Murder on the Menu Page 4

  Yes, it’s a little delusional, but it is also fun, and call me crazy, but I know I’ll go right on dreaming until I somehow make my dream come true. Nothing can shake me from my picket-fence fantasies.

  Unless, perhaps, if I had Sarah’s address.

  The next Wednesday night, Eve and I stood side by side, our eyes wide and our mouths hanging open, in the lobby of Sarah Whittaker’s apartment building. The fact that Eve was speechless should say a lot.

  Sarah lived in Clarendon, the same Arlington neighborhood where Eve and I had taken our ill-fated cooking class at Très Bonne Cuisine. The neighborhood is a mixture of funky old and trendy new, and from the looks of things, this building was one of the newest of the new, so brand-spanking-new, in fact, that the carpeting smelled as if it had just been laid.

  The architecture was, in a word, amazing. Clean lines, touches of chrome (or was it stainless steel?), and a lobby that featured a lofty ceiling and wide, high windows that during the day must have let in an amazing amount of light. It was airy and it was classy and it was spectacular. I tamped down a wave of lifestyle envy lest it get the better of me, and wished I’d listened to my high school guidance counselor who always said I should have attended college. Something told me a job on a senator’s staff paid more than I made at the bank.

  Before the green-eyed monster could completely take over, I shook myself back to reality. I left Eve checking out a sleek sculpture of what looked like a vase of flowers (but might have been a mother and child) and asked the doorman to call and tell Sarah we were there.

  There was no answer.

  Convinced he’d called the wrong number, he tried again.

  Still no answer.

  I guess by this time, I looked a little confused and, by the way, the doorman looked suspicious. When he left the lobby desk to help an elderly lady with a boatload of packages, he raised an eyebrow and gave us a look that pretty much said we should get a move on. Eve came over to see what was up.

  “You called Sarah, didn’t you?” I asked her. “You said you did.”

  She nodded. “I called yesterday. Just like I told her I would. Sarah didn’t answer, but I left a message. I reminded her we were coming tonight and that we were bringing dessert.” As if to prove it, she lifted two bags. One of them was from Bellywasher’s, and I knew it contained three larger-than-usual pieces of flourless chocolate cake. Though Eve hadn’t told me what was inside the other bag, I had my suspicions the moment I saw that it came from an Old Town boutique called the Pampered Pooch. “She’s got to be home. With all that traffic we ran into because of the water main break over near the Pentagon yesterday that they were still cleaning up, we’re even a little late. She’s had plenty of time to get home from work. She wouldn’t invite us over and then not be here. She’s dying for us to meet Doctor Masakazu.”

  “Well, you try.” Since the doorman had disappeared with the elderly woman, Eve leaned over the desk and grabbed the phone. She punched in the numbers. She had no luck.

  She replaced the receiver and harrumphed. “The buzzer thingy is probably broken. Sarah gave me her cell number. I have it with me. I think.” She headed over to where a tasteful grouping of leather furniture was nestled in front of a gas fireplace where flames sparkled in the grate. She set her bag on the couch, flopped down beside it, and started rummaging.

  I know Eve well. I know the kinds of things she carries in her purse, and I know how much she can jam into one bag.

  I plunked down on a leather love seat for the duration, watching and waiting.

  Eve pulled out three tubes of lipstick and set them on the couch. Next came a comb, a brush, and two of those round metal containers of breath mints. “I know my address book is in here somewhere.” She was bent over her purse, and her voice was muffled. “That’s where I wrote the number. Just give me a little while and…”

  She continued to mutter and dig, and while she did, I tried to get comfortable. It should have been possible, considering that sitting on the love seat was akin to riding on a cloud. I actually might have been able to enjoy the experience if I didn’t keep thinking that we’d been stood up and that I was sitting there doing nothing when I could have been over at Bellywasher’s, checking inventory, paying bills, or doing one of the thousand other things that demanded my attention.

