Bake, Battle & Roll (2 page)

“But you have blood all over your shirt.” Lexy pointed to Silvia’s chef’s coat which was smudged with red.
Had it been that way before she knelt next to the body?
Lexy couldn’t remember, she had been too distracted.

“So do you.” Silvia nodded at Lexy’s shirt. Lexy looked down and her heart froze. She
did
have blood all over her—much more than Silvia.

“Well, of course I do. I bent over him to see if he was breathing.” 

Silvia stared at her. “Well, if you did kill him, you did all of us a favor.”

Lexy rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I didn’t do it.”

Silvia looked off toward the road as the sound of sirens split the air in the distance.

“Well, I don’t care whether you did or didn’t kill him, but my advice would be to get your ducks in a row.”

“Why is that?” Lexy wrinkled her forehead at the other woman.

“Because I don’t think the police are going to be very understanding when I have to tell them that I came out here to find you leaning over a dead body with blood all over your shirt.” 

Chapter Two

It didn’t take long for word to get around and the kitchen staff crowded outside to see what was going on. Lexy was doing her best to keep them back from the crime scene when the police arrived.

“What’s going on here? Don’t you people know this is a crime scene? Haven’t any of you ever watched TV?” 

A short, round man flashed a badge and the crowd parted to let him and his entourage through. He stopped short when he saw Lexy and Silvia with their matching blood stains.

“And who might you be?” He ping-ponged his dark eyes between the two women, his brows slightly dipped in a question.

Lexy stepped forward and introduced herself, Silvia followed suit. The man’s handshake was firm. He introduced himself as Detective Payne and the man beside him as his associate, Detective Wells. 

They made an odd couple. Wells was over six feet tall, where Payne must have been only five foot six. Wells looked to be in his late twenties, Payne nearing sixty complete with partial balding and a protruding stomach. Wells looked professional in a dark blue tailor-made suit. Payne looked like a dork in a light blue polo shirt, and blue and red plaid Bermuda shorts. 

“So you two found the victim?”

“Not me. She did.” Lexy’s stomach lurched as Sylvia pointed to her.

Payne swiveled his eyes toward Lexy. “So that’s how you got the blood on you?”

“Yes. I saw him lying there and rushed over to see if I could do some sort of first aid. I must have gotten the blood on me then.” Lexy’s stomach churned as she looked down at her shirt.

“Hmm …” Payne cut his eyes toward Wells, then walked back to the edge of the dumpster and looked at the kitchen door. “So, why were you out here, on this side of the dumpster?”

“What?” Lexy furrowed her brow at him, then remembered why she had walked around the dumpster. “Oh, I came out looking for the chef.”

Payne raised his brows. “Do you normally find him behind the dumpster?”

“No.” Lexy bit her lip. This wasn’t going good. Maybe she should stop talking now, before she got herself into trouble. “I thought he would be just outside the back door. But when I didn’t see him there, I peeked around and that’s when I saw his shoes.”

Payne scrunched up his face and walked over to the kitchen door. He made a big show of looking around, then came around the side of the dumpster. 

“Oh yes.” He nodded, pointing the pencil he held in his hand at the shoes. “They stick right out.”

Lexy did a half smile and nodded as Payne came back over to them.

“And you?” Payne fixed his attention on Sylvia. “How did you get the blood on you?”

“I came out and saw chef on the ground and ran over to him to try to revive him. I didn’t realize that Lexy had already determined he was dead.”

Payne looked up at the sky, pursed his lips together and tapped them with the eraser end of the pencil. 

“Yes, but what made
you
come all the way over to this side of the dumpster?”

Lexy saw a cloud pass over Sylvia’s blue eyes and her brows wrinkle slightly. “Well … I …” She looked toward the door, then back at the body. “I came outside to have a word with Chef Dugasse and heard the commotion over here, so naturally I came over to see what was going on.”

Commotion? Lexy didn’t remember making any commotion. 

Someone jostled Lexy’s elbow—apparently a crime tech who was trying to do their job of cataloguing the scene. It was getting crowded around the body and Lexy shuffled closer to the dumpster to give them room. 

Payne looked around, wrinkling his nose as if suddenly becoming aware of the crime scene investigators swarming the scene and the stench of the dumpster. 

