Rosemary's Gravy

by Melissa F. Miller

  “Is that blasted cop gone?” Pat demanded.

  “Yes. He just left. Dad, he needs to talk to you.” Felix’s voice was hesitant but determined.

  Pat wheeled around, red-faced. “I’m not talking to the cops, you moron. I have things to do,” he said.

  I shrank into the wall, trying to make myself invisible. Pat had a lot of ire. And if he needed a target, I imagined I’d make a handy one. I shouldn’t have worried about that, though, because he glowered at his son for a moment longer and then stomped toward the back of the house. A moment later the door leading from the house to the garage slammed shut. The engine of Pat’s Mercedes roared to life.

  Felix grabbed my hand and started pulling me along the hallway. “Come on!” he urged.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as I jogged to keep up with him.

  “You wanted to play private investigator, didn’t you? We’re going to follow my dad.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m going to make him talk to me. The cops are going in the wrong direction—you didn’t kill Amber, but neither did he. We have to get this straightened out.”

  8

  I was still trying to buckle my seatbelt when Felix peeled out of the garage. As the Boxster raced down the curvy driveway leading to the canyon road, I gripped the handle of the passenger door and offered up a silent prayer. This was your brilliant idea, I chided myself.

  Against my better judgment, I peeked at the speedometer. “I don’t think it’s going to be helpful if we get pulled over for speeding,” I ventured mildly.

  Felix glanced over at me. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Rosemary?” He flashed me a grin and zoomed toward the electronic gates that fronted his family’s property.

  For a moment I thought we were going to crash into them as they began their oh-so-gradual opening. But he eased off the gas until the gap was just large enough for his sports car to zip through. As he careened out of the driveway and onto the road, I pushed myself back against the seat and closed my eyes.

  After a few moments, I felt the car begin to slow. I opened my eyes and resumed breathing. “Did you decide to take pity on me?”

  “Ha, you wish. I just don’t want Dad to know we’re back here. Going to let him get a little further ahead.” Felix nodded toward the windshield.

  I peered out through the glass and saw taillights winding down the road ahead of us.

  “Don’t let him get so far ahead of you that you lose him.”

  “You sure are demanding.” Felix shook his head at me in frustration. “There’s only one way down out of the canyon. We can give him a little room.”

  We lapsed into silence. I figured the less I distracted him while he navigated the hairpin turns, the better. In the meantime, for the first time since the police had pounded on my door hours earlier, I thought through everything I knew about Amber’s death. And the more I thought, the less sense it made.

  When the mountain flattened out and we reached the wide city streets, I decided it was safe to talk. “How much do you know about Amber’s nut allergy?” I asked.

  He allowed two cars to merge between us and his father’s vehicle but kept his eyes trained on the Mercedes, while he answered. “Enough to know she was deathly allergic. She was worried enough that she had her doctor come to the house and show me and my dad how to use the Epi-pen. Why?”

  “If she’d eaten gravy—or anything—with nuts in it during the party, wouldn’t she have had an immediate reaction? The police said it was around one in the morning when she went into anaphylaxis. The party ended before midnight.”

  “I think she would have had trouble breathing immediately, yeah. Maybe she got herself a midnight snack after everyone left?”

  I shook my head. “Come on, you know Amber didn’t snack. And, even if she had gone looking for something to eat, I took all the leftovers. So she couldn’t have eaten food from the party.”

  “You took them?” His tone of voice held the barest hint of employer/employee admonishment.

  “I donated them to a homeless shelter. Amber knew that’s what I did with all the leftovers when she entertained.”

  “Oh. Good idea.”

  He slowed the car as, up ahead, his father braked for a red light. I was itching to call Detective Drummond and tell him to ask the forensic investigators or the coroner—somebody—about whether there was such a thing as a delayed allergic reaction. Maybe they’d stop trying to pin the murder on me. I also made a mental note to tell him to find out if Loving Hands had any of the gravy left. I doubted they would; Deb made it a point to use every scrap of food that came her way. But if she hadn’t, they could test the gravy and see that it didn’t contain nuts. My heart started to pound with excitement, and I was pulling out my phone to call and ask her myself, when Felix slammed on the breaks and I pitched forward.

