Death by the Dozen (31 page)

A hush swept over the crowd as Johnny lowered his head in a sign of respect. Mel noted that not a sound could be heard other than the trickle of the distant fountains and the twittering of the birds that inhabited the park.

“We are fortunate enough to have Grace Mazzotta taking Bertie’s place,” Johnny said, raising his head and addressing the crowd. “As we all know, Bertie would have wanted this competition to reach its natural conclusion with a winner.”

“Call me unsentimental,” Angie muttered to Mel, “but I really don’t think Bertie would give a rip.”

Mel felt her lips twitch. She had to agree.

“The challenge to the chefs, pastry division, is now down to its last four contestants,” Johnny announced. He introduced each of them in turn. Mel and Angie, in second place, were introduced second to last. When Confections was announced, the applause noticeably dimmed. Mel wondered if it was just her ego or if the crowd really had cheered louder for them. Then again they had the DeLauras on their side.

“And the ingredient is . . .” Johnny reached into the box and pulled out a long wiggling black thing. “Eels!”

“Ya!” Olivia shouted. In a blink, she jumped forward, grabbed the eel out of Johnny’s hand, and using one of the larger knives from her kitchenette, she whacked off its head.

In her peripheral vision, Mel saw Angie jump, but she couldn’t be sure if it was the eel or Olivia’s knife wielding that caused it.

“I am so out of here,” Angie said, and she made to leave.

“Um . . . it was rubber,” Johnny said. He picked up the remnants of the eel, looking worriedly at Olivia.

Angie glowered at him while Olivia slid the sharp edge of her knife against her thumb as if checking its post-eel beheading sharpness. Then she smiled.

Mel moved their set of knives away from Angie’s throwing arm—just in case.

“Okay, enough fun and games,” Johnny continued, “the final ingredient is . . . beets!”

“Oh, ish,” Angie said. “I hate beets. I think I’d rather have the eel.”

“No, trust me,” Mel said. “Beets are good. Beets are perfect.”

“What are you thinking?” Angie asked.

Mel covered her mouth with her hand and whispered, “Red velvet cupcakes.”

Angie’s eyes got wide. “You can do that with beets?”

Mel nodded. “Get ready. When they reveal the cart, try to get the best-looking beets you can find.”

The whistle blew, and Mel and Angie raced to the cart.

Olivia looked wild eyed and tried to muscle Mel out of the way. Polly looked very focused while her father yipped and stayed out of the fray. The other two bakers were the first to beat it back to their kitchenette.

Mel mentally composed a list and gave it to Joanie, who shot off for the supply cupboard. Mel set to work on the beets while Angie gathered the dry ingredients.

The judges walked amongst their kitchens while they worked. Mel noticed that Grace lingered at Polly’s station, and she wondered if Grace was watching her with a mind toward her future career as a celebrity chef.

Mel glanced at the other judges. Dutch and Jordan were not circulating; they both looked tired and stayed huddled in the judges’ booth as if they could not wait for this to be over.

Candace Levinson, the judge from
Food and Wine
, passed by Mel and Angie and gave them an encouraging smile while she paused to watch them work.

Mel added the wet ingredients to the dry and let the mixer take over. Angie started prepping the cupcake pan, while Mel began to make the cream cheese frosting.

Grace passed by and Mel looked at closely at her. “How are you holding up, Grace?”

The older woman gave her a wan smile. “I’ve been better, but Felicity is not exactly someone you can say no to. Besides, I think Vic would have wanted me to see this through to the end for him.”

Mel nodded. “Yeah, he was like that. He finished what he started.”

Grace moved on to Olivia’s station. Olivia was red-faced and sweaty, and she stopped chastising her sous-chef in order to give Grace an ingratiating smile.

Mel wondered what Vic would have made of her. For the millionth time, she wished he were there, and she felt a surge of rage at the killer who had taken him away.

“Mel,
psst
, Mel!”

She glanced up to see Uncle Stan by the side of the staging area.

