He hung his head. “Quinn, you don’t know the whole story.”
“Enlighten me.”
Lowering his voice, he said, “Can’t you just trust me? It’s something I made a promise not to talk about, and I don’t like to break my promises. Plus, it’s kind of…embarrassing.”
“More embarrassing than being made fun of in front of the whole school? More embarrassing than being the continual butt of a joke?”
Tucker’s eyes were strained. “No, it’s not…I—”
He gasped right as I felt an icy wave of liquid hit my neck and run all the way down the back of my dress. I jumped up, banging my knee on the table as I did so. As I worked to hold my tongue, I wheeled around to find Scarlett Owens smirking at me, an empty water glass in her hands.
“Ooh, I’m so sorry,” she cooed, clearly not sorry. “It’s just water.”
The large glass of “just water” had me soaked. It had doused the last few inches of my long hair, ran all down my back, and even had my underpants chilly and clinging to me under my dress.
I looked down at Tucker, who was staring at us, mouth open. “I think this is a sign that I should go now. Thank you for dinner, Tucker.”
He nodded, too shocked to say anything.
On my way toward the door, I got madder with each step. Stupid Scarlett Owens had ruined a perfectly good evening for me. Wait. My being here wasn’t all about me having a good evening. It was also about gaining access to Mark Potter and Ross Cline. Silently berating myself for getting caught up in my non-date and shirking my responsibilities while Drew sat in jail, I turned and headed to the back of the restaurant, toward the kitchen door. I sailed through the swinging door, not caring about the odd looks I was receiving.
A nervous-looking young woman came up to me. “Ma’am, it’s only supposed to be staff back here. Chef Potter will be awfully mad if—”
“I came here to see Chef Potter, and I’m not leaving until I speak with him.” It was like someone else was talking, but the words were coming from my mouth.
An imposing man came striding up to me, his eyebrows bushy and permanently angry. “I’m Chef Potter. Why are you in my kitchen?”
I stood up to my full height. “My name is Quinn Bellandini, and I’m here to ask you a few questions about Jason Green.”
Potter narrowed his eyes at me. “You a cop?”
“No, but I’m working with them.” Where was this coming from? “And I need some answers from you—otherwise, you could end up as a…an…accessory. To murder.” It was like I was speaking in tongues. Whatever. It was working.
Potter’s eyes got huge. “Shh. Come to my office.” He ushered me out of the kitchen and to a tiny office near the restrooms. I could understand why he’d had an interest in buying Green. It had way more space than his cramped little bistro.
“First, I need to know where you were on Monday night between nine and ten P.M.”
Potter relaxed a bit. “Here. Where I always am.”
“Who can corroborate that?”
“My employees.”
I regarded him thoughtfully. “Who are all too afraid to say otherwise. Nope. I’m going to need another person to vouch for you—someone who’s not on your payroll.”
He seemed to be thinking hard about it. Relief breaking out on his face, he said, “Yes—Valerie Green. She was here that night.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Valerie? The woman you were conspiring with to buy Green out from under her husband can corroborate your whereabouts. Oh, sure. That makes you sound way less guilty.”
The color drained from Potter’s face. “You don’t understand. She was only here with some of her girlfriends, eating dinner. I thought she’d be a good witness! She’s the grieving widow, after all.”
“You do know how murder investigations work, right? The spouse always has the most to gain, and therefore is always the first suspect.”
“So why is his brother the one who’s in jail?”
I clenched my jaw, losing a bit of my bravado when an image of Drew popped into my head. “We think he either had help or is being set up.”
“Not by me. The last thing I’d want to do is kill Jason Green. That scumbag would delight in haunting me the rest of my life.”
I stared at him. “Your ironclad alibi is that you wouldn’t kill him for fear of his ghost? That’s easily the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“This city’s full of them. It’s a fact.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“What do you want me to say?” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “Oh, I got it. Our security cameras. We got them a while back because we had an employee stealing all kinds of stuff from the kitchen. I’d all but forgotten them. Follow me.”
He took me down the hall to a utility closet. There were wires everywhere, and on a tiny table sat some electronic equipment and a laptop. Potter spent several minutes typing, clicking, and huffing and puffing at the laptop, then finally came up with some video footage of his kitchen.
He pointed at the screen. “See right there? It’s time-stamped nine P.M. on Monday. And there I am.”
Yes, there he was, berating the meek young woman who had warned me a few minutes ago to get out of the kitchen before Potter found me.
“I’m going to have to make sure you were here the whole hour.”
Grumbling, he stepped aside and headed for the door. “You can do that on your own.”
“Fair enough. I need to speak with Ross Cline, too. Was he here Monday night as well?”
“I think so…Oh, yeah. I know so. He ruined a batch of leek soup, so we didn’t have a soup du jour that night.”
“I’m sure you let him know how you felt about that. Don’t forget to send him in here.”
He grumbled something in reply, and I didn’t think it sounded very nice.
