Case of the Passion Fruit Poisoning Page 8

  “Unlikely,” Beatrice said, “but I’ll add it to the board.” And she did, adding ‘spying on someone,’ to the whiteboard. Sophie beamed at her input as she went back to Buzz.

  “The way I see it, there’s only one thing left to do,” Stella offered, standing from the couch.

  “And that is?”

  “Get sloshed on red wine until we can’t stand anymore. Maybe that will help.” She turned and headed into the kitchen. A second later Beatrice could hear the clinking of glasses and the ‘pop,’ of a wine bottle cork.

  Beatrice wasn’t usually a big drinker, but she had to admit, she was willing to try almost anything, because at that moment, the three ladies could not come up with a single reasonable lead.

  As far as Beatrice was concerned, it all came back to that red headed waitress. She was acting way too suspicious when they interviewed her and something about her answers just didn’t add up. For example, the tattooed waiter was convinced that she didn’t work there, but Beatrice had seen her with her own eyes, if only once. And the way she acted when they caught her trying to break into her own van was peculiar as well.

  Yes, the whole thing was odd and Beatrice wanted answers.

  The fact of the matter was that she had no connection to the waitress at all. None. Or at least none that she was aware of, and she had looked high and low for something.

  An hour into drinking, two bottles of red wine, and a lot of bathroom breaks later, the three ladies were still stuck on the same question, ‘who would want to kill Beatrice?’

  16

  Beatrice hadn’t stopped baking since she started up again. Although it was only a few days without, it felt like forever to her. Following the date with Fred, and a night of heavy drinking with the girls, Beatrice got right back into it, spending the entire next day in the kitchen.

  She woke up from the previous night with a slight hangover from the five glasses of red wine. And she even considered staying in bed all day. However, the moment she remembered that she had a kitchen that beckoned to her, she was out of bed like nothing was wrong, rushing to her long-lost love with gusto.

  She had wanted to start up the previous day, but fate had intervened – fate being Fred and a failed investigation, but now that she had no leads and no clue, she knew that she could spend the day locked up in her favorite place.

  Last night had been a total bust. Following a long night of brainstorming, the Cookie Club was no closer to solving the riddle than they had been before they started. Now usually this may have worried Beatrice, but she still had one ace up her sleeve, and that was of course baking.

  Whenever there was an issue to be solved, the kitchen was the key. It had a way of freeing her mind and allowing her to think outside the box. And, as luck would have it, she had enough ingredients to last her all day; having not had a chance to use the ones she had bought when she ran into Fred.

  So, with her apron on and her hair tied back, Beatrice got to it.

  She started out with simple chocolate chip cookies. Well, she really did hate thinking of them as simple. Anything done correctly was challenging and she had seen her fair share of cookies ruined by amateur bakers. The key with these was timing. Even a minute spent too long in the oven could turn them hard and inedible. And that was if the right amount of flour was added – another problem for the average baker.

  Beatrice took to them like an old pro, thrilled to find that she hadn’t lost her touch.

  Next up was a three-layered marble cake. A little more complex than the cookies. This required a delicate hand when mixing and adding the ingredients to the tray. When she pulled out a perfectly made marble cake out of the oven, she knew she was on a roll.

  After that came the show stopper; a five-layered trifle. There were two types of trifles as far as Beatrice was concerned and that was an amateur trifle and a professional trifle. The difference was in the way they were constructed. An amateur simply threw the ingredients in, one after the other and hoped for the best. A professional weighed and measured each ingredient, ensuring that the balance was perfect and there was no risk of one layer merging with another. It was a precise process that took hours, but Beatrice relished every single one.

  She was just getting the ingredients ready when she heard a loud knock at the door. She waited for a moment to see if another was going to follow. If an odd succession of knocks came then she would have known it was Sophie at the door, but a single, firm knock usually meant Stella.

  It was lucky timing as far as Beatrice was concerned. She had all this food and no one to feed. Ever since her grandson got that bike he had been a ghost, taking girls out daily for rides along the countryside.

  She hurried to the door to let Stella in. When she opened it however, she wasn’t surprised to find both Sophie and Stella in her doorway. She should have guessed really. She was a murder target after all, it only made sense that her friends would want to be by her side to make sure everything was OK.

  “Ladies,” she said as she let the two women into her house.

  For two women who had been drinking the previous night, they both looked rather chipper. Stella was as always dressed to impress, wearing tight fitting white jeans and a black blouse that was undone just a button too much. And although Sophie looked a little silly in her sunflower moo-moo dress, she too looked positively full of life.

  Actually, as Beatrice watched the two women stroll into the living room, bouncing on their feet, she realized that indeed they both looked a little too happy in their actions. This was beyond the act of bouncing back from a night of drinking. This was something else.

  “OK. What’s going on?” Beatrice asked, crossing her arms as she challenged the two.

