Chapter 18
“Do we have time to speak with Benet’s posse?” Maddy asked as we drove away from the Rankin house.
I thought about all we had to do this morning before we opened, and then nodded. “If I speed the dough up, we should be fine. This is too important not to do right now while we still have the chance. Kevin Hurley told us he couldn’t keep them from leaving for much longer, so we have to push them even harder than we have been.”
“I’m not sure how we can do that and still stay on their good side,” Maddy said. “We’ve been pressing them pretty hard already.”
“We’ve run out of time to act delicately,” I said. “I thought you’d be happy. You normally prefer the ‘full speed ahead’ method of investigation where we hammer everyone with accusations until someone breaks down and confesses.”
Maddy grinned at me. “Don’t get me wrong; you know I love a good manhunt as much as the next gal. I just want to be sure you’re certain that we can burn some bridges in the process.”
I thought about that, and then amended my earlier statement by saying, “Why don’t we just try to scorch them at first, and save the burning only if we need it later.”
“That sounds like a deal to me,” Maddy said. “You know, if this wasn’t about finding a murderer, it could be kind of fun.”
It obviously matched my sister’s definition of entertainment more than it did mine, but if it helped her to look at it that way, it was fine with me.
When we got to the hotel room, we found Oliver sitting alone, the door to the suite standing wide open. The poor man looked as though he’d just lost his last friend.
“What happened here?” I asked him as I walked into the room with Maddy on my heels.
“I lost everything,” he said, tears tracking down his cheeks as he looked up at us.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They took my recipes back,” he said, the words seeming to stick in his throat. “They were mine. I created them, but Jessie is exercising a clause in our agreement to release them in book form in Benet’s name. I don’t get a dime of royalties for them, and not a penny of the advance. I can’t believe that fraud is going to keep cheating me long after he’s dead.”
“They paid for them in the first place, though, right?” I asked gently.
“I got fifty dollars a recipe,” he said. “Using them, I could have started my own cooking empire. Now I’ve got nothing.”
“You could always come up with more dishes,” Maddy suggested. “You’re brilliant at it.”
“Nothing I could ever create would ever be as good as those were. I’m finished, and I know it. To think that I did all that work, and I still got cheated in the end. I just can’t believe it.”
“Believe what?” I asked. We needed to keep him talking. Maybe something would slip out. I hated taking advantage of Oliver when he was in such despair, but there was a window to get the truth, and I couldn’t let emotion stand in my way.
“It doesn’t matter if you know now or not, and I’m tired of keeping secrets. When Benet was murdered, I was in the back room of the bookstore with Cindy having a little fun, if you know what I mean. We had a connection from the moment our eyes met, but she didn’t want any of you to know, so I pretended to be mean to her while you all were around. After you were gone was a different story altogether.”
Was Cindy’s mourning just a show? Could she really be that impulsive? Of course she could. She told us so herself. Like mother, like daughter.
“That was a little sudden, getting involved so quickly, wasn’t it?” Maddy asked.
Oliver shrugged. “She’s an impulsive woman, and I wasn’t about to say no. And then she told me the truth about herself.”
“What truth was that?” I asked.
“I know you already know, so there’s no use pretending that you don’t. When she told me that she was Benet’s daughter an hour ago, I wanted to kill myself.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I told her that there could never be anything more between us than the few times we shared together. She cried and tried to talk me out of leaving her, but every time I’d ever look at her again, I knew that I’d see that leering face of her father’s instead of hers. There’s just no way it would have worked.”
“So, if we speak with Cindy, she’ll confirm that you two were together even as her father was being murdered?” I asked.
“She might not want to admit it, but it’s true. Go on, ask her.”
“Can you prove any of this if she denies it?” Maddy asked.
Oliver nodded glumly. “She’s got a strawberry birthmark on her left hip. Check that if you don’t believe me.”
It was too specific to be a lie, as far as I was concerned. Wow, the daughter was more like the mother than I’d ever imagined.
“Can’t you see why everything has gone so wrong in my life? I lost my job, my recipes, and Cindy, all within a few days. I thought Benet was ruining my life while he was alive, but if I would have had any idea how much pain he could cause me when he was dead, I would have been his bodyguard instead of his ghost chef.”
If what Oliver had just told us was true, he and Cindy both had an alibi for the time of the murder. “We’ll check it out, but you should be in the clear if it’s true,” I said.
“I already told my story to the police chief, and he bought it, so why shouldn’t you two? It happens to be the truth, but I don’t care at this point whether you believe me or not. At this point, I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
Maddy shook her head. “Quit feeling so sorry for yourself, Oliver. You’ve got it all exactly wrong.”
“What do you mean?” He looked intrigued by her statement.
“Think about it,” Maddy said. “One of the best times in my life was when I lost everything I held dear. Do you want to know why?”
“Because you’re some kind of masochistic nut?” he asked, and it was all I could do not to laugh.
