The Fatal Funnel Cake (11 page)

“Thank you. It's not really work, though,” Phyllis said as she drizzled the maple syrup and sprinkled the chopped pecans over the first funnel cake. “Cooking has always been fun for me.”

“Me, too! That's the way it is with the best cooks.”

When Phyllis had the first funnel cake finished, an overhead camera moved in to get a close-up of it. Joye enthused over how beautiful it was, and then as the main camera, manned by Hank, took the shot again, Joye smiled into the lens and said, “I think I'm going to give it a try. Would that be all right, Phyllis?”

“Well, it might still be a little hot,” Phyllis said. “Just be careful and don't burn your mouth.”

“Oh, I won't.” Joye tore a piece off the funnel cake, popped it into her mouth, and began to chew. While she was doing that, she said, “Oh, my. I know it's not polite to talk with your mouth full, but this is de—”

Phyllis had the tongs in her hand and had removed the ring and was about to turn the second funnel cake, but as she heard Joye stop short without finishing the word
delicious
, she glanced over at the host. Shock surged through Phyllis's mind as she saw Joye stagger, catching herself with one hand on the counter while her other hand went to her throat. Joye's mouth hung open, and her lips moved like those of a fish out of water as she gasped for air.

“Joye!” Bailey cried as she rushed in from the side.

With a harsh strangling sound, Joye collapsed, twisting off her feet as she fell to the floor behind the counter. For the second time in this episode, the audience members leaped to their feet in alarm and began to shout.

“Cut the cameras! Cut the cameras!” Reed Hayes yelled as he rushed forward from the edge of the stage.

Phyllis knew that Joye was having a violent allergic reaction of some sort. During the last few years she had taught, she and her fellow teachers had received training on such things. Too many students now had allergies and were prone to attacks if they were exposed to the wrong thing, and the teachers had to know how to deal with those potentially serious problems.

Bailey dropped to her knees beside Joye, who was writhing around on the floor as she struggled to draw air through her swollen throat. Bailey pulled something from her pocket that Phyllis recognized as an autoinjector—a small penlike syringe already prepared with a dose of epinephrine that could save the life of someone suffering from a serious allergic reaction. With swift, efficient motions that told Phyllis Bailey had practiced and prepared for this emergency, the young woman pulled the cover from the needle and stuck it into Joye's thigh. Bailey's thumb depressed the plunger. As she pulled the needle out, she sat back a little and a look of relief crossed her face as she waited for the medication to take effect.

That look turned to an expression of horror as Joye began to spasm even worse. Her arms and legs flailed, and her choking sounds rose to a frantic babble. Hayes knelt on her other side, and Hank came around the set to loom over the three of them. “What's wrong with her?” the burly cameraman cried. “That thing was supposed to stop the attack!”

Sam was out of his chair, standing beside Phyllis now with one hand gripping her arm to support her. Carolyn, Eve, and Peggy gathered anxiously around her as well. The audience crowded forward to see what was going on, and Chet Murdock and the other guard, who had returned from dealing with Ramón Silva, couldn't hold them back. The other guard was calling for more help on a walkie-talkie.

Joye's body jerked and her back arched up from the floor. She held that pose for a second, then slumped down loosely. People screamed and shouted. It was obvious to everyone what had just happened, but Hayes confirmed it by holding a hand to Joye's neck for a long moment, searching for a pulse, before he looked up and announced bleakly, “She's dead.”

Chapter 14

A
n hour later, Phyllis, Sam, and the others sat alone in the bleachers and watched with grim expressions on their faces as several paramedics wheeled a gurney bearing a zipped-up black body bag away from the broadcast set.

Several uniformed Dallas police officers stood around the set, guarding it while the crime scene technicians continued scouring the area for every possible bit of evidence. Off to one side stood Bailey Broderick, Reed Hayes, Charlie Farrar, the cameraman Hank, and the rest of the crew. A couple of officers were keeping an eye on them to make sure none of them left before the detectives in charge of the case had a chance to talk to them.

At the moment, those detectives, a man and a woman, were interviewing Chet Murdock and the other security guard who had been on duty when the fatal allergic reaction had struck down Joye Jameson.

“I don't get what they're doing,” Peggy said. “They're acting like there was some sort of foul play here, instead of just a terrible accident.”

“We don't know for sure that it was an accident,” Carolyn said. “We've known people who appeared to die of natural causes before, but then it turned out to be something else . . . haven't we, Phyllis?”