Payne pointed to Lexy and Silvia. “Let’s finish this inside,” he said jerking his head in the direction of the kitchen. He turned and started toward the door, almost tripping over an investigator that was scouring the ground for evidence. Wells fell in step behind him.

Lexy exchanged a raised eyebrow glance with Silvia and followed them inside. The kitchen staff, who had been gathered in a circle, quickly dispersed to their various stations as soon as they entered the kitchen. Lexy realized that with Dugasse gone, Sylvia was now in charge. 

Payne rambled over to the least crowded spot in the kitchen—the table where Lexy had been rolling the pie dough—and leaned against it. Wells stood to the side as if awaiting orders.

Payne looked down at a small spiral bound flip pad he had taken from his pocket when they were outside. 

“Now, where were each of you when the murder happened?” Payne poised his pencil above the paper and widened his eyes at Lexy.

“Oh, I was right here. I was rolling pie dough and I saw chef over there.” Lexy pointed to the end of the kitchen where she had seen Dugasse yell at Thomas. “Then I saw him go outside. I didn’t go out until a few minutes later and found him with a knife in his chest.”

“And someone saw you here?”

“Yes, several people. My assistant Deena and another chef, Brad.”

Payne scribbled on the pad, then turned to Sylvia. “And you?”

“Well, I’m not sure exactly when he was murdered, but I went over to Thomas after Dugasse yelled at him, then I went into the freezer for a few minutes. When I went outside, he was already dead.”

Payne’s eyebrows mashed together. “Who is this Thomas?”

“He’s one of our cooks.” Sylvia looked around the room, then spotted Thomas by the sink and pointed him out to Payne. Payne gave Wells a slight nod and the other man headed off toward Thomas, presumably to harass him with his own line of questioning.

“And why was Mr. Dugasse yelling at him?” Payne pronounced the chef’s name as de-gassey and Lexy stifled a giggle.

“It’s pronounced
doo-gah-say
,” Silvia said.

Payne made a face. “What?”

“The chef’s name. It’s pronounced
doo-gah-say
,” Silvia repeated, then continued. “He didn’t like the eggs Thomas had prepared, thus the yelling.”

“And did this chef yell a lot?”

Lexy and Sylvia both nodded.

Payne looked up at the ceiling and tapped the eraser end of his pencil on his lips. “So, would you say he was unpopular?”

Lexy and Sylvia nodded again.

“And who would have wanted him dead the most?”

Lexy looked around the kitchen. The rest of the staff, who had been craning to hear what was being said, suddenly developed a keen interest in their various tasks. She felt a shiver run down her spine. The head chef had just been murdered, yet everyone was going about their business as if nothing had happened. Then again, the resort couldn’t shut the kitchen down. The meals were included in the price for paying guests so the food service had to continue uninterrupted. 

No one liked the recently departed chef, but would anyone here have disliked him enough to kill him? She turned to look at Sylvia. If they didn’t bring in anyone from the outside to replace Dugasse, she’d benefit the most.
Was a head chef’s position worth killing over?

She shrugged. “No one really liked him that much, but I don’t think anyone here would kill him.”

Payne tapped his pencil on his lips while he looked around the room. He narrowed his eyes at Lexy and Sylvia, his gaze moving to their bloodstained shirts.

“You were both out there with the body. Either one of you could have had time to thrust the knife into the chef … or both of you together. It only takes but a second.”

Lexy’s stomach dropped, anger flaring at the detective. But then she realized he was only drawing the logical conclusion … she’d probably think the same thing herself. Except she knew that
she
didn’t do it. Silvia, she wasn’t so sure about.

Payne twisted his face into a grimace, making exaggerated sniffing noises. “What is that smell? Is something burning?”

Lexy sniffed. She
did
smell something burning. She whipped her head in the direction of her ovens, her heart clenching when she saw smoke streaming out of them.

“My pies!” 

She ran to the ovens and jerked the doors open. A dark cloud of smoke billowed out. She shoved her hands in some oven mitts and batted at the smoke. Choking and coughing, she reached inside the oven and brought out twin flaming pies.

She dumped the pies in the sink, running water on them to douse the embers.

“You bake the pies?” Payne gestured to the other pies on the counter, the ones that weren’t blackened hunks of coal.

