Wedding Cake Murder (42 page)

“Thanks, Dick.” Hannah got up from her stool, said good-bye to the Pretty Girl conventioneers, and followed Dick to the lobby. When they got there he pointed to a couch in the far corner, away from anyone who could hear them, and Hannah took a seat.

“It was Rodney Paloma,” Dick said.

“Rodney ordered that expensive wine from room service?”

“That’s right. The call came in at midnight. According to room service records, Rodney answered the door himself and asked the girl who delivered it not to open it, but to leave the wine opener with him.”

“And she did?”

“Yes. We don’t usually do that, but she said he gave her a ten-dollar tip and she figured she could replace the corkscrew if he didn’t return it and still keep at least half of the tip for herself.”

“Smart girl,” Hannah said.

“Yes. We tell our staff that the guest is always right, even if they’re dead wrong. Lucy’s very good at following the rules and she had this one covered. She went back to his room later and retrieved the opener. Rodney wasn’t there and his bed hadn’t been slept in. Lucy assumed that he’d taken the wine somewhere to drink it with friends.”

“What time was this?” Hannah asked.

“A little after two in the morning. Lucy said she walked through the lobby on her way downstairs for her break, and Rodney wasn’t there. She presumed that he must have taken the wine to someone else’s room and he was still there.”

It took a moment for the information Dick had given her to register in Hannah’s mind. When it did, Hannah came close to gasping as the puzzle pieces twisted and turned, and then clicked into place. She gave Dick a smile. “Thanks, Dick. There’s just one more thing. Is the back door you use for deliveries locked at night?”

“It’s not locked, but it’s automatically alarmed from seven at night until six in the morning.”

“So if anyone uses it during those hours, the alarm goes off?”

“Yes, unless they know the code to disarm the alarm.”

“How about the kitchen staff? Do they know the code?”

“No. We don’t give it to them. When they leave for the night, they deposit any waste in the Dumpster in the hallway by the back door and the garbage service collects it every night.”

“But doesn’t someone have to wheel the Dumpster out to the parking lot?”

Dick shook his head. “The garbage service has the code. They load the Dumpsters in the parking lot first, and then they punch in the code and get the one in the hallway outside the kitchen.”

“How many people have the code?”

“Only four. There’s the garbage service, Sally, the maintenance man, and me. That’s it.”

“But how about the other delivery men? Don’t they have it?”

“No. We don’t get deliveries at night. They all come during the day when the alarm is off.” Dick paused to smile at her. “Are you planning to open a restaurant, Hannah?”

“No!” Hannah was shocked. “Of course not, Dick. I’ll leave that up to the professionals like you and Sally.”

“Okay. If you’re not planning to open a restaurant, all these questions must have something to do with Chef Duquesne’s murder.”

“They may,” Hannah admitted, “but right now I’m just gathering information and hoping it’ll all fall into place for me.”

“It will. You’re good at this, Hannah. And nobody’s more eager than I am to get that killer behind bars. The fact that it happened out here is frightening. For all we know, the killer may still be here.”

“That’s a possibility,” Hannah admitted.

Dick glanced at his watch. “Do you need anything else, Hannah?”

“Not right now. Thanks, Dick. Tell Sally I’ll see her at the church. Grandma Knudson said she’s planning to have coffee and cookies in the basement after the service, and then everyone will drive out here for the reception.”

“We’ll be ready. Happy wedding, Hannah.”

“Thank you. Just one other thing, Dick. Rodney Paloma’s still here, isn’t he?”

“He’s here. Rodney’s not checking out until early tomorrow. All the contestants are coming to your wedding. And every one of them has baked a dessert for Sally’s dessert table.”

“Wonderful! You don’t happen to know where Rodney is right now, do you?”

“Actually, I do. He went out for a walk by the lake and he ought to be back pretty soon. He said he was going to come in the back way so I told him about the automatic alarm on the door. He said he’d be back by the time it activated.”

“Then he’s coming in the back way?”

“Yes. And he said he’s going straight in the kitchen to check on his coconut cream pies. He just baked them this afternoon and he wanted to make sure they were properly chilled in time for Sally to put them out on your dessert table.”

