Murder Has a Sweet Tooth (7 page)

“But—”

“When you get some real evidence, something we can actually verify, give me a call,” he said, and because he didn’t expect that to happen anytime soon, he hung up.

I stood there on the sidewalk, trying to make sense of everything he’d told me, and when that didn’t work, I waited for Eve to join me and tried to fit the information I had into what I did know about the case.

“Listen to this,” I said. “And help me make sense of it all. Alex was found, passed out, with a knife in his hands, with Vickie’s body.”

There was no denying any of this. Eve nodded. “Ugly but true.”

“Yeah, but wait.” I held up a hand to let her know I wasn’t done. “Tyler says Vickie Monroe was from McLean, one of those ritzy suburbs the two of us always fantasize about.”

Eve couldn’t deny this, either. Once in a while, back in the day before we both got jobs at Bellywasher’s and got so busy, we used to take drives through some of the suburbs we fantasized about. Yes, in our weaker moments, both Eve and I had imagined ourselves living Vickie’s life. We’d have perfect homes in a perfect gated community, and of course, we’d be neighbors. My brighter-than-average children would attend the better-than-normal schools nearby with Eve’s. Because our husbands would make enough money to support us in the upper-class style we were used to, neither of us would have to work. But that didn’t mean we’d be couch potatoes. Both of us would be involved in our kids’ lives, and in their activities. Together, Eve and I would contribute to our community.

I came out of the dream when I heard myself sigh. “Oh, yeah,” I said, “Vickie Monroe had our dream life, Eve. Well . . .” I flinched. “Except for those cooking classes. And . . .” This time, even a flinch wasn’t enough to register my horror. I felt the blood drain from my face. “She had a perfect life except for the cooking classes, and the murder.”

BELIEVE ME, I HAD A PLAN. AT LEAST A PLAN AS FAR
as my investigation went. I had to wait until the medical examiner released Vickie Monroe’s body, but after that, I had every intention of attending her funeral. After all, everybody goes to a funeral: family, friends, neighbors, loved ones. Maybe even murderers. Oh, yeah, I would be there, too, and talking to everyone unfortunate enough to get too close to me.

Until then, I had other things to keep me busy. There was all the work I had to do at Bellywasher’s, of course. As business manager at the restaurant, I’m responsible for keeping all our invoices in order, paying our bills, balancing deliveries against receipts against those invoices. I make sure we order the supplies we need and I take care of our bank transactions every single day. I handle payroll, too, as well as things like making sure what we’re charging for food actually covers the cost of the food, the preparation, and that payroll. If we’re lucky, we can manage a smidgen of profit in there, too.

Yes, in my real job, I do all those wonderful, mundane things other people hate to do, and I love every minute of it. After all, I get all the excitement I need from murder. And from planning my wedding.

These days, it seemed as if the two things had a way of getting all mixed up.

Which was why on Thursday evening, I spent some time at the restaurant thinking about what I could do for Alex and how I’d proceed with my investigation. But once Bellywasher’s closed and I kissed Jim good night, Eve and I hurried over to the apartment that wouldn’t be my apartment for too much longer. This time, we were investigating—

“Cullen Skink?” I was sitting at my computer, and Eve was standing behind me. She leaned over my shoulder and pointed at the screen, reading out loud. “What on earth is it? And do you really think you’d want to serve something called Cullen Skink at your wedding?”

I wasn’t about to so easily dismiss anything that fell under the heading of Scottish cuisine. I clicked around the Internet site I’d found that promised to reveal the secrets of Scots food in all its glory. Or not.

“It’s fish soup,” I told Eve, speed-reading the page as I went. “And it doesn’t sound half bad. You need a smoked haddock, onions, milk, potatoes. I might actually be able to do this!” I grinned at the prospect until I got to the part of the recipe that said
Method
. Then I read aloud and my shoulders drooped. “The first thing you have to do is skin the haddock.”

“Oh, my Lord, Annie! We can’t have you doing that on your wedding day. You’ll smell fishy!”

Eve didn’t have to argue to convince me. With my mouse, I zoomed around the page, looking for other suggestions. “Here’s one.” I stopped and pointed it out. “I don’t know what it is, but it sure sounds Scottish. Crappit heid.”

She leaned closer and read, “It’s the head of a fish stuffed with oats, suet, and the fish liver. It’s boiled in seawater. Annie, you’re not actually thinking—”

“No.” I went back to Google and tried a different Scottish cooking site.

