Final Fondue (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) (7 page)

Gunnar reached for her hand. “I’m sorry for calling you a murder magnet. I wouldn’t have joked if I’d known you found her. Are you okay?”

“I’m good now.” She could have used that hand enveloping hers last night.

“Did the murdered woman’s friends cut short their weekend?” When Val shook her head, he tightened his grip on her hand. “You shouldn’t sleep in the house with them. Why don’t you stay at my place until they leave?”

“Thank you, but Granddad arranged for Monique to put me up at her house this weekend. You think it’s dangerous to sleep in the house with the wedding group?” Or was Gunnar using the murder to nudge her toward moving in with him?

“Despite the rumors flying around, someone who knew the victim is a more likely killer than a psycho stranger. Do any of your grandfather’s guests strike you as a possible murderer?”

“Hard to say who the murderer is without knowing who the victim was supposed to be.” Judging by his raised eyebrows, she’d surprised him.

“I want to hear more about that, but right now,” Gunnar pointed toward the front of the booth, “you have another customer.”

She stood up and stifled a groan when she saw the sneering man with a mustache. She’d try to be civil to him. “Would you like to order something, Henri?”

“Certainly not. One of your former colleagues told me you planned to write a cookbook. I thought,
That can’t be true
. You don’t have a restaurant or a TV program. Now I see you do have a restaurant. Très elegant. Dining al fresco.” He pulled a phone from his pocket. “I shall immediately send a photo to Monsieur Michelin. Perhaps he will come here and give you a star for this restaurant. Or maybe two stars.”

“If you weren’t too vain to put on your glasses, you’d know this isn’t a restaurant.” She gestured with an open palm toward the booth. “No stove, no refrigerator, no running water.”

He squinted at the food listed on the whiteboard. “Ah, but you have a menu. Let us see what is on it. A peanut butter sandwich. How quaint. Fruit and cheese, but not French cheese, I’m sure. And hummus.” He pronounced it
hyoo-mus
so it sounded like dirt.

“Hummus.” Val corrected him through clenched teeth.

“Ooh-la-la! You make salads too. You are part of the raw food movement, perhaps. Now let us look up the meaning of the word
cook
.” He punched buttons on his phone and held it up triumphantly. “Aha! To cook means to combine ingredients and heat them. So it is not a
cook
book you will write. You will write a
chop
book.”

His tirade was attracting onlookers. She couldn’t let him claim center stage unchallenged. She scuttled outside of the booth. She wanted to say, for the benefit of the crowd gathered around him, that her booth sold food she’d cooked not just chopped, but it took all her energy to control the steam rising inside her. An inner voice warned her against provoking a man who might want to kill her, and may have already tried.

“Your recipes will explain how to take something big and make little pieces of it.” Henri mimicked chopping movements. “You think you know anything about cooking? Why? Because you promoted my cookbook? You didn’t do a good job of it.”

She erupted. “You can’t cook without a brigade of helpers, the sous chef, the food prep team, the station cooks, and the pastry chef. You yell at them and chew them out. Is that what you call cooking? I call it the reason you don’t have a restaurant anymore.”

Henri raised his index finger and jabbed it toward her. “
You
destroyed my business.”

Gunnar loomed behind him. “Scram, buddy.” He had the kind of face that no one wants to see in a dark alley. With a crooked nose and a craggy complexion, Gunnar could answer a casting call for a hit man.

Chef Henri, however, wasn’t cowed. He looked up at Gunnar the way most people look down on another person, as if he’d encountered a worm. “And whom are you?”

“
Who
, not whom,” Val muttered.

“I’m her friend.” Gunnar cocked his head toward Val, his voice quietly menacing. “Leave her alone, or you’ll regret it.”

For an amateur actor, he wasn’t doing a bad imitation of a thug.

Henri’s face turned puce. “You are threatening me?”

Gunnar stared down the chef. “I have not yet begun to threaten.”

A man in the crowd applauded. “Great performance art. It wasn’t even on the festival schedule.”

“It isn’t a performance,” a tall gray-haired woman at the edge of the crowd said. “It’s real. This man knows what he’s talking about. He’s the celebrity chef who’ll judge the cook-off tomorrow.”

Val might have known that Irene Pritchard, her former rival for the job of managing the Cool Down Café, would jump at the chance to criticize her and curry favor with the cook-off judge.

