Chow Down (A Melanie Travis Mystery)

we weren’t getting anywhere. I needed to shock Simone out of her complacency.
    “What happened next was all your fault,” I said. “The plan that you and Lisa made resulted in Larry Kim’s death. What went wrong, Simone? Did you begin to get nervous when he nearly took his dog and walked out of that first meeting? That would have ruined everything, wouldn’t it? Were you the one I heard arguing with him that day in the stairwell? Did he make you so angry that you reached out and gave him a shove?”
    “No, of course not!” Simone had picked up a paper clip from her blotter. She twisted and untwisted the small piece of metal between her fingers. “I wasn’t anywhere near Larry when he fell. It was up to Lisa to make sure that Yoda remained a contestant. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
    “But you admit that you and she had cooked up a scheme—”
    “I’m not admitting anything. Why should I?”
    “Well for one thing,” I said, “if you don’t, I’ll take my information to the police. I hear they’re having a hard time narrowing down their list of suspects. This ought to help them sort things out, don’t you think?”
    “Wait!”
    I’d started to rise, but now I paused. Faith, who’d stood when I did, stopped, too. Faster than most humans at picking up on nuances, she looked back and forth between us, waiting to see who was going to cave in first. Thankfully, the answer was Simone.
    “I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said. “Especially now, when we’re just about to announce the winner of the contest. That’s the last kind of publicity Champions needs. I’m sure you and I can discuss this between ourselves and come up with an equitable solution.”
    “Like what?” I asked. Just my luck, she was probably thinking of offering Faith the top prize in exchange for my silence.
    “Let me think,” Simone said. “And in the meantime, you should do some thinking too. I hope you realize that you have nothing to gain by exposing the contest to undue scrutiny.”
    “I disagree. Exposing irregularities in the contest judging will help the police find Larry’s murderer.”
    “Oh please. Surely you don’t want me to believe you’re doing this to be helpful .” She stared at me across the width of her desk. “Did you even know Larry Kim?”
    “No. We met for the first time at the opening reception.”
    “You wouldn’t have liked him.”
    As if that made it all right that he’d been murdered?
    “Does that matter?” I asked.
    “Of course it matters,” Simone snapped. “Lisa never should have married Larry. He was all wrong for her. I told her at the time but she wouldn’t listen. She thought she knew better.”
    “It was her life. Right or wrong, Lisa had a right to make her own decisions.”
    “Not when she was going to come running to me after the fact to clean up the mess she’d made of things. It was just pure luck that Chris had already come to me with the idea—”
    Simone stopped speaking so abruptly that it was like putting an exclamation point on what she’d left unsaid. I sank back down slowly into my seat.
    “ Chris came up with the idea for the contest?” Quickly I filled in some blanks and rearranged the pieces of the puzzle to fit. “That’s interesting. I was sure I’d heard that you were the one who deserved the credit for that.”
    “Not entirely.” Simone gave a careless shrug. She couldn’t quite pull it off. “It was more of a joint effort. You know, colleagues brainstorming for the good of the company.”
    “Except that Chris thought of it first.”
    Simone, I noted, didn’t refute the assertion a second time.
    “There were four of you on the judging committee,” I said after a minute. “Lisa had your vote, we know that. Who else had you gotten to agree to your plan?”
    “Yoda was the best candidate for the position. He’d have drawn votes from the other judges even without my support.”
    “Maybe, maybe not. After all, Cindy prefers big dogs and lately she’s been spending her own downtime hanging around with Ben O’Donnell. Then there’s Chris, who got his pet Scottie from Dorothy Foyle. So I’m assuming that Doug must have been your ace in the hole.”
    “Doug’s my boss. Why would he do anything just because I asked him to . . . ?” Abruptly Simone went still. “Wait a minute! Cindy’s been seeing Ben? ”
    “Yup.”
    “That stupid girl. What the hell is she thinking?”
    “Maybe the same thing you’re