“I don't want to even think about that,” Phyllis said honestly. The knowledge that Joye had died right after eating a piece of her funnel cake was already nagging at her. She didn't see how it was possible that the two things could be connected, and yet the conclusion was inescapable. Somehow, that funnel cake had caused Joye's reaction . . . and her death.

Sam said, “I imagine the cops are goin' to these lengths because it was somebody famous who died. They know it'll get a lot of press coverage, and they don't want there to be any questions later on about them not doin' their job the way they should have, so they'll cover every possibility.”

“I suppose so,” Carolyn said. “But if you ask me, they're acting like they think Joye's death is suspicious.”

“Any unexpected, unexplained death is suspicious by nature,” Phyllis said. “That's all that's going on here.”

She wished she could believe that. But deep down, she thought Carolyn was right. The entire building had been locked down as soon as the police arrived, although plenty of people had gone in and out first. There was no way the security guards on duty could have stopped that.

Now everyone was gone except for the five of them, the police, and the show's crew. The audience members and the other people who had been in the exhibit hall when the police arrived had been questioned briefly, a process that didn't amount to much more than getting contact information. Since Phyllis had been right there on the set with Joye, the police wanted her to wait and talk to the detectives, and her friends hadn't wanted to leave without her, so they were all still here, too.

The female detective who had been questioning the crew came over to the bleachers and said, “Mrs. Newsom?”

“Yes?” Phyllis replied as she stood up.

“Would you come with me, please?” As Carolyn started to get up, too, the detective put out a hand to stop her and added, “Just Mrs. Newsom, please.”

“Phyllis, you don't have to talk to them without a lawyer,” Carolyn said. She had an instinctive distrust of the police, probably because she and her daughter had both been suspects in a murder case several years earlier.

“I don't need a lawyer,” Phyllis said. She hoped that was true. She hadn't forgotten how she herself had been locked up in jail less than a year ago.

As she stepped down from the bleachers to join the detective, the woman said, “Actually, if you'd like to have an attorney present, that's all right.”

That surprised Phyllis. She said, “Am I being read my rights?”

“Oh, no. This is just informal questioning. We're just trying to find out what happened; that's all. But no one who wants a lawyer is going to be denied one.”

Phyllis shook her head and said, “I'm fine.”

The detective motioned toward the broadcast set. “Let's go over here.”

The two of them stepped up into the working kitchen that had been built for the TV show's trip to the state fair. Phyllis couldn't help but glance at the spot where Joye had collapsed and died, but then she forced herself to look away.

The detective must have seen what she did. She said, “I'm sorry to have to put you through this, Mrs. Newsom. That must have been a terrible experience, watching Ms. Jameson die right in front of you like that.”

“It was terrible, all right,” Phyllis said.

“We'll get this over with as quickly as we can. I'm Detective Charlotte Morgan, by the way. My partner over there is Detective Al Hunt.”

Detective Morgan was probably forty years old, Phyllis estimated, and rather attractive, although there was a certain hard-bitten cynicism visible in her face, no doubt put there by all the awful things she saw in her job. Blond hair fell just past her shoulders. She wore jeans and a brown leather jacket. Her partner, Detective Hunt, was a stocky, gray-haired man in a rumpled suit who came a lot closer to fitting the popular image of a cop.

“So,” Detective Morgan went on, “just tell me about what happened here today.”

“Well, I was on the show to make funnel cakes . . . You know about the funnel cake competition and how I won it yesterday?”

“Yes, ma'am, Mr. Hayes and Ms. Broderick told us about that. Unless you saw something unusual earlier, you can just take up the story from where you came out and started making funnel cakes with Ms. Jameson.”

That was what Phyllis did, going back through the fifteen minutes or so she had been on the set with Joye. She included every detail she could think of. Detective Morgan took notes, and from time to time she glanced up as if she were surprised about something.

Phyllis figured out what that something was when Morgan commented, “You must have an exceptional memory, Mrs. Newsom. Most witnesses are a little more vague about things.”

There was a good reason Phyllis had gotten in the habit of being as observant as she was, but she was hesitant to explain it. On the other hand, it wouldn't take any time at all for the detectives to find out about her background if they wanted to.

“I've been around several criminal investigations in the past,” she said.

“Oh, really?”

“My son works for the sheriff's department over in Parker County,” Phyllis said. “I'm acquainted with a number of people in the department, and in the Weatherford Police Department, as well.”

“This isn't really a criminal investigation,” Morgan pointed out. “Not at this point, anyway.”

“No, of course not. But because of, well, being around those sorts of investigations in the past, I've learned to keep my eyes open.”

