Turn Up the Heat

by Jessica Conant-Park

  “I have to go, babe.” Josh grabbed my hand. “I’ll try to call you later.”

  Within minutes, the entire staff was bustling to get ready for dinner service. Gavin again thanked me for putting together such a lovely book. I brushed off his thanks. “It was no problem. Everyone was happy to contribute.”

  Happy to have this memorial service over, was more like it.

  FIFTEEN

  BACK at my apartment, I put the finishing touches on my second paper, which was due the next day. I fed Ken the hermit crab some crab food that looked like mouse poop and then distracted myself from thoughts of the thievery at Simmer by researching names for Adrianna and Owen’s baby.

  They had decided not to be told whether the baby was a boy or a girl, so all possibilities were open. And for a world of possibilities, no place on earth beats the Web. Using a baby-name site that allowed me to save a list of names under consideration, I put together an appealing selection and then looked up the meanings of the names in case I’d misguidedly chosen something that meant “idiot woman” or “son of burglar.” While I was on the site, I looked up Noah, which turned out to mean “wanderer,” “peaceful,” or “comforter.” Well, the wanderer part rang all too true, and if “comforter” was the bedroom variety, then it fit, too. Peaceful? Well, Noah probably felt peaceful after having sex with one of his random one-night stands. Chloe, I discovered, had two meanings, both pleasant: “young green shoot” or “blooming.” I typed in my last name and was disappointed to learn that Carter meant “cart driver.” Dull!

  Josh called and interrupted my important research.

  “Listen, I can’t talk long, but I just had a pretty weird conversation with a friend of mine, Dan, who’s a chef at Asiago, one of Owen’s restaurant accounts.” I heard the usual kitchen noise in the background.

  “Uh-huh. What’d he say?” I entered Joshua. The word looked funny, since I never called Josh by his full name. “Lord is salvation” or “God rescues.”

  “Owen told me he was delivering to Asiago, so I asked Dan how Owen was working out and all that. Dan had no idea what I was talking about. He said that Owen had come in but that his prices were too high, so Dan didn’t use him.”

  “So? Maybe Owen just meant he was trying to get the account.”

  “There’s more.” Josh spoke loudly to make himself heard over the restaurant din. “Dan is good friends with the chefs at a few of the other places Owen said he delivers to, so I had Dan call over to them and see what they had to say. Turns out, Owen only has one of those accounts, and they only order a few of their products from him and still use their other fish purveryor for most of their orders. I called Porcaro, too, because I’d sent Owen over there when he first started his job, and I forgot to ask Porcaro about it the other night. Owen told me Top of the Hub was one of his biggest accounts, and they were giving him great orders five times a week. When I talked to Porcaro today, he said he only orders scallops from Owen twice a week.”

  “Owen is lying about his accounts? What’s going on with him? Maybe he’s been trying to keep Adrianna from worrying.”

  “I don’t know. But Mark also told me that his friend Sam from Danielle’s Bistro does use Owen and has gotten to be friendly with him.”

  “Okay, so that’s good. He’s building a relationship with his account.” I felt desperate to find something positive.

  “Owen told Sam that he bought the delivery truck. It doesn’t belong to the Daily Catch company. It’s his. Owen was showing it off to Sam and told him how much he paid for it, which was a lot, by the way, and how he got a brand-new refrigeration unit put in himself. Chloe, Owen must have huge car payments every month for that thing.”

  “No, no, that can’t be right,” I insisted. “He’s said a hundred times that his delivery truck is a company truck. Adrianna said he doesn’t have to pay for the insurance or maintenance on it because his boss takes care of all of that.” Josh had to be mistaken; Owen wouldn’t lie.

  “No. Mark was sure about this because he heard that Owen made a little bit of a spectacle of himself by flashing off his new truck. You know Owen. I don’t think he was being a jerk about it, but he definitely made a show of it.” That was like Owen.

  I shut my eyes and sighed. “I don’t even know what to say right now. But don’t say anything to Owen, and especially not to Adrianna, about this.”

