I was parched from all the chatting. Besides, I needed a fortifying cup of coffee to face Simon. I stopped by the refreshment table and was filling a cup with steaming coffee that smelled like hazelnuts when an arm curled around my shoulders. My ex-husband, Mars, short for Marshall. I’d known he would be there and steeled myself for a little shock of awkwardness that didn’t come. Seeing him again was like eating a bowl of lobster bisque. Warm, cozy, familiar, even a little exciting, but I didn’t want more. We would always be friends but I realized with joy at that moment that I truly had moved on.
Mars’s magnetic personality earned him the nickname Teflon Mars among friends. No matter how dire his actions, everything slid off of him. A handy attribute for a political advisor.
He kissed my cheek. “Good luck, Soph. Don’t tell Nat but your country bread stuffing was always my favorite.”
“Gnat? You call her Gnat, like a bug?”
He shook hands with someone and we moved away from the coffee setup. “Yeah, she hates it. So undignified.”
He jammed his hands into his pockets, a gesture I knew well. Something was wrong.
“I hear Simon is taking you out.”
This was my lucky day. I couldn’t resist a chance to tweak Mars a little bit. “The ballet.”
“Steer clear of him, Soph. You’ll end up getting hurt.”
“Why, Mars,” I said in my best imitation of Scarlett O’Hara, “I do believe you might be a tad jealous.”
I’d always liked Mars’s eyes. They twinkled with humor like his mother’s. He stared at me with those kind eyes.
“He’s trouble. On the outside Simon comes across as a great guy, but he’s crafty and conniving beneath that facade. Trust me on this, Soph. Don’t get involved with him. He’s ruthless. He didn’t get to be rich by being nice.”
I didn’t resist the grin that came to my lips. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”
The loudspeakers crackled and a woman’s voice announced, “All contestants report to the check-in desk immediately.”
I should have skipped the coffee and found Simon. With a quick wave to Mars I made a beeline to the desk in the ballroom foyer.
Enormous arrangements of orange and gold mums flanked the desk. The contestants clustered together and Wendy shrieked, “It’s sabotage. Someone’s cheating!”
Her lips drawn so tightly they almost disappeared, Natasha focused on the contest coordinator. “I hate to see her go but I have to agree. It’s simply not right for a contestant to have a relationship with a judge.”
They were talking about me.
“Hey! I was looking for Simon to tell him off. We don’t have a relationship of any kind.”
The contest coordinator blinked slowly. “Simon? What’s he got to do with thyme?”
Wendy shoved a small herb bottle under my nose. “My thyme. It’s gone. Someone has been tampering with my ingredients.”
Each contestant searched the faces of the others—except Natasha, who held her chin high and acted as though she were above the fray.
“I brought extra. You’re welcome to have some of my thyme,” I offered.
Tears welled in Wendy’s eyes. “Thank you so much.”
I hated to leave Natasha there to bring up the subject of Simon again but I had no choice. I sprinted through the ballroom doors and toward my work station as fast as the crowd would allow. Leaning over the work counter, I snatched my bottle of dried thyme and hustled back to the lobby.
Wendy grabbed it and unscrewed the top. “I can’t thank you enough . . .” She shook some out and sniffed it. “What’s the big idea? This isn’t thyme. It’s”—she dabbed the tip of her finger into it and tasted it—“cilantro.”
I seized the bottle from her, smelled it, and tried some. “It
is
dried cilantro.” The saboteur had erred in a big way. Cilantro might be a popular herb but it wasn’t one of my personal favorites. I didn’t keep it on hand in my kitchen so there was no way I’d goofed and brought cilantro instead of thyme.
The contest organizer grumbled. “I’ll get thyme from the hotel kitchen. Everyone will use the same thing, even those of you who have thyme.”
Natasha groaned. “Hotel restaurant herbs. You know they’re not fresh. My stuffing depends on the quality of the herbs.”
“If you brought your own fresh herbs, then you may use them. If you brought dried herbs, you must use what I give you. That’s my ruling.”
“What about the contestant who is dating Simon?” asked Emma.
“I am
not
dating him.” My voice was a bit louder than I meant it to be. I sucked in air and willed myself to speak in a calm tone. “I have never dated Simon. Never had lunch with him, never had a phone conversation. To be sure this is fair to all of you, I was on my way to find him and tell him that I will not go to the ballet with him. Is that okay with everyone?”
“He’ll still be biased,” said Wendy. “Maybe he should withdraw from judging.”
Natasha acted horrified. “It’s
his
contest! We can’t ask him to bow out of his own contest.”
Local celebrity chef Pierre LaPlumme focused on the ceiling and muttered in a French accent, “Zees is why I don’t work wiz zee amateurs.”
The organizer rubbed her temples. “All the stuffing will be judged without names or other identification. I know your recipes but Simon doesn’t. Is that satisfactory?”
Everyone except Natasha nodded.
She smiled sweetly at the organizer and said, “You are aware that the contest is misnamed. Stuffing goes into something, like a bird. Dressing is baked separately.”
Emma whined, “Who cares about that? No one stuffs a bird anymore. Stuffing and dressing are interchangeable these days. What’s crucial is that Sophie breaks her date like Natasha said she should.”
“Fine.” I practically spat it. Even though I’d meant to do it anyway, it was irritating to have to do it on Natasha’s demand. I could feel the fire burning in my face. Where did that devil Simon go?
Clyde, who’d been by Simon’s side earlier, walked through the lobby. I jogged up to him and asked if he knew where his boss was.
Clyde assessed me with amusement. Did he think I intended to fawn over his boss like countless other women?
“They gave him a conference room so he could work during the contest. The George Washington Room, right down the hall.”
