Fearless Love

by Meg Benjamin

  “Maybe if you’ve got something later in the afternoon. I’ll try to come by.” She figured she wouldn’t feel like doing much of anything Sunday morning except sleeping.

  “Yeah. Come on by around three or so. Should have some open spots.”

  She left that night feeling happier than she had since the attack on the hen house. If only the other chickens would come back, she might even feel optimistic about the future.

  But when she checked the yard that night, no Robespierre appeared to snap at her ankles. And, of course, Great-Aunt Nedda was always there in the background with the note for the farm. Happiness was a very temporary thing.

  Nedda called Kurtz exactly one week after the last time she’d called him. She’d already discovered that men like Kurtz worked best if they knew somebody was watching, and fortunately, watching was something she did really well.

  “Did you do like I told you?” she asked as soon as he picked up. She wasn’t going to waste politeness on a nonentity like Kurtz.

  “Yes’m,” he muttered.

  Sulky. Not something she felt like putting up with at the moment. “Tell me exactly what happened," she snapped.

  “Coyote got into her yard that night. Killed some of her hens. Don’t know how many she lost.”

  Nedda rubbed her fingers across her breastbone absently. The gesture had become almost automatic over the last few days. That fancy medicine from the pharmacy didn’t do squat, but she figured she could wait out the pain. She always had before, and doctors cost money. “Did you ask her how many chickens she lost?”

  “Didn’t want to talk to her about it,” Kurtz grumbled. “Never have before. I figured she’d think it was suspicious if I was to start now.”

  Nedda gritted her teeth. The idiot actually had a point. “Keep an eye out anyway. I want to hear about anything that happens over there, including anything else with those chickens.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Now he sounded surly along with sulky. Time to remind him who was in charge. “You got a mortgage payment due next week. Going to have my money?”

  There was a quick pause, then Kurtz’s voice—much more guarded this time. “You’ll get your money, Miz Carmody.”

  “Good. I’ll talk to you later.” She clicked off the cell phone, then sat staring down at her printouts. Everybody was paid up for once. Except her niece, thanks to Harmon’s carelessness. The girl still owed part of the missed payment. She figured it was only a matter of time now before she bowed to the inevitable. She’d lost her chickens, and she couldn’t have too much else she could rely on either. Certainly not that cook.

  What’s wrong with you, Neddie?

  This time she ignored the voice in her head. Just her memory playing tricks. Harmon hadn’t spoken to her much for the last ten years of his life, any more than she’d spoken to him. There was no reason to think he’d suddenly get all chatty now that he was dead.

  On Thursday morning, MG drove in to the Rose with Joe, even though her job didn’t really start until ten or so. She figured Darcy might need some extra help getting ready for the contest, and anyway, sitting around the house these days seemed way too bleak.

  They didn’t take any eggs. Some of the hens still weren’t laying, and she’d decided to let the others try brooding up some chicks. That would be one way to deal with losses from now on—have enough hens so that it wouldn’t hurt so much to lose three or four of them.

  That assumed, of course, that she had a farm and a flock to care for. From now on was a pretty short time span.

  Joe pulled into his parking spot next to the back entrance. Shadowy shapes passed back and forth across the kitchen windows, maybe more than usual. Or maybe they just passed more quickly.

  Beside her, Joe straightened. “What the hell?”

  As he spoke, lights began to flash along the drive, and then a Konigsburg police cruiser pulled in beside them. Joe stepped out of his truck at the same time as the policeman climbed out from behind the wheel of the cruiser. “Nando,” he called, “what’s going on?”

  The policeman turned back briefly to glance at them. “Got a report of a burglary. You know anything about it?”

  Joe shook his head. “We just got here.” He moved quickly up the steps, throwing open the back door.

  MG heard him call for Darcy as she sprinted up the steps behind the Konigsburg cop. For a moment she stood blinking in the bright lights of the kitchen. Then she found herself gripping the edge of the nearest counter.

