WAS THE NOTE MEANT FOR ME? DID IT REFER TO Drago’s death?
And if so, was it a warning?
It was the next night, but questions still swirled around my brain.
Fortunately, between that and the headache that felt like it was going to rip apart my skull, I didn’t have a chance to think about how the rest of the class had progressed after the explosion.
Perhaps I should say regressed.
My goat cheese bundles turned out soggy. My skewered veggies were limp. And the bacon pinwheels? Well, let’s just say they gave the termcrispy a whole new meaning.
Which I suppose in the great scheme of things was better than how crispy I would have been if the explosion hadn’t thrown me back and out of the blast range.
Just thinking about it all brought me back around to the note.
And that made my head hurt all over again.
I massaged my temples with the tips of my fingers while I listened to Jim get us started on night number three: Superb Salads and Dazzling Dressings.
“Freshness, that’s the key.” Jim stood at the front of the room, a bunch of romaine in one hand and an expression on his face that was almost transcendent. This guy loved to cook. I mean, he really loved it. Go figure.
“You always want your vegetables to be as fresh as possible,” Jim said. He rolled ther infresh, and the sound tickled its way up my spine. “They need to be nice and crispy.”
There was that word again.
I groaned.
“Are you all right?” At least Eve remembered to keep her voice down. Neither of us wanted to be caught talking in class again. “You look worried.”
“I’m fine,” I whispered back.
Eve didn’t look convinced. She shot a look across the room toward the stove where I’d nearly been fried the night before. It had been fixed, Jim assured us, and it was as clean as a whistle. Still, Beyla had refused to work there again, and I for one couldn’t blame her. The Incredible Hulk had taken her place, and Beyla and her cooking partner, John, were working one station closer to us. I made sure I kept my voice down so she couldn’t hear me.
“I’m just thinking,” I told Eve. “That’s all.”
She nodded. “I know just what you mean. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, too.”
I’d told Eve about the note, and I knew it had only cemented her theory about our mysterious classmate’s guilt.
Eve was 100 percent positive that it all came down to Beyla.
“I’m telling you, Annie, she looks as guilty as hell,” Eve said.
“She doesn’t.” I knew this for a fact, because I was looking right at Beyla, and Beyla was calmly going about her business as usual, unpacking her ingredients and setting up her cooking station.
But Eve wasn’t about to take logic into consideration.
OK, I admit it. Mentioning the note to Eve had been a major blunder. I knew it the moment I opened my mouth. But let’s face it, I had a good excuse. I’d been pretty upset. And worried. I’d been thrown for a loop (literally and figuratively), and so darned confused by the whole thing, I’d just naturally shared my discovery with Eve.
And Eve had just naturally blown the whole thing out of proportion.
Sure I found the note. Sure the stove went kablooey. But that didn’t mean that one thing was related to the other.
Did it?
In my ordered, logical mind, I liked to think it didn’t. Because I knew in my ordered, logical mind that if it did, I was still in danger.
Call me the queen of denial, but I had decided to believe that the note had nothing to do with me. That it wasn’t referring to Drago’s death. That the whole stove incident was nothing more than an unfortunate accident, and that I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The explosion was a desperate attempt by the culinary gods, that’s what it was. A not-so-subtle way for the powers that be to warn me to stay away from anything that even resembled cooking.
And the note?
It had simply fallen out of somebody’s purse or pocket.You are next in line at a doctor’s office.You are next because whoever “you” was had a birthday coming up.You are next for a haircut or a nail appointment or for a tire rotation down at the garage.
Delusional? Sure. But it beat thinking that Beyla was out to get me.
While I was busy pondering all this, Jim told us to start stripping romaine leaves off the bunch, and I did, setting them in a colander so that I could rinse them.
“Maybe the note wasn’t meant for me at all,” I suggested to Eve. “Maybe it has nothing to do with any of us. Or maybe someone left it there for Beyla.”
“Yeah.” Eve sniffed. “That’s why you saw her putting a pen back in her purse.”
“I didn’t say anything about a pen. I said I saw her with her purse.”
“I’ll bet there’s a pen in it.”
“I’ll bet there’s one in yours.”
“OK. Fine. If that’s how you want to be.” Eve tossed the last of her romaine into the colander and turned on the water. “Maybe she didn’t write it. But if that’s true, why-”
Eve’s words stopped as if they’d been snipped in half by scissors. Her colander was still under the spigot, and water was still running over her romaine. But Eve was frozen in place. All it took was one look at the doorway to know why.
A man had just stepped into the room.
Tyler Cooper.
“My hair looks like hell.” Still staring toward where her ex-fiancé was introducing himself to Jim, Eve ran one shaking hand over her ponytail. She blinked rapidly, her eyes moist with emotion. “Kaitlin must have mentioned to him that she saw me. That’s got to be why he’s here. He didn’t know where to find me before now.”
