Free Murder Al Fresco by Jennifer L. Hart Page B

not a better-late-than-never prospect.
    On the other hand, the man had saved my life last winter and was now offering to help take my business to the next level. Although I'd never admitted it to anyone, the thought of being stuck in the pasta shop day in and day out for the rest of my life ate at me. I wanted more of life than to be a slave to the family legacy. The fame I could live without, and the redemption, which had seemed so important forty-eight hours earlier, had become a distant dream. No way would I give up on the Bowtie Angel, but running the pasta shop was Nana and Aunt Cecily's dream, not mine. I kept coming up with ways to change things, but I was woefully inept at the nuts and bolts portions of running a business. I was a chef, not a businesswoman. The competition and Clayton's arrival had underscored all the deficiencies with the way the place ran.
    The question, though, was what did I want out of life?
    Creeping out of bed like a thief in the night, I snuck past Clayton's crib and into the bathroom. A hot shower soothed my stiff muscles and helped clear away the cobwebs, but that question kept ricocheting around in my brain. What did I want?
    The laundry was piling up, but I managed to find a clean pair of jeans and a red, V-neck T-shirt to wear. Collecting as much of the discarded clothing as I could without waking the boys, I headed down to the basement to put a load in.
    The basement office was really just a desk with an all-in-one computer and a few filing cabinets. Jones's darkroom was just behind the desk, but I never went into it unless he invited me to see something. We worked as a couple because we gave each other space. Of course, space wasn't an option with Clayton in our lives.
    While the wash ran, I checked out the new file folder that Jones must have started earlier.
     
    Subject name: Chad Tobey
    Date of birth: October 12, 1976
    Marital status: Separated
    Children: Two
    Occupation: Chef (Iron Chef, grill master, sole proprietor of barbeque sauces and rubs)
    Cause of Death: Unknown (check with county ME's office for toxin screening)
    Other Notes: Subject was in the midst of a custody battle and a cooking competition. Andrea reports that subject received threatening messages, which may or may not have been violent in nature. Will obtain subject's medical records and credit history for further examination.
    Blogger fixated on Tobey's personal life, accused him of domestic violence. A personal vendetta? Fact-check to follow.
     
    I had an inkling that when Jones said check with ME's office, he didn't intend to just waltz up to the desk and ask. Either he had an informant who worked there, willing to slip him a copy of the report, or he would hack the system. The financial and medical stuff would be a breeze for him as well, and determining cause of death would hopefully clear up the issue of accidental death versus murder. The blogger, though, was the sticky part.
    Maybe we'd get lucky, and poor Chad had dropped dead of a massive heart attack—no harm, no foul. Although I felt sorry for his son and any other loved ones, at least that would mean we didn't have yet another killer roaming around the greater Beaverton area.
    After setting up a pot of coffee, I retrieved my laptop and started going through the files Stu had sent me on the former Flavor TV employees. They ranged in age from a nineteen-year-old intern to a seventy-year-old camera operator. The information didn't come with photos, but I recognized several names. Considering many of them had lost their jobs when Flavor TV filed for bankruptcy—a direct result of the food-poisoning incident during my lone episode of Al Dente — I doubted they would open up to me. Maybe I could talk to Rodrigo about some of them, get his impression of any he knew from his time at the network, and narrow the list down that way.
    I also needed to get moving on my recipes for the contest. Diced gave me a budget to work with, so I needed to decide what