“No, because when you’ve hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up, and the world is full of new possibilities.”
“I’m having a tough time seeing it that way,” Oliver admitted as his head dipped down again.
“Tell you what,” Maddy said. “I’m willing to admit that you’ve earned a day of self-pity, but as soon as you’re finished, start thinking about what you want to do next with your life.”
“Can I have at least a week to feel sorry for myself?” Oliver asked with a slight grin.
“Twenty-four hours, and not another minute more,” my sister answered with a smile of her own. “Do you happen to know where Jessie and Patrice are right now?”
“They’re downstairs in the conference room. Since they promised the police they wouldn’t leave town until tomorrow, they’ve convinced Benet’s cookbook publisher to fly down here to meet with them. They’ll be in meetings all day from what I heard, but by tomorrow, they’ll be gone.” Oliver stood, and brushed at the seat of his pants, as though ridding himself of dust. “I suppose that I will be, too.”
“Where are you going to go from here?” Maddy asked.
“I don’t know,” Oliver said, and then began to smile with a full-blown grin. “You know what? You’re right. That’s kind of the beauty of it, isn’t it?”
“Don’t worry. I have a feeling that you’re going to do just fine,” Maddy said.
“Thanks.”
After we were out of the room, I looked at my sister with a fresh perspective. “I never would have believed it if I hadn’t heard it myself.”
“What’s that, their alibi? It’s pretty strange, isn’t it?”
“No, I’m sure Chief Hurley has confirmed that by now. I just never thought I’d hear Maddy Spencer giving a motivational speech to anyone.”
She shook her head. “Don’t expect to ever hear it again. The boy was in some serious trouble, and I thought I could help.”
“I’m not complaining. I thought it was great. One thing, though. When did you lose everything you ever cared about?”
She bit her lip, and then admitted, “I might have embellished a little when I said that.”
“You could have fooled me. You sounded as though you’d experienced it firsthand,” I said, remembering how I’d felt when Joe had died.
“It was more like secondhand,” she admitted. “I was using you as my example. I meant every word of it, Eleanor. The way you managed to keep going was truly inspiring, and I thought Oliver had a right to know that just because his dreams died didn’t mean that he had to end with them.”
I bit back the tears, but then I let them explode as I hugged Maddy. She calmed me, and after the brief flood abated, she asked, “You’re not angry with me for doing that, are you?”
“I’m honored,” I said. “Don’t ever underestimate the role you played in it, though. If you hadn’t come back to town when I needed you most, I wouldn’t have made it, and that’s a fact.”
“You’re stronger than you think,” Maddy said.
“Maybe so, but I also know in my heart that I’m even stronger with you.”
As we neared the hotel’s conference room, Maddy asked, “Is there any reason to just wait around outside for them to take a break?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I glanced at my watch and then added, “We probably just have to come back later. I’m not really sure how long we can wait.”
“Pizza making sure gets in the way of our investigations sometimes, doesn’t it?” Maddy asked with a smile.
“I can live with that,” I said. “I only investigate these things because I have to. I make pizza because I love to. It’s two completely different things.”
“I’m glad you found your true calling,” Maddy said as we headed out to her car. “I don’t know if I’ll ever find mine. Who knows? Maybe I’m destined to always be the bride, and never the bridesmaid.” We got in and Maddy started to drive away.
“I’m not sure you got that exactly right,” I said. “You’ve sacrificed a lot coming to work for me. I know your dreams have soared higher than being a server at a small-town pizzeria.”
“Funny, I thought I was the assistant manager,” she said with a slight frown.
I quickly amended my statement. “You are. But it’s not quite up to your earlier aspirations; you’ve got to admit that.”
“Dreams aren’t all they’re cut out to be,” Maddy said. “At the moment, all I want is to be happy.”
“Can anyone ask for anything more?” I asked.
“Oh, you can ask,” she said with a wicked laugh. “But that doesn’t mean you’ve got a prayer of getting it.”
“Aren’t you happy now?” I asked, concerned about my sister.
“I’m happy enough,” she admitted.
“I’ve always wondered just how happy that might be,” I said.
“Eleanor, sometimes it’s greedy to want more, when you already have enough.”
I wasn’t exactly sure how to take that, but I never got a chance to spend any more time considering it as someone jumped out in front of Maddy’s moving vehicle.
Maddy slammed on the brakes, and still narrowly missed knocking Janet Rankin to the ground.
“Are you insane?” Maddy screamed at her as she jumped out of her car.
“I thought you saw me flagging you down,” Janet said, pale from the near hit.
“I did, but just barely,” Maddy replied.
“Pull over to the side,” I said to my sister. “We all need a second to catch our breath.”
Maddy did as I asked, and in a minute, the three of us were sitting on a bench by the sidewalk.
“What were you thinking when you did that?” Maddy asked her, using a much calmer voice than she had before.
