By Cook or by Crook (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) (19 page)

Granddad wouldn’t approve of her meeting alone with anyone, especially one of his five suspects. The police, though, had eliminated Joe as a suspect. That was good enough for Val. She hit the buffet and indulged in foods she didn’t stock at home for fear of tempting her grandfather: soft cheese, salami, chocolate truffles.

Chapter 20

Val climbed the steps to Nadia’s front porch and tried not to think about the last time she rang the bell here.

Joe opened the door. “Come on in. I just made coffee. Would you like a cup?”

“Not for me, thanks.” The rich food she’d eaten at Althea’s house had left her slightly queasy. The acid in coffee would make her feel worse.

“I’ll grab a cup. Have a seat in the living room. I’ll be right with you.”

At least Val didn’t have to make a return visit to the kitchen. She went through the archway into the living room, sat on the overstuffed sofa, and looked in her handbag for a pen and paper. If she concentrated on recording Joe’s words, she might forget where she was. The only paper she found was the small spiral book with Nadia’s tennis team notes that Kimberly had given her. She turned it to the first blank page as Joe settled into an easy chair.

She jotted notes while he talked about his first encounter with Nadia on the Virginia Beach boardwalk, her enthusiasm for living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and their shared enjoyment of tennis.

Joe clutched his coffee mug and shook his head. “Hard to believe she’s gone. I called her at the office Monday. I never thought that would be the last time I’d talk to her.”

“Did she tell you what happened the night before?”

“About the burning racket? Yeah. She should have contacted the police. She never liked dealing with them on account of what happened when she was a kid.”

Val couldn’t imagine Nadia in trouble with the law. “She had problems with the police?”

“Her father called them about a noisy party next door. The cops overreacted and arrested some people for disorderly conduct. The neighbors blamed Nadia’s folks and harassed them.”

“Harassed them, how?”

“Phoning in the middle of the night. Letting their Dobermans loose when Nadia was playing outside. Her family had to move to get away from it.”

That explained Nadia’s reluctance to tell the police about the racket burning and a possible stalker. Had she confided in her ex about the stalking? “I think something was bothering Nadia, even before the racket fire.”

“She didn’t mention anything to me, but I found a strange e-mail message on the printer. I’ll show it to you. Maybe you’ll know what it’s about.” He took a paper from an antique secretary desk in the corner, handed it to Val, and went back to his easy chair.

She read the message: Hi Nadia, We love our vacation house on the bay. Thanks for helping us get it at a price we could afford. I ran the two samples you gave me through my gas chromatograph. Except for the red dye in the pink sample, the components in both are the same. They match what’s in a product we supply to drugstores and small resellers. Let me know if you need more information.—KC

According to the message header, kcarlson at obp-labs had e-mailed it early Monday morning. Val wrote down the sender’s e-mail address and “gas chromatograph.” She handed the paper back to Joe. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. Did you try contacting the sender?”

“Nah. I hate to bother somebody just to satisfy my curiosity.”

Val had no such qualms. She’d follow any lead, however remote, to help her cousin. She put the spiral notebook away, hoping to encourage Joe to talk off the record. “It’s wonderful that you and Nadia stayed friendly after your divorce. You didn’t hold it against her.”

His neck and head moved forward like a turtle’s. “You mean that she didn’t hold it against me.”

“The divorce was your idea?”

“Yeah, I pushed for it. Things had gone stale after fifteen years. It might have been different if we’d had kids. We had a baby who died. Neither of us could get past the loss.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. We tried everything, including the test-tube approach. Didn’t work.” He interlaced his hairy fingers. “We just found out my fiancée’s pregnant. That’s one reason I called Nadia Monday, to let her know the good news.”

Val’s mouth dropped. “How did she take the news?”

He rubbed his eyes. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell her on the phone. I figured I’d wait until the next time I saw her.”

Okay, that made him less than a hundred percent dense and self-centered, just ninety-nine percent. Yet Nadia stayed friendly with Joe after he abandoned her for someone fertile. Maybe the divorce was a relief for both of them. If what he’d just said was true, Joe didn’t have a motive for killing his ex-wife. He was a man on the verge of marriage, looking forward to having a child.

