Mousse and Murder

by Elizabeth Logan

  Oliver’s sister did seem relieved to see us, however. Or was it a you-idiots-again look? In any case, she stared at us, put the rifle down by her side, and leaned on it. I wondered if I should be hurt that we seemed to pose no threat to her.

  I started in on a little speech that I constructed as soon as I saw her. “We’re here looking for things we might use for Oliver’s memorial service or a little shrine in the diner. And I wanted to say something for a eulogy, or put together some photos. I—”

  “Just leave,” she said, her voice gruff. She waved the rifle as if it were a broom, sweeping us out the door.

  “I don’t want you to think we—”

  “Sorry to bother you, Kendra,” Chris said, ushering me out the door. Kendra had pulled the crime scene tape off the door and dragged it inside. We stepped over it. Chris gave me a gentle but firm shove in front of him and marched me down the steps. He didn’t put his hand over my mouth, but his behavior had the same effect: Let’s quit while we’re ahead, Charlie.

  I got the message. But I wished I could have made double espressos for us all. I pictured us sitting at the kitchen table sharing stories of Oliver’s life. Instead, before I knew it, I was buckled into my Outback and on the road.

  TWELVE

  For the next half hour, on the way to Anchorage, our conversation was restricted to statements that required no comment and questions that required no answers.

  “So scary.”

  “Kendra, huh?”

  “I thought we were goners.”

  “Why is she avoiding us?”

  “I wonder if she’s staying in Oliver’s house now.”

  “Did she take his computer?”

  And finally, from me, “Thanks for shutting me up. I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “I saw that. Pretty quick thinking, though. Coming up with that story.”

  “Thanks. It was kind of true, though.”

  “Meaning?”

  I indicated the tote bag between my feet. “I stuffed some of the papers in here on the way out. They might contain something useful for the eulogy. Or the investigation.”

  “Let’s hope. Nice going, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now I know why women always carry purses.”

  “So we’re always ready to raid a crime scene?”

  “Something like that.”

  “We can look at it all when we’re at the airport.”

  “You mean when we’re sitting down to eat? I’m starving.”

  Chris was always starving, but that was a good thing for a woman who owned a diner.

  We arrived at Ted Stevens International Airport, named for a World War II pilot who later represented Alaska as a US senator for four decades. I stopped to read a poster with salient FAQs about the airport. My childhood obsession with trivia, like why Moose’s Tooth wasn’t Moose’s Jaw, was understandably reinforced during my days working at visitors’ centers in various state parks. Who knew when I’d be asked to answer a question like “Where does ANC rank as a cargo hub?” (Answer: ANC is among the top five cargo hubs in the world.) Or “How many jets land at ANC on any given day?” (Answer: around seventy-five big ones, for an estimated three million tons of freight.) And, a fun fact to tell people you meet at a cocktail party: Anchorage is nearly equidistant by air from New York and Tokyo, and less than ten hours from ninety percent of the industrialized world.

  While I immersed myself in ANC trivia, Chris had checked out the list of restaurants in the terminal and picked up a bouquet of flowers for my mom. More points for Chris. If he even cared about that.

  We were early enough—eight twenty for my mom’s nine fifty arrival time—to have a meal where there were tablecloths. But my eyes landed on a poster ad for Wright’s Classic Diner.

  “No, really?” Chris asked.

  “I have to check out the competition.”

  Agreeable as usual, Chris joined me in following the signs to the diner. Wright’s was nestled between a coffee chain and a dimly lit bar, all of which were sparsely populated at this hour. The image of Oliver’s kitchen fresh in my mind, I had an urge for an espresso. I upgraded to a large macchiato, taking the risk of being turned away if I attempted to carry the green and white cup from the coffee shop into the diner.

  Not a problem. The greeter hardly glanced at my cup. I’d never had that problem at the Bear Claw, since there was no coffee shop close enough, but I wondered if I’d be so lenient about other people’s brands coming into my domain.

  Once seated, I whipped out my notebook and, in spite of Chris’s indulgent grin, listed the subjects of the photos along the wall, many of which celebrated Wilbur and Orville Wright and Kitty Hawk, of course. It occurred to me that the Bear Claw should have more photos of people, not only scenery. No question, our mountains, lakes, and photogenic wild life were spectacular, but why not also feature native Alaskans, or people who wrote about Alaska, like Jack London and John Muir?

  Wright’s Classic Diner was exactly the distraction I needed after the harrowing end to our time at Oliver’s home. If you could call having a rifle trained on you harrowing—and I certainly did.

  Today, before we even opened our menus, I heard “Burn one” for ordering a hamburger and “Bloodhound in the hay” for a hot dog with sauerkraut.

  I thought about ordering hash just to hear the waitress say, “Clean up the kitchen.” Instead I told Fran, our waitress, who looked old enough to have invented some of the jargon, to please bring me a splash of red noise. She let out a hearty laugh and yelled into the kitchen, “Bowl of tomato soup.”

  “Show-off,” Chris said.

  But it had been worth it to bond with Fran and tell her a little about the Bear Claw. Chris and I had taken a back booth with windows that looked out onto the airport’s shopping mall.

