Pop Goes the Murder Read online

  He touched my hand lightly and withdrew. He knew this was hard for me. He also knew too much sympathy might undo me. Damn, it was good to have friends, especially right after you found a dead body floating in a hotel room tub. “Tell me about when you first entered the room.”

  “The door swung open on its own when I knocked.” I shut my eyes to try to picture it all. “The room was kind of a mess. She had clothes strewn across the couch and shoes all over the floor.”

  The bed had been made. I tried to picture the clothes on the couch. Dresses. Some jeans with a silky top. My head came up. “Dress-up clothes. Not everyday clothes. Like maybe she was getting ready for a date or something.” A date that had never shown up. My hand flew to my mouth. “Do you think she was lying there in that tub dead all night?”

  Dan’s lips tightened. “I have to wait for the medical examiner to make that determination, Rebecca. She may have been, though.”

  Poor Melanie. Floating like that all night, waiting for someone to find her. The water getting cold around her. The light glaring down on her. I tried to choke back a sob and made a weird little whimpering sound instead.

  “You okay?” Dan asked. “Do you need a break?”

  I shook my head. It would be better to get this over with. Then maybe I wouldn’t have to think about poor Melanie floating in the bathtub like an extra-poached egg no one needed for eggs Benedict. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Did you see anyone in the hallway or the elevator as you were going up to her room?” His pen was poised over the notepad.

  “No.” I was sorry to disappoint him, but there didn’t seem to be much point in making up sinister strangers hiding in stairwells.

  “In the lobby?” He sounded hopeful.

  I was about to shoot that down when I remembered something. “I saw a woman coming in here.”

  “Anyone you recognized? Someone from the show?” Dan arched a brow at me.

  I thought for a second. “Not anyone I’ve met. She could have been someone else staying here at the hotel.”

  “Can you give me a basic description?” he asked.

  “Younger than me. Shorter than me. Dark hair. Maybe Latina.” I shrugged. “That’s all I can remember.”

  “Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll get a list of who else is staying at the hotel and see if we can find out who she is just in case. Did you touch anything at the crime scene?” Dan asked, looking at me pointedly.

  I’d known this question was coming. I’d known what I was—or more to the point, wasn’t—supposed to do. After all, I’d been yelled at enough for straightening Coco’s skirt after she died so the entire town wouldn’t see her knickers. It couldn’t be helped, though. Only a woman who did not have the milk of human kindness in her latte could have left Melanie like that, floating naked in the tub to be ogled and photographed and gossiped about. “I covered her with a towel.” I said it really quietly in the hopes that Dan would let it go quietly.

  I was disappointed. He slapped the table so hard our mugs jumped. Coffee and Earl Grey sloshed all over the fake wood and Sprocket yipped in surprise. “I knew it! The second I saw that towel I knew it. It’s a potential crime scene, Rebecca. A. Crime. Scene. You’re not supposed to touch anything. You know that.”

  “I wanted to grant her that much dignity. Lord knows she won’t have much else.” I grabbed some napkins to soak up the spills. “No woman could have left her uncovered.”

  “You said the same thing about Coco.” His lips were set in a grim line.

  I shrugged. “The circumstances were similar in a lot of ways.”

  He shook his head. “Did you touch anything else?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I thought back through my trip through the hotel room. “Definitely nothing.”

  Dan made a note. “Did you notice anything else? Anything out of the ordinary? Anything that didn’t seem quite right?”

  Like it or not, every time I shut my eyes, the whole scene flooded back in high relief, every detail distinct and sharp. Melanie. The bathtub. The bathmat. The towels. The blow-dryer.

  Wait. The blow-dryer. I sat up straight.

  “What?” Dan asked. “What are you remembering?”

  “That blow-dryer isn’t Melanie’s.”

  Dan leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t know if she’s married, but you know what kind of blow-dryer she uses?”

  I ignored the blatant skepticism in his voice. “Melanie had curly hair like mine.”

