Murder of a Chocolate-Covered Cherry (7 page)

“Sure.” She thrust the large black satchel into the officer’s arms. “I don’t have anything to hide. I don’t need a secret ingredient to win. I have talent.”

Quirk opened the purse and upended it on a nearby table. He named the objects as he returned them to the bag. “Wallet, checkbook, comb, lipstick, pillbox, tissues, glasses, pen, pad of paper, and roll of mints.”

Before handing the purse back to May he asked Cherry, “Are any of these your secret ingredient?”

“No,” Cherry said curtly, her eyes burning with contempt and determination. “But that doesn’t prove she doesn’t have it. I want her strip-searched.”

“Now, ma’am, we can’t do that.” Quirk pushed his hat back and scratched his head. “May, would you be willing to let this lady pat you down?”

May started to shake her head until Skye pointed out, “You both realize that if we don’t resolve this matter here, you’ll have to go to the police station, and you’ll miss the tour and the chance to do a dry run of your recipes. Heck, maybe you’ll even be disqualified.”

“Both of us?” Cherry squealed, wheeling toward Skye. “She’s the crook; I’m the victim. Why would I be disqualified?”

Skye exchanged glances with Quirk, who nodded his consent for her to go on. “If you make a formal report and we find nothing, we could arrest you for malicious mischief.” Skye had no idea if this was really true.

“Fine, just forget it,” Cherry said. “Once again the criminal goes free.”

“Oh, no. You’re not getting away with letting all these people think I’m a thief.” May’s jaw was rigid. “Cherry can pat me down, but if she doesn’t find any paper bag, she has to apologize.”

Everyone looked at Cherry, who finally shrugged and said, “Very well.”

As she stepped toward May, May held her arms perpendicular to her body and warned, “No funny business, now. I don’t play for that team.”

As soon as they arrived at the factory, Cherry cornered Grandma Sal’s son and started complaining about her missing secret ingredient, which had not been found on May or anywhere else in the restaurant.

Skye stepped within listening range as Jared Fine tried to soothe Cherry by saying, “Don’t worry, ma’am; we’ll get you a replacement before tomorrow. Everything will be all right, I promise. Just tell me what it is you lost.”

Cherry stomped her foot. “No. I’m not revealing the ingredient until I’ve won the contest. And I don’t want you to go looking on my entry form and telling anyone, either.”

“Then I’m not sure what I can do for you, ma’am.” Jared backed away. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

Cherry seethed. “It’s not something you can pick up at any old grocery store. It needs to be special-ordered, you moron.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Jared said. “Read your contest rules. We aren’t responsible for missing ingredients that cannot be purchased locally.”

Cherry pulled out her cell phone and stomped off, glaring at May as she passed her.

Skye realized that Jared had caught her eavesdropping. She made a face and joked, “Sounds like Cherry has a couple of issues.”

“A
couple
of issues?” Jared shook his head. “She has the full subscription.”

Even though they had wasted a good half hour searching
for Cherry’s secret ingredient, they had still arrived at the factory in time to join the last tour group. Skye and her mother donned the hairnets and hard hats they were handed and followed the group into the production area.

Their tour was being led by Brandon Fine. The handsome young man seemed less sullen than he had when he was first introduced at the press conference, and Skye wondered what had improved his mood. Maybe he had just been bored, or hungry, or had to go to the bathroom that morning. Skye certainly had experienced all three.

As they walked, Brandon said, “This is an older factory. Much of what you see is original equipment from when it was first built.” He gestured to the left and said, “This is where the raw materials—such as sugar, powdered eggs, corn syrup, cocoa, and seasonings—are stored.”

Skye poked her head into the enormous room and saw huge bins and sacks the size of refrigerators stacked on wooden pallets.

Next they were led to an area where Brandon pointed down. “The metal plate you see in the floor is actually a scale. While your recipes may call for two cups of flour, ours call for two hundred pounds.”

As if on cue, a man wheeled an empty stainless-steel container onto the scale. He reached up to a pipe running above the tub and turned a valve handle, then walked over to a panel with digital numbers. Underneath the display was a series of switches. He flipped one, then another, and oil began to flow into the container.

