Chicken Soup & Homicide (21 page)

Bridget put one of the gowns back on the rack and then checked the price tag of the other. She let out a low whistle. "Being a cougar isn't cheap." She touched Amy's shoulder. "I'm sorry that awful detective is messing with you and your friend. I do water aerobics with the police chief's wife. I'll have a chat with her to see if there's some way to get someone more competent on the case. I'm curious to find out who dearly departed Chet pissed off enough to get himself killed."

She wasn't the only one who wanted to see the real killer in jail. Did she have that much influence that she could actually get Pitts kicked off the case? "Thank you. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks Pitts is doing a terrible job."

Bridget flipped through more of the gowns. She pulled one out and handed it to Amy. "This would look fabulous on you."

Amy held up the cream-colored lace chemise trimmed with pale-blue satin ribbon. It was gorgeous. Elegant, but a bit old-fashioned and sweet because of the lace. Slutty Victorian. "Thank you. I love it…and I bet my husband will too."

She followed Bridget to the checkout counter. Mrs. Mahoney went first but stayed at the end of the counter while Amy completed her purchase. Amy smiled as she took the bag and started to walk toward the door. Bridget fell in step beside her and asked, "Do you have a few minutes? I was wondering if we could talk for a bit, maybe in my car, for privacy."

Amy's lips felt like floppy silly putty as she struggled to keep a cheerful smile from falling into a frown. What was going on? "I have some time to spare. Lead the way."

Mrs. Mahoney's car turned out to be a pearl-white Range Rover. It rumbled to life, courtesy of the remote starter, as they approached. Amy settled in the passenger seat while Bridget adjusted the heater settings. The door locks clicked, and a terrifying thought clicked into Amy's mind. Maybe she had been delirious with relaxation during the massage and was wrong to cross Bridget off her suspect list. Was she being kidnapped by the murderer?

"You take part in a lot of my fundraisers," Bridget said as she tapped her blood-red fingernails on the steering wheel. "I'm usually a good judge of character, and I'm pretty sure you didn't kill Chet. So I just wanted to offer my help. I'm sure you've put some thought into it. Who do you think killed Chet?"

An alliance was much better than a joyride with a killer. "There are so many people who have motives. It would be like finding a grain of salt in a teaspoon of sugar even for a good detective. As you've figured out, Pitts isn't good. But he is stubborn. He's just sticking to variations of the same
wrong
scenario." Amy took a deep breath. Bridget might not like what she had to say next. Somebody that Bridget knew, intimately, had definitely benefited from Britton's departure. "I don't want to offend you, but do you think Chef Michael could be the killer? You insinuated that he was ambitious. I know Britton had already been demoted and Chef Michael promoted before the murder, but what if Britton hadn't been quietly making salads? What if he was sabotaging things to make Michael look bad or blackmailing him to try to get his job back?"

Bridget stopped the fingernail percussion riff. "You're very clever. I never thought of Michael, but that makes perfect sense. He is rising fast in the restaurant world. Chet was like a brainless peacock, strutting around without a clue but squawking and preening nonetheless. Hell, I took advantage of him. It was a physical fling at first, but then I realized I could profit from his financial bumbling. So I did." She smacked the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. "Chet didn't have any brakes. He pushed things over the edge all the time. You're right. He could've been torturing Michael, pissing him off, and I was just oblivious to it. Michael was at the expo all weekend working in the Cornerstone booth."

Amy gasped as she remembered the scene in front of the booth. "And he heard everything Britton and Carla said to each other before the murder. I remember…he was standing behind Britton and laughed at Carla's insults."

"Well, that settles it." Bridget reached into the backseat and grabbed her bag from the lingerie store. "I'm going to see if Michael is ruthless enough to commit murder."

Whoa. Was she going to try to seduce a confession out of a murderer? Maybe the shock of pointing out that her current lover may have killed her former lover clouded her judgment. There was no delicate way to point that out. Hopefully, Bridget would appreciate her candor. "If Michael is the killer, do you really want to get that close to him while trying to decide if he did it?"

Bridget laughed like Amy had just told a joke. "I haven't figured out how I'm going to test him, but I do know I'm not going to need this." She set the bag on Amy's lap. "So consider this my thank you for opening my eyes. I've been so busy being a sugar mama that I've lost my edge. Apparently, playing with boy toys diminishes common sense. I should've suspected Michael right from the start."

