Dying for Dinner

by Miranda Bliss

  “I’ve got to get to Bellywasher’s for a cooking class. Raymond will take care of you.” I motioned toward Raymond, who was just coming up the aisle from the back office where he’d gotten one of our white aprons and was tying it around his back. On him, the apron looked as if it came straight from the store’s Kids Cook section.

  “Oh, that’s OK.” Peter barely looked at Raymond before he turned his attention back to me. He stepped toward the front counter. Since I was standing directly between it and him and the displays all around us made it impossible to get by without getting too close, I had no choice but to step back. “I just need a couple of things,” he said. “I won’t keep you long.”

  I wanted to say, You won’t keep me at all since I’m leaving, but I remembered what Eve had said last time Tyler came to Bellywasher’s. Paying customers were paying customers and as caretaker of his establishment, I had an obligation to Monsieur Lavoie to treat everyone who walked through the door with respect. Even a weasel like Peter.

  I motioned to Raymond that I’d take care of things and watched as his eyebrows rose in an expression that clearly said he realized I knew Peter-and that he couldn’t wait until we were alone so we could dish the dirt.

  I ducked back behind the counter and from there, I saw that Raymond was straightening the shelves of stainless-clad cookware that was not so far away that he couldn’t hear exactly what was going on.

  “I didn’t realize you were into cooking,” I said, watching as Peter took a quick look around. “Is it like poker, another new hobby?”

  “Oh, you know how it is.” Peter stepped closer. “Everybody cooks.” His eyes lit. “Everybody but you. What are you doing here, Annie? The most cooking you ever did was grabbing a box of Hamburger Helper and-”

  “Ancient history.” It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my cooking skills, or my lack of them. It was just that I didn’t need to be reminded. Not by Peter, anyway. And not in front of Raymond. I sloughed off his comments with a laugh and a lift of my shoulders. “You learned to play poker. I learned to cook.”

  “Amazing.” He said it in a way that made me feel a little queasy. Like he really meant it. Like he was impressed.

  I pretended to fiddle with the cash register.

  “But what happened to the restaurant?”

  Peter’s question snapped me back. “Bellywasher’s?” He looked at me with those melting brown eyes of his. “You told me you were the business manager there.”

  “I am the business manager there. And I’m the business manager here. It’s a long story.”

  “And again, I say, amazing. You’re…” Peter took a step closer to the counter. Call it instinct. Even though there was a slab of polished granite between us, I took a step back. “You’re like a different person,” he said. “You’re so accomplished. So professional.”

  “Which means I wasn’t accomplished and professional before.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “What you said.” There was a time this would have cut me to the quick. Now, I simply cocked my head and stared at him, expecting him to back down not because he had to, but because it was my due.

  It was.

  He did.

  And somewhere deep down inside, I actually felt a little sorry for him. “I’ve got to get going,” I said, stepping to my right so that I could move around to the front of the counter. “We’ve got a cooking class at Belly-washer’s tonight, and-”

  “I won’t be another minute.” Peter grabbed a pig-shaped wooden cutting board from a nearby shelf and plunked it on the counter. From another display near the front window, this one intended to attract mothers and grandmothers for those last-minute impulse buys, he reached for a tube of pink cake icing. As if that wasn’t enough, he added two boxes of the red, white, and blue citronella candles I’d put out in honor of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday.

  “That ought to do it,” he said.

  I look at the disparate assortment. “You’re sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t need anything else?”

  He reached for his wallet. “Nope.”

  “Then how about if you tell me what you’re really doing here.”

  Just as my professionalism and business acumen apparently had done, my question caught Peter off guard. I would have known that even if we hadn’t been married for eight years. It was the uneasy, embarrassed way he smiled, I guess. Or maybe it was the uncomfortable way he shifted from foot to foot.

  “I was just passing by,” he said, and I actually might have believed it if he didn’t push a hand through his dark hair when he said it. I remembered that gesture. I’d seen it a thousand times. Always when Peter was feeling guilty about something.

  Oh, how well I remembered that he’d never once resorted to that gesture when he fessed up about Mindy/Mandy!