  Cupboard doors stood open on all sides. Pans and other equipment were tossed on the floor, as if someone had been going through the cabinets, pulling things out at random. At the side of the room, the door to the walk-in gaped wide open.

  Darcy stood at one side of the room, talking to Joe. Today her hair stood straight up, ice white, without any color at the tips. She looked like a frost goddess. The cop stepped beside her, leaning forward to talk to them both. MG moved close enough to hear.

  “Five o’clock,” Darcy was saying. “I was going to get started on the prep for the contest.”

  “And it was like this when you walked in?” The cop now had a pad and pencil in his hand.

  Darcy nodded. “We didn’t touch anything. I called you as soon as I saw the place.”

  “How did they get in?”

  She gestured toward the open window over the counter at the side of the room. “We didn’t leave it like that. And the screen’s off.”

  MG glanced around the kitchen. Ezra stood at one side, his eyes the size of Necco wafers. Leo leaned negligently against the stove, his arms folded.

  “Can we close the damn walk-in, at least?” Joe growled. “God knows how long it’s been open. I don’t want to lose any more food than I have to.”

  The cop raised his cell phone and took a couple of quick snaps of the open door, then shrugged. “Go ahead. We’ll need to dust it for prints later.”

  “And you’ll probably find them from everybody in the kitchen,” Joe muttered as he walked toward the refrigerator.

  The cop turned back to Darcy. He was amazingly handsome now that MG got a good look at him. His khaki uniform seemed to set off his golden skin and his dark hair and eyes. When he gave Darcy a quick smile, she thought she could see a dimple. She wondered how female suspects ever managed to conceal anything from him.

  Kit Maldonado’s Significant Other was a Konigsburg cop, the assistant chief, no less. MG stole a glance at his nametag—Avrogado. So he was Kit’s main squeeze. Well, at least he wasn’t exactly a stranger in the kitchen.

  “Can you tell if anything’s missing, right off the bat?” he asked.

  Darcy shook her head. “I checked on all the high end equipment after we called you. It’s all still there.”

  “What about the stuff in these cabinets?” He gestured toward the open doors.

  She frowned, shaking her head again. “It’s just routine stuff—mixing bowls and hotel pans, things like that. It’s not worth all that much when it’s new. And this stuff sure ain’t new.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Joe’s voice echoed from the walk-in. Darcy and Avrogado both swiveled in his direction.

  He stepped out of the walk-in, muttering a string of obscenities in a mixture of English and what sounded to MG like French.

  Darcy moved toward him. “What?”

  “The quail. The quail’s missing. And the fois gras. Haven’t checked on any of the other stuff yet.”

  He started toward the storage area where they kept the fruits and vegetables that didn’t need refrigeration. Avrogado walked after him. “Quail? Fois gras? Is this stuff valuable?”

  “Only to us.” Darcy’s voice sounded choked. “It’s the food for the contest Saturday.”

  “Beets are still here,” Joe called. “And the pomegranates. But the goddamn mangoes are missing. Somebody check on the goat cheese.”

  MG sprinted toward the walk-in, wondering just how much evidence she was destroying as she pulled open the door. She heard A
vrogado’s yelp of protest behind her, but managed to pretend she hadn’t as she pulled one of the hotel pans to the front of the shelf and found the smooth white cylinders swathed in plastic wrap. “It’s still here,” she called.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” Joe called back.

  When she stepped back into the kitchen, Darcy had disappeared.

  Nando Avrogado stood in the middle of the kitchen, scowling, his arms folded across his chest. “In another minute, I’m closing this damn kitchen down,” he called after Joe. “It’s a fucking crime scene.”

  Joe shook his head, his jaw tight. “It’s a working kitchen. The only thing missing is food. Maybe somebody was looking for a snack.”

  Avrogado turned toward him, raising a dark eyebrow as he nodded. “A snack that happened to be the food you need for the Wine and Food Festival contest? Pretty picky thief.”

  Joe stared back, expressionless. “Maybe so. But that’s the only thing that’s missing.”

