by Leslie Karst
“A guy in a suit just dropped this off for you.”
It was the tox report. “Oh, thanks,” I said. “Hey, you know how to work this thing?”
Once Elena and I had finally succeeded in getting my form through to the State Bar, I sat down to study the report. There was this finding: “various indole alkaloids, esp. gelsemine, present in blood.” Turning to the office computer, I typed “gelsemine” into the Google query box, hit “search,” and clicked on the first entry.
Gelsemine (C20H22O2N2) is an extremely toxic alkaloid derived as a bitter, white, semicrystalline substance from Gelsemium sempervirens. It is easily soluble in alcohol, ether, and dilute acids. It is only sparingly soluble in water, though more easily soluble in hot water. If even a teaspoon is ingested, it can produce muscle weakness and general anesthesia.
I read on. There was lots of chemical jargon I didn’t understand, but then this sentence jumped off the page at me: “It has a bitter taste and an aroma akin to green tea.”
Green tea. That was what Letta drank every night after work. And a Chinese teapot and two cups had been found at the crime scene. Someone must have put gelsemine in her tea to prevent her from fighting back when she was stabbed. Ugh. It was a gruesome image.
I wondered who could have done such a thing. It had to have been someone she knew, someone she would let into the restaurant after hours, with whom she’d share a pot of tea. Ted sprang to mind first. He was, after all, suspected of having poisoned food before. And there was the violence implicit in those letters he sent Letta. Having seen his tirade against that charcuterie woman at the Slow Food dinner the other night, it wasn’t too far of a stretch to imagine him actually attacking someone. I was guessing the tea habit went way back for Letta, so he would have known about it. And contrary to what Ted had said the other night, I could well imagine she would welcome in, with open arms, a long-lost ex who showed up like a stray cat on her doorstep.
Of course, Kate had demonstrated a penchant for violent behavior, too, and she certainly would have been invited in as well. Then again, I was starting to have doubts about her as a suspect—especially now that it looked like she’d been telling the truth after all about the guy in the muscle car. And about not knowing the man in the photo.
But what about those two mystery men? It seemed unlikely that Letta would have let the guy in the photo into Gauguin after hours, but I couldn’t be sure. If he’d shown up with some apologetic story, she very well might have bought it and invited him in for some tea.
As for the man in the blue muscle car, it was becoming more and more clear that Letta had kept numerous secrets from everyone. For all I knew, he could be another one of her ex-lovers.
And speaking of lovers, there was Tony. I now knew he had enough of a violent streak to punch Javier in the nose, plus he’d also been a party to that tussle with the chef at the wake. And one thing for sure, he definitely had the knife skills to do the deed. I’d been impressed by how quickly and adeptly he’d eviscerated those fish.
Of course, if anyone was good with a knife, it was Javier. And not only was it his knife that had been used for the stabbing, but he was also known to drink green tea with Letta regularly after work. And to top it all off, he’d been the last known person to see her alive.
I leaned my head against my palms, thinking back to what Reuben had said about Letta comparing Javier to her dog. Humiliation can be a powerful emotion. Could I have been completely wrong about Javier all this time? As Eric had said, statistically speaking, the police did tend to be right when they got around to arresting someone for murder. The thought made me queasy.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It’s a little embarrassing being a lawyer who’s never been to the jail, so I was feeling self-conscious as I pulled into one of the two-hour spots in front of the large cement building. What if I did something dorky, like touch Javier (was that allowed?), and had to be chastised by the sheriff like some schoolgirl?
I pushed open the heavy glass door and found myself in a somewhat shabby waiting room that could have graced any number of government agencies. A vending machine stood against one wall, and there were benches and chairs along the others. Spying a woman sitting at a window with a sign above it saying “Reception,” I walked over, and she greeted me with a smile.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi. I’m here to see one of the, uh . . . inmates.” That was the right word, wasn’t it?
