Bake, Battle & Roll (A Lexy Baker Bakery Cozy Mystery) Read online

  Payne rambled over to the least crowded spot in the kitchen—the table where Lexy had been rolling the pie dough—and leaned against it. Wells stood to the side as if awaiting orders.

  Payne looked down at a small spiral bound flip pad he had taken from his pocket when they were outside.

  “Now, where were each of you when the murder happened?” Payne poised his pencil above the paper and widened his eyes at Lexy.

  “Oh, I was right here. I was rolling pie dough and I saw chef over there.” Lexy pointed to the end of the kitchen where she had seen Dugasse yell at Thomas. “Then I saw him go outside. I didn’t go out until a few minutes later and found him with a knife in his chest.”

  “And someone saw you here?”

  “Yes, several people. My assistant Deena and another chef, Brad.”

  Payne scribbled on the pad, then turned to Sylvia. “And you?”

  “Well, I’m not sure exactly when he was murdered, but I went over to Thomas after Dugasse yelled at him, then I went into the freezer for a few minutes. When I went outside, he was already dead.”

  Payne’s eyebrows mashed together. “Who is this Thomas?”

  “He’s one of our cooks.” Sylvia looked around the room, then spotted Thomas by the sink and pointed him out to Payne. Payne gave Wells a slight nod and the other man headed off toward Thomas, presumably to harass him with his own line of questioning.

  “And why was Mr. Dugasse yelling at him?” Payne pronounced the chef’s name as de-gassey and Lexy stifled a giggle.

  “It’s pronounced doo-gah-say,” Silvia said.

  Payne made a face. “What?”

  “The chef’s name. It’s pronounced doo-gah-say,” Silvia repeated, then continued. “He didn’t like the eggs Thomas had prepared, thus the yelling.”

  “And did this chef yell a lot?”

  Lexy and Sylvia both nodded.

  Payne looked up at the ceiling and tapped the eraser end of his pencil on his lips. “So, would you say he was unpopular?”

  Lexy and Sylvia nodded again.

  “And who would have wanted him dead the most?”

  Lexy looked around the kitchen. The rest of the staff, who had been craning to hear what was being said, suddenly developed a keen interest in their various tasks. She felt a shiver run down her spine. The head chef had just been murdered, yet everyone was going about their business as if nothing had happened. Then again, the resort couldn’t shut the kitchen down. The meals were included in the price for paying guests so the food service had to continue uninterrupted.

  No one liked the recently departed chef, but would anyone here have disliked him enough to kill him? She turned to look at Sylvia. If they didn’t bring in anyone from the outside to replace Dugasse, she’d benefit the most. Was a head chef’s position worth killing over?

  She shrugged. “No one really liked him that much, but I don’t think anyone here would kill him.”

  Payne tapped his pencil on his lips while he looked around the room. He narrowed his eyes at Lexy and Sylvia, his gaze moving to their bloodstained shirts.

  “You were both out there with the body. Either one of you could have had time to thrust the knife into the chef … or both of you together. It only takes but a second.”

  Lexy’s stomach dropped, anger flaring at the detective. But then she realized he was only drawing the logical conclusion … she’d probably think the same thing herself. Except she knew that she didn’t do it. Silvia, she wasn’t so sure about.

  Payne twisted his face into a grimace, making exaggerated sniffing noises. “What is that smell? Is something burning?”

  Lexy sniffed. She did smell something burning. She whipped her head in the direction of her ovens, her heart clenching when she saw smoke streaming out of them.

  “My pies!”

  She ran to the ovens and jerked the doors open. A dark cloud of smoke billowed out. She shoved her hands in some oven mitts and batted at the smoke. Choking and coughing, she reached inside the oven and brought out twin flaming pies.

  She dumped the pies in the sink, running water on them to douse the embers.

  “You bake the pies?” Payne gestured to the other pies on the counter, the ones that weren’t blackened hunks of coal.

