While Zach rushed down the hall to fetch the police, I took a moment to take a closer look at Belmonte. Strangely enough, the guy wasn’t much taller than me, but something about the way he carried himself made him seem much taller, gigantic even. I let my eyes roam from the bald stripe down the center of his head to his fat hands. I could just imagine those short stubby fingers of his wrapped around a nail gun, finger pressed against the trigger . . . He caught me looking, wagged his fingers, and raised a brow, a strange little smile quirking the corners of his mouth. Oh for crying out loud! He thought I was checking him out for another reason. I scowled and looked away. Ego, that’s what it was. Obviously, the man was full of himself.
I tuned into Jude’s phone conversation. Poor guy was working hard to placate Bentley, whose irate voice was coming loud and clear over the line. I imagined at this very moment she was storming down the hallway, pushing her way through the crowds with her phone in hand, on her way to resolve this most recent crisis. “Yes,” Jude was saying. “Lila discovered the body . . . Yup, afraid so . . . The police are here,” he finally said in way of an excuse before quickly disconnecting.
Two uniformed officers had entered the hall and were quickly making their way toward us. “Where’s the victim?” the first officer asked.
I pointed toward the service kitchen. “Back there. In the walk-in cooler. I found him there; he’s got a . . .” I let my words trail off, shifting my focus to Belmonte. “This man was back there. He grabbed me.”
Next to me, I could feel Jude grow tense.
“Grabbed you?” the man protested. “You backed into me.”
Okay. Maybe that was true. Still . . .
He turned to the officer. “She was standing over the dead guy with a screwdriver,” he added.
One of the officers had taken out a notepad and was jotting down information. “Your names?”
“Oscar Belmonte. I own Machiavelli’s.”
Oh brother, I thought, noticing the way his chin lifted and his chest puffed out. “Lila Wilkins,” I told the officer. “I’m an agent with Novel Idea Literary Agency.”
“Wilkins?” one of the officers said, exchanging a look with his partner. The partner simply nodded in one of those all-knowing ways.
“Wilkins?” Belmonte echoed. “Do you know Althea Wilkins?”
I narrowed my eyes. “She’s my mother. Why?”
He averted his gaze as his face flushed deep red. “She’s a friend of mine.”
*
IT DIDN’T TAKE long before the place was crawling with all sorts of officials: officers, crime scene techs, the coroner’s team, and my fiancé, Detective Sean Griffiths. “Did you know the guy?” he was asking me. Belmonte and I had been sequestered to two of the small classrooms in this wing. Another officer was interviewing Belmonte, while Sean questioned me.
“Not really. I mean, I knew who he was. Actually, I suggested him for the job.”
Sean waited for me to expand on my explanation. I’d come to learn that Sean’s biggest asset as an interrogator was his patience. He knew how to wait it out, let the person being interrogated sweat a little. Make them nervous enough to start babbling. And it always seemed to work with me.
“I met him briefly yesterday at the Magnolia Bed and Breakfast. He’s putting up some shelving in Cora’s pantry. It irritated Bentley because he was so noisy.” He raised a brow but didn’t comment. “Not that much,” I assured him. “Anyway, a few of our authors are staying at the inn: Pam, she writes erotic romance; Jodi, romantic suspense; and my client, Lynn. She doesn’t actually have a book published, but she’s a great—”
“So you met this Chuck once, but you recommended him for this job?”
“Well, not really. I remembered hearing that he worked maintenance for the Arts Center and it was sort of an emergency. The refrigerator died and we had the chef coming and the cakes . . .” I stopped, visions of buttercream frosting stained with blood swimming before my mind and mingling with echoes of yesterday . . .
Sean leaned forward. “What is it?”
“The cakes,” I repeated. Found facedown in a wedding cake. Bentley’s words from yesterday’s meeting came rushing back to me. Of course! The way I found Chuck, facedown in a wedding cake, covered in frosting and blood . . . My own client had written that very same thing in her book, Wed ’til Dead. But certainly Lynn wasn’t capable of such a thing. Suddenly I felt torn between my loyalty to Lynn and my obligation to tell Sean what I knew. In my heart I knew Lynn couldn’t have done such an awful thing; there was just no way she could hold a nail gun to someone’s head and . . . I cringed.
“Lila?”
I met Sean’s eyes, deciding I needed to tell him about Lynn. He’d eventually find out they had been married anyway. “There’s something I need to tell you. It’s about one of my authors, Lynn Werner.” I told him what I knew. That Lynn and Chuck were once married. The strange way Lynn acted when she discovered Chuck was working at the inn. The argument I witnessed between the two of them on the street yesterday. The murder scene in her book. But I did sort of leave out the fact that she was missing from her booth earlier. Surely she was taking a break to get some water or use the restroom. Wasn’t she? I pushed away the strange thought creeping into my mind. There was just no way Lynn—shy, timid Lynn—was capable of something so violent. “I know it all sounds suspicious,” I continued, “but she just doesn’t seem like the type. She’s so quiet and nice.”