“I needed to speak with you both,” Janet said. “I didn’t know any other way to get your attention.”
“What was so important that you’d risk your life for it?” I asked.
“It’s nothing as dramatic as all of that. You’re apologies meant a great deal to me earlier, and after thinking about it, I decided that I want to give you our alibis. You deserve at least that much.”
“We’ve already got Cindy’s,” Maddy said, but before she could add anything more, I put a hand on her arm.
“But we’d appreciate it if you could tell us as well,” I added.
Janet nodded. “I don’t blame you for checking our stories. She was with Benet’s assistant the entire time of the murder.”
“And you believe them?”
Janet nodded. “My daughter is many things, but she’s no liar.”
Whether she was or not was beyond our scope of investigation at that moment. “That covers her, but where were you?”
Janet looked ashamed. “I told the police, so I’ll tell you, but I’d appreciate if you don’t tell Cindy.”
It felt as though Maddy was about to agree, but I knew better than to make promises like that. “We won’t say a word if we don’t have to, but that’s where it ends. I’m sorry if that’s not good enough for you.”
“It will have to do,” Janet said. After a moment’s pause, she said, “I was on the phone with Nathan Pane the entire time, and Chief Hurley has already checked my telephone records. There’s no way I could have killed Tony, not without Nathan hearing every last bit of it.”
“I thought Nathan was unreachable,” I said, knowing that the town’s millionaire recluse answered to no one but himself.
“For most folks he is, but I have an in with him.”
I thought about my contact with Art Young, and the number and curious code he’d given me in case of an emergency. I couldn’t imagine the circumstances that would force me to use it, but it was comforting nonetheless having him just a phone call away.
“What did you discuss?” I asked.
Janet couldn’t even look at us as she spoke, instead staring down at the ground between her feet. “I was asking him for a loan to keep Cindy afloat. We were counting on the revenue from Tony’s book signing to carry us six months, maybe even a year, but we lost every last bit of it when he was murdered.”
“That had to have been hard to do,” I said sympathetically. I’d never been forced to borrow money to keep the Slice open, but I knew that if I had to, I’d find a way to do it.
“Not as hard as it was asking Tony for the money first,” Janet said.
“When did you do that?” I asked. “I didn’t think you realized that you were in a jam financially until after he was murdered.”
“We were operating too close to the edge as it was, and I wanted Cindy to enjoy her dream, and to have a little breathing space. After Tony stormed out of the Bookmark, but before he got to Paul’s Pastries, I found him on the promenade shortcut and confronted him. When I told him he should do right by his daughter even before I knew that he wouldn’t be able to host his demonstration, he laughed in my face. He said that I hadn’t told him about her all those years ago, and then he said that he’d get to know her on his own terms, with no strings attached, and nothing expected from either one of them. Oh, Tony admitted that he might help her out financially someday, but not out of a sense of responsibility, and certainly not anytime soon. We had a fight, and he went into Paul’s and continued having his little tantrum. I decided then and there that I needed another plan, and Nathan was the only person I knew with the means to loan us the money we needed.”
“And did he?” I asked.
“It took some convincing, but he finally agreed. He’s always had a soft spot for Cindy, and to my shame, I exploited it.”
“Hey, there’s no use beating yourself up about it. You did what you had to do,” I said as I patted her leg.
“Well, that’s it,” Janet said as she stood. “I had to get that off my chest. I’m sorry about everything.”
“We are, too,” I said.
Janet walked away, and I could swear I saw a lighter movement in her steps. It was as though an actual burden had been lifted from her shoulders.
“Now who’s the great inspiration?” Maddy asked with a slight smile.
“What can I say? It must run in the family.”
As we got back into Maddy’s car and headed to the Slice, I said, “That’s three cell phone alibis we’ve come up with for five suspects.”
“Most people live on their telephones,” Maddy said. “It doesn’t really surprise me all that much.”
“I suppose not. Who do they all talk to?”
“Each other, I’m guessing. Think about it, though. Just about everyone you know works at the Slice.”
“Not David,” I answered.
“No, but he’s tied up most days. You just don’t have all that much time to chat, do you?”
“It works for me,” I said. “It looks like we can strike another name from our list.”
“It’s finally getting to be manageable, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “We might have to close early tonight so we can see if we can stir the pot a little more with the ones we’ve got left, though.”
“How are we going to do that? We have Patrice and Jessie left, and they’re in meetings for the rest of the day.”
“I don’t know yet, but we’ll figure something out.”
I would have loved to know what Kevin Hurley had uncovered so far in the case. There had to be information he was privy to that we didn’t know, but I couldn’t just ask him directly. He’d tapped me for information once, but that didn’t mean that I had the same privileges. I suspected that if I helped him enough, he’d throw a few tidbits my way, too, but if the two main suspects Maddy and I had in our sights had alibis they’d already told the police, no one had shared them with us.