Ellen McKenzie 03-And Murder for Desser (12 page)

Chapter Eleven

I wanted to blast Sabrina for not telling me she had engaged in a three-way battle with Jolene and Otto on Saturday night, but I wasn’t the police, and she had no obligation to tell me anything. And wasn’t that a bummer! So, I tried to edge my way into the subject.

“Larry was just here, and he said…”

“I know what he said,” she interrupted, “and speak of the devil, guess who’s driving up right now?”

“Not Larry,” I said, surprised. “He didn’t say anything about going out to the winery. What does he want?”

“He called this morning. He’s bringing back the wine Frank doesn’t want. In our rush to leave, we forgot it.”

I laughed. “We did exit in a bit of a hurry. It’s nice of him to make a special trip.”

“Evidently there are some pots or something that he left here the night of the dinner. He wants them back, which is fine with me.”

“Why didn’t he tell us Sunday? We could have brought them.”

“No idea. Besides, I haven’t been here long enough to know what belongs to the winery and what’s the chef’s. They always bring their favorite something. He can rummage around to his heart’s content until he finds his precious pots.”

Sabrina didn’t sound as if she were in a very good mood. Maybe I’d wait until tonight to ask her about Otto and Jolene and—everything. But she was one jump ahead of me.

“You want to know what happened in the kitchen Saturday night, don’t you?”

Put that way, it sounded like meddling, misplaced curiosity, or none of my business. But I did want to know. So I simply said, “Yes.”

“Damn that Larry.”

Unfortunately, that didn’t answer the question, so I said, “This could be serious. What happened?”

“Jolene barged into the kitchen and started in on Otto about something. I walked in just as he was ordering her out of the kitchen and out of his house. She was yelling he couldn’t do that, he’d be sorry, and he was yelling right back that yes he could, and he could walk out of this kitchen right now as well and no one could stop him. So, I told him how I’d stop him. Then I grabbed Jolene and dragged her out the door. I almost knocked Frank over. Served him right for hanging around in the hallway. I got Jolene into the ladies’ room and left. She evidently spent some time.”

I almost laughed. The mental picture was wonderful. Otto with his round beet-colored face, Jolene losing her Southern charm to a little too much Southern Comfort, Sabrina besting them both. Sabrina. She was turning out to be something of an enigma. Either that, or rage gave her courage I’d doubted she had. But another thought intruded.

“Why was Frank outside the kitchen? I thought you told him to keep away from it.”

“I did, and I don’t know.”

“Did he go into the kitchen?”

“I don’t know that either. I told him to go back into the dining room, but I had my hands full with Jolene wailing about how awful Otto was treating her and that she wasn’t going to put up with it. All I thought about was getting her somewhere quiet, where she couldn’t make a public scene. I never thought about Frank again.”

“Have you told this to Dan?”

“Of course,” she said. “I didn’t kill Otto. I never even thought about killing him. Although, in hindsight…”

“Don’t say that,” I said hastily. “I know you didn’t, but you don’t need to run around giving yourself a motive.”

“I already had one. Ask Dan. Listen, I have to go, the tasting room is filling up and I have to help the girls.”

Nothing like a good murder to bring out the morbid in people and bring in the customers. Oh well, as long as they spent money. “See you tonight?”

“Late, we’ll be late,” she said and hung up.

I hung up also and sat for a moment thinking about our conversation. I hadn’t learned anything and there was a bunch I wanted to know, starting with Otto and Jolene. What was that all about? They evidently hated each other, but Otto was letting her stay in his unfinished bed and breakfast for free and she seemed to be happy to be there. Why? What had changed? And why was Frank hanging around in the hallway outside the kitchen? Listening to the fight? Had he gone back into the kitchen after Sabrina and Jolene left? No, he couldn’t have. Larry would have said something. But another thought started to form. Sabrina. She wasn’t an enigma. She followed a pattern, a behavior pattern. When she was at the winery, doing her job, and Mark wasn’t around, she was Miss Efficiency. When Mark was around, she became either a helpless little female or a fierce tiger, ready to do battle protecting her—what? Mate? Territory? Wasn’t that interesting? It was more than interesting. If she thought she was protecting Mark, would she have followed Otto out onto the deck, fought with him, and in a fit of desperation, swung at him with the wine bottle? It seemed possible, and the thought made me a little sick. What did I do now? Call Aunt Mary, of course.