  “Yes, I’m the pastry chef here.” Lexy tore off the oven mitts and tossed them on the counter, her spirits sinking. She’d have to work fast to get the right number of pies out in time for dinner and Payne was taking up valuable time.

  “What kind of pies are these?”

  “Huh?” Lexy scrunched her face at the detective who gestured at two of the pies she had finished earlier which were cooling on the counter. “Apple and blueberry.”

  “And this one?” he asked pointing to one in the back.

  “Lemon meringue.” Lexy wondered what this had to do with the dead chef.

  Payne tapped his lips with the eraser end of his pencil. “May I?”

  Lexy’s brow creased deeper. Was this guy for real? He wanted a piece of pie? Now?

  She nodded slowly.

  Payne reached over and grabbed a chef’s knife, cutting a large slice of pie. He looked at the knife as he pulled it out.

  “This looks similar to the knife that killed your chef.” Lexy’s stomach clenched as Payne turned his dark eyes on her. She glanced over at her knives, her shoulders relaxing when she realized they were all there.

  “Well, all my knives are accounted for, so it wasn’t one of mine that killed him.” She nodded toward the knife rack on the counter, then remembered the mahogany wood on the handle. “Besides, that knife had a mahogany handle … mine are rubber.”

  Payne narrowed his eyes at the knife, then grabbed a plate from a stack of clean ones beside him and plopped the pie on it. His eyes darted around the counter, looking for something to eat the pie with. Lexy held out a plastic fork hoping to speed up the process and get rid of him.

  “Mmm…’s good,” he mumbled around mouthfuls. Lexy shuffled her feet impatiently.

  “Detective … the murder?” Wells appeared at Payne’s side, eyeing the piece of pie he was demolishing.

  “Right,” Payne said, swiping a gob of meringue from the plate with his sausage-like finger and then licking it off. He put the plate down and consulted his flip pad.

  “Chef Dugasse was murdered.” He announced the obvious, looking up from his pad. “And someone in this room is most likely the killer.”

  All work in the kitchen ceased. All eyes turned to Payne.

  “How do you know that?” Lexy asked.

  “Well, you all had opportunity.” Payne looked around the room. “Since you were all here in the kitchen, anyone could have slipped out to do the killing.”

  “But what about motive?” A voice from the other side of the kitchen cut in. Lexy cringed, recognizing the voice as her grandmother’s. It would be just like Nans to run on down here upon hearing there was a murder. Her grandmother had an odd hobby. She investigated murders and, judging by the gleam Lexy saw in the older woman’s eyes, she was right on top of this one.

  Payne’s eyes lit up. “Very good Ma’am. Who here wanted the chef dead?”

  His question was met with silence.

  “No one? You all loved the chef?”

  Most of the staff looked down at the floor, some shuffling their feet and many of them murmuring, “no”.

  “You all didn’t like him, then?”

  Lexy saw Brad step forward. He gave her bloody shirt a pointed glance.

  “Some of us liked him, but many didn’t. Especially her.” Lexy’s heart lurched as Brad pointed straight at her. “In fact, right before Chef Dugasse was murdered, I heard her say she was going to put a stop to being bossed around by him once and for all.”

  Chapter Three

  It took an eternity for Payne and Wells to leave. The short detective bombarded Lexy with a series of questions, then warned her not to skip town before demanding her blood stained chef’s shirt as evidence.

  Lexy glare
d over at Brad who watched them with a satisfied smirk on his face before she changed her shirt and put on one of the kitchen aprons.

  Somewhere in the middle of questioning Nans had left, but not before demanding Lexy’s presence once she was done with her baking. Her grandmother seemed practically giddy with delight and Lexy figured she’d probably have the large rustic cabin she shared with two of her friends turned into some sort of command center to use for running the investigation by the time she got there.

  Lexy got busy rolling out dough. She needed twenty pies for the dinner service and all that questioning had taken up valuable pie-making time. She worked at breakneck speed since she didn’t want to waste the whole day in the kitchen.

  “I can’t believe Brad ratted you out like that,” Deena said, cutting her eyes toward Brad.

