Final Fondue (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) (20 page)

As Val drove from her cousin’s house to the Cool Down Café, she thought about the advantages of a crab hat as a disguise. With so many people wearing the souvenir hats on Friday night, the killer could have blended in with the crowd at the fireworks and trailed Fawn to Granddad’s house. If Fawn had glanced behind her, the combination of darkness and a face-obscuring hat might have kept her from recognizing someone she knew. No one along the route would pay close attention to one crab-hat wearer walking behind another one.

After the murder, Granddad had asked the wedding group if they’d worn crab hats. What Val had learned since that night gave her a new perspective on the wedding group’s responses to that question.

Sarina had said she hadn’t worn the hat, intending it as a gift. The next day she refused to don the souvenir hat even briefly for the wedding group photos Monique had taken. Maybe Sarina realized that a photo of her in a crab hat might jog the memory of someone who’d seen her wear one the night of the murder.

Noah had also said he was saving the hat as a gift. Yet he’d worn the hat while eating dinner across the lane from Jennifer and Payton, just hours before the murder.

According to Jennifer, she’d worn the crab hat, removed it for her dinner with Payton, and put it on again afterwards because it was easier to wear than carry. That story had sounded believable on Friday night, but now that Val knew Jennifer had gone back to the house with Payton, the last part of the story rang false. Jennifer could have simply left the crab hat at the house. Instead, she’d worn it to the fireworks. Because she’d gotten into the festival spirit? Or because the hat would make her hard to recognize?

Other people might have wanted to disguise themselves that night. Payton’s ex-girlfriend, Whitney, could have worn a hat to spy on him and later lie in wait for Jennifer at the house. And Whitney was the likeliest person to mistake Fawn for Jennifer. Finally, Chief Yardley’s favorite suspect, Fawn’s husband, could have donned a hat to keep Fawn from recognizing him when he followed her back to the house after the fireworks.

Whether or not the killer had worn a crab hat as a disguise, Val still had no answer to the question that had occurred to her immediately after the murder—who was the intended victim? Fawn, if her husband had been the strangler. Jennifer, if Whitney had been the strangler. As for the others in the wedding party, Val could only guess at their motives for wanting either woman dead.

She parked in the lot at the racket and fitness club and walked quickly to the entrance, catching up with a woman headed in the same direction. “Hi, Yumiko.”

“Happy to see you, Val.” The club’s tennis manager smiled broadly. “The doubles group wasn’t the same without you and Monique playing with us on Saturday. I heard many people say they were sorry the café was closed this weekend. I missed your coffee and muffins.”

“I’ll make coffee and put out some nibbles, if you want to stop by. Tell anyone who asks about the café to drop in. I’ll be there for another hour or two.”

Over the past two days Val had made four times as much at the booth as she earned on an average weekend, but she’d missed the conversation and camaraderie that made her work at the café so enjoyable. Most of the people she’d served this weekend had been strangers. They’d walked away from the booth after picking up their food. It wasn’t the same as serving food to the café regulars, her friends and tennis teammates, who hung around to talk.

For the tourists and the locals involved in the festival, this was the last day. For the locals not involved in the festival, this was Monday. They had regular tennis games scheduled, aerobics sessions, and yoga classes.

Val preheated the oven, made coffee, and ate a pecan mini muffin left over from yesterday. She put the remaining ones on a plate as freebies for anyone who stopped by.

As she made the dough for today’s muffins, a bartender who worked out regularly at the club came into the café for coffee. He told her that the chef who’d judged the cook-off had spent Friday night in the bar, drinking and ranting about how she’d destroyed his car and nearly killed him.

“How long was he there?” Val said.

“All night. From seven ’til ten or ten thirty. He drank so much he had trouble walking.”

Earlier Val had all but crossed Henri off her list of murder suspects. Now she could do that with certainty. He’d been occupied with alcohol while Fawn was strangled. Val still held him responsible for the voodoo doll and the firecrackers, though she had no proof he’d played those juvenile dirty tricks.

