Dying for Dinner Page 4

  “You’re going to take the case, right?” Eve didn’t wait for me to answer. She’d left her purse in my office that morning and she got it out of the bottom drawer of my desk, dug inside, and pulled out a tube of lipstick. “I mean, you pretty much have to, don’t you? What with Monsieur being our friend and all.”

  “I dunno.” I rolled my chair back. “It’s not that I wouldn’t like to know more-”

  “Of course you would.” Eve uncapped the lipstick, applied it, and smacked her lips together. “You’re a smart woman with an inquisitive mind.”

  “But we don’t have much to go on.”

  “You mean the cops don’t.” Eve pulled a mirror from her purse. She pouted into it, checking her lipstick. “You’re oodles smarter than they are, Annie. You’ve proved that more than once.”

  “I have, but-”

  “And you know you could do it again.”

  “I might be able to, but-”

  “And you want to, don’t you?” She looked directly at me when she said this and, face-to-face with the sheen of excitement in Eve’s blue eyes, I found it impossible to speak anything but the whole truth and nothing but.

  “It is interesting to investigate,” I said, my words tentative. “I’ll admit that. I like solving the puzzle of a case. I like knowing that a victim has found justice and the person responsible will be punished. But-”

  “But? But what?” She shoved both lipstick and mirror back in her purse, tucked the purse in the bottom desk drawer, and sat up straight. “You are not telling me that you’re going to give up on Monsieur Lavoie, are you, Annie? Because I just know that can’t be true. He’s our friend. And you’re the best detective this side of the-”

  “Oh, no. Don’t try to pull that on me!” I was up and on my feet even before I realized it. “Being curious about what happened to Monsieur is one thing. Being thought of as some kind of Sherlock Holmes is-”

  “The absolute truth. And you know it. You’ve got a gift.”

  “Maybe. Possibly. OK…” I indulged in a little vanity, not a weakness that usually plagued me. “OK, you’re right. I’m pretty good at this detective thing. That doesn’t mean-”

  “Of course it does. You don’t think the police are anywhere near as concerned about Monsieur as we are, do you? I mean, truly, they might want to be, but they’re just as busy as can be. And they don’t know Monsieur like we do. They don’t like him as much as we do. I mean, how can they, when they don’t know him. Unless some of them do. I mean, if they’re cooks. And they shop at his store. But I don’t think they all could. I mean, every single cop on the Arlington force? That seems a bit unlikely. And it would mean Monsieur would be busy. All of the time.” She must have seen my eyes go glassy. Eve twitched away the rest of her convoluted theory.

  “Why, if we don’t take charge and take on this investigation,” Eve said, her voice as rock steady as her shoulders, “the mystery of what happened to Monsieur might never be solved.”

  I hadn’t failed to notice how the you had somehow morphed into we. It didn’t matter and, besides, like I’ve said before, there’s no one I’d rather have with me on an investigation than Eve.

  “We could go back to the places Jim and I stopped last night,” I told her. “Those couple little bars in Clarendon, and that coffee place that Monsieur likes so much. Maybe there will be someone there today who wasn’t there last night.” It was an idea, sure, and it was better than sitting around doing nothing, but honestly, it felt useless. I twitched my shoulders, but that did nothing to get rid of the uneasiness that sat on them like a weight. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “It’s a start, and it’s better than doing nothing. The whole thing is just so odd, isn’t it? I mean, Monsieur, he’s anything but a shrinking violet. You’d think he’d want to come forward and tell the world what happened at the shop last night. He’d get interviewed on the news if he did. And there’s nothing he likes better than publicity.”

  Leave it to Eve. The PR angle was one I hadn’t thought of, but I knew she was absolutely right.

  “He loves his friends, too,” I said. “He must know we’re worried about him. If nothing else, you’d think he’d give Jim a call just to let him know that everything’s OK.” My shoulders drooped. “Unless everything’s not OK.”

