Chicken Soup & Homicide (4 page)

Shepler leaned back in his chair and exhaled loudly. "What else? I can see you're not telling me something."

Good grief. She must be as transparent as a sheet of leaf gelatin. Either that or Shepler was a master at picking up on body-language clues. Which he should be since he probably interviewed killers who tried to look innocent on a pretty regular basis. She frowned as she continued. "I hate to tell you this, but she used to date Chef Britton a few years ago. The relationship didn't end well, which honestly doesn't mean much. From what I've heard, none of Britton's relationships end amicably. I just thought I should let you know since this could affect the investigation. Not that she killed him. You and I both know she couldn't have."

His emotionless poker face was in top form. How could he do that? Her right eye was twitching, her feet were doing some kind of rhythmless tap dance under the table, and she hadn't even been blindsided with the past-relationship information bomb. He tapped the cap of his ink pen on the table, once, and said, "I already know about the disagreement between Carla and Britton. One of the chefs working in his booth told me about an argument he'd had with a couple women. I kind of figured it was you two after he gave me a description."

"But we were walking away from the Cornerstone booth. Britton stopped Carla and instigated the whole thing."

"I know. The other chef noted that." He tossed the pen down. It spun across the table and clattered onto the tile floor. "The argument isn't a big deal. Apparently he had harassed all of the other people in the showdown that were unlucky enough to stray into his area. What did you and Carla do after getting away from him?"

"I hung out with Sophie in the Riverbend Coffee booth, helping hand out gingerbread latte and espresso brownie samples. Carla left so she could take a nap before heading into work tonight."

He closed his eyes for a few seconds. Amy squirmed in the hard plastic chair when she realized what that could mean. "I was home alone" never worked well as an alibi in the movies or in mystery books. The fictional police always zeroed in on the person who used that excuse. Amy jumped when Shepler slapped the table with the palm of his hand. "I can't take on this case. I need to turn it over to someone else. I'm sleeping with a possible suspect."

"But you're a really, really good detective. You'll be able to clear her quickly. Right?"

Shepler shook his head. "I have a major conflict of interest here. It can't be me that determines whether she has a bulletproof alibi."

He pulled his phone out of an inner pocket in his blazer, tapped the screen a few times, then looked at Amy. His mask of solemnity had cracked. Was that a spark of fear in his eye?

"You can go back to the waiting room," he said. "I have a feeling the chief will turn this over to the detective that came with me as backup. He'll want to interview you himself, since you found Britton."

"That's okay, though, isn't it? All of the detectives in your department are good, aren't they? He'll clear Carla." Amy swallowed when she stopped babbling. "It'll all work out soon."

"I'm glad you're confident," he said as he stared at the phone's screen. "The other detective just transferred here about a month ago. From what I've seen of his work so far…let's just hope someone else can take this case."

An hour later Amy was the last woman in the dressing room. Trisha, Sophie, and Holly had all done videotaped interviews with officers. Since she was the unlucky dead-person discoverer, she had to wait until the new lead detective decided to interview her.

She was counting dimes and nickels dredged from the bottom of her purse to buy another bottle of pop from the vending machine when an officer finally came for her. The new detective had set up shop in the same room where Shepler spoke with her, but it seemed like she had stepped into a time warp and been transported to a 1970's police drama TV show. The man on the other side of the conference table had longer, wavy charcoal-colored hair that was combed back away from his face. Since it didn't look wet or greasy, the guy probably went through a can of hairspray at least once a month. A bushy mustache and boxy, black leather coat over a black mock turtleneck sweater completed the retro look. "Have a seat, Mrs. Ridley," he said as he pointed at the empty chair that faced him on the other side of the table.

Amy sat and dropped her purse on her lap, clutching the top of it like it would come to life and try to run away. She wished she could run away. The man had said five words to her, and she was already nervous, much more than when she had been in the same position across from Shepler.

"I'm Detective Pitts," he said as he turned the page on a notebook. "I understand you found the body of Mr. Britton. Can you please tell me about that?"

