Murder of a Chocolate-Covered Cherry Read online

  “What?” Skye cringed. Her mother’s idea of good was often not close to Skye’s; heck, a lot of times they weren’t even in the same universe.

  “I’m a finalist in the Grandma Sal’s Soup-to-Nuts Cooking Challenge.” Grandma Sal’s Fine Foods was one of the area’s biggest employers. They operated a huge factory located between Scumble River and Brooklyn, Illinois, adja-cent to the railroad tracks that ran through both towns.

  “Wonderful.” Skye hugged her mom, happy for May and relieved for herself. A cooking contest would keep May occupied and out of Skye’s affairs. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” May took a step back and wrinkled her nose. “You smell funny.”

  “I was painting my dining room. Remember? I told you I was taking this weekend to finally get some of the downstairs rooms done,” Skye reminded her mother, then added, “If you wanted me all clean and pretty, you shouldn’t have said it was an emergency.”

  “But it is an emergency. I needed to explain something to you before you answered your phone again.” May took a knife from the drawer by the stove and sliced into the wedding cake.

  Skye flinched, still unconvinced that her mother didn’t have a groom waiting in the den and a priest stashed in the linen closet. “Explain what?”

  “Sit down and I’ll tell you.” May handed Skye a piece of cake and a fork. “What do you want to drink with that?”

  A double martini straight up? Skye settled for a glass of milk.

  May finally pulled a stool up to the counter next to Skye and said, “Now, I want you to promise that you’ll let me tell you the whole story before you say anything.”

  “Okay.” Skye frowned; she was a school psychologist, for Pete’s sake, a trained counselor. Did her mom really feel it necessary to remind her to be a good listener?

  “When I entered Grandma Sal’s contest, I couldn’t decide which recipe to use. Each entrant was only allowed to send one, but how could I choose between my Two-Hour Decorated Cake and my Chicken Supreme Casserole?”

  Skye finished chewing and swallowed. “Well, I think you made the right decision; this cake is scrumptious. I didn’t know you knew how to make frosting decorations.”

  “Maggie taught me the basics.”

  Maggie was one of May’s best friends and the premier fancy-cake baker in Scumble River.

  “They’re beautiful. You must be a quick learner.”

  “Thanks.” May fiddled with her coffee cup. “Uh, I didn’t exactly choose the cake recipe.”

  “Well, your casserole is great too.” Skye forked another bite into her mouth.

  “I’m glad you feel that way.” May stared out the picture window and kept talking. “Because you entered the chicken dish.”

  “Huh?” Skye choked and had to take a swig of milk in order to speak. “I did what? Why? How?”

  “I wasn’t sure which recipe would get the judges’ attention.” May twisted a paper napkin into a raggedy bow. “The cake is more dramatic, but the casserole is more practical, so I wanted to enter both. I just needed another name to use, and I borrowed yours.”

  “Why me? Why not Aunt Kitty or your friend Hester or Maggie?”

  “They were all entering their own recipes. I needed someone who wasn’t.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?” Skye put down her fork; suddenly the sweet frosting curdled on her tongue.

  “Because you would have said no. Then I’d have had to use your father’s name, and you know he would have a coronary if I entered him in a cooking contest. He’s barely over the fact that I made him wear a pink shirt to the VFW dinner dance.”

  “Dusty rose,” Skye corrected, losing the thread of the argument.

  “Pink, red, it doesn’t matter what you call it; Jed still finds it hard to accept that dress shirts come in any color but white.”

  “Uh-huh, let’s get back to the contest.” Skye tilted her head. There was something her mom was keeping from her. “So you used my name. What does that have to do with me not answering my phone?”

  “Because the woman who called to tell me I was a finalist said that they were notifying you next, and I was afraid you’d tell them you hadn’t entered and ruin everything.”

  “I’m a finalist?” Skye took another sip of milk to stop herself from slapping her mother. “Why did she tell you about my entry finaling?”