  “His name is Michael Levinsworth,” Stella announced, pulling a piece of paper from her jeans’ pocket that she proceeded to read. “He’s been retired for ten years, has two children, three grandchildren, a pet dog named, Sniffle, and enjoys fishing. In fact, he fishes every weekend.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Beatrice asked, reaching for the piece of paper, which Stella snatched away, holding it from her reach.

  “I’m talking about the future Mr. Fletcher of course… or at least, the future ‘Mr. Last Night,’ if you know what I mean?” The smirk on her face was incredible, as if she had some great secret that she couldn’t wait to share.

  “You’ve still lost me,” Beatrice admitted. She really had no idea what was going on. From Sophie who was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet and Stella who was boosting her current status over her, she was lost.

  “I’m talking about your next conquest of course. You got a match!” She handed the paper to Beatrice finally, whose face dropped the moment she saw what was on it.

  Stella had of course been talking about the online dating service that she had signed Beatrice up for a few days ago. Beatrice had totally forgotten all about it. Between the murder investigation and the date with Fred, that brief argument that she had had with the ladies about online dating was a distant memory.

  Well at least until now it was.

  “You don’t really think that I’m going to go through with this, do you?” she asked skeptically. They really had to be joking. There was no way she was going to go on a date, not now and not with a complete stranger. She really didn’t know what they were thinking.

  “You have to,” shouted Sophie a little too loud.

  “I most certainly don’t,” she replied, crossing the room and heading for the kitchen. The two women followed her in, dead on her heels. “Besides, I don’t know anything about him. Or he about me.”

  “Oh, don’t be so sure. Me and Sophie have been chatting to him all day. He’s quite the delight.”

  “You’ve been talking to him all day?”

  “Yep, as you!” Sophie cut in. She looked even more excited than Stella, as if she were the one going on a date.

  “We may have pretended to be you – just to see what he was like. And he seems nice enoug
h, from what we can tell. And he really likes you.”

  “He likes you, you mean,” she corrected, unable to believe the absurdity of the situation.

  “Come on Bea, what have you got to lose, and don’t say your life,” she cut in before Beatrice could make the obvious comment. “You’d go on a date with a man you thought had tried to kill you, but you won’t go out with this one?”

  “What have I got to lose? My dignity? My time? My… my… Oh those two will do. Pick one!” She grabbed at her apron, throwing it back on. There was a trifle waiting to be made and she wasn’t going to let this little interruption stop the roll she was on.

  “Time? Really?” Stella asked, looking around the kitchen which was an absolute mess. “Have you been in here all day?”

  “So, what if I have?”

  “Can I...” Sophie asked, reaching slowly across the table toward a batch of the cookies. Beatrice pushed them closer and Sophie pounced, shoving at least three into her mouth at once.

  “So, what? Time obviously isn’t an issue. And as for dignity, how can you possibly lose that on a date with a man you may never see again?” Stella reached across to the marble cake, prodding at it with her long fingernails. “Good looking cake.”

  “It’s a great looking cake. And it doesn’t matter what you say. I’m not going.” She crossed her arms, letting them know she meant business.

  “No? What about Fred and Rogers?”

  “What about them?” She asked, confused. She didn’t see what either of the men had to do with this.

  “Well you currently have two men chasing you. Neither of them with any reason to give up. Maybe if they found out about a third party they might get the picture.”

  Beatrice went to respond, but then paused to think. It was a pretty accurate point. She was getting a little sick and tired of being hounded by men she didn’t have feelings for. Was a spontaneous date the best way to get the message across?

  “I don’t know...” she began, feeling her resolve weaken. “When is that date for?”

  “Tonight!” Stella beamed as if she had won already. “Me and Sophie will even help you get ready… again!”

  “I really don’t...”

  “Oh, come on,” Stella said. Pulling the piece of paper with the prospective date’s face on over her own face, acting as if his face were her own. “How can you say no to this?”

  Beatrice looked from the photo of the man, currently plastered across Stella’s face, to the currently cookie-deep face of Sophie, wondering what she had done to deserve such friends, most likely something terrible in a past life, but she also realized that she wasn’t going to get out of this one so easily. “Fine,” she said. “One date.”

  Stella whipped the paper down, looking positively delighted. “That’s all I ask.”

  –

  There’s an old rule that says you can always tell how a date is going to go within the first three minutes. By then if there’s no spark, no general common interests, then you are in for a long night. Beatrice didn’t even need the three minutes.

  It all started with the restaurant choice, slowly going downhill from there like a car that had its brakes cut.

  Beatrice liked to arrive early to dates to get the layout and settle herself in. She had on her first date with her husband. She had on her date with the now dead Matthew and she sure as heck was going to on this one. After wrestling the address off her friends, she drove herself down with time to spare – they had wanted to come and watch, but she insisted that they remain behind. They did of course, but very reluctantly.

