Dying for Dinner

by Miranda Bliss

  “To see you, of course.” His smile was a little too bright.

  “You mean to make sure I’m OK.”

  I knew that sometimes he hated having a detective for a girlfriend. He was nice enough not to point this out.

  “Is there anything wrong with being concerned about you?” He glanced around the store and, satisfied that all customers were gone for the night, he went over to the front door and locked it. “There’s been a murder here recently. I don’t need to remind you of that. It’s only natural that I worry.”

  “And I appreciate it. I really do. Truth be told…” I came back around to the front of the counter and looped my arm through Jim’s. “This is the first time all day that I’ve been alone. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to sit down for more than a minute at a time.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. But I can’t have you working yourself to a frazzle. That’s why I’ve hired you some help.”

  I wasn’t expecting this, and I stepped back, surprised. “You think I can’t run the shop on my own?”

  “I think you could rule the world if you were so inclined. But I don’t like the idea of you working such long hours.”

  “And if I have help, I won’t be alone.”

  “Aye.” He gave in with a smile. “Raymond starts on Monday.”

  “And Raymond is…?”

  “A customer. Has been for years. Used to come around back when I worked here. He’s devoted to the place. He’s one of those brainy types, runs a computer company or a Web site or something. But he fancies himself a cook. I offered him a chance at some hours here at the shop, and he jumped at it. Don’t look at me that way,” Jim added, though what way I was looking at him, exactly, I wasn’t sure. “Is that such an awful thing, to be worried about you?”

  “Actually, it’s sweet.” It was, and something a lot of guys wouldn’t have thought about. Peter never would have.

  I caught myself as soon as the thought formed and ordered it out of my head. I’d spent the better part of the last couple years banishing all thoughts of Peter. I didn’t need to get into any new bad habits.

  “It will be nice to have some help,” I told Jim. It was the truth, and better than what I’d been thinking about. “Truly, I never imagined I’d be this busy.”

  “And no wonder.” What was left of my display of Vavoom! caught Jim’s eye and he untangled my arm from his so he could step closer to the front counter and read the computer-generated sign I’d taped there. “ Sale?” He considered the concept. “That’s one product Jacques has never put on sale. Said he never had to. That it practically sold itself, no matter what price he put on it.”

  “Well… yes…” I had never told Jim the truth about Vavoom! Partly because I didn’t think there was much point. Mostly because I didn’t want him to think less of Monsieur. I edged into the subject now with something less than enthusiasm.

  “Vavoom! is pretty good stuff, and I used to use it all the time myself, but you know…” Like a diver going off the high board, I pulled in a breath and took a leap. “It’s seasoned salt,” I said. “Vavoom! It’s seasoned salt with a bit of lemon pepper and dill and garlic thrown in for good measure. I should have told you sooner, but… well, want to see? Come on.”

  I grabbed Jim’s arm and tugged him down the aisle, and once we were in Monsieur’s office, I showed him the empty jars and the bulk seasonings and the handwritten recipe.

  “That’s why I put it on sale, Jim,” I confessed. “It just didn’t seem right charging that much for the stuff. I’ve seen the invoice for the bulk salt. Monsieur hardly pays more than ten dollars for five pounds of it, then turns around and-”

  “The cheat.” Jim shook his head. He didn’t look angry, exactly. He looked exasperated. And more than a little disappointed. “I never suspected.”

  “I knew.” At this point, I had no choice but to explain how I’d discovered Monsieur’s scheme back when I was a cooking student at Très Bonne Cuisine. “I never wanted to tell you. I didn’t want you to think less of him.”

  Jim glanced at the recipe. “Well, he is changing it somewhat. I suppose that excuses Jacques to some extent. But honestly, I never thought…” He blew out a breath of annoyance. “It’s quite a scam, isn’t it? And he’s got everyone believing it’s a gourmet treat.”

  I moved over to the counter and measured the additional ingredients. I added them to the salt, stirred, and started filling jars. Without me asking, Jim stepped up beside me to help.

