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“A PUNCH BOWL?” Sophie Halperin gawked at me, a bite of bacon-and-onion quiche quivering on her raised fork.
“According to Shelley,” I said, “Percy’s ghost bangs his cup on the thing whenever he’s annoyed. Which I’m guessing coincides with people taking showers or flushing toilets.”
“You mean like air in the pipes?” she said. “That kind of knocking or banging?”
“That’s what it sounds like to me, but hey, maybe Shelley’s right and it’s old Percy, seeking justice.”
“I’ve known the Bernsteins for years,” she said. “Never heard about a ghost haunting The Gabbling Goose. Shelley should talk it up. Aren’t ghosts supposed to be a big draw for old-timey inns like theirs?”
“Well, the inn’s not actually theirs, of course.” I lifted half of my croque-monsieur, basically a fancy-schmancy grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich. “It belongs to Ty Collingwood, but the Bernsteins have managed it forever.”
“Does Woody believe this ghost business?” She took a sip of sparkling water.
I shrugged, mouth full. It was Friday, about thirty-six hours since I’d made my shocking discovery behind The Gabbling Goose. Sophie and I had decided to meet for lunch, as we often did, at Patisserie Susanne, a lovely French bakery and café on the ground floor of Crystal Harbor’s Town Hall. As the town’s mayor, Sophie had an office on the building’s top floor, so for her, it was a simple matter of riding the elevator down four flights.
She was in her midfifties, short and round, her chin-length hair mostly gray. Today she wore an outfit typical for her, a colorful abstract tunic with metallic trim over voluminous wide-leg pants.
Oh, and did I mention? Sophie’s my best pal.
If there’s a heaven, it smells like Patisserie Susanne. There can be no better high than the scent of napoleons, éclairs, macarons, palmiers, and my addiction of choice, chocolate croissants. Not to mention exquisite savory offerings such as pâté sandwiches, assorted quiches and salads, and my decadent croque-monsieur.
The patisserie was bright and cheerful, with abundant sunlight, hanging plants, old-fashioned brass fixtures, and black-and-white floor tiles. Today it was filled to capacity with the usual lunchtime crowd. We’d managed to snag a round bistro table in a corner.
I’d already filled Sophie in on everything I’d learned from Shelley and Martin. I lowered my voice so as not to feed the town’s insatiable appetite for gossip. “Don’t you think it’s kind of a creepy coincidence that both Stu Ruskin and Ty’s ancestor Oswald Collingwood were shot to death behind the B&B?” I asked.
“When you put it that way. So you don’t think it was suicide.” It wasn’t a question. Sophie knew me too well.
“Honestly, I don’t know. There are a couple of unanswered questions. Howie and Cookie seem to think his death was self-inflicted.”
She swallowed a mouthful of her side salad. “They might be rethinking that initial assumption.”
I was instantly alert. This was the kind of insider info I’d been hoping for when I made our lunch date. Sophie Halperin had always been plugged in to the heartbeat of the town, even before becoming the “mayor of this damn burg,” as she often referred to herself. Nothing of significance happened that she was unaware of.
“I know the autopsy must’ve already been done.” I tossed back some lemonade.
“Yep. I had drinks with Magda last night.”
“Okay, spill.” Dr. Magda Temple was the medical examiner, and by all accounts, a thorough and experienced one. She knew her stuff.
Sophie didn’t need to remind me to keep the information to myself. Like I said, she knew me. She glanced around at the nearby diners and said quietly, “She found a couple of things during the postmortem that may or may not be inconsistent with suicide.”
“May or may not?” I’d been hoping for something more black-and-white.
“The science isn’t conclusive. And by the way, this is pretty unsavory stuff, so you might want to wolf down the rest of your sandwich before I get into it.” She’d already made short work of her quiche.
“You forget who you’re talking to.” I punctuated the statement with a nice, big bite of my yummy croque-monsieur.
“Have it your way, Ms. Death Diva.” Sophie leaned toward me and said, sotto voce, “Magda said the angle of the gunshot is suspicious.”
“You mean like...?” I was about to point toward the interior of my own mouth but thought better of it. No sense taking pains to prevent eavesdropping if we were going to broadcast our conversation through the art of mime. The entire town knew about Stu’s death, and how he’d profited from a stolen trade secret. It was all anyone had been talking about for the past day and a half. They also knew I was the one who’d stumbled upon the gruesome scene. I felt my fellow diners’ eyes on me.
