“Thanks!” The waitress waved at another waitress who was passing close to their table. “Sherry? Can you come here a second?”
Hannah and Michelle listened as their waitress explained what she needed. Sherry agreed and they all posed together. The photos didn’t take long, even though Sherry requested another photo for herself. Then Hannah and Michelle signed blank order forms for both waitresses and their mothers.
“Thanks so much,” their waitress said, placing the autograph in her apron pocket. “My mother’s going to love this. And wait until I tell her that you two are so nice, not anything like the contestant with Mayor Bascomb!”
Hannah and Michelle exchanged meaningful glances, and Michelle responded immediately. “Oh? When was that?”
“The night after the last competition. The mayor was here with one of the competitors, and she turned me down flat when I asked for an autograph.”
“Was it the blonde?” Hannah asked.
“Yes. She was really mad about something, and the mayor was trying to calm her down. It must have worked, because she started smiling when he ordered a bottle of champagne. All they had was one glass, and then they left.”
Their waitress rushed off after thanking them again. Hannah and Michelle looked at each other and both sisters smiled, bemused, as they reached for their coffee cups at exactly the same time. Then Hannah looked down and her face assumed a more serious, Let’s get down to business expression, as she reached into her saddlebag-size purse and drew out what Michelle and Andrea had referred to as her murder book. “Did you take notes on that footage we saw last night?” she asked.
“Of course. I’ve got them right here.” Michelle picked up her cell phone and tapped it several times.
“You put them in a voice mail to yourself?” Hannah guessed.
“No, I used the note function and typed them in.”
One by one, the two sisters went through their notes. Hannah had caught some things that Michelle hadn’t noticed, and Michelle had noted several things that Hannah hadn’t spotted.
“Okay,” Hannah said, flipping to a clean page in her steno notebook. “Now that we’ve got a complete list, let’s talk about what we’ve learned about the contestants and judges that we’ve met.”
“The other judges didn’t seem to like Chef Duquesne very much,” Michelle said. “I saw La Vonna Brach roll her eyes several times when he said mean things about Brooke’s strawberry mousse with the marshmallow sauce in New York. And Helene Stone leaned as far away from him as she could when he criticized the contestants, here in Lake Eden.”
Hannah thought about that for a moment, and then her mind offered a possible explanation. “Did it seem to you as if Judge Stone wanted to get out of camera range so that no one would associate her in any way with Chef Duquesne?”
“Yes. You could be right, Hannah. That could have been what she was trying to do. I was watching and it was subtle. There was nothing overt, not really. It’s possible that it was completely unconscious on her part.”
“I suppose that could be true,” Hannah agreed. “I noticed something else about her, too. When Chef Duquesne handed her the coffee cup he’d refilled for her, she put her hand around the cup part, even though it must have been hot. I remember thinking that she must have preferred the discomfort over the possibility of touching his fingers on the handle.”
“You’re right! She did do that, and her reaction was a bit excessive. I wonder if something happened in the hotel in New York.”
Hannah was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Remember when I ran back up to the room to get my copy of the recipe?”
“Yes. You went right after we ordered coffee and you said not to worry, that you’d be back in a flash.”
“I was, but I did have to wait a few seconds for the elevator. I know because the elevator was up on the fourteenth floor. The elevator came straight down without stopping until it got to the eighth floor to pick me up. When the doors opened, Chef Duquesne and Helene Stone were inside.”
“Is that important?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s interesting because Helene Stone’s room was on the sixth floor.”
“How do you know that?”
“She was in line in front of us when we checked out of the hotel. I heard her give her room number.”
“You’re sure it was the sixth floor?”
“Positive. She had 626, and we had 826. I remember thinking that she was directly below us, two floors down.”
“Did Chef Duquesne and Helene Stone do anything on the elevator that gave you the impression they’d been together on his floor?”
“No. They were both staring directly ahead at the numbers on the display over the doors as the elevator went down to the lobby. Neither one of them said a word.”
“Did you get the impression that they were upset with each other?”