HAVE I MENTIONED THAT JIM IS A CONSUMMATE professional?
I suppose I have. I mean, it’s impossible for me to talk about Jim and not sing his praises to the high heavens. Yeah, he’s that terrific. On the personal side, he’s always been there for me. Professionally, I’ve seen him come through in a cooking pinch so many times, I’m pretty much convinced he’s a bona fide kitchen superhero.
But if I needed more proof, it came the day after Greg’s murder.
In spite of the fact that he’d soldiered through with the rest of the cooking class even after I called him to tell him what had happened at Très Bonne Cuisine and that we’d been up half the night in an effort to find Monsieur Lavoie, Jim was at Bellywasher’s at his usual early hour. When lunchtime rolled around, he directed the kitchen staff like a conductor in front of his orchestra.
No missteps.
No miscues.
No sour notes.
Me? Well, after calling Monsieur’s cell phone a couple of dozen times an hour the night before, going along with Jim when he visited every one of the haunts he knew Monsieur frequented, and just basically pacing my apartment as we wracked our brains to try to figure out what had happened to our friend, I was a little less perky.
The latest batch of supplier invoices was on my desk in front of me, but the numbers swam in front of my bleary eyes.
When my office door snapped open and Jim stuck his head in, I was grateful for the break. “Anything?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No answer,” I said, with a look toward the phone on my desk. “I’ve been calling every half hour or so. But there’s no answer at his house. No answer on his cell, either.”
Jim’s white apron was a stark contrast to the smudges of exhaustion under his eyes. He looked over his shoulder, quickly checking to be sure that for the moment, everything was under control out in the restaurant. Only when he was sure did he step into my office and close the door behind him.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
In all the hours we’d worked on the problem, I’d never heard Jim sound this discouraged. Or this worried. I rose from my chair and crossed the room (it didn’t take long; my office is lilliputian). I would have given Jim a hug if there wasn’t a smear of marinara across the front of his apron and I wasn’t wearing a white sweater.
I put a hand on Jim’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “We’re going to find him,” I said, and honestly, I believed it. “Monsieur can’t have just disappeared off the face of the earth. He has to be somewhere.” I was grateful that Jim was listed as the emergency contact on the note that hung over the cash register at Très Bonne Cuisine. That meant the cops had contacted him directly the night before. He was in the loop, and he wasn’t getting all his information about the murder and Monsieur’s disappearance secondhand from me. “You heard what Tyler said when he called you last night,” I reminded him.
“You mean about Jacques making that phone call. The one that alerted the police to the trouble.” Jim nodded. A lock of hair fell onto his forehead, but he didn’t move to brush it back. The curl of hair made him look younger. And more vulnerable.
I’d heard people talk about heartstrings, and at that moment, I knew for certain they were real because mine tugged in sympathy.
“ Tyler said that phone call means Jacques is as right as rain,” Jim said. He didn’t have to; I remembered the call as well as he did. But I let him talk. He was bolstering his own spirits, and trying to buck up mine, too. “Jacques was able to make the phone call, so he must not have been hurt. Tyler said it means we shouldn’t worry that he might be… you know.”
I couldn’t blame Jim. I didn’t want to say it, either. I didn’t even want to think about what he was thinking about, so I didn’t. I concentrated on the facts instead.
“When I was at the shop, Tyler told me the back door of Très Bonne Cuisine was open when the police arrived. I think that means that when the killer came into the store, Monsieur must have been loading his car with the stuff he was supposed to bring over here for your class. Of course, I didn’t get a chance to look around the store. If I could have gone back there, maybe I’d know for sure.” A stab of embarrassment reminded me that after Tyler had given me more time than he probably should have at an active crime scene, he unceremoniously escorted me from the premises and told me to mind my own business.
Which was exactly what I was doing, I reminded myself.
Monsieur was our friend. This was our business.
With that in mind, I went right on. “He didn’t come right out and say it-you know how Tyler can be-but I got the feeling he thinks that Monsieur walked back in and realized something was wrong. I’ll bet Monsieur was all set to help. You know he wouldn’t just turn tail and run. Not when a friend is in trouble. He’s not that kind of person. But then he must have heard the shots, and that’s when he called 911 and got himself out of there. It was the smart thing to do and it also means that he’s safe. He’s just-”
“Missing? Disappeared into thin air? Hiding? That makes the least sense of all. Why would he want to hide? Why would he need to?”
These were the same questions that we’d been over the night before-again and again, until our heads spun and our brains were as fried as the ravioli on the day’s menu. Before I could try to drum up some answers that sounded new, different, and even vaguely plausible, there was a rap on my door.
Heidi, our waitress, opened it and came inside. In my office, three is the proverbial crowd and when Jim stepped closer, I stepped back to keep my sweater from getting ruined. Heidi, smart girl that she is, didn’t waste any time.
“The party at table four is ready for their birthday cake,” she told Jim, and he assured her he’d be right there. I knew the Tennessee whiskey cake Jim had made the day before was a special order for a group of regulars and that he was proud of his recipe. There was no way he wasn’t going to serve it himself.
Before he stepped back into the restaurant, he looked toward my phone. “You’ll try again?”
I didn’t have to answer. He knew I would.
Before he closed my door, though, he turned to me one more time.
“He was the one who gave me my first real job when I came to this country, you know.” Jim’s smile was brief. “I was barbacking here for Uncle Angus, but there’s only so much of that a young fellow can do, especially one who’s itching to cook. Jacques’ shop was brand new and when I stopped in to look around, he saw that I was interested, and knowledgeable. I’d taken a few cookery courses back in Scotland, but I’d never seen anything like that shop of his. I started out unpacking boxes, stocking shelves. I learned a lot there, and Jacques gave me a chance to cook, and to teach.”
I knew the story, of course, but I didn’t bother to point this out to Jim. As I’d seen in so many investigations, those left behind to deal with the aftermath of a tragedy needed space to explore their feelings and a chance to talk.
“But this isn’t a tragedy,” I told myself the instant Jim was out the door. And then I felt guilty. Because of course Greg’s death was exactly that. Monsieur’s disappearance, on the other hand?
Right now, that was a mystery.
As always, my mind and Eve’s were apparently moving in the same direction. That would explain why the moment I was back at my desk and staring at those endless columns of blurred numbers again, she slipped into my office and plunked into the chair next to my desk.
“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.