Page 109 of Death of a Grill Master

Zane gave a tired, grateful smile.

Hayley exhaled and tucked the slip into her jacket. The truth was finally forming. Baird had motive, means, and now a pattern of silencing anyone who got in his way.

It was time to turn the tide.

Chapter 35

Hayley had sautéed a lot of onions in her life. She’s flambéed shrimp in a blizzard, caramelized scallops in the back of a moving RV, and once brûléed bananas during a blackout while using a lighter and a paring knife.

But this was the first time she’d attempted a lobster mac and cheese demo while being grilled about murder—and her hot husband.

“Be honest,” a girl in a crop top and COA hoodie whispered from the back of the college’s airy teaching kitchen. “Is Bruce Linney really your husband? Because he looks like if sexy Hemingway did CrossFit.”

Hayley stirred her roux and tried not to blush. “He’s mine, and I’ve got the wedding photos to prove it.”

“Can he come next time?” someone else called.

She’d been invited by the Student Sustainability Club, though it became immediately clear the real draw was her reputation as a murder magnet. One student joked that COA should rename the kitchen “The Scene of the Thyme.” Another offered her a Tupperware container of seaweed chips and whispered, “You’re so much cooler than our forensics professor.”

A guy with gauged ears and an apron that said WHISK TAKER leaned over the island. “If this ever becomes a streaming series, who do you want to play you? My vote is Julianne Moore. No question.”

“She’s too classy,” another student said. “I vote for the girl from Poker Face.”

Hayley held up a whisk like a traffic cop. “Wow. An insult and a compliment all in one. My husband and I were just talking about this. But we’re here to talk about food. Unless one of you thinks the killer used lobster shells as a weapon—”

“I mean,” said a nonbinary student with a silver nose ring and a sardonic smile, “you could probably gouge an eye out with one of those claws.”

“Not helpful, Sage,” Hayley said.

”Helpful-adjacent,” she said.

She sprinkled in shredded cheddar, trying to steer them back toward dairy and away from death, but it was no use. The room buzzed with true-crime excitement.

“I heard Tina was wearing a wet suit when she disappeared.”

“Do you really think Zane killed anyone?”

“Rumor has it you nearly drowned when you were out investigating that sea cave. What was it like on the edge of death? Was there a light? A tunnel?”

“Do you know you’re trending on local TikTok?”

Hayley groaned. “Why didn’t I just bake cookies?”

Sage edged closer. “Okay, real talk. You didn’t come here just to cheese up our lunch, did you?”

Hayley hesitated, then lowered her voice. “No. I need to get into Peter Baird’s office. I was hoping for a little extracurricular help.”

Sage’s eyes lit up. “You’re my hero.”

Within seconds, a student-led distraction plan was set in motion with the kind of coordinated chaos that could only come from a campus that had turned Earth Day into a three-day festival involving interpretive dance, ethically sourced glitter, and a surprisingly effective petition to outlaw plastic forks.

Someone spilled a kelp smoothie in the hallway. Another faked an allergic reaction to quinoa. A pair of wannabe drama majors debated the ethics of marine forensics in increasingly louder voices until Peter Baird finally stormed out of his office, muttering, “This campus is a circus.”

Sage gave Hayley the signal—a subtle tip of the head toward the anthropology wing.

Hayley tucked a pot holder into the oven door, whispered “Stir that every thirty seconds,” and hustled down the corridor, her heart pounding.

Baird’s office was dim and musty, the walls plastered with maps of predatory migration patterns, an academic certificate, a signed poster from a Maine PBS special entitled “The Predator’s Mind,” and dive photos in which Baird stared intently at the camera like he was auditioning for Jacques Cousteau: The Musical.