“How about that one?” Eve stopped me with her question. “Black pudding. That’s got to be like chocolate pudding, right? And what could be better or easier than chocolate pudding? Oh!” She shivered with delight at the very thought. “We could top it with dollops of fresh whipped cream and strawberries. Wouldn’t that be the best?”

It would have been, if black pudding was what we thought it was. The recipe proved otherwise. “It’s sausage made by cooking blood with filler until it’s congealed,” I told Eve, and she didn’t wait for me to read more. She grabbed the mouse and clicked off the page.

I was not to be deterred, even in the face of culinary adversity. I kept looking, and my efforts were rewarded. “Here’s one that’s traditionally served at weddings. It’s called cranachan. It’s made with whipped cream, whiskey, honey, and fresh raspberries and the whole thing is topped with toasted oatmeal.” I didn’t wait for her to say yea or nay. I didn’t need to. I knew that any recipe that included whipped cream and fresh raspberries was as all right by Eve as it was by me. I had the recipe printed out in a moment, and a few minutes later we were in the kitchen, giving it a whirl.

And I suppose since I’ve said this much about it, I really should report the results.

Only, do I have to?

Let’s just say that by the time it was all over, I had honey stuck in my hair, there was cream (whipped and unwhipped) splattered across the kitchen cabinets, and Eve, who had volunteered to toast the oatmeal in a frying pan, was sitting at my kitchen table with her right hand wrapped in a cold, wet washcloth. The better to keep the blisters down.

It was a good thing my limited supply of at-hand food didn’t include fresh raspberries. It would have been a shame to sacrifice fresh raspberries for something that turned into that big a mess.

I sank down on the chair across from Eve’s and groaned, and Eve, though she was surely in pain, never forgot that it is the duty of a best friend to boost her best friend’s spirits. She knew where I kept supplies for just such an emergency. She got up, fetched the step stool I kept in the kitchen because I’m too short to reach most of my cupboards, and dragged it over to the shelves above the refrigerator. She’s tall, but even she had to stretch to reach my emergency supply of giant-sized Hershey bars. That’s the idea, of course. If the chocolate is out of reach, I will be less likely to reach for it. Except in the most dire of emergencies.

Eve brought one over along with a jar of extra-crunchy peanut butter and handed me a spoon. “Don’t worry. We’ll find something that’s easy and tastes good, too. You’ll still be able to surprise Jim.”

I spooned up some peanut butter and coated a square of chocolate with it. I chewed and swallowed it down. “That’s the problem,” I said, my words sticking to the roof of my mouth. “My bad cooking is exactly what
won’t
surprise Jim.”

“I’M THINKING EMMA AND LUCY WOULD LOOK
sweet in rose. Not anything mauvy, a true, rosy pink. That way, Doris and Gloria could wear a nice, fresh shade of green. Wendy and Rosemary . . . well, with their coloring, bright yellow might be too much. But then, they’re kids, and kids can get away with anything and still look adorable. So let’s put Wendy and Rosemary in yellow, but a nice soft shade. That leaves Alice, and I’m picturing lilac for her. And I know, I know, Annie . . .” Even if I hadn’t known her forever, I would have picked up on the frustration in Eve’s voice. This was a subject she’d brought up time and again for the last . . . oh, I don’t know . . . maybe twenty-five years. “I know you aren’t into lots of color or flashy fabrics, but you know you really should give it a chance sometime. You know, spread your artistic wings and fly. But really, I mean, this is a wedding and wouldn’t it just be adorable if the girls looked like a bouquet of flowers! And Alice’s lilac dress will match Little Ricky’s bow tie and cummerbund.”

Believe me, when Eve gets like this—all talky and making plans so big, all of Virginia can’t hold them—I try my best not to fall under her spell. I tried even harder that next Monday morning as we sat in Willburger’s Funeral Chapel waiting for the service for Vickie to begin. For one thing, this was hardly the place to talk about a wedding. For another, it wasn’t the time, either, considering that we were attending the funeral so we could find out all we could about Vickie and—if we were lucky—so we could find someone who might be responsible for her death. Someone other than Alex, that is.

At least Eve knew enough to keep her voice to a whisper. That was a plus. So was the fact that we were sitting in the last row of folding chairs, back near a credenza filled with photographs of Vickie and her family, a vase with two dozen yellow roses in it, and a box of tissues I had a feeling I was going to need as soon as Edward Monroe and his kids walked in.

Funerals always do that to me.

I was doing my best not to get sucked in by Eve’s wild plans, but I was looking for a distraction. Desperate to think about anything other than that urn sitting on a table at the front of the room, what was in it, and why, I turned to Eve. “Little Ricky’s wearing a cummerbund?”