Sprinkle with Murder (11 page)

Twelve

Several hours passed before Detective Rayburn and his crew departed. Mel and Angie had waited, sitting in a booth inside the shop. Angie had begun to make a list of all the items that would need replacing when the officers left.
Mel felt as if she were in suspended animation. She didn’t want to hover and draw attention to herself, but she didn’t know what to do either. She debated calling her mother and having her call the attorney Johnny Dietz had recommended, but she hesitated. Mostly because she didn’t want to appear guilty. But did it really matter when everyone seemed to think she was guilty?
When the detectives left, she sagged with relief, mostly because they hadn’t handcuffed her and dragged her with them.
Angie had just locked the door behind them when Tate entered through the door to the kitchen. He looked grim.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Not here.” Mel didn’t really think the detectives had bugged the bakery, but she had watched a few too many episodes of
24,
and couldn’t help but think that Jack Bauer would never risk it.
“What . . .” Angie began, but Mel cut her off by putting a finger over her lips.
She gestured for them to follow her, and the three of them headed out the back door. Mel locked it behind them and led the way down the alley, across Brown Street, and into Civic Center Park. She stopped beside a fountain that sprayed in a large bubble, and hoped the noise would keep their conversation from being overheard.
“What do you know?” Mel asked Tate.
“There was arsenic in the cupcake.”
“That’s impossible!” Angie said.
They were standing huddled in a small circle. The sun was setting, and it would soon be dark. The evening hadn’t cooled off yet, but Mel felt a chill walk across her skin with icy fingers.
“So that’s why they were searching the bakery,” Mel said. “To see if I had arsenic mixed in with my chocolate chips.”
“It gets more interesting than that.” Tate leaned closer. “My attorney has connections at the police department and at the medical examiner’s office. Get this: The initial autopsy showed no trace of arsenic in the contents of Christie’s stomach.”
“What does that mean?” Angie asked.
“It means it wasn’t arsenic that killed her,” Tate said.
“Then why are they searching my bakery?” Mel asked.
“Because something killed her, but they have no idea what,” Tate said. “It may or may not have been in the cupcakes.”
“Someone tampered with my cupcakes,” Mel said. She thought back to Alma and her five-year contract. There was a lot of anger there, and Alma certainly had motive and opportunity.
“It could be anyone,” Angie stated. “Tate, do you know who was at the photo shoot? And who Christie was dealing with for the wedding? Did she lock anyone else into a contract they were unhappy about?”
“She had a big fight with Jay Driscoll, the photographer, the day of the shoot. He’s high fashion and she used him for a lot of her layouts, but he was balking about doing our wedding. He didn’t like her having ownership of the pictures.”
“I know how he felt,” Mel muttered.
“You should have come to me,” Tate said. “I would never have made you sign over ownership of your cupcakes.”
Mel could see the hurt in his eyes. He was right. She should have gone to him, and then they wouldn’t be in this mess.
“Just like you should have told us that you didn’t remember proposing to Christie,” Angie snapped.
“Point taken,” Tate admitted. Angie looked somewhat mollified.
“So, what’s the plan?” Angie asked, looking between them.
“I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” Mel said. “I’m going to keep talking to people. And next on my list are Jay Driscoll and Terry Longmore.”
“The designer?” Angie asked.
“Yes, she and Christie had a rivalry that was apparently quite intense,” Mel said. “I’m going to drop by her design studio and see what I can find out.”
A small smile played on Tate’s lips.
“What?” Mel asked.
“ ‘I just find it hard to believe that you’re a man,’ ” Tate quoted.
“ ‘Because you found me attractive as a woman?’ ” Angie finished.
“Okay, what’s with the
Victor/Victoria
references?” Mel asked. They stared at her until she got it. “Oh, Terry Longmore is a man.”
“Who dresses like a woman,” Tate said.
“Maybe I’ll start with the photographer,” Mel decided.

