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The writer's short mysteries have appeared in Futures Magazine, Women's World, New England Writers' Network, The Storyteller, Detective Mystery Stories, and online at Mysterical-E, Web Mystery Magazine, Dana Literary Society's Journal, Crimson Dagger and Silver Moon.

Sauce For The Gander by Charles Schaeffer

The assistant chef, Maurice, finally got fed up. Every day at the mountain lodge, Head Chef Pierre shouted conflicting orders. “No, Maurice, you put too much brown sugar in the creme brulee. Yesterday, you shortchanged the cayenne in the hollandaise sauce.”

Maurice could no longer stomach the criticism. He looked out the window towards the rushing river, 200 snow-covered yards away. At 8 a.m. the lodge cleared out of staff and skiers, who crowded on a slope-bound bus. Maurice stormed to the kitchen to confront Pierre.

Later, in one swift move, Maurice plucked two pairs of spare skis from the rack, opened the kitchen window and placed one pair outside. Then he slipped through the window and into the skis, strapping the extra pair on his back. With poles Maurice pushed himself to he edge of the cliff overlooking the river.

Fixed in place on the skis, he tossed one spare into the river. He dropped the other one on the rocks below. Keeping in his original tracks, Maurice skied backwards to the lodge. He slipped through the window, pulled the skis after him and returned them to the rack.

Later, the skiers returned, just about the time the chief waiter found Pierre in the kitchen dead, a carving knife through his heart. When the police arrived, Sgt. Michael Fogarty checked out the crime scene, following the trail of a single pair of skis to the river’s edge. “It’s an open-and-shut case,” he told his boss, Lt. Camille Manet. “The killer, an intruder, either fell or jumped to his death in the river.”

Lt. Manet knew nothing at all of what had gone before. But she sent Fogarty to retrieve the ski on the rock. On his return, she said, “While you were gone I questioned some guests and the staff. It’s clear Chef Pierre was not well liked. Guests and staff, including Chef Maurice, exchanged occasional heated words with him.

Just then Maurice tramped down the stairs to meet the returning skiers in the lobby. Hearing about the successful day, he told guests that he had taken a well-deserved nap in their absence, resting for the evening meal.

”Sounds logical, except for one thing,” Lt. Manet explained, taking a close look at the recovered ski. “It’s clear to me that the killer carried an extra pair to the river’s edge, tossing one into the raging water, the other on the rocks below. But see, the binder did not break away as it should have in a real skier’s fall.”

Next she observed a couple drops of water on a glossy table between kitchen window and the ski rack area. “An exiting killer would have left no water inside as he fled on skis. A murderer returning in the same tracks, then pulling the skis after him, would surely wipe up moisture on the sill and floor. But this killer carelessly overlooked the drops on the window-side table as he stashed the skis in the rack to hide them among the dripping equipment of skiers returning later.”

Facing Chef Maurice, she said, “Sgt. Fogarty is back from upstairs with your boots. They are damp, hardly the footwear of a dozing chef. I accuse you as the one who cooked Chef Pierre’s goose.”

THE END