  “Hey!” I protested.

  “Sorry.” He jerked the wheel to the right, and we zipped down a side street.

  “What are you doing? Your dad didn’t turn off.” I dropped the phone back into my bag and turned to glare at him.

  “Settle down. I know where he’s going. We’re going to take a shortcut so we can get in position and watch him when he arrives,” he told me in a self-satisfied voice.

  “Oh. So, tell me, Sherlock. What’s his destination?”

  “You should know. Recognize this neighborhood?”

  I stared out the passenger window. Large stucco apartment buildings, boxy and close together, flashed by. I squinted into the dark and tried to make out something that looked familiar, but I couldn’t. I’m sort of spatially challenged. As in, whenever I visit Thyme in New York, she threatens to pin an index card to my shirt with her contact information on it in case I wander off and can’t make my way back to her apartment. As in, once, when Sage was living in D.C., I left her apartment near Chinatown to meet a friend in Georgetown for lunch. Instead of taking the Metro, I drove and somehow managed to travel from Point A to Point B—located about two and a half miles apart in the city’s northwest quadrant—via both Maryland and Virginia. So, no, I didn’t have the slightest clue where we were.

  “I give up,” I said.

  He eased the car into a parking spot and killed the engine. I grabbed my purse and met him on the sidewalk. He draped an arm around my shoulder, and I shivered as a crackle of electricity made its way up my spine. I told myself the chill was due to the cool night air and not the heat from his skin. He turned me about forty-five degrees to the right and pointed down a narrow alleyway.

  “See that brick wall with the gate set into it?”

  I looked in the direction he was pointing. “Yes.”

  “Behind that gate is the garden where we ate lunch today.”

  * * *

  My heart was pounding so loudly as we crept along the narrow alley that I kept waiting for Felix to tell me to keep it down. Leaving the car and sneaking into the garden to spy on Pat seemed like a medium-bad idea to me, but he was dead set on it. So here we were, tiptoeing through the trashcans.

  “Are you sure your dad won’t drive past your car?” I whispered.

  He turned and gave me an exasperated look over his shoulder. “I’m sure. That was the whole point of parking where we did. He’ll come up from Santa Monica Boulevard and go into the apartment building from the front.”

  I trotted along behind him. I won’t lie. My apprehension about confronting Pat was mixed with anticipation and a little bit of heady excitement. I felt like we were doing something thrilling, if possibly dangerous. Felix must have been feeling the same way because he glanced back again and grinned at me.

  “Come on,” he urged, grabbing my hand to pull me even with him.

  We came to a stop in front of the wrought iron gate and stood staring at the dark apartment. No lights shined through the windows. No shadows moved inside. The place was dark and quiet. The only illumination came from a security light mounted on the trellis that sheltered the patio. Felix took his keys
from his pocket and eased a long silver key into the gate’s lock. He turned it, and the gate swung silently toward us. He stopped its motion with one hand and gently nudged me through the opening.

  “It looks like we beat him here. We’ll go in through the garden. Follow my lead,” he whispered in my ear after pulling the gate shut and locking it behind him.

  His warm breath tickled my hair. He reached for my hand again and laced his fingers through mine. If you’d have told me yesterday that I’d be sneaking around holding hands with Felix Patrick, I’d have told you you were a lunatic. But here we were. Just us, the stars fighting through the cloud cover overhead, and a pale crescent moon. The garden was as lush and fragrant in the night as it had been midday. The sole difference was that the blooms were closed up as if they were sleeping. The only sounds were the tinkle of the water feature and the soft crunch of crushed stones underfoot as we wended our way along the path.

  He stopped suddenly as we reached the fountain, and I stumbled into him.

  “Sorry. What’s wrong?” I asked, any illusions that we were taking a romantic walk shattered by the way he tensed his shoulders and held up his palm.

  “Hear that?”