While the muffins baked, she chopped fruit and vegetables for the salads. The bartender left, and two women from her tennis team dropped in for coffee before going out on the court. The pace this weekend reminded her of the hectic life that she used to lead in New York . . . and that she could return to. But why would she want to? She could come up with only one reason—to redeem her reputation as a cookbook publicist. She’d left under a cloud and now she could return triumphant, but was that ego boost worth giving up her friends and family here?

Val sensed someone at the counter behind her.

“I’m glad I found you alone, Val.”

Gunnar
. Her heart leapt. She turned around.

He wasn’t smiling the way he usually did when he saw her. “I’m really sorry for being a jerk. I was wrong.”

She released the breath she’d been holding. “No, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. And you’re not a jerk.”

He sat at the counter. “I acted like one. I had trouble believing you’d prefer me to Tony. He’s like the star of the show, and I’m the understudy who’ll never get a chance to take his place.”

“I felt the same way about your ex-fiancée when I saw her.” Val walked around the counter, sat on the stool next to his, and reached for his hand. “The only thing that matters is that we’re stars to each other. By the way, I decided to turn down the job offer in New York.”

He studied her face. “Are you sure? I’d like you to stay in Bayport, but if that’s the right job for your career, you should take it.”

“It’s not the right job for me
now
. It would be a step back. I enjoy what I’m doing here better.”

Yumiko and the reception desk manager came into the café. Val went behind the counter, poured coffee for them and Gunnar, and passed the muffins around. She took out the ingredients for apple turnovers—the dough she’d thawed overnight, the filling she’d made yesterday.

“Anything new on the murder?” Gunnar asked when the club staffers left.

As Val cut the dough into squares, she told him about the intimidating text message Jennifer received and about Noah spying while wearing a crab hat.

“You figure Noah’s hung up on Jennifer?”

Val put apple filling in a dough square and folded the dough into triangles. “Yes, and I’ve been hung up on triangles all weekend. Not just Jennifer, Payton, and Noah, but also Payton, Jennifer, and Whitney. She’s Payton’s ex-girlfriend. A Noah-Fawn-Sarina triangle also occurred to me, but Sarina doesn’t show a lot of interest in Noah. Of course, she’d want to hide her interest for a while if she eliminated Fawn as a rival.”

“It’s hard to escape a pattern once it settles in your mind. It pops up everywhere.”

Val stopped making dough triangles and looked into his eyes. He was talking about the triangle that had obsessed him this weekend, the one involving her, Tony, and himself. “Not everything, or everyone, fits into a three-sided box. You and I don’t, and neither do my mother and the chief.”

“I know that now. I’m throwing out all my three-sided boxes.”

The smile that transformed his face warmed her all over. Too bad she couldn’t act on the stirrings she was feeling inside.
Too many other things to do now. Focus on the strangling
. “I’m not ready yet to throw out the three-sided boxes the wedding group fits into, though last night I heard a story that gave me a new angle on the murder.” She told him what Fawn’s mother had said about the death of a bicyclist beneath the wheels of Jennifer’s car.

Gunnar raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That happened ten years ago. How does it explain a murder here and now?”

Val rearranged the turnovers to fit more of them on the baking sheets. “It doesn’t, unless this is the anniversary of the accident. Maybe someone’s been brooding on it and finally sprang into action. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything online about a car hitting a bicyclist near Franklin, the town where Jennifer and Fawn were high school friends. I also checked the surrounding counties and nearby cities. Nothing turned up.”

“You could have been looking for information in the wrong part of the state. Indiana has two towns named Franklin. Virginia might have more than one Franklin.”

“I’ll look into that. It’s also possible Fawn’s mother forgot the details and called a motorcycle a bicycle. I was too tired to do a thorough search last night, but I should have time later. Do you have any free time today? My mother is taking my place at the booth.”

