s the killer.” Her voice crackled with emotion.

  I felt for her. No woman ever wants to think the person she loves is a bad guy. I certainly didn’t, but David was.

  “Listen, Coco, Simon left here a few minutes ago. If he calls, don’t answer. Lock your doors and windows.”

  Coco whimpered. “You’re scaring me.”

  “Call the police.”

  “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “Don’t be naïve.”

  Chapter 28

  I SCANNED THE bistro for my aunt and Deputy Appleby. They had left during my conversation with Coco. Not willing to dally any longer, I headed back to The Cookbook Nook to fetch Tigger and Hershey. On my way, I set aside my hesitation about being wrong about Simon and called the precinct. Cinnamon wasn’t on duty. Risking the end of a beautiful friendship, I decided to call her on her cell phone. She answered after one ring.

  “Are you busy?” I asked.

  “It’s late.”

  I heard background noise. The news on TV. I dove into my spiel, outlining my thoughts about Simon stealing the recipe cards.

  “Is that why you needed to see what was on the computer?” Cinnamon asked.

  “Yes. Do you recall who the author of the document called Mother’s Chocolate Bombs was?”

  “Not offhand, but I’ll check it out.”

  “I believe it was Simon. I think he altered one of Coco’s recipes to pawn it off as his own.”

  “Why steal something that has already been published?”

  “Because he was running short on good recipes for his cookbook,” I said. “He needed a few tried-and-true.”

  “Aren’t recipes copyrightable?”

  I explained what Coco had said to me, that the directions for the recipe and the voice of the author were proprietary, not the ingredients. Therefore, if Simon changed the instructions and altered the wording, voilà. The recipe was his. Except Alison was no dummy. She knew he’d stolen recipes from Coco.

  Cinnamon said, “Where are you?”

  “At the shop and then on my way home.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  I disconnected, a smile on my face. At least she hadn’t labeled me crazy. I unlocked the front door of the shop and heard a high-pitched yowl. Panic cut through me. I called Tigger’s name. He didn’t come.

  “Hershey!” I yelled. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it.” I raced past the breezeway leading to the café—the door was always closed and locked at end of business—and past the antique kitchen table and sales counter. I pushed through the drapes into the stockroom and saw Hershey, his hind legs stiff, his rear end raised, and his back sloped downward toward his head. He was holding Tigger at bay in a corner. Tigger’s tail was wrapped protectively around his body. His eyes were dilated with fear.

  I shrugged off my purse and stepped cautiously toward them. I didn’t want Hershey attacking Tigger just because Tigger’s human had arrived.

  “Hershey, it’s okay, fella. Let’s play nice.”

  He hissed again. There seemed to be no reason for his aggression. There was no female cat in the area; both food bowls were full. What had Tigger done to earn Hershey’s wrath, or was Hershey simply mean-spirited?

  “Time out, Hershey,” I said, hoping words would work with cats like they do with people.

  I heard a door creak open. “Bailey!” I called, thankful she’d had a change of heart and was here to collect the cat. “I’m in the stockroom. Your cat—”

  Hands shoved back the drapes. Simon Butler entered.

  What the heck? I thought he’d left the vicinity for the night. My insides clenched. I pressed down the fear rising up my throat.

  Simon’s face was pasty white and covered in perspiration. His arms dangled at his sides. In one hand, he held the bottle of wine he had told his staff he was taking for safekeeping. Prisoner Blindfold. I recognized the label.

  Hershey, sensing something was wrong, stood stock-still. Like an owl, he swiveled his head to look at the intruder. Tigger scampered to me and nudged my ankles with his head. I toed him away and made a
slight gesture, warning him to stay put.

  “Hello, Simon,” I said. “Fancy seeing you here.” Honestly, fancy? I never said fancy. Was my voice shaking? “Why are you here?”

  Simon didn’t say anything. The words Cat got your tongue? flitted through my mind. I bit the corner of my lip to keep from blurting anything idiotic. No need to stir the pot. Simon looked somewhat confused. I recalled a time when I’d house-sat for my boss at Taylor & Squibb. I was working in his office one morning when—surprise, surprise—his thirty-something alcoholic son appeared in the doorway with a huge knife in hand. My boss hadn’t told me the guy was staying there. Big oops. It turned out the son had been cutting melon in the kitchen and heard sounds. Me. He’d come to investigate the intruder. Thanks to the alcohol he had imbibed the night before, he was in a bit of a trance. I’d had to feign all sorts of calm in order to coerce him back to his bedroom. Simon looked like that crazed son. Tousled. Unsure.

  Hershey mewed. I shot him a cautionary glance. Tigger slunk to Hershey’s side to buddy up. Hershey didn’t hiss. Better the enemy you know . . .

  “Is that wine for me, Simon?” I extended a hand, hoping he would hand over the bottle. “I heard Neil talking about that particular wine the other night. I’ve been meaning to taste it. I bet it would’ve gone great with the cheese platter I ordered.” And never ate because Bailey abandoned me. If only she hadn’t run off to see Tito. “How much is it? I’ll pay you in cash.” I edged toward my purse.

  “Don’t!” Simon ordered.

  I froze.

  “You know,” he said in a menacingly low voice.

  “What do I know?”

  “You figured it out.”

  I made my face go blank. Might as well have him spell it out.

  “You were staring at me upstairs, Jenna.”

  “It’s a bad habit,” I said. I do stare. I wasn’t lying. “I apologize.”