I focus my energy on Carlos now. I’ve been dreading this all day, but unfortunately, no one gets a free pass here, no matter how much I might personally like them.

  “Carlos, did you go see Tara that night too?” I ask.

  He sighs like he knows what’s coming. “Yes. And yes, I told her I wanted to quit the show.”

  The room goes so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.

  I swallow hard. “She was going to expose your gambling habit, wasn’t she?”

  “I haven’t gambled in years, but it’s still a daily struggle.” He looks around the table. “Ten years ago, I had to declare bankruptcy. My life was in shambles because I couldn’t stay away from the horses. But then I found Gamblers Anonymous. I got married, had a couple of kids and worked my way up to manager at The Burger Barn. The owners know about my disease, and they’ve been terrific.”

  “Then what was the problem?” asks Heidi.

  “The problem,” I say, “is that Tara was going to create a story line in which Carlos was accused of embezzling money from the restaurant because he’d started gambling again. In the end it would come out that there was no missing money and he would have been exonerated, but the damage to his reputation would be done.”

  Everyone turns to glare at Gilly. “I never liked that story line,” she says, trying to defend herself. “I tried to dissuade Tara from it. I really did.”

  “Not hard enough,” accuses Carlos.

  “Carlos, did you poison Tara?” I ask.

  “I wish I had, but no. I didn’t.”

  “Good enough for me.”

  Two down, four to go.

  I look down the table to catch Heidi’s gaze. “What?” she asks in a bristly tone.

  “You also went to see Tara that night, didn’t you?”

  “I think it’s silly to have a show where we all compete against one another.”

  “You didn’t feel that way the other day when Will and I went to have breakfast at your bakery. As a matter of fact, you told us you thought you’d win the show hands down. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Well—”

  “Ha!” cries Wendy. “Everyone knows you’re nothing but a big show-off.”

  Heidi begins wringing her hands. Am I a bad person because a tiny part of me is enjoying watching Heidi squirm? “Okay, I admit it,” she says. “I did go see Tara that night.”

  “Because you wanted to quit the show?” Juanita gazes up to the heavens. “Dios mio, it was an epidemic!”

  Heidi nods demurely. “Yes, I wanted to quit the show too.”

  Mark Dalton crosses his arms over his chest like he’s posing. He’d make a great TV prosecutor. “If you were so confident you’d win, why did you want to quit?”

  I pick up the notebook and raise a brow at Heidi. Either she tells them or I will, and she knows it.

  “Tara was going to make this big deal about the fact that I don’t have nutritional values on my menu.”

  “What’s so damaging about that?” asks Juanita.

  “Do you know how many calories and fat grams are in one of Heidi’s doughnuts?” I skim through the notebook to find the information. “Her chocolate Bavarian crème doughnut has five hundred calories and over twenty-five grams of fat. Almost twice the amount found in a similar doughnut from a national chain.”

  Wendy gasps. “No wonder they taste so good!”

  Heidi’s eyes fill with tears. “That kind of information could kill my business.”

  “That kind of doughnut could kill your customers,” mutters Carlos.

  My thoughts exactly. Muffins are so much healthier for you than doughnuts, but this probably isn’t the best time to bring that up. It would feel too much like gloating.

  “I’m working on reducing the fat content on my doughnuts,” she says. “I really am. But Tara was going to be so horrible about the whole thing! She said my bakery was like from another century! I inherited that bakery from my mother. I wasn’t about to let Tara trash my business.”

  Juanita looks shocked. “So you killed her?”

  “No. Although I sure wish I could have shoved a few doughnuts down that skinny throat of hers.”

  I try to hide my smile. “Heidi isn’t the killer. So far we’ve eliminated Juanita, Carlos and Heidi.”

  “Well, I can tell you right now I didn’t go see Tara,” says Wendy. “So you can cross me off your list.”

  “True, you didn’t see Tara that night, but there’s more to the story, isn’t there?”

  “How do you … you can’t prove anything,” she finishes stubbornly.

