Deadly Desserts (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 6) (4 page)

CHAPTER
8

I was sitting at one end of the
conference room table while Portia sat at the other, flipping through pages in
her Food & Wine Festival binder. It was nearly seven-thirty. Dina and her
team were still taking photographs and searching for evidence, but the building
had become hushed and tranquil since the other judges and Portia’s assistant
departed an hour earlier.

“I still have Lacy’s original
letter asking to be a judge,” Portia said in a soft, fragile voice. “It was
ages ago. She was new in town and…” A muffled sob interrupted the memory. “I
just can’t believe she’s gone, Kate.” She dabbed at her eyes with a knot of
wrinkly tissues. “And look at me! I’m a blubbering mess!”

“You’re not a mess, Portia. You were
Lacy’s good friend for many, many years.”

“I suppose,” she said. “Even though
we didn’t always get along, I loved her like a sister.”

“I think we all loved her,” I said.

“She’s one of the…” Portia glanced
down the length of the table and smiled sadly. “I guess I should say she
was
among the kindest women in town. Just thoughtful and pleasant. A few months
ago, when I had the most wretched head cold
ever
, Lacy fixed a special
batch of her chicken noodle soup for me. I swear to you, that soup made all the
difference in the world! I felt about ninety percent better after just one
bowl!”

I nodded, but didn’t say anything.
I’d been the recipient of the same generosity during the winter, so I knew from
experience that Lacy’s soup was a powerful remedy.

“Oh, now…” Portia clamped one hand
over her heart when she turned a page in the binder. “Isn’t she just the most
beautiful?”

She looked up, grinning from ear to
ear. “Did you ever see the picture that Lacy wanted us to use for the festival
publicity kit this year? You know, for the section about the judges?”

I shook my head. “No, but I hope
it’s better than the terrible photo I sent you.”

Portia’s face stiffened. “Oh,
c’mon, Kate! Didn’t your boyfriend take that?”

“No, I sent something that my sister
shot when we went hiking one Sunday.”

She motioned for me to join her at
the opposite end of the table. I got up from my chair, looped around the room
and sat beside her.

“See?” she said, pointing at a
large color print. “Isn’t she lovely?”

I looked at the image of Lacy
Orvane, radiant and relaxed. She was sitting beside a man I didn’t know at a
picnic table in what appeared to be a rustic location.

“This was from one of the summer
flings the bank threw for its employees,” Portia explained. “It was two years
ago, a lovely Sunday in June. We all went to Horsetooth Reservoir up near Fort
Collins.”

I nodded. “I remember the place. My
parents took Brody, Olivia and me there a few times when we were little.”

“It’s a wonderful spot for
families,” Portia said in a dreamy, faraway tone. “My grandfather took me and
my sister there every summer so mama and daddy could have a weekend alone.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Yes, it was. Just like my
grandfather.”

She ran one finger across the
photograph, tracing the arc of Lacy’s vibrant smile. Then she said, “I just
can’t believe any of this happened today, Kate. It was all so unnecessary. If
only she’d never started that horrible affair.”

I nodded, watching as she ran her
hand over the picture again. “It’s a huge shock. And a terrible tragedy.”

“And so incredibly pointless,”
Portia said. “I mean, why in the world did Lacy keep seeing such a selfish
man?”

I knew it was too soon to
speculate, so I let Portia talk for a few minutes. When she finished, I asked
if she knew who took the photograph.

“Who took the…” Her mouth was tight
and her eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious. Since you were there
that day, I thought—”

“I wasn’t there. Lacy gave me the
picture for festival publicity.”

“Oh, I must’ve misunderstood. I
could swear that you just said you went to Horsetooth Reservoir that day with
the group from the bank.”

The tension in her mouth relaxed.
“You should get your hearing checked, Kate. Why would I go to a bank picnic?”

I knew what I’d heard, but I also
realized that it wasn’t worth pursing. Instead, I asked Portia if she could
identify the man in the picture with Lacy.

“If I could…what?”

“The guy from the bank picnic,” I
said, pointing at the sun-splashed portrait of Lacy Orvane and a
thirtysomething man with silver-framed glasses, a pointy nose and curly hair.
“Do you know his name?”

“Oh,
that
little pecker?
That’s Danny Downer. He’s vice president of the bank.”

“Isn’t that odd,” I said. “I’ve
never noticed him before. As often as I go in there, you’d think I’d recognize
the face.”

Portia sneered at the photo. “I’m
not surprised,” she said. “He spends most of his time doing Nathaniel Craig’s
bidding. When you’re in the bank, Danny Downer is probably polishing the Big
Kahuna’s wingtips or something equally ridiculous.”

I chuckled at the name. “Danny
Downer?”

