Grilled Cheese and Goblins

by Nicole Kimberling

  Gunther drove while Keith leafed through the paper. Among the usual local political rants, cult cartoons and ads for escort services, he found the food column.

  “This is interesting,” he said.

  “What?”

  “This food critic is talking about the Bauer & Bullock closure. He’s missing the cookies.”

  “I can see why. They’re great cookies,” Gunther remarked. “Rake’s going to be brokenhearted when he learns he’s had his last box.”

  Keith continued to leaf through the paper, looking for live music listings. Carnivore Circus had a Friday show booked at a club called the Greenhouse. He found no listings for Theater of Blood. Was it because they’d gone underground or because they were just a bad band who nobody wanted playing their club? Hard to say.

  As Keith could have predicted, when at last they sat in an interrogation room with Lancelot, they found him not terrified that he would be arrested and tried for cannibalism. Instead, he wanted to know whether or not he would be out of jail in time to make it to his gig on Friday night. Gunther glanced to the legal advocate. She was some sort of faerie with long pink hair and longer legs. She shrugged and shook her head slightly. Gunther turned his attention back to Lancelot.

  To Keith’s surprise, Gunther’s amicable cool evaporated. He let loose a long string of growling goblin syllables that, from Lancelot’s reaction, were seriously profane.

  “If you could stick to English, I’d appreciate it, Heartman,” Keith remarked.

  “Lancelot,” Gunther snapped. “Disappointing your bandmates is the least of your problems right now.”

  “I know, I just can’t think about it. I don’t know what to do.” Lancelot hung his head in misery. “My legal advocate says I don’t have to talk to you, but I didn’t do anything. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why isn’t your family here with you?” Gunther shot back.

  Keith thought it an odd question for Gunther to ask, but then, he supposed he’d underestimated the filial connectedness of goblins.

  “My parents are dead,” Lancelot replied. “They were in a boat accident last year. I don’t have anyone else.” Lancelot’s hands shook.

  Much as he valued aggressive questioning, Keith didn’t think badgering Lancelot would yield much profitable information. The kid—and he was clearly a kid, Keith could see that now—was visibly retreating into himself. He said, “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “I sure would.” Lancelot raised his eyes fractionally.

  Keith signaled to Gunther, who grudgingly placed his own pack of Luckys on the table. Lancelot took one and chewed the end nervously. He looked up to Gunther and said, “I know you’re disappointed in me, but I didn’t do anything.”

  The rest of the interrogation revealed nothing of value. No one could provide Lancelot with an alibi for the time of the murder. He had been at home, alone.

  They left Lancelot in the interrogation cell and headed back downtown.

  Gunther wanted to walk along the river, so Keith parked and soon they walked shoulder to shoulder along the greenbelt, the Willamette River on one side, the skyscrapers of downtown on the other. Gunther chewed three cigarettes, one after another in silence, before finally saying, “The latest victim of the Cannibal Killer was dumped directly in Lancelot’s backyard. There has to be a goblin connection. Only another trans-goblin would know about Lancelot’s status.”

  “But the question is, is the connection to Lancelot or to Carnivore Circus?”

  “When I interviewed the other two band members, they alibied out. No, I think the connection must be to Lancelot, but . . .”

  “But?” Keith prompted.

  “But I don’t think he’s a killer.” Gunther shook his last smoke out of the pack and crumpled the empty box.

  “Are you suggesting he was framed?” Keith sat down on a bench overlooking the water.

  “To me it feels like someone is going out of their way to make it look like he is the killer. Not just any old goblin, but him.”

  “All right, what’s special about him? Apart from the fact that he’s in a band?”

  “He can’t make change?” Keith suggested.

  “Well, you can’t expect that. He hasn’t been working at the market all that long.”

  For the first time, Gunther’s reflexive defense of Lancelot’s abilities didn’t annoy Keith. It was true. He hadn’t worked there long. “We know he’s an orphan, if you can call a twenty-one-year-old guy an orphan. He owns nothing of value. No car, no savings. His house is rented. He hadn’t even finished paying off his guitar. He lives off the nominal cash he gets from his band and his recycled-sweater stall.”

