Murder of a Chocolate-Covered Cherry (20 page)

“Anyone take him up on his offer?” Skye finished with the second casserole and put the topping on the first one, returning it to the oven so the bread crumbs could brown.

“Not that I saw.” Bunny adjusted her bra strap. “He may be good-looking, but there’s something missing in him. Even me, with my bad luck with men, can tell that.”

“Yeah, I noticed a certain coldness behind his eyes,” Skye agreed, then chewed on her bottom lip. Kyle was looking better and better for his wife’s murderer.

After a few minutes Skye took her first casserole out of the oven. It looked surprisingly good. The cheese was melted, the sauce bubbled, and no little elbows of macaroni were sticking up, waving their burnt arms. Now the question was whether to send it to the judges or the photographer. Each could award a dish up to forty-five points. The audience had a mere ten points, and it was mostly stacked with friends or relatives of the competitors, so Skye’s getting their points was unlikely.

If only she could taste the casserole. But she couldn’t, and she had to make a decision soon. Once it cooled off it wouldn’t be good for either the judges or the pictures. Okay, she’d send this one to the photographers. It really did look perfect.

After delivering the dish to the photo area, Skye returned
to her workspace and checked her watch. Once again she had nearly half an hour until the second casserole came out of the oven—plenty of time to find a telephone and make contact with the outside world.

She repeated her previous instructions to Bunny and headed out of the cooking area. There were no public phones near the judges or behind the workstations. She spotted a few reporters in the media quarters, but they were all using cell phones.

Skye tapped her foot. She really wanted to talk to Wally. Maybe he had some news about the murder or the kidnapping, or at least what the heck was going on with his father.

She wandered around for another fruitless ten minutes, at which point she was ready to scream. How could there be no public phones in the whole place? Did they really assume that everyone had a cell, or, more important, that a cell would work when they needed it?

Blowing a curl out of her eyes, Skye decided she’d have to go over to the factory. Surely they’d have regular phones there. Unfortunately, a peek at her watch informed her that she had only ten minutes left. Realistically, could she get from the warehouse and back in time not to risk her dish?

No. She’d just have to wait until after she made her third casserole. Maybe she could borrow Bunny’s cell phone, but it seemed sort of sleazy, using her ex-boyfriend’s mother’s phone to call her present significant other.
Crap
. Maybe it
was
time to buy a cell of her own.

The second casserole emerged looking as good as the first. Was there a chance she might actually win? Skye took this one to the judges. Her mother’s Chicken Supreme was superb. If by some chance Skye had managed to reproduce the recipe, it could very well be one of the best dishes in the category.

As she assembled the third and last casserole, Skye daydreamed about what she would do with her half of the five-thousand-dollar prize. Two thousand would go for more home repair and remodeling, but she was taking the other five hundred and going shopping for spring and summer
clothes. And she could actually go to Von Maur and Nordstrom, rather than Target and Kohl’s.

Four hours into the contest Skye put her third dish into the oven. As long as nothing went wrong she’d finish with nearly an hour to spare, but right now she had thirty minutes available, and this time she was finding a phone.

Neither her mom nor Uncle Charlie had a cell, so that left Vince. He was doing May’s Healthy Pasta Primavera, and Skye wondered how her brother was making out. As far as she knew Vince ventured into a kitchen only to grab a beer and a bag of pretzels. May brought him lunch at his salon every day, and if he wasn’t going out in the evening, he ate supper at his parents’.

Not surprisingly, when Skye arrived at Vince’s workstation, a group of women was gathered around the entrance. Skye elbowed her way through the adoring masses, announcing, “I’m his sister. Family business. Step aside.”

The throng parted reluctantly, and she finally made her way to the edge of the inner sanctum. She could see Vince bent over his stove, his assistant standing a few steps behind him holding a spoon as if it were a scalpel ready to be slapped into his waiting hand.

Vince’s helper was a stunning brunette who Skye remembered worked as a fitness instructor at her mother’s health club. Somehow Skye didn’t think her presence was a coincidence. The instructor had probably heard May talking about the contest and thought this would be a good time to spend some quality time with her client’s handsome son. Girls had been plotting similar schemes since Vince had turned fourteen.

Skye dredged her mind for the assistant’s name. Skye remembered that besides being May’s fitness instructor, the woman had been the roommate of a suspect in a murder Skye had investigated a little over a year ago. But what was her name? It had something to do with a TV game show. Ah, Price, as in
The Price Is Right
. And her first name was … yes, Nikki, since she helped nick those inches away.

Clearing her throat, Skye said, “Nikki, hi, I’m Skye, Vince’s sister.”

“Shhh.” The brunette frowned and put her finger to her lips, then whispered, “He’s almost done.”

Skye waited impatiently while Vince tossed whole-wheat spaghetti with cottage cheese, then topped the mixture with sautéed vegetables.

He turned with a flourish and bowed to the crowd, holding up his dish for everyone to admire. “Ta-da!”

After the applause died down, Skye finally got her brother’s attention. “Do you have your cell phone with you?”

“I did, but Ma took it a few minutes ago. She said she had information that might help solve the murder.”

F
or once Skye was eager to talk to her mother. She was hurrying over to May’s cubicle when she noticed the time. Once again the minutes had ticked away, and her dish was in danger of burning if she didn’t hustle back to her oven. Interrogating her mother would have to wait.

This was why she hated cooking. It felt as if she were shackled to the stove and, as soon as she got a certain distance away, someone removed a few links from the chain and yanked her back.

As she rushed toward her workstation, Skye plotted her escape. This was her last casserole; as soon as she browned the topping and gave the dish to the contest staff supervising the audience tastings, she’d be free. And once she was liberated she would find May, and then she’d call Wally.

