"I know, you were never charged with any of them, but it seems rather suspicious to me that you're always around when a dead body shows up." He leaned in toward her, his dark eyes drilling into hers. "I'm going to be looking into you very carefully. Rest assured that if you had something to do with this murder, your detective boyfriend won't be able to get you out of it this time."

Chapter Seven.

It was noon by the time Lexy and Deena stuffed the last cannoli shell with her sweet ricotta recipe. She threw her apron into the bin, said good-bye to Deena and grabbed a cannoli on her way out the door.

She took the same path to Nan's cottage as she had the day before. This time she was more focused on the sweet creamy pastry than the scenery. The hours spent over the Fry-O-Lator had paid off. The shell was perfectly crunchy. They were sure to be a big hit at tonight's dinner. Speaking of which, Lexy realize she'd better hurry if she wanted to have some beach time with Jack before they had to come back to the dining hall to eat.

She shoved the rest of the cannoli in her mouth, wiped her hands together and sprinted the rest of the way to Nans.

The four ladies turned as Lexy tapped lightly on the screen then let herself in. She glanced at the white board and noticed they had added a column labeled clues' and put pink Cadillac' under it and had updated the Dugasse' column with the time of death.

"Did Payne say anything enlightening after we left?" Nans was all business.

"Not really." Lexy sunk into the old slip covered sofa that faced the white board and studied the columns.

"Let's go through the board and you can tell us about any new information," Nans said to Lexy.

"Did you find out about any enemies or any rumors about Chef Dugasse?"

Lexy shook her head. "Nothing so far. I have Deena asking around. You know how teens are, they see a lot more than the rest of us."

Nans nodded, then pointed to the Crime Scene' column. "Do you know what they might have found for evidence?"

"Other than the knife? No. But Jack said, if it was his case, he would be scouring the trails for evidence and it doesn't look like Payne is doing that. We walked a couple of them yesterday and didn't find a thing, but there's one more I want to check out ... maybe you guys could go with me?"

"Sure," Nans said, looking at the others who nodded their agreement.

"I wish we knew if they found anything out by the dumpsters," Helen said. "It sure is a lot easier investigating these things when you have an in' at the police department."

Lexy nodded her agreement. Back home, Jack usually knew everything about the cases they were working on and he would give them tidbits of information. She didn't think they'd be getting the same courtesy from Payne.

Nans pointed at the murder weapon column on the white board. "This knife could be a clue ... if we could verify whose knife it is."

Lexy shrugged. "Most every chef has a set of knives, but I did notice that knife was a very high end one with a mahogany handle. I haven't seen any like that in the kitchen but I'll keep looking."

Ida stepped out from the other side of the board and tapped her finger on the heading of the next column, Sylvia'. "This is probably where we should focus our efforts."

"Yes, she seems t0 be our most likely suspect," Nans agreed.

"She claims she was in the freezer, that she never went outside until after I found him," Lexy said. "Thomas, the chef she was talking to right before the murder said he didn't see where she went, so I can't place her at the scene ... yet."

"She stands to gain the head chef spot and she probably hated him just as much as anyone," Helen pointed out.

"I bet when she saw him yelling at the other chef, it was the straw that broke the camel's back and she got so mad that she ran out there and shoved the knife into his chest!" Ida clasped her hands together and arced them in the air in front of her, making stabbing motions.

Ruth nodded. "Pent up aggression for how he treated everyone."

"A crime of passion," Helen added.

Helen's words triggered something in the back of Lexy's mind. "Or maybe ..."

The four women raised their eyebrows at her.

"What if there was more going on with Sylvia and Dugasse than just a chef and sous-chef relationship?" Lexy asked.

Nans eyebrows shot up. "Did you see something to indicate that?"

"Well, sort of. I did see them in some conversations that seemed to be more personal then professional. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now ..."

"A lover's quarrel!" Ida's eyes lit up.

"Well, I don't know. It's one thing to look into, I guess. There's another thing too." Lexy's brow wrinkled. "When Sylvia saw me with the body, she asked if we should hide it."

"Hide it?" Nans said. "Why would she ask that if she didn't kill him?"

"I have no idea," Lexy said. "And then there's the matter of Brad."

"Who's Brad?" Helen asked.

"Another one of the chefs. He's the one that told Payne I had stormed off to stop Dugasse once and for all'. And he was needling me today about being the killer." Lexy pressed her lips together. "I have no idea why he would do that, unless he just hates me."

"It could be a love triangle!" Ida said.

Lexy made a face. "I'll have to ask around and see if anyone else noticed anything."

"Meanwhile, I'll add Brad to the board." Nans added his name under the Suspects' column.

"There's another thing to consider," Ruth said. "How did his body get behind the dumpster?"

"He might have been dragged there to buy some time for the killer. If the feet weren't sticking out he might not have been found until hours later." Nans pinched her nose with her thumb and forefinger. "The smell of the dumpster would have masked any smells from the body."

"And that would imply the killer wanted to get far away ... so maybe it wasn't someone from the kitchen," Helen said.

"Or, he was lured to the other side of the dumpster by the killer, who stabbed him, then took off down the path," Ida added.

"Either way, that indicates we should also consider suspects that weren't in the kitchen," Nans said.

"Which ties in with what I found online." Ruth held up the iPad.

Lexy's eyebrows shot up. "What did you find?"

"Well, it seems your chef was involved in some sort of chili contest," Ruth said.

Lexy nodded remembering Brad's order that she make the cornbread was the catalyst for her finding Dugasse in the first place. "Yes, I know."

"Well, it seems this chili contest can be quite lucrative and it's very competitive ... some newspaper articles describe it as cutthroat.'"

"Why?" Helen asked.

