A Catered Fourth of July (6 page)

Brandon laughed. “That would be everyone.”

“I think we need to be a tad more selective,” Bernie said.

“Give him the list,” Libby told Bernie.

“I am giving him the list,” Bernie shot back. “Jeez.” She took out the list that she, her sister, her dad, and Clyde had compiled earlier in the evening and handed it to Brandon. “We're concentrating on these people. We're convinced that somewhere in here is the person who wanted Jack Devlin dead.”

“Or maimed,” Libby said.

“What difference does it make? No matter what the intention was, the result was the same,” Bernie snapped. “A dead Jack Devlin.”

Libby put up both her hands. “So-r-ry.”

“What do you want me to do with this?” Brandon asked, waving the paper in the air.

“I want you to tell me who you think the most likely candidates are,” Bernie told him.

“You want me to rank them or something?” Brandon inquired.

Bernie nodded. “That's exactly what I want you to do.”

“What if these people don't pan out?” Marvin asked.

“Then we'll broaden our search,” Libby informed him.

Marvin drummed his fingers on the bar. “To whom?”

Libby noticed that he was beginning to slur his words. “To the other people who were there.”

Brandon drank the rest of his soda. “Why are you asking
me
to do this?”

Bernie laughed. “Simple. Because you know everything that goes on in this town.”

Brandon sniffed. “You're saying that I'm the gossip king?”

“No, Brandon. I'm saying you're a bartender and bartenders, like hairdressers, know everything.”

“It's true. I do.” He took a pen from the side of the register and began putting numbers next to names. “This is kind of fun,” he told Bernie and Libby when he was through.

Marvin looked woeful. He hiccupped again. “I don't feel so well,” he mumbled.

“Somehow, I'm not surprised,” Libby told him. “What did you have to eat today besides the pretzels?”

Marvin looked at her. “Not much,” he managed to get out before he did a face plant onto the bar.

Brandon looked at Marvin and shook his head. “I haven't seen one of those for quite a while.”

“Me either,” Bernie said.

Brandon pointed to Marvin who was lying there with his mouth open. “I guess he doesn't have much of a tolerance for alcohol.”

“Obviously,” Libby said.

Marvin began to snore. Loudly.

“I'll tell you one thing,” Brandon said. “He's not going to be a happy camper when he wakes up tomorrow morning.”

“On that,” Bernie said, “I think we all can agree.”

“And,” Brandon added, stating the obvious, “he's not going to be fun to carry out and get into his car.”

B
y five o'clock the next morning the temperature had already climbed to seventy degrees. The air-conditioning was going full bore in the kitchen of A Little Taste of Heaven, but it was no match for the heat the ovens were throwing off. Even the fans Bernie had set up weren't having much of an effect. They were just moving the hot air around. Both Libby and Bernie were dressed in shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops, but that wasn't helping, either.

“I'm going to get heat stroke and die,” Libby moaned as she rolled out the pie crusts for the lemon meringue pies she was making.

“You can do that after you finish the pies,” Bernie informed her while she measured out ingredients for the red velvet cupcakes they were featuring that day.

“Thanks.” Libby took a sip of the iced coffee she'd made the night before.

Bernie paused to pin a stray lock of hair off her neck. “That's me, compassionate to a fault. By the way, have you thought of getting a pedicure? It
is
the summer and you
are
wearing sandals.”

Libby frowned. “I thought we agreed that my feet were not up for discussion. I don't like nail polish on them.”

“But they look so naked.”

“And yours look so . . . so . . .”

“Good.” At the moment, Bernie was wearing green nail polish with blue tips.

“Not the word I was going to use.” Libby totally changed the topic, going off on a food tangent because it was just too early in the morning to argue. “I've been thinking. Maybe we should sell ice cream or frozen yogurt.”

“Frozen yogurt is the new big deal,” Bernie reflected. “It would give us another income stream. Especially if weather like this becomes the new norm.”

Libby looked up as she finished her first pie crust and went on to her second.
Only ten more to go,
she thought. For some reason, lemon meringue and chiffon pies of various kinds were turning out to be their best sellers this summer. Maybe it was a retro thing, since those kind of pies were particularly popular in the fifties. Or a comfort food thing. The dessert equivalent of meatloaf, so to speak. Or perhaps they were a hot weather thing, because they were light and refreshing.

In any case, Libby wasn't complaining because the chiffon pies were easy to make, their ingredients were cheap, and their profit margins were large. The pie crusts were baked blind, cooled, and then filled with a variety of flavors.

She rolled the portion of pie dough she'd been working on into a circle. “We could always rent one of those frozen yogurt machines with an option to buy,” she suggested as she transferred the dough to the waiting pie pan, patted it down, and began to crimp the edges. She loved the way the pie dough felt like velvet underneath her fingers.