Chapter Twelve

“The man is going to drive me crazy!” was the way she answered the phone.

“Who?” As if I didn’t know.

“Who do you think?”

“I thought you liked all that attention. You sure weren’t crying the blues on Sunday,” I said. I hadn’t talked to Aunt Mary for a couple of days and the last thing I expected was this explosion over the phone.

“Saturday night, Sunday, yes. They were fun. But then there was Monday. Today is Tuesday, and thank God, he has something he ‘can’t get out of ’ tonight, but what am I going to do about tomorrow?”

“What exactly is Frank doing?” I quickly swallowed what was threatening to be a belly laugh. This was so unlike unflappable Aunt Mary, the organizer of half the charity events put on in this town. Dinner for two hundred homeless, a Fourth of July picnic for four hundred, a church bazaar that hosted six hundred, none of these made her turn a hair, so whatever Frank was doing, it must be pretty good.

“He’s…he’s.…he’s here!” she sputtered. “In my kitchen! I can’t get to my own pots and pans.”

The fatal sin. He’d taken over Aunt Mary’s kitchen. I would bet even money he was telling her how to do everything. Gallantly, with grand sweeping gestures, but telling her nonetheless. After all, he was the “great” Frank Tortelli.

“I thought he was busy taking over the restaurant. Isn’t there a lot to do?”

“Oh, yes. Lots. But he’s doing most of it on my phone. My dining room table is full of fabric pieces and wallpaper books. My sofa is piled high with restaurant catalogs. I have strange people calling me, giving me quotes on sides of beef and crates of vegetables. I’m scared to death to open my door. It’ll probably be some man with a truckload of potatoes.”

This time the laugh wouldn’t stay in. “I’ve got to come over and see that.”

“It’s nice someone sees the humor,” I was told, with no small amount of bitterness.

“Okay, Frank’s definitely—anyway, the restaurant part of the bed and breakfast will be open soon. The big dinner is a week from this Saturday. Then he’ll be too busy to be under your feet. Now listen, you’re not the only one—”

“You think so? I don’t. He’ll just give that poor Larry more to do, no credit at all, and camp in my kitchen, writing out menus and telling me how great he is.”

“Speaking of Larry…” I tried again.

I heard a pot clank. “That poor boy.” Aunt Mary’s voice sounded a little hollow, then there was a faint whoosh. The refrigerator door, I assumed. “I don’t know how he puts up with it. First Otto, now Frank. He must have the patience of a saint.”

“He has the persistence of one. You have Frank; I have Larry, and he’s driving me nuts.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Larry. He keeps calling me. Wants to cook me dinner, wants to take me to lunch, he even stopped by this morning.”

“He’s got a crush on you. Probably has since high school.” There was a banging noise. “But, he’s lonely, and you should be nice to him. He’s really quite nice looking. He’ll make someone a good husband.”

“Did you have someone in mind?” I waited but got no reply. “He’s not lonely. He’s horny. And I’m not amused. If he tries stroking the back of my hand once more, I’ll smack him. With a wine bottle. He’s making me crazy.”

“What does Dan think of all Larry’s attentions?”

“We haven’t talked about it.” I started to doodle a stick man with a top hat.

There were splashing noises. “Too busy talking about the wedding?”

“Well,” I let the word sprawl a little, “we haven’t talked a lot about that either.” A stick woman with a veil found her way next to him.

“Ellen.” She sounded almost exasperated. “You have three months. That’s not a lot of time. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were dragging your feet.” There was a pause filled with faint banging noises. “You’re not, are you?”

“Of course not,” I replied hotly. And that was true. More or less. “Dan’s been a little busy.”

“Wait a minute.” I could hear peculiar noises interspersed with “stupid slippery things.” She came back on the line. “Sorry.”

“What are you doing?”

“Cooking,” she answered.

“Cooking what?”

“Food, of course,” she said, a bit grimly. “Now, why did he stop by?”

“Who?” I asked, still trying to identify the strange sounds.

“Larry, of course. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Sabrina. He wanted to tell me about Sabrina. Actually about Jolene and what she told the police.”