Jay Driscoll had a studio on the outskirts of the artsy section of Old Town Scottsdale, on Fifth Avenue between a pet groomer and a guitar store.
Mel propped her Schwinn Cruiser bicycle against the side of the building and locked it to the handrail that led up the short staircase. She had been thinking of how she would approach the photographer. Obviously, she wanted to know how he had felt about Christie, but how was she going to get him to confide in her?
She’d just have to wing it. She pulled open the door and stepped inside. Like Christie’s studio, this one was a study in minimalism with white walls, a black granite reception desk, and no chairs. Obviously, lingering was not encouraged here.
“Hello?” she called. Her voice echoed in the cavernous space, and she had a brutal flashback to the morning she found Christie’s body.
She glanced nervously around the main room. Huge black-and-white portraits of models in haute couture covered the walls. She glanced nervously across the brown concrete floor. There was no sign of a body.
She felt a coating of sweat bead up under her long-sleeved T-shirt, and she pushed the sleeves up to her elbows, more to give herself something to do than to relieve her sudden case of the sweats.
“Marlena!” a voice called from behind a frosted glass wall, and Mel felt her shoulders drop in relief. “Marlena!”
Footsteps echoed on the hard floor as a man dressed all in black pushed open a red door in the frosted glass wall and stepped into the room. He was spider thin, wearing black cowboy boots, skinny black jeans, and a black silk dress shirt that was untucked. His hair was thick and gray, and styled in a wispy way that reminded Mel of Richard Avedon. He had a large, clunky camera hanging from a strap around his neck. Jay Driscoll.
His gaze raked Mel from head to toe. “You’re not Marlena.”
“No, I’m Melanie Cooper,” she said and extended her hand. He ignored it. “I was hoping to speak with you, Mr. Driscoll.”
He let out a put-upon sigh. “Let me save us both some time. You’re tall, but you’re too heavy to be a runway model. What are you? A size eight or a ten? I can’t work with anything over a four. And, frankly, although the boyish hairdo does fabulous things for your eyes, you’re too ordinary-looking to be a print model. Pretty, yes, but ordinary. You really need to have fuller lips or a needle-thin nose—you know, something that makes you look exotic. And besides, aren’t you a little old to want to be a model?”
Mel felt her jaw drop. Was this guy for real? He looked past her as if the missing Marlena might be hiding behind her. She resisted the urge to kick him in his shapeless backside, barely.
“Actually, I have no interest in being a model, but thanks for the blow to my self-esteem. Really, I appreciate it,” she said.
He shrugged as if to say “whatever,” and asked, “Then why are you here?”
“I came to ask you some questions about Christie Stevens.”
That got his attention. He looked at her again, but now he was wary.
“Who are you?”
“Melanie Cooper.”
“Are you a cop?”
“No,” she said. “Just a friend.”
“Well, I have nothing to tell you. I already spoke to the police. I don’t know anything about what happened to her that night. When I left the studio, she was fine.”
“What time did you leave?” Mel asked.
“Just before midnight,” he said. “My assistant, Marlena, was with me.”
“Did you see any cupcakes at the photo shoot?” Mel asked.
“Cupcakes? No, I never eat those things,” he said. “They’re all fat and sugar, death in a paper cup. Why are you asking me about cupcakes?”
He looked at her as if she were deranged, and then a light flickered in his pale gray eyes.
“It’s you,” he said. “The cupcake killer.”
“The what?” Mel asked. “I am not!”
“I read about you in the paper,” he said. He lifted his camera and stared at her through the lens. “You’re the childhood friend of the groom, who wanted him back so desperately that you poisoned the cupcakes you were hired to bake for the wedding, and killed her.”
“I did not!” Mel protested. She covered her head with her arms and turned away to keep him from getting a good picture.
“Stand still,” he ordered. “A good picture of you could net me a small fortune.”
“From high fashion to paparazzi, is that how you want your career to go?” Mel asked.