  I’d barely finished one when what he’d said struck a chord.

  “It’s a scam!” I repeated Jim’s words. They didn’t provide all the answers, of course, but suddenly those IDs we’d found at Monsieur’s… suddenly, they made a lot more sense.

  Seven

  I QUIT MY JOB AT PIONEER SAVINGS AND LOAN BECAUSE running back and forth between the bank and Bellywasher’s was too much to handle.

  Great plan, yes?

  It had worked for exactly… er… let me do a little math here.

  It looked like my plan had worked for less than twenty-four hours.

  Now, nearly a week after I walked into Très Bonne Cuisine and saw Greg’s body lying on the floor, my life was more hectic than ever. The shop was open six days a week and yeah, once in a while Eve came in to help or Jim stopped by to lend a little moral support. But by and large-at least until that happy day when the help Jim hired actually started-I was pretty much a one-man… uh… one-woman show.

  And there were still invoices to pay and file at Belly-washer’s.

  And invoices to pay and file at Très Bonne Cuisine.

  And shipments to check, and bank deposits to take care of, and tax papers to prepare, and cash registers to balance and stock with proper change.

  At both places.

  Not to mention the whole taking-care-of-the-customers part, which I didn’t have to deal with at Bellywasher’s, thank goodness, but did have to handle at the shop. The problem with customers, see, is that they ask questions. About cooking. And cookware. The problem with me is that I don’t know any of the answers.

  To say that my stress levels were to the moon would be completely understating the problem.

  It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that as much as I was itching to look into Monsieur’s disappearance and that tantalizing stack of licenses and how they might (or might not) be related to his Vavoom! scam, I never had much of a chance until Sunday. That was the one day of the week that Très Bonne Cuisine was closed, and after the brunch crowd at Bellywasher’s had finally cleared out and before the dinner crowd could arrive, Eve and I took some time and convened in my apartment.

  I was sitting at my computer. She was on a chair next to mine. I gave her a sidelong look and made sure not to sound too critical when I said, “You know, there are no dogs allowed in this apartment complex.”

  “Doc isn’t a dog.” Eve had the critter in her lap, and she lifted him so they could rub noses. He looked an awful lot like a dog to me. Even if he was wearing a red cotton sweater that matched Eve’s tank top. “Doc is my itty-bitty friend. And besides…” She scrubbed a finger behind one of the dark, V-shaped ears of the tiny Japanese terrier. “It’s not like he lives here or anything. He’s just visiting. With me. Nobody could complain about that. Nobody would even know he was here. He’s so well behaved and so quiet. Like a little angel in a dog suit!”

  “Uh-huh.” Pardon me for not sounding nearly as enthusiastic. I clearly remembered the night she snuck Doc into the back room of Bellywasher’s and he escaped, walked out into the restaurant, and barfed all over the place. “My neighbors will not be happy if he starts carrying on.”

  “He’s not going to carry on. He’s too good to carry on.” Eve planted a kiss on top of the dog’s head before she lowered him into an oversized white leather tote bag studded with rhinestones that matched the ones on Doc’s collar. At least I hoped he was wearing his rhinestone collar. During one of our investigations, we’d discovered that the spark
ly collar Doc was wearing when Eve got him (the one we’d always assumed was just a showy fake) was the real deal. The thought of that many genuine diamonds in my plain ol’ middle-class apartment was enough to make my blood pressure soar.

  Ever practical, I decided it was best not to think about it.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” I told Eve, partly because it took my mind off the diamonds, and mostly because time was a-wastin’. “We’re going to do a little research. About Monsieur. I figure if we find out all we can about him, then we’ll be able to figure out what he’s up to with the IDs. And where he might be.”

  Eve had recently seen her aesthetician, so when she shook her head, her blonde hair gleamed in the glow of my desk lamp. “I don’t know. Think about it, Annie. We know all there is to know about Monsieur. He’s our friend.”

  “Do our friends tell us everything?”

