Dying for Dinner Read online

  While everyone was busy getting settled, Jim crooked a finger to call me over. I approached the stove carefully, and when it didn’t flare up, blow up, or break down, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “What’s up with Jacques?” he asked. “He was supposed to be here by now.”

  I could only answer the way I had before. I shrugged.

  “You haven’t heard from him?” Jim might be cool, calm, and collected in front of the class, but he was also a stickler for perfection-especially in the kitchen. With his back to his students, I saw the way his eyes glimmered with annoyance. When his accent thickened, I knew we were in trouble. “Where can the man be? He’s supposed to show them the proper roasting pans. He’s supposed to bring a mandoline from the shop and demonstrate how to slice the honey-roasted ham we’re making. He said he’d be by with the ice cream maker we’re to use for the dessert. What’s wrong with the man? Is he daft? How can we have cool tools and hot meals without the tools to make the hot meals?”

  Have I mentioned that I’m the soul of logic and reason?

  Maybe it goes without saying since I’m the business manager of the place. Like any business manager, I looked beyond the problem and directly for a way to fix it.

  “You’ve got roasting pans,” I told Jim. “You can use those.”

  “Aye, we can. Only Jacques was supposed to bring a whole slew of them. You know, stainless steel in different gauges and a slow cooker just to show that there are other ways of doing things. We agreed it was a good way to introduce something new into the classes and a great way for him to advertise his business. And besides-”

  “But the roasting pans you have will work fine.” I stuck to the topic and refused to get sucked in by the emotions and, just as I expected, Jim caved.

  “Aye.” Some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders. “You’re right, of course, Annie. As always. We’ll make do. If the mandoline doesn’t arrive-”

  “Monsieur’s bringing a musical instrument?”

  This was a legitimate question, so Jim shouldn’t have rolled his eyes. He went right on as if I hadn’t said anything at all. “Then I can show them proper knife work instead. And if the ice cream maker isn’t here-”

  “I can run out and pick up a couple half gallons of chocolate chocolate chip.”

  I was going for funny. Jim knew it and smiled. He gave me a peck on the cheek.

  “As always, you’re the one who keeps things here on an even keel. Thank you. Only…” Once again, his gaze strayed to the doors that led into the restaurant. “He said he’d be here, and it’s not like him to be late. Or to forget completely. You don’t suppose-”

  “Anything’s wrong? Of course not.” It was a cavalier statement and Jim knew it, but that wasn’t about to stop me. I wasn’t going to let my imagination get out of hand. “Monsieur is healthy and active and everybody loves him,” I reminded Jim. “Nothing’s happened to him. Nothing’s wrong. He’s probably stuck in traffic. I’ll tell you what…” I moved toward the door. “I’ll call the shop and ask his assistant, Greg, what time he left. Then we’ll know if we need that chocolate chocolate chip or not.”

  “That’s my girl.” Jim gave me a wink before he turned back to his class.

  And I walked back into the restaurant and grabbed the phone just as Eve was coming out of the ladies’ room.

  “Calling Très Bonne Cuisine,” I told her, the receiver to my ear but my hand over the mouthpiece so I wouldn’t confuse Greg when he answered.

  Only he didn’t.

  Answer the phone, that is.

  I checked the clock that hung over the bar. Being a Monday, I knew the shop was open until nine and it was just a bit past seven. I hung up, then dialed again.

  There was still no answer.

  “That’s weird,” I said, and I didn’t have to explain. Eve knew exactly what I was talking about. She reached into her purse, pulled out her cell phone, hit a button, and handed the phone to me.

  “Monsieur’s cell,” she said while I listened to the ringing on the other end. “I have his number programmed in. I’ll bet he’s stuck in traffic.”

  “That’s what I told Jim. Only if he is held up somewhere, you’d think he’d call and let us know. And you’d think Greg would answer at the shop. Unless he’s tied up with a customer.” I waited until Monsieur’s message came on, left a brief one that said something like, “Just hoping everything is OK and that you haven’t forgotten,” and handed the phone back to Eve.