It didn’t seem likely, at least not to me, but there was no use pointing it out. As her theories about Beyla proved all too clearly, once Eve got something into her head, it was nearly impossible to dislodge it.
That’s why I didn’t bother to mention that Tyler was a cop, and that cops can find anyone anytime they want. And that Eve hadn’t moved since the days when she and Tyler were a couple, that her phone number hadn’t changed, and that he’d bought her cell phone at the same time he bought his own. Her number was only one digit different from his.
“Ladies and gentlemen…” Jim tapped a spoon on the side of his metal colander to get our attention. He wore a serious expression, and a thread of uneasiness knotted in my stomach.
Why was Tyler Cooper at Très Bonne Cuisine?
“We’ve got a visitor, and I’m going to let him explain what he’s doing here.” Jim turned to Tyler. “This is Lieutenant Tyler Cooper of the Arlington Police Department. He’s-”
“Here to see me,” Eve said under her breath, standing a little straighter.
“Here to tell us some rather disturbing news,” Jim finished.
Eve’s shoulders drooped. She looked at me, confusion clouding an expression that only moments before was wavering between hope and disbelief. Before she could say a word, Tyler cleared his throat and stepped to the center of the room.
I have to admit, I was never quite sure what Eve saw in Tyler. Just like I couldn’t quite remember what it was about him that I didn’t like.
Oh, he was good-looking enough. He was a smidgen under six feet tall, with broad shoulders, sandy hair, and eyes that, in the right light, looked like they were lit with blue neon. But with Tyler… well, his physical appearance wasn’t nearly as important as his attitude. And Tyler had attitude to spare. I suppose it was one of the things that made him a good cop. Tyler was tough, and every move he made was designed to make sure no one would ever forget it.
We knew it now, just by the way he stood there with his shoulders squared and pulled back slightly, his chin raised, his jaw tensed. He sized up each of us in turn, and I swear, he didn’t even flinch when his gaze landed on Eve.
Now I remembered what I didn’t like about Tyler.
He had a cold, cold heart.
“Most of you have probably heard by now that a man died in the parking lot behind the store two nights ago,” Tyler said. Apparently, not everyone did know. There was a buzz around the room and I automatically looked Beyla’s way.
She didn’t even blink an eye.
Tyler silenced the class with a look. “His name was Drago Kravic. Did any of you know him?”
My hand twitched. Twelve years of Catholic schooling had taught me nothing if not how to be honest. Eve slapped her hand over mine to keep it in place.
Beyla didn’t move a muscle.
“It doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t know him,” Tyler went on. “What does matter…” Again he glanced around the room. It wasn’t like I had anything to feel guilty about-well, except for fibbing to Kaitlin Sands-but just the touch of Tyler’s icy blue gaze made me shift from foot to foot.
“We were sure he had a heart attack,” Tyler said. “Now…” He shrugged. “Well, let’s just put it this way. This morning, an autopsy was performed on Mr. Kravic. And now we know that he was murdered.”
Murder?
The single word shivered through me, turning my blood to ice water. If Drago was the victim of a killer,you are next took on a whole new meaning.
I clutched the countertop to steady my suddenly wobbly legs as Tyler finished up. “Maybe you saw something,” he said. “Maybe you heard something. That’s what I’m here to find out. You just go about your business and do your cooking. I’ll come around and talk to each of you in turn.”
“Ladies room,” Eve said. She turned off the water, grabbed her purse, and ducked out. I wanted nothing more than to go with her, but I knew it would be suspicious if I did, so I stayed put. While I waited, I forced myself to keep busy. I rinsed my romaine and broke it into bits, just the way Jim recommended. My bits were too bitty, and when I added what was supposed to be a drizzle of olive oil, it turned into more of a rainstorm. The salt and fresh ground pepper I sprinkled on sort of clumped in the oil and sank to the bottom of the bowl. I crumbled some blue cheese just like Jim showed us and got more on the floor than in the salad.
All the while, I was watching out of the corner of my eye as Tyler walked around the room.
Eve was back in a flash, a fresh coat of lipstick on her mouth, a little more mascara on her lashes. “Has he been by yet?” she asked, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes followed Tyler as he made his way from station to station, talking to my fellow students and writing in a leather-covered notebook.
When he got around to Beyla, I stopped to see what was going to happen. I couldn’t hear more than the low rumble of Tyler’s voice and Beyla’s higher-pitched, murmured replies, but I knew he was asking questions, and she was answering them. She nodded now and then. She shook her head.
I’m no mind reader, but my guess is that she told Tyler exactly what she’d told us the night before: Drago? Drago who?