“Then we'd have to break it down and clean it every night.” Bernie added a stream of cocoa powder to the contents of the mixer bowl. Red velvet cake was a Southern thing that had suddenly become popular in the northern states. “Remember. All those little tubes have to be cleaned with brushes. Or have you forgotten?”

Libby wrinkled her nose. “God, what was I thinking? How could I forget?”

“Probably because you repressed it.”

“I think you're right.”

Libby's memories of working at the frozen custard stand in the Catskills were not good. Aside from having two sex-crazed coworkers who insisted on indulging in that activity every time they got a break—unsettling since she never knew where she was going to come across them—it had taken her the better part of two hours every evening to dissemble, clean, and reassemble the custard machine. Eventually, she'd broken one of the little tubes and gotten herself fired—which had been fine with her.

“Ice cream would be better,” Bernie continued, thinking out loud. “We'd just need a larger freezer and cooler.” Her voice gathered enthusiasm as she went on. “We could do all local fruit and maybe a few exotics like vanilla with black pepper or lavender and cardamom or avocado ice cream.”

Libby smiled. She liked the idea. “I heard the pizza place in the strip mall near town is selling their freezer. Someone said they'd be willing to take two hundred for it.”

Bernie nodded. “Not bad. We could sell ice cream for—” She stopped. Price point calculations had never been her thing.

“Give me a sec to figure it out,” Libby said, being the better of the two at that particular task. Her lips started moving, but no sound came out as she did the arithmetic in her head. “Ballpark, I think we could sell the ice cream for two-fifty for a single scoop, three dollars for a double.”

“Including the cones?”

“They can't be more than a nickel each. And I'm being generous.”

Bernie nodded. “That would work. We'd be undercutting Schneider's by a nickel a scoop.” Schneider's was the only place in town at the moment that sold homemade ice cream.

“Always a good thing. We could do sorbets as well.”

“We should talk to Stonewall Dairies,” Bernie suggested, “and see if they can give us a deal on milk and cream.”

“I'll call them later today,” Libby promised.

The sisters worked in silence for the next couple minutes. When Libby was done with the last of the pies and had them all safely secured in the oven, she poured herself a second cup of coffee and perched on one of the kitchen stools. “I've been thinking,” she began as she stirred a lump of raw sugar into her coffee.

Bernie looked up from putting frilly cupcake papers into muffin tins. “Always a dangerous occupation,” she cracked.

Libby ignored her and continued on with what she'd been about to say. “Do you believe that Rick Evans really didn't care that his wife was sleeping with Jack Devlin?”

“No,” Bernie promptly replied. “I've never met a guy who didn't care about something like that. Even the ones who don't like having sex, care. It's a control thing.”

Libby raised an eyebrow. “Is there such a thing as a man who doesn't like sex?”

Bernie laughed. “I think there might be one or two out there. Not our men of course, but I know that Brandon would leave me if I fooled around.”

Libby reached over, snatched one of the strawberries that was about to become part of a strawberry chiffon pie, and ate it. “So would Marvin.”

“Rick Evans is a Type A control freak. If Gail did something like that, he'd be livid.” Bernie began pouring the batter into the paper cups. On three occasions, she had placed the paper cups on baking sheets instead of in muffin tins and the batter had ended up spilling over the sheets and onto the counters. Definitely not worth the cleanup. Using the muffin tins was a little slower, but definitely safer. And faster in the end. It was a tortoise and hare kind of thing.

“Maybe they really do have an open marriage,” Libby suggested while she handed Bernie a strawberry. “Maybe Rick was telling the truth down at the station. Or maybe he just likes to watch. Maybe he's a voyeur.”

“Maybe,” Bernie said, plucking the stem out with her fingernails and plopping the berry into her mouth. “But this is Longely, gossip capital of the world. If he and his wife were doing that, we would have heard. But I haven't heard a hint of anything like that. A whisper. Anything at all. Have you?”

“Nope.”

Bernie ate another strawberry. “Neither has Brandon. So there you go.”

“It doesn't mean it's not happening,” Libby objected.

“True. But it makes it more likely that it isn't.”

“Okay then,” Libby continued. “We come to Gail. Do you believe that she wasn't furious when she found out that Jack Devlin was stepping out on her with Juno Grisham, her arch nemesis?”

“Who also happened to conveniently be there when Devlin was killed,” Bernie pointed out.

“Except she was on the hill, which is nowhere near where the reenactment took place. We saw her there, remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Bernie replied. “She was quite the spectacle with those wings.”

“She had a good motive, but the husbands of those two women had better ones. And what about David Nancy? His wife—” Libby paused because she couldn't remember her name.

Bernie supplied the name. “Cora. I'm sure he wasn't too pleased either.”

“If he knew.”