  “That’s weird.”

  “You said that already.”

  “But it is.” I drummed my fingers against the bar. “Monsieur is always anxious to promote his shop, and this is a great way for him to do it. Besides, he wouldn’t blow Jim off. They’re friends.”

  “And you’re worried.”

  I looked to Eve for reassurance. “Think I need to be?”

  “I think we’d better find out what happened, or you’re not going to sleep tonight and then your first full day here is going to be miserable and you’re going to say it’s because you never should have quit your job at the bank and then you’re going to get all crazy and obsessive about that again and I’ll never have any peace.”

  I am not that much of a drama queen, but I didn’t bother to remind Eve of that. I was too busy grabbing my purse from my office, sticking my head into the kitchen to tell Jim I’d call him when I found out what was going on, and heading for the door.

  According to those online mapping programs, it’s a little more than eight miles from Alexandria to Arlington, and it should take the average driver somewhere around fifteen minutes to get there.

  Eve is not anyone’s average driver. She’s got a heavy foot on the accelerator, little tolerance for other drivers who get in her way, and is subjective about what, exactly, constitutes a red light that is red enough to make her stop.

  But traffic in the D.C. area is nothing if not brutal, and it took us nearly a half hour to make the trip to Très Bonne Cuisine.

  By the time we got there, there were already four police cars in front of the place, their lights swirling.

  Two

  TRÈS BONNE CUISINE IS ONE OF THOSE FANCY-SCHMANCY cooking shops where logic (and my own, sad history with the culinary arts) dictates that I should have felt like a fish out of water.

  All that expanse of polished hardwood floors.

  All that gleaming chrome, the sleek cabinetry, the granite countertops.

  All that pricey cookware. And the knives that came in more sizes and for more specific purposes than I ever knew existed. And then there were the linens, so perfectly coordinated and so prettily displayed, they literally took my breath away. Especially when I took a gander at the price tags.

  And yet even a kitchenphobe like me had never felt unwelcome or uncomfortable in Monsieur Lavoie’s shop.

  At least not until that night, when I wound my way through the press of people gathered on the sidewalk as if I had every right to be there, stepped into the store, and saw the pool of blood on the floor in front of the cash register counter.

  And the body lying facedown in it.

  My stomach clenched and though I don’t know how I found the breath to make so much as a sound, I guess I must have let go a gasp of horror.

  That would explain why the cop standing nearest to the door turned away from the crime scene and gave me a dirty look.

  “No reporters.” He grabbed my arm, all set to escort me back out the door.

  “I’m not-”

  “No gawkers, either.”

  “But I-” I might have been better able to state my case and my intentions (such as they were) if I wasn’t so transfixed by that body. From where I was standing I could see that it was a man and that he was clothed in crisply pressed khakis and a blue oxford-type shirt.

  The same clothes Monsieur always wore at the shop.

  “Get going, lady.” The officer’s voice snapped me out of my daze. “Or you’re going to leave here in the back of a squad car.�
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  “I can’t. I-” Who would have thought that I’d ever see Tyler Cooper as a savior! Yet when he appeared out of nowhere, walking up an aisle from the back of the store like he belonged there (which I guess he did, seeing that he’s an Arlington homicide detective), that was exactly my reaction.

  “ Tyler!” I raised my voice and a hand so that he couldn’t fail to notice me. “ Tyler, I need to talk to you.”

  I knew exactly when he caught sight of me. That would be when a dusky flush darkened his cheeks. As if praying for strength, he closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them again, he signaled for the uniformed cop to let me go.

  “What happened here?”

  Was that my voice? It was choked and breathy. I am anything but clingy yet I somehow found myself with my hand on Tyler ’s arm, holding on for dear life. “ Tyler, what happened? When did it happen? Do you know who did it? Is Jacques Lavoie-” I could barely get the words past the sour taste in my mouth. “Is he-”

  “Dead?” Leave it to Tyler not to beat around the bush. He put a hand on my shoulder and turned me around to face the body just as the cop looking over the crime scene turned the victim onto his back.