  She turned up exactly ten minutes prior to the agreed upon time. When she laid eyes on the chosen spot, she was quietly impressed. A beautiful Italian restaurant, it was one of those places where the staff were all born and raised in Italy and even most of the foods were imported. She couldn’t wait to sample some of it. Unfortunately, she never got the chance. When she went inside, asking for the reservation, she was quick to learn that there was no reservation.

  She argued with the maître d’ for exactly two minutes, sure that they were being purposefully rude and obtuse, but to her horror she soon realized that the address was actually for the place next door. There was a reason she hadn’t noticed it.

  The place next door was about as hole in the wall as a restaurant could be. And although this wasn’t a deal breaker, the rest of its attributes were. The furniture was all old plastic, probably a good twenty years old at least. The menu was a hodgepodge of every dish known to man and the floor and walls had a distinct layer of mold covering them; it almost looked like it was part of the decorations, it was so prominent.

  Beatrice decided to be the bigger person and suck it up. Maybe it was a mistake and this Michael had no idea what the place was like? Maybe the food was amazing? Maybe he wouldn’t show and she could just go home? A girl could dream.

  She almost got that wish, matter of fact. Twenty minutes into waiting and Beatrice was just about ready to pack up shop and go home. Unfortunately, he did turn up, rushing through the restaurant like a whirlwind. It was from there that the night descended.

  Beatrice was wearing a beautiful black-dress that she had borrowed from Stella. It ran down to her ankles, shimmering in the light and was just tight enough to imply a certain amount of sexuality without being too promiscuous. Michael however, was wearing a t-shirt and dirty old jeans, for the restaurant of choice though, he fit right in. And just to add to this misery, his fly to his jeans was undone and his boxers were sticking out through the gap. She would have pointed it out to him, but he was sitting down before she had a chance; pulling out the seat and collapsing into it before even saying hello.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he eventually managed as he pulled his cap off, running his hand through his greasy hair. “Car ran out of gas. I had to siphon extra from my neighbor’s.”

  “Excuse me?” Beatrice asked, sure that she had misheard… or misunderstood what siphon meant.

  “Would you look at this!” he suddenly blew up, picking up the fork in front of him. “I mean how hard is it to – hey!” He yelled out to one of the waiters, who hurried over. “This fork is filthy. Please get me another one! And we’ll be expecting free drinks too.” The waiter, a young girl no older than sixteen, apologized profusely before disappearing. “You’re welcome,” he winked at Beatrice.

  Beatrice looked at him, appalled. She wasn’t sure if the fork truly was dirty or if he had done it to get a free drink. Not that it mattered. The trick for the free drink was repulsive and the way he had treated the staff was even worse.

  One minute in and this was already turning into a horror date to end all dates.

  If that was where the night had ended, Beatrice would have still counted it as the worst date she had ever been on, and that includes the one where she was almost killed, but of course, there is never such luck as the date continued in full force and only went from bad to worse.

  The information he provided on his profile was accurate yet flawed. Yes, he did have two kids and three grandkids, although none talked to him. It seemed that he owed them all a large amount of money that he had ‘borrowed,’ although it sounded more like he had stolen it. And yes, he was interested in fishing, although he preferred to use dynamite to blow the fish from the water, as it was just easier that way. And as for Sniffle, the dog, she didn’t even want to ask.

  “… and I said ‘buddy, the window was broken when I got here, and as for your son? Well maybe he shouldn’t have mouthed off like that’” he bolstered, leaning back in his chair, retelling a fight he got into a few days earlier with a man and his eight-year-old son.

  It had only been twenty minutes and Beatrice already needed a break, desperately. “If you don’t mind, I have to visit the bathroom. Freshen up,” Beatrice said as politely as she could, but nearly leaping from her seat as she hurried to the bathroom at the back.

  Beatrice was red with rage. She could not believe what her two friends had gotten her into. As she paced b
ack and forth through the small bathroom, she steamed, wondering how she was going to get out of this one. There was no way in good conscious that she could go back out there for another hour. Just no way.

  The bathroom itself was as filthy as the rest of the establishment. The whole place looked like it needed to be burnt down and abandoned. There was an odd funk too that filled the entire room. It would have been suffocating if it wasn’t for the small window that blew fresh air in the window.

  Beatrice eyed the window, wondering if it was possible. The window was only a foot or two above her head, easy enough to climb up to, and it was more than big enough to get through too. The only thing that would have stopped her was the dress that she was wearing. Chances were that to climb through the window meant ruining the dress, but then again, the dress did belong to Stella and right now she really couldn’t care less about that woman.

  Without further hesitation, Beatrice saddled up to the small window and lifted herself up and through the gap, falling out the other side.

  Her fall was broken by a large bush that just happened to be directly under the window. She crashed through it as she fell to the ground, feeling the branches scratch and tear at her. The dress was most likely ruined, but again, Beatrice just didn’t care. She had to get as far away from that date as possible.