Chapter 31
I left Nate and my mother to deal with the deputies as I stepped back into the wedding tent with Rochelle. The guests were working their way through the buffet line and many of them were already at their tables eating.
Over at the dais, my aunt was feeding tidbits of food to Louis. If my daughter was here, she’d be in hysterics. I snapped a quick photo from my cell to share with her later, before turning my attention to Rochelle. “Please keep your voice down but . . . how much do you really know about Antoine?”
Rochelle turned her head toward the pastry aviary and shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“You see . . . er . . . uh . . . oh, what the heck! Antoine’s not who he says he is.”
“Huh?”
“His real name is Tony Marciano and he used to work for Feltons’ Pavilions, Tents, and Awnings.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve been working side by side with Antoine, and he’s a skilled pastry chef. Polished . . . Precise . . .”
I finished her sentence with one word: “Pretend.”
Then I told her the whole gruesome saga about how Roland had embarrassed and humiliated Tony and how Tony sought out and got his revenge. “It wasn’t so much a planned act of murder but more like someone reaching their breaking point and snapping. Crack! Like that!”
Rochelle’s face flushed. “Julien’s going to snap when he finds out! Don’t tell me you’re going to send one of those deputies in here. That’ll be a disaster for La Petite Pâtisserie. See for yourself. Julien and Antoine are getting ready to serve up the aviary.”
“Serve up the aviary?”
“Yes. Each guest approaches and selects his or her bird. Every bird has its own handwritten card revealing the ingredients. My favorite is lemon pastry with tart blueberry filling.”
“Do they also break off a piece of the branch as well and put it on their plate?”
Rochelle looked at me as if I’d suggested decapitating one of the birds. “No. Of course not. The plates are made of a special chocolate blend and are edible. They look like mini nests. Please, Miss Kimball. Speak to those deputies. Speak to your boss. Tell them to hold off. Julien doesn’t need any bad publicity.”
I really couldn’t see the harm in waiting until the reception was over. I mean, it wasn’t as if Tony was a dangerous assassin about to massacre the wedding party.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
“Thanks. I’ve got to get back over to Julien and Antoine.”
In all of the madness, I hadn’t even touched the food and my stomach was rumbling nonstop. I’d sample a small platter of the breakfast delicacies and then go off to find Nate and my mother. I was certain they were jabbering away with the deputies in the parking lot.
“Where have you been?” Kirk asked when I sat down. “Do you really have indigestion or are you using that as an excuse to get out of here?”
Judy shot my cousin a dirty look. “Kirk! That’s a terrible accusation to make. Why would Phee lie about something like that?”
I saw the smirk on my cousin’s face. “I’d feign dysentery if I thought it could get me out of this reception. While you were outside, we had to listen to Louis and my mother’s poetry readings on love and eternal life. Between that and the stuffed eel, I thought I was going to heave.”
Judy and I couldn’t help but laugh. At least the main meal from Saveur de Evangeline was pretty decent, right down to the hollandaise sauce Cecilia and Myrna had tasted. As I helped myself to another bite of the eggs Benedict, something brushed against me. It was my mother.
She yanked her chair from the table and plopped herself down. “It’s a damn good thing I went out there, Phee. What were you and your boss going to do? Wait until the killer decided to sign a confession?”
“You didn’t have to chase him down the footpath, Mom. Nate had things under control.”
“Well . . . now he does. He’s talking with the deputies. That man . . . the one I chased . . . which chef is he? They’re taking him into custody.”
“Sebastian from Saveur de Evangeline, why?”
“I wanted to make sure he wasn’t the pastry chef. With the main meal served already, I didn’t want anything to interfere with the desserts.”
“Yeah, well . . . about that . . . there’s kind of a situation with one of their chefs.”
“Don’t tell me it’s another killer. Who on earth did my sister hire for this wedding? Murder Incorporated?”
Suddenly I was poked in my back.
It was Shirley from the next table. “Psst! I don’t want to alarm you, Phee, but why are those two deputies blocking the serving line to the bird desserts? And look! Your boss is over there, too.”
No, no, no! This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. Antoine can come unglued at any moment, and then what?
I jumped up from my seat, mumbled a few words to Shirley, and raced over to the Aviary Atop the Tree. Nate had all but promised the deputies would be discreet. Too bad he couldn’t make that same guarantee for La Petite Pâtisserie’s pastry chefs.
