Final Fondue (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) (6 page)

Val usually anticipated her mother’s visits with mixed feelings. Nothing mixed about her feelings this time. Mom couldn’t have picked a worse time to come.

Val returned to the dining room but didn’t sit down. “Does anyone want anything else?”

Jennifer and Sarina shook their heads. Noah patted his stomach and said, “Not me. Great breakfast.”

Val beckoned to her grandfather. They went outside to the front porch.

He joined her on the glider. “Who was on the phone?”

“Mom.” Val recounted the phone conversation. “I broke the news about the murder.”

Granddad groaned. “I’m always glad to see her, but any other weekend would have been better. Just don’t tell her we’re working on solving the murder, or she’ll buy me a ticket to Florida and you one to New York.”

Not the right time for Val to tell Granddad that she might buy her own ticket to the city and go back to her old job. “Mom says she’ll stay at a hotel if—”

“I’d hate for her to do that. The police should be done poking around your room by the time she gets here. Your mother can take that room.”

“You don’t mind her staying here with a possible murderer in the house? Does she get RoboFido as a guard dog?”

“She gets better than that. I’ll put a sturdy bolt on the door. Anyway, let’s not jump to the conclusion that someone in the house killed that poor girl. The murderer could have come from the outside.”

Val rocked the glider. “Who’s your candidate? Sarina’s homicidal maniac?”

Granddad cupped his hand around his mouth and leaned toward Val. “The groom. Yesterday, when Jennifer brought him into the dining room, you were on the phone. Fawn was outside smoking. He asked where she was. I wonder if something was going on between him and her.”

“Just because he asked for her?”

“The man had dinner with his fiancée and then left her for the rest of the evening. Why? Where did he go?”

Good question, but not evidence of wrongdoing. “He didn’t necessarily come here to lie in wait for Fawn and kill her. If his Washington law firm is anything like Tony’s New York firm, Payton could have had to work on a case even on a Friday night.”

“If Payton’s anything like Tony, he could have cheated on his fiancée when he was supposedly working late.”

“Thanks for reminding me, Granddad.” She stood up. “I have to go to the café to get the food ready for the booth today. Bethany’s meeting me there to help.”

“And who’s gonna help me clean up after breakfast?”

She grinned at him. “Why don’t you ask Sarina?”

“Because she’d bite my head off.”

* * *

On the way to the café, Val picked up large bags of ice for the coolers she would take to the booth. It was almost nine by the time she pulled into the parking lot of the Bayport Racket and Fitness Club. Normally, the café opened at eight, but this weekend it was closed because of the festival.

She went inside the club and paused before entering the Cool Down Café. Small and utilitarian with its granite eating bar and handful of bistro tables, the café was the opposite of Granddad’s Victorian house overstuffed with books, family photos, and soft furniture. But she felt at home in both places. One balanced the other. During her last few years in New York, she’d had Tony to come home to. If she went back there now, she might end up working constantly and losing the balance in her life.

From outside the café alcove, Val could see her weekend assistant and tennis teammate, Bethany, already at work. Val went into the café. Bethany had set out vegetables, fruits, and hummus on the food prep counter—ingredients for healthy alternatives to the burgers, hot dogs, and fries that other booths at the festival would offer. “Good morning.”

“Hey, Val.”

Val was used to seeing Bethany in primary colors that would appeal to the first-graders she taught. Today she’d gone for a younger look in pastels—a short lavender skirt with a lace trim at the hem and a pink top with puffy sleeves. The clothes would make a toddler look cute, but didn’t flatter a sturdy ginger-haired woman in her twenties. “New outfit?”

“I bought it yesterday. Did you hear the news?”

Val could guess what news she meant, but hedged in case Bethany meant something else. “News, as in gossip?”

“No, I heard it on the radio as I was driving here. A woman was strangled last night. The police issued a bulletin asking for help. They described her and asked anyone who saw her at the festival to contact them. They also want to hear from people in your neighborhood who saw anything out of the ordinary last night between six and ten.”