  “While we were chatting she mentioned that more than one entrant with the same last name made the finals. She asked if we were related, and I said yes. I told her that the Chicken Supreme was my daughter.”

  “Well, they won’t let us both compete, so I’ll decline when they call.” Skye blew out a breath, thankful for her narrow escape.

  “No! That’s just it. We can both be in the contest. There aren’t any rules against it.”

  “But I don’t want to be in it.”

  “Please. For me?” May’s happy expression melted away. “We’ll have a great time. We can spend some quality time together.”

  “I talk to you every day and see you at least twice a week. That’s enough quality time for any thirtysomething daughter to spend with her mother.” Skye wasn’t falling for that old line. The only way May would ever feel she and Skye spent enough time together would be if Skye moved back home. Heck, knowing May, she wouldn’t be satisfied unless Skye crawled back into the womb.

  “I’ve been entering this recipe contest for twenty-five years, and I’ve never made the finals before. I never expected more than one of my recipes to make it this far.” May dabbed at a tear with her paper napkin. “This might be my only chance to win. I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

  “You still have your cake entry.” Skye was determined not to let her mother talk her into this. Several of her friends had told her she needed to grow a backbone where her mother was concerned. Of course, they never had to face the heaping helping of guilt May was so good at dishing out to get her own way.

  Tears seeped down May’s cheeks. “But I want the casserole to have a chance, too. There are four categories: Snacks, Healthy, One-Dish Meals, and Special-Occasion Baking. The winner of each category gets five thousand dollars, and the overall winner gets fifteen thousand. Between us we could win twenty-five thousand dollars. I could finally take your dad on that cruise we’ve been talking about, and have enough left over to buy him a new used truck. His is running on wire hangers and duct tape.”

  Skye opened her mouth to say no, but instead asked, “Where and when is this contest? There’s no way I can take a lot of time off from work.”

  “It’s at the Grandma Sal’s plant, right here in Scumble River.” May smiled like a poker player laying down a royal flush. “It starts the first Friday in April and goes through Sunday. Isn’t that during your spring break?”

  Once again Skye tried to say no, but she couldn’t come up with an excuse. Too bad she couldn’t claim to be going away for the school vacation, but her mother knew she was spending all her spare cash fixing up the old house she had inherited that past summer.

  May was looking at Skye like a puppy asking to be chosen from the animal shelter. How could Skye turn her down? She loved her mother and wanted her to be happy. If that made Skye a weenie, then so be it. There was a difference between having a backbone and being nice to your mom. Heck, there was even a commandment about it.

  “I get to keep the cash if I win, right?” Skye teased, knowing her chances of producing a winning dish were slim to none.

  “We’ll split it,” May bargained. “Fifty-fifty—my recipe, your cooking talent.”

  Skye rolled her eyes. In that case the split should be ninety-ten, in favor of her mother.

  After finishing her cake and milk, Skye was on her way out the door when a thought that had been nagging at her subconscious finally surfaced. She stopped and turned to face her mother. “You said there were four categories, right?”

  May nodded.

  “The cake would be in the Special-Occasion Baking and the casserole in the On
e-Dish Meals, right?”

  May nodded again, this time more slowly.

  “So, whose names did you use for the Healthy and Snack divisions?”

  “What makes you think I entered those?” May studied her nails intently.

  “Let’s not do this dance. Just tell me the whole truth. No equivocations.”

  “What does equivocation mean?” May turned away from Skye and opened the dryer door, taking sheets and towels from its drum.

  “Mother!” Skye pulled a towel out of May’s hands. “You have three seconds to tell me or I’ll drop out of the contest.”

  May shook out a sheet, remaining silent.

  “One.”

  May picked up two pillowcases and paired them.

  “Two.”

  May closed the dryer door with her knee, her arms full of folded cotton.

  “Thr—”

  “Uncle Charlie for Snacks and Vince for Healthy.”

  “Well.” Skye had to bite her lip to keep from giggling as she tried to imagine her godfather cooking. “I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t final.”

  “Mmm.”

  “They didn’t final, did they?” Skye followed her mother as May walked to the linen closet.