Val stood up. “I won’t keep you any longer. I know you’ve had a bad week. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.”

“I was going to ask you to stop by anyway. Nadia’s will says that her friends should each choose a knickknack to remember her by.” He gestured at the shelves holding Nadia’s collection of miniature houses. “Take your pick.”

“I really wasn’t such a good friend. I don’t feel I should—”

“The people she played tennis with were some of her closest friends. Please. Take something.”

Val approached the shelves. The brownstone tempted her as a reminder of her first home in New York. She started to reach for it but switched course. Her hand closed over the Victorian house that resembled Granddad’s. “Thank you, Joe. I’d like this one.”

He walked her to the door. “Take care, Val.”

She took his advice literally. On her way home she checked the rearview mirror several times. No blue sedan trailing her now. Good. The ground had shifted under her enough for one day—Gunnar telling her to leave town and Granddad recruiting her as a recipe ghostwriter, tough Bigby shedding tears and nice Joe dumping his wife, Chatty striving for disinformation and arriving at the truth. On top of that, this morning’s
Gazette
article increased the pressure on Monique. The day had brought tremors rather than seismic shifts, but tremors often presaged an earthquake. A big shakeup opening new ground might be just what the situation needed. Otherwise, the police would arrest Monique, and the media would try her in short order.

Val pulled into the driveway and joined her grandfather on the front porch.

He sat in a wicker armchair, his feet propped up on a matching ottoman. “I was snoozing out here, opened my eyes, and saw you drive up in a mutant banana. I figured I was dreaming.”

She laughed. “It’s Monique and Maverick’s old car. I’m borrowing it until mine’s fixed.” She sat on the porch railing. “You’re going to have to cross some suspects off your list. Maverick has an alibi. He’s on surveillance tapes in Atlantic City casinos at the time of the murder.”

“Hmph. Does he have a twin brother?”

“He’s an only child. Nadia’s ex, Joe, is also in the clear. He hasn’t been nursing a grudge. Contrary to what everyone thought, he divorced Nadia, not vice versa.”

“She’s not around to contradict him. Unless there’s proof of that, I’m keeping him on the list—him and Monique, Bethany, and Gunnar.” He ticked off his suspects on four fingers and pointed his thumb up. “I could use one more. Five’s a nice round number. How many suspects do you have?”

“A single definite one. I’m still rooting for Bigby.” Today she was less certain of his guilt than yesterday. She at least had Irene as a backup if he came up with an alibi. And now, thanks to the e-mail Joe had shown her, Val had a new angle to pursue. She opened the screen door. “I’ll be working on the computer for a while. Then we can tackle dinner.”

“Plug in the phone if you want to answer it. I unplugged it to stop it from ringing. Too many people want to talk to me now that I’m a newspaper columnist.”

She waggled her finger at him. “Be careful what you wish for.”

She plugged the phone in, turned on her laptop in the study, and found a website for OBP Labs, where Nadia had sent samples of something. OBP stood for Organic Beauty Products. The company manufactured cosmetics and personal care products for resale under private labels. Resellers could buy OBP products in gallon or even five-gallon jugs and decant them into smaller containers.

Val and Nadia both knew someone who sold organic beauty products—Chatty. Could Nadia have sent one of Chatty’s products for analysis?

Val studied images of the empty bottles and jars OBP marketed to resellers. The small ones looked exactly like Chatty’s containers for facial products. The larger bottles resembled those on display at the big drugstore in the Midway Shopping Plaza. No wonder Chatty had snatched back her bottle of “pink silky stuff” when Val pointed out its similarity to what she’d bought at the store. Chatty offered services that stores didn’t—a free facial and lots of gossip. That entitled her to charge more, but perhaps Nadia thought Chatty was ripping her off.

Val calculated the return on a gallon of moisturizer divided into four-ounce bottles and sold for the price Chatty charged—eight hundred dollars on an investment of a hundred dollars. A similar product, possibly the same one Chatty sold minus the dye, cost a third as much at the drugstore. Nadia might have made the same calculation. Most people would merely stop buying an overpriced item. They wouldn’t go to the trouble of proving they were being overcharged as the meddling Nadia had done.