  “Which we have no way at all of knowing until we get to the bottom of this crazy thing.” Eve stood. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen her earlier in the day, but I guess I’d been preoccupied and hadn’t noticed that she was dressed in a creamy skirt and pink blouse that made her look as fresh and bright as the flowers that grew in the boxes outside Bellywasher’s front door. Eve always dresses to impress, but that Tuesday, she looked even more spectacular than usual.

  It didn’t take a detective to figure out what was going on.

  “So…” In an attempt to look as casual as possible, I shuffled and reshuffled the papers on my desk. “When I walked out of Très Bonne Cuisine last night… when Tyler walked me out and walked me to the car… did he say anything to you? Anything about maybe stopping here today to talk to us all again?”

  “Goodness no!” Eve’s petulance was a little too… er… well, petulant to fool me. She folded her arms over her chest in a classic defensive posture if I ever saw one. “You were right there, Annie. You know what happened. Tyler said hello. Then he gave me that little arctic smile of his. But he never said… I mean, even if he had, you don’t think I’d actually care, do you? He wasn’t any happier to see me last night than I was to see him.”

  “Eve?” It was Heidi again. This time when she opened my office door, she left it open. “There’s someone here to see you.”

  “Really?” As Eve had proven over the years, she could be cool and calm up in front of dozens of beauty pageant judges, but even so, she wasn’t much of an actress. Her faked surprise at hearing she had a visitor didn’t fool me. When she threw back her shoulders, lifted her chin, and walked out into the restaurant, I didn’t even need to confirm my suspicions. I did, anyway. I wasn’t surprised to see a single customer sitting at the small table near the front window. He looked an awful lot like Tyler Cooper.

  Maybe it was a good thing the lunch hour rush was in full swing. From the looks of the crowd waiting near the front door, I could tell Eve wouldn’t have much time to chat with Tyler.

  While I thought about all this and what it might mean, I tried Monsieur’s phone again.

  I didn’t get any better results.

  With no other options and no hope of making any sense of those invoices stacked on my desk, I sat back down and took out a legal pad.

  What could have happened to Monsieur? I wrote at the top of the page.

  Under that, I made a list of the spots Jim and I had stopped the night before and next to that, the names of the people we’d talked to at each one. A couple minutes’ time on the computer and I had phone numbers for each of those places, too. I promised myself I’d call them to see if anyone was there I could talk to who hadn’t been there the night before-after I finished half the invoices.

  With that bit of incentive, I might actually have gotten back to the work that was from that day forward supposed to be my full-time job if Jim hadn’t popped into my office again.

  “Did they like their birthday cake?” I asked, and I swear, he was so distracted, he had to think about it for a couple seconds before he knew what I was talking about.

  His quick smile told me the celebration had gone well. “I’ve been on the phone,” he said without preamble. He sat in the chair Eve had so recently vacated. “Arranging for a cleaning crew to get over to Très Bonne Cuisine once the police are done with the place.”

  I hadn’t thought of this, but it made sense. I remembered once reading something about how the owner of a property is responsible for cleaning up after a crime. I didn’t want to consider the task that waited for them. Just the memory of all that blood on the floor…

  I wiped the image out of my mind
and listened as Jim got down to business.

  “Jacques and I… I don’t think I’ve mentioned it… there was never any reason… but Jacques and I, we had an informal agreement of sorts. If anything ever happened to me, he was to see that things here ran smoothly. And if anything ever happened to him-”

  “You’re in charge of keeping the shop open for business.”

  “Aye.”

  I knew Jim was feeling sentimental, not to mention obligated. That’s exactly why he wasn’t thinking clearly. What kind of girlfriend would I have been if I didn’t point this out?

  I leaned forward. “I know you’d love to keep your word to Monsieur, but it’s not going to work, Jim. You realize that, don’t you? You’re so busy here, there’s no way you can run the shop.”

  “That’s true.” He took my hand. “I can’t manage Très Bonne Cuisine, but you can.”