Amy parked on the freshly plowed street in front of Holly Neale's house. The driveway was a mountain range of drifts filled in between the snow banks edging it. There was no way her Mini would make it up the snow-clogged driveway. She grabbed the box of thrown-together, absolutely mediocre cupcakes that were her excuse for the unannounced visit. But hopefully, Holly wasn't home and wouldn't be sampling the uninspired baked goods anyway. Preston may actually be happy with the outcome of having his life turned upside down by Britton's machinations, but maybe he knew somebody else who wasn't. Bridget was somehow going to feel out—she swore not literally—Michael to see if he had reason to kill. As she waited for word from her new partner in crime solving, Amy couldn't stand to sit around hoping she had finally figured out the real murderer. Considering Pitts's frequent bouts of queasiness, he might not be in shape to do the job anyway.

She walked heel to toe up the fresh tire tracks in the driveway. Otherwise the snow would've soaked the bottom of her jeans and sifted into the top of her ankle boots. Somebody had left the house that morning, and most likely it was Holly. Amy rang the doorbell. There was silence for a few seconds, then the door flew open. She took a step back. Preston had perfected the psychotic serial-killer look. Crazy, bugged-out eyes. Greasy, stringy hair that looked like it hadn't been combed in a week, then styled by sticking his head in a toilet and flushing. Pink boxer shorts covered in brown cow-spot stains was his entire outfit.

"What do you want?" His breath formed a cloud in the cold air. The fog drifted toward her face, and she coughed. Morning breath and beer. One scent was common at ten o'clock in the morning.

"I was hoping your mom was home to sample some more of my cupcakes."

"She ain't here." He started to swing the door shut, but Amy stuck her foot out to stop it. Her big toe cramped from the impact. Thank god she had thick winter boots on instead of sandals. That wasn't a move she wanted to try again in the summer.

"Why don't I just put these in the kitchen for her? If you have some scrap paper, I'll leave a note." She put her shoulder against the door and pushed her way into the cave of a living room. It smelled like the bottle recycling area at the grocery store. A mixture of stale beer and a random unpleasant sourness. Would her boots stick to the floor too? She hurried into the kitchen and looked around. There weren't any notepads in sight, but that wasn't what she was really looking for anyway. The empty slot in the knife block still didn't hold a knife. She returned to the living room. Preston was sprawled on the couch, balancing a beer can on his hairy, bloated belly. She needed to get Alex naked ASAP to overwrite that image in her mind. She diverted her gaze to the painting of a bowl full of tropical fruit on the wall behind him. "I didn't find any paper, so can you just let her know I would like her opinion on this batch of cupcakes?"

"Whatever."

His alcohol-stunted conversation style didn't lend itself to her subtly bringing up what she really wanted to know. But did she need to be subtle with a drunk? Maybe he was too smashed to care about blatant nosiness. At the moment, Preston didn't look happy, but at the bar he had more or less told her that he was fine with having his life ruined as long as his mama was there to coddle him. Did he know of somebody else who might not be so thrilled about having their life crushed by Britton? She took a deep breath and plunged in. "So, I know you had problems with Chef Britton and didn't fare so well in the end. Do you know of anybody else that Britton scammed or screwed over?"

"Don't ever mention Chet Britton in this house! He ruined my life, and I hope he's burning in hell!" Preston winged a beer can in her direction. Luckily, it was empty. And he had bad aim. The can clunked on the floor at her feet. "Get out, bitch!"

Not the kind of answer she was expecting, but
drunk
and
predictable
were two words that didn't go together. She lunged at the front door as Preston picked up another can from the cooler sitting on the floor at his feet. A full can of beer could easily make the flight across the room. After she yanked open the door, she twisted the lock in the handle to try to slow him down, just in case he decided to give chase. On the front step she turned to pull the door shut. He was trying to stand, but his left foot hovered about a foot off the ground. The drunken jig dance sent him sprawling on the couch again. She slammed the door shut. A loud thump reverberated from the house. Had Preston fallen off the couch or managed to throw the beer can? She wasn't sticking around to find out. An unintelligible yell came from the house. Carefully walking in the tire track furrow wasn't a priority anymore. Her fingers closed around the keychain in her coat pocket as she plunged through a knee-deep drift like a tiny yeti on a mission. Her heartbeat roared in her ears as she slid around the back bumper of the Mini, then scrambled inside. She jammed the keys in the ignition and stomped on the gas pedal. The back of the car wagged back and forth, trying to get traction on the snow-packed road. She eased up on the gas slightly, and her trajectory straightened. Her lungs burned, reminding her to breathe.

