Kernel of Truth (24 page)

“You revitalized her. You put a skip back in her step. She always loved her shop, but she'd gotten bored and tired. You brought excitement back.”

“And that excitement got her killed.” If Coco hadn't gotten that spring back in her step, would Jessica have even noticed the business plan that pushed her over the edge?

“No. Jessica got her killed.” Annie leaned back in her chair, fixing me with those bright blue eyes.

“Because Jessica was jealous. Of me.” Try as I might, I couldn't seem to get away from it. Jessica had told me it was my fault that Coco was dead, and even though I knew she was crazy, I could see her point.

“No, because Jessica is an entitled little brat and always has been. That's not your fault.” Annie shut the binder and smoothed her hands over the front. “I'm not saying what happened wasn't tragic. You're not the only one who's going to miss Coco.”

“I know that.” I covered her hand with mine. “Even Jessica misses her. You can see it on her face.”

It had been hard to tell what Jessica was more upset about when she was arraigned: Coco's death or the fact that she'd been caught. When Judge Romero asked if she had anything to say, she'd stood and talked about the example Coco had set for how business should be done in a small town and how to lead a life of dignity. She'd talked about her grief at losing the person who'd been both a mentor and a friend. She'd talked about what a loss Coco's death was to the community.

“I know,” Annie said. “Everything she said about Coco was absolutely right. Yet somehow she missed the fact that she was the one who ended it all.”

I picked up a popcorn bar and took a bite. “It just goes to show you, even in the craziest bowl of popcorn, there's often still a kernel of truth.”

4 cups popcorn

⅜ cup brown sugar

⅛ cup honey

1 tablespoon butter

½ cup dried fruit

½ cup nuts or seeds

Or seriously, get crazy with it. I love dried cranberries and white chocolate chips together. Coconut with slivered almonds is pretty awesome, too. Pack those puppies with everything you like and call it good!

Line a square pan with parchment paper. Mix together all ingredients. Press into prepared pan. Let sit for 10 to 15 minutes. Turn out onto cutting board. Cut into bars.

3 ½ ounces marshmallow crème

Kahlúa (or vanilla if you prefer, or really any kind of liqueur)

4 cups popcorn

Heat the marshmallow crème in the microwave. I recommend using 50 percent power for 30 seconds. Keep going with 30-second increments until crème is easy to stir. Stir in Kahlúa. Fold in popcorn. Grease your hands and form into balls. Allow the balls to sit on wax or parchment paper while you make the chocolate glaze.

CHOCOLATE GLAZE

3 tablespoons cocoa

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup powdered sugar

3 tablespoons milk

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Whisk together over low heat until combined. Don't let this glaze sit. It hardens relatively quickly. You can reconstitute it by adding a little milk and heating again, but it won't be quite the same.

Dip the popcorn balls in the glaze. Let sit until the glaze hardens.

¼ cup butter

¼ cup brown sugar

4 teaspoons corn syrup

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 cups popped corn

1 ¼ cups sweetened condensed milk

2 cups chocolate chips

½ teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon cayenne

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Combine butter, brown sugar and corn syrup in a saucepan. Bring to a boil while stirring. Then hands off for four minutes! Seriously, let it do its thing. At the end of the four minutes, add in baking soda and vanilla, then pour the caramel sauce over the popcorn and combine well. You'll have to use your hands, so grease 'em up and get in there.

Spread popcorn out on a baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes to an hour at 250 degrees. Check it every 15 minutes to avoid burning. The caramel corn should be light and crispy.

Once the popcorn is out of the oven, start making the fudge layer.

Line a square pan with foil. Combine sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips either in a double boiler or in the microwave. Either way, stir often. When everything is melted and mixed together, add in salt and cayenne. Pour into prepared pan. Press caramel corn into the fudge. Refrigerate for two hours. Turn out onto a cutting board and cut into
squares.

Keep reading for a special preview of Kristi Abbott's next Popcorn Shop Mystery . . .

Pop Goes the Murder

Coming soon from Berkley Prime
Crime!

