Dying for Dinner

by Miranda Bliss

  There were cups on the table and Jim poured and handed them around. “You’ve told us already that you were in prison once. Maybe there’s some other secret in your past-”

  “Don’t you think I would tell you if there was? I’d really like to get to the bottom of this. I swear, I wouldn’t hold anything back.” Norman ’s shoulders had only barely slumped when Jim passed a plate of freshly baked cranberry almond muffins under his nose. Norman took a whiff. His eyes lit up and he didn’t look nearly as discouraged anymore.

  I always knew he was a man after my own heart.

  He had already taken a muffin, split it open, and buttered a portion of it before he said, “If only I could think of something.”

  “Money.” It was the one thing we hadn’t discussed. Since my mouth was full of muffin, too, and the word came out sounding more like “Mny,” I swallowed and repeated.

  “Money. The killer said it was payback time, and to me, that sounds like it has something to do with money. I’ve been to your home, Norman. It’s nice. It’s more than nice. You drive a Jag. You own a successful business. Pardon me for not being politically correct, but that’s not bad for an ex-con.”

  This time, Norman ’s shrug was more nonchalant. Like the one he’d used so often when he was Jacques Lavoie. “I’m not suffering, that’s for sure, but I’m not loaded, either. I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve earned. I mean, lately.” Obviously thinking we were going to call him on the being-honest vow he’d made, he cleared his throat. “Sure, I ran a bunch of scams back in the day, but they never earned me really big bucks. Now, Très Bonne Cuisine…” Even though he’d ditched the phony French accent, when he said the name of the store, he still added a bit of European pizzazz. “That place has made me a bundle. But hey, like I said, I’ve worked for it. Nobody can begrudge me that. Every penny of it’s been honest. Well, except for the Vavoom!”

  I thought about this while I nibbled on another piece of muffin. “So where did the money come from in the first place?” I asked, and I kept my eyes on Norman while I spoke. Promises or no promises, I wasn’t ready to trust him implicitly. I needed to gauge his reactions and measure his answers. I needed to watch his eyes when I said, “I mean, the money you used to open the shop. Where did you get the initial capital to invest, anyway?”

  A totally honest man would have answered without hesitation.

  A liar would have, too.

  Norman ’s response was somewhere right in the middle.

  Carefully, he buttered half his muffin. “It was a card game,” Norman finally admitted. “Just a friendly poker game. Nothing shady about that.”

  “You won enough money in a card game to open a store with a huge, expensive inventory?” I thought about the figures I’d heard thrown around, rent and utilities, salaries and taxes, and neighborhood retail association fees. Sure, Très Bonne Cuisine was successful, but with those kinds of expenditures, it was a wonder any business could stay afloat.

  “Just to open the doors…” I was in the middle of a bite of muffin, so I swallowed before I continued. “It must have cost plenty to get the place decorated and stocked. I’ve been looking over packing lists and picking tickets. Even at wholesale, the merchandise you sell isn’t cheap.”

  “It was kind of a high-stakes card game.” Norman said this as if it was no big deal.

  I thought otherwise.

  I pinned him with a look. “How high were the stakes?”

  He stalled by making a face.

  “ Norman!” The name came out as a warning, not from me, but from Jim. It was amazing how much whammy he could pack into rolling that r in Norman ’s name.

  It was enough to make Norman ’s face pale. “I won three hundred thousand dollars,” he mumbled.

  “Three hundred-!” I could barely get the words out. Maybe that’s because a piece of muffin was stuck in my throat. I washed it down with a gulp of coffee. “ Norman, that means if you won big, somebody lost big.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But that doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Greg.”

  “And you know this, how?” Again, it was Jim’s turn, and again, he put that Scottish burr of his to good use. When Jim is dead serious, it’s hard to ignore that earnest rumble. It sounds a whole lot like thunder.

  Norman got up from the table and did a turn around the room. “He’s not that kind of guy,” he said.