And then it was our turn.
I wasn’t imagining it: there was a bit more swagger in Tyler’s walk when he sauntered over. I could feel the tension that tingled through Eve’s body like electricity.
“Why, if it isn’t Eve DeCateur.” Tyler grinned at Eve and acknowledged me with a tip of his head. “And Annie Capshaw. I might have known I’d find you two together.”
“Do I know you?” Eve stepped back, her head cocked, and studied Tyler for a moment. I had to hand it to her, she could look as poised facing down an ex-fiancé as she had onstage back in her beauty pageant days. If I hadn’t just spent how many hours listening to her go on and on about Kaitlin Sands, even I would have been convinced that Eve didn’t care one iota about Tyler.
He was cold, but she was cooler.
I shivered.
“Why yes, I think we have met.” Eve’s Southern accent had never been more pronounced. Her eyes wide, she pointed one perfectly manicured finger in Tyler’s direction. “Didn’t you write me a ticket once on the George Washington Parkway?”
“Never worked traffic, ma’am.” Tyler turned to a clean notebook page, a signal that the pleasantries, such as they were, were over. He was all business now. “I understand you two were with Drago Kravic when he died.”
Eve didn’t so much frown as she pouted. In a pretty sort of way, of course. “Why, that sweet little Kaitlin told you that, didn’t she? I’ll bet that little girl just tells you all sorts of things. Sharing. It’s so important to any relationship.” She finished her riff with a lift of her shoulders. “Now, what was it we were talking about?”
“Drago Kravic.” Tyler was not amused. I could tell because a muscle twitched at the base of his jaw. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Not a thing, of course,” Eve said, at the same time I blurted out, “We saw him with Beyla, just a little while before he died.”
Eve gave me one of those looks but I wasn’t about to be put off. She might have steamrolled me into keeping quiet when Kaitlin questioned us the night Drago died, but that’s when we thought the man had died of a heart attack. Now that we knew it was murder…
Well, it was my civic duty to tell Tyler everything I knew, wasn’t it?
“You saw the deceased? With her?” Tyler’s laser gaze swiveled over to where Beyla was chopping parsley while she talked quietly to John. “She just told me she didn’t know the man.”
“Then she’s lying,” Eve interjected. And I had to admit, her theory about Beyla was growing more and more convincing. “They were fighting, her and Drago. Right before he keeled over.”
After a year of dating her and another few months of engagement, Tyler was well aware of Eve’s tendency to overstate things. He turned to me. “Is it true?”
I nodded.
“And when exactly was that?” he asked.
I thought back to everything that happened that night. “It was just after nine o’clock,” I told Tyler. “I remember because Eve left her watch here. We were already on our way home, and we turned around and came back. When we got here, we saw Drago and Beyla in the parking lot. We couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t a friendly chat. A couple minutes later, we came up here and got Eve’s watch. When she slipped it on, she commented that it was exactly nine twenty-five.”
“That’s impossible, officer.” Though we’d kept our voices down, John, the accountant, had apparently been listening. He walked over and joined in the conversation. “Beyla and I went for coffee after class that night. By nine twenty-five… well, I’m certain we’d already ordered and had our lattes in front of us. There’s no way she could have been anywhere near here at that time, or even for a half hour or so before then.”
I shook my head, certain of the facts. “Eve checked her watch. It was-”
“I’m sure I have the receipt somewhere.” John patted down the pockets of his brown polyester pants and peeked in the pocket of the yellow shirt he had buttoned all the way to the neck. (After all, he is an accountant.)
“Maybe it’s at home in the jacket I wore that night,” John said. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s where I stuck it. I’d be glad to stop at the police station with it when I find it. Then you’ll see, officer. Beyla and I got to Starbucks just a couple minutes before nine. I know their receipts are stamped with the time. There’s no way these ladies could have seen Beyla arguing with that man. At nine twenty-five, Beyla was with me.”
Tyler dismissed John with an appreciative nod, then turned toward Eve and me. “You were saying?”
“We were telling you what happened!” Eve stepped toward him, her eyes snapping. “If you’d pay half the attention you need to pay, Tyler Cooper, you’d know-”
“What? That you’d like nothing better than to see me fall flat on my face when it comes to this investigation?” Tyler snorted. “Oh yeah, don’t pretend it isn’t true, Eve. Kaitlin told me how uncooperative you were the night she was here.”
“We told her everything she needed to know.” I butted in. Better fudge the truth than to watch Eve and Tyler go at each other. Even though they kept their voices low, there was no mistaking the animosity between them. The other students in class had stopped what they were doing and were watching the show. “We reported everything just as it happened.”
