Chow Down (A Melanie Travis Mystery)

to find out.
    “What the heck,” I said to Faith, chucking her under the chin and alerting her to the fact that we were about to go the other way. “It’s not like we were going to win anyway.”
    We reached the stairwell just in time to hear the heavy fire door shut on the landing above us. Together, Faith and I went running up the steps to the fourth floor. I eased the door open slowly.
    Simone’s heels were beating a brisk tattoo on the shiny floor. Thankfully, they covered any noise I might have made. I watched Simone detour right when she reached Chris’s office. She shoved open the door and marched inside without knocking. Faith and I slipped out of the stairwell and followed.
    The fourth floor, like the one below, was now mostly deserted. The majority of the Champions employees were down in the lobby, waiting to share in the excitement of the press conference and the big announcement. Nobody noticed what Faith and I were doing as we crept quietly along the corridor.
    I’d expected that we would have to be right beside the doorway to hear what was going on, but Simone must have been counting on nobody being around. Either that, or she was simply too angry to moderate her voice. Even though we were still two doors away, I was able to hear the first words she addressed to Chris.
    “Are you crazy? What the hell did you think you were doing?”
    “Calm down, okay?” Chris’s voice was pitched much lower than Simone’s, but it didn’t matter. Faith and I were close enough now. I could hear just fine. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”
    “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” she snapped. “The deal we made is off!”
    “No, it’s not. You can’t do that.”
    “I can and I am.”
    “It’s too late,” Chris said. He sounded triumphant. “The announcement’s about to be made.”
    “There’s still time. Doug won’t start the press conference until I get there. All I have to do is pull him aside and tell him I’ve reconsidered.”
    “You’ll just end up making yourself look like an idiot. You already told him you thought MacDuff should win.”
    What? I shrank back, shocked. Where had that come from? Wasn’t Simone supposed to be Yoda’s most ardent supporter?
    “Only because you blackmailed me into changing my vote when Lisa went AWOL,” said Simone.
    “Hey man, Larry was dead and she was gone. Nobody had any idea when she was coming back. You’ve got a lot of influence around here, but even you couldn’t convince Doug to name a missing finalist as the winner.”
    I leaned forward again, hand cupped around Faith’s muzzle to ensure her silence. This was getting more interesting by the moment. Simone had thought she was doing the right thing by keeping Lisa’s whereabouts a secret and it looked as though it had ended up costing them both.
    “Besides,” Chris countered. “Blackmail is a pretty strong word coming from someone who stole my idea and passed it off as her own.”
    “I told you at the time that that was an accident. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Doug and I were going through a rough patch when you approached me with the proposal for the contest. I was going to give you credit when I took the idea to him. Honestly, I was. But next thing I knew he was calling me clever and innovative—”
    “Words he would have applied to me, if he’d known the truth.”
    I maneuvered until I could see Simone through the crack between the door and the jamb. She had her arms crossed over her chest.
    “You could have told him,” she said.
    “Yeah, right. Like he’d have taken my word over yours. Especially after you’d already gotten to him first.”
    “You know what they say about the early bird . . .”
    “Oh, stuff it,” Chris said impatiently. “This discussion is over. Nothing is changing. We’re both going downstairs to stand and smile for the press while Doug announces that MacDuff is the very deserving winner of the ‘All Dogs Are Champions’ contest.”
    “No way,” Simone replied. “Trust me, that is not happening. Now that I’ve been made privy to additional information, I’m going back to my original plan, and you won’t dare to try and stop me.”
    “What additional information?”
    “Are you sure you want me to spell this out for you, Chris? Because you don’t come off looking very good. You were the one who was in the stairwell with Larry Kim when he fell, weren’t you?”
    Chris shook his head in denial, but Simone ignored him and kept