Sugar Work

[SFX: Water dripping. Bottles shatter]

NARRATOR: Mina explained that Tomas asked her to make sugar dowels for a wine-display illusion. She did not know he installed them in load-bearing racks. One dowel survived, flavored with rosemary from Pike's final course.

MINA ROSE: He used dessert condensation as the timer. When we lifted the cloches, runoff entered a tube behind the wall.

BEA HOLT: One performance triggered two endings: Pike died and the cellar destroyed itself.

NARRATOR: Yet Tomas had poured wine in full view when the cloches lifted. Ellen could access the runoff tube. Luca designed the smoke bowls. Mina built the sugar. The murder remained a dish with too many hands.

[SFX: Fridge refrigerator compressor stops]

NARRATOR: Power failed to the pastry freezer, threatening evidence stored inside. Bea found a cyanide vial frozen into a block of decorative ice bearing Luca's fingerprint.

CHEF LUCA VENN: I touched the mold yesterday. Someone planted the vial.

BEA HOLT: Yes. The ice froze cloudy around it. A vial added yesterday would sit in clear directional crystals. This was inserted after freezing with a hot knife.

NARRATOR: The hot knife belonged to Tomas's foil-cutting station.