“Yes, I’m the pastry chef here.” Lexy tore off the oven mitts and tossed them on the counter, her spirits sinking. She’d have to work fast to get the right number of pies out in time for dinner and Payne was taking up valuable time.

“What kind of pies are these?” 

“Huh?” Lexy scrunched her face at the detective who gestured at two of the pies she had finished earlier which were cooling on the counter. “Apple and blueberry.”

“And this one?” he asked pointing to one in the back.

“Lemon meringue.” Lexy wondered what this had to do with the dead chef.

Payne tapped his lips with the eraser end of his pencil. “May I?”

Lexy’s brow creased deeper. Was this guy for real? He wanted a piece of pie? Now? 

She nodded slowly.

Payne reached over and grabbed a chef’s knife, cutting a large slice of pie. He looked at the knife as he pulled it out.

“This looks similar to the knife that killed your chef.” Lexy’s stomach clenched as Payne turned his dark eyes on her. She glanced over at her knives, her shoulders relaxing when she realized they were all there. 

“Well, all my knives are accounted for, so it wasn’t one of mine that killed him.” She nodded toward the knife rack on the counter, then remembered the mahogany wood on the handle. “Besides, that knife had a mahogany handle … mine are rubber.”

Payne narrowed his eyes at the knife, then grabbed a plate from a stack of clean ones beside him and plopped the pie on it. His eyes darted around the counter, looking for something to eat the pie with. Lexy held out a plastic fork hoping to speed up the process and get rid of him. 

“Mmm…’s good,” he mumbled around mouthfuls. Lexy shuffled her feet impatiently. 

“Detective … the murder?” Wells appeared at Payne’s side, eyeing the piece of pie he was demolishing. 

“Right,” Payne said, swiping a gob of meringue from the plate with his sausage-like finger and then licking it off. He put the plate down and consulted his flip pad.

“Chef Dugasse was murdered.” He announced the obvious, looking up from his pad. “And someone in this room is most likely the killer.”

All work in the kitchen ceased. All eyes turned to Payne.

“How do you know that?” Lexy asked.

“Well, you all had opportunity.” Payne looked around the room. “Since you were all here in the kitchen, anyone could have slipped out to do the killing.”

“But what about motive?” A voice from the other side of the kitchen cut in. Lexy cringed, recognizing the voice as her grandmother’s. It would be just like Nans to run on down here upon hearing there was a murder. Her grandmother had an odd hobby. She investigated murders and, judging by the gleam Lexy saw in the older woman’s eyes, she was right on top of this one.

Payne’s eyes lit up. “Very good Ma’am. Who here wanted the chef dead?”

His question was met with silence.

“No one? You all loved the chef?”

Most of the staff looked down at the floor, some shuffling their feet and many of them murmuring, “no”.

“You all didn’t like him, then?”

Lexy saw Brad step forward. He gave her bloody shirt a pointed glance. 

“Some of us liked him, but many didn’t. Especially her.” Lexy’s heart lurched as Brad pointed straight at her. “In fact, right before Chef Dugasse was murdered, I heard her say she was going to put a stop to being bossed around by him
once and for all
.”

Chapter Three

It took an eternity for Payne and Wells to leave. The short detective bombarded Lexy with a series of questions, then warned her not to skip town before demanding her blood stained chef’s shirt as evidence. 

Lexy glared over at Brad who watched them with a satisfied smirk on his face before she changed her shirt and put on one of the kitchen aprons.

Somewhere in the middle of questioning Nans had left, but not before demanding Lexy’s presence once she was done with her baking. Her grandmother seemed practically giddy with delight and Lexy figured she’d probably have the large rustic cabin she shared with two of her friends turned into some sort of command center to use for running the investigation by the time she got there. 

Lexy got busy rolling out dough. She needed twenty pies for the dinner service and all that questioning had taken up valuable pie-making time. She worked at breakneck speed since she didn’t want to waste the whole day in the kitchen.

“I can’t believe Brad ratted you out like that,” Deena said, cutting her eyes toward Brad.

Lexy pursed her lips. “Yeah, what a jerk.” Then looking up at Deena’s wide eyes, she added, “I didn’t kill him.”