“One more thing. How long are you and Valerie planning to wait to seal your deal now that Jason is dead and Drew is otherwise detained? I figure with neither of them being in a position to protest, you can get your hands on Green like you’ve always wanted.”
Potter stared at me for a moment. “Lady, you’re ballsy. And I’m no longer interested in buying into Green. That place is in debt up to the ceiling. It’s a much safer business decision to wait it out until they close up and then buy the property. I’m not taking over Jason’s mistakes. Or his sloppy seconds. That wife of his is a piece of work.” He shook his head. “I figured out real fast I didn’t want to be business partners with her.”
I nodded, trying to take it all in. I knew Green was failing and that the three partners had sunk their own money into it, but I didn’t know it was in major debt as well. That put a different spin on Valerie’s involvement in everything. She was scrambling to find someone to get her out of debt—probably a predicament she blamed Jason for. She could have killed him out of sheer panic and desperation. Valerie Green was definitely first on my investigation list for tomorrow.
Squinting at me, Potter added, “Why are you drenched? Is it raining out?”
“No, your lovely waitress Scarlett had an old score to settle with me. She dumped a full glass of water down my back.”
“She did what?” His entire head turned red. “That is unacceptable. I’ll take care of it.”
He stormed off, and I heaved out a sigh of relief. I didn’t know if it was the altercation with Scarlett, my frustration with Tucker, or my aggravation at myself for losing sight of the reason I came here tonight that made me transform into Sassy Quinn. But I had to admit, Sassy Quinn got stuff done a lot faster than Regular Quinn.
Chapter 19
I’d watched about ten minutes of boring footage of the Abercorn Bistro kitchen when there was a knock at the door of the utility closet. A man in his early twenties stuck his head in the door.
&nb
sp; “Chef said you needed to see me?” he said.
I paused the security footage and stood, trying to muster up my tough exterior from earlier. Now that I’d sat in my cold clothes for a while, I was more discombobulated than angry.
“Yes, I’m Quinn Bellandini. You’re Ross, right?”
“Yeah. Why do you want to talk to me about Jason Green? I haven’t seen the guy for weeks.”
“I’m speaking with everyone I can find who might have had a reason to kill him.”
Ross’s face darkened. “And because that jerk fired me, I have a reason to kill him. Are you for real?”
“Well, someone killed him, and you were seen trying to punch him when he fired you. If you’d landed the punch and he’d filed charges, you’d have a record for assault against a murder victim. That lands you on the radar.”
I hoped Mark Potter had relayed to Ross that I was working with the police. I wanted to make him think he needed to keep talking to me. Luckily for me, he did.
“But I didn’t hit him.”
“Only because you missed.”
“And I didn’t kill him.”
I could easily verify that by watching the video, but I needed a lead badly. “Then do you know who might have wanted to?”
“I thought Drew had already been arrested for Jason’s murder. It’s over and done, right? Case closed. Why are you even here?”
Good point, which was the same one Mark Potter had made earlier. If I were indeed working with the police, why was I still investigating after they’d got their man? I gave the same answer I’d given Potter. “We think Drew either had help or is being set up.”
“Oh.”
My answer seemed to satisfy both of them, so I was going to stick with it in the future. It wasn’t entirely accurate, but it was becoming clearer to me by the second that if I was going to get answers from people, I was going to have to be willing to bend the truth. It wasn’t something I felt right about doing, but I figured as long as it was for the greater good, it was a forgivable enough offense.
“So no one comes to mind that you’ve seen have an altercation with Jason? Besides yourself, of course.”
He frowned. “Look, Jason had altercations with everyone he talked to. The staff at Green, his brother, his wife, that one restaurant reviewer…everyone.”
“Right. I’ve spoken with a lot of people. I feel like there’s someone out there we’re missing, though. And I feel like it had to do with the financial trouble that Green has been in lately. Do you know anything about that?”
“No. I was only the help. Ava, the manager, might know about it, though.”
“I’ve talked to her already.”
He thought for a moment. “Wait. I remember one night Jason and I were the last two to leave Green. Some older guy came in, and they went in the office. Jason was screaming, no surprise, but the other guy seemed to be holding his own. I didn’t catch the whole conversation, but they were talking money. The guy said something about Green’s debts being too high for him to go ahead with their partnership, and Jason blew his top. Told the guy he’d have him in court for breach of contract and a bunch of other things. I hightailed it out of there before their conversation was over, because I knew if Jason was that mad, he’d take it out on the first person he saw, and I didn’t want that person to be me.”
“Do you know who the man was?”
“No idea. I’d never seen him before, but then again, I don’t know a lot of people in town. I only moved here six months ago.”
“Would you recognize the man if you saw him again?”
“Probably.”
Great. Now all I had to do was find Ross’s mystery man. Could this have been the business partner who was “putting the screws” to Jason, as Sasha had mentioned? Or was this a different man altogether?
“Thanks for your time, Ross. I appreciate it.”