  “So?”

  “No self-respecting curly-haired woman would use a blow-dryer without a diffuser—if she used one at all—and Melanie respected herself plenty. Trust me. That was not her blow-dryer.”

  He shrugged. “So it was the hotel’s.”

  Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Still . . . “Why was it plugged in, then? She wouldn’t have used it.”

  “I don’t know, Rebecca.” He frowned. “Honestly, you know as much as I do.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  Dan sighed. “I have no idea at this point, Rebecca.” He leaned forward to look me right in the eye. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You are a witness. In fact, you’re barely that. You’re the person who found the body. Nothing more. This has nothing to do with you and there is absolutely no reason for you to get involved in any way. Understood?” His eyes had gone laser-beam bright and a muscle twitched in his jawline.

  I leaned back, slightly affronted. “I know. This isn’t like what happened with Coco.”

  He leaned even farther forward. If this kept up, he’d be in my lap and then the gossips of Grand Lake would really have something to talk about. “There was no reason for you to get involved the way you did with what happened to Coco, either, Rebecca. You’re a civilian. Not a detective. Not a police officer. You’re a chef. Stick to the kitchen.”

  I’ll admit it; that stung a bit. I got it. I had almost gotten myself killed, but I was also pretty certain that Coco’s killer would never have been caught if I hadn’t intervened.

  Sometimes it takes a chef to sniff out what’s rotten in a kitchen.

  * * *

  As I was about to leave the Grand Lake Café and go back to POPS to get a decent cup of coffee and make sure that Susanna and Sam hadn’t burned the place to the ground dealing with the breakfast rush, Antoine whirled in.

  When I say he whirled in, I don’t mean he actually pirouetted or something like that. It was more as if the air whirled around him, like all the particles in his energy field got excited and started pinging around faster and faster, like the air started to hum. When he walked into a room, people’s heads immediately raised from what they were doing. Most of the time, they didn’t even know they were doing it. It was like watching a magnet getting passed over iron filings. He had that much charisma.

  I hadn’t really known what charisma was until I met Antoine, and then I got a crash course. Sadly it took me close to ten years to figure out that being attracted to someone wasn’t the same as being in love with that person. I didn’t know if I’d ever been in love with Antoine. I hadn’t, however, been able to take my eyes off him if we were in the same room.

  I still couldn’t.

  “Mon Dieu!” He grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me up and down. “Are you all right, Rebecca? Have you been harmed?”

  I shrank back. Just because I couldn’t take my eyes off him didn’t mean I wanted his hands on me. “I’m fine. Melanie? Not so much.”

  He sank down into the booth with Dan and me. Sprocket growled from beneath the table, but Antoine ignored him. “Lucy phoned me. I could not believe what she was telling me. Melanie is . . . no more?”

  Dan had gone very still, but not a restful kind of still. It was the stillness of a cat that had
spotted a mouse, a lion looking at a limping impala, Sprocket eying a stuffed animal left unattended by a child. “Where were you when Lucy phoned you?”

  “By your beautiful lake. Running.” By nature of his business, Antoine ate a lot. He especially ate a lot of things with butter and cream and cheese. He was pretty fanatical about exercise. Otherwise they’d have to lower him onto the set of his television show with a crane. He turned to me. “Thank you, by the way, for the brioche. Very thoughtful. You know how difficult these American breakfasts are for me.”

  “What brioche?” I asked.

  “The brioche you left in front of my hotel room door, of course.” He put his hand over mine.

  I slipped my hand from underneath his. “I didn’t bring you brioche.”

  “You are sure? It tasted very much like your recipe.” He smiled. “Quite buttery.”

  Dan cocked his head a fraction to one side. Antoine didn’t seem to notice. “Lucy phoned you to tell you that Melanie was dead and you took time to eat and to shower before you came to see what was going on?”

  Antoine looked surprised. “Of course. I would not want to be offensive to anyone’s senses and the brioche was just there. From what Lucy told me, there was nothing I could do for poor Melanie at this point anyway.”

