by Robin Allen
I held up my badge and savored the look of panic on his face before I announced, “Austin/Travis County health inspector.”
He turned his head and yelled, “Back door!”
A Japanese woman with delicate features that Nina had to pay good money for took his place at the door. “Yes, can I help you?” she asked, the words accented but carefully enunciated. She wore a bright blue chef’s coat and clean black pants that matched the color of her hair.
“Are you the chef?” I asked, still holding up my badge.
“Chef, owner, manager,” she said. “Ayame Kobayashi.”
“Can I come inside, please?”
“Gavin was here yesterday.”
I’m pretty good at distinguishing between stalling and genuine confusion. She sounded confused, but she might be a good actress. “What time was that, Ms. Kobayashi?” I asked as I clipped the badge to my waistband.
“When we opened at eleven.”
I would double-check Gavin’s inspection sheet. Knowing when he inspected them—and therefore, when he may have eaten the bad fish—was important to my investigation because pathogens incubate at different rates. And keeping her speaking to me in English would help me notice if she suddenly gave some command in Japanese that would put me in the middle of a samurai movie, looking at the business ends of a dozen sushi knives.
“Have any of your employees been ill recently?” I asked. “Sneezing, vomiting, bleeding from the eyes?”
“What is this about?” she asked, now sounding confused and distressed.
I accused her with my glare. “Mr. Kawasaki was rushed to the emergency room soon after eating in your establishment. Have you received any other complaints of food poisoning?”
I hoped there hadn’t been. If so, and if at least one other foodborne illness—FBI, we call them—had been confirmed by a doctor, we would have an outbreak on our hands. Should I be so lucky that remnants of the actual food still existed, I would take samples and send them to the state lab for testing. Then I would have to ask this sushi restaurant not to serve raw tuna for the two to seven days we would have to wait for the test results.
If there were no remnants, I would investigate, step by step, how the sashimi is made, from receiving to storing to preparing to serving. Any misstep would lay the blame on the Emperor. Criminal charges could be filed against them, and Gavin could even take them to court.
If the fish was bad out of the box, the toxin could have journeyed all the way to the Emperor from the supplier, which would open up a whole other can of parasitic worms. We would have to contact the USDA, who would launch their own investigation of the supplier, which could result in a recall, a revocation of their permit, and heavy-duty federal fines.
“No one has been sick,” she said, certain of her words. “The inspection sheet is on the bulletin board. We scored a ninety-nine.”
“Good,” I said, stepping inside. “I’m going to take a look around. When I’m done, I’d like to see your Food Manager and Food Handler Certificates, and this week’s employee schedule.”
In Travis County, every restaurant is required to have an employee with a Food Manager’s Certificate onsite while food is being prepared and served, which is basically at all times. The certificate is awarded after a day-long health and safety class and successful completion of a written exam. The cost for the class is around $100, so usually only the managers, chefs, and upper-level cooks are sent for training.
I’m of the opinion that every food service employee, from dishwasher to waiter to hostess, should be required to attend this in-depth training instead of the hour-long food handler training they get, but that idea would be as welcome to Olive as a sprout salad. Not because she wouldn’t agree with me, but because making it happen would involve both thought and work.
Surprise health inspections, which are performed twice a year, act as a sort of practical pop quiz to make sure everyone has been paying attention in class. On first glance, the Emperor didn’t look like the kind of place that flouted health regulations, and if they lacked only a single point for a perfect score, they probably didn’t. But inspectors can’t go on looks and seems. I washed my hands, then wrestled them into rubber gloves and entered the walk-in to visually and olfactorily check the tuna.
The Emperor is a tiny place, and the walk-in took up only a fraction of the kitchen, which meant that they probably got daily or twice-daily deliveries, further complicating my efforts to pinpoint the source. The overhead light bulb was out, so I pulled my backpack around to the front of me and pulled my flashlight from the side pocket. As soon as I flipped the switch, I knew that Troy Sharpe’s death had not been an accident.
twenty-three
But I had a more pressing mystery to solve. If I didn’t figure out the source of Gavin’s food poisoning, many more people could get ill or even die. I went outside and stood near the back door to call Olive and tell her that the fan was on high and I was fixin’ to throw buckets of poop at it.
She answered her phone with, “Call it off, Markham. Kowsaki’s appendix busted.”
“You could have told me.”
“Sounds like I just did,” she said, then hung up.
I walked into the middle of the dusty alley and began to count to ten, imagining myself floating up into the cool, quiet, Olive-less stratosphere, moving higher with each count. And because I’m a multitasker, I also began to count the number of seconds it was taking the mobile food truck headed in my direction to reach me. By the time I hit four and the first layer of clouds, the truck had covered significant yardage.