She was nearing the beginning of the One-Dish Meals row when she heard a commotion. Several male voices battled to be heard, but a loud alto drowned them all out. “I’m gonna pop all you upside the head if you don’t shut the—”

A tenor cut her off. “Why you bustin’ our chops, Janelle? We was stickin’ up for you.”

Skye tiptoed forward and put her eye to the gap where the
cubicle partitions didn’t quite meet. Once she got used to peering through the crack she could see Janelle Carpenter, the prison cook from Granger, surrounded by guys from the opening ceremony’s cheering section. They looked even bigger and more menacing close up.

There were four of them, ranging in size from elephant to manatee. Skye guessed that the manatee had been the one to interrupt Janelle, because the cook had hold of him by his shoulders and was shaking him like a dust mop.

“Get outta my face, chump, before I kick your ass. There’s only an hour or so left, and I ain’t even got my third dish in the oven yet.”

The elephant stepped forward. “Can you cook and listen? This is important.”

She shrugged, but let go of the smallest guy. “Make it quick. My first one didn’t turn out so good, so I had to send it to the audience tasting. The next one looked good, but I wasn’t sure if I forgot the salt or not, so it had to go the photographers. That means this one gotta be perfect, ‘cause it gotta go to the judges.”

“Gotcha.” Mr. Elephant nodded. “But you’ll want to know this.”

“Okay.” Janelle’s red flip-flops flapped against the soles of her feet as she turned back to the counter. “Go ahead, but you best not be wastin’ my time.”

The rhino, the second-largest of the quartet, said, “We was jes’ kickin’—you know, waiting for more food to be brought out to taste—when this cracker tried to hustle us.”

“How?”

“He offered us papes to give our points to his bitch’s entry.”

Janelle swung around holding a butcher knife. “How many times do I gotta tell you about using that word when you’re talking about women?”

“Chill, Janelle, and check out the rest.” Mr. Elephant shoved Mr. Rhino aside.

Janelle narrowed her eyes but went back to cooking. “So, what happened?”

“Dude—” The manatee started to talk, but the wildebeest, the third in line, size-wise, interrupted.

“That punk not only tried to bribe us; he usin’ fake money to do it with.”

“How you know that?” Janelle looked over her shoulder. “You take him up on his offer? You gonna give someone besides me your points?”

All four men backed away, protesting their innocence, but still putting at least a knife’s length between them and Janelle.

Mr. Elephant, plainly the leader of the group, cleared his throat. “No, Janelle, honey, you know we wouldn’t ever do that to you.”

“No?” Janelle’s growl could be heard clearly over the whir of her mixer.

“No, babe, that’s straight-up.”

“Okay, so why you be tellin’ me this?”

“Because when we turned him down, the fool tried to make us change our mind by tryin’ to intimidate us.”

“He have a death wish?”

They all shrugged this time, and Mr. Manatee said, “We just thought you ought to report this guy to the man, since you tol’ us not to get into any fights here.”

“Why didn’t you all report him, ‘stead of botherin’ me?” Janelle frowned as she smoothed a concoction into her casserole pan.

“Babe,” Mr. Elephant answered, “you know the man don’ listen to dudes like us.”

Janelle slid the dish into the oven and set the timer, then turned and asked, “So, how am I supposed to report this chump if I didn’t see him?”

“They won’t have no trouble findin’ this cracker,” Mr. Manatee blurted out. “He a little guy, ‘bout five-seven, five-eight, with tats up and down both arms. He don’t weigh no more than a buck twenty, twenty-five, and he bald on top, with a ratty old ponytail down his back.”

“That all?”

Skye could hear the sarcasm in Janelle’s voice, but obviously her crew couldn’t, because Mr. Wildebeest said, “No,
he got a stomach on him like a big ol’ muskmelon, and he’s dressed all in camo.”

“I’ll take care of it as soon as my casserole is done.” Janelle waved toward the door. “Now you all get the hell out of here.”

Skye jumped back from the peephole and hastily walked away. The herd had described Earl Doozier, right down to his little potbelly. What in the world was he thinking, trying to buy votes, and with fake money? Not to mention threatening guys who would find a Hummer a tight fit.

Of course, the simple answer was that Earl didn’t think. His impulse control was less than that of a two-year-old with attention deficit disorder. And, while he had a mind like a steel trap, it had long ago been left out in the rain and rusted shut.

Which meant she’d better find him right away. She needed to stop him before he got Glenda kicked out of the competition, or one of Janelle’s guys forgot their vow of nonviolence. Because if Earl didn’t stop his nefarious activities, either his darling wife or one of the animal pack would end up kicking his poor scrawny butt from here to St. Louis.

But what about her casserole? If she didn’t get back to it soon the sprinklers would be going off again. Still, even though Earl deserved whatever Glenda or the herd dished out to him, he had saved Skye’s life on more than one occasion, and it seemed wrong to put a cooking contest ahead of their friendship—no matter how odd and twisted that alliance might be.

Sending a silent prayer that Bunny might actually follow her orders and take the dish from the oven when the timer went off, Skye turned around again, this time heading for the audience.

As she emerged from the glare of the bright lights aimed at the cooking areas, it took her eyes a minute or so to adjust. Once they were focused she saw several people she knew, including aunts and cousins who had come out to support May and her children.

She waved at her relatives and friends, then scanned the rest of the seats for any sign of Earl. It didn’t take long to
spot him. A crowd had formed a half circle at the rear, and everyone was focused on an unfamiliar woman dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. She was tall and broad, and easily held the errant Doozier off the ground by the scruff of his neck while hitting him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper as if he were a naughty puppy.

Edging her way through the crowd, Skye tried to come up with something to say, but as she emerged from the mob all she could think of was, “Put the Doozier down.”