The detective studied her for a moment, then said, “Let me get this straight. You're a retired schoolteacher, right?”

“That's right.”

Detective Morgan was starting to look even more cynical now. “And an amateur detective?”

“I never said that.”

“Look, Mrs. Newsom, I realize that when some people get to be a certain age, they have to find something to occupy their time—”

Phyllis felt a flash of anger. “That's not it at all, Detective,” she said.

“I don't mean any offense. I'm just doing my job.” Morgan closed her notebook. “I think I've got all I need from you right now, Mrs. Newsom. You gave your contact info to the uniformed officer who canvased everyone, didn't you?”

“Yes, I did. I gave him the address where we're staying here in Dallas, my address in Weatherford, and my cell phone number.”

“Then that's all we need. Thank you.” Morgan started to turn away, then paused. She waved a hand at the counter, where all the ingredients for the maple pecan funnel cakes were still sitting, along with the one from which Joye Jameson had taken a bite and the pan of oil, now cold, with the scorched second funnel cake still in it. “Does any of this stuff belong to you? Because we're going to have to take it all in as evidence, and we can give you a receipt for it . . .”

Phyllis shook her head. “No, the TV show provided everything for the funnel cakes we were making today. There's nothing out of the ordinary about any of it, though; I can tell you that much.”

“What kind of oil is that?”

“Corn,” Phyllis said. “That's the first thing I thought of, that it might be peanut oil, because I know there are people who are violently allergic to peanuts. But my recipe calls for corn oil, so I'm sure that's what they used.”

“We'll have it tested and make certain of that, but thanks, anyway.”

“Detective . . . I'm curious about one thing.”

Morgan looked like she was growing impatient, but she asked, “What's that?”

“You have the footage that was being broadcast, don't you? So all you have to do to know what happened is to look at it.”

“The camera doesn't always catch everything. We have to ask questions to know what we're looking at.”

That answer made sense, Phyllis thought. She nodded and said, “Thank you.”

“If we need anything, we'll be in touch.”

“What about my friends? Are you going to interview them, too?”

Morgan glanced over at the bleachers where Sam and the others were sitting. She asked, “Where were they during the show?”

“In some folding chairs in front of the bleachers where they're sitting now.”

“Then they didn't really see anything more than what the rest of the audience would have seen,” the detective said. “No, we shouldn't need them. You're all free to go.”

“Thank you,” Phyllis said again, and this time Detective Morgan went back over to rejoin her partner. Sam, Carolyn, Eve, and Peggy came down the steps to meet Phyllis as she walked off the set.

“Are they going to interrogate us, too?” Carolyn asked.

Phyllis shook her head. “No, the detective said we were all free to go.”

“Do they know what caused Joye's allergic reaction?”

“If they do, Detective Morgan didn't say anything to me about it,” Phyllis replied.

“It looked like a peanut allergy to me,” Carolyn went on. “Back when we were still teaching, they really drilled the dangers of peanuts into us. We had in-service training with the school nurse about it every year. And you know, I've always wondered where all those peanut allergies came from. I don't recall ever knowing anyone who was allergic to peanuts while I was growing up, do you?”

Carolyn looked around at the others, who all shook their heads. “Everybody I knew ate goobers,” Sam said.

“I don't understand it, either,” Phyllis said, “but I don't doubt that it's real.”

“Oh, neither do I,” Carolyn said. “I just can't figure out why it's so prevalent now.”

One of the officers at the building's exit had to check with Detective Hunt on the radio before he would allow them to leave. As they stepped out into the beautiful autumn afternoon, which was a mixture of clouds and sunshine, it was hard for Phyllis to believe that death had struck so suddenly and unexpectedly in the building behind them. Joye Jameson had been so beautiful and vivacious, and a couple of minutes later she was gone. It was tragic, Phyllis thought, and not just because Joye was a television star. She would have felt the same way about anyone who had died like that.

The fair was still going on, of course, even though the Creative Arts Building had been evacuated and put off-limits to the crowds thronging through Fair Park. Phyllis and her friends started making their way toward the parking lot but hadn't gone very far when she heard someone behind her call, “Mrs. Newsom!”

Phyllis turned to see Bailey Broderick hurrying toward them. The young woman looked upset, and understandably so. Her boss and mentor had just died right in front of her eyes not much more than an hour earlier.

“Bailey, dear, I'm sorry—” Phyllis began.

“What did you do?” Bailey interrupted her. “What did you do to kill Joye?”