Julien Rossier looked like a cartoon dragon with his nostrils flaring and his face turning beet red. “This is an outrage! An outrage! I must ask you to leave at once. I can assure you my esteemed pastry artist, Antoine Marcel, has nothing to do with the untimely and unfortunate death of Saveur de Evangeline’s cook.”
He spit out the last word as if it was a piece of dirt.
“Mr. Rossier,” one of the deputies started to explain, “I’m afraid Mr. Marcel is not who he claims to be and that he is indeed responsible for the actions leading up to Mr. Roland LeDoux’s death.”
“Nate,” I whispered. “Do something.”
Nate immediately turned to the chamber musicians, who were seated near us, and motioned for them to make the music louder.
I was frantic. “That’s not what I meant. What good is that going to do?”
What happened next came so fast and so unexpected that I was still trying to figure out how we missed it. Julien stepped in front of the two deputies and in a loud voice announced, “La Petite Pâtisserie is pleased to begin serving our delectable winged delicacies from the Aviary Atop the Tree. Once we have served Mr. and Mrs. Melinsky their white chocolate cake doves with vanilla Bavarian cream, we welcome the guests to line up by zodiac table signs to select their dessert.”
With a brisk wave of the hand and one clap, Julien stepped aside for Antoine and Rochelle to begin serving. No sooner did he take that one step when the deputy closest to me shouted, “Cuff him and read him his rights!”
I grabbed Nate by the arm. “This is awful! They’re going to arrest Antoine. Right here in front of everyone. And your loud classical music isn’t going to help.”
Actually, nothing would have helped, except maybe a giant meteorite slamming into the crimson bhurj tent. The deputy’s voice was so strong it could be heard well into the next county. “ANTOINE MARCEL, WE ARE TAKING YOU INTO CUSTODY REGARDING THE DEATH OF MR. ROLAND LEDOUX.”
“You can’t do that!” Rochelle shouted. “He has to serve the pastry birds.”
I was now in a full-blown panic and tugging at Nate’s sleeve. “Can’t you do something about this?”
“Like what? Serve the birds myself?”
And those were the last recognizable words I heard before my aunt Ina let out a scream from hell and charged toward the aviary as if it was Bunker Hill. It was complete and total pandemonium. People shouting, people whipping out their cell phones to take pictures, and people rushing toward the aviary to see what was going on. At first I thought my aunt was overreacting to Antoine’s arrest. That was before I realized why she was screaming in the first place.
It was dawn. Sunrise. The time when bats returned to their caves or roosts or wherever they lived. Bats! The last thing this wedding needed. A large bat must have gotten confused and entered the tent. It was now swooping down all over the place and threatening to wreak havoc with the pastry birds.
Most of the guests were waving their arms in the air as they screamed, but others were ducking under the tables.
I ran to the nearest deputy. “You have a gun. Don’t be afraid to use it.”
His response was curt and to the point. “I’m not about to kill an endangered species, ma’am.”
Again with the “ma’am.” What is it with these young deputies?
By now, Cecilia Flanagan and Lucinda Espinoza had made their way to the dessert table, and both of them were screaming, “KILL IT! KILL IT! BEFORE IT GIVES US RABIES!”
Nate tried ushering the two of them away from the desserts, but it was futile. Meanwhile, the deputies were trying to put handcuffs on Antoine but had to stop when they got dive-bombed by the bat.
Julien kept yelling, “You’re making a mistake,” but no one was listening.
Then came a voice that could engulf a stadium—my mother’s. She couldn’t help it. Loud voices and facial hair ran in my family. In this case, I was grateful she inherited the sturdy vocal chords and not the latter. “OPEN THE FLAPS TO THE TENT! IT’S ONLY A BAT. OPEN THE FLAPS AND IT’LL FLY OUT OF HERE!”
A few brave souls left their seats and pushed open the side flaps before ducking to the ground in case the bat decided to pass by them on the way out. It didn’t. Instead, it did something far worse. Something that sent my cousin Kirk into gales of laughter while everyone else reacted with horror. The bat crashed right into the Aviary Atop the Tree, sending pastry birds to their death. Not one crash. Many. It was as if the poor bat couldn’t figure out how to escape the wall of birds. As a result, the floor of the pavilion/tent was strewn with cake crumbs and slippery fillings. From buttercream to boysenberry sauce, it was impossible to take a step without wondering what was underneath your shoe.
I had always heard the expression “watching a train wreck.” For the first time in my life, I knew exactly what that meant. The bat didn’t fly out from the open flaps. The guests did. One by one, they stepped out into the full sunshine, distancing themselves from the “celebration of bliss.”