“Turns out when people kill themselves in that particular way,” she said, “the angle of the gunshot tends to be a bit upward and toward the left—if the person was right-handed, that is. Death is due to brain damage.”
“Was Stu right-handed?” I lifted the other half of my sandwich.
She nodded. “In his case the gunshot went straight back at a somewhat downward angle, through the neck. Cause of death was blood in the respiratory tract.”
Well, she warned me. “And that means someone else was holding the gun?”
“Maybe. Like I said, it’s inconclusive. And then there’s the tongue thing.” Sophie watched me set down my sandwich, uneaten. To her credit, she did not gloat.
“Okay,” I sighed, “let’s have it.”
“The bullet went through his tongue.”
“And that’s unusual?” I asked.
“According to Magda, people who, uh...” Her gaze flicked to the nearest table, where a pair of young businesswomen were quietly studying their phones and ignoring each other. In a whisper, she said, “People who decide to check out that way, they lower their tongue to make room for the gun barrel.”
As much as I didn’t want to, I asked, “And when it’s homicide?”
“The victim tends to automatically put his tongue up, and it gets pierced by the bullet.”
“Good Lord.” I pushed my plate away.
“But like I said, it’s all conjecture. They haven’t studied enough cases to draw any reliable conclusions from this sort of evidence.”
“So, what did Magda write on the autopsy report and death certificate?” I asked. “It’s up to her to determine manner of death. As in suicide, homicide, whatever.”
“She wrote ‘pending further study’ since the police are still investigating. But that’s just a temporary thing until they make up their minds. Your turn,” she said. “What kind of unanswered questions?”
“What? Oh.” I told her about the stumpers raised during my conversation with Martin and Shelley: Why would someone planning to do himself in hire a bodyguard, and why would he use a silencer?
Our conversation was interrupted by the muted sounds of an argument behind the door leading to the café’s kitchen: two female voices, shouting in a mixture of French and English. I assumed one of those voices belonged to Susanne Travert, the owner of the patisserie. The young man standing behind the counter, serving customers, wore a Here we go again look.
Suddenly the kitchen door banged open and a tall Chinese-American woman stormed out, hollering over her shoulder. “That’s it, je démissionne! I quit!”
Sophie looked surprised. “That’s Georgia Chen. I met her last month at the annual poker tournament.”
“Henry Noyer’s ex-wife?” I asked. “The woman who invented the MegaMunchGigantiKookie?”
“If you mean the original version, the Dreamboat cookie, then yes. Didn’t know she was working here.”
Susanne stalked out after Georgia, screeching, “Bon débarras!”
“Good riddance to you, too, Susanne. I’m outta here. Je ne vais pas revenir.” Georgia possessed a thick New York accent. Even her French had the drawn-out vowels and brisk, nasal speech pattern of a native New Yorker. Neither woman seemed to care that they were playing to a packed room.
How I wished I had my Parisian hottie, Victor Dewatre, there to translate. I’d met Victor the previous fall when he came to Crystal Harbor following the murder of his brother, Pierre, a local celebrity chef. The two of us hit it off, though we had yet to do anything about it—anything of a, you know, physical nature. Victor had stayed in touch after he returned to Paris. Not only did he urge me to visit, but he’d actually asked me to move in with him there.
As you might have gathered by now, I'm pretty adept at not following through when guys show serious interest. Hey, you don't want to rush into these things.
Okay, you know what? That was not an opening for you to offer your opinion. When I want your advice... Oh, forget it.
Susanne was in her late forties, short and thick-waisted, her dark hair tucked into a turquoise, bandana-style chef’s cap. She followed Georgia through the café, hurling invectives in her native tongue.
Georgia turned and stabbed a finger toward her employer. “Cuire vos propres damn biscuits. You’re on your own.”
Susanne appeared to be running out of steam. “Zheorzhia, no more of this. Arrêtez cette bêtise.”
The women faced off, hands on hips. “Foolishness, is it?” Georgia said. “To want to be treated with respect? Le respect. Est-ce trop demander? Is that too much to ask?”