I knocked on
the hotel room door. No one answered. I glanced at my watch. Seven forty-five in the morning. I was right on time. The fact that I'd had to dump the hectic breakfast crowd on Susanna and Sam to be on time for this meeting didn't irritate me at all. Now that it appeared that the person who had insisted she could only make time to talk to me from seven forty-five to eight fifteen on Wednesday morning wasn't answering her door, I didn't feel like the top of my head was about to explode like a can of dulce de leche left to steam too long. No. Of course not.

I knocked again. I'd never really liked Melanie, not from the first moment Antoine Belanger had hired her. Everyone thought it was about jealousy, but if it was, it wasn't because I was jealous of Melanie. I'd been fine with Antoine needing an assistant. I'd been fine when he hired a young and frankly quite good-looking woman. I'd even been fine when I'd realized that she pretty much looked like a younger, slightly prettier version of me, from her curly, sandy brown hair to her
slightly too-long feet. I'd just gotten an odd vibe off Melanie. A vibe I recognized. A you're-in-my-way vibe.

I knocked a third time. Hard. This time, the door swung open. Melanie must not have latched it all the way. “Melanie?” I called. “It's Rebecca. I'm here for our meeting.”

The meeting you called.

I wasn't even all that thrilled about the reason for the meeting. A few months before, my ex-husband, Antoine, had walked in on someone threatening to shoot me and had run the other way faster than a soufflé can fall. While he kept explaining to me that he'd been running to get help, we both knew the truth. He was a big fat French chicken. He was also, however, a big fat French chicken with a seriously influential television show. A show that was watched by tens of thousands of people across the nation. A show that had launched Antoine's successful line of pasta sauces.

A show that could launch my little gourmet popcorn shop into the stratosphere.

To make up for leaving me to be gunned down in the lighthouse where my father had proposed to my mother, Antoine had offered to feature my breakfast bars and popcorn fudge on his television show.

Antoine somehow thought this might win me back, but I'd been done with him since before he'd left me staring down the very black, cold tunnel of a gun. Now I was beyond done. So done you couldn't even stick a fork in me. The starstruck culinary school student who had run off with the man who taught her to make a béchamel sauce that could make gods weep existed no longer. In her place was a grown-ass woman who still knew it was stupid to turn down free publicity, even when it came from her ex-husband.

I walked into the hotel room, Sprocket at my side. Having
my dog with me made me feel brave. “Melanie,” I called again. “I'm here for the meeting.”

The bed was made. Clothes were strewn across the couch in the sitting area. Papers covered the desk. The bathroom door was ajar.

The first feeling of unease climbed up my spine. I ignored it. I watched way too many psychological thrillers. I was being dramatic. Apparently Sprocket had watched too many movies with me. He whined and then growled low in his throat. I knocked lightly on the bathroom door. It swung open.

Melanie floated in the bathtub, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. A big, black blow-dryer plugged into the wall floated in the tub with her.

Apparently our meeting was going to be indefinitely postponed.

*   *   *

Sheriff Dan Cooper,
my bestie and brother-in-law all rolled into one handsome, broad-shouldered package, crouched down next to me where I sat slumped against the wall in the hallway. “You okay?”

I looked up at him. “Define okay.”

He knocked his hat back a little on his head. “Are you going to barf or faint?”

I did a quick mental scan. “No, but I might have nightmares.” I buried my nose in Sprocket's fur.

“That's Sprocket's problem. Not mine.” He patted my shoulder. “Do you think you can answer some questions?”

I nodded. “Is there any chance that I could have some coffee while I do?” I felt ridiculously cold. Plus I'd sort of been counting on having coffee at the breakfast meeting that was now very clearly not going to happen. I was fairly
certain that I'd remember more of what I'd seen with some caffeine in my system.

“Sure. We can go down to the coffee shop in the lobby.”

“I meant real coffee.” I wasn't sure what the Grand Lake Café used to make the fluid they sold as coffee—I suspected liquid from wringing out dirty rags—but I was fairly certain it had never come from a bean.

“I don't think this is the moment to be snobby about your coffee.” Dan stood and extended a hand down to help me up.