  I strained to listen. A car’s engine was drawing nearer. As the low growl grew louder, he stiffened even further.

  “That’s him,” he said.

  I had my doubts as to whether a person could really identify a specific Mercedes’ engine by its sound. But his voice was full of conviction, so I decided to take his comment at face value. As the car pulled into the driveway that led from the front of the house, Felix squeezed my hand so tightly my knuckles ached. I squeezed back.

  “Now what?” I whispered, as the engine turned off and the sound of a car door slamming shut echoed through the courtyard.

  He pulled me to the side of the path and led me through the dense magnolias to a side porch I hadn’t even noticed during our interrupted lunch. The porch abutted the kitchen, judging by the gleaming appliances visible through the French doors. He hurried to the edge of the porch and shimmied between the side of the house and the fence that separated the building from the stucco home next door.

  I followed suit and we side-stepped along the fence until we reached a large window that looked directly into a small parlor off the kitchen. The window was framed by cream-colored linen curtains that were tied back and afforded us a perfect view. A small Tiffany-style lamp cast a dim light in the room. I could make out a fireplace with an ornate mantle and two Queen Anne chairs. They were covered in a muted silk stripe. Between the chairs, a small glass and metal bar held two rows of glasses and several decanters filled with various liquors.

  Suddenly light flooded the interior of the house. More out of reflex than anything else, I drew back from the window and pressed myself against the edge of the building. I noticed Felix did the same on the opposite side of the window. I held my breath and listened to Pat bang around in the house. He must have passed through the parlor and gone into the kitchen because the back of the apartment was flooded with light and the door to the patio banged open.

  I sought Felix’s eyes frantically. Was Pat coming out back?

  Felix mouthed ‘it’s okay’ and gave me a reassuring smile. Sure enough, after an excruciatingly long minute, the door banged shut and the outdoor lights went off. I exhaled and peeked through the window. Pat was standing near the bar with a handful of freshly picked mint and a white marble mortar and pestle.

  Ah, he was just muddling mint for a drink. I exhaled and nearly went limp with relief. I considered that perhaps I wasn’t cut out for this secret spy stuff and flashed Felix an embarrassed grin. He looked as though he were about to say something but the sudden roar of a car engine cut off the words before he formed them.

  I’m no gearhead, but even I could tell this car was much noisier and more muscular than the Mercedes had been. Instead of purring, it roared. It sounded as loud as a racecar as it pulled into the driveway behind Pat’s car. I felt my eyes go wide. Felix motioned for me to join him on his side of the window. I crouched low, under the window, just in case, and duck walked over to him.

  We peered through the window as Pat hurried toward the front of the house with a glass in each hand. I sort of figured Pat was meeting his mistress, but I nearly fell over when I saw who came striding into view and grabbed Pat in a long, tight embrace.

  “Is that … Antonio Santos?” Felix asked.

  I blinked. When I opened my eyes, the scene hadn’t changed. “Yep.”

  We watched as Pat pulled back, held the racecar driver at arm’s length, and drank in the sight of him. Pat’s entire face softened from hard-edged music mogul to adoring partner.

  “I didn’t know your dad was gay,” I said stupidly.

  Felix was speechless. I guess he didn’t either.

  I’m not sure what he would have done next if sirens hadn’t pierced the air from all directions. A black and white patrol car screeched to a halt out front, most likely blocking the driveway unless television shows had lied to me. A second unit rolled through the alley and parked just in front of the gate. Two figures emerged from the car and cleared the low gate like hurdlers in a track and field event. One headed directly for the back door, gun drawn. The other made a beeline straight toward the side of the house where we were hiding.

  Felix pressed his finger against his lips as if maybe I’d been planning to blurt out a greeting.

  Bright light arced over us. I shielded my eyes and turned to squint into the face of none other than Detective Drummond. He trained the flashlight on us much longer and more directly than I personally thought was strictly necessary.

  “I wish I could say this is a surprise,” he cracked.

  Beside me, Felix was covering his face. “Would you turn that thing off already?” he demanded.