  Keeping the thought firmly in mind, I wrapped the pig cutting board in tissue and tucked it into a shopping bag along with the candles and the icing. “You were just passing by and you decided you couldn’t live without a wooden pig cutting board? Or maybe it’s Mindy/Mandy who needs the cutting board. What, is it some kind of romantic anniversary for you two? Maybe you’re commemorating the first time you cheated on me with her? There are some who would see the pig as wonderfully symbolic.”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Raymond give me the thumbs-up.

  That was far more encouraging than the pained look on Peter’s face. “That’s not fair, Annie,” he said. Leave it to Peter to try to defend the indefensible. “I didn’t come here to argue with you. I just wanted to…” He was never the hemming and hawing type. He hemmed and hawed. “Actually, I just wanted to see you.”

  I was about to ring up his purchases, and my hands stilled over the keys of the cash register. “That’s not a good idea,” I told him.

  Peter shrugged. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “I can blame a guy for not trying back when we were married and you didn’t give a damn.”

  At this, Raymond’s eyebrows rose even more, and his eyes went wide. He had given up all pretense of not eavesdropping, and he stood with his colossal arms folded over his enormous chest, just listening.

  I don’t think Peter noticed. He wasn’t looking at anyone or anything but me. “That was a long time ago, Annie. You haven’t forgiven me?”

  I’d like to say I took Peter’s cash from him gracefully. It was more like I yanked the money from his hands. I punched the keys on the cash register, fished out the proper change, and shoved it in Peter’s direction. “If you’re looking for forgiveness, you’ve come to the wrong place. That’s not my job.”

  “But-”

  “Thank you for shopping at Très Bonne Cuisine.” I gave Peter the smile I offered every customer as they left.

  Right before I stepped around the counter, grabbed my shopping bag, and called a good night to Raymond.

  “You’re making a mistake, Annie.” Peter’s words followed me to the door. “You’re forgetting that not everyone is what they seem.”

  Yeah, I already knew that. Peter had taught me that lesson.

  But as I got to my car and headed over to Belly-washer’s, the truth of what he said hit like a ton of bricks.

  “Not everyone is what they seem,” I mumbled to myself, and I knew exactly why it bothered me in the context of Monsieur’s disappearance.

  It was exactly the reason I hadn’t done more to pursue that stack of suspicious IDs. Or the telltale information I’d received from Monsieur Brun, the innkeeper, the day before.

  Not everyone was what they appeared to be, and if I dug a little deeper into Monsieur Lavoie’s background, I was afraid I wasn’t going to like what I found.

  Did it matter?

  Personally, yes, it mattered a whole bunch. To me, to Jim, to all Monsieur’s other friends.

  Professionally…

  I knew exactly when I made up my mind, because my hands tightened on the steering wheel and my spine stiffened with r
esolve.

  Professionally, I had to find out what was going on.

  No matter what the consequences.

  Nine

  THE BAD NEWS WAS THAT ON MONDAY, HER DAY off, Eve twisted her ankle.

  No, it didn’t happen at the gym. Eve and sweat are not on a first-name basis.

  She told everybody that the accident happened as she was chasing after Doc, racing to save him from meeting a tragic and horrible end under the wheels of an oncoming bus.

  I knew better.

  Number one, because Doc is too lazy and far too spoiled to ever think about running away from Eve. I mean, why should he? The dog lives better than a lot of people. He certainly has a bigger wardrobe than mine.

  Number two, I knew that just like Eve and sweat, Eve racing anywhere is a statistical improbability.

  Unless she’s racing to a sale at Nordstrom.

  She finally fessed up with the truth-I knew she would-and the truth was that my instincts were right on. It was her own fault, Eve admitted. She had tried to outpace a woman who had her eye on the same pair of alligator slingbacks Eve saw from the other side of the shoe department. Eve darted. The other woman rushed forward. Eve sidestepped, pivoted, slipped.

  The good news?

  Well, according to Eve, the good news was that she got to the shoes first. Even though by that time, she was limping.

