By Cook or by Crook (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

a B-movie interrogation—the suspect sweating under hot lights. Val would welcome hot lights in this tiny room without a window but with a vent that blew polar winds at her. She leaned down to rub her knees and calves. Her short skirt suited the heat outdoors, but not the frigid air trapped under the table.
    Holtzman flipped to a new notebook page. “This morning at the victim’s house, you must have thought about who’d want to murder her. Any names come to mind?”
    Translation: finger someone else and you can get out of the hot seat, or rather, the cold seat. “I just thought it was a pretty strange way to kill someone.”
    He sat immobile like a bird of prey ready to pounce, eyes glued on her. “Oh? How would you kill someone?”
    She clamped her lips together. Some questions didn’t deserve answers.
    He leaned toward her. “Would you make it look like an accident?”
    Val flinched as if a dentist had just hit a nerve with his metal probe. “What are you driving at?”
    His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Driving at? Good word choice. I’m thinking about a car accident that wasn’t accidental.”
    Val stiffened and felt a tremor run through her. No one had ever blamed her for the crash that nearly killed the famous Chef Henri, no one except the great man himself. The police and even the insurance company had chalked it up to bad weather and road conditions. Yet Val didn’t feel blameless, wondering if the black ice on the road reflected her anger at the chef for rebuking her publicly. Maybe she could have steered out of the skid if she hadn’t wanted to get back at him. She gripped the seat of the metal chair to stop her hands from shaking.
    Holtzman pinned her with his steady look. “You know anything about the hit-and-run?”
    “Hit-and-run?” Her voice sounded faint as if coming from inside a tunnel.
    “A month ago a man was struck by a car on a deserted road near here.”
    Val’s fingers relaxed. She’d misunderstood. He was talking about someone else’s accident not hers. “What’s that got to do with Nadia’s murder?”
    “A suspicious death and a murder within a few weeks of each other, that’s rare in this area.”
    “That’s the only connection between the hit-and-run and Nadia’s murder?”
    “How’s this for a connection? You find a woman you know horrifically murdered, and you don’t show much emotion. Then I bring up the hit-and-run and get the strongest reaction I’ve seen all morning.”
    And you’ll never know why I had it . “Are you accusing me of something? Because if you are, I want a lawyer.”
    “You have the right to counsel if you think you need it.” Holtzman turned off the tape recorder, crossed the room, and opened the door. “Sit tight, Ms. Deniston. We want your fingerprints.”
    She jumped out of her chair. “Fingerprints? Why?”
    “You were all over the crime scene. We need to differentiate your prints from the others we find there.”
    Of course. She would have realized that if he hadn’t made her nervous by treating her like a suspect. Did he grill her because the murder weapon made every tennis player a suspect? She paced the small room, trying to warm up. Holtzman had intimidated her, and she had no motive for murdering Nadia. Someone with a motive would feel even more intimidated.
    Fifteen minutes later, with the fingerprinting over, she left the police station and ran into the chief in the parking lot.
    “You got your color back, Val. You doing okay?”
    “Better than this morning. Has Nadia’s family been notified?”
    “I talked to her ex, Joe Westrin. Her only kin are elderly and don’t live in the area. He’s contacting them.”
    Sad. Almost no family to mourn her. “I hope you catch the killer fast. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”
    “Keep your ears open at the club. You may hear something people won’t tell us.” He went inside the converted farmhouse that served as police headquarters.
    Val climbed into