“True.” Bernie went over to the refrigerator and poured herself a cup of iced coffee. “The husbands are usually the last to know, although given the level of gossip in this town that's probably not true.” She shook her head. “Just thinking about who did what with whom is giving me a headache. I think we're going to need a flowchart.”

“I think you may be be right. I'll tell you one thing. These people have way too much free time.”

Bernie poured some heavy cream into her coffee and watched the swirls the cream made as it turned the black liquid a pleasing shade of tan. It was so much better than adding skimmed milk to coffee. The skimmed milk turned the coffee an unappetizing shade of gray. Really. In the scheme of things what did fifty calories matter? It was worth it for the taste it imparted.

“So what about Gail?” Libby asked, getting back to her original question. “Do we like her for Devlin's murder?”

“Are we calling it murder now?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Last night you said you weren't sure.”

“I didn't say that.”

Bernie snorted. “You most certainly did.”

“I was just exploring possibilities,” Libby retorted. “But the more I think about it the more I think that, for once, the DA is right.”

“Me, too.” Bernie tapped her nails on the counter. “So let's talk about Gail, Rick Evans' charming wife.” She took another sip of her coffee, put the cup down, finished pouring the batter into the cups, and put the muffin tins in the oven. She carried the empty bowl over to the sink and rinsed it out so she could make the bittersweet chocolate frosting she was going to top the cupcakes with.

“Yeah, she is a piece of work.” Libby remembered the time she'd seen Gail lash out at the checkout girl in the local hardware store when the store didn't have what she'd needed.

“She does not take losing well,” Bernie said slowly. “Not well at all. Remember when she lost the school election for class president and put a snake in Patti Jensen's locker and Patti fainted? Gail claimed it was an accident. Like that snake just
happened
to find its way in there. Like the musket just
happened
to explode.”

“I'll never forget that one,” Libby exclaimed. “I had the locker two doors down.”

Bernie smiled. “That was all you talked about for weeks. Somehow I don't think Gail's changed. I think she's just gotten better at hiding it.”

“As do we all. One thing is for sure. She can't have taken it well. Losing Devlin to Juno, I mean.”

Bernie snorted. “Now that's an understatement if I ever heard one. Gail has hated Juno ever since she was crowned Miss Apple Queen at the Longely Apple Festival.”

Libby wrinkled her nose. “But Gail had to know Devlin was a well–known philanderer.”

“Maybe that was part of Devlin's appeal. Philanderer.” Bernie rolled the word around in her mouth. “The word reminds me of the word
philatelist
. Stamp collector,” she explained, seeing Libby's puzzled expression. “One collects women while the other collects stamps. One has a black book and the other has an album.”

Libby shook her head. Sometimes she didn't understand her sister. “Surely, given his reputation, Gail couldn't have been surprised when Devlin went off with someone else.”

Bernie dried the mixing bowl, set it on its stand, and started measuring out the ingredients for the frosting. “You know what they say about denial being a river in Egypt. Anyway, knowing Gail, she would have thought she was so wonderful that Jack would stay with her forever. Or at least until
she
threw him out.”

“Yes. She'd definitely want to be the one doing the leaving,” Libby agreed.

“Don't we all.” Bernie took the butter out of the cooler so it would have time to soften then got out the sugar, vanilla, dark chocolate, and coffee extract.

“Yes, we do. But some of us feel more of a need than others.”

Bernie put her hands on her lower back and stretched. She'd slept wrong the night before and her lower back was killing her. “Maybe Rick and Gail Evans worked together to kill Jack. Each of them does have a motive.”

Libby raised an eyebrow. “Interesting theory. The family that kills together, stays together? An exercise in family bonding?”

“Well, it is possible. It has been known to happen. Look at Bonnie and Clyde.”

“I don't think they were married.”

“The Macbeths?”

Libby groaned. “Just stop.”

“All I'm saying is that what I suggested is within the realm of possibility.”

“Agreed. However there is one small glitch. Gail wasn't there.”

“A mere detail,” Bernie said.

“However, Rick Evans was there, putting on quite the performance, accusing Marvin the way he did.”

“Indeed he did. It's like he wanted people to forget that
he
was the person who developed the idea for the reenactment.
He
was the person who knew all about the arrangements.”

“And he was the person who arranged for the costumes,” Libby said.

Bernie went over to the counter and turned on the radio. Music helped her focus. “We should talk to Rick and Gail.”

“Why both of them?” Libby asked as the timer went off for the pies.

“Because maybe Gail knows something.”

Libby snorted. “She's not going to tell us.”

“She might if she's approached in a low-key informal way.”

Libby got up, turned the oven off, took the pie crusts out of the oven, and lined them up on the cooling racks. “Perfect,” she said, looking at the golden, flaky crusts.