She routinely checked e-mail at every opportunity. She’d probably read the OBP Labs message Monday morning before hitching a ride to work with Chatty. Had Nadia demanded a refund from her or threatened to expose her high mark-up? Chatty would lose customers if Nadia broadcast that a nearby store carried the same products at a much lower price. How far would Chatty go to save her reputation and her business? Val’s queasiness returned at the thought of Chatty as a possible killer. All along she’d assumed someone she didn’t like or barely knew would turn out to be the culprit, not a woman on her tennis team.

The hall phone rang. Its computer-generated voice announced the caller’s ID—Luke Forsa. Maybe he was calling, like everyone else in town, to congratulate Granddad. She answered the phone.

“Hey, Val. It’s Luke. You going to the concert at the park tonight?”

She hadn’t planned on it. But if she stayed home, she’d just brood about Chatty. Listening to music would give her a chance to relax and take her mind off the murder.

“Why not?” she said into the phone. “What kind of music?”

“A jazz group. Can we meet there? They start playing at eight, but I might be stuck at the diner ’til eight-thirty.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there.” She’d have no trouble finding him. This time of year, it stayed light until nine. “I’ll sit somewhere near the fountain.”

She clicked the phone off. She ought to check for messages that came in while Granddad had the phone disconnected.

Most of the messages were for him. She saved those. Gunnar had called her and suggested they go to the concert in the park that evening.

Rats. She’d have preferred his company to Luke’s. On second thought, a dose of Luke could be an antidote to Gunnar. Luke wasn’t stagestruck. He didn’t dramatize. He wouldn’t spend the evening talking about sabotage and urging her to leave town.

She called Gunnar back, left a message that she’d already made plans for the evening, and suggested they get together tomorrow.

Granddad came in from the porch. “Who phoned?”

“Luke. He asked me to meet him at the park tonight for the concert.”

“Hmph. In my day, we picked up our dates. We didn’t invite them to meet us places.” Granddad stroked his chin. “Luke. He’s my fifth suspect. I should have thought of him sooner.”

Val laughed. “I see a pattern here. Gunnar and Luke show an interest in me. I go out with them. Therefore they must be murderers. Or do you have some other reason for thinking Luke killed Nadia?”

“You gotta watch out for men who don’t treat their mothers right. He makes Rosie do too much. Restaurant work is for young people. She should retire.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to retire. She’s like you. She wants to keep her hand in. Speaking of which, we’d better start cooking dinner. Did you pick out a recipe?”

Of course not. He left it up to her. She chose an Orange Pork Tenderloin recipe and modified it for chicken tenders. She made him do most of the work. After dinner, he patted himself on the back and offered to drive her to the park for the concert and pick her up.

“I don’t want you going anywhere alone after all the trouble you had the last few days.”

She should have taken Gunnar’s offer to serve as a bodyguard, given that her alternative was a man in his seventies.

As they were about to leave the house, she spotted the family that lived down the street. They carried lawn chairs and a blanket, probably going to the outdoor concert. “I’ll go with them, Granddad, and come back with either them or Luke. I promise I won’t go anywhere alone.”

She hurried out of the house before he could object and fell into step with nine-year-old Tiffany, a tomboy who reminded Val of herself at that age. As she chatted with the girl, Val glanced behind a few times to check if anyone had followed her in a car or on foot. She saw no one.

The family stopped at the ice cream parlor. Val licked her double chocolate ice cream cone with chocolate sprinkles and felt some of the tension leave her body.

Tiffany’s family joined some friends at the park. Val sprawled on her grandfather’s army blanket. The sound of water splashing in the fountain relaxed her. She watched the crowd gathering for the concert.

Bigby O’Shay picked his way around strollers and folding chairs, stopping now and then to glad-hand someone, like a politician bent on reelection. Val went on alert when she saw him coming toward her.

The evening wouldn’t be as relaxing as she’d hoped.