  While I was still at a loss for words and with my mouth wide open, Jim saw his chance and took the opportunity to explain.

  “It’s the perfect setup,” he said. “You know Jacques will appreciate your help. When he gets back, I mean. You know he’ll be thrilled to learn the shop’s been in good hands.”

  “Sure, but…” I teetered on the edge between laughter and tears. Just to remind Jim of who-and what-I was, I looked him in the eye. “It’s me, Annie Capshaw. I’m the world’s worst cook. You remember that, don’t you?”

  “You won’t have to cook.”

  “I’m the world’s least likely person to know my way around a kitchen.”

  “Bah!” He dismissed this objection in an instant. “It’s naught but cooking supplies, Annie. Pots and pans and the like. There’s nothing to it. And who has a better head for business than you? That’s all it is, you know. A business like any other business. A business just like this one. Only you’re not dealing in food, you’re dealing in-”

  “Ice cream makers and roasting pans and pot holders I can’t afford to buy.”

  His blank expression told me I wasn’t getting through to him. I tried another tack. “The shop is a crime scene.”

  “ Tyler ’s out front.” He didn’t know that I already knew this so he tipped his head in the direction of my closed door and the restaurant beyond. “He says they’ll be done there by tomorrow. Which is why I felt free to schedule that cleaning crew. If you could be there to supervise…”

  Supervising was something I knew how to do. I nodded. “Of course I’ll do that if you can spare me here.”

  “And when it’s all cleaned up and all ready to open again, then you’ll work the shop.”

  “I never said that.”

  “But you will, won’t you, Annie darling? We can’t let the business go to pot just because Jacques isn’t there. That’s not how friends respond to their friends in trouble.”

  “It isn’t. And I wouldn’t want to leave him high and dry, but-”

  “And it will give you the perfect chance to get a closer look at the place. You know, for a little investigating. Detecting, Annie. Not cooking.”

  Call me cynical. I knew as sure as I was sitting there that Jim had planned out this speech to the very last word.

  How?

  Because he’d used the bait he knew would hook me.

  Number one, there was that word, cooking. Oh, sure, coming from most of our mouths, there’s nothing special about it. But coming from a Scotsman with a knee-melting accent…

  Jim knew I was a sucker for those long o’s, that mellow tone when his voice wrapped around the vowels, and the way his lips puckered the slightest bit.

  I could no more resist the temptation in his voice than I could the promise of a little detecting.

  He knew that, too.

  “But you hate it when I investigate,” I said. Since it was true, I figured I had every right to call him on it. “You always worry when I’m looking into murders.”

  “But it’s not the murder you’ll be investigating. Not technically, anyway. The police will take care of that. You’ll be looking into finding Jacques.”

  I had to admit the idea was tantalizing. But before I could say as much, Jim went on with the rest of his argument.

  “You’re good at this, Annie. You know you are. You have a way of getting to the heart of matters. And that’s what we need, isn’t it? Someone who cares enough to try and find out what happened to Jacques.”

  It was practically the same thing Eve had said. I’d been convinced then. Looking into Jim’s eyes-more gray today than they were green-I was more convinced than ever.

  “All right. I’ll do it.”

  He patted my hand.

  “But I’m going to need help,” I told him, just so he didn’t think I was caving completely. “I don’t know anything about kitchen shops, Jim. I can’t answer customer questions.” A new thought hit me and my blood turned to ice water. “Monsieur isn’t still doing the cooking classes upstairs, is he?”

  “Now, Annie…” He wound his fingers through mine. “There’s nothing to worry about on that front. He’s been talking about opening the cooking school again, but not until fall. By then-”

  “Monsieur will be right back where he belongs.”

  I said this mostly to convince myself. I didn’t need to throw the possibility of teaching a cooking class into the mix. Just the idea of spending time at a cookware store was enough to send chills up my spine. I shivered.