“I have a meeting with a new accounting client at noon. Otherwise, I’m at your disposal.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “What do you have in mind?”

“Chocolate fondue. In Granddad’s backyard. I want to run through what happened the night of the murder.”

“That’s really romantic.”

Val laughed and glanced toward the café entrance. “Here comes Bethany. Time for us to go into high gear on making the food for the booth.”

Gunnar stayed at the counter, talking with her and Bethany for ten minutes. Then he stood up. “I’ll see you later, Val. What time do you want me at your grandfather’s house?”

“A quarter to eleven.” That would give her time to make sure the booth was operating smoothly before leaving it in her mother’s and Bethany’s hands. And he’d have plenty of time to make his business meeting.

* * *

Five minutes before Gunnar was due to arrive at the house, Val chopped up a bar of dark chocolate. She reversed the cooking tradition in the house and simplified Granddad’s recipe, melting the chocolate with cream in the microwave for a fast fondue. Granddad shook his head in disgust and told her it wouldn’t turn out right if she cut corners. How often had she said the same thing to him when he pared down her recipes to five ingredients?

She stirred the melted chocolate. “This isn’t going to be a gourmet experience. It’s a prop for a crime reenactment Gunnar and I are going to do in the backyard.”

“Hmph. You didn’t have to waste good chocolate on that. And why do you need him anyway? You and I could have recreated the crime without an actor.”

“Sarina and Noah are still upstairs. Payton and Jennifer may show up here. You have to keep them all away from the back windows. I don’t want them to see what we’re doing.” Fortunately, only the kitchen and her bedroom above it had windows overlooking the backyard.

Granddad looked less grumpy, now that he had a role to play. “I’ll make sure your mother locked your bedroom door from the outside when she left. Then no one can go in there and watch what you’re doing from the window.” He went up the staircase by the kitchen and came down a minute later, carrying the barking motion detector. “The door’s locked. Here’s my plan. I’m going to hang around the front hall. If Noah and Sarina come downstairs or if Payton drives Jennifer back here, I’ll keep them away from the back of the house. I’ll also set up RoboFido at the base of the staircase here. If anyone sneaks down, Fido will bark to alert me.”

“That’ll certainly scare away whoever is coming down the back stairs.” She laughed as she poured the melted chocolate into a bowl. “By the way, you can stop worrying about Chef Henri coming after me. He didn’t mistake Fawn for me and strangle her. He was drinking at a bar Friday night.”

“I stopped worrying about him yesterday. He checked out of his hotel and drove north.”

“How do you know?” She scraped the chocolate from the pot with a wooden spoon.

“I got Ned to tail him.”

Val dropped the spoon she was about to offer Granddad to lick. Chocolate splattered on the counter. “You involved Ned in your sleuthing again?”

“He offered to keep an eye on the chef. Ned’s very fond of you. He lost the chef for a while on Saturday, but he stuck with him on Sunday.”

The doorbell rang as Val was wiping the chocolate off the counter. “That must be Gunnar. I’ll get it.”

She brought him back to the kitchen. Granddad gave him a more cordial welcome than usual. Chocolate wasn’t the only thing melting in the kitchen. Now might be a good time to mention her mother’s plan. “Mom wants to take all three of us to lunch when the booth closes at two. Can you make it, Gunnar?”

He nodded. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

“And I’m looking forward to eating steak,” Granddad said, “since I didn’t get it last night.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, Granddad. Mom’s planning lunch at the crab house.”

“That’s okay too. Crabs are even better than steak.”

Granddad set up the barking sentry as Gunnar and Val adjourned to the yard to reenact Fawn’s final fondue.

Val put a plate of strawberries, a bowl of melted chocolate, and a fondue fork on the picnic table in the backyard. She gave Gunnar an old clothesline she’d found in the shed. “Can you make a rope that looks like the one we saw in the maze? I know the clothesline is thicker than that rope, but it won’t matter for this purpose.”