  “Didn’t his parents leave him anything?” Gunther asked.

  “Just the hereditary table. Lancelot’s mother sold handcrafted knitwear.”

  “There has to be a connection between these things,” Keith said. “I’d be willing to bet it’s money. Somehow.”

  “Not food?”

  “Food is money,” Keith said simply. “In other contexts, food can be love, art and culture. But in this case I feel comfortable saying that if food is involved, it’s in the form of money.”

  “Agreed.” Gunther gazed out at the river. “Maybe if Lancelot needed money enough he would start hunting and selling human flesh, but I don’t think it would have been his idea. Maybe Bullock or one of her cronies lured him into it?”

  “I don’t buy the money angle there. Lancelot’s market reporting shows that he made enough cash to support himself,” Keith said. “And he has absolutely no connection to Bullock.”

  “That we’ve found yet,” Gunther countered grimly.

  “It’s not like we haven’t looked. There’s none. Zip.” Keith flipped his paper open, once again reading the article on the Bauer & Bullock closure, looking for anything he’d missed. What was surprising about the article, from a law enforcement standpoint, was the complete lack of apparent concern the writer had about the restaurant being shut down by the police under suspicious circumstances.

  Rather, the author was simply obsessed to the point of torment by the idea that he wouldn’t have any more alfajores described lovingly as “a three-tiered sandwich cookie filled with alternating layers of feijoa jam, goat cajeta, and hazelnut pastry biscuit dipped in white and black chocolate for the signature Bauer & Bullock half-moon effect. An Argentinean delight made native to the Pacific Northwest. Local hazelnuts were supplied by Peabody Orchards. The luscious cajeta goat caramel was sourced locally from Azalea Point Creamery.”

  Keith did a double take. Gunther, who had been reading over his shoulder, seemed to notice the name at the same moment. He said, “Don’t I recognize that brand?”

  “Holy shit,” Keith breathed. “It’s the fucking vampire after all.”

  “I don’t disagree, but why? And where’s the evidence? We already searched his property and came up empty.”

  “I don’t know yet.” Keith popped his knuckles in irritation. But the pieces refused to assemble themselves into any sort of picture. “The connection we have is the cookie.”

  “If only we could interrogate pastry,” Gunther remarked dryly. “I suppose we could have it analyzed, but what for?”

  “Don’t you still have that box you got for your old partner?”

  They drove back to the hotel under flashing lights and Keith parked illegally while Gunther legged it up to his room to retrieve the souvenir. He flopped back into the passenger seat just as the hotel manager was approaching the loading zone. Keith zipped around the corner into the alley, put on the hazard lights, and said, “Let’s see them.”

  Gunther opened the beautifully wrapped box and handed over a cookie. Keith broke it in half. A delicious, fruity scent floated up. Instantly, his mouth began to water. He wanted nothing more than to put it in his mouth but knew better.

  “This jam is not made with feijoa.” Keith had experienced this amazing aroma before. He’d confiscated twenty-seven jars
once in a quaint teashop in Madison, Wisconsin. “This is heartfruit.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s a fruit that grows exclusively in necrotic human organ meat, specifically the heart and liver. It’s incredibly rare. I busted a manufacturing operation last January. A guy who worked at a funeral home was harvesting organs and selling them to a nice little grandma who used them for growing material.”

  “But Bauer & Bullock sells hundreds of these cookies every week. How could they farm that many organs?”

  “Heartfruit is so potent that one fruit can flavor an industrial vat, and there isn’t much jam in each cookie. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. Bauer & Bullock pulled in fifty percent of its take from the sale of these cookies.” Excitement rose in his chest. They might just be able to prove Lancelot’s innocence. “This isn’t about cannibalism. That was just a fringe benefit. It’s about money. It’s about jam.”

  “That doesn’t connect Sounder,” Gunther warned. “Or Lancelot.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But we know Bullock was in a business relationship with Sounder already. Maybe . . .”