  “You got any ideas?” Avrogado’s eyebrow stayed up.

  “Dietz still in jail?”

  He shook his head. “Judge let him off with time served. That meat wasn’t worth enough to get him any serious time.”

  “Then he’d be my number one suspect,” Joe said dryly.

  “And the motive?”

  “Revenge. Payback. Or maybe somebody paid him to put us out of the running.”

  “How did he know?” MG blurted.

  Both men turned toward her, eyes narrowed.

  “Know what?” Avrogado said.

  “The menu. How did he know what to steal?”

  Joe’s forehead furrowed. “We’ve been serving bits and pieces of that menu to everybody in the kitchen. All they had to do was talk about it to the wrong person.”

  “Bits and pieces,” she echoed.

  He paused, watching her. “So?”

  “So this thief knew exactly what your main dish was. He stole all the parts. I don’t think anybody got the whole thing, the quail and the seared fois gras, along with the mango syrup. At least they didn’t while I was here.”

  Joe nodded slowly. “I never gave anybody the fois gras except you and Darcy. It’s too expensive to serve at family dinner.”

  “But somebody knew what to take to wipe out your main course.”

  Avrogado squinted at her. “Who would this be?”

  The Beav. But she knew better than to accuse him with no more proof than they had at the moment. “I don’t know.”

  He turned toward Joe. “Any guesses?”

  Joe’s jaw was rigid again. He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe…”

  “Got it. Goddamn! I got it.” Darcy sailed into the room, carrying a large white carton in both arms.

  Joe turned toward her. “Got what?”

  “Quail.” She thrust the box into his hands. “I knew we had some more somewhere in the freezer. I just had to remember where it was.”

  Joe stared down at the box, the corners of his mouth slowly turning up. “Darcy, you are worth your weight in truffles.”

  MG put a hand on the box. “It’s frozen solid. Is there time to defrost it?”

  Joe nodded. “Oh yeah, we’ve got a day and a half. But this stuff goes to my house. No way am I leaving it here for somebody else to walk off with. Hell, maybe we should put an armed guard on it.”

  “Joe?” Kit Maldonado stood in the kitchen doorway, impossibly cool in pink linen. Nando Avrogado seemed to come to attention as he glanced in her direction. “Are we doing breakfast service this morning?”

  Joe looked back at Avrogado. “I don’t know. Are we?”

  The cop rubbed his eyes, grimacing. “That depends. Do you want me to catch this fucker or not? If you start working in here, there’s no way I can collect evidence.”

  Joe stared at the box again, his forehead furrowed. Then he shook his head. “You won’t find enough. And even if you do, chances are the asshole will get off just like he did the last time. This stuff’s expensive, but it’s not worth enough to make it a felony.”

  Avrogado looked like he’d just tasted something sour. “Okay then, have at it. I’ll file a report, but there’s not much else I can do.”

  “Understood.” Joe was already heading for the back door and his cabin. “You, Ezra, pick this place up. Darcy, get the service started. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  Ezra stared at the open cabinet doors, eyes wide with panic. “I don’t know where anything goes.”

  MG sighed. “Come on, kid, it’s no big deal.” She picked up the nearest sauce pan, hanging it from the overhead rack. “Just follow my lead.”

  Ezra gave her a terrified glance and then began gathering up pans and bowls, putting them in the cabinets and racks as she did.

  Darcy glanced her way, smiling grimly. “If you find anything dented or broken, let me know. We’ll file an insurance claim.”

  “You didn’t find the fois gras,” MG said, stretching toward the overhead rack.

  Darcy’s mouth tightened. “No, there’s no extra. We don’t use it that much.”

  “Can you get some more before Saturday?”

  She shook her head. “It comes from New York. Special order. No way we could get it here by Saturday morning. We’re just lucky we had quail on hand.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “Now, we serve breakfast.” Joe walked back through the rear entrance, buttoning his chef’s coat across his broad chest, his black chef’s beanie crumpled on his head. “Later on we do damage control. One thing at a time, darlin’, one thing at a time.”

