Battered to Death (Daphne Martin Cake Mysteries) Read online

  “Did he say anything mean to you?”

  “He said something mean to everybody in the class at least once,” I said, trying to sidestep her question.

  Myra straightened. “What did he say to you?”

  “He asked if my husband was still incarcerated. Then he went on to tell the class the whole sordid story of how Todd had tried to kill me.”

  Her jaw dropped.

  “He said it was to demonstrate the pressure that bakers can come under from the public or some such garbage,” I said.

  “That’s a load of baloney,” Myra said. “He just wanted to embarrass you!”

  “That was how I looked at it.” I shrugged. “At least, he didn’t tell me to lose twenty pounds.”

  She gaped again. “He told somebody to lose weight? Was it a man or woman?”

  “Man.”

  “That’s probably a good thing,” she said. “If he’d have said that to a woman, they’d probably be scraping him off the hood of her car about now.”

  I chuckled. “The guy handled it well . . . I’ve got to give him that. He quickly retorted that his appearance was no sloppier than that of Mario Batali.”

  “And what did Chef Richards say to that?”

  “He said he wouldn’t eat anything prepared by Mario Batali, and the student said that Chef Batali wouldn’t offer him anything because of Chef Richards’s odious attitude.”

  Myra laughed. “Good for him! It sounds like Chef Richards thinks he’s better than everybody else . . . and that he needs to be taken down a notch or two. Carl Jr. had a baseball coach like that once. He was the biggest jerk I’d ever seen. He was nice to the kids until they’d agreed to play for him, and then he treated them like dirt. He’d even criticize them for things they did right . . . just, apparently, not right enough! Carl Jr. once made a run—earned the team the game-winning point, no less—and Coach Jerk Face yelled at him when he crossed home plate for not being in the proper position when the ball was hit.”

  “Did you take Coach Jerk Face down a notch or two?” I asked with a grin.

  “I sure did. One evening after sitting at a game, seething and hating the man and feeling guilty because I was seething and hating the man, I told Carl Jr. that we were going to find him another team to play for. Well, the coach heard me say that to Carl Jr. and he wanted to know if Carl was being a baby and quitting the team.” Myra’s jaw tightened and her eyes became slits just remembering the encounter. “I said, ‘No, he’s not. He’d stick it out and keep playing for you, but I’m the one paying the bills. And I’m not giving you any more of my husband’s hard-earned money. I’d rather give his money to a team where boys are encouraged, not torn down.”

  “Wow. You handled that very well,” I said.

  “Well . . . I left out the part where I told him that if he ever said another cross word to my son I’d kick his butt up between his shoulder blades,” she said. “And I didn’t tell you that when I left, I let the air out of his tires.”

  I laughed. “From the sound of things, even if you had given him the butt-kicking, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy!”

  “Except maybe for Chef Richards,” she said. “Maybe Mark and I should check into that guy’s past.”

  “You do that,” I said. “It’s hard to tell what’ll turn up.”

  She nodded. “I bet you’re right. Nobody that mean could be up to any good.”

  AFTER MYRA LEFT, I still needed some time to unwind. My best therapy for relieving stress was baking. I decided to make some cookies . . . maybe white chocolate chunk macadamia.

  I thought about taking the cookies to share with the class tomorrow morning, but I quickly dismissed that idea. Chef Richards would either a) declare the cookies to be the most disgusting things he’d ever tasted, b) harangue me for making cookies when I should have been working on my lousy scrollwork technique, c) toss the cookies in the trash can immediately upon my arrival because he hadn’t authorized my bringing them to class, or d) something even more nasty than any or all of the above.

  Ben loved my white chocolate chunk macadamia cookies, and we were going out tonight. I’d make the cookies for him, put them in a bakers’ box tied with a red ribbon, and present them as a “just because” gift.