“Thank you, Madame.” Henri bowed to Irene and extended both arms to the crowd. “I invite you all to watch my cooking demonstration tonight at eight at the Harbor Inn.” He turned back to Gunnar and rose to his full height, which brought him up to Gunnar’s chin. Eyes fixed on that chin, Henri said, “You do not scare me.”

With that, he hightailed it away.

Bethany stepped forward. “What he said wasn’t true. A lot of cooking went into the food Val’s serving. She roasted the vegetables and baked the desserts. And it’s all delicious. Her cooking is great, and her cookbook will be too.”

“I’ll second that,” a man said, his voice coming from beyond the knot of people closest to the booth. “Val is a fantastic cook.”

Val stiffened. Her insides knotted. She couldn’t see the man because the crowd hid him from view, but she didn’t need to see him. She’d spent enough time with him to recognize that gravelly voice and, if she’d forgotten what he sounded like, his recent voicemail message would have reminded her—Tony.

Val stood rigid as her former fiancé sauntered toward her. The air around her seemed to buzz like a high-voltage wire. She’d suppressed her memory of how good-looking he was, his brown eyes framed by dark lashes, his high cheekbones. He had features that would have made the sculptors of ancient Greece swoon—a classic profile and a marble heart.

Val caught Bethany’s eye. “Can you handle the booth by yourself for a minute or two?”

Bethany nodded and scurried under the canopy. Val reminded herself how she’d wasted five years thinking Tony was the love of her life. She moved closer to Gunnar.

Tony wore the crooked smile that women found so charming. “Good to see you again, Val. I’ve missed you.”

Obvious that he’d lost weight. Missing her cooking? Starved for affection? “What are you doing in Bayport?” She kept her voice even, devoid of emotion, despite the turmoil inside her.

“Well, I didn’t come for the Tricentennial.”

“While you’re here, enjoy the festival.”
You won’t get anything else out of this trip.
“Gunnar, this is Tony Nicolias. Tony, meet Gunnar Swensen.”

Tony thrust out his hand.

Gunnar hesitated before shaking hands. “Tony. I’ve heard about you.”

“Well, I haven’t heard about you.” Tony’s eyes flicked from Gunnar to Val. “Can we talk . . . alone?”

She pointed to the booth behind her. “I’m working.”

He glanced at the banner saying the booth would be open from ten to four. “I’ll come by at four.”

“I’ll be busy then too. I’m sure you remember what it’s like to work after hours.” She instantly regretted her snide reference to the evenings he’d spent with his paralegal. She didn’t want him to think his cheating still bothered her.

Val turned away from him and went back to the booth, with Gunnar following. The crowd around the booth was thinning out, but a knot of people clustered around the menu.

Bethany cocked her head toward them. “A bunch of people are talking about what to order.”

“Great. A late-lunch crowd.” Val smiled at Gunnar. “Business was slowing down before Henri came along. I hope he’s nearby to see how his tirade made people notice my booth.”

Gunnar folded his arms. “Why didn’t you tell Tony you didn’t want to talk to him?”

Val hesitated, surprised at the change of subject. “He already knew that. He left me several messages in the last month. I didn’t respond to them.” Voice mail, text message, e-mail. He’d tried them all and she’d deleted them all.

“What made him show up here?”

Val couldn’t have been clearer about her negative feelings for Tony. Yet Gunnar was behaving as if she’d expected her ex-fiancé to come to Bayport. “You’ll have to ask him, and I have to help Bethany wait on customers.” She pointed to the line of people in front of the booth.

“I’ll come back when you’re less busy.” He ducked out of the booth and walked stiffly away.

Val was glad he was taking a break. Given a little time, he might stop brooding about Tony.

For the next fifteen minutes, she was too busy waiting on customers to give any thought to him, Tony, Henri, or the Bayport strangler.

During a break between customers, Bethany said, “Would you do me a favor?”

“Of course.” Val couldn’t have run the booth without her this weekend and owed her a bunch of favors.

“I planned to go to the corn maze tonight with two of the other teachers. But one of them bowed out because her parents are visiting for the weekend, and the other caught the stomach virus that’s going around. It’s no fun to go through the maze alone, so will you go with me?”

Half an hour ago, Val would have nixed a visit to the maze, but now that she knew Henri would be busy with a cooking demo, she saw no reason not to go. A maze wouldn’t appeal to criminals, whether purse snatchers or murderers. They couldn’t depend on a fast getaway. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”

She spotted her cousin outside the booth. Monique moved around with her camera, apparently searching for a good angle. She took some shots of Val serving customers. When no more customers were waiting, she took more formal shots of Val and Bethany standing outside the booth, under the banner that read C
OOL
D
OWN
C
AFÉ
A
NNEX
.