  MG glanced around the still-cluttered kitchen. Right now her “one thing” seemed to be getting the place back in running order.

  She divided her time between putting things away and chopping the occasional onion. Fortunately, they had enough prep done from the day before to carry them through the breakfast service. Also fortunately, they didn’t have much of a breakfast rush to contend with. Maybe the guests had heard there were problems in the kitchen, which was, of course, another thing to worry about.

  Two-thirds of the way through the meal, Ezra appeared at her elbow. She glanced at him, then put down the potato she was scrubbing. “What?”

  His skin was the color of old parchment, his eyes back to Necco wafer size. “I think I’m in trouble.”

  MG leaned back against the counter. “In trouble how?”

  “It’s my fault,” he blurted. “All this…stuff that happened. It’s all my fault.”

  For a moment, he looked as if he might burst into tears. MG restrained her impulse to pat him on the arm and say “There, there.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I saw Chef Fairley downtown a couple days ago,” he said in a rush. “And he asked me how things were going, and I said okay. And he asked if I was learning anything, and I said I was.”

  MG gritted her teeth. “And then?”

  “Well…” Ezra took a breath. “Then he asked about the contest. About how it was going and all.”

  She felt a drip of ice water slide down her spine. “Did he ask you for the menu?”

  “Well, not exactly, no. I mean I wouldn’t tell him the menu. I know better than that.”

  “But…”

  “But he asked me, you know, what I was learning and all. And I said something about how quail seemed like a lot of trouble for so little meat.” His mouth tightened, his eyes suspiciously bright.

  Do not cry. Do not even think of crying. “What did he say to that?”

  “He asked if I’d gotten to try seared fois gras because that was what you usually served with quail, and I said”—he took a deep breath, as if he were trying to get himself under control—“I said no because it was so expensive and all.”

  MG raised an eyebrow. Getting information out of Ezra was almost too easy. Fairley didn’t deserve any points for ingenuity. “Did you tell him about the mango syrup too?”

  Ezra nodded miserably. “He was talking about fruit compotes to go with the fois
gras and I said something about mangoes working pretty good.”

  “Right.” She blew out a breath. “You need to tell Chef LeBlanc about this.”

  Ezra’s face was now the color of dirty snow. “But…but he’ll fire me.”

  Most probably. “He still needs to know. And at least you’ll get points for honesty.”

  “Couldn’t…” He stared down at his feet. “Couldn’t you, like, tell him. Since you and he are sort of…friends and all.”

  MG put a hand on his arm. “It would be better coming from you. Trust me.”

  Ezra sighed. “Okay. I’ll talk to him when he comes in from the omelet station.” He shambled away, his shoulders bowed, the picture of dejection.

  She almost hoped Joe didn’t fire him. Of course, firing him was preferable to killing him, which was probably going to be Joe’s first choice.

  She turned back to the sink full of potatoes. At least it was something she could work with. As opposed to chickens and mortgages, currently in the hands of fate and Great-Aunt Nedda.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Joe stood in the middle of the pantry, trying to pretend he wasn’t feeling an incredible adrenaline rush. By all rights, he should still be pissed as hell. And in fact, he was still pissed as hell, largely at Fairley. Sooner or later, he’d have to do something about the little pissant, but right now he had other things to think about. Namely, what to do for the main dish at the contest Saturday.

  Fois gras was out, but he found he wasn’t too upset about that after all. The whole fois gras thing had messed up their regional cred, seeing as how nobody in Texas was producing it currently. Now he stared up at the shelves of bottles, cans and jars, waiting for inspiration to strike and hoping inspiration didn’t take too long doing it.

  Orange soda and Starburst Fruit Chewies. He sighed. He wasn’t going to go that route, but he hoped he could come up with something that would at least give Fairley a case of heartburn.

  What he couldn’t exactly explain, though, was his feeling of elation as he sorted through possibilities. He couldn’t possibly be enjoying this, could he? That would be thoroughly perverse.