After a quick pause, during which I could tell she was sizing me up, she asked, “Are you an attorney?”
“Yes, I am.” I handed her my bar card and driver’s license.
“This says you’re inactive,” she said and started to hand the items back.
“I’ve only just gone active again and haven’t received my new card yet. But here, call this number, and they’ll confirm that I’m active.” I pointed to the member services phone number on the back of the bar card.
With a shrug, she took the card, rolled her office chair over to the desk across from the reception window, and picked up the phone. After talking for a couple minutes, she rolled back over to me. “Okay,” she said, keeping the card this time. “And who would you like to see?”
“Javier Ruiz.”
She found him on the computer. “Here,” she said and handed me a visitor’s badge to hang on my lapel. “It’ll be a couple minutes. One of the sheriffs will come out to get you.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I started to walk away, but she called me back.
“I’ll need to check your purse. And you’ll have to leave your keys and cell phone if you have one with you.”
“Oh, sorry.” I handed over my phone and keys, let her search my bag, and then wandered over to where a squat kiosk was sitting in the middle of the room. It took a minute, but I finally figured out that it was for depositing money to give to the inmates. The machine accepted credit cards as well as cash, the sign announced. Convenient.
Taking a seat by the window, I perused the stack of magazines sitting on the side table, curious as to what reading material one would find in the waiting room of a jail. There was a Newsweek, a Sports Illustrated, a Redbook, and at the bottom of the stack, one with the unexpected title of Lucky Kids. As I was flipping through its pages, reflecting that any kids who happened to be in the jail waiting room likely wouldn’t consider themselves to be all that lucky, a sheriff came out and said he was ready to take me on back. He was young, in his midtwenties, I guessed, and I saw that he had a yellow Taser in a holster on the front of his belt.
We passed through a double glass-door entry—the first one closing tightly before the second opened—and I followed the sheriff down a wide hallway. On our left was a row of little cubicles with phones and glass windows between them, but he didn’t stop there. Instead, he showed me into a larger room on the right with a wall made of glass that faced out toward the hallway.
“You been here before?” he asked.
“No, it’s my first time.”
“Okay.” He pointed to a metal box on the wall next to the door. “The one on the right is the call button for when you’re ready to leave.”
“What’s the other for?” I asked, indicating the red one on the left. “The panic button?”
He smiled. “You got it. It’ll just be a minute, and I’ll bring Mr. Ruiz in.” The sheriff closed the door, and I took a seat on one of the two red plastic chairs. There were no other furnishings. The room had a scuffed vinyl floor and white walls with an industrial-shade green trim. The plaster was cracked in spots and someone had scrawled “Marcus ♥ Trisha” to the right of my chair.
I started when the door opened again, and there was Javier in an orange jumpsuit with a brown T-shirt poking out from underneath. The words “XL Santa Cruz County Jail” were stenciled in black on his back and legs. I wondered why they hadn’t given him a smaller size. The clothes looked sack-like on his slight frame. As he shuffled in, my eyes were drawn to the backless, brown plastic sandals he was wearing
, which had a fake weave texture that reminded me of Mexican huaraches. I wondered if he, too, had noticed the resemblance.
He sat down in the other chair, and the sheriff left us alone.
“How you doing?”
Javier looked up at me. “How do you think I’m doing?” His face was drawn and looked pallid under the fluorescent lights.
“Yeah. Right.”
“So I don’t understand why they arrested me. Now, I mean. If they were gonna do it, why’d they wait so long?”
I told him about the fingerprint results, and he slumped in his chair. “That must be why they came by the restaurant again last week.”
“And that’s unfortunately not all,” I added. I explained about the toxicology report and that I thought the tea had probably been drugged. “So I’m afraid it doesn’t look good for you, Javier. You knew she liked to drink green tea after work, and they found tea cups at the scene. Not only that, but you were the last one there that night. And it was your knife.”
“But—”
“I’m not saying I think you did it. But the cops clearly think so.”
