Chapter Fifteen

I stared at Melody in alarm. "Why are you crying?" I asked, softly at first, and then louder so she could hear me over her noisy sobs.

"Because I did it! I know I did!" she wailed, pushing back a long lock of red hair and reaching for a tissue. Her hand groped blindly for the box. I nudged it towards her and her hand flopped over the top before she pulled out a tissue.

"Did what?" I asked.

"I killed Edwin!" Melody wailed. The cat twisted its head to give her an appalled look before standing up. It raised itself onto its rear paws and reached up to her with its front legs. I'd never seen a cat give someone a hug before and if this one didn’t, it sure did a good job of trying to! It was both sweet and strange. Melody wrapped her arms around it and kissed its head between the ears. "I didn't mean to poison him, but I must have done it by accident. I know Belle Rose has a nut-free policy but I just love peanuts. I ate a handful before I came to work that night. I washed my hands twice but maybe I didn't do it well enough. I must have gotten some into the cooking somehow."

"Oh, no. No, Melody, no! You didn't kill Edwin," I replied, my heart going out to her as she dabbed her red eyes. "There's no way your eating a handful of peanuts could have killed him."

"But it must have been me. I must have somehow transferred it into the cooking."

"Detective Logan told me every sample he took from the kitchen contained ground peanuts. Someone definitely intended to kill Edwin Jones and it wasn't you and it wasn't accidental. Besides, you said you washed your hands twice, so you couldn't have made an accidental transfer. You don't have to worry."

"But... but..." Melody hiccupped.

"You can ask Detective Logan, yourself," I suggested. "He told me directly."

"Are you sure?" Melody reached for another tissue and dabbed her eyes, then honked her nose. The cat that was curled on my lap scrambled off and raced out of the room. "I've been trying to work up enough courage to go to the police station and turn myself in. I've thought about nothing else since it happened. I feel so terrible."

"Now you know the real story," I said, "and there’s no need to feel responsible or guilty anymore."

"But if you knew all that, what do you need to ask me?" Melody turned her red, confused eyes on me.

"I'm trying to work out what might have happened that night." I paused to contemplate whether or not to tell Melody about my visit to the farm but decided not to. It sounded like Melody was worried enough lately without me giving her something new to fear. Plus, I still wasn't sure what to do with the information I'd gleaned. Someone secretly accessed my email to send a fictitious order; but surely they couldn't have expected a distraction like that to empty the kitchen of all the chefs? Perhaps it was just someone being malicious, but I knew I hadn't irked anyone in town. Certainly not so much that they would have wanted to affect my business by jerking around my suppliers. I tucked that thought away, intending to contemplate it again later.

"I don't know what I can tell you that you don't already know."

"I think someone might have come into the kitchen when they shouldn't have. I'm trying to work out who it could have been and when. Do you remember any time when the kitchen was empty that night?"

Melody wrinkled her nose. "I don't recall. There's always someone doing something in there."

"What about when you cut your hand?" I nodded to the Band-Aid.

Melody held up her hand and shrugged. "Oh, that. I caught myself with a knife. Such a rookie move. It's almost healed already." She peeled back the bandage and showed me the pink flesh. A long, thin scab had already formed over the cut. She smoothed the bandage back over it and took up stroking the cat again. "You and Jack were both in the kitchen when I ducked out to get the medical box. I grabbed it from your office and went straight into the employee restroom to wash and bandage it. I was so relieved it was a minor cut and didn’t need any stitches."

"Do you remember anyone walking by?"

"I think I heard you going into the office. The water was running and I was concentrating mostly on cleaning the cut so I didn't pay too much attention."

"That would have been when I went to answer the phone," I decided.

"I guess."

"What about when you returned to the kitchen?"

"Let's see... Yes, you were in the office and still speaking on the phone. Oh, the back door was open when I went into the kitchen. Jack was outside and he came back in a minute later."

"Was anyone in the kitchen at all when you walked in?"

Melody shook her head. "No one."

"Didn't you think that was odd?"

"Not really. The rush was over and there wasn't much left to do. There was hardly anything on the burners so I wasn't concerned about something boiling over. Plus, I thought you or Jack were somewhere in there. You know, you should ask one of the servers. They go in and out of the kitchen all the time."