  “Maybe it was a trade,” Gunther said. “Maybe Sounder traded something with Bullock.”

  “Like what?”

  “If we assume that Sounder provided the bodies for Bullock, which is a pretty good bet, she must have agreed to do something for him. Standard pact,” Gunther said.

  “You think she or her accomplices, since she clearly had some, agreed to set Lancelot up in exchange for bodies?”

  “Right. But there’s no connection between Sounder and Lancelot either.”

  Keith thought about this. Finally he said, “If Lancelot has no direct heirs, who will his goblin market table go to?”

  “I don’t know. Getting into those markets is really competitive but . . .” Gunther suddenly smiled. “But I bet they have a waiting list. But that is insane. Killing over a table at a market?”

  “It’s not a table. The food industry is incredibly competitive. Fifty percent of all food-related business ventures fail in the first year. That table represents market penetration. It’s exposure for the product. It’s direct sales. It’s—”

  “It’s money,” Gunther finished for him. “Regardless, we still have no evidence of anything but a legitimate business arrangement between the steakhouse and the dairy.”

  “You’re right. We need to find the grow operation. Somebody there will know who drops off the ingredient for processing,” Keith said. “Is the jam made locally?”

  Gunther flashed a smile. “It’s Portland. What do you think?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The manufacturing facility for Cascadia Jams and Preserves was located in a light industrial area in Hillsboro. As it turned out, the flavoring agent for Bauer & Bullock’s exclusive house jam was shrouded in such tremendous secrecy that the company’s owner, Mike Grady, had to be called back from his afternoon orchard tour in order to speak to them.

  Mike was a rotund man with dark circles under his eyes and quick, aggressive body language. Keith had met literally dozens of guys just like him. Cooks with ADD and one-track minds. This guy’s brain had been consumed by the idea of jam early on so that every culinary idea that occurred to him, savory or sweet, had to be expressed in the form of jam. Or jelly. Or syrup.

  Other cooks he’d met had been obsessed with pizza or hot sauce or ice cream as an expressive format. Keith had often wondered if this kind of focus constituted a form of autism. One-dish thinking combined with inevitably poor social skills created one of the most unpleasant, yet widely dispersed, character types in the culinary world. Often they were very successful business-wise specifically because they stuck to one product.

  Chances were good that Mike, though ambitious, was too self-absorbed to be directly involved.

  Keith knew exactly what would happen next. Mike would try to make them sample every product in his entire line while evading their questions about Bauer & Bullock.

  “Our newest product is a line of savory honey syrups,” Mike said, unscrewing the lid from a tiny jar of golden liquid. “White pepper truffle honey is going to go through the roof. I can feel it. It’s just amazing on chicken. Here, try some.”

  “Sounds great.” Gunther politely accepted a toothpick dipped in the fragrant syrup.

  Keith demurred. “We need to see the ingredient list for the Bauer & Bullock private-label jam.”

  Mike smiled the typical, sneering smile that all guys like him never knew they were making. “No can do. That’s top secret. I had to sign a legal agreement and everything. Sorry, boys.”

  “I can get a court order, but that’s going to bring a lot of unwanted attention to your facility. Especially when it’s about to be revealed that Cindy Bullock was butchering humans at her restaurant,” Keith said.

  Mike paled. “You’re bullshitting me.”

  “Not at all,” Gunther said. “In a couple of days anybody with even the slightest connection to Bauer & Bullock is going under the magnifying glass. If I were you I’d start distancing myself now. And I’d start by giving us a full ingredient list for that jam.”

  “I don’t know . . . ,” Mike began. His cheeks went gray and waxy.

  “Look, would it help you if I told you that I already know what’s in it?” Keith said.

  “Then you’re one ahead of me,” Mike said. “It’s flavored with a secret liquid compound. She said it was feijoa, but it isn’t.”

  “Who brings you the flavor compound?” Keith asked. “Was it Bullock herself?”