  I was just about to tell Eve as much and ask her to drive me to the restaurant, so I could put in a couple hours in front of my unruly computer and hope I could get it to load my Quick Books program, when the glass doors that separated the entryway from the elevators swung open. A middle-aged man wearing gray work pants and a matching shirt walked out. The embroidery over his heart said his name was Foster.

  “Excuse me. Do you work here?” I didn’t want to look desperate, but I didn’t want Foster to get away, either. I hopped off the love seat and closed in on him before he could make it to the front doors, and when he nodded, I breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re trying to buzz a friend,” I explained, “and she’s not answering.”

  “Doorman didn’t get through?”

  “No, and he’s gone now. We thought maybe—”

  “No way the buzzer’s not working.” Foster was, apparently, not one to wait to hear all the details. “The system’s brand-new, and we check it all the time. Tested it this morning, and it’s working fine.”

  “Well, maybe, but—”

  “Nobody buzzes you in, you can’t get in.”

  “I know that. And I understand it. Security is important, but—”

  “Your friend isn’t home.”

  “But we called her. We left a message. She knew we were coming and—”

  “Oh, Annie, don’t be so insistent. This nice man is only doing his job.” Sometime while I was trying to reason with Foster, Eve had joined us. She gave him her widest beauty queen smile and a little pat on the arm that told him she sympathized with his position. “Who would think a little thing like this”—She looked my way and yes, since she was wearing four-inch heels and I was in sneakers, and since at five-eleven she was far taller than my five-foot-two to begin with, I guess I did qualify as a little thing—“could be so pushy!” Eve giggled, and whether he knew it or not, Foster was caught in her tractor beam. He smiled back. “What my friend here doesn’t understand…” she told Foster, leaning in close enough for him to get a whiff of Happy Heart and just the tiniest peek down the low-cut neckline of her pink cashmere sweater. “Is that there are rules about things like this. That’s why beautiful and expensive apartment buildings have buzzers, Annie, honey. And conscientious employees like Foster here. So that not everyone can just go marching up, willy-nilly, anyplace they want. Unless they know someone, of course. Someone like our friend Foster.”

  She batted her eyelashes at him, and I knew exactly what was going to happen next. Poor Foster didn’t stand a chance.

  Little did Eve or I suspect that there were unplumbed depths to Foster’s personality.

  “Can’t let you in,” he said. Oh, he was still smiling when he said it. And he was still trying for a better look at Eve’s cleavage. Only he wasn’t budging an inch. “No one can let you in but one of our tenants. That’s the rule, and if I don’t follow it, I’m going to be up shit creek.”

  “Of course, I understand all that,” Eve began, but Foster was already walking away.

  “Maybe we’re just not calling the right number.” I chimed in again. If there was one thing I’d learned in the years I was married to Peter, it was that a lot of guys liked to think they knew things that women didn’t. Even things like the right way to use a phone.

  Foster, it seemed, was one of those guys.

  He shrugged and walked over to the phone.

  “Sarah Whittaker,” I told him.

  “Apartment 16A,” Eve added.

  “Sixteen A?” Foster stopped before he ever had a hand on the phone. “You sure?”

  “About the apartment?” Eve dug into her purse again, but I didn’t need her to find Sarah’s address and
phone number to be certain. I remembered what Sarah had written on the back of the Bellywasher’s card.

  “Yes, 16A,” I told Foster. “Absolutely. Why, is there some problem?”

  He scratched a finger behind his ear. “Had some calls today about that apartment. Complaints, you know. There’s a dog up there—”

  “Doctor Masakazu.” Eve supplied the detail.

  “Whatever.” Foster rolled his eyes. “Don’t know about no doctor. All’s I know is that there’s a dog up there and it’s been barking all day long. This is an expensive place to live. People have certain…what do you call them? Expectations. The people up there on sixteen, they’re getting mighty tired of hearing that barking. It was bad enough during the day when just about everybody was out at work. Now that it’s dinnertime…well, if that mutt doesn’t shut up soon, somebody’s going to call the management company, and then my ass is going to be on the line. Pets are allowed here, see, but only if they’re well-behaved. Sure as I’m standing here, I’m going to get blamed for not making sure that one is quiet.”