  “You’ll be fine.” Laughing for the first time since the news of the murder at Très Bonne Cuisine broke, Jim rose and opened the door to go back out into the restaurant. “Think about it, Annie,” he said to me over his shoulder. “It’s a natural sort of job for someone with your organizational skills.”

  “And my cooking skills?”

  My question stopped Jim in his tracks. He turned and grinned. “Cooking,” he said, emphasizing those o’s like there was no tomorrow. “What can possibly go wrong with cooking?”

  I’d heard that question before, and I didn’t like to remind myself of the answers. Dead cooking students, suspicious cooking students, murderous cooking students.

  Plenty could go wrong in cooking classes.

  “Only there won’t be any classes,” I told myself in that lay-it-on-the-line voice I used to talk to myself and calm my nerves. “Only pots and pans. Heck, there’s more cooking going on in this place, and lately, things here couldn’t be going any better.”

  That cheered me right up, even if I was a little apprehensive, and I went into the restaurant to get an iced tea and to find out what time I needed to be at Très Bonne Cuisine the next day.

  I guess my timing was good.

  Or maybe it was very, very bad.

  That would explain why when I stepped out of my office, I ran smack into a man standing just outside my door.

  Did I say man?

  This wasn’t just any man and the second I realized it, my stomach hit the floor, then bounced up again to stick in my throat.

  That’s when I realized I was face-to-face with someone I hadn’t seen since the day we faced off at the courthouse over a stack of divorce papers.

  Four

  I LOOKED UP INTO THE CHOCOLATE EYES THAT USED to smile at me every morning from the pillow next to mine. I backed away from the body that was just as familiar and did my best (it wasn’t good enough) to try not to remember that once upon what seemed like a lifetime ago, these were the arms that hugged me and that was the mouth that kissed me good-bye each day as we headed off to our jobs. His was the heartbeat I’d listened to, my head nuzzled against his chest as I fell asleep each night.

  Now my own heart slammed against my ribs, counting out the seconds I was unable to find my voice: One, two, three, four…

  I could barely keep up with the thoughts that sped through my head, and that was too bad. If ever there was a time I needed to be my usual rational and well-balanced self, this was it. But instead of being logical, I was dizzy. Instead of thinking, I was running on pure emotion and a shot of adrenaline so strong, it pumped throu
gh my veins, heightened my senses-and left my brain so far behind, I was pretty sure it would never catch up. Pity, because without my reason to guide me, I didn’t know how I felt. Heck, I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to feel.

  Regret? Denial? Longing? Anger?

  They were all possibilities, and I suppose each was legitimate in its own way. It wasn’t until after the initial pikestaff of shock settled, after my heartbeat racheted back and my stomach stopped jumping around as if it was filled with grasshoppers, that I realized I felt one thing and one thing only-surprise.

  “Peter!” I congratulated myself when I managed to say his name without the slightest trace of breathiness, and because I knew emotions were unreliable, I stuck with the only thing I could count on-my logic.

  “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Annie.” Like we were old friends, he leaned forward and gave me a peck on the cheek. A wave of familiar, peppery aftershave enveloped me and a stab of memory came right along with it. Old Spice was Peter’s favorite. I’d always put a bottle of it in his Christmas stocking.

  I also remembered that after he told me he’d never really known what love was until he met the girl who worked behind the counter at the dry cleaner’s, he’d stopped wearing good ol’ Old Spice and switched to a pricey, metrosexual scent she picked out for him at the mall.

  I pretended not to notice he’d switched back. Just like I pretended not to make note of the fact that he was once again dressed in khakis and a tan polo shirt, and not the black and white, sort of noir, maybe goth look I’d seen him in the day our divorce was finalized.

  “You’re here for lunch,” I said, because of course that was the only possible reason he could be at Bellywasher’s. “You’re not at school. You should be at school. It’s the middle of the day.”

  “It sure is, and summer vacation has started.” I should have remembered this and he was kind enough not to point it out. “I don’t start teaching summer school for another two weeks.”