“I'm probably in shock. I can't think of a more important moment to be sure to have good coffee.” I took his hand and let him heave me to my feet.

He gestured for me to walk in front of him down the hall. “Maybe they can make you some tea.”

“I doubt it.” Trust me. The number of restaurants in America that can make a decent cuppa is fewer than hen's teeth, and hens have absolutely no teeth whatsoever. I walked anyway.

The Grand Lake Café was a typical hotel-lobby coffee shop. Not quite a diner. Not quite a restaurant. Not quite anything, really, but a place where desperate travelers could at least get enough sustenance to maintain life. I didn't recognize the waitress on duty. She looked young. Maybe nineteen or twenty, and like she might be pretty out of the horrid mustard-colored uniform she wore. It was weird to actually run into someone in town whom I didn't know somehow. My footsteps balked as we crossed the threshold.

“Sorry, Bec. You're going to have to slum it. I can't leave here right now and I need to know what you saw.” He shook his head. “Again.”

We sat down in the café with Sprocket under the table. The waitress gave him a pointed look, but Dan smiled up at her. “He's kind of like a service dog at the moment,” he said.

“As long as you're the one telling the Health Department that,” she said with a shrug.

Dan asked her to bring a cup of coffee and a pot of Earl Grey. Sure enough, she showed up with a white mug full of a tannish, greasy-looking liquid and a do-it-yourself assembly kit of a tea bag, a mug and a pot of tepid water.

I sighed and poured the water over the tea bag. Aromatic oils were not released. I could tell. Dan took a sip of his coffee and winced.

“Told you so.” The satisfaction of being right did little to make me feel better at the moment.

“I'll suffer in the line of duty,” he said. “Now what were you doing in Melanie Fitzgerald's hotel room?”

I sighed, sipped at my weak, tepid tea and explained about the meeting, about how we were going to go over the logistics, the shooting schedule, the cooking scenes in the kitchen.

Dan rubbed his face. “I knew there would be trouble the second you told me Antoine was coming to town with his crew.”

Dan had never been exactly what I'd call an Antoine fan. First of all, Antoine tended to appeal to women more. They loved that hint of French accent, the piercing blue eyes, the blond hair, the quick grin, the way he threw his head back when he laughed . . . basically all the reasons I fell in love with him. He had legions of female fans, many of a certain age. They called themselves the Belanger Bunnies. They had Facebook groups, Twitter hashtags, YouTube channels, Tumblrs, Pinterest boards. Well, everything. So Dan wasn't exactly Antoine's usual demographic. I thought if you asked Dan to tweet he'd tell you he never did that in public.

Second, my marriage to Antoine had represented the moment when Dan realized I was never coming back to Grand
Lake. Or at least, he thought I'd never come back. With my marriage, my life had taken a turn that set me firmly on a path that did not include little resort towns on Lake Erie.

Boy, had he been wrong about that! I had come running back full speed after my divorce. Somehow, though, Dan still harbored ill will toward my charismatic ex.

“I'm not sure you can blame him for this one, Dan.” Which was when it occurred to me to wonder who should be blamed. Who was responsible? Or was anyone to blame at all? Maybe I was a little in shock.

“I know. How well did you know Melanie?” Dan asked, taking his little notepad out of his breast pocket.

I shrugged. “She's been Antoine's assistant for years. He relies on her for everything.”

Dan arched a brow at me. “Everything?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Cooper. Seriously, do you think about my sister with that brain?” Men. Need I say more?

He grinned slightly wolfishly. “Actually I do. But that's beside the point. Was Melanie Antoine's lover?”

“I can't say what they are and aren't to each other now, but I don't think she was Antoine's lover when Antoine and I were married.” I suspected it wasn't for lack of trying on her part, but that was another story. I also suspected that Melanie had had something to do with the last big fight Antoine and I had. She had been the assistant who packed up everything in our hotel room in Minneapolis while I was seeing a play at the Guthrie and whisked Antoine off to a last-minute TV spot in Florida, leaving me behind without even a change of underpants in Minnesota in January.