As Val smiled for the camera, she caught sight of Jennifer two booths away, clinging to a tall man. Had to be Payton. Long of leg and neck like a crane, he covered the same distance in a single stride as she did in three steps, wearing sandals with stacked heels. She’d changed out of the jeans she’d worn at breakfast into butter yellow capris, showing off her shapely calves. Noah in cargo shorts and Sarina in her usual tan gaucho pants walked a few paces behind the engaged couple, talking with their heads close together.

“The wedding group staying at Granddad’s is coming this way,” Val said in a voice just loud enough for Bethany and Monique to hear.

“Where?” Bethany glanced left and right.

“Two booths down. The woman hanging onto the preppy-looking guy is the bride-to-be.” Val tilted her head in their direction. “They’ll stop to talk if I’m right in their path. Why don’t you go under the canopy, Bethany? It’ll look more natural than if we’re both lined up here.”

Monique moved away. “I’ll come back and take some photos of them.”

While Bethany smoothed out the autumn table covering, Val stood outside the booth straightening the flyers on the table. She waved to the wedding foursome as they approached.

Jennifer pulled her companion toward the booth. “Hey, Val. This is my fiancé, Payton Grandsire. I don’t think you got a chance to meet him yesterday.”

Payton held his fiancée close with his hand roving on her hip and thigh. “Good to meet you. How is your grandfather after the tragedy last night? I hope it wasn’t too much of a shock.”

“Thank you. I hope so too.”

“He seemed okay this morning,” Jennifer said. “A little sad, but we all were.”

Noah and Sarina joined the soon-to-be bride and groom. Val had just introduced Bethany to the four of them when Monique rushed over with her camera.

“Could I get some shots of this group? I’m Monique Mott, a festival photographer.”

Val introduced everyone to Monique. “She’s my cousin and the best wedding photographer in town.”

“Could I have your business card, Monique?” Jennifer said. “Payton and I are planning our wedding. That’s why we’re all here this weekend.”

“Fantastic. Photos of your planning weekend can be the first ones in your wedding album.” With infectious enthusiasm, Monique arranged the group for the camera and coaxed natural smiles from them by prompting them to say
yes
instead of
cheese
. Even the formerly immovable Sarina was no match for Monique’s irresistible force. Through a dozen shots, Payton never took his hands off Jennifer, though he did move them around to different parts of her anatomy.

“How about a few pictures with Val?” Monique said. “A souvenir photo of the weekend. Come and join them, Val.”

Just what Val needed—a souvenir of a murder weekend. Like the others, though, she gave in to the energetic Monique.

Her cousin snapped three pictures of Val with the group and then pulled a pair of crab hats from her tote bag. “Now let’s do a few pictures so you remember the festival that was going on while you were planning the big event. These are the official Tricentennial hats.” She offered the bride-to-be a hat.

Jennifer took it. “We have our own hats, but not with us.”

Val gave her cousin points for deviousness. Monique was saving herself the trouble of using software to put crab hats on people. When Sarina refused to wear a crab hat, Monique held it out to Val.

Val, who hadn’t put on her own souvenir hat since finding Fawn dead, hesitated. Reluctantly, she donned the hat for the photo, though she couldn’t quite manage a smile for the camera.

After a few clicks of the camera, Jennifer took off the hat and handed it to her fiancé. “Your turn, Payton!”

“Not unless Noah wears one too.”

Val took off her hat, gave it to Noah, and moved out of the way of the camera lens. So many people had stopped to watch the photo shoot that they created a pedestrian tie-up near the booth. Val spotted her grandfather in the crowd and waved. He returned her greeting, but the next time she looked, he’d disappeared. Maybe he’d gone to meet her mother, who should have arrived by now.

When Monique finished taking photos, she collected the hats and handed out her business cards. “You’ll find the photos on the Tricentennial website with information about ordering them. Shoot me an email if you want to discuss photography for the wedding. I’m already taking bookings for June. Thanks much, folks.” She hurried off.