“And what was that?”

When I had finished, there was a long pause. “Are you suggesting that Sabrina’s removal of Jolene so that Otto would continue to cook makes her a suspect?”

“No, I’m not. Not exactly. She had a motive to want him dead, but a stronger one to keep him alive to finish the dinner. It’s something else.”

“What?” Aunt Mary asked. A series of hollow thumps followed.

“You know how sometimes Sabrina is so nervous? How she seems to be anticipating trouble? Then an hour later, she acts as if she could run the United Nations without mussing her hair?”

Aunt Mary started to laugh. “Not exactly the way I’d put it but, yes, I’ve noticed that.”

“Have you noticed when she’s a nervous wreck?”

“When she’s worried about Mark.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Know what I’m going to say before I get the words out?”

“I’ve been watching Mark and Sabrina for a month,” she stated. “It wasn’t hard. So, you think what exactly?”

“That if Otto were going to bail on the dinner, knowing how much it meant to Mark, she may have lost it and banged him over the head with a wine bottle.”

“Then pushed him into the fermenting tank and tossed the champagne bottle in to do—what? And what did she do with the bottle that actually killed him?”

“So you don’t think it was her?” I so didn’t want it to be Sabrina.

Kitchen noises resumed. I recognized water running but couldn’t identify the pounding noises. “I think what you have right now is pretty thin,” Aunt Mary said, then, “Damn.”

I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Okay, what are you making?”

“Lasagna,” Aunt Mary said, a little defensively. “I just dropped the onion on the floor.”

I almost made the mistake of laughing. She had reclaimed her kitchen. Out loud I asked, “You going to feed it to Frank?”

That was ignored. “When did Sabrina take Jolene into the ladies’ room?”

“I’m not sure, but everyone was still downstairs, tasting wine out of the barrels.” I thought for a minute, listening to the cooking noises coming over the phone. Something had started to sizzle. Sausage maybe? Or onions, green peppers and garlic? I could hear chopping, probably tomatoes and fresh basil. She’d put the stockpot filled with homemade sauce on the back burner to simmer until the lasagna was ready to assemble. My mouth started to water. “Jolene was late getting back to our table, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, but if you’re thinking of her as the murderer, think again. She could barely stand up, let alone swing a wine bottle.”

“Don’t be so sure,” I told her. “She looked pretty steady when I saw her. And the bathrooms are in the front of the building. It would have been only too easy for her to slip out the front door of the winery, walk around to the deck, spot Otto, and attack. She could have gone back the same way. Maybe she hid the wine bottle in a bush.”

“And maybe some of us have too much imagination,” I was told. “If you want to make up stories, make up one about Carlton.”

“All right. But you’re going to have to get me started.”

“Carlton was going up the back stairs, the ones that lead to the offices and the kitchen, right about the time everyone else was going up the main stairs, back to the dining room.”

That wasn’t a story, it was front page headlines. “How do you know that?”

“I saw him,” she answered. “Do you want some of this lasagna? I certainly can’t eat it all.”

“No. Yes, of course I do. I’ll come get it later. Tell me more about Carlton.” I’d been doodling a poodle but stopped right in the middle of a topknot.

“There’s nothing to tell. I was going up the main stairs, back to our table, and I just happened to see him on the other staircase, the one that leads to the offices. I paused on the landing to catch my breath, you get a good view of it from there.”

“Was he alone?” My pencil was poised, ready to take notes.

“Yes. Probably why I noticed him. That’s got to be some kind of first.”

“Do you think he was going up to see Otto?”

“I have no idea. All I know is what I saw. He was going up the stairs.”

“He could have gone into the kitchen. He could have—”

“What?” she asked. “Think. Otto was killed on the deck, not in the kitchen. So how did Carlton get him onto the deck?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Besides, Larry didn’t mention anyone else coming into the kitchen. But he could have seen Otto on the cellar floor and followed him and—”

“Why would he? I don’t think much of Carlton, but I don’t see him as a murderer.”

“You know, I think I have an idea why Carlton might have been very upset with Otto, and I think I know how to find out. What time will the lasagna be done?”

“Come by about five,” she instructed. “And you can tell me some more stories.”

Five it would be, and if I were right, I’d have a much better story to tell than she was expecting.