  “I agree. I don’t know what the hell to think. Something weird is going on with Owen. Listen, I have to go, but I wanted to tell you what I knew. I’m coming!” Josh shouted out to someone in the kitchen. “I’ll talk to you later tonight or tomorrow.”

  I hung up, stunned by what Josh had just told me. Owen was lying about something significant to Adrianna, his fiancée and the mother-to-be of his child. How could he possibly afford a new truck? And now, of all times? And the maintenance and the insurance! Especially without the major accounts he had described to us. He was being so uncharacteristically deceptive about the truck and the accounts that I had to wonder whether he was also lying about other things. I already knew that he had asked Adrianna to tell the police that he had been with her the night Leandra died. Why had Owen asked her to lie for him? Convenience? Maybe he’d simply wanted the police to stop pestering him. Or could Owen really have something to hide? Could he possibly have killed Leandra? No. There was no way. I knew Owen.

  I thought back to the morning when I’d discovered Leandra’s body in the back of his truck. Owen had wanted to show me the truck himself; it had been strictly my idea to explore it on my own. Maybe he’d had no intention of showing me the inside. He could have planned to drive the body away and dispose of it! Still, why would he have murdered Leandra? An unwelcome answer came to me. Months ago, Adrianna had had a minor fling with Snacker. She hadn’t outright cheated on Owen, but she had betrayed him. What if Owen had had his revenge with Leandra? Owen had been to Simmer’s New Year’s Eve opening, and he’d been there many times since then. He now made daily deliveries to Simmer. It would’ve been easy for him to run into Leandra and flirt with her. Owen was still furious with Snacker, but I thought that he had forgiven Adrianna for her indiscretion. Maybe not. Maybe he had stupidly, foolishly hooked up with Leandra as payback. And then Leandra had threatened to tell Adrianna. If Leandra was as coldhearted as people had been telling me, she wouldn’t have thought twice about breaking Gavin’s heart. Or Ade’s. In fact, Leandra had enjoyed needling people and taunting them.

  A much more tolerable alternative was that Owen had been set up. Someone else had killed Leandra and tossed her body into Owen’s truck. Almost everyone liked Owen. The only person I could think of who didn’t was Snacker. But Snacker didn’t hate Owen; he was just sick of having Owen shoot him dirty looks and throw obnoxious comments his way. In response, Snacker stood up for himself. The rest of the time, I thought, Owen never crossed Snacker’s mind. It didn’t make sense that Snacker would have killed Leandra, placed her body in the fish truck, and waited for Owen to suffer the consequences. Snacker loved women and loved fooling around with them; the notion that he’d killed a woman, especially one he found “hot,” was ridiculous. But I couldn’t think of anyone else who’d deliberately have framed Owen.

  My thoughts returned to the day we’d found the waitress’s body. Owen’s behavior had been strange: he’d tried to convince me to move Leandra’s body out of his truck, and he’d seemed far more worried about himself than about the dead woman, as if his selling fish were more important to him than staying alive had been to her. It was, however, possible that Owen had had some sort of affair with Leandra. The other night at Simmer, Leandra had said something that hadn’t sat right with me: “So, when am I going to get a ride in that new truck of yours? I hear the fish business is booming.” Did getting “a ride” have a double meaning? Ick! Or did she know that he had bought his truck and was she taunting him with what she knew? Leandra’s words bothered me.

  I looked up Owen’s name in the online baby-name database. Owen meant “wa
rrior.” I abruptly shut down the computer and walked away.

  SIXTEEN

  MY sleep that Monday night was dreamless, and I awoke on Tuesday morning feeling healthy and energetic. After a day of hungover grogginess, my system was finally free of beer, and I was back to normal. I showered, dressed, and ran my second term paper over to school. Back at home, I was forcing myself to review my notes on the DSM and pathological behavior in general when Adrianna called.

  “Chloe, I need your help!” Worried that my best friend had discovered Owen’s lies, I braced myself for an onslaught of screaming and wailing. “The movers left a little while ago, and I can’t deal with this disaster! Can you help me get started with unpacking? I think I have that nesting thing going on, and I feel like I have to get everything settled as fast as possible.”