  “You might not have gone to see Tara, but you wanted to quit the show as well, didn’t you?”

  “I … ” She glances around the table to gauge our reactions. I don’t think I’m the only one who wants an answer here. “My lawyer was looking into the best way to get out of the contract,” she admits.

  “Why?” asks Mark. “Tiny’s has the best pizza in town. Probably even in the whole Florida panhandle.”

  I hold up the notebook as a reminder. “Either you tell them, or I will.”

  “You have to promise to keep this confidential,” she says.

  We all give her our word.

  “It’s the sauce that makes Tiny’s pizza so special. My father created the recipe thirty years ago. Only Tara claimed that he stole it from a former partner of his who still lives in Brooklyn. She was even going to fly this man down and have him confront me on camera. Can you imagine? My father would roll in his grave.”

  “So there’s no truth to it?” asks Heidi.

  “That’s just it. It’s this man’s word against my father’s, who isn’t here to defend himself. All I can say is that I believe my father. And I find it highly suspicious that this former partner of his comes out of the woodwork now when it’s all going to be on TV.”

  I open the notebook to a bookmarked page and hand it over to Wendy. “You were right to be suspicious. Tara was paying this man five thousand dollars to come down here and discredit your father.”

  Wendy silently reads the page. “So … it was all a lie! But why would this man lie for just five thousand dollars? He and my father were partners at one time. I know the relationship didn’t end well, but it seems overly malicious to me.”

  “Tara promised to give his new restaurant in Brooklyn some free promo on the show,” explains Gilly. She glances around the table, where she’s met with hostile stares. “I didn’t want to go along with that. I told Tara it was wrong and probably illegal, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Did the network know what she was up to?” I ask.

  “No. It was all Tara’s idea. I just wrote down the notes like I was told to, that’s all.”

  I turn back to Wendy. “Did you poison Tara?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  No one says anything for a few moments.

  “I guess I’m next,” says Mark. “Go ahead, ask me whatever you want. I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “Curiously, there’s not much about you in the notes,” I say, wondering how he’s going to wiggle himself out of this.

  “Let me tell you why,” he says. “The Harbor House is the finest restaurant in Whispering Bay. There’s no dirt on me or the restaurant because there’s none to find.”

  Oh boy, this guy is good. He’s just lied to me, and I’m not getting any sort of physical reaction. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was telling the truth. Up to now, I found the idea of outing Mark’s affair with Tara distasteful, but what arrogance! His poor wife. I thought he was taking her on a cruise to make up for a guilty conscience, but clearly, he isn’t the least bit remorseful or afraid of getting caught, either.

  “Oh, but there is dirt, Mark. You and I both know there is.”

  He frowns. “What are you babbling about?”

  “What about all those late nights you and Tara spent in your office? What have you got to say about that?”

  “Who told you about those?”

  “Never mind who told me. Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Absolutely nothing. We didn’t do anything illegal.”

  “How about immoral?” I shoot back.

  “I think someone has been eating too many coconut muffins and it’s going straight to their brain,” he says, sneering.

  “Oh, so that’s how you’re going to play it, is it? Making fun of my muffins isn’t going to hide the fact that you and Tara were having an affair.”

  Juanita gasps and makes the sign of the cross.

  Carlos makes a face. “Ew.”

  “An affair?” Mark says incredulously. “Me and Tara? Are you insane?”

  “We’re focusing on you, remember? If you weren’t having an affair, then what were you and Tara doing during all those late nights together?”

  He snorts. “I’ll tell you what we were doing, Ms. Nosy Pants. Tara was grooming me for a position as the host of a new show. And not any of this two-bit reality crap, that’s for sure. I was going to host an exploration of the finest restaurants in Europe. She was helping me with my audition tape. And guess what? I would have gotten the show too, with Tara’s recommendation. So if anyone here wanted Tara alive, it was me. Now that she’s gone, I don’t have anyone at the network rooting for me.”

  I wait for the hair on my neck to tingle. Or tickle. Or do something. But nope.