Gunnar took out a pocketknife and cut a length of rope. Then he looked up. “We’d better make this fast. It looks like a storm is coming.”

She watched the clouds race across the sky. “It might blow over.” She pulled a bench close to the table. “Before you arrived, I went online to look for another Franklin in Virginia. No luck. Then I realized no one had actually said the town was in Virginia. I’d assumed it because Jennifer and Fawn both went to college in Virginia. I found a Franklin in West Virginia, close to the Virginia border.”

“Any hits on an accident that killed a bicyclist there?”

“None. I checked a map to see where two teenagers from Franklin, West Virginia, might go for a party. James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, is an hour east of Franklin.
That’s
where the accident Fawn’s mother described happened. The driver was a minor whose name was withheld. The bicyclist was a student at James Madison. Emilio Alvarez.”

Gunnar tied a bowline on one end of the rope. “You don’t know for sure Jennifer was the driver.”

“Right, but everything else fits. Ten years ago. A passenger in the car. The driver absolved of any fault. The bicyclist had entered the intersection without having the right of way.” Now for the exciting part she’d been bursting to tell him. “Someone came forward who’d received a text message from the driver shortly before the accident occurred. But that was discounted as a factor in the accident because the passenger texted the message, using the driver’s cell phone.”

Gunnar finished tying the second knot. “Who got the message and what did it say?”

“That will take more digging. I ran out of time, but I’ll go back online when we’re finished here. Payton may be involved somehow. That’s around the time when he met Jennifer. He and Noah were in law school then at the University of Virginia, less than an hour from James Madison University.”

“Just tell the police what you found out. They’ll do the digging.”

“They think they have the culprit—Fawn’s husband. If I’m going to convince them otherwise, I’ll need something more concrete. Everyone in that wedding group is holding back something. The question is how to get them to talk.”

He slipped his hands through the loops he’d made in the rope. “What do you expect to learn from acting out the murder?”

“I just want to make sure I haven’t missed anything.” She sat down on the bench, with her back to the house. “I’ll dip a strawberry in the chocolate and eat it. Meanwhile, you creep around the side of the house and come up behind me, put the rope over my head, and tighten it as if you were going to strangle me.”

She had just swallowed the last bite of a chocolate-coated strawberry when he took her by surprise. She flailed, dropped the fondue fork on the ground, and then slipped her index finger under the rope.”

“No fair,” Gunnar said. “You can’t get your finger between the rope and the neck if I’m pulling it tight enough to strangle you.”

“Okay. We need another take. So far, we’ve proven that Fawn wouldn’t have heard anyone sneak up behind her. I didn’t hear you even when I expected you to come.” Val speared another strawberry. “Let’s run through it again from the top.”

“Are you sure this isn’t an excuse to gorge on chocolate fondue?”

“Of course it is.”

This time Val had finished eating a strawberry and put down her fondue fork by the time he threw the rope over her head. She grabbed the fork, whipped it behind her, and poked him in the leg with the blunt side of it.

“Ow!” Gunnar rubbed his leg. “I saw that coming a second too late to get out of the way.”

“Fawn’s strangler wouldn’t have seen it at all in the dark. To hit you with the fork’s wood handle, I twisted my wrist outward. Fawn just had to reach back and stab her attacker with the business end of the fork.” Val mimicked the action and touched her finger to the tips of the two prongs. “They’re sharp.”

“Assuming Fawn succeeded, the strangler would have puncture wounds. If I’d been stabbed while strangling someone, I might loosen up on the rope for a second when the pain hit, but then I’d be really mad and jerk the rope even tighter.”

“And you’d have blood running down your leg.” The strangler’s blood might be on the bandages Granddad had fished from the trash, but there was no way to prove that the blood on them came from a wound made by a fondue fork. Val stood up. “Show me where I hit you.”

He pointed to a spot on the outside of his right leg just above the knee.

