Danny and Mason found us on the back deck a little after seven Tuesday morning. Lurleen and I were drinking coffee and soaking up the early morning sunshine. The first shoot was scheduled for eight, and we were both dressed and ready to go. Lurleen was giving me some last minute pointers on how to play to the camera.
Danny looked like he’d just stepped out of the shower, which he probably had. Mason appeared more crumpled, as if he’d slept in his clothes.
Danny said neither one of them had gotten much sleep. “I suspect you two will want to hear this,” he said.
Lurleen nodded eagerly and made a place for Danny beside her.
Mason sighed and sat down next to me. He looked exhausted.
“I was near the front gate when one of the officers reported seeing a man at the back of the estate,” Danny said. “It was around 11:30 last night. By the time we got there he’d disappeared. I called Mason to let him know about the situation.”
“And I called the chief,” Mason said. “Woke him up from a sound sleep apparently. It was after midnight, but he got over here in twenty minutes with some portable search lights.”
“The chief did a good job of covering the area,” Danny said. “He had us searching quadrants of the estate using the lights. I wouldn’t be surprised if we woke up half the guests.”
Lurleen shook her head. “Anna had coffee available at 6:30, and I’d say most of the folks stopped by to get some. They talked about being nervous with the contest starting this morning, but no one mentioned searchlights or noise last night.”
“Good,” Mason said.
“Maybe,” Lurleen said, “they just thought it was normal life on the estate of a celebrity, lots of security, lots of light.”
“Did you find the man?” I asked.
“Nope,” Danny said. “Nothing appeared to be amiss and there was no sign of anyone. All outside doors were locked with no evidence of a forced entry. Buddy went back home around two. Mason and I split up and walked the perimeter for another hour. As far as I know the two officers stayed at their posts all night.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Lurleen said. “I saw the cute younger one with all that dark curly hair asleep on a sofa on the back deck, dead to the world.”
“What time was that?” Mason asked.
“It was 3:00 or 4:00 am. I woke up—not sure why— and I wandered to the portico at the end of the hall. There he was stretched out on the deck below me.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything else?” Mason asked.
“No,” Lurleen said. “After that I went back to sleep.”
“Looks like it was all a false alarm,” Danny said. “Might be some reporter wandered off for privacy and then came back unnoticed.”
The four of us were sitting clustered around a low teak coffee table, and we kept our voices down. News traveled fast in this environment, and we still didn’t know who had leaked the photos of Izzy Moran to the press. That meant someone might be eager to hear about the latest rumor of an intruder roaming the grounds at night.
Savannah joined us. “Thank you both for what you did last night,” she said to Danny and Mason. “Buddy told me that someone was seen near the back gate. I’m relieved it turned out to be nothing.”
I glanced at my watch. It was 7:20, and I was suddenly ravenous. Perhaps I did get nervous after all. I followed Savannah inside and back to the dining room with plans of grabbing a muffin.
“Don’t eat,” Lurleen called after me, “I just fixed your make-up.”
A separate breakfast room had been set up in a back parlor with several small tables. I watched Savannah chat with participants at each one, assuring them they looked wonderful and were about to have a great time. “Just be yourselves, and you’ll be fine.”
I noticed she didn’t pause at the table where James Bradshaw and Gertrude Flumm were seated, chatting, heads together. They stopped talking as Savannah walked by. Neither one of them looked up. Gertrude wore a sour expression, as if appearing in the contest brought her no pleasure. Her hair was pulled back in a bun and covered with a net. She was slight and maybe an inch or two taller than me, but she looked as if her backbone had a steel rod in it. James slumped over his coffee. I remembered how he’d looked at Savannah’s party—tall and elegant, perfectly coiffed. Now, his hair was in disarray and his outfit was decidedly casual—tan khakis and a maroon polo shirt.
Flumm and Bradshaw were both locals but had chosen to stay in the house as guests. I suppose it made sense. That way they could focus on the contest.
After breakfast the entire atmosphere changed from relaxed to business-like. Savannah had a make-up and hair specialist available on set to take care of last minute concerns.
The kitchen set was enormous. Contestants had their own islands on which to work that included an oven and stove top to one side. We had a prep table behind us for supplies. It looked as if Savannah had studied the set-up from the Great British Baking Contest, except we weren’t housed in a tent outside the mansion.
Shooting was to start promptly at eight. Savannah was always prompt according to Chris Evans. He told me it was part of what made her empire such a success. Everything started and ended on time. He said the other key to Savannah’s success was Anna. She was the power behind the throne—the chef who could take any set of ingredients and produce an outstanding and original creation.
“If Anna ever gets her own show,” Chris said as he checked my station, “Savannah might be out of a job.” He glanced around as if afraid someone might have overheard his comment. “Don’t get me wrong, Savannah’s an amazing entrepreneur. She deserves every bit of success she’s achieved—she’s just not a great cook.”
