Murder, Money & Marzipan (3 page)

The baker in the next booth, Mikela, leaned across the table separating the booths. “The police came by asking us all where we were and if anyone could confirm we were in our rooms. They said they could tell if anyone left because of the electronic room keys. The doors record when they are opened and closed. The only thing is, if the room door is opened, they don’t know
who
left.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t think anyone in the competition is too upset about Saunders, but I hate to think one of us killed her.”

Lexy felt a chill at the young woman’s words. The three woman looked around the stadium at the other bakers.
Could one of them be a cold-blooded killer?

Mikela leaned in closer to Lexy and Corinne. “I didn’t say too much to the police - none of us really want to because we’re afraid of getting the competition closed down, but I did notice Judge Saunders was acting kind of funny.”

Lexy felt her heart beat pick up speed. “Funny how?”

“She was acting kind of secretive - more so than usual. I saw her getting chummy in the corner with Evan Westmore a few times.”
 

“Evan Westmore - the event coordinator?” Corinne made a sour face. “Who would want to get chummy with him?”

Lexy and Mikela chuckled. Westmore wasn’t exactly handsome. He was actually rather dowdy - a short, stubby man with a bad attitude. Given Saunders’s own nasty attitude, Lexy thought they might have made a perfect match.

“Hey,
 
now that you mention it, I did notice she had some expensive new shoes and clothes. I didn’t realize competition judges got paid so much.”

“Did you see the Coach purse she had? I wondered why she seemed to be taking pains with her appearance. Maybe she was having an affair with Westmore?”

Lexy opened her mouth, pointed her finger at her throat, and made gagging noises causing the other two to collapse into a fit of giggles.
 

The laughter caught the attention of Janice, one of the other bakers, who came over to join them.

“We were just talking about Judge Saunders’s murder,” Corinne offered.

Janice raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, the police have been all over asking questions.”
 
She looked around the room, then stepped closer to the other women. “Some I’d rather not answer.”

“Oh?” Lexy asked. “Like what?”

“They were asking us if we were in our rooms all night, if we had anyone in there, and what time we left.”

“Right, they asked all of us.”

“Well, I don’t really like my roommate, but I don’t want to be a tattle-tale either.”
 

“Who is your roommate?”

“Aurea Pearce.”
 

Lexy, Mikela and Corinne groaned in sympathy. No one liked Aurea, and to be saddled with her as a roommate seemed cruel.
 

“What do you know that you didn’t want to tell them?” Lexy asked.

Janice looked down at the floor. “They asked me to verify what time Aurea and I left the room in the morning. Apparently she had told them she left at 5 am. I told them I got up at 5:30 and left around 6 and that Aurea had left before me.”

“That sounds about right., I don’t see the problem.” Corinne said wrinkling her brows together.

Janice bit her lower lip. “Aurea made a lot of noise when she got up and it woke me. I looked at the clock when she left and it wasn’t 5 am like she said…it was 3:25 am - shortly before Saunders was murdered.”

###

“How long until you can get all these surveillance tapes looked at?” Nik perched herself on the edge of Detective Jake Ryan’s desk.

“Days, boss.” He shrugged up at her. “The bakers’ rooms are on all different floors and not all of them are staying in the hotel. It’s gonna take a long time.”

Nik chewed on an already stubby thumb-nail. They had questioned all the bakers in the competition and they were proving to be a tight lipped bunch.

“It’s too bad they don’t have cameras right in Bakery Battles Stadium. That would make our jobs a lot easier,” Nik said wistfully.

“That’s for sure. Unfortunately, the contestants wouldn’t hear of it. They didn’t want any cameras spying on their secret recipes.”
 

Nik nodded. “Well, you know how I love a challenge. What do we have so far?”

Jake hit a few keys on the keyboard, then swung his monitor in her direction. “We have a dead bakery contest judge - TOD about 4 am. We have a bunch of contestants who hated her - they might all have had a motive. We’ve been able to verify that about half of them were in their rooms at the time of death so they can be ruled out. We have reports that the judge and her husband were fighting quite loudly the day before. That’s about it.”

