Melinda Wells - The Proof is in the Pudding

Ingram, Yvette, and I surveyed the cooking activities, assessing the individual dishes and checking the skill level of the various celebrity chefs.

Vernon “Coupe” Deville was sautéing onions for his Philly Cheese Steak. He had his burners on high, with the result that the combination of butter and olive oil he was using sent little dots of hot grease into the air.

Ingram addressed Yvette. “Step back. You don’t want to get splattered.” Since I hadn’t been included in his warning, I guessed that he didn’t care if grease hit me.

Oona Rogers, Deville’s wife, wasn’t endangering anyone. Her workspace was much neater than his, and she wasn’t splashing the marinara sauce as she stirred it into her Chicken Parmesan.

Moving on, we watched Francine Ames take a partially baked strawberry-rhubarb pie from her oven and start to remove the aluminum collar she’d fastened around it to prevent the edges of the crust from becoming too brown. When a big hunk of piecrust came off with the collar of foil, her pretty face screwed up into a grimace.

“The pie will taste just as good,” she told us as she put it back into the oven for its final fifteen minutes of baking.

At the last stove in Sector Four, author Roland Gray was stirring a pot on the stovetop. “I’m making Lemon Pudding Surprise, from an old recipe of my mother’s. The ‘surprise’ will be little bits of candied fruit at the bottom.” His cultured British accent conjured images in my head of Number 10 Downing Street and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the audacious secret agent who was my favorite of his literary creations.

“I was quite inspired by the show you did on comfort foods,” he said. “When I was growing up, this pudding was what my mother made to soften life’s little blows.”

“I look forward to tasting it,” I said.

Ingram scowled at me. “You’re not supposed to get chummy with the contestants. We can’t show favoritism.”

It took all of my self-control not to snap back at the odious creature, but there had been enough confrontations here tonight. I forced my thoughts away from how much I detested Keith Ingram. Instead, I surveyed the room full of enthusiastic amateur cooks.

The aromas that were coming at me from every corner of the Elysian Ballroom were making my mouth water. I was hungry. Knowing that I would have to taste twenty separate dishes this evening, I hadn’t eaten anything that day except one piece of seven-grain toast and a slice of cheese with my morning coffee.

I was finding it easy to concentrate on what the celebrity cooks were doing, because the mobile audience was behaving respectfully. Even though they were drinking as they wandered through the room, they were as polite as spectators at a golf match. Their whispered comments to each other made a soft background rustle, like the sound of a breeze ruffling leaves.

High-pitched laughter from across the rows of kitchens startled me. I looked up to see a woman emitting “Oh! Oh! Ohhhh!” noises of excitement as she and others stared in awe at new antics of Wolf Wheeler. Other voices called out, “Higher. Higher!” and “That’s impossible!” as Wheeler juggled wine glasses-tossing them high in the air, catching them in front of him and behind his back and then tossing them again.

All over the ballroom, people were turning to focus on Wolf Wheeler’s amazing juggling act. The clamor level rose with shouted comments of encouragement, interspersed with sharp intakes of breath.

I was watching, too, when a drop of something very hot struck the back of my hand. I yelped in pain, but before I could find out what it was, suddenly my side of the room was enveloped in thick, acrid smoke.

A man’s voice yelled, “Fire!” In that instant, the scene in the ballroom changed from convivial to chaos. People screamed and coughed, and shouted.

Someone’s elbow struck a sharp blow to my diaphragm. It sent me reeling backward and against a stove. Suddenly feeling heat, the self-preservation instinct kicked in. I wrenched myself away from a stovetop flame just in time to avoid being burned. Turned around, disoriented, I had no idea which way to go toward safety.

Ceiling smoke detectors began to shriek.

Blinded by the smoke, I collided with a man. He grunted, then grabbed my arm and pulled us both down to our knees. I was too surprised to struggle as he pushed me under a preparation counter.

With my face forced close to the floor, I could breathe a little better because the smoke began to rise. The shelter of the counter kept us from being hit or trampled by the terrified crowd.

Heavy footsteps pounded into the ballroom. I recognized shouted orders from firemen, and heard the sound of powerful blowers being activated.

It didn’t take more than two or three minutes for the smoke to dissipate. The smarting in my eyes eased. With a few blinks, my vision began to clear and I looked up. One mystery-how firemen had arrived on the scene so quickly-was solved when I saw that the men who’d come to our rescue weren’t regular city firemen. Yellow patches on their green jackets identified them as the hotel’s private fire safety officers.

I heard one of the officers swear. “Jesus H. P. Christ-it was just a smoke bomb!”

The man who had been sheltering me helped me to stand. It was Roland Gray.

“Thank you,” I said.

“As I rule, I don’t pounce on a woman until a month of dinners have been shared,” he said in his charming British accent. “Ah, well. Ms. Carmichael, when you’re calculating your decision about tonight’s prize, I do hope you will take into consideration the fact that I thought I was trying to save your life.”

Smiling, I indicated my clipboard. “Sorry, but saving my life isn’t one of the judging criteria.”

Suddenly, his nose wrinkled with distaste. “Oh, no!” He hurried toward his stove. I followed, and saw immediately what had happened. During the excitement the burner under his lemon pudding had been left on. The pudding had boiled over, sending a thick, yellow river erupting over the pot and flowing down the side of the stove.

Gray shook his head. “My delectable dessert is DOA.”

Behind us, a woman screamed.

I whirled to see Yvette Dupree, eyes bulging, her arms crossed against the clipboard she pressed tight against her chest.

She was staring at the crumpled body of Keith Ingram, who lay facedown in a widening circle of blood.

Roland Gray was first to recover from the shock that had momentarily frozen the rest of us. He bounded forward, grabbed Ingram’s shoulder to turn him over onto his back-and was hit in the chest by spurting blood.

The stench hit my nostrils and I nearly gagged. I hadn’t known that fresh blood had such a sickeningly sweet, metallic smell.

Then I realized that blood pumping meant a heart still beating. I grabbed a roll of paper towels from the counter beside Roland Gray’s stove and dropped to my knees, hoping to stem the bleeding, but rough hands wrenched me away. I dropped the roll as two of the safety officers took over, trying to save Ingram.

It was a hopeless task. I’d known it was, even as I’d tried to stop his bleeding. Keith Ingram had been stabbed in the throat, and the wound was a gaping well of flesh and muscle.

Ingram wasn’t going to be able to blackmail Eileen, but I couldn’t forget that the video he’d made was an unexploded bomb that would go off if the wrong person found it.

Roland Gray interrupted my thoughts. He had been trying to dry his shirt and jacket with another roll of paper towels, and offered a fat wad of the sheets to me.

I looked at him, puzzled.

“Your dress,” he said.

Dress? I looked down and gasped. “Oh, Lord!” The front of my peach chiffon gown-my borrowed designer creation-was soaked with Ingram’s blood.