She moved her leg next to his to see where the fork would have hit someone shorter. “Fawn would have stabbed me or Jennifer a third of the way up the thigh. Sarina and Noah would have puncture wounds a few inches below that. Payton’s ex, Whitney, has long legs. The fork would have hit her about where it hit you.”

“If Fawn stabbed the strangler, the fork would have DNA on it.”

Val felt a tingle of excitement. “That’s why it disappeared the night of the murder. The killer must have taken it to wash the blood off. It still hasn’t turned up.”

“Bleach could have removed the blood and the DNA from the tines. Is this fork like the one that’s missing?” At Val’s nod, Gunnar picked up the fork she’d used and pointed to the place where the metal was set into the wood handle. “Even a droplet of blood can leave a trace in a place like this or in one of these scratches on the wood. If the killer knows that, you’ll never see the fork again.”

“It’s not easy to dispose of a ten-inch long fork. You can’t just put it in the trash and expect no one to notice.”
Especially with Granddad practicing his garbology.

“You can throw it in the river or bury it in the ground, but someone might see you do it.”

“It’s not necessary to find the fork. If Fawn managed anything deeper than a scratch, her killer may still have tine marks on the leg. Wait much longer, though, and the wound will heal without leaving a trace. That’s why the police need to identify the murderer fast.”

“They can’t ask your guests to roll up their pants or raise their skirts based on your speculation that one of them has a fork wound. But you can try strip poker and hope the strangler loses.”

She laughed, sat down on the bench, and pointed to the strawberries and the bowl of chocolate. “Have some. Did you know that the original chocolate fondue was made from triangular-shaped chocolate bars? Swiss chocolate in the shape of a mountain.”

He sat next to her and took a strawberry. “I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised. There are triangles everywhere this weekend.”

“And text messages. Five texts in all, counting the one sent ten years ago from Jennifer’s car. On Friday afternoon Jennifer texted for directions to the house. That evening Fawn texted Noah, asking to have dinner with him, but he turned her down. Then Payton received a text in a restaurant, shortly after Noah sent one. On Saturday morning Jennifer got an intimidating verse in a text.” Val took a strawberry. “I want to know who sent the text to Payton, what was in it, and who texted the verse to Jennifer. I suspect Noah has the answers.”

“Don’t corner him in a dark alley and grill him.”

“I won’t, but I wish the police would take him into the grilling room.”

Gunnar’s cell phone dinged. “That’s a message from my calendar, reminding me about my appointment. I have just enough time to walk home and put some papers together for my pitch to a client.”

“Thanks for helping.”

“See you later.” He kissed her and left by the side yard.

Val took her props to the kitchen and found Granddad there. “Are Noah and Sarina still in the house?”

“They just left with Jennifer and Payton. They were going to walk around town and get some lunch before the parade. They may be back if it starts raining. Why don’t you go to Bayport Outfitters and ask about those tags I found in Jennifer’s trash? Find out what she bought.”

Val couldn’t imagine it would matter. She had the impression he was trying to get rid of her. “Don’t you even want to hear about the crime reenactment?”

“Not unless it told you who murdered Fawn.” He pointed out the window. “You’d better get going or you’ll get caught in a downpour.”

She’d rather do more online research into the accident, but he wouldn’t give her any peace until she went to Bayport Outfitters.

A ten-minute walk brought her to the shop. Despite not much frontage on Main Street, the shop had a large sales floor because the building was deeper than most of the older structures in the historic district.

Val approached a middle-aged salesclerk. “A friend who was visiting this weekend bought some things here and really liked them. She was sorry she hadn’t bought more. When I found the tags, I decided to surprise her and buy them for her as gifts. Can you tell me if you have more of these?”

The clerk looked at the tags Val gave her and held one up. “This is a tag for our skinny capri pants. They’re popular this weekend because the weather is warmer than most people expected for October. I’ll check if we still have them in the size your friend bought.”