  Lexy pursed her lips. “Yeah, what a jerk.” Then looking up at Deena’s wide eyes, she added, “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Deena said, then leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Do you think it was someone in here?”

  Lexy glanced around the kitchen. Sylvia had easily slipped into the role of head chef and was overseeing the food preparations. She had to admit that Sylvia was much more pleasant than Dugasse. Could she be the killer?

  Everyone else seemed to be focused on their job. No one was acting like they had just stabbed someone.

  “I don’t know. The police seemed to think so, but it could have been anyone, really.”

  “Yeah, someone could have come from the woods and killed him. I bet a guy like that had a lot of enemies,” Deena said as she turned to put two more pies in the oven.

  Lexy glanced out the kitchen window at the large section of woods behind the dining lodge. Someone could have come from the woods. There were several paths out there.

  “I heard he was behind the dumpster. What was he doing there?” Deena started pouring the filling into more pie shells.

  Lexy bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know.”

  What was he doing behind the dumpster? She’d assumed the chef had gone out for a smoke, but usually the smokers stayed right outside the kitchen door. There would be no reason for him to go behind the dumpster … unless he was lured there or has some sort of secret meeting and didn’t want to be seen.

  Lexy finished rolling out the last of the pie dough, cut it into two circles, and quickly fitted them into pie plates for Deena to fill.

  “Can you fill these and bake them, then set them to cool? I need to take off,” Lexy said as she untied her apron.

  “No problem.” Deena nodded, getting to work with the pie filling.

  Lexy bunched up her apron and threw it in the clothes hamper as she headed toward the door.

  She was in a hurry to get to Nans. This case had a lot of angles to it and she’d feel much better if someone competent was looking into it. She didn’t know if she trusted the pie eating Detective Payne, but she did know that Nans and her friends were good at solving crimes. They’d even helped the police department back home—where her fiancé, Jack, was a homicide detective—solve several cases.

  Plus, she figured, it couldn’t hurt to do some investigating of her own. It might help solve the case more quickly and she wanted to make sure the real killer was caught … especially since she seemed to be the one that was at the top of Payne’s suspect list.

  ###

  Lexy stopped outside the dining hall, taking a deep breath to calm herself from the stresses of the morning. She was no stranger to dead bodies. In fact, she seemed to come across them frequently, much to the dismay of her fiancé … and the delight of her grandmother. But still, it was never pleasant to find someone dead … or to become the number one suspect.

  Starting down the hill, she tried to push the image of Chef Dugasse with a knife sticking out of his chest from her mind. Instead, she focused on the scene in front of her.

  The dining lodge was at the top of a hill with panoramic views of the rest of the resort. Lexy looked out over the pristine lake which was dotted with kayaks and canoes. Sunlight glinted off the deep blue waters. The peaceful sound of chirping birds filled the air and the smell of pine permeated her nostrils adding to the tranquil scene.

  The resort was all about nature and relaxation. The roads were dirt, more like paths and people rarely drove cars on them—only to get to their cottages and to leave the resort. Most people walked or drove small golf carts inside the complex and the absence of the drone of car engines added to the peaceful feeling.

  Quaint, rustic cottages painted in reds, blues, whites and greens—their shutters with cutouts of pine trees sat along the roadways. Most of them had porches complete with rockers and the yards were bursting with colorful displays of flowers. Lexy could see hammocks swinging in the breeze and wished she had time to relax in one.

  Turning left on Aspen Lane, she headed toward Nans’ cottage which was one of the largest in the resort. It sat at the very end of the street and had a huge front porch on which Nans and her three friends, Ruth, Ida and Helen were waiting.

  “Lexy, are you okay?” Ruth hugged her.

  “Come inside dear, we made some tea.” Helen held the door to the cottage open and ushered Lexy inside.

  “Tell us all about finding the body.” Ida scooted a chair out from the wide pine table that sat next to a large window on one side of the room, indicating for Lexy to sit.

  Ruth appeared at her side with a steaming cup of tea and then all four ladies took their seats around the table, staring at Lexy with wide, excited eyes.