  As far as I was concerned, the good news was that the injury wasn’t serious. However, Eve had been ordered by her doctor to stay off her feet for a couple days. And that was the second piece of good news. Because she is the hostess at Bellywasher’s and because a restaurant hostess is always on her feet, Eve was forced to take a couple days off. That meant she was free to investigate with me.

  After all, Eve riding in the passenger seat while I drove qualified as staying off her feet, right?

  Eve pulled down the visor on her side of the Saturn and peered at herself in the little mirror, checking to make sure her makeup was just right. Of course it was. “So, you think Raymond will work out well?” she asked me.

  The way I grinned at the very mention of his name should have been a clue, but since Eve was so busy looking at herself, she didn’t notice. “He practically begged me to let him work today,” I said. “This is my first real day off in as long as I can remember. Raymond is my hero! He’s going to be perfect. I talked to him before I left home, and he’s in his glory. He actually thinks working at Très Bonne Cuisine is the best job in the whole, wide world.”

  “You don’t.” Eve snapped the visor back into place. “I don’t know how you’re doing it, Annie. I mean, with the way you feel about cooking and all. And I miss you at Bellywasher’s.”

  “I miss being there.” Who ever would have thought I’d say that about working at a restaurant! My grin stayed firmly in place. “I just don’t fit in at Très Bonne Cuisine. Sure, the shop is gorgeous, and most of the customers are nice. Except for the ones who come in just to see the place where Greg died.”

  After a week, I should have been used to the scenario, but it still gave me the creeps. We were headed south and the early morning sun was blazing through my window. My air-conditioning was on the fritz so it wasn’t nearly as cool in the car as I would have liked. Still, I shivered.

  “We need to get to the bottom of this,” I told Eve. As if she didn’t know. “The whole thing is weird, and it’s driving me crazy. Has Tyler said anything…”

  OK, so subtle, I’m not. Since Eve was being less than forthcoming about her contact (or lack of it) with Tyler, it was only fair for me, as her best friend, to force the subject.

  “You mean about Greg? About Greg’s murder?” Even though she’d just checked her makeup, she checked it again. “The only thing he’s said-”

  “Aha! You have talked to him again!” I was so proud of my detective skills and so jazzed about catching Eve in my little trap, I didn’t realize how hard I was pressing on the accelerator. It wasn’t until I saw my speedometer inch up to seventy-five that I caught myself, and slowed right down. Sure, everybody on I-95 exceeds the speed limit. All the time. But I am not everybody. Especially when it comes to driving.

  Careful to keep my speed exactly where it belonged, I moved over to the far right lane to stay out of the way of the speed demons on the road with me. The driver of the dark sedan behind me must have been gauging his own speed against mine. He slipped right behind me into the lane.

  I gave Eve a sidelong glance. “You’ve been seeing Tyler.”

  “That’s exactly why I haven’t told you. I knew this was how you’d take it.”

  “Take it? Take what?” My heart thumped like the bass line in the music of the overloud stereo of the Hummer that whizzed by us as if we were standing still. “Eve, you and Tyler… you’re not…” I swallowed hard. No easy thing, seeing as my mouth was suddenly so parched I could barely get the words out. “You’re not engaged again, are you?”

  Eve’s only reply was a squeal of laughter.

  It wasn’t much, but it did make me feel better, and my heart rate ratcheted back. If Eve was laughing at the very idea of marrying Tyler, then it couldn’t really happen.

  Right?

  I never trust cars that actually drive slower than me. Or maybe I should say more accurately, I never trust the drivers of those cars.

  As I was thinking all this, I checked my mirrors-twice-before I passed the red Camry crawling along in the right lane. The car behind me did the same. It wasn’t until I settled back in the lane and well in front of both the red Toyota and the dark sedan that I felt safe giving Eve another probing look.

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  “About being engaged? To Tyler?” Eve picked at her white linen pants. Not that there was any lint on them or anything. “Don’t be silly, Annie. Tyler is still engaged to Kaitlin. Technically. And even if he wasn’t… my goodness, Annie! Even if he wasn’t, a man who’s been engaged, then gets unengaged, he wouldn’t be ready to get engaged again.”