But I wasn't bitter. Not me.

“What do you know about her personal life?” Dan asked.

I leaned back and shut my eyes, but nothing much came to me. “Not a whole lot,” I said, straightening up and looking
at Dan. “I think there was a boyfriend in the picture back in the day, but that was over two years ago now. They could have broken up or gotten married. I wouldn't exactly be on the list of people Melanie would have notified about it. She wasn't wearing a ring, if that helps any.”

“Yeah. I see your point.” Dan chewed on the end of his pen. “Let's talk about the crime scene.”

I took a big gulp of my tea. I didn't want to think too hard about the crime scene. It was bad enough as it was. The fact that it brought back memories of another time I'd had to describe a crime scene to Dan didn't help. The last time it had been my dear friend and mentor Coco Bittles who had lain dead at the center of the scene. I still saw her lifeless body slumped against her antique credenza as I fell asleep some nights. I knew he had to do his job, though. “Okay.”

He touched my hand lightly. He knew this was hard for me. “Tell me about when you first entered the room.”

“The door swung open on its own when I knocked.” I shut my eyes to try to picture it all. “The room was kind of a mess. She had clothes strewn across the couch and bed and shoes all over the floor.”

The bed had been made, too. I tried to picture the clothes on it. Dresses. Some jeans with a silky top. My head came up. “Dress-up clothes. Not everyday clothes. Like maybe she was getting ready for a date or something.” My hand flew to my mouth. “Do you mean she was lying there dead in that tub all night?”

Dan's lips tightened. “I have to wait for the medical examiner to make that determination, Rebecca. She may have been, though.”

Poor Melanie. Floating like that all night, waiting for someone to find her. I tried to choke back a sob and made a weird little whimpering sound instead.

“You okay?” Dan asked. “Do you need a break?”

I shook my head. It would be better to get this over with. Then maybe I wouldn't have to think about poor Melanie floating in the bathtub like an extra poached egg no one needed for eggs Benedict. “What else do you want to know?”

“Did you see anyone in the hallway or the elevator as you were going up to her room?” His pen was poised over the notepad.

“No.” I was sorry to disappoint him, but there didn't seem to be much point in making up sinister strangers hiding in stairwells.

“In the lobby?” He sounded hopeful.

I was about to shoot that down when I remembered something. “I think I saw Lucy coming in here, into the café.”

“Lucy?” Dan arched a brow at me.

“One of the production assistants. They're all staying here at the hotel.” Hardly significant, but he asked. A television show employee getting coffee in the morning didn't seem like it would be a big break.

“Did you touch anything at the crime scene?” Dan asked, looking at me pointedly.

I'd known this question was coming. I'd known what I was—or more to the point, wasn't—supposed to do. After all, hadn't I been yelled at enough for straightening Coco's skirt after she died so the entire town wouldn't see her knickers? It couldn't be helped, though. Only a woman who did not have the milk of human kindness in her latte could have left Melanie like that, floating naked in the tub to be ogled and photographed and gossiped about. “I covered her with a towel.” I said it really softly in the hopes that Dan would let it go quietly.

I was disappointed. He slapped the table so hard our mugs jumped. Coffee and Earl Grey sloshed all over the
fake wood. “I knew it! The second I saw that towel I knew it. It's a crime scene, Rebecca. A. Crime. Scene. You're not supposed to touch anything. You know that.”

“I wanted to grant her that much dignity. Lord knows she won't have much else.” I grabbed some napkins to soak up the spills. “No woman could have left her uncovered.”

“You said the same thing about Coco.” His lips were set in a grim line.

I shrugged. “The circumstances were similar in a lot of ways.”

He shook his head. “Did you touch anything else?” he asked.

“Nothing.” I thought back over my trip through the hotel room. “Definitely nothing.”

Dan made a note. “Did you notice anything else? Anything out of the ordinary? Anything that didn't seem quite right?”

Like it or not, every time I shut my eyes, the whole scene flooded back in high relief, every detail distinct and sharp. Melanie. The bathtub. The bathmat. The towels. The blow-dryer.