  Uh-oh. Mark is telling the truth.

  “So you weren’t having an affair with Tara?” asks Carlos.

  “That would be a big no,” says Mark. He turns to me, his eyes blazing. “How did you come up with that cockamamie theory anyway?”

  I gulp. “Um, it seems like I got my wires crossed. So sorry for that little misunderstanding,” I mumble.

  He shoots me an angry look. “You should be.”

  Now that I’ve eliminated all the contestants, there’s just one person left.

  “I’m so sorry I had to put you all through that, but I had to make sure I was right. There’s only one person who had both motive and opportunity. Her motive? To take over Tara’s job. Her opportunity? Lots, considering she and Tara were living in the same beach house.”

  Just like one of those scenes from an old detective movie, I turn to Gilly. “Did you poison Tara?” I hold my breath.

  This is it. The moment of truth.

  “I … ” She shakes her head.

  “Well?” Carlos demands. “Did you?”

  “So you did poison her,” says Heidi.

  Gilly glances around the room, like she’s looking for a way out. “I don’t have to answer that. It’s insulting.”

  “We answered it,” says Wendy. “So you should too.”

  We all lean forward in our chairs, waiting.

  Tears well in Gilly’s eyes. “I know I profited from Tara’s death, but I didn’t poison her. I’m absolutely sick that she’s gone. She was a terrible boss, but I never wanted her to get hurt. Never,” she adds vehemently.

  The room goes silent.

  Holy wow.

  Gilly is telling the truth. She didn’t poison Tara.

  But if she didn’t poison Tara, and no one else in the room did either, then … Could my Spidey sense be wrong again? Am I losing my touch? Could someone in this room be lying to me and I just didn’t pick up on it?

  Everyone turns to look at me.

  “If none of us poisoned Tara, then who did?” asks Wendy.

  “Yeah,” says Heidi. “Your text specifically said that you knew who killed her. Are you telling me that you dragged us all out here in the middle of a workday for some sick prank?”

  The expressions in the room range from embarrassment (for me) to open hostility. This is not how I expected the day to go at all.

  I wince. “I guess I sort of underdelivered, huh?”

  Will makes a pained face.

  Paco slumps to the floor and puts his head between his paws.

  Ouch. My own dog is ashamed of me.

  “What about you, Lucy?” demands Mark. “What’s in that notebook about you?”

  “Yeah,” says Heidi. “What was Tara going to use to make you look bad on the show? You’ve aired all our dirty laundry and conveniently left yourself out of the mess.”

  Uh-oh. Now I know how the Christians felt when the Romans let the lions loose on them. A trickle of sweat runs down my back.

  “Tara kicked me off the show, remember? She didn’t have to have anything on me.” Gilly catches my gaze and raises a brow in amusement, because as the writer of all those notes, she knows good and well what Tara had on me. Is she going to tell everyone? God, I hope not. Not here. Not in front of Will …

  “I think we’re done here,” Mark says, his voice laced with disgust. He brushes past me on his way out the door, muttering under his breath about being late setting up for the dinner crowd.

  Gilly doesn’t say anything on her way out.

  Carlos gives me the silent treatment too, which, yikes. Gilly, I don’t care about, but I thought Carlos and I were friends. But then, what kind of friend am I to blab about his gambling addiction? Not a very good one, I’m afraid.

  Sensing my mood, Juanita gives me a hug. “Don’t worry, Lucy. Carlos won’t stay mad at you. Sooner or later, he’ll start to crave a muffin.”

  Wendy squeezes my arm gratefully. “For what it’s worth, I’m actually glad this all came out because now I know that Dad didn’t steal our secret sauce recipe. Not that I doubted it,” she adds quickly, “but it’s good not to have that hanging over my head.”

  Heidi picks up one of my orange cranberry low-fat muffins and takes a bite. “I’m supposed to believe that this is really reduced fat? What kind of idiot do you take me for?” She sticks her nose in the air and marches out the door.