  “Would you?”

  “To Tyler? My goodness, you don’t have any faith in me at all, do you?” Eve sniffed in the way she always does when she’s put out.

  I guess I couldn’t blame her.

  Tyler had sliced and diced her heart. He had pureed her self-esteem, stir-fried her self-confidence, and served it all up on the platter of his own huge ego.

  Maybe I was starting to think like I worked in a gourmet shop after all.

  “So let’s go over our plan.” I figured I owed Eve for questioning her judgment, and I engineered the change of subject without any fanfare. “I’m glad you’re investigating with me, Eve. Want to grab that file folder I gave you when you got in the car?”

  She did, flipped it open, and squinted at the copy I’d made of one of the licenses we’d found at Monsieur’s. “The name on the driver’s license is Bill Boxley.” Thinking, Eve cocked her head. “Do you think Monsieur’s real name is Bill Boxley? If it is, I can’t say I blame him for changing it.”

  “I think it’s a distinct possibility that Bill Boxley and Jacques Lavoie are one and the same person. That would explain why he has the license, right?”

  “Yeah, but…” Eve hesitated.

  I was negotiating my way past a van driving too slowly in the left lane and an eighteen-wheeler in the right that didn’t seem to recognize that such things as speed limits exist. Only when we were safely by the van and watching the truck disappear into the distance in front of us, did I feel safe getting back to the conversation.

  So safe, in fact, that I barely noticed that when I maneuvered my way between the van and the truck, the dark car behind me did, too.

  I’d heard the uncertainty in Eve’s voice, I knew where she was headed. “Yeah, but…,” I echoed her comment. “You don’t think Monsieur might really be Bill Boxley? Or Bill might really be Monsieur?”

  “I don’t know what to think. And I’m not sure I understand what you’re thinking. What are we trying to prove with a trip to Fredericksburg?”r />
  The answer was simple enough. “ Fredericksburg…” Without taking my eyes off the road, I pointed to the photocopy of the driver’s license. I’d meant to point out the address, but instead, I poked Bill Boxley in the nose. “ Fredericksburg is the home of Bill Boxley. Of all those driver’s licenses we found at Monsieur’s, Bill Boxley’s is the most recent. Check it out. It expired just a couple years ago. All those other licenses are older.”

  Eve squinted at the picture of Monsieur that graced the license. In it, his hair wasn’t quite as silvery, and he was a little thinner than the man we knew. “And…?”

  “And I chose the newest license because it seems to make more sense starting there than it does starting with the older ones. My guess…” I paused here because, after all, it was something of a ta-da moment. “My guess is that we’re going to go to the address on that license, and we’re going to find Monsieur Lavoie there.”

  “You mean Bill is Monsieur? Or Monsieur is Bill? But why?”

  I knew Eve’s question had nothing to do with my logic, and everything to do with why people thought the way they did and did the things they did. That’s why I shrugged. “Who knows. I mean, maybe Monsieur has a wife and seven kids living out here in Fredericksburg. Though why he wouldn’t want anyone to know it, I can’t imagine. Maybe he’s gay. Or maybe-”

  “Maybe he’s a spy or an agent for a rogue government.”

  Just like the first time Eve had raised these possibilities, I was not about to let them distract me. “It’s the whole Vavoom! scam thing that got me thinking in this direction, Eve. I’ll bet Monsieur is up to something. Maybe not something as illegal as being a spy or the agent of a rogue government, but something he shouldn’t be up to. I’ll bet that’s why he’s got a couple of different identities. Theoretically, I suppose it’s none of our business. Unless Monsieur’s involved in something that’s going to get him into a whole bunch of trouble. Considering what happened to Greg, I think that’s a very real possibility. And even if it isn’t…” I chose to think of the problem from this angle because thinking about the myriad illegalities I didn’t even understand scared me so. “We can at least talk to him. We need to let him know we’re worried about him. And if there’s anything we can do to help him get out of whatever trouble he’s in, we need to do that, too.”