Chapter Thirty-one

L
uckily, she’d brought her key. Hannah sat in Sally’s kitchen, staring at the clock on the wall. The kitchen staff had gone and there was nothing to do but wait. They’d done all the prep work and they would come back at eight to start preparing the reception dinner, which would be served at ten in the evening.

She wished she could bake. It would help to pass the time. But Sally’s kitchen was spotlessly clean, since the staff had readied it for the wedding reception. There was nothing to do but sit here and wait. She’d have to leave by seven-thirty at the latest to be at the church in time to get dressed for her wedding. Dick had told her that Rodney would be back before the automatic alarm activated on the back door at seven. There was plenty of time to catch him when he came into the kitchen to check his pie.

While she was waiting, Hannah reviewed what she knew about the murder case. The suspects who had strong motives were already eliminated. Every one of them had an alibi. And the genetic marker on the hair Doc had found hadn’t turned out to be the important clue, now that Brooke had revealed that she was Chef Duquesne’s daughter. When they’d met with Loren at the breakfast buffet, he’d given Brooke an alibi.

Hannah was out of both motives and suspects. That meant no one with an ax to grind was left, at least no one that Hannah had discovered. There was only one thing that made her slightly suspicious, one thing that didn’t fit the pattern. That was why she’d stayed to talk to Rodney.

Although she really couldn’t think of a possible motive, Hannah knew that Rodney had lied to her about going for a drive on the night that Chef Duquesne was murdered and coming back in through the door. Rodney didn’t have the code to the door. Why had he bothered to lie about something like that to her? It was almost as if he had tried to provide himself with an alibi, and he wasn’t even on her suspect list!

Hannah drew the murder book from her purse and reviewed the list. Everyone on it had an alibi for the time of the murder. There was only one name remaining and that wasn’t even a real person. As always, when she wrote notes to herself on a murder case, she added that mythical suspect. It was
Unidentified Suspect with an Unknown Motive
.

Hannah glanced at the clock. It was almost time to do something to shake things up. She’d done everything according to the guidelines in Mike’s detective manuals. She’d eliminated all the reasonable suspects who could have had a motive for killing Chef Duquesne. And since that hadn’t shown any positive results, she’d decided to think outside the box, to concentrate on someone previously unsuspected who had done something that appeared to be totally unnecessary to provide himself with an alibi. This was why she was sitting in Sally’s kitchen at the Lake Eden Inn, watching the minutes tick by on the eve of her wedding, and waiting for Rodney Paloma.

“Hannah!” Rodney came in the kitchen door and stopped short when he saw Hannah. “I thought you were getting married!”

“I am.” Hannah glanced at the clock. It was one minute before seven, and she had thirty minutes to clear this up with Rodney. “Why did you lie to me?”

“Lie to you?” Rodney looked genuinely confused. “About what?”

“About going for a drive on the night that Chef Duquesne was murdered. You didn’t go for a drive at all, and you certainly didn’t come in the back way. The reason you got back to your room so late was because you killed him!”

Mistake!
Hannah’s mind shouted. Rodney was staring at her with narrowed eyes, and Hannah felt chills run up and down her spine. His eyes were trained on her like a bird of prey that had just spotted a field mouse, and they were as cold and hard as lumps of coal in the belly of a mine shaft. Hannah moved back a step, involuntarily, and shivered in dread.

“He did not deserve to live!” Rodney said, and his words were icy as his eyes.

“What did he do to you?” Hannah asked, terribly afraid, but desperately attempting to maintain a conversational tone. “I agree that he was not a nice man.” And all the while she spoke, her mind was racing and her eyes scanned the room for something she could use to defend herself.

“Not nice? Not
nice
?!” Rodney gave a snort of derision. “He was the very essence of evil. He didn’t care how many lives he ruined by his own self-indulgence. He killed my mother!”

“He killed your mother?” Hannah hoped she sounded reasonable, even though she was afraid that Rodney had slipped from the brink of sanity into the abyss of madness. “How did he do that?”