Susanne threw her arms wide in frustration. “Je te respecte, Zheorzhia. Mais le respect va dans les deux sens. It goes both ways. You must remember who is boss.”
Georgia crossed her arms and looked away. “Not anymore.”
“Pour l'amour de Dieu! You are not really quitting, are you?”
“I should,” she grumbled.
Her employer’s eyes glistened. “J'ai besoin de toi ici.”
“I agree.” Georgia’s chin wobbled. “You do need me here.”
Susanne sniffled. “And you need us, too, non?”
Georgia bobbed her head as her pretty face screwed up and tears began to fall. The two women threw themselves into each other’s arms. A handful of customers clapped, and I got the feeling I was witnessing a regular performance.
Following a lot of tearful jabber and cheek kisses, the two finally separated, Susanne returning to her kitchen, and Georgia—or Zheorzhia as I now thought of her—heading for the exit.
Sophie stood and waved her over. “Georgia!”
She stopped in her tracks, looked around, and smiled broadly as she spotted Sophie. “Mayor Sophie! Oh my Gawd!”
They exchanged air kisses, and Sophie introduced me. She invited Georgia to sit with us awhile, which she seemed happy to do.
Georgia Chen appeared to be about my age, perhaps a little older, but still beautiful. Her shoulder-length hair was dyed eggplant-purple, which looked great on her and made me wonder whether I should consider changing up my look. She wore black leggings and a long pink blouse with the sleeves rolled up. I noticed a streak of white flour on her jaw. The scents of cinnamon and chocolate clung to her like the most decadent perfume.
“Your name is familiar,” Georgia told me, giving the words a real New Yawk spin. “Someone mentioned you just recently.”
Sophie lowered her volume once more. “Jane’s the one who found Stu Ruskin’s body.”
Georgia gaped at me. “Oh Gawd, that’s right. That must’ve been horrible.”
Sophie put her hand on the other woman’s arm. “We’re trying to keep our voices down, Georgia. There are enough rumors flying around this town.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” She put a finger to her lips and shushed herself, then turned to me. “They have a nickname for you. The death something?” She shuddered.
I’d been in this person’s presence for about two minutes and already had her pegged as your basic drama queen. “Death Diva,” I said. “I didn’t choose the title. Someone else did me that dubious favor and it stuck.”
“Well, I like it.” She raised her arms as if pointing to a theater marquee. “The one and only Death Diva! Live and in person!”
If Georgia was broken up over the sudden death of her onetime boyfriend, she had an odd way of showing it.
“Are you and Susanne okay?” Sophie asked. “Looked like you two were really getting into it there.”
Georgia wagged her hand. “We just need to blow off steam every once in a while. I’m the best pastry chef she ever had. Sometimes she needs reminding.”
“Are we keeping you?” I asked. “Do you have to get back to work?”
“Naw, I’m done for the day. I’ve been here since five a.m. All the pastries are made fresh every day, and we open at seven on weekdays.”
“I knew everything was made fresh daily,” I said. “I guess I just never realized the demand that puts on the people who make the magic happen.”
“I can’t complain,” she said. “Susanne gets in at three to start the bread.”
“Three a.m.?” Sophie said. “I had no idea.”
“And she doesn’t go home after eight hours like I do,” Georgia said. “It was the same when my ex and me had our own bakery. We’d be there eighteen hours sometimes, seven days a week. At least here I get two days off.”
Our own bakery? She might have put in the hours at The Cranky Crumb, but I knew that her ex-husband, Henry Noyer, had been the sole owner.
“How long have you worked here?” I asked.
“What time is it?” She laughed. “Almost a month. I hate working for someone else, but what choice do I have? My ex lost everything, thanks to that rat Stu. Not to speak ill of the dead or whatever, but him dying doesn’t change what he was. You gonna finish that?” she asked, eyeing my untouched half sandwich.
I pushed the plate toward her. “Help yourself. It’s cold, though.”
She shrugged. “Still delish. I gotta hand it to Susanne, everything in this place is orgasmic. Mm-mm...” Her rapturous groan as she took the first bite, combined with the half-closed eyes and shoulder wiggles, served to prove her point.
Sophie said, “So I take it Henry’s no longer able to keep up his support payments?”