Two women in designer slacks and chic sweaters approached from the other direction. Val recognized Penelope Grandsire, though until now she’d seen her only in tennis clothes. Payton sprang away from Jennifer. The resemblance between him and his mother was striking, both tall with a face shaped like an inverted triangle, broad in the forehead, narrowing to an elongated chin. The other woman, a willowy blonde with hair tied back at the nape of her neck, was about Payton’s age.

“There you are, Payton.” Penelope used the same tone as a mother would to a young boy who’d strayed away from her in a shopping mall. “Why don’t you introduce your friends to Whitney?”

Payton did as he was told.

His mother nodded to Sarina when Payton introduced her, gave Jennifer a stiff hello, and exchanged a few words with Noah. She either didn’t notice Val or didn’t recognize her from their encounters on the tennis court.

Val shuffled the flyers on the table and kept her eyes and ears open to the drama taking place near the booth.

Noah glanced from the flustered Jennifer to the cool Whitney. “How do you and Payton know each other, Whitney?”

The blonde smiled fondly at Payton. “Fate put us together from the time we were born.”

Payton didn’t return the smile. “My parents and Whitney’s have been friends a long time.”

Penelope nodded. “Payton and Whitney played together as children and dated when they were older. Then Payton went off to law school and Whitney went to graduate school and to the Sorbonne. It’s so nice to have her back home.” She locked arms with the younger woman. “I’ve forgotten what type of work you do, Jennifer.”

Jennifer perked up. “I’m an interior decorator. Residential. A lot of people move into and out of Washington after each election. It’s very satisfying to help them find the look that will work for them.”

“Such fun for you,” Penelope said, “to go into the houses of the well-to-do and tell them what to do.”

The little Val knew about the older woman suggested she also enjoyed telling other people what to do.

Penelope was still talking. “I’m sure interior decorating pays well too, for a job that doesn’t require much education. Of course, you need a good eye.”

“I have a B.F.A. degree.” Jennifer’s voice sounded half an octave higher than usual.

Penelope frowned. “I’m not sure what that is. Whitney is working on her second Ph.D.”

Sarina glowered. “Bachelor of Fine Arts—that’s what a B.F.A. is. And you need more than a good eye to earn one. You need talent and creativity.”

“Are you an interior decorator too?” Whitney asked Sarina.

“No, I’m an artist. With a B.F.A. What are you getting a Ph.D. in?”

“Communication, Culture, and Media in their social, historical, and ideological contexts. It’s an interdisciplinary program that fosters synergistic collaborative approaches to understand and solve problems.”

Val watched the members of the wedding party go slack-jawed as Whitney continued in this vein, using terms like
ethnographic
and
sociopoetic
.

Sarina recovered first. “What sort of a job does that prepare you for?”

Her question echoed the one in Val’s mind.

Whitney’s pained expression made her look like a headache victim in an aspirin commercial. “Well, I’ve always believed the purpose of education is to enable you to live a full life, not prepare you for a specific job. That said, a leadership position in a foundation or nonprofit would be a possible outcome.”

A possible outcome in the unlikely event she would need to earn a living.

Penelope touched her son’s arm. “Your father’s in a tizzy about getting the grills ready and the drinks set up for the barbecue. Don’t dawdle here. We’ll see you back at the house before long. So interesting talking to all of you.” She and Whitney turned around and retraced their steps.

Looking at the two women from behind, Val would have taken them for sisters. The golden-haired Whitney and the platinum-haired Penelope weren’t cut from exactly the same cloth, but they had a tailor who used the same pattern and scissors.

Sarina put an arm around Jennifer’s shoulder and walked her in the other direction from Payton’s mother. Noah and Payton followed.

Val went back inside the booth, grateful for the shade the canopy provided. She sat on a folding chair.

Bethany peered at her. “You look flushed. You okay?”

“I was standing in the sun too long.”

“I’ll get you a cold drink.” Bethany gave her a paper cup of lemonade on ice and sat down across from her. “I feel sorry for Jennifer. Did you notice how Penelope looked at her?”

“You mean, like she was going to drill a tennis ball right at her?” Val guzzled the lemonade.

“I still have a circular black-and-blue mark on my shoulder, where she hit me a week ago. If you’d found Jennifer dead instead of Fawn, I’d know who did it.”

And if Penelope had failed the first time, she’d certainly try again. Val could think of no way to find out where Payton’s mother had been last night, but maybe she could talk the chief into checking on Penelope’s alibi. “Imagine having her as a mother-in-law. Love is all well and good, but when you marry someone, you also marry his family.”