“So I’m cleared?”
I gestured toward the laptop. “As soon as I watch an hour’s worth of surveillance footage and determine you didn’t leave the kitchen on Monday night.”
He snorted. “Oh, I didn’t.” He came over and pointed to the top right of the screen. “That’s me. I peeled potatoes and apples all night as punishment for ruining Potter’s precious leek soup.” Sure enough, there was Ross Cline on the screen, peeling away. He added, “You know you can fast-forward this if you want and still be able to see what’s going on.” He clicked a button on the screen, and the people started moving faster.
“Thanks. Watching it in real time was like watching paint dry.”
After Ross left, I watched the speeded-up video until the time stamp showed ten P.M. Neither Mark Potter nor Ross Cline left this kitchen for more than a couple of minutes during that whole hour. That was two more people to mark off our list. We were running low on suspects and hadn’t made much headway.
Dejected, I left the utility room and headed outside. Abercorn Bistro was several blocks from home, but I didn’t mind to walk. I needed to clear my head. On the way back, I decided to walk past Green, thinking taking a look at the place could somehow magically spark a brilliant idea that would crack this case wide open. I stood in front of the building for five minutes, and no such luck.
As I was walking away, though, I noticed a light bouncing around inside. Hmm. That was odd. I’d heard yesterday that the employees had planned to work all morning and afternoon today and were going to finish up around six P.M., which it was well past. I walked back across the front, trying to see where the light was coming from. It seemed like it could be the beam of a flashlight—it was small and in constant motion.
I continued on around the building and peered over the backyard fence. A truck I didn’t recognize was parked next to Drew’s, its bed stacked full of kitchen appliances and equipment, plastic storage bins, and taped-up boxes. This made no sense. Drew had told me that they were shutting down the place until further notice, not that they were gutting it. I had a bad feeling about this. I kept watching, and had to clap my hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp when I saw who was coming out of the back door carrying a clear storage bin full of plates—Ava Newton, the manager.
What in the world? Ava was stealing from Green? I’d caught a strange vibe from her yesterday, but I never imagined that she’d do this. Drew had said she’d “give you the shirt off her back.” Sure—it wouldn’t be a big deal to part with a stolen shirt.
I hurried a few feet away, hoping to be out of her earshot, and called Delilah.
“Where in blue blazes have you been?” she demanded, not even bothering with a “hello.”
“Um…at Abercorn Bistro, where you dropped me off. But that’s not what I called about—”
“Tucker got home over thirty minutes ago, and you weren’t with him. He came by and dropped off a yearbook and mumbled something about you not trusting him, then he left before I could get anything else out of him. What did you do?”
I sighed. I didn’t have time for this. “Delilah, we will talk about that when I get home. Right now I want to tell you about what’s going on at Green. Ava is taking everything that’s not nailed down and stashing it in her pickup truck.” I tiptoed back to my spying spot and lowered my voice. “I think she’s robbing them blind.”
“You’re kidding!”
I watched as a young, fit-looking man loaded up several boxes stacked higher than his head. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I hissed, “No, I’m not kidding. And she’s got an accomplice. There’s a guy helping her.”
“Do you think maybe you should have called the cops instead of me?”
“Oh…well, yes, I suppose I probably should have.”
“I’m on my way over. Hang up and call the police.”
“Okay,” I replied, but Delilah had already ended the call. I quickly dialed Rufus’s cell number that he’d given me.
>
“Detective King,” he said as his greeting.
“Rufus, it’s Quinn. There’s a situation at Green that I think the police should deal with. The manager, Ava Newton, and a man I don’t know are stealing kitchen equipment.” I wondered for a fleeting moment if the man with her was her boyfriend, Brock, that Jen had told me about. Jen had said Brock and Jason didn’t get along too well.
“Right now?” he asked.
“Yes, right now.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m watching it happen.”
There was silence on the other end. Then he said in a tightly controlled voice, “I’ll send someone over. Meanwhile, you need to get out of there. Go home, Quinn.”
“But don’t you need someone to stay here to make sure they don’t get away before your officers get here?”
“What are you going to do? Keep them occupied by serving them tea and cookies?”
I frowned, even though he couldn’t see me. “That’s not a very gracious thing to say considering I made the effort to report a crime in progress, Detective.”
He sighed wearily. “I’m sorry, Quinn. Just…please go home. I’ll have someone come over to take your statement later.”
“Okay,” I said, ending the call and heading back home with the distinct feeling I was being treated like a child.
When I rounded the building, I nearly ran into Delilah, who seemed to have sprinted all the way here.
“Are they…are they still…there?” she panted.
“Yes, but you came over here for nothing. The police are on their way, and Rufus ordered me to go home.”
“So?”
“He’s a police officer. I’m not happy about it, but I probably should do what he says.”
Delilah waved away my worries. “You’re already here. Being here another few minutes is not going to make a bit of difference.”
Southern Discomfort Page 15