  I paused here. A long time. Which gave Eve the perfect opening to bring up Tyler. She hadn’t said one word about him in days. Naturally that made me suspicious. I was dying to know what was up with him. And her. And them.

  When she said not a thing, I waited even longer.

  That didn’t work, either, so I puffed out a breath of exasperation and went right on. “I’ve asked Jim,” I told her. “We sat down together last night and talked for a long time. I told him to tell me everything he knew about Monsieur.” There was a yellow legal pad on my desk and I picked it up and handed it to Eve. “That’s all he knows.”

  She read over my neatly written notes. “French. Owner of Très Bonne Cuisine. Lives in Cherrydale.” Eve wrinkled her nose. “See? I told you so. We know all that.”

  “Except there’s more.” I pointed to the next lines.

  “Loves to cook. Good businessman. Reasonable boss, though not especially generous when it comes to salary and raises. Cares about his customers. Except for the Vavoom! thing.”

  Eve wasn’t around the night Jim found me filling the Vavoom! jars so I filled her in about that part of the story. “Jim was disappointed,” I said. “He didn’t think his friend could ever be that-”

  “Dishonest?” Eve flipped the page on the legal pad, but since there was nothing written past the first page, she flipped it right back. “It doesn’t say here that he thinks Monsieur is dishonest.”

  “No.” The thought sat uneasily with me, and I twitched my shoulders. “Jim didn’t want to come right out and say it, so I didn’t add it. But that’s not the point.” I reached for the pad and tapped a finger against the list. “The point is that it’s a pretty short list. And pretty basic, too. Even though Jim has known Monsieur for years, he really doesn’t know that much about him.”

  “Monsieur is a private person.”

  “But he’s not.” I thought about all those smiling faces on all those jars of Vavoom! “Monsieur is a showman. He loves publicity. He adores the spotlight. He’s got a following in the area and he loves that, too. You’ve seen the way he perks right up when somebody walks into the shop and says they saw his picture in the paper or in some culinary magazine or another. The same thing happens at Bellywasher’s when he’s there and someone walks in and recognizes him. He’s as happy as a kid on Christmas morning when that happens, and he’s not shy about talking to anybody or about posing for pictures. So why is it that a man who loves to be the center of attention-a man we think of as our friend-why is it that we really don’t know that much about him?”

  Eve tipped her head. “I never really thought about it before,” she admitted.

  “Why would you? Why would any of us? We all meet people and we take those people at face value. They tell us they’re cooks, and we believe them. Why shouldn’t we? They tell us they’re rocket scientists or horse trainers or that they work behind the counter at the local Starbuck’s, and there isn’t one reason in the world for us to stop and consider if they’re telling us the truth or not.”

  Eve still wasn’t sure where I was headed. At the risk of ruining her perfectly put together look, she worked her lower lip with her teeth. “Are you saying that Monsieur might not be who he says he is?”

  “I’m saying we don’t know. Maybe one of those licenses we found…” I looked toward the drawer of my computer desk because that’s where I’d stashed the IDs. “I’m saying that maybe one of those people is the real Monsieur.”

  “No way.” Honestly, I couldn’t blame Eve for sounding so dead set against my idea. I didn’t like the sound of it, either. I didn’t like the way it made my insides uneasy, or the way just thinking that our friend may have deceived us made my skin crawl. “You can’t fake being French, Annie. Everybody knows that. French people are… well… they’re French.”

  “I’m not saying he’s not French.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t like admitting it. I sighed. “I’m saying we should check. That’s all. How could it hurt? And how much can we possibly know about a person who wasn’t born in this country, anyway?”

  “You know a lot about Jim.”

  “That’s different.” It was, and Eve knew it. Which was exactly why she brought it up. That would explain why her eyes sparkled, too.

  And why she smiled when she said, “You and Jim are falling in love, aren’t you?”

  The question wasn’t out of line. I mean, Eve is my best friend.

  “Jim is terrific.” It was the truth, and I wasn’t shy about admitting it.

  “And?”

  I didn’t even try to hide my smile. “And we’re falling in love.”