  “Yes.” May put the clean laundry on the shelf. “Charlie knew I had used his name, and he called just a few minutes ago to say we’re in.”

  “And Vince?” Skye asked. When her brother had become a hairstylist, he’d had a hard time convincing the more narrow-minded townspeople, which included their father, that he was straight. Entering a cooking contest would cause all that talk to flare up again.

  “He said it would be a hoot, and he likes the idea of being surrounded by women.” May beamed fondly. “He’s such a good boy.” Vince was thirty-eight, but would forever be a boy to May.

  Skye shook her head, hoping neither her mother nor her brother would repeat his statement to Vince’s girlfriend, Loretta. Loretta was Skye’s sorority sister and sometime attorney. She would not be amused to learn that her boyfriend was one of the only males under seventy among two dozen women.

  “It seems wrong for you to have four chances to win, and the others to have only one.” Skye wondered how the organizers felt about three finalists coming from the same family— four if you counted Charlie. On the other hand, since the contest had an entry area of only about a forty-five-mile radius, there was bound to be some duplication.

  “It’s not like I’ll be doing the cooking. I just provided the recipes. Sort of like sponsoring a car in a race.” May closed the linen closet door. “I checked the rules and there’s nothing that says the recipes have to be your own; they just have to be original.”

  Skye gave up. It wasn’t her problem. Her problem was learning how to make Chicken Supreme Casserole without burning down the kitchen. Why did the expanding-bread episode of the old TV show I Love Lucy keep running through her mind?

  It was the first Thursday in April, April Fools’ Day, which was apropos, since Skye had just gotten out of a meeting with the school’s attorney regarding the threatened lawsuit against the student newspaper. Due to spring break, there were only one or two people in the school building. Most of the staff was off on vacation, including Trixie, the student newspaper’s cosponsor.

  The lawyer was confident they’d win the case if it ever went to court, but the stakes were so high Skye was still worried. The superintendent was threatening to do away with the activity if they lost, which would devastate the kids who had worked so hard to make their paper one of the best student-produced newspapers in the state. They had even won a prize for last year’s efforts.

  Skye cheered herself briefly with the thought that the de-fault mode of school administrators was always no, but they could be reprogrammed. Still, why had she ever let Xenia Craughwell write for the Scoop?

  Granted, Xenia was smart—her IQ was off the charts. She was an excellent writer, and she was seeing an outside therapist, but there was a streak of meanness in the girl that concerned Skye. Xenia just didn’t seem to grasp the finer points of right and wrong, which made Skye suspect that it would take more than six months of counseling to make any substantive changes in her.

  Xenia had enrolled in Scumble River High in the fall after being kicked out of several other schools, and up until now she had been behaving herself; but Skye should have known from Xenia’s record that wherever she went, trouble followed.

  Which brought Skye back to the question of why in the world she had allowed Xenia on the newspaper staff to begin with. Skye felt like slapping herself—she had to stop trying to save everyone, and admit that some people were beyond her power to help.

  Trying to distract herself from thinking about the lawsuit, she flipped open her appointment book and stared at the pale green index card clipped to Thursday. Her mother’s careful printing mocked Skye.

  Was she some kind of moron? What in heaven’s name was she doing wrong? She’d been practicing the recipe for nearly three months and it still came out a gooey, rubbery mess every time she made it. The only time the dish was edible was when May stood right beside her, guiding her every move.

  Poor Wally had dutifully eaten all of Skye’s attempts, and gamely lied, claiming to taste improvement each time. Maybe that was why he had broken so many dates lately. At least three or four times since January he had called out of the blue, said something had come up, and had never given her a good explanation for canceling.

  He was probably reconsidering his statement that he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend who was a good cook. Thank goodness the contest started tomorrow. One more practice casserole and Skye might be minus a boyfriend.