“The police better have operators standing by. They’re going to hear from a lot of people. Bayport’s never had a festival like this, so everything was out of the ordinary last night.” At least the police hadn’t announced exactly where the woman was killed, but in a small town everyone would know that before long. No reason to keep it from Bethany. “She was strangled in our backyard.”

Bethany’s eyes and mouth turned into O’s. “Your poor grandfather. The radio said she was a tourist not a local. Was she one of the people staying at his house?”

“She was.” While making the salads to sell at the booth, Val gave her assistant a rundown on Granddad’s guests.

Bethany chopped celery for the Waldorf salad. “Those poor people. They come here to arrange a wedding and one of them is murdered. How are they dealing with that?”

“Better than you’d expect. The murdered woman wasn’t a family member or very close friend. None of them knew her except the bride, who hadn’t seen her for ten years.”

“Don’t most brides visit wedding locales with their mothers or sisters?”

“That’s what my friends all did when they planned weddings.” If Val hadn’t broken off her engagement to Tony before they’d even set a date for the wedding, her mother would have gone with her to find a place for the reception. “I don’t know if Jennifer’s mother is dead, sick, or too busy to bother. The maid of honor is the mother substitute. The best man probably wouldn’t have come except for the festival. He’s more interested in boats than wedding plans.”

Val’s phone chimed. She pulled it out of her bag. Gunnar was calling.

“Glad I reached you, Val. I was worried when I heard a woman was strangled near your grandfather’s house. The police said the poor woman didn’t live around here, but first reports aren’t always reliable.”

“That one was accurate.” She switched the phone to her left ear so she could stir the cucumbers, olives, and tomatoes in the chopped Greek salad. “The woman was staying at our house. Keep that to yourself because I don’t want any media attention.”
Though Granddad, the publicity hound, probably felt differently.
If the police chief hadn’t warned him to avoid the media, Granddad would be standing in front of a camera in his Codger Cook apron, cogitating aloud about the crime and brandishing a Sherlockian pipe.

“You’re a magnet for murder, Val. I’ll bet the New York homicide rate has gone down since you left.”

“My magnetic power kicked in when I moved to Bayport.” She gave the salad one last stir.

“I’m just grateful you’ll be too busy at the festival to go sleuthing again.”

“I can delegate what needs to be done at the booth, if necessary,” she said, only half in jest.

“Delegate detecting to the police. The woman was a stranger, right? The police aren’t accusing you or your grandfather, right? You have no skin in this game.”

Unless the strangler had been after her skin.
Val checked her watch. Time to load the coolers with the food. “When can I expect to see you at the festival?”

“We hope to finish the theater sets by noon. I’ll stop by the booth after that.”

If she gave him a mission, he’d be more likely to show up on schedule. “Would you bring some big bags of ice with you? We have enough for the food coolers, but I don’t want to run out of ice for drinks.”

“Okay. See you later.”

Val tucked her phone in her jeans pocket and noticed a bulging plastic grocery bag next to the trash bin. The club’s cleaning team came through every night to remove trash. So where had this bag come from? She picked it up, heard glass clinking, and checked the inside. It was full of baby food jars, all of them open and recapped. Some were half-filled with pinkish-grayish contents, others nearly empty except for orange or purple stuff clinging to the jars’ insides.

Bethany zoomed over and took the bag from her. “Don’t throw those away, Val. I’m going to take the jars home, wash them, and use them in my classroom for crayons and crafts.”

Where had the jars come from? “Was anyone feeding babies in the café when you arrived? Sextuplets maybe? There are a dozen baby food jars here.”

“Fourteen, actually.”

“You counted them?”

“You bet I did. That was my breakfast. I have another fourteen jars for lunch. I’m on the baby food diet.”

At least Val had heard of the diets Bethany had previous tried. Not this one. “Two months ago you were on the caveman diet. You’ve leapfrogged millennia since then. Now you’re eating food that didn’t exist until the twentieth century.”

“The baby food is only for breakfast and lunch. Then I get to eat a light dinner of food I can chew.”

Val took another look at her friend’s outfit. Whether consciously or not, Bethany had picked out clothes that matched her diet. When eating like a cave man, she’d worn animal prints. Now on the baby food diet, she was wearing pastel frocks with smocking.