  But it is reduced fat! Only I don’t think this is a good time to try to get the last word in.

  Now that everyone is gone, it’s just me, Will, and Paco.

  “Don’t say it,” I warn.

  “Say what? Oh, you mean, I told you so?”

  I flop down in my chair.

  “So Gilly was telling the truth when she said she didn’t poison Tara?” Will asks.

  I nod miserably. “I don’t understand. I was so sure that Gilly had to have been the one to poison her. No one else had the motive or the opportunity.”

  “What about the camera guys? Alan and Pete? They were all in the same beach house, so they had the opportunity.”

  “Yeah, but what’s the motive?”

  Will shrugs. “Maybe Travis is wrong. Maybe Tara didn’t die from cyanide poisoning. I heard a rumor that she was taking drugs.”

  “You and everyone else in town. I thought Gilly started that rumor to mislead the cops. I guess I was wrong about that too.”

  “Look, you did the best you could. Leave the rest to Travis and Zeke. They’ll get to the bottom of it. I say we forget all about Battle of the Beach Eats and go upstairs and watch reruns of America’s Most Vicious Criminals. I’ll order the pizza,” he offers. “And speaking of pizza, you did do some good today. Like Wendy said, at least now she knows the sauce is an original recipe.”

  “Okay,” I say, sounding like a petulant child. But I can’t help it. Today was more than a total bust. It was a disaster.

  The more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that I’m right and Gilly had to have killed Tara. There’s no other explanation. Which means she lied to me and I couldn’t detect it.

  I’ve lost my gift.

  I should be happy. I should be dancing on the rooftops. Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted? To be normal?

  Except there’s a niggling sensation in the back of my brain telling me that I haven’t lost anything and that the answer is staring me right in the face.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It’s Thursday, and business at The Bistro is booming, which is great. Except I don’t feel great. Snippets from yesterday’s big who-done-it flop keep popping up in my brain, reminding me that I’m not nearly as clever as I think I am. Not even close. Hopefully everyone will forget all about my lame attempt at playing Hercule Poirot.

  Betty Jean comes up to the counter to order. “Heard how you accused almost everyone in town of poisoning Tara.”

  “I’m sure that made your day,” I say in a fake cheery voice. “But it wasn’t almost everyone in town. Just everyone in the cooking competition.”

  “Whatever. But you’re wrong, Lucy, it didn’t make my day. Not in the least. I was hoping you’d come through again and solve another murder in this town, but I guess you just got lucky with those other cases, huh?”

  I mentally count to ten. “Guess so.” Boy, would I love to tell Betty Jean the truth. That luck had nothing to do it, but I’m not so stupid as to tell her I’m a human lie detector (or at least I used to be) just to prove a point. She orders and takes her food to a table, joining a few other members of the Gray Flamingos. Every once in a while, they glance my way and whisper among themselves. Glad I’m able to provide my customers with entertainment along with their breakfast.

  I’m wiping down the counter during a temporary lull when Brittany and Darren come in. Their smiles are heavily laced with sympathy and maybe a tad of embarrassment. I sigh. “I guess you heard about yesterday’s fiasco?”

  “It’s all over town, Lucy,” says Brittany. “My mother heard it from Jan over at The Piggly Wiggly who heard it from Stan at the dry cleaners who heard it from—”

  “Let me guess, Heidi Burrows?”

  “Yep.”

  “Everyone from the show is mad at me. Not that I blame them.”

  “If you ask me, they’re all a bunch of ingrates. Do you know how hard I worked to get Battle of the Beach Eats to film here in town? All that publicity down the … ” She glances at Darren, who’s looking a bit chagrined. “Oh well, our loss is Catfish Cove’s gain.”

  “You mean the show is going to film in Catfish Cove?”

  “Lucky for us, the pipe burst has been cleaned up,” says Darren. “So the network decided to go back to their original location.”

  “Congratulations. That’s great,” I say, meaning it. If the show isn’t going to be filmed here in Whispering Bay, then I’m glad Catfish Cove got the gig.

 

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