Wined, Dined and Dead Read online

  Back at my car, Kenneth was shuffling from foot to foot. "So, you know, it's a pretty busy day for me tomorrow too," he said, making an apologetic face. "There's about a million weddings happening in this town tomorrow and I’m in charge of the cake for half of them."

  "Oh, right," I said, realizing what he was really hinting at. He wanted to go home. He did realize that someone had just died, didn't he? "I was kind of hoping you would help us out?" I asked hopefully, standing up on my tiptoes a little. "After all, you did help me find the Halloween Killer last year."

  Very romantic story: I had actually met Kenneth because I suspected him of being a serial killer.

  He wasn’t.

  He made a face. "I'm sure you and Pippa have this under control, right? You don't really need my help."

  I looked at the ground. "No. Sure. Of course we will be fine. We're old pros at this," I added, forcing a smile. "And I know it's a big night for you." I turned around and saw that Pippa and Marcello were arguing about something.

  "I'm gonna take off. Get a cab." Kenneth leaned over and kissed me. "Don't stay out too late. I mean, it is Valentine's Day. I was kind of hoping we'd be waking up together."

  I didn't make any promises before he climbed into the cab.

  Pippa marched back over to me. "I think I finally drilled the instructions into him," she said with a heavy sigh and a shake of her head.

  "Are you sure you're really able to stay out all night with a new baby at home?" I asked her, concerned.

  She nodded. "For ten thousand dollars? YES."

  "It'll only be five when we split it two ways," I pointed out.

  "Still," she said. "It'll go a long way."

  Marcello had driven home in Pippa's car—I was shocked he actually managed to hold down a license—so the two of us gathered around mine.

  "Where do we even start?" I asked, climbing into the car. As I turned the ignition, I felt my head spin and panic started to set in. Usually there wasn’t such a rush to solve a case. Not this kind of insane pressure where the clock was ticking and I didn't even have time to get my thoughts in order. I felt like I was back at college, taking an exam and the clock was counting down, seeming to get faster and faster, and I was still stuck hopelessly on question one with all my answer sheets blank.

  Pippa told me to calm down. "Let's go back to the bakery," she said. "Get our thoughts in order there. That's the place we work best. We can decide where to begin. Take a deep breath. Or ten." She stopped talking and became very still. I turned to look at what had her so entranced.

  Police car lights.

  "They're here."

  I shook my head. Somehow this only made the pressure worse. Scott was going to want us to find the killer before the cops did, and how were we supposed to work faster than the police?

  "Let's get out of here," Pippa said quickly, tapping me on the arm and telling me to drive. "We don't want to get caught up in their questioning. We can't exactly afford to lose an hour or two getting questioned down at the station, can we?"

  "Good point," I said, quickly fastening my seatbelt and pressing my foot to the accelerator. "Let's go!"

  I groaned as we reached the street of the bakery and saw that there was nighttime road construction happening and the street was closed for traffic.

  I checked the time. 9:30. How was time already speeding by so fast? My heart quickened as I physically felt the time running out.

  "Quick," I said, slamming on the brakes and pulling over. "We're going to have to get out and run."

  "We're both wearing heels. And dresses," she pointed out. "We were on dates, remember?"

  "Well, then we're just going to have to walk really, really fast."

  "I don't really need the money, you know, Pippa..." I said as we hurried along the dark pavement, passing the construction workers on the way. "Well, I do," I said, correcting myself. "I mean, of course I'm not going to turn it down. I just mean that's not my only motivation."

  It was dark but I still caught Pippa raising her eyebrow in a show of disbelief.

  "Really, it's not!" I practically shouted. "I'm finding it kind of thrilling that we only have less than a day to solve this mystery."

  Pippa shook her head. "And you wanted to turn down the challenge," she said. "This is why you should always listen to me."

  She was hinting at something. I just didn’t know exactly what.

  "Speaking of," Pippa said, confirming it for me. "Where is Kenneth?"

  "He had to head home for a bit," I mumbled, searching for my keys as we finally reached our destination.

