“I’m not implying anything. I’m asking directly.” I take a step closer, lowering my voice. “Coraline recognized those recipes, didn’t she? She confronted you about it at the competition. That’s what your very public argument was really about.”
“You don’t understand—” Giselle starts, but I cut her off.
“I understand that she was planning to expose you. That she threatened to destroy your career, your reputation, everything you’d built.” I keep my voice level and controlled. “You have quite the following. She was going to upend everything. That’s a pretty powerful motive for murder, Giselle.”
“Recipes can be very similar.” Her eyes spear mine with a not-so veiled threat.
“Yes, but these were so very specific. And it wasn’t so much the recipes themselves, it was the implications. You’ve built upquite a fanbase for yourself. Your fans trust you. To lose their trust could cost you everything.”
“I didn’t kill her!” The words burst out of her, sharp and panicked.
Giselle takes a breath, then straightens her shoulders. The fear shifts into something harder. Anger.
“Yes, I used Marguerite’s recipes. Yes, Coraline figured it out. And yes, she tried to blackmail me over it.” Her accent remains thick, but there’s steel underneath it now. “She demanded money—a lot of money—to keep quiet.”
“So, you killed her instead of paying?”
“I didn’t have to pay her.” Giselle’s voice turns cold. “Because I’d already reached an agreement with Marguerite’s estate months ago. I paid them for the rights to use and adapt her recipes. Legally. Properly. The whole thing was settled with signed agreements and everything.”
I blink. “You had permission?”
“I told Coraline this. I showed her the paperwork, the signed agreements, everything.” Giselle’s hands clench. “And you know what she did? She slapped me. Right across the face. Said I was lying, that I had forged the documents, said she’d ruin me anyway just because she could.”
“But she couldn’t actually ruin you if you had legal documentation.”
“Exactly. The woman had nothing on me. She was just angry that her big exposé fell apart.” Giselle picks up her plate again, her composure returning. “I didn’t need to kill her. I just needed to wait for her to embarrass herself when the truth came out, and she looked like a fool for accusing me without doing proper research. And a part of me wishes it did.” She smooths her dress with one hand. “If you’ll excuse me, I have cocktails to sample. I plan on enjoying tonight’s festivities.”
Giselle stalks off toward the competition area, leaving me standing by the dessert table with the sinking realization that I just accused the wrong person of murder.
The real killer is still out there, perhaps even walking around this luau with a mai tai in hand, congratulating themselves on how perfectly everything went.
But killers always make mistakes. They think they’re smarter than everyone else, that they’ve covered all their tracks, that they’re untouchable.
And that’s exactly when they get sloppy.
I’m left wondering who really had the most to lose when Coraline Starling arrived on our little slice of paradise with her camera crew and her talent for uncovering people’s secrets. Maybe she knew too much about someone’s operation. Maybe she discovered a deep, dark secret that would destroy everything they had worked to build.
Something that would make murder seem like the only solution to keep their world from collapsing entirely.
I scan the luau crowd, watching tourists dance and laugh while a trio of shirtless fire spinners create arcs of flame against the darkening sky.
My gaze lands on Breezy behind one of the tiki bars, his shaggy sandy blond hair catching the torchlight as he pours drinks with that easy charm that makes people forget to ask important questions.
Something niggles at the back of my mind. Something Mabel said. Or was it something I noticed myself?
I pull out my phone, my fingers moving quickly across the screen. A few searches, a couple of clicks, and then?—
I gasp.
My eyes snap back up to Breezy, who’s laughing with a customer, mixing a mai tai with a magical flair, looking exactlylike a successful local businessman who’s got everything under control. Except he doesn’t.
And that’s when I see it. Hiding in plain sight beneath his table, and I gasp.
I have a sneaking suspicion I know who the killer is and exactly why they thought they needed to send Coraline Starling to the great Mai Tai Mix-Off in the sky.
CHAPTER 19
It’s amazing when the exact evidence you’ve been waiting for is staring you right in the face.