She hurried over to him. “Kind of busy here, Uncle Stan, what’s up?”

“Well, first, good luck,” he said. Mel nodded and motioned with her hands for him to hurry. “And I wanted to warn you to be careful. We got a preliminary tox screen on Grassello. It’s not conclusive yet, but it looks like the same poison used on Angie was used on him.”

“Really.” Mel sat back on her heels with a thump.

“Be careful,” Uncle Stan said. “There’s a nut job mixed up in this food competition, and I won’t be happy until you’re out of it.”

“Mel, clock ticking!” Angie shouted. “Come on!”

Mel raced back over to her kitchenette. Her hands were shaking. The secret ingredient that wasn’t.

Dutch was finally circulating, working his way around the kitchenettes. When he got to Mel’s, she grabbed him by the shirtfront.

“Hey, easy on the silk,” he said.

Mel leaned her head close to his and hissed, “Who gave Bertie Vic’s secret spice for pastries?”

“What?” he asked.

“The one that you had Jordan use on Vic’s scones—who gave it to you?”

“I told you,” he said. “Bertie wanted us to use it to bring Vic down, to humble him.”

“I know that, but where did Bertie get it?” she asked.

Dutch frowned. “I don’t know. He never said, so I assumed he stole it from Vic.”

“Did he tell you what it was made from?” she asked.

“No, I badgered him, believe me, but he refused to tell me. All he would say was that it was a very rare spice from Southeast Asia.”

Mel released his shirt and nodded. She hadn’t known she’d been clinging to the hope that stress had done Bertie in until Uncle Stan took it away. She had almost convinced herself that guilt had caused Bertie to have a heart attack, but she’d been wrong. So wrong. They’d all been wrong.

She glanced up and looked around the stage. They’d all played a part. Unbeknownst to one another, they’d all played a significant role in the death of Vic Mazzotta, and it hadn’t been suicide—it was murder, and Mel knew exactly who had orchestrated the entire thing. The question now was how to prove it.

She and Angie placed red nasturtium blossoms on top of the cream cheese frosting. She did not know where Joanie had found them, but she suspected one of the flower beds in the park had been denuded just a touch. If the
Food and Wine
lady liked edible flowers, these would be sure to get her attention.

Mel had to admit the red color from the beets was stunning. She only hoped they tasted as good as they looked. If they did, she fully intended to make these at the bakery and lose the ones that used too much bottled dye.

The final buzzer sounded, and the chefs all slumped back away from their creations. Glancing over the stage, Mel noticed their competition offered up a beet mousse, beet ice cream, and beet cookies. This was going to be an interesting showdown.

The servers gathered up their entries and began to make their way to the booth where the judges sat waiting.

The crowd shuffled restlessly on their feet, and Mel couldn’t blame them; it had been a long hour already.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are asking our chefs to remain while the judging commences. I will be introducing each chef and have them talk us through their creation while the judges rank them.”

“From Polly’s Kitchen, let’s start with Polly Ramsey and her beet-infused white chocolate–chip cookie.”

Mel tuned out Polly with her perky giggle. She saw Polly’s mother standing in front of the stage, trying to hiss pointers at her daughter.

“Smile, bigger, show me those teeth, Polly!”

Polly smiled and frowned at her mother at the same time, lost her concentration, and ended her explanation in mid-sentence. Awkward.

“That woman should be kept in a padded cell,” Angie said, tipping her head at Polly’s mother.

The Moonpie bakers were next, and the crowd cheered loudly after their interview.

Next was Olivia. She was still sweating profusely and looked uncomfortable at the front of the stage. She towered over Johnny Pepper, and when she spoke into the mic, she yelled as if uncertain that it was really making her heard over the festival grounds.

Johnny cut the interview short and waved Mel over.

She glanced at the table where the servers were just putting out her red velvet cupcakes.

“Lastly, we have Melanie Cooper from Fairy Tale Cupcakes. What inspired your red velvet cupcake, Mel?”