“Funny you should say that,” I whispered back. “A friend commented that she’d never seen Savannah do much cooking on her shows.”
“Your friend is right. Just don’t spread that around.”
Chris glanced at his watch and became mister professional. “I have two more stations to check. You’re good. Please don’t wander off.”
At two minutes to eight, Savannah reappeared. She began speaking after a signal from Chris. “We’ll start the contest with a technical challenge. Your first task is to prepare a chocolate pudding cake. That will get you warmed up for your next assignment, banana pudding.”
She smiled broadly for the camera.
“You have the ingredients on the sheet in front of you. You have one hour. What I want to taste is a crunchy chocolate layer over a bubbling ooze of luscious decadent chocolate pudding. On your mark, get set, create.”
I studied the ingredients. This didn’t sound too hard. I’d made a flourless chocolate cake in the past, and this list of ingredients looked similar. The hour flew by.
The lights were a lot brighter and hotter than I expected. Air conditioning going full blast made the set tolerable. The cameras didn’t bother me much, but I could see other contestants either nervous or happy to see the camera when it focused on them.
Pepper Young was one of the ones eager to catch the cameraman’s eye. When she did, she was all smiles. Did she have higher aspirations than a cameo on the Savannah Evans’s show?
Chris posted minutes left and then told us to step away from the table when the time was up. The cameras were stopped as we placed each of our entries on the tasting table with a card face down that had our name on it.
Savannah swirled into the room and stood behind the table. “None of you will be eliminated from this round, but you will receive positive or negative points based on how well you executed the technical challenge. She took her time sampling each entry with comments as she proceeded down the line. “This one looks a little overdone. I can’t seem to find any of that gooey pudding I was hoping for.” She’d turn over the card, and the camera would catch the contestant’s expression. Mine was last. “Now, this is what I’m talking about,” she said after she’d taken a bite. “Chocolaty crunch on the outside and irresistible dark pudding coming through with each bite. Outstanding.”
I smiled, and Lurleen, seated in the front row, beamed back at me. She would have hooted and hollered if Chris had not been very clear about silence from the audience. Gertrude Flumm and I tied for first place. I thought for a moment Gertrude might contest the decision. Instead, she graciously shook my hand. “Well done.”
James Bradshaw and Pepper Young tied for last place. James was all soup and no crust. Pepper’s was dry. “Cooked to within an inch of its life,” Savannah said, not too kindly.
We were given a half-hour break to freshen up and grab a snack. Lurleen started speaking immediately. “You were fantastic,” she said, “such a pro. So calm under pressure. I guess it didn’t hurt that Jason and Lucie love your flourless cake.”
“It didn’t hurt a bit. Let’s find the boys.”
“The boys, Mason and Danny, were with Chief Lewis in the front parlor. “All quiet here,” the chief said. “Nothing to worry about. You boys look dead to the world. Now, Danny, here, he’s a young man, don’t need his sleep. But, you, Detective Garrett, you look like you could use a nap. A man your age can’t stay up all night and not pay for it.”
Mason and Buddy Lewis were contemporaries. If anything, the chief was probably a year or two older, I’d guess. Mason didn’t respond.
“I won’t budge from here before dinner,” Chief Lewis said.
“I’ll take you up on the idea of a break, chief,” Mason said, “after I hear how the morning went. How was it, Ditie?”
“Ditie won the technical challenge! First place.” Lurleen said.
“A tie for first place,” I said. “I’ll walk you upstairs, Mason.”
Mason had been given a bedroom at the end of the hall where Lurleen and I were staying. I lay down with him, hoping we might talk for a few minutes. Mason fell asleep before I could say a word, so I left him to take his much-needed nap. The door across the hall was open, and I heard Peter and Pepper Young talking. Arguing was more like it.
“She likes you, maybe too much, but she certainly doesn’t like me,” Pepper said. “She went out of her way to humiliate me.”
“Savannah’s all right,” Peter said. “You’re taking this contest too seriously. You need to settle down.”
Peter saw me in the hallway. He looked annoyed and then pasted on a fake smile, as he closed the door. I walked to the end of the hall and entered the small enclosed porch Lurleen had found the night before, the one that looked out on the back of the estate. The formal gardens were lovely with water flowing from a multi-tiered cast iron fountain in the center of the garden. Beyond that were raised beds of flowers, and past that all I could see was a strand of trees, loblolly pines and other ones I couldn’t identify—thick enough to hide a man or an army of men. A barely discernible path seemed to meander through the woods toward the back of the property.
I hoped Danny was right —that the sighting of someone outside the back gate was nothing to be concerned about.