  “I knew it!” Eve was so happy for me, she shrieked. “I can’t wait, Annie! I can’t wait until he asks you to marry him.”

  When I think about Jim, I get all warm and fuzzy.

  When I think about matrimony, my insides freeze up.

  I guess that explains why I was suddenly feeling like a Slurpee.

  I hugged my arms around myself. “There’s been no talk of marriage,” I said.

  “But if there is-?”

  “There isn’t. There hasn’t been. Marriage is a big step. Bigger than quitting my job at Pioneer. I wouldn’t even think about it. I mean, after-”

  “Peter?”

  As a best friend, Eve should have known better.

  She didn’t. She gave me that look of hers, the one that’s innocent and probing-all at the same time.

  “Peter is a nuisance,” I said. “I don’t feel a thing for Peter. Not anymore.”

  “Then why has he been hanging around?”

  “He hasn’t been hanging around.” I hadn’t even thought about it, but now that I realized it, I was relieved. “I haven’t seen Peter since the night of the poker game. He’s ancient history. Like Tyler used to be to you.”

  Remember what I said about Eve being my best friend? Well, I was her best friend, too, so she shouldn’t have sloughed off my comment like it was nothing at all.

  “Are we going to tell Tyler?” she asked. “I mean, about Monsieur’s IDs? I wonder if it’s something the police should know about.”

  I was nobody’s fool. I knew a change of subject when I saw it. Or heard it.

  Like I was going to let that stop me?

  Remember, we were talking best friends here, and best friends have a dispensation of sorts; they don’t have to back off. Not when the subject is l-o-v-e.

  “I think it’s too soon to involve…” I made sure I put so much emphasis on this word that anybody could have seen-or heard-where I was headed. “I don’t know if we should get Tyler involved.” I said it again, just the same way. “Unless he is already. Involved, that is.”

  “Well, aren’t you about as subtle as a presidential motorcade?” Eve tried to look put out, but a smile played around the corners of her mouth. “Truth be told, Tyler is not involved. Not currently, anyway. I mean, not in the immediate future.”

  It took a moment for this momentous news to sink in. Even after it had, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “Are you saying…?”r />
  “The wedding has been postponed again. They set a new date. They pushed it back again.” Eve looked much too pleased by this announcement, but before I even had a chance to feel

  A) appalled

  B) frightened

  C) worried

  D) all of the above

  she breezed right on, “ Tyler says it was by mutual agreement. That’s how he put it. Mutual agreement. He said that over the last months, he and Kaitlin have grown apart. You know, the way some couples do. They thought if they postponed the wedding, they might be able to work things out.” She shrugged. Not like she’d been thinking about it and couldn’t make sense of the situation. More like Oh, well, what the heck, Kaitlin’s loss is my gain.

  Which I’m pretty sure is why my stomach did a flip-flop.

  “You know how it is sometimes, Annie,” Eve said, ever the bearer of wisdom when it came to any relationships but her own. “You and Peter, you could never work things out, either.”

  “I tried. Peter wasn’t interested.” I would have thought she’d remember. “But that’s beside the point, which is-”

  “That we’re supposed to be talking about Monsieur. Research, isn’t that what you said?” In a message as un-subtle as that presidential motorcade, Eve reached over and flicked on my computer screen. “It’s nearly three, Annie, and I have to be back at Bellywasher’s in a little bit. We’d better get down to business.”

  There was no use arguing and, hey, since I’d probably spend the rest of the years I knew Eve worrying about her romantic entanglements-and since I planned to know her for the rest of my long, long life-I figured there would be time enough later to quiz her about Tyler. For now, we had Monsieur to think about.

  With that in mind, I Googled his name.

  “Eight pages of citations!” I bent closer to the screen for a better look. “Here’s the Très Bonne Cuisine home page,” I said, pointing to each line as I went. “Here’s an article about the appearance he’s scheduled to make at the big D.C. food show in a couple weeks. He’s one of the main presenters. That’s what Jim says, anyway. Monsieur is supposed to be doing a demonstration of French cooking.”