  Detective Drummond took his time lowering the beam so it pointed at the ground. Then he jabbed a finger at us in the air. “Don’t go anywhere. After we take your father into custody, we’re going to want to talk to you,” he said to Felix. Then he turned to me. “Same goes for you, Ms. Field.” I figured it had to be my imagination, but I thought I heard a note of disappointment in his voice—as if he expected better from me.

  “You’re … arresting my dad?” Felix sputtered.

  He suddenly looked even younger than he was, like a lost little boy, really. It made my heart ache.

  Detective Drummond apparently was deficient in the sympathy category because he didn’t try to soften his response. “It looks like Mr. Patrick has a pretty compelling motive for murder. Mr. Carlson reached out to Detective Sullivan a few hours ago with some information that he’d held back from his original interview because he didn’t want us to get the wrong idea about Mrs. Patrick. After giving it some thought, he reconsidered. It’s a good thing because his information is going to nail Roland Patrick’s hide to the wall.”

  “What’s this mystery information?” I asked as I reached for Felix’s hand. Don’t get me wrong, I was ecstatic to know that I wasn’t going to be charged, but I also know firsthand what it feels like to learn that a parent has feet of clay. I squeezed his hand tightly.

  Detective Drummond raised an eyebrow at the gesture but continued. “In her divorce preparations, Mrs. Patrick hired an attorney, a forensic accountant, and a private investigator to see if she could come up any grounds to nullify the prenuptial agreement that Mr. Patrick made her sign. The private investigator found out about Mr. Patrick’s homosexual affair with Mr. Santos. Mrs. Patrick apparently decided to blackmail her husband with the evidence of his relationship and force him to agree to spousal support notwithstanding the existence of the prenup.”

  I felt sick. Amber really had been a horrible wench.

  I sneaked a look at Felix and tried to guess what he was feeling, but his face was set in stone. “That’s still not proof he killed her.”

  “No, it’s not,” Detective Drummond agreed. “But the forensic reports came back.”

/>   “And?” I interjected. I couldn’t help it.

  “There was no evidence of cashews present in Amber’s stomach contents,” he said. He waited for that to sink in. “But the lab geeks did find peanut oil.”

  “Peanut oil?” I repeated. “I don’t keep peanut oil in the kitchen. I couldn’t use it in any recipes. And Amber would have freaked out if she’d found in her house.”

  The police officer nodded. “Right. We didn’t find any peanut oil in the kitchen. But testing showed the oil had been added to a partially consumed bottle of 2007 merlot found near Mrs. Patrick’s body in her dressing room.”

  The image of Amber tottering up the stairs with her hand wrapped around an open bottle of red wine flashed in my mind.

  “Someone put it in her wine?” Felix asked.

  “Yes, and in light of the new information, we like your father for it.”

  Felix shook his head in disbelief. “I want to talk to him.”

  Detective Drummond twisted his lips into a knot as he considered his response.

  “Hang on. How’d you know they were here—Pat and Santos?”

  He turned to me with an unreadable expression. “We didn’t. In light of Mr. Carlson’s new information, Detective Sullivan authorized me to do what you had wanted all along. I’ve been following Santos. When we arrived and saw Mr. Patrick’s Mercedes in the driveway, my partner called for backup. Good thing we’re virtually around the corner from the station.”

  “Oh,” I managed.

  He turned back to Felix. “Once Detective Sullivan radios me that he’s in custody, I’ll give you five minutes.”

  He didn’t wait for thanks or a response of any kind. He just turned on his heel and jogged over to the uniformed officer waiting for him by the kitchen door.

  I swallowed hard and waited for Felix to say something. He didn’t speak at first. I watched as he clenched and unclenched the muscles in his jaw, making his cheek tighten and relax, tighten and relax. My stomach was jumpy and unsettled as I tried to think of something appropriately supportive and understanding to say to a guy who just found out his father was about to be arrested for murdering his stepmother so his affair with another man wouldn’t be uncovered. I suspected Hallmark probably had a card for this occasion, but I was coming up empty.