  The last thing I felt like doing right now was unpacking boxes, but it would be better to help Adrianna move in than it would have been to console her about Owen’s deceit. “Sure. Give me your new address again?”

  Adrianna and Owen’s new apartment was around the corner from mine. Within minutes, I was outside her building. Their place, like mine, was on the top floor of a house that was surrounded by other houses. Ours were two of the rare streets left in Brighton that weren’t jammed with large apartment complexes. Ade and Owen, however, had the only apartment in the house; unlike me, they wouldn’t have Noah-esque neighbors who sunbathed in skimpy clothing. The owners lived in the main part of the house for half of the year and spent the other half in South Carolina. Consequently, Ade and Owen wouldn’t have to worry about irate neighbors when the baby cried. The building was attractive: a yellow house with a lovely front porch and black shutters. The front lawn, with its tall shade trees, would be great for the baby. A separate entrance on the side of the house gave them private access to their top-floor apartment. As I ascended the narrow, twisty staircase, however, I wondered how in the world they’d carry up a stroller or a baby in a car seat. The door to the apartment was open. I had to squeeze past two cardboard boxes to get into the hallway. I nearly cried.

  This was a beautiful place, with freshly painted walls, but God, it was so tiny! The front door opened into a minuscule hallway. To my right was a small living room, ahead of me was the doorless doorway to the galley kitchen, and to my left were three doors. I’d have given anything to be able to buy my friends a big, fat house in the suburbs where they’d have the space they needed to raise their child.

  “Ade?” I called.

  “In here,” she answered.

  I took a left and found Adrianna in what was obviously a large closet. Matching up the closet with a description Ade had given me of the apartment, I realized that she was in the nursery. In spite of a small window with an old radiator under it, the closet was a closet. But she could definitely get a crib in here. And almost nothing else. I was heartbroken.

  Ade stood up and smiled at me. “Thank you so much for helping. I didn’t know where to begin, so I’ve been trying to push some stuff in here for now.”

  “You’re not supposed to be pushing anything!” I admonished her. “I’ll move whatever you want.” I did some quick muscle poses to demonstrate my Herculean strength.

  She laughed. “Don’t worry. I haven’t been lifting couches or anything. I just have to get some of this put away, because with my belly sticking out like this, I can hardly move around here.”

  “Tell me where to start. I’m at your service.”

  “Well, I found a couple of boxes of sheets and towels. Maybe you could unload those into the bathroom closet? Right there.”

  I stepped out of the “nursery” and went to the bathroom at the end of the hall. There was barely enough foot room for me to stand, but the bathroom did indeed have a skinny linen closet with plenty of shelving. Boxes with Adrianna’s neat labeling were next to the door. I yanked the packing tape off the tops and began refolding and storing the contents.

  “How did it go with the movers?” I asked. “And when is Owen going to be here to help?”

  Ade stood in the hallway. “The movers were great. I just stayed out of their way, and they had all my stuff out within a half hour. Right after they finished unloading here, Owen’s movers showed up, so the timing worked out well.” She looked at her watch. “He should be here by midafternoon. He has a meeting scheduled with a new restaurant he’s hoping to get, but I don’t know how long that will last. I need some water. Want some?”

  “Sure.” I nodded.

  “Hey, can you pull out a set of sheets for me? The movers actually put together the bed for me. I want to get it made up before I collapse later.”

  Ade went to the kitchen, and I poked through the boxes until I found a matching set. “Gosh, how many sheets and towels does one person need?” I was discovering set after set of white linens.

  I traded her the sheets in my hands for the water. “That really nice set of heavy sheets?” she said. “That’s from my vacation to Cabo last year. And those superthick towels? Same place.” She shrugged.

  “You wasted suitcase space on towels you could buy here? Why didn’t you just wait until you got home?”

  Adrianna laughed. “I didn’t buy them, silly. That’s what hotels are for!”

  “You stole these?” I myself was barely able to use the little hotel soaps and shampoos without feeling pangs of guilt. And that was when I was staying at the hotel. “All of these?”