Portia grinned. “Oh, shoot, Kate!
That’s not his
real
name. That’s just what some folks in town call him
because he’s so morose and gloomy all the time. His older brother got all the
good looks and optimism in that family. The only thing Danny can do is run
around like Chicken Little. Know what I mean? ‘The sky is falling! The sky is
falling!’”

“Does Danny Downer have a negative
outlook on life?”

Portia gasped and laughed at the
same time. “Oh, heavens! If only! A negative outlook would be a huge
improvement. The guy is such a sad sack, moping around and muttering all the
time. It’s a miracle that Nathaniel Craig hired him to work at the bank in the
first place, let alone promote him to vice president.”

“Well, it seems like he and Lacy
got along okay,” I said. “At least, from the way they look in the picture.”

She studied the image again,
tracing the curve of Lacy’s smile with her finger.

“Could you email that to me?” I
asked.

Her eyes darted up. “This picture?”

I nodded. “I’d like to pass it
along to Dina Kincaid and Deputy Chief Walsh.”

“Hmmmm…” She shrugged, humming
softly. “I can do that, Kate.”

“If it’s not too much trouble,
okay?”

The humming ended abruptly and she
blinked away the haze from her eyes. “Oh, heavens! No trouble at all.” She
smiled at the photograph again before closing the binder. “And, you’re right,
Kate; they got along fine. Although it sometimes seemed that Lacy didn’t want
to get too close to him. He’s a needy sort of fellow, kind of clingy and
possessive.”

“I suppose that’s understandable. Especially
if you don’t have many friends and a woman as sweet as Lacy shows you some
consideration.”

“I guess so...” Portia’s voice
trailed off and she dabbed at her eyes. “To be honest, I don’t have anything
against Thomas.” She tapped the binder lightly with her nails. “That’s his real
name, by the way—Thomas Green. I shouldn’t have called him a little pecker.”

“Oh, it’s fine.” I gave her
shoulder a squeeze. “You’ve had quite a shock, Portia. If calling someone a
little pecker is the worst thing you do today, I wouldn’t give it too much
thought.”

CHAPTER
9

I was sprawled on my living room
sofa late that night when Zack came in from the kitchen with two bowls of
tomato soup on a tray along with a box of Triscuits and a bottle of wine.

“I’ll be right back with the
glasses,” he said.

I opened one eye. “Why bother?” I
moaned. “Just bring a funnel and I’ll be happy.”

He chuckled at the joke and put the
tray on the coffee table. When he returned a few seconds later, he knelt down
and gave me a long, passionate kiss.

“I’m really sorry about your
friend, Katie. I had to listen to your message a few times before it could sink
in.”

“Thanks, handsome.”

We kissed again, a soft and tender
moment that soothed the ache in my heart. When it ended, Zack asked how I was
feeling.

“I’m still in shock,” I said. “Ron
took Lacy to New Orleans six months ago to celebrate her thirty-first birthday.
It’ll take a long time to accept that she’s really gone.”

I held out my hands and he helped
me sit up. Then he joined me on the sofa and we enjoyed dinner in quiet
contemplation for a few minutes. As I sipped the wine and savored the simple
comfort of the meal, Zack said he wanted to ask a question.

“What’s that?” I replied.

“Can I ask your opinion?”

I smiled. “About the soup? It’s
absolutely delicious!”

“I wasn’t talking about that,” he
said. “I meant your opinion about Lacy.”

“Oh,
that
opinion.” An image
quickly flashed through my mind; my friend’s gaunt, slack-jawed face as she was
loaded into the ambulance earlier in the day. “Well,” I continued, “I’m
probably just as stunned as the rest of the judges. Lacy was the kind of person
that got along with everyone, even the grumpy grouches and crabby cranks.”

Zack smiled. “That’s what I thought,
but I heard a couple of reporters talking in the
Gazette
offices right
before I left for the day. One of them covers the police department, and she
heard that Dina’s investigating Lacy’s death as suspicious.”

“Unfortunately, that’s true. They suspect
someone put poison in the desserts and snacks that we were going to taste for
the festival.”

“Poison?”

“It hasn’t been definitively
confirmed, but that’s what came back in the initial toxicology report.”

“And it was in all of the food you
were supposed to sample?”

I nodded. “Everything they’ve
tested so far.”

Zack sipped his wine and nodded his
head slightly in the contemplative way he did when considering weighty
subjects.

“So that means…” He put down the
glass and turned on the seat to face me. “That means that
you
could’ve
died. Or Luigi. Or…” He squinted, frowning faintly. “I can’t remember who all
attended the meeting.”

“The usual suspects,” I said. “Plus
me. I’m the only new judge on the panel. Everyone else has done it before.”

He raised his eyebrows. “And so…”

“Oh, you were serious! I thought
you were just—”

“No,” he said, reaching over and
lightly pinching my arm. “I was actually interested, Katie. Who was there this
afternoon?”