“After two meals of baby food, you’ll be ravenously hungry and eat a heavy meal.” Val wouldn’t be surprised if the baby food diet resulted in weight gain. Bethany would look ten pounds slimmer in solid colors and simple styles, but Val wouldn’t dare comment on anyone’s wardrobe. Her own consisted mostly of black, white, beige, and the blue of jeans.

“Don’t try to talk me out of this diet. I’m having a hard enough time with it. I now know why babies spit out their food. The meat is gross and the vegetables aren’t a lot better. At least the strained fruit isn’t bad, especially the applesauce.”

This diet made even less sense than her previous one. Val would bet it wouldn’t last any longer than the usual Bethany diet, five days tops. “Changing the subject to food for people with teeth, we need to load up this stuff for the festival.”

* * *

The festival food booths were set up in the town parking lot, each one under a ten-foot-square canopy. The canopies lined a broad walking space for festival visitors. Val backed up her car to the booth. A popcorn vendor’s machine two booths away permeated the air with a chemically enhanced butter fragrance that would entice some people and repel others.

With Bethany’s help, Val set up the booth with a long table at the front for serving customers, two folding chairs and a card table farther back, and coolers along the sides. An oilcloth table covering with a fall motif—yellow, orange, and red leaves on a green background—added a warm note to the stark booth. Val set out flyers for the festival events and discount coupons for the café at the club.

From ten until eleven, they had few customers, which gave them time to organize the booth for the influx of lunch eaters who lined up later. Whenever no one was lined up for lunch, Bethany took a break to eat baby food. She scraped every bit from twelve of her fourteen jars, but barely touched the spinach-apple-rutabaga combo and the macaroni and lentils with Bolognese sauce.

At one thirty Val took stock of the remaining food at her booth. The Waldorf salad with a vinaigrette dressing was almost gone. She still had plenty of the pasta-and-vegetable salad and of the chopped Greek salad. She also had enough bread to make more sandwiches though she doubted she’d use all of it, with the lunch rush over. The smoked turkey and cheese on rye and the hummus with roasted vegetables on whole wheat had sold equally well. The peanut butter and banana sandwiches had been a hit with youngsters.

“The iceman cometh.” Gunnar adopted a voice of doom for his announcement. His dazzling smile undermined its effect. He was far from handsome, but that smile transformed his face. “I hope I’m not too late with the ice. Where do you want it?”

“In the two blue coolers.” Val pointed to them. Judging by the whitish dust in his dark hair and on his sturdy workman’s boots, he must have come straight from working on theater sets. “Are those new or old paint splatters on your jeans?”

“Old. We haven’t started painting the sets yet. How are you doing, Bethany?”

“Fine. Good to see you again.” She turned to Val. “I’d love to go home and make sure the neighbor’s daughter took Muffin for a walk. Can you manage the booth alone for half an hour?”

Val nodded. “Sure. Gunnar can assist if things get busy, but I don’t expect that.”

Bethany picked up the plastic bag holding the remains of her lunch. “Thanks for covering for me, Gunnar. I’ll be back soon.” The baby food jars rattled in the bag as she left.

When Gunnar finished dumping the ice, Val asked, “Did you eat lunch yet? I can make you a sandwich. Or would you prefer a salad?”

“I stopped to eat at the burger booth at the end of this row.”

“Ah. You’d rather not eat my lower-cal healthy food.”

“I’ll eat anything, but it’s hard to pass up charcoal-broiled meat. I’ll go get you a burger, if you like.”

“No, thanks. I’ve been sampling the food here. Take a seat at the card table and I’ll bring you cider and dessert.” She poured ciders for both of them and brought over oatmeal cookies on a napkin. “This isn’t just a food booth, it’s an isolation booth. I’ve heard nothing about the strangling. Have you?”

“Rumors about a psychopathic tourist.” He grabbed a cookie.

“Well, that’s better than rumors about Granddad and his house of carnage.” She sipped the cider.

“Fill me in on what happened.”

Between interruptions to serve customers, Val described the wedding group. She was finishing her cider when she got to the part about finding Fawn in the yard.