Off the Books Page 5

  I reached the entrance to the service kitchen and pushed through the swinging door. “Chuck?” I called out. “Mr. Belmonte?”

  No answer. Huh? Belmonte should have arrived by now to start setting up.

  “Chuck?” I called again, making my way to the back of the kitchen and the large walk-in cooler.

  Still no answer. What was it about today? No one was where they were supposed to be. First Lynn and Jodi disappeared and now Belmonte and the handyman were MIA.

  “Chuck!” I called again, my toe hitting against something on the ground. There was a scraping sound, followed by a loud hollow pinging noise as a wrench I’d inadvertently kicked slid across the floor and banked off the bottom of a set of steel cabinets. “Ouch!” I cried, cringing from stubbing my toe.

  As I rounded the cabinet I noticed a lot of tools strewn across the floor: more wrenches, pliers, a drill, even one of those cordless, automatic nail gun things roofers always use. How careless, I thought. Someone could get easily get hurt. I bent over and picked a screwdriver off the floor as I headed toward the large steel door that accessed the walk-in fridge. Maybe Chuck was still working on the unit and couldn’t hear me through the insulated door.

  “Hey,” I said, opening the door and holding up the screwdriver, the cold air making me shiver. At least it seemed he’d been able to fix things. “Looks like you dropped your tools out …” And that was when I saw him. I gasped, one hand flying to my mouth.

  Chuck, the handyman, lay on the floor in a splattered mess of cake, blood, and buttercream frosting, a nail driven straight through his temple.

  Chapter 5

  I dropped the screwdriver and started backing up. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. Memories flooded my brain of deadly garden spades and lethal explosions and … I started to shiver all over. I’d seen too many dead bodies under various circumstances and now this? No wonder half the town’s people had dubbed me the local murder magnet.

  I continued to inch backward until a scolding voice in my head snapped my mind away from past events. Do something, Lila! the voice screamed. Yet I couldn’t move. What was wrong with me? Here an innocent, hardworking man was lying dead, obviously murdered, in a blob of frosting and all I could think about was my own reputation. I needed to do something … call someone …

  My back hit something soft and squishy. I jumped just as a pair of strong hands clamped onto my shoulders. “What are you doing in here?” a husky male voice demanded. “Hey! What did you do to that guy?” The hands gripped tighter, holding me in place.

  Freaked-out, I lifted my foot and slammed my heel down as hard as I could on the shoe behind me. The hands instantly let go as an agonizing scream pierced the air, but I didn’t bother to stick around to see what damage I’d caused. As soon as he released me, I made a break for it, running as fast as I could through the kitchen and back down the hallway, bumping into Zach and Jude as I rounded the corner to the main corridor.

  “Lila!” Jude exclaimed. “What’s wrong? We heard a scream.”

  I pointed behind me, sucking in a deep breath. My heart was slamming against my chest. “Murder,” I managed to say.

  Jude grabbed me and shook. “What do you mean, murder? Speak to me, Lila.”

  I pointed down the hall again. “The handyman … he’s dead. In the fridge.”

  Zach’s eyes popped. “What? You can’t be serious.” He threw his hands in the air and tipped his head back. “Whoa! I can’t believe this. The Murder Magnet has struck again!”

  Jude shot him a withering look before turning back to me. “How do you know he was murdered? Maybe he just had a heart attack.”

  “No, murdered. He’s dead as …” Dead as a doornail. Dead as a … I stopped myself from actually saying the horrible phrase that suddenly popped to mind. Shaking my head, I tried to vanquish the gruesome image of the nail in Chuck’s temple. Dead as a doornail. Dead as … The sound of heavy footsteps interrupted the automatic replay in my mind. We all looked up as the large man from the kitchen came flying around the corner, cell phone in his hand. I flinched and grasped Jude’s arm.

  “Don’t let her get away,” he cried, pointing at me. “She murdered a man! I’ve already called the cops.”

  “Me? It was him. And he tried to kill me, too,” I blurted.

  “Chef Belmonte tried to kill you?” Jude asked, pushing me behind him as he took a couple of aggressive steps toward the chef.