Amy glanced at the video camera that was set up on a tripod in the corner of the room. "I needed to freeze the butter for the biscuits Sophie would be making during the showdown. When I opened the freezer door, Chef Britton's body fell out, knocking the plate of butter out of my hand."

Pitts slowly nodded as he scribbled in the notebook with a Bic stick pen. Without looking up, he said, "Tell me about what happened in the theater before that." He flipped back a few pages. "I understand the competitors arrived in the theater to prepare about an hour before the competition began."

"Yes. Sophie and I were mostly in the kitchen onstage, preparing our ingredients, chopping vegetables, going over our cooking sequence…things like that."

"Did you go backstage at all? See anybody that seemed out of place hanging around?"

Holly seemed like such a nice person. She didn't want to cause problems with her and her family, but she couldn't lie to the detective either. "When I was clearing a path to the freezer, moving chairs and theater props out of the way, I noticed a drunken man backstage."

"Did you know him?"

"No, but Holly Neale spoke with him. Said she would call a cab to take him home. I wasn't familiar with the man, but Sophie, my partner, said he was Holly's son."

More nodding. More scribbling. More unnerving silence from the detective. "Was your friend Carla in the theater?"

"No, she had already left to go home and take a nap before working the night shift at the hospital."

"So, Mrs. Ridley, how bad did you want to win the showdown?"

Amy blinked at him. That question was weighed down with so much innuendo it waddled. Was Pitts playing a game of Duck, Duck, Goose with suspects, and she'd just been tagged as a goose? "The whole objective of entering competitions is to win, isn't it?"

He shrugged. "I suppose. So how motivated were you to win?"

"Sophie and I were playing for the Kellerton Library's literacy program. It's something that we are both passionate about, so it would've been great to raise some money for the organization. But no matter what team won, all of the charities were going to receive some money."

Pitts paged back through his notes again. "The winning team would also receive $500 per person. That would be a nice chunk of change to help pay off Christmas bills or get a pretty cocktail ring, wouldn't it?"

The innuendos just kept piling on to every comment he made. Did he really think she or any of the other competitors would kill for $500? "If my team won, I was planning on donating my earnings to the literacy program too."

Pitts stood up. His hip bumped into the table. There was a screech as the table legs scraped over the tile floor. Amy sucked in a breath. The unexpected movement made her heart beat out a Morse code SOS. Why did he jump up like a pouncing cat? Was he going to slap handcuffs on her wrists? He reached out his hand, and Amy held her breath as he said, "Thank you. I'll probably need to speak with you again, but for now we're done. You're free to go home."

Really? Amy swallowed as she shook Pitts's hand. No questions about Carla and Britton quarreling earlier in the day or dating in the past. What did that mean? She had a feeling she would find out soon, but for the moment she was happy to get out of the theater of death and away from the strange detective. If Pitts was the officer Shepler had been concerned about, she could see why he was apprehensive about having to excuse himself from the case. Something about the new lead detective seemed off, like he was a dark caricature of a real crime solver.

Carla pulled into her designated parking space under the long metal awning. The roof helped the residents in the lofts keep their cars from fading in the summer sun or being buried under a foot of snow. Now her Nissan Juke was protected, but she had to brave about twenty feet of swirling snow and arctic windchills to make it into the building. She shielded her eyes with her hands and looked up at the second floor. The lights were on in her condo. She glanced to the left at the visitor parking area. Bruce's truck was barely visible under the parking lot lamps that were dimmed by the winter storm. What a nice surprise after a short, but insanely busy, shift in the emergency room. She had been dating Bruce Shepler, a detective with the Kellerton PD, since August, when he investigated a murder and threats made against her best friend, Amy.

She wrapped her scarf around her neck and steeled herself for the cold trek. At least she would be able to have some fun warming up and winding down from the stressful evening at work. A few minutes later she opened the door to her condo. The lights in the living room were dimmed to a cozy glow, and Bruce was stretched out on the sofa, studying the screen of his phone.

"Hey there," he said as he stood. It was the middle of the night, almost 3:00 a.m., but he was still wearing his work clothes. The gray slacks were a bit wrinkled but still hugged his muscular thighs. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned a few inches, revealing a sprinkling of golden chest hair. He even made rumpled and tired look sexy.

