“Okay,” I said. “We know that officially René Sartin is dead.”
The chef’s face went from pink to white almost instantly. He seemed to shrink into his chair.
The door from the kitchen opened and Emmett came through, his arms full of serving platters and food. He grinned in our direction, unaware of the tension around the table.
René lowered his voice.
“How did you find out?” he asked. The accent fell away, and I felt like I was meeting him for the first time.
“We’re detectives,” Mac said.
“It’s not what it looks like,” René said. He put his hands up as if to hold us back.
“It never is,” Mac said. “Why don’t you tell us your story?”
Fake René leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“René was my brother,” he said. “My grandmother raised us all on her own in the Upper Peninsula. She was from Quebec and had come to Michigan when she married my grandfather. She was an incredible cook and taught us all the old recipes from the time we were both young.” He stopped and cleared his throat.
“My brother worked three jobs to save enough money to go to France and train there as a chef. I was only nineteen when he left. He went to the Cordon Bleu school and came home with his certificate. About two weeks after he got home, he was in a car accident and died.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He tilted his head at me, and cleared his throat. “My grandmother and I knew that René wouldn’t want all that work to go to waste and she said she always thought I was the better cook. We arranged to cover up his death and I would take his name and his credentials so that I could get a job as a chef.”
I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. How did he think he would get away with it?
“Who else knows about this?” Mac asked.
René shook his head. “No one. I took a job in Traverse City and learned everything I could. Then my grandmother died of a stroke.”
He passed a hand over his face. “She was so proud that a Sartin was working in a ‘fancy’ restaurant. After her death, I headed south and ended up here. Linda and Jessica were wonderful to me. They let me have free rein in the kitchen to set the menu and experiment. It was a dream come true.”
“They have no idea that your credentials are fake?”
He shook his head. “After a while, I decided I should tell them, but then Jessica and I started spending more time together and she was so impressed that I had grown up in France . . .”
He held his hands out to us. “I just didn’t want to disappoint her and by that time, I didn’t want to lose her. I was in too deep and felt like I couldn’t tell her the truth without her feeling like our whole relationship was a lie. So I kept quiet.”
“And no one ever found out?” I said.
“No one until Clarissa,” René said to his shoes. “She went through all the employee files when she came here six months ago. I guess Linda had never looked into my credentials, but Clarissa did. She traced my brother’s information and found out that he didn’t grow up in France, which led her to discover his car accident. She must have put the rest together somehow.”
“Was she blackmailing you?” Mac asked.
René nodded, and studied the floor.
“She wanted to renovate the whole hotel and open a fancy spa. She threatened to expose my secret if I didn’t take her side. I told her there was no way Jessica would buy it. I’ve worked for the past five years for our reputation. Jessica knows I wouldn’t give it all up to open a spa, but Clarissa wouldn’t listen.”
“So you tried to convince Jessica to go along with the spa plan?” I asked.
René hung his head. “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to lose Jessica even more than I didn’t want to lose the restaurant. I think she thought Clarissa and I were having an affair. She got very touchy over the past couple of months and criticized Clarissa every chance she got.” His hands went up in a placating gesture and he briefly met my eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I had nothing good to say about Clarissa, either, but it put a strain on our relationship. So, ironically, my plan to go along with Clarissa and buy her silence was backfiring and causing more trouble with Jessica.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rested his head in his hands.
“It sounds like Clarissa’s death will work out in your favor,” Mac said.
René’s head snapped up. “I didn’t kill her. I may not have liked her, but I didn’t kill her.”
“So you didn’t see her after she left the dining room on Thursday night?”
René shook his head, but wouldn’t meet our eyes.
“We have a witness who heard you arguing with Clarissa in her room that evening,” I said.
His face drained of color even more and he looked like he might be sick.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, and closed his eyes briefly. “Okay. I saw her that night—she was agitated over a meeting earlier in the week and wanted me to convince Linda to sell some of the antiques to support the spa.”