  Pippa leaned against the back door of the bakery. "He isn't going to help?"

  "He has to be up super early for work."

  "Hmm."

  I stopped for a moment. We really didn't have time to waste, but I wanted to know what that 'hmm' meant. "Pippa, what is your problem with Kenneth?"

  She shook her head and turned away. "Nothing."

  Ugh, this really was not the time to have a fight. I pushed through the doors and stopped dead in my tracks to find the lights on and a bright faced Marcello standing there waiting for us in the middle of the kitchen.

  "You haven't touched anything, have you?" That was my first reaction, to look around and make sure that nothing was smashed and there was no food lying on the ground.

  Pippa's reaction was quite different. She was not shocked, or worried. She was furious. "Marcello, what on earth..." She must have stopped when she noticed that Lolly was behind him, sleeping on her car seat that was perched on top of one of the counters.

  Marcello threw his hands up in a show of apology. "I didn't know what to do with her, Pippa!"

  Pippa shook her head and pointed to Lolly in exasperation. "What more is there to do? She is sleeping, Marcello! You just had to leave her to sleep and go to sleep yourself! Not drag her down here in the middle of the night!"

  Pippa looked at me for help. But I just shook my head to say sorry. I didn't want to get involved. Plus, I didn't want to wake the baby.

  "Can't you do anything on your own, Marcello?" Pippa closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head.

  "Hey," Marcello offered. "Maybe I can help out, seeing as I am here."

  Looked like it was just going to be Pippa, Marcello, and me on the case then.

  Oh, and baby made four.

  I was happy to be back at the bakery. This was home base for us, the place we always started from and now that we were back there, I felt like the cogs in my brain could start working properly again.

  I cleared a space and got out a dry erase board and a marker, placing it in the middle of one of the stainless steel kitchen counters where I would usually mix dough. This time, I was trying to figure out a place to start with solving Paul's murder. While I hovered over the board, Pippa moved Lolly enough out of the way that we wouldn't wake her, but close enough so that we could still keep an eye on her.

  Marcello blinked as he looked down at the board. "That’s all you got so far? It’s blank!"

  I tried to ignore him.

  "Okay, so we heard Scott yelling at him from behind the bar while we were seated," Pippa said. “I think that makes Scott our number one suspect.”

  I was confidently able to shut that ridiculous suggestion down. Maybe it had crossed my mind earlier, but now I could see that logically, it didn't make any sense.

  "Why on Earth would Scott be paying us a king's ransom to solve the case if he is the guilty party?" I asked in disbelief.

  "Umm...to throw us off the case?" Pippa asked, throwing her hands out like, duh, isn't that obvious?

  Marcello nodded and threw a ball of something up into the air. "That's what I would do," he said with his eyebrows raised.

  Whatever he had thrown up stuck to the ceiling. "Whoops, sorry," Marcello said while I stared at the wayward dough ball with a resigned expression.

  "Fine," I said, nodding. "We keep Scott on the suspect list." I leaned against the bench while something dawned on me. "But
I don't think we'll be getting paid if we find Scott guilty."

  "I thought the money wasn't your biggest motivator?" Pippa asked pointedly.

  "It's not."

  "Don't let the money get in the way of you finding out the truth."

  I wouldn't. Still, even though I had agreed, out loud, to keep Scott as a suspect, in my own mind, I already knew that was a ridiculous suggestion and silently struck him from the list.

  I wrote his name, faintly, on the board.

  I shook my head. "Oh boy. With less than thirteen hours to go, we’re going to need more than this."

  Pippa paced back and forth. "Maybe it was a disgruntled customer." She suddenly let out a loud gasp. "What about that gray-haired dude that went to the bathroom right before me?"

  "Ooh," I said, nodding slowly. I was just grateful to have a non-Scott suspect for a minute. "Oh, but he was more annoyed with us than the waiter," I said, trying to recall the incident. "If he was going to kill anyone, he was going to kill Marcello," I said, shooting Marcello a look.