“Except that when you talked to Officer Sands”-Tyler turned to me, automatically making theyou plural-“you never mentioned that you saw Drago with Beyla. And Beyla says she never laid eyes on the man. Seems kind of odd, doesn’t it? Plus, in case you weren’t paying attention, Beyla has an alibi. You swear she and Drago were at each other’s throats at a time when a witness says they couldn’t have been together. You admit you didn’t bother to mention any of this to Officer Sands. And now all of a sudden, you remember? I can’t believe it, Eve.” He looked her way, and suddenly, it was personal again. “Don’t you have anything else to do but leave the scene of a man’s death and go home and concoct a crazy story just so you can make my life more difficult?”
“It’s not like that at all,” I said. “We didn’t mention Beyla to Kaitlin because-” Eve shot a dagger look in my direction, and I stopped short. I knew exactly what that look meant. I’d better not mention how jealous she was of Kaitlin, or more to the point, how jealous she was of Kaitlin’s relationship with Tyler. If I did, I’d have to start looking for a new best friend.
“There is something else we should tell you,” I said instead. “Drago mentioned somebody named Alba. Alba Stru. Right before he died.”
“Sure he did.” Tyler smiled at me the way I’d seen a mother smile at a child who was clearly making up a tall tale. “What else did he say to you?”
“Nothing.” I nodded, sure of it. “He mentioned Alba, and that was it. We thought he was having a heart attack.”
“Exactly what you were meant to think.” Tyler nodded. “The symptoms of a heart attack and foxglove poisoning are very similar.”
Foxglove. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered my mother mentioning foxglove. She was an avid gardener, and she liked to tell me stories about the flowers she grew.
“Foxglove is what’s used to make digitalis, the heart medicine,” I said.
Tyler nodded. “And too much of it… well, you saw what can happen.”
“Wedid see Beyla fight with Drago.” Eve stepped toward Tyler, her arms close to her sides, her hands curled into fists. “Just like we saw Monsieur Lavoie arguing with Drago earlier in the evening, before class even started.”
“Now you’ve got another cock-and-bull story to tell me?” Tyler rolled his eyes. “Give me a break, Eve. Why don’t you just admit that you can’t get me out of your system and you’ll do anything to make my life miserable, just so you can have a little revenge? Even if it means trying to mess with my mind by introducing all this nonsense into the investigation. Let me remind you that in this case, what you’re doing is called obstruction of justice. It’s not cute, and I’m not going to fall for it-or for you.”
Tyler’s words were as sharp as a slap. If I felt their sting, I could only imagine how much they hurt Eve.
I was just about to tell him to mind his manners when Eve stopped me, one hand on my arm. “You got me there.” The smile she turned on Tyler was sleek. “I was pulling your leg, Tyler, honey. And you had it all figured out. You always were as smart as they come. I should have known you’d see right through it. Iwas just trying to mess with your mind. We never saw Beyla and Drago together. We never saw that cute little ol’ Frenchman argue with Drago, either. Why, we’re just two little girls who are trying to add a little bit of excitement to our dull, dull lives.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “Forgive me?”
Tyler didn’t answer. He flipped his notebook closed and walked away.
“What was that all about?” I asked Eve as soon as he was out of earshot. “You know that’s not true.”
“I sure do.” Watching Tyler say something to Jim, Eve smiled. It wasn’t until he’d left the classroom that she turned back to me. “Don’t you remember when he broke up with me, Annie? I do. Like it was yesterday. He told me he couldn’t marry me because I wasn’t smart enough.”
“So you lied to him to prove how smart you are?”
“Don’t be silly!” Eve tossed her romaine leaves into her salad bowl and reached for the olive oil. “How on earth could I prove how smart I am by lying to the man? No, I’ve got a better way to do it, and to make that Tyler Cooper look like the fool he is. And you’re going to help me.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “How?”
She hummed a little tune while she drizzled on her olive oil. “Why, that’s simple, honey. We’re going to solve Drago’s murder ourselves.”
I choked out a laugh. It died the moment I realized she was serious.
“You’re nuts,” I told her.
“Maybe, but I’m going to do it. And you’re going to help me.”
“No.”
“Why ever not?”
“That’s what the police are for.”
“The police…” She glared at the spot where she’d last seen Tyler. “The police aren’t listening to us. And Beyla is lying. So is John. Doesn’t that make you want to find out what’s really going on?”
“No.” I wasn’t kidding. There were professionals who were paid to do this kind of thing. “Eve, we don’t know how…”
My voice trailed off as I watched Eve start to toss her salad. I might as well save my breath. She wasn’t listening. She added blue cheese to her bowl, her eyes shining in a way that told me I’d never change her mind. Not about this.
That’s when I knew one thing for certain: We’d just gone from Scrumptious Salads and Dazzling Dressings straight into hot water.