A Beeline to Murder

Abby excused herself and walked to the back of the room, set her phone to video record mode, and waited to see who else would show up. When Brenda left, Philippe sank into the chair nearest the casket to receive the condolences of those attending the viewing. He’d told Abby that if no one showed, the two of them would watch the tribute and drive up the mountain for the burial, then share a simple meal afterward to celebrate Jean-Louis’s life.

From somewhere beyond the chapel, a clock sounded two chimes. At five past the hour, the mayor and the city manager filed in, followed by Nettie, who spotted Abby and nodded. Nettie would not be there except by order of Chief Bob Allen, and Abby knew that Nettie would be watching and listening and reporting back to the chief any relevant information that the police chief should know about. The three spoke to Philippe, waved to Abby, and filed by the coffin before taking a seat. Word traveled fast in a small town, but Abby hadn’t realized just how fast and what the impact would be. Others came. Many others. Abby recognized customers, pastry shop workers, suppliers, and business associates among them, but there were also people she didn’t know, presumably from the art and culinary worlds of San Francisco.

Abby was not surprised that mayoral candidate Eva Lennahan—who once had called Jean-Louis “the most talented pastry chef in town”—was a no-show. Hopeful that the man in the dark suit, the bearer of white lilies, might return, Abby kept a watchful eye on the door as the lights dimmed for the audiovisual tribute.

The soft strains of “Vissi d’arte” from Puccini’s Tosca, coincided with an on-screen close-up of Jean-Louis. His large light brown eyes and dark brows dominated his angular face, made more so by a straight nose sans a bump or excessive fleshiness and his smiling Cupid’s-bow lips. The camera loved the handsome French Canadian immigrant who’d made Las Flores his final home. On film, he exuded vitality and a commanding presence. Abby marveled at Philippe’s selection of music. Of course, Jean-Louis would have loved hearing this aria again. Its opening line, “I lived for art, I lived for love,” encapsulated the narrative of his life. And as Chef Jean-Louis had once exclaimed, no one could sing Tosca like the incomparable Maria Callas.

The sniffles and muffled cries Abby heard from where she stood at the back of the room tugged at her heart. There were moments during the twenty-two-minute tribute when she had to pinch her nose and squeeze her eyes shut against the tears that were welling. The sequence of shots depicting Jean-Louis at work in the pastry shop kitchen proved the most difficult for Abby to watch. The close-up of his fingers holding scallop-shell pans filled with freshly baked honey-almond madeleines brought new tears. And there, on the counter next to him, was his familiar vermeil teapot and a jar of Abby’s honey, with its unmistakable label, which captured the beauty of Henrietta, her favorite little Mediterranean hen.

Other images depicted Jean-Louis and Philippe in a school yard, as adolescents, arms around each other, their school backpack straps draped over their shoulders. In a picture of the boys at an art show with their father, Abby could see the family resemblance. Yet another showed a teenage Jean-Louis outside a Parisian-style patisserie, studying the offerings through the glass window. There was an image of him with Sugar, the mini English pointer–whippet–beagle mutt, whom Jean-Louis had acquired after moving to Las Flores.

The voices of Bocelli and Dion sang “The Prayer” as the last image lingered—a grinning Jean-Louis in his tropical-print shirt and hiking shorts, hands outstretched to heaven, standing atop the spillway of the Las Flores Reservoir. Jean-Louis’s tall, thin friend—perhaps less adventurous—stood nearby, as if ready to catch Jean-Louis in the event that he slipped. The haunting and unmistakable image of that friend—one Jake Lennahan—stuck with Abby like no other.