May poked Skye in the ribs with her elbow. “Good thing your father isn’t here to see this. Next thing you know he’d be running pipes for his beer into the living room.”

The worker caught Skye’s glance and snickered as he continued to add ingredients to the tub. When he was finished, he looked around and muttered, “Where did Shorty get to? I can’t move this thing by myself.”

“Never mind, Moose,” Brandon said. “I’ll give you a hand.” He joined the factory worker, and they rolled the container over to what looked like a giant milk shake machine.

As the group followed, Brandon said, “There is now over five hundred pounds of raw material in this vat.”

As the ladies oohed and aahed, he reached up and grasped a switch.

Moose yelled, “No!”

But Brandon flipped the toggle to the ON position, and the huge mixer growled into life, catching the dangling cuff of Brandon’s shirt in its beaters.

Before anyone else could react, Moose slammed down a big red button and all the machinery in the immediate vicinity went still.

The sudden silence was startling. No one said a word for a long moment; then voices rose in concern. Brandon waved away offers of help, inspected the damage to his shirt, and said, “Everything’s fine. Moose, have them turn the power back on.”

As soon as the machinery roared back into service, Brandon said, “It will take over thirty minutes to mix this batch, so we’ll move on to the extruding area.”

May held Skye back and whispered, “What do you think would have happened if they hadn’t turned off the power?”

“He would have lost his arm, maybe his life.” Skye tugged on her mother’s hand. “Come on. We’d better keep up. I don’t want to take a misstep and become part of the frosting.”

As they hurried past Moose, they heard the factory worker muttering to himself, “Those spoiled-brat gran’kids know just enough to be dangerous. We told ’em not to let ’em lead the tours.”

Skye and May joined the group in watching what looked like unending rows of cake pans passing on conveyor belts. As the pans went under short lengths of hoses, batter was extruded into each one; then the pan moved into a long oven.

Skye commented, “Sure wish we had this setup for the next school bake sale.”

“Yeah! And the family reunion, too,” May added.

They ended the tour in the packaging area, where rows of women in white uniforms and hairnets placed the finished product into boxes, sealed the flaps, and stacked the boxes
into cartons. There was another section of the factory in the far rear of the building that Brandon explained was called the Boneyard because it contained the out-of-date equipment and broken machinery that Grandma Sal couldn’t bear to throw out.

As the tour group was led away, Skye noted that none of the workers was under fifty years old, and she bet that many of them had been doing that same job since they had graduated or dropped out of high school. What would they do if the company were sold to some big conglomerate that moved the factory away or modernized it or otherwise eliminated their jobs?

From the packaging area they were escorted back to the front of the factory, past a row of offices, then through a narrow corridor that led to an outside exit on the left side of the passage and a door leading into the warehouse straight ahead, where all the cooking would be done.

Four sets of six stoves had been arranged in two rows. Next to each stove were four feet of counters, a minifridge, a cupboard, and two drawers. Brandon explained that they’d run two miles of cable to provide the electricity needed for the setup. He also warned them that the room would be at sixty-five degrees to start with, but would warm up quickly once the cooking started and the spotlights were turned on.

The judges and the media were placed behind the kitchen stations. On the right the judges were shielded from sight by several folding screens, but on the left the media had an unobstructed view of the contestants.

In front of the cooking spaces, chairs for the audience had been positioned in rows with a central aisle. Skye was impressed by the professional arrangements and amazed at how efficiently the contest space had been designed. Before returning to Scumble River she had lived in apartments with less well appointed kitchens.

Contestants were grouped by their food category, which meant that Skye, Charlie, and Vince were all on their own. There was no way May could subtly help any of them with their recipes.

Because Skye and May were in the last tour, the other finalists had already begun to cook. Skye cringed when she heard her mother’s voice.

“Brandon.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Do you really think this is fair?” May gestured to the contestants busy at their stoves. “They’ve all had a head start.”

“But, ma’am, this is just a trial run to make sure you have everything you need for tomorrow.” Brandon glanced at the media area, a frown creasing his forehead. “It isn’t timed or judged.”