"The usual reason. Money. The winner gets a national brand so not only will they get the money from chili sales, but their name will become a household word which will lead to other endorsements, cookbooks etc. ..." Ruth looked up at them. "Winning that contest could be worth millions."

"Did he ever talk about the contest? His rivals, or anything?" Nans asked Lexy.

"I never heard him say anything." Lexy spread her hands wishing she'd paid more attention to Dugasse, the truth was she kind of zoned out whenever he started droning on.

"Well, that's something to look into then." Ruth crossed to the board and added Chili Contest' to the list.

"And that brings us to the pink Cadillac." Helen pointed to the words on the white board.

"Too bad we can't ask Jack to just look that up in the database," Ida said.

"Well, luckily a pink Cadillac is unusual, so I'm going to start by doing a search on newspaper articles. Then if that doesn't pan out, I'll hack into the motor vehicles database." Ruth looked up at them and widened her eyes, putting her hand over her mouth. "Ooops ... I mean I'll look elsewhere."

The other women laughed, then gathered behind Ruth to look over her shoulder as she searched.

After a minute she said, "Got it!"

She held the iPad up. "Here's a picture of the exact same car I saw in the parking lot. The article is about a semi-celebrity that's staying in the area at the Sheraton Hotel. You know the fancy five star one, on the side of the mountain?"

"Yes," Nans, Ida, Helen and Lexy all said. Everyone knew that hotel. It was the height of luxury.

"Well, apparently she loves pink. Pink car. Pink clothes. Pink purse. Even a pink dog."

Lexy wrinkled her brow and bent closer to the iPad. Sure enough, it showed a middle-aged blonde with gigantic pink sunglasses holding a furry dyed-pink Pomeranian.

"What's that have to do with our case?" Nans wondered.

Lexy grabbed the iPad and scanned the article. Her heart jerked in her chest when she looked at the caption under the picture. She sucked in a deep breath and looked up at the four women.

"The owner of the pink Cadillac is Victoria Dugasse ... Chef Dugasse's wife."

Chapter Eight.

"Thanks for making the cake, Lexy," Nans said as she slid into the backseat of Ruth's gigantic Oldsmobile beside Lexy.

Lexy looked down at the red velvet cake on the seat beside her. She'd had to cut her beach time with Jack short to make it yesterday afternoon and he'd been unusually understanding. In fact, he seemed strangely disinterested in the case and the fact that she was a murder suspect.

"Lexy?"

"Oh sorry, I was just thinking how Jack seems only interested in fishing, he didn't even care that we were going to visit Victoria Dugasse today. Normally he'd have all kinds of warnings about butting into police stuff."

Ida turned in the front seat to face her.

"Oh, that's how they get. When it comes to fishing they become obsessed. I know Norman is. He has only fishing on his mind ... well that and one other thing." Ida winked at Lexy who shifted uncomfortably in her seat, unwanted pictures of Ida and Norman bubbling up in her mind.

Ruth maneuvered the car out of the resort and headed up the highway. Lexy wondered how she managed-her eyes barely cleared the top of the steering wheel. Lexy tested her seatbelt to make sure it was fastened properly.

"Do you really think she'll buy our ruse of wanting to give our condolences?" Helen asked.

"I don't see why not. It's the proper thing to do," Nans replied. "Besides, we'll make it seem like we are on official business from the resort, then she'll be more likely to talk to us."

"Hopefully we can get her to open up enough to tell us where she was that morning," Ida said. "Because if she wasn't in the kitchen ..."

"... She could have been out by the dumpster with Dugasse." Nans finished the sentence.

"Well I doubt she's going to tell us she killed him." Lexy cringed as Ruth turned into the parking lot for the hotel, her back tires going up over the curb and crushing a bed of petunias.

"No, but hopefully we'll be able to tell if she's hiding something," Nans said as Ruth parked the car.

Everyone got out. Lexy grabbed the cake and followed the four women into the gigantic hotel, happy to have gotten there in one piece.

The lobby was sumptuous. Lexy's sandals sunk into thick carpeting in a dark blue and gold pattern as she walked past the giant marble table that held a vase of flowers which must have been six feet tall and three feet wide. A crystal chandelier sparkled above the flowers.

Nans walked past the oak paneled front desk and straight to the elevators. Ruth had somehow gotten the room number so they knew just where to go. They rode the elevator up to the eighth floor, turned left and walked the fifty feet to room 845.

Nans knocked on the door. Lexy heard the safety chain slide, then the door opened a crack. A baby blue eye peeked out at them.

"Yes?"

"Mrs. Dugasse?" Nans asked.

"Yes." The door swung open to reveal a tall blonde who raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows at them. Lexy noticed she was wearing an expensive pink silk sleeveless shirt and white capri-length pants. Her bare feet sported petal pink painted toenails and gigantic pink diamonds glittered in her ears.

"We're from Lakeshore Resort. We'd like to express our condolences," Nans said as Lexy shoved the cake in Victoria's face.

"Oh. Do come in." The door swung open and they stepped inside while introducing themselves.

"Please call me Victoria," their host said as she took the cake from Lexy. "Would you like a piece?"

"No thanks," Nans said and the rest of them shook their heads.

Victoria put the cake on a sideboard and gestured them further into the opulent suite. They settled in the living room-Victoria, Nans and Ida picked out chairs while Ruth, Helen and Lexy shared the sofa. The room was decorated with French provincial furniture in off white. Pink curtains and throw pillows accented the white upholstered sofa and chairs. Lexy wondered if the hotel just happened to have a pink room or if Victoria had redecorated.

A white Pomeranian with pink tipped fur pitter patted into the room.

"You dyed your dog's fur?" Lexy asked.