  “He’s dead,” Tyler said. “But it’s not Jacques Lavoie.”

  “Greg!” I looked at the face of the retired teacher who loved to cook as much as he loved helping Monsieur with the everyday tasks of running the shop. Relief swept through me and instantly I felt guilty. Greg had worked at the store for nearly six months and in that time, I’d come to know him. He was a nice man, single, and he never made me feel stupid or inadequate when I walked into the shop on some mission or another from Jim. He was soft-spoken and helpful and though he could be prickly with customers who came in and acted as if their knowledge of food and wine made them superior to the rest of the human race, he’d always been kind to me.

  “It isn’t Monsieur. It’s Greg. Poor Greg!” My vision blurred and I blinked, and tears streamed down my cheeks. I wiped them away with one hand. “What happened?”

  “How about if I ask the questions?” I doubt if Tyler was being kind. Tyler didn’t have a warm and fuzzy bone in his body. I think he was just trying to make sure we stayed out of the way of the folks swarming over the crime scene. That’s why he turned me around the other way and, one hand on the small of my back, marched me down the nearest aisle. He finally stopped at a place where we were surrounded by a display of jars of Vavoom! on one side, and shelves of enameled cookware in brilliant primary colors on the other. “You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”

  I tried. A couple of times. It was hard to get anything like a coherent sentence out of my mouth.

  Because he’s the ultimate hard-nosed cop, I knew that would never satisfy Tyler. Like Jim is in the kitchen, Tyler is a stickler for procedure. I know (at least I suppose) that since he’s alive, he has a heart, but I am just as sure that it’s as cold as ice and as impenetrable as a brick.

  I know this for a fact, too. Tyler, see, just happens to be one of Eve’s former fiancés.

  Let me explain.

  Eve has been engaged any number of times. And, since I guess the time she was engaged to the man who was a murderer and tried to kill us both doesn’t count, she’s broken off every one of those engagements.

  Every one but the one to Tyler.

  He’s the one who called off that wedding, and, Tyler being Tyler, he didn’t try to soften the blow. He told Eve point-blank that there was no way he could marry her because she just wasn’t smart enough.

  Ouch!

  Point of fact, it was Eve’s reaction to Tyler ’s attitude that sent us off in search of our first killer. After all, Eve reasoned as only Eve can, if she could prove to Tyler that she was smart enough to solve a murder, maybe he’d see that she wasn’t the airhead he thought she was.

  Since that time, we’d solved that murder and a couple of others besides, but that hardly changed a thing. As far as Tyler was concerned, Eve was nothing more than an unfortunate footnote in his past. We’d heard through the local grapevine that Tyler was engaged to another cop named Kaitlin Sands. If memory served me correctly, the day of their nuptials was fast approaching.

  What did I think about the whole Tyler/Eve situation? Honestly, I thought that the day Tyler and Kaitlin tied the knot should (theoretically) be the happiest of Eve’s life. Once Tyler was married, she could officially stop thinking of him as available. He’d be out of her life and her heart, once and for all.

  Eve, of course, had a different take on the subject. For her, Tyler Cooper was like a severe case of poison ivy.

  So far, she hadn’t found anything-or anyone-that could ease the itch.

  But I digress.

  Tyler was waiting for some kind of explanation from me, and I knew if he didn’t get it-fast-I’d be out the door before I found out what had happened to Greg and who was responsible.

  “Monsieur Lavoie was supposed to stop at Belly-washer’s tonight,” I told Tyler, my words choked by the painful ball of emotion lodged in my throat. “He didn’t show. I came here…” I heard one of the cops working the crime scene call another man over to look at something, but I refused to turn around to see what they were up to. One more look at all that blood and I wasn’t sure I could continue. “No one answered the phone when I called, so I tried Monsieur’s cell. He didn’t answer that, either, so I came over here to see what was wrong.”

  “Is Eve with you?”