“She tried so hard to please him, and every time she tried, he told her she just wasn’t good enough. If he’d thought she wasn’t good enough, he should have fired her. At least then she would have had a chance to start over in some place that she was appreciated. But he didn’t do that. He wanted to control her like a puppet master. He wanted to pull the strings and watch her jump.”

“Your mother worked for Chef Duquesne?”

“She worked for the
devil
!” Rodney paused to take a breath. “He was the devil incarnate! And she couldn’t quit because of me. She was alone, and her paycheck was the only thing that kept us alive. It was just enough so we couldn’t get welfare and so little that we fell behind every month. We scrimped and saved, but we just kept falling further and further behind. But the bills kept piling up until there was no way out, but I never knew! I was just a boy and she kept it from me. She did it to
protect
me! She was living in hell, and I never knew it!”

“You said Chef Duquesne killed your mother?” Hannah asked, hoping that the memory of that sad time would distract him enough so that he wouldn’t notice that she was exploring the shelves under the counter. Using her fingers and feeling around for something that she could use to keep him from turning on her. There was no doubt in Hannah’s mind that he would try to kill her. He was telling her why he’d committed murder. After he finished, he couldn’t let her live to tell anyone else.

“I was just a kid,” Rodney repeated. “I didn’t know she was sick. I thought she was just tired,” Rodney said. “She was always working, every minute of every day while I was in school. She’d leave food for me and she taught me how to fix it in the toaster oven she’d found in a thrift store. But there were nights when she didn’t get home from the restaurant until I’d gone to bed.”

As Rodney told the story, Hannah took a chance and pulled out a bowl that was filled with something. She could hear it slosh. It was covered with plastic wrap and she carefully inched off a bit from the edge. Then she dipped her finger into the bowl and rubbed it against her palm. It was slick and smooth, lightly viscous, and that meant it was some kind of oil. It must be premeasured for something that Sally was planning to make for the wedding reception.

“I remember how thin she was. When she held me, her arms were bony. I noticed, but I didn’t notice, not really. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Hannah responded quickly. This was a good sign. He was no longer just telling a story. He was interacting with her now. “Did Chef Duquesne know that she was sick?”

“If he did, he didn’t care. He just made her work longer and longer and told her that what she baked wasn’t any good. I could hear her crying in the night.”

Hannah’s heart went out to Rodney, and she had to remind herself that he was a dangerous killer. If she let sympathy get in the way of her determination to stay alive, she’d never walk down the aisle in her beautiful wedding gown. She’d never hear Reverend Bob pronounce them man and wife, never dance with Ross at their wedding reception, and never see the man she loved again!

New determination filled her. Hannah lifted the bowl and held it in one hand. It was heavy, but that was all to the good. She wasn’t quite sure how she would use it, but somehow she would.

“One night she baked a cake,” Rodney went on, plagued by his memories of the past. “She was very excited about it and she even copied the recipe for me. It was something that she’d been practicing after work at the restaurant every night. She told me that he was bound to like it and to praise her for her work when he tasted it. When he did, she’d ask him for a raise and he’d give it to her because he’d be so impressed with her cake.”

Suddenly it all came together and Hannah knew what had driven Rodney Paloma to murder. “The candied violet cake,” she said.

“Yes. Very smart, Hannah. But tonight you were too smart for your own good. I would have been gone tomorrow and no one would ever have figured it out.”

“But you
won
that night! We tied for first place. Chef Duquesne must have liked your mother’s cake.”

“Oh, he did! But that was only a partial vindication. It was for me because I made her cake. And it was for her because he had to admit that it was superlative. But he
still
had to answer for the fact that he had killed her!”

“Yes,” Hannah said, taking a deep breath. “I can see that.”

“Of course you can.” Rodney dismissed it. “I ordered a special bottle of wine, one that I knew he liked, and I found him right here in the kitchen. I opened the wine and poured it, and then I said I had a toast to make. And I toasted my mother and told him that it was her cake!”

“What did he say?” Hannah asked as she inched off a little more of the plastic wrap. Over half of the circumference of the bowl was now exposed.