  Okay, she didn’t want to think about the lawsuit or the recipe. What was more pleasant? Ah, yes. She smiled, recalling how excited everyone in town had been about Grandma Sal’s Cooking Challenge. In the past, the opening press conference, the welcome luncheon, and the awards ceremony had taken place in Brooklyn, but this year Scumble River’s mayor, Dante Leofanti, who was also Skye’s uncle, had persuaded the company to move all those events to Scumble River.

  Locating accommodations for the three judges, half a dozen contest staff members, and various media personnel covering the three-day extravaganza had been like negotiating a peace treaty, but the mayor had stepped in and gotten everything moving forward.

  He had even managed to get the school board to allow him to use the high school gym/auditorium for the contest press conference. As Dante had explained at the town meeting, no way would they let an event that would bring in both positive media coverage and lots of people spending money go back to Brooklyn just to save some scuffing of a hardwood floor.

  Skye had watched in awe as her uncle managed to get the townspeople to work together to keep the Challenge in Scumble River. Collaboration was not the strong suit of most of the town’s citizens.

  Skye tapped the recipe card against her chin, remembering having seen Dante arguing with Uncle Charlie about who got the cottages at his motor court. Charlie would have preferred to give the rooms to the highest bidders, but he and the mayor had agreed to three for the judges, three for out-of-town Grandma Sal’s staff, one for Grandma Sal, one for her son and his wife, one for her two grandsons, and two for the media. It was a good thing the cooking challenge was for Stanley County residents only. All the finalists could commute.

  Charlie stood firm on the twelfth cabin, explaining that he had a long-term renter and couldn’t kick him out. Skye wondered how much the lodger had bribed Uncle Charlie to keep the cabin during the contest.

  Overall, the town was ready for the Challenge, even if Skye wasn’t. She exhaled noisily. At least, unlike other events Scumble River had hosted, this one was likely to produce nothing worse than burnt chicken. The food might be to die for, but it was unlikely that anyone would be murdered over a recipe.

  CHAPTER 2

  Assemble the Ingredients

  Skye squirmed, trying to find a comfortable position on the wobbly plastic seat. S
he wasn’t sure where the school had found these flimsy folding chairs, but they were not designed for a woman of her generous curves. She felt as if the chair was about to collapse at any minute, landing her on her butt. Skye was okay with her full figure, but situations like this reminded her that society had different expectations.

  May and Skye had been the first to arrive. After their names were marked off on the list, they were given red and white checked aprons, a tote bag full of goodies—all products of Grandma Sal’s Fine Foods and its subsidiaries—and had their picture taken with Grandma Sal. Then they verified their recipes and were sent to sit backstage to wait for the rest of the finalists to show up. Once all twenty-four contestants arrived they would be brought onstage and introduced to the media, and Grandma Sal would make her welcoming speech.

  Skye wished she had brought a book. Her mother was chatting with Uncle Charlie, who had come in a few minutes after Skye and May. The woman sitting on the other side of Skye had been on her cell phone since she arrived—probably because she kept having to repeat herself over and over again, saying, “Can you hear me? Is this better? How about now?”

  Skye contemplated telling the signal-impaired woman that Scumble River had more dead zones than a Stephen King novel, but decided against it. Telling her wouldn’t do any good. Cell phone coverage was one of those life lessons—like a sign saying WET PAINT—that everyone just seemed to have to test out for themselves.

  Skye yawned. She was so bored. Maybe she should go talk to her brother. Vince had come in ten minutes ago, causing a stir with his golden blond hair and male-model physique. Vince, May, and Skye all shared the Leofanti emerald green eyes, but Vince used his to better advantage. He had the ability to hypnotize any female between the ages of three and ninety-three.

  Shaking her head, Skye decided this wasn’t the time to chat with her brother. The smitten women around him would not appreciate his sister diverting any of his attention away from them.

  Skye counted the tiles in the ceiling. If something didn’t happen soon, she was going to scream. It had been over thirty minutes since the last person arrived, and a quick tally of the people milling around the twelve-by-twelve room made it clear that they were all waiting for one last contestant. They had been instructed to arrive at ten a.m., and it was now closer to eleven.