  “We could do it.” I don’t know why I thought so. After all, I had never met Doctor Masakazu, so I didn’t know if the dog would respond to either me or Eve. I don’t know why it seemed important to get upstairs, either, except for the fact that it struck me as odd that Sarah would invite us over and then not be there to let us in.

  I pictured her sick.

  I pictured her hurt.

  I pictured my desk back at Bellywasher’s and the stack of work that was waiting there for me, and I thought about how tired I was of running back and forth between the restaurant and the bank. I would never admit it—not to Jim, not to Eve, not even to myself—but I really wanted this night off. I needed it. Sarah had to be home so I could kick back, drink coffee, and eat flourless chocolate cake with a clear conscience.

  “Doctor Masa…” The name was impossible. I didn’t even try, just started again. “The dog knows us,” I assured Foster. “He’ll be thrilled to see us. We can feed him. Or take him for a walk. Whatever it takes to make him stop barking.”

  Foster wasn’t convinced. “You’re sure?”

  “Sure?” Eve’s silvery laugh rang through the soaring lobby. “Why, don’t you know who this is? Annie Capshaw. The Annie Capshaw? If you read the Post, surely you’ve heard of her. You know horse whisperers? Annie here is a dog whisperer. The best in the business. Oh honey, her clientele is the Who’s Who of Capitol Hill. Or at least the Who’s Who’s doggy friends. She’ll quiet that critter up in no time flat.”

  Was Foster a sucker? Or just desperate?

  Either way, he slid a key card through the keypad next to the front doors, and they swung open. “OK. But I’m coming with you,” he said, and he led us to the elevators.

  As soon as his back was turned, I shot a wide-eyed look in Eve’s direction. “Dog whisperer?” I mouthed the words, but there was no mistaking my outrage.

  Eve was still laughing about it when we stepped off the elevator on the sixteenth floor.

  “Sixteen A is over that way,” Foster said, pointing down a long hallway on our right.

  He really didn’t need to. Even from here, we could hear Doctor Masakazu. Foster had been kind when he said the dog was barking. What it was really doing was yapping. A lot. The high-pitched noise made my skin crawl and my teeth hurt. I pitied the poor people who had been listening to it all day.

  “This is exactly the kind of case Annie specializes in,” Eve told Foster. Leave it to her to milk a good story for all it was worth, even when we didn’t need it to convince Foster to help us any longer. “You’ll see. You’ll be so grateful, you might want to keep her business cards. You know, to hand out to other people in the building who might be having the same sort of difficult canine problems.”

  Lucky for us, we arrived at Sarah’s door, and Eve stopped talking. Foster knocked. Doctor Masakazu yapped even louder.

  No one answered.

  Foster pulled out his passkey and unlocked the door, rapping on it with his knuckles. He opened it, but not all the way. There was no sign of life. Except for the dog’s yapping, of course.

  “What did you say her name was?” Foster asked me, and when I supplied the information, he raised his voice. “Miss Whittaker? It’s me, Foster. You know, the maintenance man. You got some visitors here. Can we come in, ma’am?”

  Still no answer. This time, Foster pushed the door all the way open, and we had our first glimpse of the apartment.

  The lifestyle envy came back with a vengeance.

  Oh yeah, one step into Sarah’s apartment, and already I knew I could learn to live like this. Champagne carpet, furniture in muted tones of sage and burgundy. The place was as neat as a pin and as beautiful as a showplace in a decorating magazine. Sarah had a killer view of Arlington, a collection of simple yet striking black-and-white photos on her walls, and a dining room table that was set with a china pot and cups. As if she was expecting company.

  “Told you she knew we were coming,” Eve said to Foster, pointing to the table, but though he nodded as if he was finally ready to admit we’d been right all along, he didn’t take another step inside.

  “You go look,” he said from his spot near the door. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the dog’s yapping, more plaintive than ever now that he knew he had company. “I don’t feel right, you know, going through a tenant’s place. If she’s a friend of yours, she won’t mind.”