  “It’s delivered by courier. I just got a bottle yesterday.” Mike pulled out a key ring and unlocked his lower right desk drawer. He removed a two-pint plastic screw-top jar that had the words “Bauer & Bullock” written on it in Sharpie. “I have the receipt here. You can have it all.”

  Mike held up his hands, shaking his head slowly as if denying that the jar had ever been in his possession. This was why Keith didn’t like guys like Mike. The cowardly pendulum of their emotions only swung between bullying people and rolling over and pissing on themselves.

  With the courier’s receipt it was easy to find the pickup address—another industrial park only half a mile away—and a business called B&B Extract Company.

  Like most industrial parks, this one consisted of a series of low, large buildings whose sides were intermittently punctuated by bay doors. Occasionally a regular door appeared in the corrugated siding, and it was on one of these that Keith found a small, dull sign that indicated the existence of B&B Extract Company.

  “You want to ring the bell or just go ahead in?” Keith asked.

  “I think it would be wise to let ourselves in.” Gunther pulled a skeleton key from his coat and inserted it into the lock. The spells etched into the key’s surface blazed to life—first showing red, then slowly turning to green.

  Gunther removed the key and Keith carefully tried the knob, moving his hand only slightly, to make sure the knob was unlocked.

  Keith opened the door. Inside was a regular-looking front office with an old desk and a couple of chairs. Beyond that was a closed door. The faint sound of music could be heard thumping from beyond it. They moved forward, mage pistols drawn, standing on either side of the doorframe. Keith could smell the dense, lush perfume of heartfruit flowers in bloom. The fragrance made him salivate instantly and nearly managed to cover the sweet stink of rotting meat. How many plants did they have in there?

  “Please don’t let it be trans-goblins running this operation,” Gunther muttered.

  For the first time since he’d joined the Irregulars, Keith found himself hoping the same thing.

  They burst through the door into a dank, humid, sweet-smelling greenhouse.

  At the back of the room Keith could see a bank of grow lights. Seven slim heartfruit stalks rose beneath them. Five of these ended in white flowers. The other two had already developed fat, white seedpods.

  Three pallid individuals, who had been appa
rently been engaged in tending the drip-irrigation system, looked up at them in what Keith could only describe as muted alarm. All wore black. Two had fangs. The third wore red cat’s-eye contact lenses that Keith imagined greatly impaired his vision. Downbeat electronica pulsed through the air. A stack of Theater of Blood flyers and a staple gun sat on a metal table.

  “Yes!” Gunther said into the silence. “Fake vampires!”

  Then came a slight buzz at Keith’s wrist. Without lowering his mage pistol, Keith glanced at his watch. Numeral nine blinking green.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you kidding? Look at them.” Gunther waved dismissively at the trio, then said, “You three idiots are under arrest, by the way.”

  “Master?” The guy wearing the cat’s-eye contacts finally spoke but not, Keith thought, to them.

  “Blinking green nine, Heartman.” Keith kept the mage pistol trained on the three wannabes while scanning the room. In the upper corner of the room, a shadow moved against the ceiling. “Nosferatu. Ten o’clock.”

  The black shape moved like a spider across the ceiling toward them. Its strange, shapeless jaw undulated. He didn’t know if this was Sounder or the remaining concubine.

  It didn’t really matter.

  “Freeze, asshole.” He retargeted his mage pistol. The vampire slid along the ceiling, still coming toward them, saying nothing. Saying nothing was a bad sign.

  Gunther seemed unperturbed, even slightly annoyed by this. He said, “I order you to stop and identify yourself.”

  The vampire launched himself at Keith. Gunther threw himself between them. The vampire sank its teeth into Gunther’s shoulder, narrowly missing his neck. The three humans bolted, running toward the back entrance. Keith slammed the butt of his mage pistol into the vampire’s head. He couldn’t risk firing while the vampire was still attached to Gunther. Though he was trans-goblin, the mage pistol would still have an effect on him.

  “Get off him, you fucking lamprey.” Keith pried but couldn’t loosen even one of the vampire’s inhumanly strong fingers.

  He wished he’d had the sense to bring a wooden stake or flamethrower.