There was a party store a couple blocks away from the Neale home. Amy checked her rearview mirror. Preston wasn't following her, so she pulled in and parked. Barreling down the unplowed driveway had covered her jeans in a layer of powdery snow that reached above her knees. An old man stared at her as he walked by on his way into the store. Hadn't he ever seen a person using the brush on an ice scraper to clean snow off of themselves? Whatever. She wasn't going to let the snow melt and give her soggy jeans.

Once she was sufficiently de-snowed, she tossed the scraper behind the front seat and grabbed her purse. She needed some chocolate to soothe her nerves after the explosive encounter with the beer can flinger. A quick circuit of the two-aisle store yielded chocolate milk and a bulk package of chocolate-covered raisins. She returned to her car, chugged half of the bottle of milk, and munched through a couple handfuls of raisins. After a minute or two, the magical power of chocolate kicked in, and she could think clearly. Preston wasn't as enamored with his life of leisure as he'd said earlier. He was so going back on the suspect list.

While he may be off his rocker, his mother wasn't. What would Holly think when she came home to find footprints in her driveway, beer cans tossed around the living room, and strange lemon-thyme-blueberry cupcakes in the kitchen? Amy gulped down the rest of the milk. Next stop: Buttercream Cupcakery.

The intoxicating scent of chocolate cake greeted Amy when she opened the door of the tiny bakery. The hot-pink walls made the entire space glow. A glass-front showcase was filled with cupcakes topped with swirls of fluffy buttercream icing.

"What a nice surprise. How are you doing?" Holly asked as she walked through the doors behind the cash register.

"I'm doing well." Amy stepped up to the showcase and glanced at the handwritten signs declaring the flavor of each cupcake. "I just stopped by to let you know I left a few more cupcake samples at your house." She looked Holly in the eye. "I'm sorry, but I upset Preston with my unexpected visit."

Holly sighed as she wiped her hands on the bottom of her lace-edged white apron. "Everything upsets Preston anymore. What Chet did sucked, but it's time for him to stop feeling sorry for himself and move on. I'm sorry you had to deal with one of Preston's mood swings. "

"It's my fault. I didn't think before going to your house. Of course, you're here baking yummy cupcakes." Amy pointed at the tray of German chocolate cakes topped with gooey coconut and caramel frosting. "Could I have one of those?"

"Sure." Holly plucked a square of tissue paper from a box on the showcase. She used it to pick up one of the cupcakes and place it inside a clear plastic clamshell box. As she set the box on the counter next to the cash register, she said, "My business is doing well. I finally saved up enough money to buy a house. Everything is going great with my life, except my son has turned into a lazy sloth. I've given up trying to figure him out. All I end up with, when I try to do that, is a big headache instead of answers."

She could relate to that sentiment. Amy dug her wallet out of her purse. If Preston killed Britton, Holly's headache could soon turn into a skull-splitting migraine. Then again, he'd be out of her hair if he was in prison. As she handed over her money in exchange for the cupcake, she tried her hand at being wise. "You always add salt to bring out the sweetness in cake batter. Sometimes it takes a few unpleasant bumps in life to make you realize how good it is."

* * *

After a morning of mega-dosing chocolate and sugar, Amy couldn't just drive home and pace around the house. As she licked the last of the sticky coconut icing off her fingers, she decided she needed to cook to wear off the jittery effects of the chocolate binge. Ironically, chicken soup sounded good. Maybe it was her battered soul crying out for some nourishment, like the popular book series. It certainly wasn't the desire to relive the showdown. So she would make the soup completely different from the recipe she and Sophie had come up with for the competition. Something with lots of vegetables and herbs. Trisha said she had some root vegetables wintering over in one of her greenhouses. She also had a potted bay tree for sale that Amy had decided she needed since her last visit. Every winter she went through a big jar of dried bay leaves because she added them into every soup, stew, and roast she made. Might as well have a never-ending, self-replenishing supply sitting in the living room window.