“Okay, so it was Lacy, Becca,
Harley, Yvonne, Luigi, Portia, me, Pinky Newton and…well, Suzanne Craig was
supposed to be there, but she went out of town for a banking seminar. Portia
was so mad about it, too. I overheard her yelling at her assistant for allowing
one of the festival judges to miss the first tasting session.”

Zack frowned. “Wait a sec. What was
that about Suzanne?”

“She went out of town for work,” I
said again.

“When?”

I shrugged. “I think a couple of
days ago. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing. I mean, well…I could
swear that I saw her at the ATM on the corner of First and Rivington this
afternoon.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I mean, I
think
it was her. Gretchen sent me out at the last minute to take a quick portrait of
Herman Bright for the newspaper. His new insurance agency office is right next
to the ATM. Anyway, when I was framing the shot in front of his office, I had
to wait for someone to finish getting cash.”

“Why do you think it was Suzanne?”

“Because of the thing in her hair,”
he answered. “She’s the only woman I know in Crescent Creek who wears those
thick plastic headbands every day.”

I nodded. “It’s her trademark. Although
it could’ve just been some other woman who wears one, too.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I also saw her
arguing with a guy who looked a lot like Nathaniel Craig.”

“Her husband?”

He shrugged. “At least, I thought
it was him—same height, same hair color, glasses with silver frames. And he was
wearing one of those double-breasted green blazers the guys sometimes wear at
the bank.”

“Well, on a day like this, Suzanne
Craig’s whereabouts aren’t really that important,” I said. “Considering what
happened to Lacy.”

“And isn’t it possible that Portia
misunderstood her assistant’s message?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Portia was
livid. And she’s a stickler for details, so she would’ve checked it out herself
once she got word that Suzanne wasn’t going to be at the meeting. She also made
her assistant call Suzanne’s cell number and double check. Suzanne actually
answered and told the woman that she was in Seattle.”

Zack smirked. “Or else lying about
where she was.”

“Well, wherever she was, I’m sure
Suzanne’s ears are still ringing from the sound of Portia’s voice.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen Portia in full
anger mode before, and I would definitely
not
want to face her wrath
under any circumstances.”

“She can be a tough cookie,” I
agreed.

Zack howled. “A tough cookie?
C’mon, Katie! That woman makes Cruella de Vil look like Bambi. The last time I
saw her go ballistic was in the newspaper offices when she and Gretchen got
into it about an article in the
Gazette
.”

“What was it about?”

“The article?”

I nodded.

“The Aspen Food & Wine
Classic,” Zack said with a faint smirk. “Portia was all bent out of shape that
Gretchen thought Aspen’s event was superior to the one in Crescent Creek.”

I shrugged. “Poor, crazy Portia. No
matter what you’re talking about, if it originates in her brain then it’s
better, brighter and bigger than anything else.”

“Do you think she’s aware that the
Aspen Classic has been going for more than thirty years?”

“Doesn’t matter. Like I said, she’s
cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

While we enjoyed the rest of our
soup and a second glass of wine, I asked Zack about his upcoming trip to Santa
Fe. When he wasn’t working as a freelance photographer for the local
newspaper, he handled assignments from a wide range of clients—advertising
agencies, corporations and a handful of state agencies in the region. The trip
to New Mexico was a three-day excursion to shoot a catalog for a new hiking
boot company. When he heard the news about Lacy, he’d offered to see if the
client could postpone the project, but I’d insisted he honor the commitment.
The last thing I needed in addition to grieving the loss of my friend was guilt
associated with interfering in Zack’s career.

“I’ll keep my phone on if you need
to talk,” he said for the third time. “If there isn’t service where we’re
shooting, I’ll call you the second I get back to the hotel.”

When we finished our soup and
crackers a few minutes later, I collected the bowls and headed for the kitchen.
Zack jumped up and followed, insisting that he’d do the dishes so I could
relax.

“I’m okay, sweetie.” I deposited a
quick smooch on his cheek. “And I’m a strong woman. I’ll be fine as…” My voice
cracked and I felt my eyes fill with tears. “Oh, who am I kidding? I’m going to
miss her every day of every week.”

He surrounded me with a warm, solid
embrace and my head fell against his broad chest. We stood at the sink for a
long time, swaying slightly and letting the tenderness twine around us. When my
legs started to wobble, I pushed back, kissed him again and sent him into the
living room with instructions to get
Pitch Perfect 2
loaded into the DVD
player.

“Didn’t we see that one already?”
he asked, sounding slightly less than thrilled. “Not that I’m complaining or
anything.”

“That was
Pitch Perfect
,” I
said. “Aren’t you glad they made a sequel?”