  The chef’s jaw went slack. “What? I didn’t try to kill nobody. I just came into the kitchen and found this woman with a weapon in her hand, standing over a dead man.”

  My muscles tensed. “A weapon? What are you talking about?”

  “Stop. Both of you.” Jude cut us short. “No one say anything else until the police get here.”

  Within moments the sound of wailing sirens could be heard in the distance, muffled at first, then growing louder as they arrived outside. Zach started pacing, raking his hands through his tight black curls, causing them to shoot out in every direction. “Man, Bentley’s going to be ticked when she finds out you discovered another dead body, Lila. And at our event, even! It’s bad enough everyone in town thinks of you as a murder magnet. Now your reputation is rubbing off on us. No one’s going to want to have anything to do with us, once this gets out. We’ll be ruined!”

  Belmonte furrowed his bushy brows at Zach. “Is he always so dramatic?” he asked Jude.

  “He represents screenplays,” Jude said by way of an explanation. Then, turning to Zach, he said, “You’d better go meet the cops and show them back here. See if you can do it quietly, without drawing too much attention.” He pulled out his cell. “I’ll call Bentley and let her know what’s going on.”

  While Zach rushed down the hall to fetch the police, I took a moment to take a closer look at Belmonte. Strangely enough, the guy wasn’t much taller than me, but something about the way he carried himself made him seem much taller, gigantic even. I let my eyes roam from the bald stripe down the center of his head to his fat hands. I could just imagine those short stubby fingers of his wrapped around a nail gun, finger pressed against the trigger … He caught me looking, wagged his fingers, and raised a brow, a strange little smile quirking the corners of his mouth. Oh for crying out loud! He thought I was checking him out for another reason. I scowled and looked away. Ego, that’s what it was. Obviously, the man was full of himself.

  I tuned into Jude’s phone conversation. Poor guy was working hard to placate Bentley, whose irate voice was coming loud and clear over the line. I imagined at this very moment she was storming down the hallway, pushing her way through the crowds with her phone in hand, on her way to resolve this most recent crisis. “Yes,” Jude was saying. “Lila discovered the body … Yup, afraid so … The police are here,” he finally said in way of an excuse before quickly disconnecting.

  Two uniformed officers had entered the hall and were quickly making their way toward us. “Where’s the victim?” the first officer asked.

  I pointed toward the service kitchen. “Back there. In the walk-in cooler. I found him there; he’s got a …” I let my words trail off, shifting my focus to Belmonte. “This man was back there. He grabbed me.”

  Next to me, I could feel Jude grow tense.

  “Grabbed you?” the man protested. “You backed into me.”

  Okay. Maybe that was true. Still …

  He turned to the officer. “She was standing over the dead guy with a screwdriver,” he added.

  One of the officers had taken out a notepad and was jotting down information. “Your names?”

  “Oscar Belmonte. I own Machiavelli’s.”

  Oh brother, I thought, noticing the way his chin lifted and his chest puffed out. “Lila Wilkins,” I told the officer. “I’m an agent with Novel Idea Literary Agency.”

  “Wilkins?” one of the officers said, exchanging a look with his partner. The partner simply nodded in one of those all-knowing ways.

  “Wilkins?” Belmonte ec
hoed. “Do you know Althea Wilkins?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “She’s my mother. Why?”

  He averted his gaze as his face flushed deep red. “She’s a friend of mine.”

  *

  IT DIDN’T TAKE long before the place was crawling with all sorts of officials: officers, crime scene techs, the coroner’s team, and my fiancé, Detective Sean Griffiths. “Did you know the guy?” he was asking me. Belmonte and I had been sequestered to two of the small classrooms in this wing. Another officer was interviewing Belmonte, while Sean questioned me.

  “Not really. I mean, I knew who he was. Actually, I suggested him for the job.”

  Sean waited for me to expand on my explanation. I’d come to learn that Sean’s biggest asset as an interrogator was his patience. He knew how to wait it out, let the person being interrogated sweat a little. Make them nervous enough to start babbling. And it always seemed to work with me.