“The husband…does he have an alibi?”

Jake shook his head. “He was in their room alone at the time of the murder. He did seem upset when we first informed him of his wife’s death, but when I went back to question him later, he was in the casino drinking and didn’t seem upset at all. He
did
say they were having troubles, but to tell you the truth he was so drunk it was hard to get anything concrete out of him. I have a note to go back and question him again.”

“What about Lexy Baker, the one who found the body? Saunders was strangled with her apron. Do you think she is involved?”
 
Nik remembered the call she had put into Jack Perillo to check up on Baker. She pulled out her cell phone. No messages.
Same old Jack, gets so involved in his cases he forgets to look at his messages
.

“I’m not sure about her,” Jake said. “She doesn’t have much of a motive, even though the evidence points to her. Someone could be trying to frame her, or it could be co-incidence. Murder is pretty serious; most people don’t kill someone over losing a contest…unless they have another reason.”

Nik glanced at her watch. “We need to get more answers before the trail gets cold. It’s too bad the contestants aren’t more forthcoming with their information.”

“They don’t want to do anything to get the contest shut down. Maybe we should threaten them with pulling the plug on the whole thing unless they start coming forward with what they know,.” Jake offered.

Nik screwed up one side of her face while she thought about it. It might work, but then again, it could also backfire on them. What they needed was a way to get them to open up…to gain some sort of an “in” with the bakers.
 

A sudden inspiration hit. She snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it!”

Jake raised his eyebrows for her to continue.

“The bakers won’t talk to
us
, but they will talk to
each other
, especially Lexy Baker. What if we could get close to her and let her do the work for us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Make friends with her, maybe feed her some information. Let her get the dirt from the other bakers. I’ve seen her snooping around - if she’s not the killer, then she might be able to lead us to whoever is.”

Jake chewed the end of his pencil. “That might work, but how do we get chummy with her?”

Nik looked down at Jake. His straight white teeth worked the end of his pencil. His baby-blue eyes stared up at her from his handsome, finely chiseled face. A face that exuded honesty and trust but that was dotted with just enough stubble to give him a roguish air.
What woman could resist a face like that?

“Not
we
, Detective Ryan -
you
.”

Chapter Five

Lexy leaned back against the pillows, stretching her legs out on the bed. Her hand absently patted the spot beside her where her dog, Sprinkles, would be lying if she were at home.

She missed Sprinkles. The little white poodle mix was a big part of her life but Lexy couldn’t bring her to Vegas so she had left the dog with Jack.
 

Jack!
 

She cringed, realizing he’d probably heard about the murder by now. She’d have to call him and downplay her role in it.
 

“…out anything interesting?” Nans’ question interrupted her thoughts.

“What?”
 
She looked over at the older woman sitting at the round table in their hotel room. Her iPad sat in front of her with the crossword puzzle and pencil next to it.

The room was a decent size with two queen beds. Lexy lay on the one nearest the table. She could see into the adjoining room through the open door. She and Cassie had rented two rooms so the three of them would have lots of space. In the next room, she could hear Cassie making showering noises which reminded her that she needed to hit the shower herself to wash off the days accumulation of flour and sugar.

“I asked if you had found out anything more downstairs - you were going to talk to the other bakers.” Nans raised her eyebrows at Lexy.

“Oh, right. Actually I found out something very interesting. I talked to Aurea’s roommate - she said Aurea wasn’t in the room at the time Judge Saunders was murdered.”

Nans’ eyes went wide. “That
is
interesting. Would she have a motive to kill Saunders?”

“Her good friend Grace Harvey is one of the replacement judges. If Grace takes Saunders’s spot, she might judge Aurea’s work more favorably and give her a better chance of winning. There’s a lot of money at stake.”

Nans tapped her lips with her pencil. “Murdering someone is a pretty drastic move to win a contest, even if the prize is $100,000 and a magazine spread. I think the killer must have had a more pressing motive.”