  With both my recipe and my purpose in mind, I took out my favorite blue mixing bowl. There wasn’t any special sentimental value to my mixing bowl . . . no particular reason it should be my favorite. It was simply a good bowl. Chefs, bakers, gourmands, and grandmothers—especially grandmothers—could always get a feel for the best kitchen tools. This bowl was uppermost in my arsenal of baking weaponry. I relied on it often and was never disappointed by it—it wasn’t too deep or too shallow; it was just right.

  I measured my flour into the bowl and wondered again about Chef Richards. Was he as harsh as he’d tried to come across today in class? He’d greeted us all nicely—I wouldn’t go so far as to say warmly—when we got to class. He hadn’t been impersonal or unfriendly. Then he’d begun the class and behaved like a complete ass. Was it part of his performance as the caustic celebrity chef? Could he turn the attitude on and off as if it were a light switch? Did he employ it only when he was onstage—with any venue in which he was performing as the celebrity chef serving as his stage?

  He’d been critical of Gavin Conroy’s appearance. Yet Chef Richards’s own assistant had an unconventional hairstyle and fashion sense. Had Mr. Conroy been planted as a student in order to give Chef Richards someone with whom to argue? Given that Fiona had done almost all of the actual Australian string work, I had to wonder how much of Chef Richards’s celebrity was due to his bluster and how much was to be credited to actual talent.

  3

  BY THE time Ben arrived to pick me up for dinner, I’d showered, put on a plum-colored wrap dress, reapplied my makeup, and felt like a brand-new woman. I’d even talked myself out of dreading tomorrow’s class with Chef Jordan Richards. So what if the guy was a jerk? The rest of the class and I had survived the first day. We’d get through the second. Plus, I was learning some fantastic new techniques.

  “You look beautiful,” Ben said.

  “You look pretty hot yourself,” I told him. And he did.

  Ben was gorgeous. He had wavy light-brown hair, sky-blue eyes, and a lopsided smile. He worked out at the gym every other day and had once won the Sexiest Male Editor of the Year award. Okay, I’m joking about that last part. To my knowledge, there was no such award. But had there been, my Ben would have won it. Tonight he wore navy dress pants, a light-blue shirt that brought out those eyes, and a tan sport coat.

  “I have a surprise for you,” I said.

  “I have a surprise for you. I made reservations at that little Italian place outside of town,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”

  I smiled. “You know I love that place.”

  “Yeah, I do.” He kissed me. “Now what’s your surprise?”

  I stepped over to the island and retrieved the white box tied with a red velvet bow. I handed the box to Ben.

  “Wow. What’s the occasion?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing much. I guess the occasion is that I just wanted you to know I was thinking of you when I got home this afternoon.”

  He opened the box. “Oh, man . . . These are my favorites!”

  “I know,” I said.

  He took out one of the cookies and bit into it.

  “You’ll spoil your appetite,” I warned.

  “No, I won’t,” he said. “Did you have fun in class today?”

  “ ‘Fun’ isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe it,” I said. “But I don’t want us to lose our reservation. Let me tell you about it on the way.”

  By the time we pulled into the parking lot at Geppetto’s, Ben had heard the whole saga. He shook his head. “Chef Richards is lucky that the guy he called sloppy didn’t punch him in the face . . . unless he was planted there, like you said. But you weren’t planted there, and he wasn’t kind to you. Someone wi
ll eventually put that man in his place. Bullies usually wind up meeting their match one way or another.”

  “Well, forgive me for saying so, but I hope I’m around to see it when Jordan Richards does meet his match.”

  Those words would eventually turn up on a plate served with sides of fear and regret, and I’d be forced to swallow them whole. But tonight, I was having pasta.

  THE GEPPETTO’S HOSTESS showed us to an intimate table for two by a window that looked out upon the river. It was a lovely late winter’s night. The sky was clear, and the moon was full. The hostess told us that our waitress, Kaitlyn, would be right with us, and then she returned to her post to seat the next arriving patrons.

  While we awaited Kaitlyn’s appearance, Ben reached across the table and took both my hands. “You know how special you are to me, don’t you?” he asked.