  “I met him briefly yesterday at the Magnolia Bed and Breakfast. He’s putting up some shelving in Cora’s pantry. It irritated Bentley because he was so noisy.” He raised a brow but didn’t comment. “Not that much,” I assured him. “Anyway, a few of our authors are staying at the inn: Pam, she writes erotic romance; Jodi, romantic suspense; and my client, Lynn. She doesn’t actually have a book published, but she’s a great—”

  “So you met this Chuck once, but you recommended him for this job?”

  “Well, not really. I remembered hearing that he worked maintenance for the Arts Center and it was sort of an emergency. The refrigerator died and we had the chef coming and the cakes …” I stopped, visions of buttercream frosting stained with blood swimming before my mind and mingling with echoes of yesterday …

  Sean leaned forward. “What is it?”

  “The cakes,” I repeated. Found facedown in a wedding cake. Bentley’s words from yesterday’s meeting came rushing back to me. Of course! The way I found Chuck, facedown in a wedding cake, covered in frosting and blood … My own client had written that very same thing in her book, Wed ’til Dead. But certainly Lynn wasn’t capable of such a thing. Suddenly I felt torn between my loyalty to Lynn and my obligation to tell Sean what I knew. In my heart I knew Lynn couldn’t have done such an awful thing; there was just no way she could hold a nail gun to someone’s head and … I cringed.

  “Lila?”

  I met Sean’s eyes, deciding I needed to tell him about Lynn. He’d eventually find out they had been married anyway. “There’s something I need to tell you. It’s about one of my authors, Lynn Werner.” I told him what I knew. That Lynn and Chuck were once married. The strange way Lynn acted when she discovered Chuck was working at the inn. The argument I witnessed between the two of them on the street yesterday. The murder scene in her book. But I did sort of leave out the fact that she was missing from her booth earlier. Surely she was taking a break to get some water or use the restroom. Wasn’t she? I pushed away the strange thought creeping into my mind. There was just no way Lynn—shy, timid Lynn—was capable of something so violent. “I know it all sounds suspicious,” I continued, “but she just doesn’t seem like the type. She’s so quiet and nice.”

  “Nice people do bad things, Lila.”

  He didn’t have to tell me. Over the past two years, I’d encountered enough violence to last me a lifetime. “I just can’t believe it. There’s got to be another explanation.”

  He stood and reached out his hand. I took it, allowing him to pull me to my feet. “There might be,” he said, pulling me close, his eyes staring intensely into mine. “But you’re not going to look for one. I came too close to losing you last time, remember?”

  I nodded, pressing a little closer and enjoying the warmth of his arms around me, even as my mind raced with doubt. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him about Lynn. As her agent, didn’t I owe her more? Maybe I should have warned her first. Given her a chance to get an attorney. I leaned in closer, my cheek sinking into the soft cotton blend of his dress shirt, inhaling his familiar soap scent, wishing more than anything that we could leave and go somewhere alone. I needed him to hold me, help me shake the horrible image of discovering the body.

  “Ahem … excuse me.”

  We quickly pushed apart at the sound of Jude clearing his throat. He was standing in the doorway, looking directly at Sean. “Bentley sent me to ask you how long it was going to take your people to get the body out of the kitchen. We’ve got an event scheduled.”

  Sean cursed under his breath. “Tell Bentley—”

  “It’s okay, Sean.” I squeezed his arm. “I’ll talk to her, okay? Are you done questioning me?”

  He nodded. “For now.”

  “Good.” I took a deep breath, willing myself back to business mode. “Since the murder occurred in the kitchen at the end of the hallway, would you mind having your guys use the emergency exit back there? That way, we could partition off the front part of this wing for our events. It won’t take us long to relocate a few things. And no one would get in the way of your investigation. Promise.”

  His lips pressed into a thin line as he contemplated my request.

  Jude was still hovering in the doorway. I waved him on. “I’ll be right out.”

  “Fine. But you’d better hurry. We’re in the Potter’s Room. Bentley’s stressed out. She’s called a DAC meeting and wants all the agents there, pronto.” DAC was Bentley’s abbreviation for Damage Assessment and Control. She must have felt desperate if she had already resorted to such measures.