  “That’s true, I suppose.” Dan rubbed his chin. “She was long gone.”

  Antoine’s brow creased. “Long? Long gone? How long?”

  Dan sighed and slid out of the booth. “I’ll let the medical examiner make that call.” He nodded to me and left.

  Antoine sighed and turned to me. “Your beau-frère, he does not care for me.”

  “Nope,” I said. “He surely doesn’t. Never really has.” There was no reason to sugarcoat it. Antoine didn’t really care one way or the other. He was only stating a fact.

  “I understand. I stole you away. He had to settle for marrying your sister.” He nodded as if putting a matter to rest.

  I snorted. “Settle? For Haley?” Antoine’s grip of reality was always a little loose. Dan no more settled for Haley than Marc Antony settled for Cleopatra.

  Lucy, a production assistant for Antoine’s show, tapped his shoulder. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Antoine.” Lucy was in her late twenties with hair I suspected would be mousey brown if it weren’t highlighted to within an inch of its life. She had those narrow black-rimmed smart-girl glasses and a Bumpit in her hair. It was a look that was supposed to be casual but I suspected took a substantial amount of time to put together each morning. I wondered what time she had to get up to look like that by this time. She carried a little extra weight around her waist, hard to avoid when you work on a cooking show, but she had that healthy glow of youth. Plump and pretty.

  “Hi, Lucy,” I said.

  She looked down at me. Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. Then she shifted to turn her back to me as much as she could and didn’t say hello back.

  “What is it, Lucy?” Antoine asked, turning to look up at Lucy. It was an Antoine thing. Whatever was at the center of his attention was completely at the center of his attention. It was amazing. In the moment, you felt smart and chic and interesting. Not bad, right? I just hadn’t been at the center of his attention often enough to keep me in my marriage.

  “I know it’s probably too soon, but the crew is wondering if we’re going ahead with the shooting schedule today. We were supposed to be getting B roll for the show while Melanie made the rest of the shooting schedule.” Lucy looked uncomfortable. I didn’t blame her. One of her co-workers was dead. On the other hand, having the entire crew on location wasn’t cheap. To have an entire day wasted . . .

  Antoine took Lucy’s hand. With another man, it would have been flirty. With Antoine, it wasn’t. It was just . . . Antoine. “What do you think, Lucy? Would it be better for them to stay busy? Or to take a day to process what has befallen our Melanie? It is hard for all of us, isn’t it?”

  “I should have known something was wrong,” Lucy said. “I should have known when she didn’t call me to go over the shooting schedule. She almost always did that.”

  “You cannot blame yourself, dear. How could any of us have anticipated this?” Antoine said.

  “I don’t see how.” Lucy pursed her lips. “I could ask the crew what they would prefer. See if there’s some kind of consensus.” A little color had risen in her cheeks.

  “Excellent. Would you also perhaps attempt making the shooting schedule? We will still need one,” Antoine asked.

  Lucy flushed for real now. “Yes! Of course. I’d be honored.”

  Antoine nodded, let go of her hand and turned back to me.

  Lucy stood for a second, as if suddenly not having the spotlight of Antoine’s attention on her had disoriented her, like walking out of a dark theater on a sunlit day, like the sudden withdrawal of his attention caused vertigo. I’d walked that crazy weaving walk. I gave her a sad smile. She glared at me, then blinked a few times, pulled herself together and left to go find the crew.

  “Whoa!” I said. “What eggshell fell into her meringue?”

  Antoine shrugged. “My crew . . . they are very loyal to me.”

  I knew that. Antoine was demanding, but fair. He treated the crew with respect and they returned that with unswerving devotion. “And?”

  “And things have not been so easy for me since you left.” He rearranged the salt and pepper shakers on the table, not meeting my eye.

  It took me a second to get his drift. “They blame me for that?”

  “Who else are they going to blame?” he asked.