  We hadn’t yet got to the L-word stage of our relationship . . . not this time, anyway. When we were dating in high school, we threw the L word around like it was confetti. And we made promises we’d been unable to keep. This time we were much more mature . . . and cautious. We’d both been hurt in the past, and neither of us wanted to go through that again.

  The seriousness of Ben’s expression made my heart flutter. He was about to make a major revelation. Either he was going to dump me . . . or he was going to tell me he loved me. I leaned forward, desperately hoping for the latter.

  “Hi there, I’m Kaitlyn, and I’ll be taking care of you this evening. What can I get you to drink?”

  I looked at the perky, ponytailed waitress and thought, You can get me a big old glass of Give Us a Minute, Kaitlyn. “I’d like a sweet tea,” I said.

  “And for you, sir?”

  “I’ll have the same,” Ben said.

  Kaitlyn said she’d be right back with our drinks. Since Ben had only let go of one of my hands when Kaitlyn had approached, I hoped the moment had not been lost.

  “You were about to tell me something,” I prompted.

  “Let’s order first.” He let go of my other hand and picked up his menu. “That way, maybe we’ll have a better chance of not being interrupted midway through our conversation.”

  It was definitely something big that he wanted to talk with me about . . . relationship-changing if not life-changing.

  When Kaitlyn returned with our drinks and a basket of warm breadsticks and asked if we were ready to order, I jumped right in with my request for chicken Parmesan. Ben mulled over the menu for what seemed like two days and then said he too would like the chicken Parmesan.

  This time, I took Ben’s hands. “Alone at last. Now tell me what’s on your mind.”

  He took a deep breath. “I got a call today from somebody I went to college with. Nickie Zane . . . she’s, um . . . she’s heading up a new, fairly large business magazine called All Up in Your Business.” He extracted one of his hands and took a drink of his tea. “She’s offered me a lucrative position with the magazine.”

  “That’s great . . . isn’t it? Are you considering taking the job?”

  “I am,” he said. “It would be more money and less responsibility than what I have at the Chronicle. . . . The only drawback is that I’d have to move to Kentucky.”

  “Oh.” I guessed it was the dump speech instead of the love speech. My heart sank into the pit of my stomach.

  “That’s it?” he asked, studying my face. “Oh?”

  “What am I supposed to say?” In my mind, I followed up with I don’t want you to leave Brea Ridge and move to Kentucky. I thought we were building something wonderful here . . . together. . . .

  “I don’t know,” Ben said. “I thought you’d have something a bit more substantive to say than ‘oh.’ ”

  “Um . . . congratulations?” I pressed my lips together. “Ben, I honestly don’t know what to say. I don’t want you to leave Brea Ridge, but you have to do what’s best for you. If this job is it, then I wish you all the best.”

  He released my other hand. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Wonderful. I’d said the wrong thing, and he was annoyed with me. I tried to make amends by further talking about the job. “Isn’t that awfully far away from your parents?”

  “Not really. Now that they’re living in the condo in Tennessee, they don’t need me as much as they once did.” He leveled his gaze into my eyes. “I guess I don’t really have anything holding me here in Brea Ridge. Do I?”

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “What kind of person would I be if I tried to convince you to stay? You’d end up resenting me. Maybe not today . . . maybe not tomorrow . . . but soon, and for the rest of your life.” It dawned on me that I was quoting Casablanca.

  That realization hit Ben at the same time, and we both laughed.

  “I do care about you, Daph, and my feelings for you will ultimately factor into my decision.”

  “And I care about you,” I said. “A lot. That’s why I have to let you make the decision on your own.”

  AFTER BEN DROPPED me off at home, I sat in the living room with my box of orchid petals and made orchids while feeling sorry for myself. Although the evening had ended on an upbeat note, there was still the possibility—a rather strong possibility—that Ben was leaving Brea Ridge. I tried to tell myself that he wouldn’t go. After all, he’d spent his entire journalistic career at the Brea Ridge Chronicle. Why would he leave it to start over with a new venture in Kentucky? Magazine startups have a high fail rate, especially in this new age of digital publishing. Even if Ben would be earning more money and it would be a more prestigious position than that of editor in chief of the Chronicle, where would he be if the magazine faltered?