"I will." I didn't look forward to encountering Bethany again, especially after the reporter chased her off right after she quit, but I had to. I couldn't ignore the fact that the servers might have entered the kitchen or seen someone who did since it now seemed very likely that someone must have entered via the dining room. Occasionally, a guest would wander through to the kitchen accidentally while looking for the restroom, or to purposefully get a glimpse of the kitchen, before one of the servers chased after them and directed them elsewhere. I'd probably have to get that issue addressed too. There was no way I could risk having just anyone walk into my kitchen again.

"I just thought..." Melody hesitated before she continued, "It's probably nothing but I was just thinking about that funny delivery and the phone call coming right after it and at such a strange time too. Why didn't one of the servers answer it?"

"That's a good question," I said. Having become so intent on finding out what Melody saw and why the delivery came when it did, I didn't spare much thought to the phone call. Now, I wondered if it were even genuine. What if, like the strange delivery, it had been solely devised as a ruse to get me out of the kitchen too? "I need to find out," I quickly decided.

Thanking Melody, I told her again that I intended to open the restaurant very soon but until then, we were closed. I still didn’t know how I could open the restaurant with so few confirmed reservations. Despite the good public relations expedition Sophie insisted I attend the previous evening, I checked the restaurant's answering service and email several times but no new reservations had arrived. On the plus side, there weren't any cancellations either. All I knew for certain was that I couldn't afford to leave Belle Rose closed. I had to open up eventually and hope to attract passing foot traffic in lieu of reservations.

The suspiciously timed phone call occupied my thoughts as I drove home. I was sure there would be a name and phone number with a booking but I couldn't remember what they were. All I recalled was hearing a female voice, which I was certain wasn't a name familiar to me. It was very possible it could have been a genuine reservation but I wouldn't know that until I looked more closely at it. I was pretty sure Detective Logan had already done so and also sure he wouldn't share any information he found. He'd cleared me of any wrongdoing but that didn't shield my restaurant from getting the brunt of the blame.

I pulled up and parked outside the restaurant before hopping out and hurried to my door, searching anxiously for my keys. Holding them up to the door, I pushed the key towards the lock. As soon as the tip of the key connected with the lockplate, the door bumped open a fraction.

"Oh, no," I groaned. I must have left the door open! And I'd been gone for hours, pretending to be an unparalleled sleuth. I fingered the lockplate. Yes, there it was. The catch was stuck again. I must have pulled the door closed behind me when I left but in my haste to start the investigation, I failed to check and see that it had properly secured. Shaking my head, I stepped inside and made sure the door was shut completely behind me. Thankfully, burglaries were few and far between in Calendar. Without waiting to take off my coat or boots, I hurried upstairs and gave the apartment a cursory check. My TV was still there, and some cash on the coffee table from when I'd emptied my purse.

Relieved, I turned my attention to what I'd still been thinking of when I drove up. The reservations book was waiting on my desk, right where I left it. I grabbed it, flicking to the week I remembered the reservation was made for. Running my finger down the page, a name jumped out. Iris Wolkowski. Next to it, I noted a party of ten and the contact phone number.

I dialed the number on my cell and waited, my heart thumping, as the voice informed me that the number was disconnected. Gasping, I checked the number, running my finger across the page and found I'd entered the fifth digit wrong. I reentered the correct number and this time, it rang.

"Hello," came the voice.

"Hi," I said, scrambling for a good reason to call. "This is Belle Rose restaurant calling for Mrs. Wolkowski. We might have made an error with your reservation. I need to double check the time and party size with you."

"Belle Rose?"

"That's right, ma'am. Belle Rose on Main Street, Calendar."

"Oh, yes. I called to make a reservation for my husband's birthday. Eight o'clock."

"Eight o'clock. Yes, that's what we have down. A party of ten?"

"That's correct. Is that all right?"

"It is. We'll see you then. Thank you!"

I hung up, relieved that she hadn't canceled on the spot. At least, that reservation was genuine but Melody was right to wonder why someone else hadn't picked up the phone that night. I hardly ever answered it when I was cooking because I was too busy. But the call came during a lull. Now I wondered if that lull in the kitchen was also reflected in the dining room. If we weren't crazy busy, what would have made the servers unable to answer? It was almost like someone had purposefully distracted them, ensuring someone from the kitchen would take the call. Did that same person also access my email to provide another distraction for that night?