  It wasn’t a question I expected and my head snapped up. I was just in time to see the wave of regret that clouded Tyler ’s expression and I knew he’d slipped up; he hadn’t meant to ask about Eve. It was an uncharacteristic moment of weakness, and Tyler wasn’t happy about it. Heaven forbid anyone should ever think he’s human!

  “She’s parking the car,” I told him, but if I expected him to surrender to his curiosity and ask another personal question, I knew I was mistaken. I stuck to the matter at hand, partly because I knew he’d appreciate it and, thus, be more forthcoming. Mostly because I was concerned, not to mention curious. “I came here because I was worried about Monsieur Lavoie.”

  “You mean this guy?” Tyler took a bottle of Vavoom! from the shelf. There was a black-and-white caricature of the Frenchman on the label that emphasized his round-as-apple cheeks, his sparkling eyes, and a smile as long as a baguette.

  “That’s him,” I said, and, being careful to keep my back to the crime scene, I peered down the nearest aisle. “He’s not here? Not anywhere? Are you sure?”

  Tyler concentrated on the Vavoom! bottle. “You use this stuff?” he asked.

  It was another question I wasn’t expecting, and for the second time in as many minutes, I felt as if the polished-to-perfection hardwood floor had been pulled out from under my feet. I looked at the dozens of Vavoom! jars on display. “I… I used to.”

  “People say it’s really good. Why don’t you use it anymore?”

  “Take a look at the price tag.” It was a simpler answer than the truth, which was that in the course of my first investigation, I’d learned that Vavoom! wasn’t the wonderful, magical seasoning everyone thought it was-Monsieur bought seasoned salt in bulk and repackaged it as Vavoom! Though it wasn’t technically honest, I didn’t imagine what he was doing was technically illegal, either, which was why I’d never divulged his secret to anyone. Besides, what was that old saying about a sucker being born every minute? If folks wanted to plunk down way too much of their hard-earned money for the stuff, that was their business. The fact that Jacques Lavoie promoted Vavoom! like gangbusters and used his own personal charm and the force of his very Gallic personality to convince them to spend that money was Monsieur’s. If nothing else, he deserved points for being a marketing genius.

  “So you were worried about him.” I drew my gaze away from the Vavoom! and saw that Tyler had rocked back on his heels. He watched me closely. “Why? You think there was a reason to worry?”

  I shook my head, ordering my thoughts.
“I didn’t have a reason. Not a real reason. I just thought it was unusual that he didn’t show up when he said he would, that’s all. I wasn’t really as worried as I was just curious. I just thought that the whole thing about him not coming to Bellywasher’s, I just thought it was-”

  “Suspicious?”

  Leave it to Tyler to think the worst of somebody. I dismissed the word with a wave of my hand. “I was going to say odd,” I told him. “I thought it was odd. Monsieur is dependable. And he loves talking about this shop. He’d never miss an opportunity to do a little self-promotion. And that’s what he was supposed to do at tonight’s cooking class. He even said he’d bring giveaways, a Très Bonne Cuisine shopping bag for each student, with a kitchen gadget and a recipe inside.”

  The bell above the front door rang, announcing someone had walked into the shop. I saw Tyler ’s gaze dart that way.

  “They’re not going to let her in.”

  Since he pretended not to know what I was talking about, he gave me no choice but to go on.

  “Eve,” I said. “She’s going to try to get in, but you know she’ll never get past the cops at the door. She’s too conspicuous. It’s easier for me to get into places. No one notices me.”

  “What makes you think I was looking for Eve? Why would you assume I was even thinking about her?”

  I could have pointed out that I saw the way he perked up when he heard that bell ring. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs. But I knew that putting Tyler on the spot would get me nowhere.

  “You’re right, of course,” I said, not bothering to mention what I thought he was right about since-truth be told-I found it hard to believe that Tyler was ever right about anything. “It was only natural for me to come down here to see what was going on. Then to find this.” This time I couldn’t help myself; I glanced over my shoulder. “Poor Greg.”