  “Tell her I’ll be right there.” Then, turning back to Sean, I leaned in close again and gave him a pleading look. “Please, Sean. If we lose the use of this wing this week, we’ll have to cancel several events. This is a huge deal for our agency.” I wrapped my arms around his midsection and gazed up into his eyes.

  Finally his expression softened. He let out a long sigh and agreed, with a lot of provisions, of course. “Where is Lynn now?” he asked.

  My heart dropped. How was Lynn going to take the news that her ex-husband was dead? And to be questioned as a suspect in his death? What had I done to poor Lynn? Suddenly overwhelmed with regret, I asked, “Can I be with you when you break the news to her? It was her ex-husband, after all. And I’m the only friend she really has here this week.”

  Another sigh. This one ringing with impatience. “All right. Tell me where to find her. I’ll bring her back here and wait until you return before I break the news to her. In the meantime, go to your D … whatever meeting. And tell that boss of yours that she’s not to get in the way of my investigation.”

  I described Lynn to him and explained where her booth was. Hopefully she’d be there now. An unwanted thought occurred to me: If Lynn was the killer—but I really didn’t think she was—we might never find her again.

  *

  “THE MURDER MAGNET’S here,” Zach said as soon as I entered the Potter’s Room.

  “Enough of that!” Bentley demanded, slapping her palm against the table. “Lila, take a seat over there.” She pointed toward the chair between Flora and Franklin. Franklin stood and held it out for me as I approached, shooting me a pitiful look. And the second I sat down, Flora reached over and patted my back.

  “You poor thing,” she said, her expression mirroring Franklin’s. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, with finding the body and all.”

  “You didn’t say how he was murdered,” Zach said, tapping his pencil excitedly against the tabletop. “Stabbed with a butcher knife? Strangled with apron strings? Oh, I know …” His voice was growing more excited with each revelation. “Poisoned! Someone poisoned him. He was in the kitchen, right? Of course, the last time a murder happened in a kitchen around here”—he raised his hands and mimicked an explosion—“Kaboom!”

  “Would you be quiet,” Jude said. “Can’t you see how upsetting this is to Lila?”

  “I don’t know why. It’s not like this is the first dead person she’s found. Let’s see, first it was the homeless man in our office, then o
ne of the editors from—”

  “We get the picture,” Bentley sneered. “The important thing is how are we going to keep this latest … uh … misfortune from affecting this week’s expo. I don’t have to remind you people of how much money the agency has invested in this event. It’s paramount that it be successful.” She turned to me. “Best scenario would be if the police could wrap this up quickly. Do they have any suspects in mind?”

  I broke into an instant sweat, guilt welling inside me. Suspect? Why, yes, Lynn is their primary suspect. Mostly because I pointed the finger of accusation at her. Never mind that she’s one of our clients. That being accused of murder may ruin her career before it even gets started. Oh my, what did I do? Only, I didn’t verbalize any of that. First, Sean would kill me if he knew I leaked details of the case. Second, Bentley would kill me if she knew I’d handed over one of our clients to the cops. Either way, I’d end up dead. Dead as a doornail. I clasped my hand over my mouth.

  “Lila, honey.” It was Flora. She leaned forward, looking at me with a worried expression. “You look ill.” Suddenly her chair slid back, and she stood and took me by the arm. “Excuse us, everyone. Lila and I are going to go powder our noses.”

  She ushered me down the hall and straight into the ladies’ room. Ripping paper towels from the dispenser, she held them under cool water and then pressed them to the back of my neck. I could feel my resolve crumble. “Oh, Flora,” I started. “I’ve got a mess going on.”

  “Tell me. Perhaps I can help.”

  The words started pouring out. “The guy that was murdered. Lynn, my client … you know, the new author? Wed ’til Dead?” She nodded and I continued, “She knew him. It was her ex-husband. I saw them arguing earlier today. And I told Sean. He’s going to question her and it’s all my fault that he suspects her. It’s just that she wasn’t at her booth … and that guy, the handyman, he was killed the very same way as the victim in her book.”