He leaned over, put his head in his hands, and started rocking his body back and forth in the chair. “So what are we going to do?” It was almost a moan.
I didn’t have an answer to this. Although I had lots of suspects for the murder, as of yet, I had no actual evidence or proof that any of them had done it.
“I don’t know, Javier,” I said, sighing deeply. “I really don’t. But you’ll be getting a lawyer appointed for you—one of the public defenders. Maybe their investigator can do a better job than I’ve been able to do.”
Javier sat up slowly, raising his head to look at me. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Sally. It’s wonderful, all you’ve been doing. I really appreciate it.”
“Yeah. Too bad it hasn’t done any good.” Useless, utterly ineffectual. That’s what I’ve been. Berating myself didn’t help, but it was maddening to see him sitting there like that and to feel so completely powerless. “Is there anyone you’d like me to get in touch with? Let them know what’s going on with you?”
He shook his head. “No, thanks.”
I realized then that I knew hardly anything about his private life—whether he had any relatives in the area, any close friends. “’Cause I could contact your family—”
“No,” he interrupted me. And then in a softer voice, “They’re all in Michoacán, anyway.” He sighed. “So what happens next? Can you get me out of here?”
I shook my head. “Not today, I’m afraid. You’ll be arraigned probably on Friday. That’s when they’ll officially charge you with the crime. And that’s also when you should be appointed your lawyer.”
“But I can get out if I pay the . . . what’s it called?” His voice was starting to have a frantic edge. “Right?”
“Bail. Yeah, probably. But I gotta tell you, Javier, it’s going to be like seven hundred fifty thousand dollars for your case. And you’d have to pay ten percent up front, nonrefundable, to get a bail bond—if they’d even give you a bond, that is. They’d most likely require some kind of security for such a large amount. You don’t own a house, do you?”
His body slumped, and he shook his head. “No.”
“Look, I’ll see what I can find out about getting bail for you. But we don’t need to deal with that right this second, since it’s going to be at least a couple days before you could get out in any event.”
As I said this, our eyes met, and I could tell we had both had the same thought: the restaurant.
I looked at my watch. It was a little after one. “You know anyone we can call to come in at a moment’s notice and cook tonight?” I asked Javier.
“Well, Reuben will be there anyway. He should be able to act as lead cook. Just call him to make sure he knows to get there early. And Tomás can move over to head line cook. He’s done it before.” Javier did some mental calculations. “Let’s see. That would mean Dave would have to help out with the garde manger, but I think he’s up to it. And Amy can help too, if she’s not too swamped with desserts. You’d still need one more person in the kitchen, though, and I don’t know who we could get at this late notice . . .” He was looking at me.
“No way.”
Javier shrugged. “It’s your restaurant. If you want to be one short, that’s your decision.”
“But I’ve never worked the hot line. All I’ve ever done is help out in the kitchen. It’d be a joke!” Now it was my turn to sound hysterical.
Javier just kept looking at me. If he hadn’t been sitting there in a jail interview room wearing a bright-orange jumpsuit, I swear he would have been enjoying this.
“Okay,” I finally said. “You win. But just for this one night. We’re finding another cook by tomorrow.”
***
“Fire table seven!” Brandon poked his head over the pickup counter and caught my eye. “And I’m still waiting on that Tahitian sea bass for table two, Sally.”
“I’m on it.” I dropped the shrimp I’d been counting out for an order of scampi in orange sauce back into the hotel pan and went to investigate the missing appetizer.
After leaving a morose-looking Javier at the jail with promises of visiting the next day, I’d called Solari’s to say I’d be missing in action again that night. I then headed directly over to Gauguin. Since Javier didn’t know Reuben’s number by heart and obviously didn’t have his phone with him, I’d have to get it from the list in Letta’s office. It was almost two o’clock by the time I got there, but fortunately Reuben picked up when I called and agreed to come in early and run the kitchen for the night.