I held up my badge but the truck didn’t slow down, and at the count of seven it was bearing down on me. The sun reflected off the windshield and I couldn’t see the driver’s face, so maybe he couldn’t see me. I waved my badge and sidestepped into the building’s shadow. “Stop! Health department!” The driver gave it some gas and angled the truck toward me. I yanked open the Emperor’s back door and vaulted inside right before the truck’s side mirror smashed into it.
“Dude, what happened?” the dishwasher kid asked.
I brushed pieces of mirrored glass from my clothes as I tried to think of an answer. The driver could have been texting or blinded by the sun or intoxicated or changing the radio station or eating an oyster po’ boy, but those explanations seemed unlikely. “I think someone tried to kill me to avoid an inspection,” I said.
x x x
I knew I was right about Troy’s murder, but before I went to Capital Punishment and started questioning suspects, I figured I should do the smart thing and make absolutely sure. I raced to Jamie’s office downtown, pulling in next to his car in the parking lot around noon.
I threw open the office door and could not believe what I was seeing. Jamie stood by his desk, embracing another woman, both of them smiling like they had won the lottery. She was one of the freelance writers in his office, Kimberlee. The very young one. This is how Jamie shows me he loves me? This is how he proves he can be trusted?
I would have left, but I had to see the crime scene photos again. Why hadn’t I thought to ask him to print them or email them to me? Because I didn’t know I would be walking in on a lunchtime tryst in his office while he thought I was working on the other side of town.
I angrily cleared my throat. “Sorry to disturb.”
They pulled apart and Jamie said, “Poppy? What are you doing here?”
“Spoiling the moment, apparently.”
“What?” he said.
Kimberlee thrust out her left hand and did a bouncy wiggly happy dance. “I’m getting married!”
The thing about being wrong is that it takes your face a few seconds to catch up to your realization. But it took Jamie no time to figure out my assumption process. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Congratulations,” I said to Kimb
erlee.
“Thanks, Poppy.” She hugged me, then turned to Jamie. “I have so much to do, but I’ll be back this afternoon to proof your Taste Buds column, ’kay?”
“Sure thing, honeybunch.”
She frowned at his term of endearment, then said, “Toodles.”
“Toodles,” we said.
Jamie hung his head and tapped his finger on the desk. “Sorry you had to find out like this.”
“What am I supposed to believe, walking in on a scene like that?”
“You could believe me when I say it will never happen again.”
“I’m trying to, Jamie.”
“I haven’t seen that person since that night and will never see that person again.” He sat in his chair and pulled me onto his lap. “You have to trust me.”
I nodded.
“Now that you’ve spoiled my moment with Kimberlee, you may as well tell me why you’re here.”
“I need to see the crime scene photos again.”
“Why?”
“Troy Sharpe was murdered.”
I stood up so he could reach his keyboard and pull up the file. As he clicked through them, my scalp began to tingle as photo after photo confirmed my theory.
“What are you seeing?” Jamie asked.
“It’s what I’m not seeing,” I said. “There’s no flashlight.”
“You’re right, but…so?”
“The power was out at the restaurant, right? And it was as dark as the black stripes on a convict’s uniform. With all the equipment and building materials everywhere, there’s no way Troy could have gotten through the dining room, much less up the stairs and across the catwalk without a flashlight. Especially as drunk as he was. I saw him drink four beers, and there were four more empty bottles in the kitchen and”—I pointed to a photo—“two more on the catwalk.”
“Hang on,” Jamie said. He opened a document on his computer and together we scanned the list of items that had been photographed. “No mention of a flashlight.”
“Troy went upstairs with his killer, who needed the flashlight to get downstairs and out of the building.” I bounced up and down like Kimberlee. “I have so much to do.”
Jamie took my hands in his. “You know what I’m going to say.”
“You think it’s a great idea for me to investigate this on my own, and you hope I catch the murderer before he or she can kill again.” I kissed him before he could say the exact opposite. “Toodles.”
x x x
I didn’t see Miles’s pickup when I drove past the front, and it wasn’t parked in back. So much for my assumption that he would always be available for questioning. I did, however, see a silver BMW with the license plate 88. At least Todd wasn’t too broken up or busy creating a defensive playbook with Suzi Grimm to be at work.
Construction workers filled the kitchen, most of them watching two others on ladders snaking a long silver ventilation duct out of a gap in the ceiling tiles. I recognized my almost-rival gurney driver, Mingo, and said hola. I pointed to the scene and asked what was going on. “Que pasa?”
“Esta quebrada,” he said. It’s broken.
Well, obviously. I didn’t think Miles would waste time fixing things that were working. I didn’t know enough Spanish to ask if it was only the duct or if the entire ventilation unit was out. The system had worked during my first inspection, but it seemed like Miles’s guys broke two more things for every one they fixed.
The office door was closed, but I heard Todd’s and Danny’s voices. I turned my back to the door and eyed the workers while I listened to their conversation. If the office door opened, I could say I was trying to decide if the ventilation issue belonged to my health inspection or to the mechanical inspection.