Skye followed his gaze and was relieved to see that the reporters’ attention was focused elsewhere. She felt sorry for Brandon. First Cherry and her secret ingredient, now May and her sense of injustice. Skye bet this wasn’t how this privileged young man usually spent his days.

“We’re still at a disadvantage.” May crossed her arms. “We all should have started at the same time.”

“I’ll mention that to Grandma Sal.” Brandon backed away. “I’m sure she’ll come talk to you about it.”

May harrumphed, but allowed herself to be led to her cooking area.

Skye found her own stove, located between that of Butch the firefighter, and Janelle the prison cook. She nodded to them both as she stepped into her space, then let out a startled yelp.

The woman standing in front of the stove whirled around. Long fake red curls cascaded down her back to the lowriding waist of her skintight jeans. Lime Skechers matched the baseball cap worn backward on her head. She casually reached into her orange-and-green-striped tank top and adjusted a black satin bra strap, then shot Skye a wide grin.

Skye stood frozen. What in the world was Bunny Reid doing at Grandma Sal’s Soup-to-Nuts Cooking Challenge? Bunny was many things—Skye’s ex-boyfriend’s mother, a retired Las Vegas showgirl, and the manager of the town bowling alley—but she wasn’t a cook. The only recipes she
knew were the ones that called for crushed ice and a maraschino cherry.

Brown eyes twinkling, Bunny threw her arms around Skye and said, “I thought you’d never get here. I was just about to start cooking without you.”

Freeing herself from the older woman’s hug, Skye managed to ask in a neutral tone, “Bunny, this is quite a surprise. What are you doing here?”

“I’m your runner.” She pointed to her sneakers. “See? I’m all set to get you anything you need.”

“Oh.” Skye stepped up to the counter, wondering if there was any way to trade runners. She didn’t want to hurt Bunny’s feelings, but since she herself was a novice cook, she really needed a helper who had actually stepped foot in a kitchen before.

Bunny trailed Skye like a piece of toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

Without turning around, Skye said, “Uh, you know, Bunny, since you and I are friends, I think maybe your being my runner is sort of cheating. The other contestants won’t have their friends helping them.”

“Honey, you really are
too
nice.” Bunny tugged her closer until they were face-to-face, her body language turning suddenly hard. “You’ve got to be more ruthless in this world.”

“No!” Skye nearly screamed. All she needed was cut-throat Bunny working for her. That would be like having a wererabbit for a pet. “I like to play by the rules.”

“In that case there’s no problem.” Bunny relaxed her pose and hoisted her jeans up a fraction. “They asked all the runners if they knew the contestants, and almost all of them did to some degree or another, so they said it didn’t matter.”

“Great.” Skye gave Bunny her best fake smile, all the while thinking,
Rats!
Excuses raced through Skye’s mind, but she couldn’t come up with any other good reason to object to Bunny as her helper. She was stuck with the redhead, and the last chance Skye had of producing an edible casserole had just hopped out the window.

Sighing, Skye took the recipe card and a pencil out of her purse, then stowed the bag in the nearly empty cupboard.
Handing the card and pencil to Bunny, she said, “Read the ingredients off to me. I’ll find them; then you put a check mark next to them on the card.”

“Okay.” Bunny dug a pair of small reading glasses out of her pocket, settled them on her nose, and asked, “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Chopped chicken.” Bunny looked at Skye over the top of her lime green frames.

Skye opened the minifridge and took out the Ziploc bag of cubed cooked breast meat. “Check.”

“Elbow macaroni.”

Skye reached into the low cupboard, but couldn’t quite grab the box, which had been pushed to the back. Sighing, she got on her knees and stuck her head inside.

She had just curled her fingers around the package when she heard someone yell, “Son of a B! Who switched my sugar for salt?” The voice belonged to her mother, and May sounded as if she were ready to have a stroke—or all set to give one to someone else.

Skye sprang up and hit her head on the shelf. Flailing backward, she threw her arms in the air, trying to regain her balance, but failed and ended up sprawled on the wooden floor as macaroni rained down on her head like rice on a bride.

Before she was able to get to her feet, May’s shouts bounced off the walls of the warehouse. “I know you did this, Cherry Alexander, and you’re not getting away with it.”