  I pulled my tote onto my lap and looked at the jumble of papers and envelopes I’d taken from Oliver’s desk. I wrestled with whether to think of them as stolen or not, since I’d be using them for Oliver’s benefit, not my own. I decided not to empty the tote onto the table but to extract only a few items at a time, to minimize the risk of dropping a piece of paper or an envelope and inadvertently leaving it behind. As paranoid and private as I now knew Oliver to be, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if something personal had fallen out of my tote and been left on the floor at the airport.

  I took out one of the larger envelopes, a standard brown color, nine by twelve inches with a brad closure. I saw the label for the first time. In Oliver’s neat printing across the front: KENDRA BURKE.

  I felt a wave of light-headedness. “Oh, no.”

  “What is it?” Chris asked.

  I showed him the envelope meant for Kendra. “I never would have taken this. It’s very personal.” I took a breath. As if the other items in my tote were impersonal. “And what if she’s looking for it right now? What if that’s why she came to the house in the first place? To find these papers?” I made a move to stuff the envelope back into my tote.

  “Well, there’s no going back, Charlie.”

  I knew he didn’t mean simply to American Eagle Avenue.

  * * *

  * * *

  I took Chris’s advice: “Never make an important decision on an empty stomach.”

  After we finished our soup and bread dinner, Chris left the diner to check the sign for arrivals and found everything on time. The flight from Seattle was still listed as due at nine fifty. I asked Fran if she’d mind if we used her table as a work space for about half an hour.

  She waved away any problem. “Anything for you, hon. And let me bring you some cookies right out of the oven. On the house.” She winked. “Professional courtesy.”

  Chris rolled his eyes. “Diner love,” I told him. He rolled them again.

  I braced myself and retrieved the Kendra envelope, t
his time holding it with my thumb and index finger, as if to leave as small a set of prints as possible. I hardly touched it, I told the judge sitting on my shoulder, wagging his finger at me. Chris leaned over, took the envelope from me, and pulled out the sheets of paper. Three or four of them, it seemed. I figured he acted quickly lest I take them back and run off and give them to the police. Or turn myself in to the TSA, or whatever law enforcement was handy.

  “Legal papers,” Chris said, scanning them. “Sort of. Not a formal will. No letterhead. A simple statement that Kendra should get his house. It is notarized. Then there’s a list of places where there’s cash. Doesn’t say how much.”

  “Places in his house?” Inexplicably, I whispered that question. A few more people, bearing shopping bags, had entered, and one woman took a seat at a table next to our booth. What if she were a cat burglar? She was, after all, wearing black leggings. I telepathically sent my apology to Benny for using that awful term.

  “Some locations are in his house. Some in a storage unit. There’s an address for that.” He shuffled the pages. “This last one has to do with his vehicle, also going to Kendra. When it was last maintained and so on. All together, it amounts to a simple will.”

  Irrational as it was, I felt better not handling the pages, instead having Chris read them to me. I was pretty sure Chris knew that. He tapped the pages neatly and inserted them into the envelope.

  “Are you getting the impression that Oliver was hiding something? Hiding himself, in fact?”

  I knew what he meant, but I asked him to explain anyway. I needed time to think.

  “A name change. A more or less cash existence,” Chris said. “Working in a diner in Alaska when his credentials could have gotten him into a four-star restaurant in any big city.” He paused. “No offense.”

  I smiled, pointing to the generous plate of cookies Fran had brought us. “None taken. I get your point. Living remotely with all that security and means of protecting himself seems to be another clue.”

  “It’s like Witness Protection without the government.”

  “Not that it did him any good.”

  “It did for a while,” Chris said. “Twenty-plus years at the Bear Claw, right? That’s more than going to ground ever gets you unless you move around a lot. And for some reason, he didn’t. It’s a wonder he didn’t just pack up that new extra-large vehicle and move.”

  I snapped to attention. “His vehicle. Oliver’s new SUV. Where is it?”

  “Wasn’t there a detached garage? In fact, I thought we were headed there next, until Kendra arrived.”

  “Yes, but this new monster SUV, longer than my Outback, wouldn’t fit in his garage. Oliver was bummed about it, but he really wanted the larger-model vehicle, so he’d made plans to extend the garage or build a new one. He was getting bids.”

  “Maybe he was planning to make a run for it and that garage remodel was a cover story so we’d think he’d be living here indefinitely,” Chris said. “We need to ask Trooper where Oliver’s vehicle is. Or was.”

  “Do you think it was at the crime scene? Like, maybe Oliver drove there, where he was—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I wondered if I’d ever be able to.

  “It could be.” Chris didn’t need me to finish right now.

  “Trooper wouldn’t necessarily have told us that. He was short on details,” I said.

  Chris stretched his arms across the table and held his hands palms up. “Let’s see what else we have in that tote.”

  “First, how do we get that envelope to Kendra?” I pointed to where the pilfered pages were covered up once more, invisible in the run-of-the-mill office supply envelope.

  “We could mail it to her from here. It would have an Anchorage postmark, if any.”