Chief Lewis described Savannah as overly dramatic, but she didn’t make up the fact that Quinn had been murdered or that someone had introduced peanuts into hors d’oeuvres that were meant to be allergen free.
I wandered back to the set ten minutes before the next shoot.
This time it was Anna who came around to make sure we had what we needed. My recipe for banana pudding was simple. I had a friend in Atlanta who made the best banana pudding I’d ever eaten. I decided to tweak her recipe with cardamom and coconut. One of the Middle Eastern refugee families I treated in the clinic often used cardamom and banana in their recipes and sometimes brought me a dish as a treat. Everything they offered me was delicious. I thought coconut might add another complimentary taste.
Anna congratulated me on the technical challenge from the morning. “I watched you on the monitor. You were very relaxed, and I sampled some of your pudding cake. It was delicious.”
Chris got us ready a little before ten.
Savannah introduced the next segment—to improve on her banana pudding. She smiled broadly at the cameras and at us. Then she left the set.
I made sure all my ingredients were in place, checked my watch, and saw that I had time to make my own vanilla wafers. I’d practiced this at home, and I knew I could get things done in the hour we had.
We took a five-minute break in the middle of the shoot, which gave us time to wipe the sweat off our brows and drink a little water. Chris came up to me. “Any chance you could look a little more anxious? Maybe glance at your watch from time to time?”
Lurleen was standing beside me at the break. “You don’t know Ditie,” she said to Chris. “The more nervous she gets the calmer she looks. And baking never makes her anxious in the first place.”
Chris nodded and moved on.
When time was up, the six of us brought our presentations to the long table where Savannah would sit and taste. We were told to make two portions.
The presentations came in all varieties. One person used a parfait glass with layers of banana, wafers, and custard. Another had concocted what looked like Baked Alaska. It seemed to me I might be the one eliminated in this first round.
We were told to leave the kitchen for the next part of the contest. Savannah was not to get any clues from us as to whose dessert she was tasting. I was more than happy to move into the comfort of the dining room.
Lurleen joined me there. She’d been seated in the kitchen audience along with the spouses of the other contestants. “Savannah asked me to be a taster for the first segment! I’m so excited, but you must realize I can’t choose you simply because you’re my best friend.”
“I understand, Lurleen. You will need to vote for the rightful winner—no hard feelings, I promise.”
On a cue from Chris, Lurleen checked herself in a mirror in the dining room and walked back onto the set. Anna ushered us into a small office adjacent to the kitchen where we could watch what was going on through closed circuit TV.
Savannah introduced Lurleen as a dear friend from Atlanta who had volunteered to help with the difficult decision for this first round. Lurleen nodded to the camera.
Savannah and Lurleen took a bite of each dessert.
Savannah discussed the pros and cons of the submissions. She was clear, kind, and direct. Then she conferred with Lurleen and labeled submissions one, two, and three. We were brought back in.
Rose Kirkwood took first place. Her husband was right. She made very fine banana pudding apparently. I took second. Gertrude Flumm took third and looked miffed that she hadn’t won. We three were allowed to leave the room. The remaining three contestants stood together—James Bradshaw, Izzy Moran, and Pepper Young.
Savannah brought out the banana pudding she liked least. “While it has some fine qualities, the custard is a little too sweet and the bananas were not cut with enough care.” She opened the envelope that revealed the name of the baker. “I’m so sorry, Pepper, but you have been ‘panned’ from the competition. You’ll help me taste.”
Pepper blushed. “Banana pudding isn’t my specialty. I was hoping for cobbler.”
The second episode ended.
Savannah thanked everyone for their efforts. She said lunch would be served in half an hour, and a third taping would begin at two.
Before lunch, Chief Lewis asked if we might meet in Savannah’s office upstairs. By “we” he meant me, Mason, Danny, and Savannah. Lurleen looked so hurt at being excluded that the chief agreed to let her come along.
“I want to bring you up to date,” the chief said. “As you know the rumor of a man on the grounds has not been confirmed. As to the peanut incident and the leaking of photos to the press, that’s another matter. We’re doing background checks on all contestants and the staff. So far we haven’t turned up anything.”
“You won’t find anything on my staff, Buddy,” Savannah said. “They come vetted. If, for any reason they’re not suitable, they’re gone within thirty days.”
“Can we get a list of the ones that didn’t make the cut?” Mason asked. “The ones that might bear a grudge against you?”
“Certainly. I’ll have Anna prepare it for you.”
“You have a large staff?” Mason asked.
“It’s a big empire, but I’m very hands on. I know what everyone is up to. Nothing gets by me.”
“I hope you’re right,” the chief said, “but that don’t mean we won’t check on folks.”
“I understand, Buddy. Someone wants to bring me down. They’ve already robbed me of my life blood. Quinn was everything to me.”