  "Hey, I am still alive and well," Marcello stated.

  "And don't we know it," Pippa said under her breath. Then she spoke a little louder. "He was also annoyed about all the commotion, remember?"

  I nodded. "Plus, he was in the right spot at the right time." I frowned. "Or possibly the wrong spot. Anyway, he was right by the stock room when it happened. Even if he's not our guy, maybe he saw something."

  Pippa agreed with me. "Only problem is, we don't even know the guy's name, let alone how to find him. And we've only got hours to solve this mystery. What are we going to do?"

  Chapter 4

  "I can't give out the private information of my customers like that," Scott said in the restaurant parking lot.

  I just stared at him in complete disbelief. "You do realize we are trying to help you solve a murder mystery, right? We are trying to help you save your business, remember?" And your own neck, I thought quietly.

  With the police gone, I had to wonder why Scott wasn't already down at the station with them. I supposed he hadn't bothered to be completely candid with them. Telling the truth might make him look kinda guilty.

  Scott looked at the ground. He sighed. "Where was the guy seated again? That's the only way I might be able to identify him."

  I opened my mouth to try and explain, but now that we were outside, I couldn't quite recall the layout of the restaurant or the location of the tables in relation to each other. "I might have to show you inside," I said. "Are you willing to enter a crime scene?" I stared back at the restaurant. It was surrounded by police tape. "Do not enter."

  Scott turned almost white but he gulped and nodded. "I suppose I can't get into any more trouble than I'm already in," he said softly as I trailed behind him.

  What did that mean?

  It was kind of eerie to be back inside the restaurant and not just because a man had been killed there two hours earlier. All the food was still on the tables, half-eaten. Nothing had been cleared away, like something terrible had happened, a nuclear apocalypse or something, and all the humans had perished but their half-eaten salmon and chicken had been left behind to survive.

  But the table the four of us had been sitting at was relatively empty. "We never got a chance to order," I explained as I headed to the table. "But I can tell this was our table by the red wine stain." I gulped as I looked at the bright red stain, which looked a little too much like blood at that moment.

  "Sorry about that," Scott said.

  "Why are you apologizing? It was my friend's husband who did it," I stated, remembering that Paul had also apologized like he had been to blame somehow, even though he'd been nowhere near us when it happened. I supposed it was just second nature for those who worked in fine dining to be overly apologetic.

  "I suppose your evening was ruined by something far more serious than red wine," Scott said with a heavy sigh. He took a seat at the table and leaned his head forward. "Do you know how many hours I work here every week, Rachael?" he asked me.

  I shrugged a little. "Sixty?" I asked. I knew how tough it was to run a business.

  Scott let out a little scoff. "Try more like ninety. Ninety hours a week, putting my blood, sweat, and tears into this joint...and for what? I'm barely keeping the debt collectors at bay. Do you know how much the overheads are at this place?"

  He was asking me a lot of questions considering that we were on a very short time frame. "Scott, do you remember who was sitting at this table to my left?" I asked, pointing to the table where the gray-haired man had been sitting. I was trying to get him back on topic, but he practically ignored my question and dove straight back into his pity party.

  "The rent alone is three thousand a week," he stated, shaking his head angrily. "And do you think those a-hole landlords ever give you a break? No, they only care about one thing, and that’s money. They think that a place like this must be raking it in, given our prices, but they don't realize the stress I am under every day."

  I looked at the time on my phone. It was almost 10:30pm already.

  "Scott, I really need to get the name of this guy. Well, and an address," I said. "If you want to pay the landlords, you need to be open tomorrow, right?"

  Scott nodded. "He was sitting there?" he asked, pointing to the table. "Which seat?"

  I frowned as I looked at the large table, which had housed a table of eight.

  "Hmm…" I tilted my head as I walked over to the seat where Pippa had been. "If he was close enough to have been hit by the wine drops, then he was probably sitting...here," I said, pointing to a seat. There was a half-eaten steak on the plate that looked so rare it could still be mooing.

