A Beeline to Murder

Abby responded in a steely-edged voice. “True, but I have contacts at all levels of law enforcement. With one phone call, your life radically changes. The sooner you talk to me, the sooner I go away.”


Etienne frowned. “Whatever!” He lined up several more plates of cake to wrap in plastic. He seemed to be thinking about her threat. His tone shifted. “I asked Jean-Louis for money to pay for a place to dry some plants.”

“So you need a drying shed. Not talking about herbs, are you?”

He shook his head. “I think you know exactly what I mean.... I found a place . . . more like a shack, but no way to grab it.”

Abby rubbed the lobe of her ear as she thought about how to phrase the next question. “So you and your friends, you wanted to actually rent the place, instead of just moving into this drying shed?”

Etienne looked at her dismissively. “And have the owner call the cops? Get real.”

“Okay . . . so, what kind of money are we talking about?”

“Seven hundred rent, fifteen hundred up front for that shack.”

“Where is the shack?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He leaned over and retrieved a new roll of plastic wrap from a box of supplies and continued cutting sheets of it to wrap the plates.

For a moment, the thought of Lucas digging up the marijuana field he’d found crossed Abby’s mind, but she said nothing. While she didn’t appreciate Etienne copping an attitude, as long as she got some answers from him, she would push him for more.

“Did Jean-Louis give you the money?”

“Nope.”

“So what did you do?”

“Said a few choice words . . . initiated my backup plan.”

“Which was . . . ?”

“Give me money or kiss your reputation good-bye. Folks around here fear what they don’t understand . . . and they wouldn’t understand their town’s illustrious pastry chef stealing recipes from other chefs and elbowing others aside to win a competition.”

“Well, that’s creative. Did he really do that?” Abby asked.

“It doesn’t matter if he did or not, if people believe it. He had so many in this town looking up to him, I had to make sure his ivory tower came crashing down.”

“And you had a plan, didn’t you?”

“I would say so,” Etienne said. Then he added, “I knew where he kept all his recipes. I just took a few. I knew he’d want them back, and maybe he would even pay for them. Hopefully, it would change his mind about ponying up some cash.”

“But from what I hear, Chef Jean-Louis was cash-strapped.”

“That’s what he said. But I didn’t buy it.”

Abby watched as Etienne wiped his forehead with a towel. She wondered if Etienne sweated because he was feeling cornered. As a cop, she’d seen plenty of guys sweat under questioning; some had even cried like babies after they were caught. “Then what did you do?”

“Had a Baileys at the Black Witch. But I got madder. The more I drank, the angrier I got. You know what they say about alcohol releasing inhibitions. Guess I started spreading it on thick.”

“About the chef stealing from other chefs?”

“Yeah.”

“So, who’d you tell?’ Abby asked, trying not to sound disgusted.

“The bartender . . . the guy on the stool next to me . . . I dunno. What does it matter now? The chef is dead.”

“It matters.”

“Okay, so I chatted up a few people, had a drink, drove up to the city.”

“Your car was spotted in Las Flores around four thirty a.m.”

Etienne stared at Abby in an intense silence.

Oh, you’re angry, aren’t you?

“You’re not pinning his death on me.”

“You ran a stop sign at the end of the exit ramp from the highway into town.”

“Big deal. So what?”

“You careened past the newspaper carrier delivering his route. He wrote down your vanity plate. LFCHEF, isn’t it? So I ask again, at five o’clock on the morning the chef died, where were you?”