  “Adding one infraction on top of another? Couldn’t that be considered mail fraud?” I couldn’t remember a time when I had to worry so much about bending—or outright breaking—the law. It all started with that little white lie to my mom on Monday when I denied that Oliver and I had almost come to blows over a change in a recipe. There was something to that slippery slope argument I’d learned in logic class.

  “I think you’re making more of this than we need to,” Chris said. “Chances are there’s no other family, right? So Kendra would get the house and car by default. She wouldn’t need a piece of paper that doesn’t even have a lawyer’s letterhead.”

  “But she’d have to go through probate, which is a hassle.”

  “With that informal so-called document, she probably would, anyway.”

  You’d have thought I’d have been the one to acknowledge that, what with my property law creds and all.

  “And the cash?” I wasn’t about to give in so quickly. “How would she know where it is?”

  “Some is in the house, which she’d clean out, and therefore find it. There must also be some kind of receipt for a storage rental in there”—he pointed to my tote, filled with useless papers in his mind, apparently—“and she’d go and claim whatever is in there.”

  “It sounds like you’ve done this before.”

  He laughed, but didn’t deny it. Was this a one-off for Chris? Or a glimpse into how journalists got their stories?

  Much of the rest of the loot was innocuous. Receipts for gas in one small envelope, groceries in another, clothing in another, and so on, for all the categories of items a typical adult will buy over the course of several months. It was hard to understand why he’d felt it necessary to put these ordinary receipts in a secure place. Well, almost secure. I felt awful, disloyal, and sneaky, browsing through Oliver’s personal purchases. I had to remind myself I was doing it for him.

  The final bundle was the thickest, barely squeezed into an extra-large brown clasp envelope. Two volumes were bound with plastic combs that gave them the look of a home crafts project.

  The cover pages read: FRENCH RECIPES BY OLIVER BLANCHARD, VOLUME ONE, and the same title with VOLUME TWO. I handed Volume One to Chris and kept the other.

  “Why another name?” I asked myself, as well as Chris.

  Chris scratched his head. “This guy has some weird stuff going on. I can’t remember if our photo of the French culinary school had a caption with names.”

  I shook my head. “I’m pretty sure there were no names in the Bugle obituary photo, just info about the school. The earliest surname we had for him was Quinlan, when he graduated from high school. Then Whitestone. In between, I guess, was Blanchard.”

  We flipped through the pages, which were filled with recipes in the typical format: ingredients followed by instructions. Almost every one included a short anecdote, about a family’s using the recipe for a holiday, or a description of the origin of the recipe, or variations that would also work. Some of the notes were handwritten. I was ninety-nine percent sure it was Oliver’s handwriting. Oliver Blanchard was Oliver Whitestone was Oliver Quinlan, not necessarily in that order.

  “So Oliver was writing a cookbook,” I said. “And using a pen name.”

  “If he was, he was taking his time. This volume is dated almost thirty years ago.”

  “Same with Volume Two,” I said.

  I riffled through, and the would-be book fell open to the cherry cheesecake mousse that we’d almost taken off the Bear Claw menu. I remembered that Oliver had been adamant about getting rid of it, even though it had great reviews from our regular customers and on social media.

  “I had it once or twice myself,” Chris said. “This volume has no desserts. But there are a lot of fancy entrées, some in French with no translation. I think I can figure out soupe à l’oignon, but what’s confit de canard?”

  “It’s essentially marinated duck, cured and slow cooked, but takes about a day and a half to prepare properly.”

  “Never mind.”

  “You prefer the Bear Claw’s moose stew?”

  “W
ell, I’d have to go to France and try that duck dish to really make an informed decision. Want to come?”

  “Sure. Let’s check the departures to Paris.” I picked up my phone and noted the time. “Oops, we’d better get to the arrivals from Seattle first.”

  I started packing my tote, retrieving the potential cookbook from Chris, in case he had designs on publishing it himself. As it was, I felt pangs of guilt every time we strayed from the task at hand, like joking about French food or trips to France, instead of focusing on helping Trooper determine who had murdered Oliver.

  “I wonder how all this fits together. The names, the security, life pretty nearly off the grid. I guess that’s how it is with death a lot of times,” Chris said.

  I nodded. “Someone looks at your connections, positive and negative, and tries to make sense of it all.”

  “You think one of those connections is related to Oliver’s murder?” he asked.

  “It’s hard to say, isn’t it?”

  THIRTEEN

  Chris and I walked a few miles, it seemed, to get to the correct elevators, all the way remarking what a good thing it was that we were inside and on level ground. We arrived at the baggage claim carousel for my mom’s flight before my mom and before her luggage reached it. Chris took a seat nearby but I was too excited to sit still. I used the restroom, where I brushed my hair and straightened out my turtleneck and sweater. As if my mom might send me to my room, which she might have done before I reached the preteen excessive grooming phase, when I’d started spending an hour in the bathroom getting ready for school.

  Eventually, a crowd of late-night travelers headed our way, creating an avalanche of noise. The area was taken over by bouncing roll-ons; tired, cranky children; happy, screechy reunions; a blaring PA system with unintelligible messages. We could only hope they weren’t warning us about an imminent disaster.