"What are you doing here?" She dropped her overloaded tote bag on the floor in the entranceway and hung up her coat. The coat tree wobbled a bit under the weight of the heavy black wool garment. "I thought we were just having breakfast together in the morning."

He shook his head as he wrapped her in a warm hug. "Amy found another body. Chet Britton."

Carla pressed her forehead into Bruce's chest. This couldn't be happening again. Poor Amy. "You're kidding. What happened?"

"She opened the door of an industrial freezer during the soup competition, and his body fell out. Somebody stabbed him." He rubbed small circles with his palm on the small of her back. "Amy said you told off the chef at the expo yesterday…that you used to be involved with him."

She leaned back and stared into his emerald-green eyes. "True on both things, but why does that matter?"

He raked his hand over the beard stubble on his chin. "For one thing, I have a conflict of interest since you have a history with the victim. I had to turn the case over to a new guy that just transferred here from New Jersey. I didn't like him before, and I really don't like him now. He found out about the argument from one of the chefs that witnessed it. Pitts is already theorizing that you stepped up the argument to murder. Please tell me you have an alibi for where you were between noon and 5:00 p.m."

No. Freakin'. Way. She couldn't be a suspect. The pint-sized asshole was bad enough when he was alive. Getting pinned as a suspect for his murder was like a parting shot from the morgue. "I left the expo at 11:30. Came straight back here to do some laundry and take a nap. I left around 5:30 to go to work."

He grasped her hand and led her to the sofa. She used to have an uncomfortable, but stylish, red leather sofa. After she started dating Bruce, she replaced the straight-backed, hard-as-a-board piece of furniture. The new black leather couch was more sedate, but the overstuffed cushions were much friendlier for relaxing and snuggling together. She sat beside him and laid her head on his chest over his heart. She just wanted to listen to his heartbeat and let his body warm her. The conversation was quickly plummeting into uncomfortable territory.

"Are there any security cameras around the building or parking lot here?"

She sat up and looked him in the eye. "Not that I know if. I've never noticed any. Security isn't one of the perks of living in a real industrial loft."

"Damn it. This isn't good." He rubbed his fist over his chin. "Pitts is going to jump on that. Hell, I would too if I thought I was looking at a legitimate suspect."

Legitimate suspect. The phrase pinged around her mind. "Pitts? Is that the detective handling the case?"

"Yes."

"So because of my argument with Chet, he's looking into me. I get that. If he finds out we used to be lovers, I'm going to look even worse." She placed her hand on his thigh. "Please tell me this guy will keep looking for more concrete proof of the murderer, that he won't just target me on circumstantial evidence."

Bruce leaned his head on the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling. "Something just doesn't feel right about him. He keeps his bad-cop persona on all the time. I don't like him, and I really don't trust him. He seems like the type that will do anything, maybe even manufacture evidence, to get a conviction to advance his career."

Amy inhaled deeply as she scraped the tangerine across the Microplane grater. Tangled threads of bright-orange rind landed on the milky-white porridge. The invigorating citrus scent was Mother Nature's wake-up call. The tired fogginess that had mired down her mind for the last half hour began to lift. The simple rice porridge was about the only thing she felt she could reliably cook that morning. Rice and milk, a few steps away from baby food but reconfigured into an adult, sort of gourmet breakfast with orange zest and dried currants. Her stomach bubbled from hunger as she scattered a handful of the dried berries into the thick hot cereal. She had considered adding dried cranberries but realized they would turn blood red as they cooked. Blood. Red. Not a color she wanted to ingest.

When she found Mandy Jo Pierce's body at the Kellerton Summer Festival Pie Contest, there hadn't been any blood on her body. The raspberry pie filling smeared all over her face looked a bit gory, in a B movie with no special effects budget type of way, but the only blood involved in the crime had pooled into bruises under Mandy Jo’s skin. The previous night, when Chef Britton's body did a backflip out of the freezer, the entire front of his white chef's jacket had been soaked with blood. Frozen blood. Like an icy pop for vampires.