  “He who?”

  Jim and I managed that bit of mangled English at the same time and together, we waited for an answer. It didn’t come until Norman dropped back into his chair at the dining room table.

  “Victor Pasqual,” he said.

  OK, let me make something perfectly clear here: I know nothing (and I do mean nothing) about poker. I also know very little about popular culture. It’s not that I’m not interested in those tell-all magazines at the grocery store checkout counter, it’s just that I don’t have the time to care. Besides, if anything really juicy is happening to any celebrity (the ones I’ve heard of and the ones I haven’t), Eve is sure to fill me in.

  In a nutshell, what this means is that my mind is a vast pop culture wasteland.

  But even I had heard of Victor Pasqual.

  “The billionaire recluse who owns that hotel in Atlantic City and never goes outside and the only time anyone sees him is during one of his card games?” I stared across the table at Norman, wondering how he managed to run in those circles. I couldn’t hold my curiosity in for long. “How on earth did you manage to run in those circles?”

  “It was a long time ago.” He waved away the idea that he was anything even remotely like a celebrity hanger-on. “Vic, he wasn’t quite as eccentric back then. I knew a guy who knew a guy who… well, you get the picture. I was invited to a game. I won.”

  “Three hundred thousand dollars.” I was having a hard time getting past the figure. But then, I am a numbers person, and these numbers, they were enough to take my breath away. “You won three hundred thousand dollars from a notorious gambler in a poker game, and you don’t think that’s important? This Victor Pasqual is rich and, from everything I’ve heard about him, a little crazy, too. He sounds exactly like the kind of guy who might hold a grudge.”

  “Which means…” Jim said this, but I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t exactly anxious to hear my answer. He had that look on his face, the one that told me he saw the wheels in my head turning and he was afraid of where they might take me.

  Which is why I answered as matter-of-factly as I was able. “We’re going to need to talk to Victor Pasqual.”

  “The man never leaves the penthouse apartment at his hotel.” This from Jim.

  “Except to play poker,” Norman added.

  And they couldn’t see where we were headed?

  My muffin and coffee finished, I got up from the table, grabbed my purse, and headed for the door. “Then we’re going to need to play poker with him,” I said. “And I know exactly where I can learn to do that.”

  THESE DAYS, IT DOESN’T TAKE A DETECTIVE TO FIND people.

  I mean, really, all you need is the Internet and a few smarts.

  I had both, and within an hour of leaving Jim’s, I was parked in another part of town in front of a tiny brick house with a neat front walk and flower beds where marigolds bobbed their heads in the evening light.

  It was the kind of house I’d always dreamed of owning.

  The kind I’d been saving for.

  The kind I’d had ripped out from under me when Peter left and took half our bank account (and half the down payment we’d saved over the years) with him.

  It was the house Peter and Mindy/Mandy bought after they’d married.

  I did my best to set aside the anger that assailed me when I considered this. After all, it wasn’t why I was there.

  I reminded myself of the fact as I rang the bell, then stepped back and waited.

  Peter was the only person I knew who played poker.

  I needed to learn to play poker.


  So-

  “Hi!” When the door was opened by a trim blonde in white shorts and a purple tank top, I tried to be as friendly as possible. As much as I’d heard about Mindy/Mandy (and believe me, I’d heard plenty) we’d never actually met face-to-face.

  She was shorter than me. She was slimmer. And younger. Her hips weren’t as round, her hair was cut short, and there wasn’t an unruly curl in sight. She had a ring in her belly button.

  “I’ m Annie,” I said, and I knew exactly when the pieces fell into place and she realized which Annie, exactly, I was. That would have been when she looked a little as if she’d bitten into a lemon. I looked past her into the house with its sleek, modern furniture and walls that were painted an especially appealing tone of beige (though truth be told, the shade was a little dark for my tastes).

  “I hate to bother you, but I was wondering if I could talk to Peter for a minute.”

  Mindy/Mandy stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind her.