  I bit back a host of replies, like maybe they should blame Antoine or even Melanie for some of it. It didn’t matter and it wasn’t an argument I wanted to have. Let the crew hate me. They’d be gone in a day or two and I’d never see them again. I changed topics. “So we’re going to go ahead and shoot the segment on my popcorn breakfast bars and fudge?” I asked. It actually hadn’t occurred to me to ask whether or not we were. Cooking the Belanger Way and POPS had been pretty low on my priority list since I found Melanie. Like they hadn’t even made the top ten. Leave it to Antoine to edge his way to the top of my list again without even trying.

  “Of course. It is show business and they say the show must go on regardless of whatever terrible accident has befallen Melanie.” Antoine massaged his temples. This couldn’t be easy for him regardless of how calm he was trying to be. He’d relied on Melanie for years. She’d been part of the Cooking the Belanger Way family, the only family Antoine really had.

  I nodded. Of course, the shoot would go on. It was a tragic accident, but Antoine was right. His audience would still expect episodes of the show with, perhaps, one of those sad “In Memory Of” notices in white type against a black background with Melanie’s dates of birth and death. That was the only thing that would really change for the viewing public.

  Antoine took my hand like he’d taken Lucy’s. I couldn’t help it. I felt that pull, that sensation of being a flower that suddenly gets sunlight. “Will you be all right, darling? I know this must have been a shock. Especially coming so soon after the death of your beloved Coco.”

  The mention of Coco was like a little shot of ice water into my veins. Coco would not have approved of my holding hands with my ex-husband. I slipped my hand out of his. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I will come by your apartment tonight to check on you,” he announced. It was so Antoine. Why wait for an invitation when you can invite yourself? It never occurred to him that he wouldn’t be welcome somewhere.

  “No,” I said. “No, you won’t. It’s not necessary.”

  He hesitated. For a moment, he looked unsure. It wasn’t a look I’d seen on Antoine before. Too bad. It had humanized him a bit. “It may not be necessary for you, but I think it might be for me.”

  I stood up. “That would be your problem.”

  It wa
s a good exit line and I took it. I was pretty sure anyone who saw me would think I meant it, too. And I did. Or I wanted to. It was hardly my fault that I kept wondering what Antoine meant by that the whole way home.

  Two

  I dropped my car back at the house. The sky was gray, but the weather report said it would clear up later. I figured I’d chance it and walk. If I didn’t walk to work, I’d end up spending all my time indoors, either at POPS or at home. Maybe some fresh air would help me clear away the images of Melanie playing on an endless loop in my head. I snapped my hair back in a twist to keep it from blowing in my face as I walked down the driveway.

  I lived in the granny apartment over the garage of the house I grew up in. My sister, Sheriff Dan and my adorable nephew, Evan, live in the house itself. I was almost down the driveway to the sidewalk with Sprocket when Haley popped her head out the door. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to work.” It seemed fairly self-evident to me. I am a creature of habit. I go to work pretty much every day. I was okay with stating the obvious, though.

  The rest of Haley—and there was quite a bit of the rest of her these days—followed her head out the door. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. I heard your name mentioned when Dan was called in this morning.”

  I sighed. I was beginning to suspect that pregnancy had heightened all of Haley’s senses. She had the hearing of a bat these days. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could echolocate. “I had a breakfast meeting scheduled with Antoine’s assistant. When I got there, she was . . . uh . . .”

  “Dead? I’m pretty sure I heard she was dead.” Haley rubbed her pregnant tummy. “What kind of dead?”

  Was it another trick question? How many kinds of dead were there? “The kind where you stop breathing and your heart doesn’t beat anymore.”

  “Rebecca,” she said, a warning note in her voice. “Was it an accident? A suicide? A murder?”

  Haley wasn’t usually this nosey about stuff. Then again, the last time there was an unexpected death in Grand Lake things got pretty dicey for our family. “I don’t think they know yet.”