I wasn't a conspiracy theorist but the more I thought about the two, well-timed distractions, the more I had to wonder if they were connected. If they were, someone went to extreme effort to plan them. Edwin Jones’s murder seemed less like an opportunistic crime and more like it was premeditated. As I sat on my desk chair, staring out of the window, I gulped down a dreadful feeling. Someone had secretly planned to kill Edwin at my restaurant! And to pass it off as an accident! Or as a murder but one that couldn't be connected to them.

Did that mean the killer knew about my history? Did they know a man had once been accidentally poisoned by the very same kitchen I was working in? Or was that simply an awful coincidence? I wished I had the answers; but every time I tried to answer one question, it would spawn several new ones, leaving me no closer to the truth.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to focus on what I learned today. An email had been sent from my email account.

How?

I wasn't a computer whiz but I had a password on my computer. The computer was constantly connected to the internet because I used it for all kinds of business-related things. I suppose someone could have hacked it from the outside but that seemed like a very specialized and targeted mission. I could access Belle Rose's emails from my computer in the office, as well as from my own personal laptop but I very rarely brought the latter into the restaurant because I didn't need to.

Plucking the email Mick gave me from my purse, I read it again. It did sound like me and was signed with my name. Could someone have studied how I wrote and then forged it? I was sure that wouldn't have been too hard to do. But in order to send an email from my email address, they had to access it somehow.

From first appearing like an accident, and then looking more like an opportunistic incident, it now seemed like a calculated set of events were meticulously planned that ultimately led up to Edwin Jones's death. Using my email to set up a viable distraction required a fair degree of planning, and so did the very act of grinding the peanuts down to a powder, but there was so much more to it than that. Someone must have known when Edwin would be dining at my restaurant. They also must have studied how we worked together and which stations we all manned to plan the best method to get us all out of the way before he or she planted the poisonous ingredient.

I shivered, disgusted that we had all been monitored in such a way. I thought about calling Jack, not only for the comfort of hearing his voice but also for the relief of knowing that it couldn't have been him, but I stopped when my thumb hovered over the cellphone.

Instead, I dialed Detective Logan.

"What can I do for you, Ms. McKellar?" he said when I was put through.

"Ally, please," I told him. "I have some information regarding the case."

"Edwin Jones’s murder? What information?"

"I think someone pre-planned his murder and did so in extreme detail."

There was a long silence, then Detective Logan asked, "What makes you say that?"

I explained my observations while Detective Logan “Ummed” and “Hmm-mmm'd.” Finally, after I told him about my other suspicion that someone must have been accessing my computer, he said, "You know I can't talk about an ongoing investigation."

"I understand that but I thought..."

"You thought you'd start poking around."

"Well, yes..." I trailed off, realizing what I'd just admitted.

"Did it ever occur to you that if this were premeditated, and I'm not saying you're wrong, that the killer could catch wind of you asking so many questions? And he or she might not like it?"

"Oh," I murmured, wincing this time.

"And did it ever occur to you that I might have looked into these angles already?"

"Sure, of course, since you're a detective, but this is my restaurant! Even though you've said I'm cleared of any suspicion, a man still died in there! Someone might have been watching me all along, waiting for the perfect opportunity!"

"I don't disagree that there's something to the theory that the murder was deliberately planned to occur in your restaurant; but I don't want you going around asking anymore questions. It's not safe."

I paused at his tone. "Do you know who did it?" I asked.

"I'm working on a suspect list. Aside from that, I can't say anymore."

"What if someone were watching me?"

"If they did so strictly for the purposes of planning a murder, I doubt they're still watching you. If it makes you feel any better, I could post a squad car outside your address."

The idea of seeing a police car outside the restaurant wasn't comforting. I wanted the townsfolk to forget about what happened at Belle Rose, not shove it in their faces. "Thanks, but no. I'd rather not remind the town of what happened at Belle Rose."

"I appreciate you taking the time to call me with your latest thoughts. Is there anything else I can help you with?" he asked, sounding tired but polite.

"No, thank you."

"And, Ally?"

"Yes?"

"Please leave all the investigating to me."

I made a non-committal noise, said goodbye and hung up, feeling despondent. Detective Logan was nice enough. He didn't make me feel like an idiot when I voiced my concerns, but he also wasn’t willing to impart any information that might have made me feel safer. Now, my skin was crawling with the idea that someone must have watched me.

All at once, Edwin Jones's death became a lot more personal.