  “You don’t know.”

  My blank expression said it all.

  Mindy/Mandy shrugged. Her tank top gaped and, like it or not, I saw that her breasts were round and firm and perky. As much as I hated to even think about it, I could see why Peter had been attracted. I wondered what she wore behind the counter at the dry cleaner’s, and if the day Peter had first walked in there and been smitten on the spot, she was displaying her pierced belly button for the world to see.

  “Peter, he said he’d seen you.”

  Mindy/Mandy’s words snapped me out of my thoughts, and it was just as well.

  “He stopped in,” I said automatically. “To the restaurant where I work. And the gourmet shop where I work and…” No doubt that sounded as weird to her as it did to me so I simply added, “He just stopped in to say hello. To talk. That’s all. I don’t want you to think-”

  Her laugh stopped me cold and Mindy/Mandy opened the door and stepped back inside. “I’m sorry I can’t help. Peter isn’t here. He doesn’t live here anymore. In fact, we’re getting a divorce.”

  Thirteen

  WAS I SURPRISED?

  Not really.

  Not by Mindy/Mandy, or by anything she’d told me.

  Suddenly, the whole thing about Peter showing up again in my life was starting to make a whole lot of sense.

  The real question was how I felt about it.

  And the real answer to that question?

  The next Monday night, I told myself I’d better figure it out, and I’d better figure it out fast. Peter was on his way over to Bellywasher’s, and before our cooking students left and he showed up, I needed to have a plan.

  As to how I’d found Peter in the first place after striking out at Mindy/Mandy’s… well, like I said, these days, you don’t need to be a great detective to track people down. Of course it helped that his soon-to-be-second ex-missus knew which extended-stay hotel Peter was staying at and didn’t mind giving me the number.

  Contacting Peter and asking him to give me some poker pointers was a better plan than dwelling on the fact that he was soon to be a free man, and I was the free woman who’d once dreamed that he’d see the light, walk away from Mindy/Mandy, and come crawling back to me.

  It was also way better than brooding, and brooding was exactly what I did when I thought about how divorces worked. I certainly didn’t know the ins and outs of Peter’s relationship with his current wife, nor did I want to. But I guessed that Mindy/Mandy was soon to be the sole owner of the house that should have been mine.

  “Annie!”

  I shook myself out of my thoughts and found Jim watching me. A couple seconds ticked by before I realized where I was-in front of the cooking class-and what I was supposed to be doing-showing them how to use a variety of citrus juicers.

  Considering that at the beginning of the evening I’d demonstrated a kitchen torch-with less than successful results-I had to give Jim a lot of credit. At least he was willing to give me a second chance. Apparently, he didn’t hold a couple of singed aprons and a siren blast from the smoke alarm against me.

  “Citrus juicers!” I beamed a smile at the students gathered around me and, call me paranoid, but I saw the way they backed away from the table when they realized I’d be the one doing the show-and-tell.

  “You’re safe. This one doesn’t even plug in.” I held up the brightly colored heavy die-cast aluminum juicer for the class to see. Because I couldn’t decide, I’d brought them in all three colors: orange, yellow, and green. “You put a half of a citrus fruit in here.” I demonstrated with a lime, setting it into the rounded end of the bright green juicer. “Squeeze the two handles together.” I did. “And the halved fruit is turned inside out.” I showed them, along with the nice bit of juice I squeezed into a glass.

  “For bigger jobs…” I moved on to the electric juicer on the table. “This one even has a filter that separates juice and seeds.” I had a halved orange nearby and made a glass of juice, lickety-split.

  “Very nice. Thank you.” Jim gave me a smile before he turned his attention back to the class. “Just a couple of the gadgets that can make your cooking life easier. I think Annie’s got a few more she brought with her…” He glanced my way and I nodded. “So when we’re done with this next bit of cooking, she’ll show you how to make the perfect cup of coffee.”