  And the name: All Up in Your Business. . . . What kind of a name was that? Were today’s professionals supposed to take a name like that seriously? It sounded more like the title of a television sitcom than that of a magazine intended to educate business leaders.

  After making a few more orchids, I closed the plastic box and returned it to the kitchen. I went into my office-slash–guest room to check my mail. I looked at my mail—which was mostly junk—and then looked at my website statistics—visits were up a teensy bit, so that was good. And then I got to the real reason I’d logged onto the computer in the first place.

  I opened up my favorite search engine and typed in “All Up in Your Business magazine.” I scrolled through the links on the first page of search results and was beginning to think that maybe the company hadn’t set up a website yet. But then there it was, near the bottom of the second page.

  I clicked on the link. The All Up in Your Business home page featured “A List of Articles We’re Working on for Our First Issue!” The list included such titles as “Small Business Networking,” “Stop Stressing, Start Achieving,” “Event Planning 101,” and “Eco-preneurs You’re Going to Love.” There was a graphic of the first cover—farmland with skyscrapers off in the distance—to illustrate, I imagined, that the magazine’s focus encompassed both the concerns of rural and urban business owners.

  I thought that, given the cover and the proposed articles, the magazine would be off to a good start. The only drawback would be the magazine’s inability to compete with the larger business magazines already in existence and the plethora of daily business blogs.

  I clicked on the About Us tab at the top of the page. There was a photograph of an attractive dark-haired woman with a chin-length bob. Her name was Nickie Zane, and she was listed as the publisher. I clicked on the link embedded within the highlighted text of her name, and another tab opened with more photos and information about the adorable and ever-so-accomplished Nickie.

  While I was skimming over the information, one of the photos caught my eye. It was a group shot from Nickie’s college days. Smack dab in the middle of all those smiling faces—all but two of which were looking at the camera—stood Nickie and Ben. Nickie and Ben were the two people not looking at the camera. That’s because they were looking tenderly at each other.

  I felt a little sick to my st
omach. Ben had described Nickie Zane as somebody he’d gone to college with, not someone he’d been involved with . . . someone he’d been in love with. . . . Why hadn’t he told me more about his relationship with this woman? Obviously, there had been one . . . a serious one. And were Ben or Nickie—or both of them—eager to resurrect it?

  I was a grown-up. I tried never to jump to conclusions. However, trying and succeeding were two different things. I also tended to rush to judgment every now and then. My current assessment of this situation was that this tramp Nickie was trying to steal my man.

  I picked up my phone and dialed Ben’s number.

  “Hello.” He sounded a little groggy.

  I looked at the clock and saw that it was ten thirty. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No . . . no . . . what’s up?”

  “Well, I was checking my e-mail and my website stats, and I just so happened to look up that magazine you were talking about . . . All Up in Your Business,” I said.

  Silence. It was the guiltiest silence I’d ever heard.

  “That is the name of the magazine where you were offered a job, isn’t it?” I asked, keeping my voice ever so innocent.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I thought so. Nickie is as cute as she can be,” I said.

  “What are you getting at, Daphne?”

  “What was your relationship with her?” I asked. “And what part does that relationship factor in to your decision to leave Brea Ridge and join her in Kentucky?”

  He sighed. “Do we have to discuss this right now?”

  “Over dinner, you seemed upset because I wouldn’t help you make your decision,” I said. “I feel like I didn’t have all the information I needed then. Now I do, and yes, I’d like to discuss it.”

  Ben blew out another breath. “It’s complicated.”

  This time, I was the one who was silent.

  “Back when we were in college, Nickie was the coolest girl I knew,” he said.

  “Is this before or after we broke up?” I asked.