Val followed the clerk to a clothing rack along the wall. Hanging there were yellow capris like the ones Jennifer had worn Saturday afternoon and yesterday. Val pointed to them on the rack. “Those are the ones she liked.”

The clerk checked the tags on the ones hanging on the rack. “They’re the right style, but we don’t have any more in her size in any color. We have a similar style here somewhere.” She flipped through the hangers.

“I’d rather stick with what I know she’d liked. What about the other item?”

“That’s a skirt. Let me see if we have another one like it.” The clerk moved to a different rack. She held up a pencil skirt in a length that would skim the top of Val’s knee and a width that would cling to her hips and thighs like elastic wrap. “The tag you showed me is for this skirt in electric blue. Here it is in an eight. That’s the size your friend bought.”

“I’m not sure she’d want another skirt in that bright blue. Does it come in other shades?”

“We sold out in the other colors. You might like this skirt for yourself.”

“Not my style.” Val gestured toward her loose khaki skirt with patch pockets. “But thank you for your help.” She’d learned one thing here—however many clothes Jennifer had packed into her massive suitcase, they hadn’t sufficed for her weekend in Bayport.

The clerk gave back the clothing tags and hung up the skirt. “If you see anything else that interests you, let me know.”

“Thanks. I will.” Val stopped to look at the sweaters folded on the shelves lining the wall. Then she ambled toward the rear of the shop and poked through a rack of sale items. Even at clearance prices, the clothes in this shop were no bargain. The prices would decrease in another month, when the tourist season wound down.

As she was about to make a U-turn and retrace her steps, she came to the children’s section. Stuffed critters sat on shelves along the back wall. Birds perched on one shelf, including a red-winged blackbird like the one she’d fished out of Jennifer’s tailpipe. Val picked up the blackbird and stroked its wings. It looked and felt exactly like the one in the tailpipe.

She forced herself to keep an open mind. Just because Jennifer had shopped for clothes in this store didn’t mean she’d shopped for stuffed birds too. Val shifted the stuffed toys on the shelf, looking for a Baltimore oriole, the bird Jennifer had plucked from the tailpipe. No luck.

Val approached a young woman who stood behind the cash register counter. “I was looking at your little birds over there.” She pointed to the shelf. “Do you happen to have a Baltimore oriole?”

“I’m sorry. I sold the last one this weekend. We’ll be getting more in stock, but I don’t know exactly when.”

“I was hoping to give it to an avid bird watcher who’s particularly fond of orioles.” Val chose her words carefully to avoid saying whether her friend was male or female. “Maybe my friend bought your last one. Do you happen to remember the person you sold it to?”

The clerk frowned in concentration. “Sorry. There were so many people here this weekend.”

Val regretted not having taken the wedding group’s photos Monique had printed for Granddad. Seeing a picture of the customer might have jogged the clerk’s memory. On the other hand, whipping out photos and asking the clerk to identify the buyer of a stuffed bird would have been decidedly weird. Val had enough information to draw tentative conclusions without a positive identification.

She left the shop and weaved through the crowd on Main Street. Probably Jennifer had bought the birds and stuffed them in the tailpipe. Did that mean she’d lied about someone running after her in the maze? Not necessarily. She’d seen how promptly Payton had left his parents’ party to join her when he believed her threatened in the maze. Maybe she decided to trump up another threat to get more attention from him. The birds in the tailpipe convinced him she wasn’t safe anywhere but in his parents’ house. She finally got her way.

The phrase reminded Val of the verse someone sent Jennifer. If her sole purpose had been to persuade Payton she was in danger, why did she brush off the intimidating text message? She’d passed up a chance to reinforce the idea that someone was targeting her. Payton might have whisked her away even sooner to his parents’ house if he’d known about that message.

Val turned onto a side street. Fawn’s death gave the threats against Jennifer a force they wouldn’t have otherwise had, but was the murder related in any other way to the threats? Val was back to the question she had from the start—who was the intended victim?