“What can I tell you? You can’t get blood from a stone. He says he’ll cough up the arrears when he can, but in the meantime I gotta eat.” Which she demonstrated by taking another huge bite of my croque-monsieur.
“It sounds like you and Henry are still on pretty good terms,” I said.
She grabbed a paper napkin from the retro dispenser and wiped her mouth. “He just moved back into our house. Well, it’s my house now. I got it in the divorce.”
“That’s very generous of you,” I said, “considering, well... Didn’t Henry sue you? Over the recipe for the Dreamboat?”
“A misunderstanding,” she said. “He thought I had something to do with selling it to Conti-Meeker. Well, what he thought is that I handed it over to Stu so he could sell it, which he shoulda realized I would never in a million years do. But that’s what Stu told him and he believed it.” She rolled her eyes at the folly of men and their credulous ways.
“So you and Henry are back together again?” I asked.
She sighed. “Naw, he’s still sore. Can you blame him? I was so stupid. I mean, I was so stupid. How could I have let that rat Stu come between us?”
“As I understand it,” Sophie said, “Stu had an ulterior motive. It wasn’t you he was after, it was your secret recipe, right?”
Georgia nodded miserably. “He seemed so sincere, so flattering. So believable. And I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“Someone told me Stu was a cookie rep,” I said, “and that Henry used to pay him to get your Dreamboat cookie into restaurants and stores.”
“Until he betrayed us,” she said bitterly. “First by breaking up our marriage and then by swiping the recipe from me and selling it to the highest bidder. The Cranky Crumb was finally taking off, thanks to the Dreamboat. All those years of hard work, all the sacrifices, were about to pay off. Until that rat Stu came in like a wrecking ball and obliterated our dream.”
“Do you have any kids?” I asked.
She shook her head. “We decided early on it would just be us,” she said.
“What’s Henry doing now?”
“Oh, he’s just, you know...” she said, “licking his wounds, trying to figure out his next move.”
So Henry was broke, so broke he had to move back in with his ex-wife. Apparently he had no job prospects, and it didn’t sound like he was making much of an effort in that regard. I could only assume Georgia was supporting them both on her salary from Patisserie Susanne.
I recalled Martin saying that Henry had, at one time, been hoping to get back together with his ex-wife. It sounded like the tables had turned and Georgia was now the one seeking a reconciliation.
“At least you two are living under the same roof again,” I said. “That sounds like a step in the right direction.”
She shook her head. “Henry stays in his part of the house.”
“It’s that big a place,” I asked, “that you can each have your designated zone?”
“Yeah, it’s this big old house that we got for a song back when we were first married. We put a lot of work into it, as in fixing up the place with our own two hands. Gawd knows we couldn’t afford to hire the work out.”
“Nothing wrong with good old-fashioned sweat equity,” I said.
“I mean, Henry’s civil when we bump into each other, but mostly he just tries to avoid me. We don’t eat together or, you know... anything. He says he’s going to move out as soon as he can afford to.”
“That might take a while,” I said, “if he’s not actively looking for work.”
“Well, his buddy Steve comes over sometimes, and they make cooking videos in the kitchen. At least, I think that’s what they’re doing. For job applications, maybe? Henry won’t let me anywhere near, and he refuses to talk about it, so...” She shrugged.
Sophie said, “So, Georgia, let me ask you. When you first came up with the Dreamboat cookie, did you have any idea how popular it would be?”
“Oh my Gawd, no!” she squealed, her mood abruptly lightening. “It started out as a joke. Henry and I were goofing around in the kitchen. I was thinking up bizarre ways to use stuff we had on hand in a cookie, and he was egging me on. A bottle of grapefruit-flavored vodka might’ve been involved.”
“Vodka in a cookie?” Sophie said.
Georgia laughed. “No, in us! I mean, you’d have to be at least half in the bag to even think of putting jerky and beer and all that other crap into one huge, gloppy, disgusting—” air quotes here “—‘cookie,’ right?”
“The Dreamboat couldn’t have been that bad,” I said, “if it was so popular.”
“I never said it was bad, I said it was disgusting.” More laughter. This woman was good at cracking herself up. And not five minutes after she and her boss had stood there blubbering in each other’s arms.
“Once I sobered up,” she continued, “I tweaked the recipe, and you know what? It was pretty good, in an over-the-top novelty kind of way. As long as you don’t try to eat the whole thing in one sitting, which I know a lot of people do, don’t ask me how. So you never had one?”