  The next item on the menu was eggs Sardou and while our students got to work and with nothing to do for the moment, I stepped back and simply watched.

  I don’t know where Jim got the notion to do breakfast foods rather than more traditional pub fare for the night’s class. It might have been because of those memorable waffles Norman had served us a couple of mornings before. Wherever the idea came from, our students were eating it up.

  Literally.

  They’d already made heart-shaped pancakes on the special griddle I’d brought from Très Bonne Cuisine, as well as soft-boiled eggs. I have to admit, I was pretty proud of myself as far as the eggs were concerned. Without any help at all from Raymond, I’d searched the shelves at the shop and found adorable egg cups made of wire and complete with little legs and chicken feet. As long as I was having a fit of culinary brilliance, I’d also brought along an ingenious little device that fits over the tops of the eggs and cuts off the rounded part of the shell, scissors-style.

  Thanks to Raymond’s patient tutoring, I was actually able to demonstrate without too much of a mess.

  “You’re doing fine.” After he’d demonstrated that mind-boggling, one-handed method he uses to crack eggs, Jim zipped by and gave me a quick smile. “Everything ready for later?”

  I knew he wasn’t referring to the other gadgets I’d brought to demonstrate. “Eve’s coming,” I told him. “And Marc and Damien said that as long as we’re going to play cards, they want to sit in, too. But, Jim-”

  We heard a groan as a student cracked an egg and ended up with a mess of white, yolk, and shell. She called Jim over for advice.

  And I cooled my heels, waiting for him to finish.

  When he was done and while part of the class was busy slicing artichoke hearts and another part was making creamed spinach, I tried again.

  Jim was on his way over to see how things were going with the students who were taking their first stab at making hollandaise sauce, and I stopped him, a hand on his sleeve. Ever since the night I talked to Peter and he agreed to stop at Bellywasher’s to give us a poker lesson, I’d wondered how Jim felt about the whole thing. I practiced a thousand ways to explain and a thousand more to reassure him. None of which had ever come out quite right. Now, Peter would be there in less than an hour and I didn’t have time for long-winded explanations. Or for beating around the bush.

  Sure, I was uncertain about what I’d say to Peter now that I knew his current marriage was drifting oh-so-near the rocks that destroyed ours.

  Yes, I kept picturing myself in those early days when I learned about Mindy/Mandy, watched my whole world fall apart, and told myself I’d do anything-any
thing-if only I could get Peter back again.

  Absolutely, I was having a giant case of mixed emotions, what with Peter’s sudden reappearance looking less accidental and more like he wanted to reconnect with the woman who would still be his woman if not for the woman he left her for.

  But Jim didn’t have to know any of that.

  I cared too much about him to let that happen.

  And he cared too much about his class for me to keep him standing there when his students needed his help. That’s why I just blurted out, “You know this doesn’t mean anything to me, don’t you?”

  “The hollandaise?” Jim is not one to be dense, and he sure isn’t dumb. The fact that he was pretending to be clueless was my first hint that the whole Peter-showing-up thing actually might bother him more than he was willing to admit.

  “Not the hollandaise.” As if he needed me to point this out. “Peter. You know, Peter coming over here and-”

  Jim was as matter-of-fact as he could be considering that he was keeping his voice down so our students wouldn’t overhear. “I know that in order to help Norman, you need to talk to that Victor Pasqual fellow. I know you’ll never be able to get close to Pasqual if you can’t play poker, though how you’re going to manage that even if you can play poker is a mystery to me and, I suspect, to you at this point. Nonetheless, I know you, and I know you want to be prepared. I know you don’t know how to play poker, and, as I am more than willing to admit, neither do I. What’s that Eve read in that tabloid newspaper she’s been carrying around with her? These days, Pasqual’s obsessed with Texas Hold’em. I don’t even know what that is. That means, if you’re going to learn to play cards, you need to ask the advice of someone who does know how. And since you’re acquainted with him, I know it also makes perfect sense for that someone to be Peter.”