The room became silent, and she glanced over her shoulder. Jay Driscoll lowered his camera with a look of self-loathing on his face.
“Were you booked to take Christie’s wedding photos?” she asked before he reconsidered.
“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t sound happy about it.
Mel knew she was going to have to pretend to be empathetic in order to gain his trust. Although at the moment, she felt that Christie and Jay were a match made in egocentric heaven.
“Look, I’m asking questions because the police think I had something to do with her death. I didn’t.”
He studied her through narrowed eyes, but Mel couldn’t tell if he believed her or not.
“She asked me to sign a contract giving her ownership of the cupcakes I designed for her wedding, which I was very unhappy with,” Mel said. “I mean, to sign over my own creations . . .”
“Exactly!” Jay snapped his fingers. “I tried to explain to her that the photographer retains the rights to wedding photos, but she was having none of it.”
“Did you consider refusing her?” Mel asked.
“I started to . . .”
He paced away from her to stand in front of a life-sized print of a model, looking very Audrey Hepburn in a chemise dress and big hat, on the streets of what Mel recognized as Paris.
“Lately, my career has been subdued,” he said.
Mel figured that was a euphemism for “in a nosedive.”
“The magazines are looking for younger photographers because they think they’re more innovative. Ha! They have no appreciation for the history of fashion.”
Mel was quiet, hoping he would continue. He turned back to face her, and he looked uncertain, almost afraid.
“If I’m not Jay Driscoll, fashion photographer, then who am I? Christie knew I’d been passed over for several large shoots, and my agent said I desperately needed the publicity to get back in the game.”
He ran a well-manicured hand through his wispy hair, making it stand on end even more.
“I begged Christie to let me retain copyright of at least a few of the photos to put on display or use in my portfolio. She laughed at me and refused. In the end, I had to agree to her terms and hope she placed them in a magazine of note and gave me the credit.”
“Your agent was okay with this?” Mel asked.
“Desperate times,” he said with a small smile.
Mel still didn’t like him very much, but she did feel for him. He had been in an untenable position, much like her own. Obviously, however, Christie’s murder was not to his advantage, because now he didn’t even have the hope that his photos might garner him some attention.
Hmm. She would have preferred to keep him on her suspect list, but it just didn’t seem likely, unless, of course, it had been a crime of passion. She tried to picture Christie and Jay together, but couldn’t quite manage it.
The front door opened and in sashayed a young woman, no more than twenty-two, Mel would have guessed. She wore a bright yellow sarong-style dress that enhanced the deep coffee color of her skin and her waist-length black hair. She had the requisite full lips of a wannabe model and a brilliant white smile.
“Ah, Marlena,” Jay said, and opened his arms. The girl entwined herself around the man old enough to be her grandfather, and Mel felt any sympathy she’d built for Jay Driscoll evaporate like dew on a hot summer morning.
“This is Melanie Cooper, the cupcake killer,” he said.
Marlena looked at Mel with wide eyes.
“Not really,” Mel said. “I just happened to be the one to find the body.”
“It wasn’t surprising that someone harmed her,” Marlena said in a charming French accent. “She was not right in her mind, and neither were her assistants.”
“True,” Jay agreed. “Do you remember that crazy scene about the weight-loss patch?”
Marlena nodded.
Jay looked at Mel and said, “In the middle of the shoot, she and her assistant left for what was it, a half hour, to go put on some crazy appetite suppressant patch.
“We’d ordered in pizzas from Oreganos, and they were terrified that they’d eat too much if they didn’t control it. The whole shoot ground to a halt because Christie wouldn’t let me take a picture without her approval. It was mental.”
Which certainly sounded like the Christie Mel had come to know. The question was who had been driven to murder by the high-maintenance bride-to-be?
Jay must have read her thoughts, because he looked directly at her and said, “It wasn’t me.”
His stare was unblinking, but Mel wasn’t quite sure she believed him.