Harry had replaced Zach in the evening since the latter had been letting people come and go with nothing more than “camera crew” or “backstage crew” for sign-ins. Once those changes were in place people had seemed to settle back in the routine.
No one seemed to miss Kassie, which left me feeling a little sad. Had her killer just been someone who had managed to get in the building, maybe through one of those other doors, looking for something to steal? Had Kassie just been in the wrong place at the wrong time? No, that didn’t make sense, either. How had she ended up with lorazepam in her system? I realized I liked the idea of the killer being a stranger because it was better than thinking I was working with a murderer.
I had just finished the applesauce I had brought with me and was wishing that I’d made and frozen more back in the fall, when I saw Russell coming toward me across the grass. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt with his black skinnies and a pair of Mickey Mouse Vans with a pink toe and yellow tongue.
“Hey, Kathleen, do you have a minute?” he asked as he came level with the bench.
“Sure,” I said, sliding sideways. “Have a seat.”
Russell sat beside me, resting his elbows on his thighs and linking his fingers. “Your boyfriend is the police detective.”
He didn’t phrase the words as a question but I nodded anyway.
“Ruby Blackthorne says you could probably figure out what happened to Kassie. She says you’ve done it before. She says you figured out who killed her old teacher.”
I had helped catch Agatha Shepherd’s murderer. I had also almost gotten myself—and Owen—blown to bits in the process.
“I didn’t know you knew Ruby,” I said, mostly because I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Elias introduced us.” Russell was wearing a gold signet ring on the middle finger of his left hand. He played with it, twisting it in slow circles. The ring looked old. I wondered what its significance was.
I cleared my throat. “I did figure out who killed Agatha, yes,” I said. “But so did the police.”
“Ruby said people tell you things that they don’t always tell the police.”
I nodded. “Sometimes they do.”
“Kathleen, I did something I shouldn’t have done,” Russell said, his eyes fixed on his brightly colored shoes.
My chest tightened and my mouth was suddenly dry. “What did you do?” I hoped he wasn’t going to say he killed Kassie.
“That bowl of whipped cream? I’m the one who made it.”
I looked at him, incredulous. “Why?” I said.
He finally looked at me. “I was going to use it in a magic trick that sadly would go terribly wrong with Kassie being the beneficiary.”
“You mean the old pie-in-the-face trick.”
Russell nodded. “And you don’t have to tell me how juvenile the idea was. I do know.”
“Eugenie couldn’t have been in on that.”
“She wasn’t.”
The breeze lifted a stray strand of my hair and I tucked it back behind my ear. “So you made the whipped cream. Then what did you do?”
“The dishes. I don’t like messes.” He made a face.
“Why did you leave the bowl of whipped cream on the table?”
“Because I heard Eugenie calling my name and I didn’t want her to come into the kitchen. I knew if she saw the whipped cream she’d guess what I was planning. I figured I’d just come back later and get it. Nobody was going to be in the kitchen. Then we all ended up down at the café and I started to think maybe my plan wasn’t such a good idea after all.” He blew out a breath. “You know the rest.”
“Why did you want to pull Kassie into one of your . . . stunts?” I said. “She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who . . .” I hesitated.
“Who had a sense of humor?” Russell asked.
“Who would have wanted to do anything that would have left her looking silly.”
He put his hands together back to back and interlaced his fingers. “That was kind of the point. To make her look silly.” He looked at me again. “I got tired of the way she took little digs at the bakers. For someone like Charles or Rebecca, well, they’re pretty confident people. They can handle it. But for Kate and Stacey—she made them doubt themselves.”
Russell wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t think a face full of whipped cream would have changed Kassie’s behavior.
“Kassie was like a crow,” he said. “She liked to collect shiny things, but in her case the shiny things were bits of information about people. Then she would use what she knew like a little sword to jab the person.”
His words left me with an unsettled feeling. I remembered what I had heard Kassie say to Richard.
“What shiny thing did Kassie have on you?” I asked.
Russell laughed. “See? That’s the thing. She didn’t have anything on me. That’s why I was the person to even the score.” He raised an eyebrow and gave me a cheeky grin. “Lucky for me all of my shiny bits have already been shown to the world, so to speak.”
chapter 7
I pulled out my phone and called Marcus. I explained what Russell had just told me.
“Can he come down to the station now?” Marcus asked. I pictured him sitting at his desk, papers piled everywhere.
I relayed the question to Russell, who nodded. I said good-bye to Marcus, gave Russell directions to the police station and then walked back to the community center with him so he could get his rental car. I spent the next couple of hours looking ahead at the show’s schedule with Eugenie and making notes on topics she wanted me to research. Dairy and Dessert Weeks were still ahead.
Maggie poked her head in Eugenie’s office about two thirty. She was carrying a plate with a green flowered napkin on top. “Caroline sent me with these,” she said, setting the plate in the middle of Eugenie’s desk.
“Wonderful,” Eugenie exclaimed. She peeked under the napkin and then lifted her gaze to Maggie. “Sourdough biscuits?”
She nodded. “With lemon curd.”
“I’m going to put the water on,” Eugenie said. “You’ll join us?” she asked Maggie over her shoulder as she went to fill her kettle.
“I would love to,” Maggie said. She smiled at me. There was a smudge of rust-colored paint on her left cheek. “I saw Peggy. She told me how much help you were to her.”
“All I did was give her some basic information,” I said. “She’s going to do a good job because of the kind of person she is. Adding her to the show was a good decision on Elias’s part.”
“Do you think Ruby had anything to do with Peggy getting the job?” Maggie asked.
“Ruby had everything to do with her getting it,” Eugenie said, coming back in with the kettle. “We needed another judge if the show was going to continue. Ruby suggested Marguerite—I mean Peggy.” She plugged in the kettle and set it on top of the bookcase. “That piece of information came right from the horse’s mouth, Elias being the horse, so to speak.”
“It was a good idea no matter whose suggestion it was,” I said. I gathered my notes into a pile and set them to one side.
“There isn’t any problem with the show continuing, is there?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t think so,” Eugenie said, reaching for a metal canister on the middle shelf of the bookcase. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I saw Elias leave about half an hour ago. He looked preoccupied. He didn’t speak to anyone. His energy felt off. Usually he comes in to say hello and to see what we’re all working on but this time he didn’t.”
“As my mother used to say, Elias has a lot of irons in the fire.” Eugenie dropped four teabags into her squat teapot. “I’m sure there’s no problem with the show.”