  Lexy sipped her tea and looked around the room. It resembled the squad room from an episode of Castle. There was a giant white board with a picture of Chef Dugasse on it and different columns of information. Papers were piled up on a nearby desk. Nans’ iPad was charging on the coffee table.

  “Where did you guys get that?” Lexy waved at the white board.

  “Oh, Norman brought us to Staples and helped us with it,” Ida said referring to her fiancé who had accompanied her on vacation. They had a small cottage near the lake while Nans, Ruth and Helen shared this one. Lexy and Jack had their own cottage a few streets over, which they shared with Lexy’s white Poodle mix, Sprinkles.

  The thought of her dog made Lexy smile and she glanced at her watch. She’d better hurry, she wanted to take Sprinkles for a walk before dinner and she should spend some time with Jack …

  “Tell us everything you know about the murder.” Nans interrupted Lexy’s thoughts.

  “There’s not much to tell. I went out to talk to Chef Dugasse—I had seen him go outside earlier. When he wasn’t outside the door, I looked a little further and I saw his shoes on the other side of the dumpster, toes up. I ran over and there he was with a knife in his chest.”

  “You didn’t see anyone else, or hear anything?”

  Had she?

  “I’m not sure, I was so distraught at finding him like that, I really wasn’t thinking.”

  “So he was already dead?” Helen went over to the white board.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “And what time was that?”

  Lexy gnawed on her bottom lip. “I’m not sure, I didn’t look at my watch or anything, but it was probably about five or ten minutes before I called 911.”

  Lexy pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and looked through the sent calls. “The 911 call was sent at eight twelve.”

  Helen wrote the time on the white board.

  Nans got up from her chair. “So, you went out the door and looked for the chef?”

  “Yes, I already said that.”

  Nans held up her finger. “When you didn’t see him, you looked around the dumpster.” Nans mimed looking around an imaginary dumpster in the middle of the room.

  “Yep.” Lexy nodded.

  Helen scribbled something on the board.

  “Then you saw his shoes and ran around to the other end of the dumpster?”

  “Yeees ...”

  Nans ran ar
ound the imaginary dumpster, threw her hands up in mock surprise and then knelt on the ground. “Like this?”

  Lexy nodded and sipped more tea.

  Ida went over beside Nans and looked down at the imaginary body. “You checked his pulse—he was dead. What else did you do?”

  Lexy shut her eyes, trying to remember exactly what happened. “I checked his pulse—his neck and wrist and then I leaned over to see if he was breathing … and that’s when Sylvia came out.”

  “Sylvia, the sous-chef?” Ruth wrinkled her brow at Lexy.

  Lexy nodded.

  “She was out there?” Ruth asked.

  Lexy nodded again.

  “Won’t she get the head chef position, now that Dugasse is dead?”

  Another nod.

  “Then she could be our killer!” Ruth went over to the white board and added Sylvia’s name under the ‘Suspects’ column.

  “Which direction did Sylvia come from?” Ida asked

  Lexy pursed her lips. “She came from behind me … I didn’t see exactly where, but I assumed she came out the kitchen door.”

  “But she could have been hiding on the other side of the dumpster after killing the chef,” Nans said.

  The ladies murmured their agreement.

  “She had means, motive and opportunity!” Helen punctuated the last word by jamming the cap onto her white board marker.

  “Well now, let’s not get too excited,” Nans said. “We can’t call the case closed without doing a proper investigation.”

  “Right.” Helen took the cap off her marker and posed her hand over the white board. “Who else do we have for suspects?”

  Everyone looked at Lexy.

  “What?”

  “Who else would have wanted your chef dead? Did he have enemies?” Nans asked.

  “He was mean to everyone in the kitchen, but I don’t think that would be a reason to kill him … unless he really pissed someone off. He was yelling at Thomas right before he was killed but Thomas didn’t leave the kitchen.” Lexy’s eyebrows mashed together. “But I did see Sylvia heading toward the door after the chef.”