Nans’ iPad erupted in a sequence of beeps and rings making Lexy jump. “What’s that?”

“Oh, its FaceTime.” Nans looked down at the tablet. “Ida’s calling.”
 
She slid something on the screen, then peered down into it.

Ida’s voice blared out of the tiny tablet. “Good evening Mona. How are things in Vegas?”

Lexy sat up on the bed leaning forward so she could see the iPad. The wide screen was filled with a closeup of her grandmother’s friend and fellow amateur detective. The angle gave her face a somewhat distorted appearance magnifying her many wrinkles. Lexy stifled a giggle.
 

“Who’s that?”

“Lexy is here. Say hi.”
 
Nans held the iPad up toward Lexy.

“Hi, Ida.” Lexy waved.

“I hear you have another murder on your hands,” Ida said.

Lexy nodded. She could see the sparkle of excitement in Ida’s eyes on the screen. Ida, Nans and two of their friends delighted in solving murders and mysteries. They even had a name for themselves: the Ladies Detective Club.
 

The four of them lived in the Brooke Ridge Retirement Center and spent their days gathering clues and solving cases. The funny thing was, they rarely even left the complex because most of their detecting was done on their iPads. They’d been instrumental in helping Lexy solve a couple of murders she had inadvertently gotten involved in and even helped out the police department on a few cases.
 

Some women took up knitting in their golden years; the Ladies Detective Club liked to find killers and solve mysteries.

“Ruth found something interesting about your suspect…Aurea Pearce, was it?” Ida continued.

“Yes. Put her on.” Nans put the tablet back on the table.

Lexy heard a shuffling sound coming from the device. She saw the screen blur then fill with Ruth’s face.

“Hi Mona and Lexy,” she said. Without waiting for a return greeting, she got right down to business. “I did a background check on Aurea Pearce. It seems she has some money troubles.”

“Oh, really?”
 
Nans exchanged an eyebrow-raised look with Lexy.

“She’s maxed out on credit cards to the tune of $40,000 and is behind on house payments.”
 
The older woman leaned in closer, whispering into the iPad. “My sources tell me she has a gambling problem and may have taken out some unconventional loans.”
 

“Excellent. Good work,”
 
Nans said.
 

“A gambling problem?
 
Well she’s come to the right place,” Lexy said sarcastically, thinking that Las Vegas was the last place a person with a gambling problem should be.
 

Nans laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. But if she’s taken out unconventional loans, she might be getting pressure to pay them back quickly. Having a big win at the tables might save her from an undesirable fate.”

“Or stacking the deck in the bakery contest to ensure she wins the $100,000 grand prize,” Lexy pointed out.

“True,” Nans said. “We have other suspects to look into, though.”
 

“Helen is busy checking out the husband and looking into Judge Saunders’s background. I’ll call you back once we have something.”
 
Ruth said.

“OK, I’ll fill you in on what we’ve found here then too. Bye.” Nans pressed a button and the screen went blank.

She turned to Lexy, a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. “Well, I’d say we just found a more pressing reason for Aurea Pearce to want to tip the scales in favor of her winning the contest. Maybe even one that would justify murder.”

###

“Where are you off to tonight?” Lexy eyed her friend who was dressed in black leather pants, black leather ankle boots and a black T-shirt. Her pink tipped hair spiked up on top of her head like a birds plume.

“Poker tables,”
 
Cassie said, poking an earring into her ear to keep the five already there company. “You?”

“I’m going to play the slots. It will be nice to take a break from baking, but I’m not staying out late. I still have some finishing touches to put on those wedding cakes before the judging tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yep, I’ll be back early too. See you later then?”

Lexy nodded, watching Cassie shrug on a leather vest, then head out the door.

Assessing herself in the mirror she decided her faded jeans,
 
pink tank top, and pink-striped platforms were perfect for a relaxing evening at the slot machines. Her hair was still a little wet from her shower, so she piled it on top of her head in a messy swirl.

She applied a few swipes of makeup, then followed Cassie out the door.