“Actually, it will likely be for several nights,” I corrected myself, “or more. I don’t know how long Javier will be . . . unavailable at this point. But don’t worry, you’ll get compensated accordingly.”
“No problem,” Reuben said, no doubt pleased to hear this last bit. When I explained Javier’s staffing concept to him, however—in particular that I’d be the extra cook, at least for this one night, until a real one could be located—he’d sounded dubious.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to assure myself as much as him. “I’ve helped out cooking at Gauguin before.” Which was technically true, if a little misleading. But I had forgotten just how frenetic it could be in a restaurant kitchen, especially during a dinner rush like we were experiencing at this moment.
Back in the garde manger area, I found Dave putting the last touches on the Tahitian sea bass, arranging rice balls around the plate and garnishing the marinated fish with grated coconut and twisted slices of lime.
“Sorry,” he said as he handed it to me. “I’m totally in the weeds.” He looked harried, and his station was in a shambles. But for someone who usually just broke down chickens and chopped vegetables, I thought he was doing a fine job.
“No worries.” I rushed back to the pickup counter with the plate, tapped the bell, and called out, “Order up!” I then returned to my shrimp.
As I leaned over to check the thermostat on the deep fryer, a voice boomed out: “Behind you!” Tomás, bearing a small, round stainless-steel container, squeezed between me and the long work table running down the middle of the room. He set the container down near Reuben, who nodded thanks without taking his eyes off the four sauté pans he had going at the far end of the range.
I watched as Reuben picked up a pan in each hand and simultaneously flipped their contents. Reaching into the container Tomás had fetched him, he added a handful of dried apricots to each order, let them brown for a minute, and then deglazed the pans with a healthy glug from one of the bottles sitting behind him on the work table. Ah, seared pork chops with apricot brandy sauce.
A ding from the deep fryer brought me out of my reverie. Giving a final, quick stir to my batter, I started dipping shrimp and dropping them, one by one, into the hot oil. Once they were all bubbling nicely in the deep fryer, I grabbed a pair of deep plates from the warming oven and set about dishing up
two orders of coq au vin au Gauguin for the deuce at table seven.
Just another average night in the restaurant business.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Waking up at eight AM is not a pleasant experience when you didn’t go to sleep until almost two the night before. I’d actually gotten home at around midnight but was too wired from the night’s work to go straight to bed. Although cooking in a high-end restaurant can be crazy exhausting, it can also be a total rush. That feeling of synergy, when the whole kitchen is in perfect sync, like a finely calibrated machine, everyone at their different stations, elbows practically bumping in the cramped quarters.
And when the night is done—the last order sent out to the dining room, the perishables wrapped up and stowed away in the walk-in fridge, the pots washed and the rangetop wiped clean—you’re left with a big-time buzz, as if shot up with some kind of strong stimulant.
So it takes a while to unwind. Alcohol helps and is commonly consumed by restaurant workers after hours. After closing that night at Gauguin, I hung out with the staff, drinking beer and shots of tequila till about eleven thirty. But when I got home, I was still too hyped to go to bed, so I channel-surfed for an hour and a half and had another beer.
This lifestyle is all well and fine if you’re young and if you don’t have to show up for your next shift until four the next afternoon. But I am no longer in my twenties and was supposed to be at Solari’s at ten thirty.
Groggy and slightly hungover (I should have skipped at least that last beer), I decided to stop by the jail before heading to work. I doubted Javier would be sleeping in, even if they let the inmates do that, and I figured he’d be thankful for the visit.
He looked a little better than the day before. The shock of yesterday’s arrest and incarceration seemed to have been replaced by resignation. But I could tell he was depressed. Who wouldn’t be?
“Well, Reuben did a good job as sous-chef,” I said, trying to sound cheerful as he shuffled into the interview room once again in his soft plastic slippers. Were they purposely made backless in order to discourage thoughts of fleeing?