“No,” I said, “but you’re making me wish I had. I guess it’s too late now. I’ve been told the Conti-Meeker monstrosity is nowhere near as good.”
Georgia blinked back the sheen of tears. Dang, I’d done it now. I shot a panicked look at Sophie, whose expression of amused forbearance told me she had the drama queen’s number. Well, and mine, too, I guess.
“But, um,” I said, “you can always make them again, right? And sell them, too. Why not? Well, maybe not here at Susanne’s. I mean, there’s nothing really French about them, and I can’t see her letting you...”
Georgia’s face began to crumple, and Sophie was giving me that look that said, Feel free to stop talking.
“I can never sell them again,” Georgia wailed, causing heads to turn. So much for discretion. “That damn Conti-Meeker owns the recipe now—a pharmaceutical company, for Gawd’s sake. And there’s nothing I can do about it. They’ll sue me if I even think of selling my Dreamboats again. I’ll lose the house. Henry and I will be homeless.”
I yanked a handful of paper napkins out of the dispenser and shoved them at her. “Now, now... it’ll all work out...” I lied.
“I named the cookie after Henry,” she sobbed. “I used to call him my—my—my dreamboat.”
I cast another helpless glance at Sophie, whose patience had reached its limit. “All right, Georgia, enough of that,” she ordered, reaching over to give the woman’s back a few solid thumps. “You got it out of your system. Now, blow your nose.”
She obeyed. A hiccup or two and the crying jag was history. I turned to Sophie and mouthed, How do you do that? It’s not as if she had kids to practice on. Like me, the mayor was childless, though in her case it was by choice. She’d had two early marriages, and apparently they’d been enough for one lifetime.
“So, Georgia,” I said, “I’m curious about something. During the time you and Stu were, you know, involved, did you notice whether he owned a handgun?”
“I never saw one,” she said. “He must’ve kept it hidden. Unless he bought it sometime after I dumped him back in December.”
“So you don’t doubt it was suicide,” I said.
Her dark-brown eyes grew wide. “Oh my Gawd, of course not. The cops told me he killed himself.”
“Well, I mean, it certainly looks that way.” I wasn’t about to get into the evidence, such as it was, that hinted at homicide. “Did Stu seem at all depressed to you?”
“Not really, but sometimes it’s hard to tell about people, you know?”
“Well, now that you know about the rotten things he did,” I said, “do you think he might’ve been struggling with a guilty conscience?” Martin had discounted that possibility, but Georgia had been Stu’s girlfriend for several months and presumably knew him better.
She appeared to give the question serious consideration. “I’m thinking of the lie that rat Stu told Henry—about me giving him the recipe as some sort of gift. Does that sound like someone with a guilty conscience? Or, like, any conscience? But there’s more.”
“Do I even want to know?” I said.
“Turns out that back in November—before my divorce was final, mind you—Stu got engaged to his real girlfriend. In case you were wondering how big a rat he really was.”
“His real girlfriend?” I said. “Meaning the one you never knew about.”
“Not until it was too late to save my marriage. Of course, she didn’t know about me either.”
Sophie said, “So getting back to the recipe, how did Stu get his hands on it?”
“You ready for this?” she said, in a voice that carried, until I gestured for her to keep it down. She leaned forward, prompting us to do the same. “I don’t have the recipe written down anywhere—not on paper, not in my computer, not in the cloud or anything. Nothing ever seemed secure enough, and no one had to tell me how valuable that thing was.” She laughed. “Well, Henry did tell me, constantly, ’cause he knows how scatterbrained I can be.”
So Georgia Chen had a modicum of self-knowledge. How refreshing.
“Was it copyrighted?” I asked.
She shook her head. “In most cases, copyright doesn’t apply to recipes. I just know that rat Stu must’ve run himself ragged looking for it, and all that time—” she tapped her noggin “—it was right up here.”
“I’m assuming he somehow tricked you into revealing it,” I said.
She took a deep breath and exhaled it forcefully. “So my divorce becomes final in early December, right? And Stu says let’s celebrate, though I gotta tell you, that’s the last thing I felt like doing.” Her chin quivered.
Sophie said, “What kind of celebration did that rat Stu have in mind?”