It figured that a big shot like Simon wouldn’t want to mingle with the rest of us all day. I made a quick pit stop in the ladies’ room to catch my breath and regain my composure. Holding a wet paper towel against my flaming face I wondered why he had put me in this position.
I stormed down the hall to face Simon, rapped on the door, but didn’t wait for permission to enter.
“Simon!” I charged into an empty room.
Almost empty.
SIX
From
Natasha Online
:
Salt isn’t one size fits all anymore. Today’s home kitchen should contain at least five different kinds of salt. Kosher for brining, coarse grinder salt for the salt mill, fine French sea salt for cooking, marvelous fleur de sel for salt shakers, and sel gris, also known as gray salt, my personal favorite.
Simon was sprawled on the floor facedown. Blood seeped from the back of his head onto the carpet.
A scream caught in my throat as the implications sank in. I ran toward him to help him, stopped abruptly, and backed up, scanning the room. Whoever injured him was gone. I darted at him again, knelt next to him, and felt his neck for a pulse.
There was none—but my own blood hammered in my head.
The door behind me opened and I shrieked, anticipating a bat-wielding killer.
Natasha’s willowy shape filled the doorway. “Sophie. What have you done?”
I leapt to my feet. “I found him this way. He . . . he’s dead.”
Natasha pointed a well-manicured finger at me. “You killed him?” She swallowed hard and edged toward Simon’s corpse. “You have to remain calm. I’m sure it must have been an accident. Don’t worry. I’ll stand by you. So will Mars.”
“I didn’t kill him!”
The muscles in Natasha’s neck looked like taut rubber bands. She backed toward the door—fast. “I’m going to get Mars. He’ll know what to do. You stay here and try to be calm.” As she reached behind her for the handle, the door burst open.
Clyde stopped dead just inside the room. “What happened?” His normally calm demeanor dissolved. He dove at his boss and felt for a pulse. Natasha fled into the hallway. I could hear her shouting for Mars. I watched Clyde’s face, hoping he’d find some sign of life that had eluded me. He rolled Simon onto his back and started CPR.
I felt my pockets for my cell phone. Rats. I’d left it in my work station. Running out of the room, I caught up to Natasha in the hallway.
“Do you have your cell? Call nine-one-one.”
With her face as frozen as if she’d just had a BOTOX treatment, she stared at me for long seconds. “Yes, of course.”
I ran back to the conference room to see if I could help.
The room was filling with hotel employees and contest participants. Mars and his brother wedged in, as did my dad. So many people were crowding into the room, I couldn’t see Simon. Finally I managed to break through the crowd and cross the small space around Simon.
Clyde and a couple of guys from hotel security were still trying CPR. I backed away from the body to give them ample room, stepped on something hard, and lost my balance. Flailing my arms in a vain effort to break my fall, I landed, rather painfully, on top of the thing that tripped me. It was the stuffing trophy, a finely detailed turkey of heavy golden metal, the tail smeared with Simon’s blood. Stunned, I threw it down and watched as it tumbled toward Simon until one of the security guys kicked it out of his way.
Like a sudden thunderbolt, Wolf stormed in and the atmosphere changed. He took over for the guy who’d been giving Simon heart compressions. While he worked, he growled, “Everyone out! Right now.” The onlookers filtered out and I crossed the room to join them.
Wolf didn’t raise his head or stop compressing but he said, “Everyone out except those with blood on their hands.”
I looked at my fingers. A sticky red mess covered them.
“That means you, Sophie.”
I stopped and looked down, shocked to realize that I had wiped Simon’s blood on my pants. Even my shoes bore traces of red.
When the rescue squad arrived and took over tending Simon, Wolf seized my arm and propelled me to the service corridor behind the room. Thrusting my back to the wall, he assumed his police stance, feet apart, fists on his hips.
“Two murders in two days and only one constant—you.”
“I had nothing to do with either of them.”
“Give it up, Sophie. Your photograph wasn’t in Otis’s truck by accident. There’s no way you’re not tied to these murders. This doesn’t look good for you.”
“Oh, please.” I said lightly. “I barely knew Simon.”
“Rumor had it you knew him so well you were about to be disqualified.”
“You’re going to rely on a rumor?”
“You’d be surprised how often rumors can lead to something useful. Did Simon and Otis threaten you? What did they have on you?”
“Nothing! I told you, I didn’t know the PI at all and contrary to what some people seem to think, I wasn’t involved with Simon.”
Wolf turned his head to the side in a gesture of disbelief. “Then what were you doing here with Simon? You were supposed to be getting ready to cook.”
“He put me in an awkward position by asking me out. I was looking for him to turn down the invitation. I admit I was upset, but you don’t kill somebody because of that.”
“People have been murdered for less.”
Sarcasm got the better of me. “Oh, right. Let’s see, either be disqualified or kill the judge. I don’t know . . . seems like I wouldn’t win the contest either way.”
His mouth hardened. “So what’s your story this time, wise guy?”
“There’s no story. I walked in and found him dead.”
“You seem to be doing that a lot.” After glaring at me until I was uncomfortable, he said, “Don’t take any trips.”
He left me in the back corridor, reeling from the events of the last two days. He was right. Normal people didn’t find two corpses in two days. Why should he believe me? It seemed like men were dropping all around me. And it didn’t help that I’d picked up the murder weapon and handled it.
When I returned to the conference room, the rescue squad was loading Simon onto a gurney. A blanket covered him, including his face.
“Wolf?” I said. “You’re going to find my fingerprints on the murder weapon.”
He ran a hand across his forehead. “I’m going to end up arresting you, aren’t I?”
“No. No!” I hastened to explain. “I fell over it and picked it up. There were lots of people in the room; someone must have seen me.”