It must have been a rhetorical question, in that she headed for the coffee urn without waiting for our opinions. Ruby Bee and Estelle agreed to allow me to bring them coffee and donuts, and we were all settled as Frannie and Durmond came out of the stairwell door and came across the lobby.
"That makes four-no, three," Kyle muttered, oblivious to the crumbs on his chin and lapels, and also to the smudge of powdered sugar on the tip of his nose. "All we need are Brenda and the kid, and we'll be set." He rapped his cup on his saucer. "Listen everybody, Geri should be here any minute to take charge, and please don't give her any grief. Do whatever she says, okay? She'll take you on a tour of the kitchen, at which time you can check your individual boxes to make sure you've got everything you need. The boxes will then be sealed, and no one will be allowed in the kitchen until it's his or her turn to prepare an entry. Only the contestant and Geri will be in the kitchen from that point on. As each entry is finished, it will be locked in the pantry under Geri's supervision, and she'll have the only key."
"Did you look in this pantry?" Ruby Bee whispered at me, then caught Kyle's beady stare and sat back. I nodded, even though I hadn't.
"I'll have to stay with Catherine when she prepares her recipe," Frannie said.
Kyle gulped at her. "Impossible."
"She has asthma," Frannie countered with a shrug. "I have to be there with her inhaler and her tablets. I'm the only one who can judge the severity of an attack and give her the proper dosage. In fact, she had an attack last night and I told her to stay in bed until the actual time of the contest."
Kyle tried to stare her down, but eventually conceded. "Yeah, as long as you don't help her prepare her entry. Nobody else has any medical problems, right?"
We all shook our heads, and I hoped I was the only one who heard Ruby Bee mutter, "Except for that man in the kitchen. I'd call being dead a downright serious medical problem."
Kyle glanced our way, but merely said, "Well, then, why don't you have more coffee while we wait for Geri. She said she'd be here at ten." He looked at his watch, and then at the window. "I'd better check on Brenda. I think it'll be better if we're all here when Geri comes. She's still a little upset after last night's reception."
I watched him as he walked across the lobby, futilely punched the elevator, and disappeared into the stairwell. He was uncomfortable in his role as drill sergeant, but he was doing fairly well. Sure, he'd ruined his tie, and his jacket was so sprinkled with crumbs that he might have been in the throes of terminal dandruff. To his credit, his voice was breaking no more than every third word and his eyes were slightly less panicky than those of an animal caught in a steel trap. It was only a silly contest, I told myself as I finished my coffee. He'd been tense the day before, but now he was so wired that he might detonate any minute.
"What's bugging that Kyle fellow?" Ruby Bee said, paraphrasing my thoughts. "It ain't like he has to run the contest by his lonesome. Geri's coming back, so all he has to do is toady around and pretend he's important."
Estelle nodded sagely. "He's acting like someone stuck a piece of dynamite up his rear and struck a match." She made sure Durmond and I were the only ones paying any attention, then lowered her voice. "Maybe he had something to do with that corpse in the kitchen…The first time I laid eyes on him, I knew he was a sneaky sort. After all, a ferret ain't nothing but a domesticated polecat."
"Neither he nor Geri is staying in the hotel," I pointed out. "Rick may have conceded the kitchen key, but I can't see him handing over the key to the hotel. They weren't even here at four in the morning."
Durmond, in a whisper almost as theatrical as Estelle's, said, "And there was no corpse in the kitchen. Arly and I checked very carefully."
"There most certainly was!" Ruby Bee protested.
I managed to control my temper, for the most part. "No, there wasn't, dammit! Not unless he waited for you to leave, and then hopped up, grabbed a mop and a dishrag, got everything cleaned up, and wandered out the door with four cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut in his pocket!" For the most part, as I said.
I might as well have been arguing with Particular Buchanon-after his funeral. Ruby Bee thought for a minute, and said, "I think you're on to it. Somebody came into the kitchen after I left, moved the body, and cleaned up that awful mess. Who'd do a thing like that?"
Optimist that I was, I tried again. "If there was as much blood as you claim there was, no one except a band of elves could have accomplished all that in the short amount of time."
"It wasn't all that short an amount of time." Ruby Bee gave Estelle a nervous look. "I'd say we discussed what to do for a little while before we decided we'd better tell you about what I saw in the kitchen."
"We didn't want to disturb you," said Estelle, trying to act as if that were one of their priorities.
I knew them too well. "How considerate of you. Exactly how long did you dangle on the horns of this particular dilemma before you came to my room?"
"It could have been most of an hour," Ruby Bee mumbled. "I believe I'd like another donut. How about you, Estelle? The ones with the lemon filling are nice and tart."
"An hour?" I said wonderingly. "You debated the delicate issue of disturbing me for an hour? I am impressed, ladies. Ruby Bee's been known to call during the first sneeze to tell me she's coming down with a cold. But a body covered with blood-hey, let's take plenty of time."
"Shhh!" Estelle said, gesturing at the others in the room, all of whom were hearing enough of our conversation to look worried, if not scared sick.
Or then again, they might have spotted Geri striding down the sidewalk and through the lobby door. Maybe they could hear her grinding her teeth. Those with telepathy might have been hearing some colorful language, if her fierce scowl was any indication of her thoughts.
She slammed the briefcase down on a table, took out her clipboard, and in a voice nearly primal in its hostility said, "Let's get this damn thing over with, shall we?"
Chapter Ten
Geri remained rigidly angry as she repeated what Kyle had said concerning the schedule, nodded grimly when Frannie presented her case for inclusion, and ordered the contestants to follow her to the kitchen.
"Isn't this exciting?" Frannie said as she, Ruby Bee, Gaylene, and Durmond trooped out the door. No one answered.
I refilled my cup and sat down across from Estelle. "Okay, we're here all by ourselves. I'm not saying Ruby Bee found a body in the kitchen, but if she did-what was she doing down there in the middle of the night?"
"You'll have to ask her why she went there. I ain't her psychiatrist, for pete's sake, and I gave up a long time ago trying to second-guess her motives for most everything she does."
"Don't try to spoonfeed me that nonsense. Why'd she go to the kitchen at three in the morning?"
Estelle took a compact and a tube of lipstick from her purse. "Maybe she was looking for a glass of warm milk. I myself was asleep, so I didn't even know she was gone until she came back and pounded on the door." She deftly outlined her lower lip in a shade I would have dubbed "Virulent Cerise," clicked the compact shut, and dropped it and the lipstick back in her handbag. "I wonder how long they're gonna be in there? I was thinking we might try again to go to the Statue of Liberty and-"
"You didn't ask her why she'd been creeping around the hotel in the middle of the night? Get off it, Estelle. I don't know what you two are-"