  Eve didn’t hesitate. There was a dog carrier in the living room next to the couch, and she hurried over to it, opened the door, and scooped Doctor Masakazu into her arms.

  The dog couldn’t have weighed more than a couple pounds. It had dark V-shaped ears that hung close to its head and an alert, clever expression on his face that seemed to say Eureka! I knew if I yapped long enough, someone would come to play with me. The attention was apparently all he wanted. He stopped barking.

  “Isn’t he just the most adorable!” I had never known Eve to be an animal lover, unless the animal in question was sable, mink, or fox. It didn’t stop her from scratching a finger under the pup’s rhinestone collar. Or from giving him a hug. As soon as she did, she wrinkled her nose and held him at arm’s length. “Hey, aren’t dogs supposed to not soil their crates? That’s what I heard somebody say when I went to that doggy boutique today.” She looked the dog in the eye, and I swear, there must have been some kind of canine mojo at work. Suddenly, she was talking in the same singsong voice Sarah had used back at the restaurant. “Doctor Masakazu, have you been a bad little puppy-wuppy?”

  I didn’t wait to find out. I peeked into the kitchen, a sleek and glossy room painted yellow ochre and filled with stainless steel that was reflected in the black granite countertops and hardwood floor. There was nothing out of place and no sign that anyone had been there recently, except for two wineglasses that were inverted on the dish drainer, washed and waiting to be put away.

  The kitchen had two doors. One led back into the living room and dining room where I could hear Eve asking the dog (like she expected an answer?) where his leash was so she could take him out for some fresh air and where Sarah kept his food dish because—don’t ask me how she decided this—she could tell from looking at his sweet little face (her words, not mine), that he was hungry-wungry. I decided not to go there, literally or figuratively, and headed in the other direction instead. The second door took me into a hallway where more photographs were displayed in simple black frames.

  I felt a little funny checking out someone else’s things. Still, I couldn’t help looking. Or admiring what I saw.

  Each photograph was black-and-white, and every one of them seemed to have been taken in the same setting. A park, I’d guess. The first was a picture of flowers. In spite of the lack of color, thanks to the clever use of light and shadow, they looked as if I could lean closer and sniff them. There was a picture of children on swings, their bodies blurred with movement but their smiles plain to see. There was another one of an emp
ty park bench, icicles hanging from its seat, and still another that showed sunlight glimmering through the splashing water of a fountain.

  I’m no connoisseur, especially when it comes to art, but I know good when I see it, and those photos were very good. I also saw that each one had Sarah’s signature in the bottom right-hand corner.

  I smiled, pleased to see that our new friend had such a special talent. Then I continued my search.

  The first room I peeked into must have been Sarah’s bedroom. It was as pristine as the rest of the place, and as tastefully decorated. So was the office next to it where a computer sat on a desk next to a neat stack of mail. I recognized the logo on the envelope at the top of the pile; Sarah banked with us at Pioneer Savings and Loan. A third bedroom looked as if it was used as a guest room.

  I may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but I was beginning to get the picture. Sarah wasn’t home. If I wasn’t so thorough (some people might say anal), I never would have looked into the bathroom. The way it was, it was at the end of the hallway, and I was right there. Besides, the door was closed, and I could see the glow of a light from under it.

  Call me crazy, but that struck me as a bit strange, considering no one was around but the dog.

  I knocked. Just in case. I didn’t expect an answer, so I wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t get one. I turned the knob and walked inside.

  I’m not the dramatic type, so I don’t think I screamed when I saw the body in the bathtub. But I guess I must have made some kind of noise. Eve and Foster came running.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Behind me, Eve’s voice choked over a sob. I turned just long enough to see that she was still carrying the dog. She put her hand over his eyes as if to spare him the sight. “It’s Sarah. Is she…” Eve couldn’t make herself say the word.

  I took a couple steps closer to the tub, but I really didn’t have to. Even the not-brightest bulb in the box can recognize dead when she sees it, and Sarah Whittaker was definitely dead.