  "Well, that doesn't help me much," Scott said, standing up. "I didn't even see who was sitting where."

  Oh my goodness. I was growing so frustrated with him I was about to scream. Didn't he realize we were on a strict time limit? The very same time limit he had set in the first place? I wanted to grab him by his chef whites and scream, "Just give me the info!"

  Oh great, now he's walking away.

  I threw my hands up into the air as Scott trailed away—slowly, of course—to the front of the restaurant and almost out of my sight.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. Pippa.

  Have you got the 411 on the guy, yet?

  I quickly shot a text back. Nothing yet.

  Hurry up! We're waiting for you here! And Lolly woke up. She's screaming.

  I sighed with frustration and stamped after Scott.

  He was flipping through a book. I was about to open my mouth and scream at him—'this is no time for reading!'—when I realized that he was actually being helpful.

  "Your guy was sitting at table thirteen," Scott stated. "Our luckiest table."

  Okay then.

  Scott ran his finger underneath the info. "Which means he must have been a very special customer..." Furrowing his brow, he struggled to make out the writing of the manager who had taken the booking. Didn't they do anything online or digital in this place?

  "Oh, gosh," Scott said, stopping. "I think I know who it was."

  "And?" I said impatiently. I checked the time. 10:45. This was getting ridiculous.

  "His name is Tyson," Scott stated. "Tyson McCall."

  "Am I supposed to know who that is?" I asked. Because I didn't.

  "The newscaster Tyson McCall," Scott said, his face turning dark as thunder. "Which means, Rachael, this story might have already gotten out."

  Pippa answered her phone with a snappy tone. Okay, so maybe she wasn't the most chill mother I had ever met. At least, not right at that moment.

  "Marcello, if this is one more easy question that you could have answered yourself..." she said, before trailing off for a second. "Yes, you can feed her from the bottle! I already told you that! It's in the fridge! Oh my goodness, where else would I keep it."

  She pressed end call and almost let out a scream. "I swear it was easier before he came back. I never thought being a parent
would actually be more stressful when there are two of you."

  "It's only been a day," I pointed out. "Give it some time."

  Marcello and Lolly were back at the bakery while Pippa and I made the trek out to Belldale Heights. It was an area I had become more and more familiar with recently—it was the place where the better half of Belldale lived. Well, perhaps not the 'better' half. A lot of killers and kidnappers did seem to reside there. I supposed money didn't always equal good morals.

  But the richer half certainly lived here. I always felt self-conscious as my rusty old junk-bucket of a car rounded its way up the hills, next to all the BMWs and three-story mansions.

  "I can't believe that guy was a local celebrity," Pippa murmured as we made our way up the hill. It was 11:10 already. "Actually, I kinda can. It explains his diva behavior, doesn't it?"

  I agreed. "I didn't recognize him though. I wonder if that annoyed him as well. I don't exactly watch the local news. It's kinda boring."

  "Maybe don't say that when he opens his door," Pippa stated.

  An eternity seemed to pass while we waited on Tyson McCall's doorstep.

  "He probably isn't going to answer at this time of night," Pippa said.

  "Well, we don't exactly have the option of calling again in the morning," I pointed out, pressing the buzzer again. I pressed it a few more times for extra effect. 11:20.

  Finally, there was the sound of angry footsteps hurrying down the hall toward the foyer.

  "Good evening," I said brightly as Tyson McCall finally pulled the door back. I was definitely not met with the same bright greeting in return.

  "Do you know what time it is?" he asked gruffly as he tied his robe around him, squinting against the glare of the bright streetlights. "What the heck are you doing here?" He leaned out past me and squinted. "You haven't broken down, have you? You'll have to call roadside assistance..."

  I shook my head.

  "No. You might recognize us from earlier, at the restaurant?"

  "Oh," he said, frowning as a glimmer of recognition flickered across his tired face. "I do recall your party," he said before sighing with annoyance. "I am going to have to get that suit dry cleaned, you know. I should charge you for the bill."