Hearing Georgia’s own pet name for her detested onetime paramour coaxed a watery smile from her. “A nice dinner in the city, before heading back to my place for a special dessert.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The special dessert was a couple of fresh-baked Dreamboat cookies.”
“He hung around the kitchen the whole time I made them,” she said. “At one point I noticed him recording video on his phone. Just for fun, he said. I told him to stop and delete it because, you know, the whole trade-secret thing.”
“And did he?” Sophie asked.
“He said he did. Then he propped the phone on the backsplash and walked away from it. I didn’t realize till later that he kept it running. He got the whole thing. All the measurements, the process, everything.”
“So then all he had to do later,” I said, “was watch the video and write it all down.”
“I was so stupid,” Georgia said.
“You were trusting,” Sophie said. “There’s a difference. You had no way of knowing how ruthless the guy was.”
“Stu Ruskin spent months trying to locate that recipe,” I said. “He deceived you, manipulated your emotions, did whatever he had to, to get what he wanted. You’re not the first person to be taken in by a smooth-talking con man.”
“When did you find out what he’d done?” Sophie asked.
“Well, about two weeks later, Henry calls me. I’m at Stu’s house, we’re about to head out to some fancy business function. Henry tells me he just got this scary letter from Conti-Meeker’s lawyers. They own the recipe for Dreamboat cookies now, and if he doesn’t stop selling them, they’re gonna sue him to kingdom come.”
“Did Henry think you had something to do with it?” I asked.
“I did have something to do with it,” Georgia said, “only it took me a while to figure it out. I was... well, I was a wreck after Henry’s call, completely distraught. Trying to work out how a pharmaceutical company could have ended up with our secret recipe. If it wasn’t for Martin, I might’ve gone off the deep end for good.”
The word Martin was a string, jerking me to attention. I looked at Sophie. Sophie looked at me.
As I groped for a response, Georgia barreled ahead. “He was Stu’s bodyguard. Well, just part-time, whenever we were going somewhere that made Stu nervous. A crowded concert, maybe, or a charity dinner. Or like this business thing that evening.” She wore a suggestive, just-between-us-girls smile. “I gotta admit I looked forward to having Martin around, if you know what I mean.”
I stopped her right there and explained that I was acquainted with the gentleman in question and that I wouldn’t want her to reveal anything that might embarrass either of them.
Just kidding. What I really said was, “No, I don’t think I know what you mean, Georgia. Why don’t you tell me?”
Sophie kicked me under the table. I kicked her back.
“Oh my Gawd. This guy Martin?” Georgia raised her palms in a Wait for it gesture. “We’re talking drop-dead delish, top to bottom. Gawdlike shoulders, pale-blue eyes you just wanna dive right into, and a killer booty. I mean, how are you supposed to concentrate on anything when you’ve got a guy that hunkalicious—” she giggled like an adolescent “—guarding your body?”
I opened my mouth to pursue this line of questioning, but Sophie cut me off. “So, what happened that evening?” she asked. “After Henry’s call.”
“Stu didn’t seem all that surprised by the news,” she said. “I started screaming at him, demanding answers, getting myself more and more worked up. He ordered me out of his house, but I stood my ground until Martin grabbed me and got me out of there.”
“To protect Stu?” Sophie asked.
“That’s what I thought at first, but no. He put me in his car—it’s this sexy vintage Mustang, red!—and drove to the town beach, of all places. I mean, it was December and it was dark and it was freezing, but we walked on the sand, and the cold air kind of cleared my head, you know? He asked a lot of questions and helped me put the pieces together. Later he did a little digging and confirmed our suspicions.”
Sophie said, “I take it that was the end of your association with Stu Ruskin.”
“Martin’s, too.” With a kind of dreamy half smile, Georgia said, “I always expected a bodyguard to be a big, dumb side of beef in a suit. But Martin is smart and sensitive and... well, he kind of saved my sanity that night, like I said.”
I’d heard quite enough about sweet, sensitive Martin and his killer booty. “Why did Stu hire a bodyguard?” I asked. “Was he in any particular danger?”
“He claimed he was.” Her dubious expression said it all. “He said someone tried to kill him. What I think? I think it just made him feel important having a bodyguard hanging around. I mean, only big shots have bodyguards, right?”