  “No, of course not. Not all of them. I’m not stupid. But probably half the stuff there, yeah, from different trips over the years. For what it costs to stay in a hotel these days…” She shrugged again. “It’s no big deal, Chloe. Don’t look so shocked. Do you think I’m the first person to take shit from places?”

  Was everyone on the planet except me so light-fingered? Was everyone else a damn thief? Was I expected to pick up the habit and start leaving the nail salon with files and polish remover? Start grabbing life vests from public pools and popcorn machines from the movie theater? Had the rest of the population gone crazy?

  “What other stuff do you take?”

  “Just little stuff. Souvenir kinds of things. Cream pitchers, salt and pepper shakers. I’m not leaving restaurants with barstools or anything. I’m sure people take stuff from Simmer all the time. Josh’ll tell you that.” She looked at me doubtfully. “You’ve never taken anything in your life?”

  “Apparently I’ve been missing out this whole time.”

  “Are you mad at me?” Ade looked hurt.

  “No, no, not at all,” I said honestly. “I just didn’t realize…I just didn’t know that people do it all the time. But I guess you’re right about it happening a lot.” It was certainly happening at Simmer.

  As I continued filling the closet with purloined goods, I couldn’t help thinking that Adrianna needed a linen service as much as Simmer did! I smiled to myself but then, at the thought of linens, my mind turned in a serious direction: toward the apron-turned-murder-weapon that had been used on Leandra. Until today, I’d assumed that the murderer was someone with access to Simmer; that is, someone who had been inside the restaurant, grabbed an apron, strangled Leandra, put her body in the truck in the alley, gone back into Simmer, set the alarm, and locked up. But if everyone except me was pilfering everything, then Owen would have had no need to enter or leave Simmer on the night Leandra was murdered. Owen, who was often in Simmer, could have taken an apron anytime he pleased. He could have waited until Leandra left for the night and strangled her with an apron that was already in his truck. It was even possible that the apron thief had been Adrianna and that Owen had used one that she’d stolen!

  “Chloe?”

  “Ahhh!” I looked at Adrianna’s surprised face. “Sorry. You startled me.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.” I shook the growing panic out of my head. “What did you say?”

  “I said, I hope Owen gets this account he’s meeting with today. This restaurant is actually one of three
that the owners have, so he could get three new accounts!”

  “I’m sure he’ll do great.”

  “I hope so. You know how charming he can be. I bet he’ll be able to schmooze them into going with him.”

  “Yeah, he is very charming,” I agreed.

  Charming the way the DSM described certain pathological people as being charming? Charming meaning manipulative? What then popped into my head was the Psychopathy Checklist, a rating scale designed to measure the traits of people with psychopathic personality disorder. The first item was “Glibness/superficial charm.” Owen scored a two on that one, meaning “item definitely applies.”

  “Are you done in there? Do you want to help push some furniture around in the living room?”

  “Sure.” I started breaking down the boxes to clear some room. “Let’s get you guys set up!” I did my best to sound cheery.

  The living room was small, but it had a beautiful bay window that overlooked the street and let light into the room. Once everything was unpacked, the visible floor space would make the room feel larger than it did now.

  “Shit, what a disaster area this is!” Ade looked exasperated.

  “Easy there, Mommy. You better start watching what you say,” I scolded her. “Are you gonna kiss your baby with that mouth?”

  “Sorry. You’re right. But what else am I supposed to say about this chaos?”

  My sister, Heather, learned the hard way to clean up her language when her son, Walker, spent six months exclaiming, “Son of a bitch!” at every mundane event. “Heather did it, and so can you,” I encouraged her.

  “Great, you think I should be like Heather saying ‘Jeepers creepers!’ and ‘Mercy me!’ when the kid throws up on me? Or ‘Criminy! What a giant, disgusting poop you made!’”

  It was true that Heather had resorted to expressions so old-fashioned that it was embarrassing to be caught in public with her. She said stuff like “Heavens to Betsy, that cab driver almost ran us over!” and “Goodness sake’s alive, what a bozo!”