Mel took a deep breath and studied the judges. This was it. Now she was going to get her tell. “Vic Mazzotta,” she said.

“Oh, so you made these in honor of Vic. He was your mentor, am I right?”

“Yes, he was. He was also my friend,” Mel said. “You know, Vic was such an amazing chef that when I was his student, we thought he didn’t tell us every ingredient he used in his recipes, because we could never get our food to taste as good as his. So as a tribute, and with the help of some of his associates, I decided to use his secret baking ingredient in my cupcakes.”

One of the judges dropped their fork with a clatter. Mel felt her heart fall like a soufflé in her chest. It had been a bluff, but the killer had revealed herself by reacting with shock.

Their eyes met, and Mel forgot she was still talking into the microphone. “Why did you do it? Why did you kill him?”

Grace Mazzotta jumped up from her seat at the table and bolted to the side of the stage. Joe DeLaura was standing there. She turned and raced for the other side, but Uncle Stan was there. She was trapped.

“I didn’t do anything,” she protested. “You can’t prove anything. It was them!”

She pointed at Dutch and Jordan. They looked at Grace and then at each other. Their expressions were blank, and Mel knew them both well enough by now to know that they had no idea what was happening.

“No, it wasn’t,” Mel said. “It was you. You had Vic poisoned, you tried to poison me, and you poisoned Bertie. What happened? Did Bertie figure it out?”

“What is the meaning of this?” Felicity Parnassus stormed the stage. She glared at Mel and Grace. “You are supposed to be tasting her cupcakes—taste them.”

Mel gave Grace a slow smile. “Yeah, taste them.”

“You’re bluffing,” Grace said. She backed away from the table until she was pressed up against the wall.

“What’s the matter? Are you afraid I used the spice that you gave to Bertie to murder Vic?” Mel taunted her.

Both Dutch and Jordan sat up higher in their seats at that.

“What are you talking about, Mel?” Dutch asked.

“I know what Vic left out of his written recipes,” Mel said. She fished his letter out of her pocket and waved it in the air before tucking it safely back into her jeans. “He told me in this letter, and it isn’t what you thought.”

“But Bertie . . .” Jordan began, but Dutch shushed her.

“Bertie gave you something that he said was one of Vic’s secret ingredients, correct?” Mel asked. Dutch and Jordan exchanged a look and then reluctantly nodded. “And he wanted you to serve it to Vic to let him know that all of you knew what his secret was. How am I doing so far?”

With hundreds of festival attendees watching and his hopes of stardom rapidly diminishing once again, Dutch had the grace to hang his head.

“Yeah, here’s the problem with that,” Mel said. “What Bertie gave you was poison.”

Jordan sucked in a breath and Dutch swore.

“So, what happened, Grace?” Mel asked. “Were you and Bertie in cahoots? That seems most likely.”

Grace glanced away, and Mel knew she had guessed right. “You took a hell of chance. I’m guessing it was Bertie’s idea to have Jordan serve Vic the poison. How did you know Jordan and Dutch wouldn’t try it first? Or didn’t you care if they died?”

She heard Dutch and Jordan gasp together.

“This is crazy talk,” Grace said. “You’re just grief struck since your mentor is dead, and the stress of this contest is getting to you. Vic died of a heart attack. It hit while he was walking the grounds, and he took a wrong turn into a freezer and died. It’s just a tragedy. I’m sorry. I know you want to blame someone, but there is no one to blame.”

Grace gave her a heartbroken look, and Mel realized the real acting talent in the Mazzotta family had been Grace.

“You’re lying,” she said.

“Mel, I would never have hurt Vic. He was my whole life,” Grace said. Her voice even trembled as if she was wrought with emotion.

“Really?” Mel scoffed. “He was cheating on you. That had to hurt. And you, you were scouting new talent before he was even dead, because you knew you were going to have to replace him, didn’t you? Because you planned Vic’s death. You planned it so well that everyone did your dirty work for you.”