Savannah started to cry.
Chief Lewis led her to the sofa. “You sit down here, Savannah. I’ll get Anna and she’ll know what to do.”
Instead, it was Lurleen who seemed to know what was needed. She sat beside Savannah and put her arm around her, offering her tissues as she cried.
“Lurleen, I’m so glad you’re here,” Savannah said. “You men can go about your business and don’t bother Anna. She has enough on her hands managing lunch for twenty. Ditie, Lurleen, and I will be down in a few minutes.”
“You must be so upset about everything,” Lurleen said after the others left.
“I miss Quinn so much. I can’t sleep and even my dog, Saffron, is suffering. She wouldn’t stay in the room with me last night. She whined until I opened the bedroom door. Then she roamed the halls looking for Quinn I’m sure.”
As if on cue, or perhaps from hearing her name mentioned, a large yellow lab wandered in from Savannah’s adjacent bedroom and settled at Savannah’s feet.
“She’s beautiful,” I said.
Savannah nodded. “She’s sweet and she’s smart. If anyone tried to attack me when Saffron was around, she’d defend me with her life.”
“Sounds like Ditie’s dog, Hermione,” Lurleen said.
“I thought I heard a dog last night,” I said, “crying to get in or out of some place. Then the noise stopped abruptly, and I thought I must be dreaming.”
“Saffron was behaving strangely last night.” Savannah said. “I know she was bothered by all the lights and noise, and then when the noise finally stopped, she was still restless. She moaned to get out of my room and was gone for half an hour in the early morning.”
“You let her outside?” I asked.
“No. I let her roam the halls, but when she came back, I didn’t let her out again because I was afraid she’d disturb the other guests. I’m sorry she bothered you.”
“She didn’t bother me,” I said. “I just wondered what made her upset.”
Savannah nodded. “She’s settled now, thank goodness. She’s such a comfort to me when everything about the future looks so uncertain.”
“Mason and Danny will find out what’s going on,” Lurleen said, “along with Buddy.”
“Buddy?” I asked, looking at Lurleen.
“The chief insisted I call him that. He said I looked familiar to him, reminded him of an old girlfriend. No harm in that, is there?”
“I guess not. As long as Danny doesn’t mind,” I said.
“The chief isn’t hitting on me,” Lurleen said.
“Buddy is devoted to his wife,” Savannah said. “Always has been, and that’s after twenty years of marriage. She’s pretty strait-laced, so he toes the line.”
Savannah looked at us and smiled. “I’m so glad you’re both here. Sometimes you need women around, and Anna is consumed with all the meals she has to prepare for the contestants.”
She took Lurleen’s hand and squeezed it. “I haven’t had any time to grieve for Quinn. I suppose it’s a good thing in a way—this contest keeps me from falling apart.”
I moved an antique straight-backed chair closer to the couch where Savannah and Lurleen were sitting. “Do you have any idea when or how Quinn got the doxorubicin?”
“You mean the drug that killed him?”
“Yes. It’s only given intravenously, ” I said. “It’s likely he got multiple doses—you mentioned that his hair started falling out several weeks before he died. There would be no way to predict when the drug would kill him or even if it would ever be fatal, but it is a drug that’s hard on the heart.”
“Did you know Quinn had had a second heart attack two weeks before the party?” Savannah asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Could the drug, the doxy—“
“Doxorubicin.”
“Could that drug have caused his heart attacks?”
“It’s possible,” I said, “or it could have worsened his condition, brought on his congestive heart failure.”
Savannah nodded slowly and dried her eyes.
“Quinn was always doing his own thing during the day, as I was. He had his main office in downtown Atlanta with a more informal one here. Even when the doctors told him to take it easy, he didn’t do that. I got the feeling he’d started going in a New-Age direction about his health. He said he’d located a medical guru who helped men find their vigor again. I think it really bothered him that he couldn’t—you know—perform the way he used to. He wouldn’t tell me anymore than that.”
“Do the police know about this?” I asked.
“I didn’t tell them. It seemed so private.”
“It could be important,” I said.
“Yes, I can see that now. I’ll talk to Buddy and look through Quinn’s appointment book here—maybe he wrote something down about where he went for treatment. I’m sure the police have gone through his papers in Atlanta.”
“Did he go to Atlanta often?” I asked.
“Not these days. It’s a long drive, and Quinn tired easily.”
“I’ll let Mason and Danny know what you’ve told me,” I said.
“Yes, yes, of course.” Savannah glanced at her watch. “It’s late. We need to get downstairs to lunch or everyone will worry about us.”
We joined the others in the dining room. Anna served a lovely lunch of endive, apple and chicken salad with homemade rolls. Savannah assured us that once we completed the afternoon shoots the rest of the week would run smoothly. I wasn’t sure I believed her.