“This makes it look like Troy killed himself,” Todd said.
“Right,” Danny said.
“But it’s better for all of us if the police think it was an accident.”
“I don’t care what they think as long as they make a final ruling,” Danny said. “And I think you should be the one to tell Ginger.”
“Negative,” Todd said. “Troy didn’t want her to know, and if she saw this we’d have to explain what it means.”
Neither said anything, and I imagined Danny staring at Todd, trying to think of what to say to convince him to tell Ginger about whatever they were at odds over. It sounded to me like they might be discussing how to keep their part in Troy’s murder a secret from both the police and Ginger.
That would make it a conspiracy. And it raised all sorts of questions about how Todd and Danny got this far into cahoots against Troy. And what didn’t they want Ginger to see? Troy’s last will and testament that left everything to Todd? His cell phone bill with midnight calls to a strange number? A credit card showing purchases of inappropriate entertainment?
I couldn’t dwell on those questions because Danny said, “I don’t think we should sit on this just to spare Ginger’s feelings.”
“I need some time to think about it,” Todd said.
“Don’t take too long,” Danny said.
I heard the handle click and quickly turned around to face the door. I raised my hand and knocked a millisecond before Todd opened it.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” Todd said stiffly. “Why?”
“This is the first time I’ve seen the office door closed.”
“The guys were noisy out there,” Danny said. He was sitting at the desk holding my yellow sticky note in his hand.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I had to fill in for another inspector this morning.”
“No problem,” Todd said. “We just got here ourselves.”
“Miles told us about the hot water,” Danny said. “It’s supposed to be working now.”
It didn’t escape me how easily they both went from discussing Troy’s murder to the practical business of getting their permit. “I’ll check the water,” I said, “but the ventilation system needs to function properly above the grill.”
“I thought the hot water was the last thing,” Todd said.
“Everything has to be working at the same time,” I said.
Todd looked back at Danny. “Get Archer.”
“You keep thinking,” Danny said on his way out the door.
“Do all permit inspections take this long?” Todd asked.
“Not usually. Most restaurant builders know the health code requirements.”
Todd looked out into the kitchen and chewed his molars as he watched the workers.
“Ginger told me that Miles usually does home remodeling,” I said.
His head jerked back to me. “When did you talk to Ginger?”
“Tuesday. Right after you and Danny left for Suzi Grimm’s office. She came in looking for you.”
“You didn’t tell her where we went, did you?”
“I didn’t know it was a secret.”
Todd shook out his hands, then sat behind the desk. He didn’t say anything else, and I had nothing else to say. I had come straight from Jamie’s office with proof that Troy had been murdered, but I hadn’t had time to think through my approach for questioning anyone about it. I couldn’t tell him I overheard his conversation with Danny and ask him if he killed his own brother. Could I?
The success of a health inspection depends on two things: the element of surprise and the offensive nature of the attack. If I called ahead to a restaurant and made an appointment to observe their daily operations, I would never know if they left uncovered tubs of frozen ground beef in the alley to thaw or whether cooks licked cream gravy from their fingers during lunch service.
Surprise offensives work in a lot of other situations, too—football games, courts of law, marriage proposals, police interrogations. I de
cided to come at Todd head-on to catch him off-guard. “What are you and Danny trying to hide from Ginger?”
Todd laughed uncomfortably. “What makes you say that?” Classic evasive tactic: answering a question with a question.
“I overheard part of your conversation. Did you and Danny have something to do with Troy’s death?”
His face flamed under his tan. “That’s sick! How could you even think something like that?”
“Danny wants to go to the police, but you don’t, and you don’t want Ginger to see something. And two days ago you both visited a criminal defense attorney. What else could it be?”
“I don’t see how any of this is your business.”
“Nefarious conduct is always of interest to a county employee, Mr. Sharpe.” Individually the words implied a threat, but strung together, they didn’t say much of anything. I counted on Todd being too caught up in his own defense to parse it out.
“Troy left a suicide note,” he said finally.
No!
There wasn’t a note at the crime scene.
There was no flashlight.
His death was not his fault.
I am not wrong.
“That can’t be,” I said. Todd squinted at me, and I heard my choice of words. “I mean, I didn’t know there was a note.”
“We just found it,” Todd said. “Some papers had been moved around on the desk and it surfaced.”
“Which proves it was suicide,” I said, disappointed, “and his life insurance won’t pay, which is why you don’t want to show it to the police.”
Todd nodded but didn’t say anything more.
Curiosity about what the note said and what it would tell Ginger consumed me. I stood there looking completely uninterested, hoping he would offer to let me read it. Instead he picked up his walkie-talkie. “Eighty-eight to Danny, over.”
“Miles isn’t here,” Danny responded. “I’m tracking him down.”
Todd slammed the walkie-talkie on the desk and looked out at the workers. “June eleventh is looking more impossible by the minute.”
