I wound my way through the clusters of women, hoping to overhear something that would be of interest to Vanessa. Almost everyone was talking about their beauty preparations for the calendar photo shoot, except one pair boasting about their cherubs’ achievements at the Frederick Academy and another who said something about a gun. The last made me pause, but their voices were hushed and I couldn’t pick up any more without being obvious about it.
Before entering the bustle of the downstairs kitchen, I stepped outside for a moment and dragged in lungfuls of clean air. It was nearing dusk, but the rose gardens were artfully illuminated by night lights. I admired the sight while breathing deeply to refresh my mind and sense of smell before performing the tasting. For good measure, I buried my nose in the crook of my arm. It was a technique professional perfumers used to bring their olfactory sense back to its normal baseline, and one of the reasons Shades used low-scented beauty products.
In the kitchen, today’s appetizers were soft-shell crab, heirloom tomato and pancetta ravioli, beet, walnut, and goat’s feta salad, or a seafood velouté. I opted for the velouté, which from what I could see was just a fancy word for white sauce, because it would be possible to taste without leaving obvious marks on the presentation. That and I didn’t feel like salad.
I tasted the velouté carefully. The scallops, shrimp, and oysters were fresh and tender, and the white sauce was the perfect blend of creamy, salty, and tart. It crossed my mind that if Connor and I didn’t work out, I should see if the chef was single.
I dismissed the idea seconds later of course. While I had, on occasion, allowed my stomach to overrule my brain, I liked to think I was smart enough not to let it dictate my love life.
In addition to the obvious ingredients, I could taste lemon juice, dry vermouth, fish sauce, and at least four different fresh herbs. I wanted to eat more, but I’d already established it was clear of poisons.
As I carried it up the stairs and navigated my way through the women milling around the ballroom, I was grateful my years as a barista had prepared me for the challenge. Until a jostle to the back of my elbow sent a wave of that delicious velouté slopping down my shirtfront.
“Isobel Avery, is that you?” said a voice that was unpleasantly familiar. “What a shame. You seem to have spilled something.”
I turned slowly to delay the moment of our reacquaintance for a few meager seconds. “What are you doing here?”
Emily Lin flicked her long black hair away from her lovely oval face and eyed my chest where the warm, creamy fish sauce was seeping through to my skin. “Same as you, I’d bet. Only I’m doing a better job.”
Yep, that was the Emily I knew and disliked. She’d gone through Shade training with me, and the two of us had been top of the class. Instead of bringing us together, it had turned her into the closest thing I’d ever had to an arch nemesis. Ultra-competitive, she’d been determined to beat me at every test, and she wasn’t afraid to play dirty to do it.
“That must be why the Taste Society chose me to protect the WECS Club president, Vanessa Madison,” I said. “Who are you here for?”
A frown marred Emily’s forehead, confirming my hope she was working for a lower-ranking client.
“Anyway,” I continued. “I’d better be off. You know how the Taste Society doesn’t like fraternizing among Shades.” I pushed past her and retreated down the stairs.
4
My feet were killing me by the time I got home. Why I had to dress up and wear heels when I was supposed to be invisible anyway was beyond my understanding.
I’d cleaned my shirt as best as I could under the circumstances and then borrowed an apron from the waitstaff to cover the mess, but I could still smell the seafood velouté. And while it had been delicious to eat, no one wants to smell like a fish market.
I stripped the offending garment off only to find that the scent had soaked into my skin like a nasty perfume. Great. Looks like I’d need to have yet another shower today. I’d have to go to a pharmacy and get eye drops as well. I’d never stared, too worried to blink, for so long in my life.
I was grateful that my housemate Oliver was away in England. He was good company, but sometimes nothing beat being alone. Well, alone with a cat, I amended when Meow wound her lithe, tiger-striped body around my ankles. She’d probably been drawn by the fishy odor. I picked her up and hugged her to my chest anyway. “You and I are going to have the best night tonight. I’ll get you some food, jump in the shower, and then it’s you, me, bed, and a book, what do you say?” She head-butted my chin in agreement.
When I felt the rasp of her tongue on my seafood-scented skin, I put her down and rummaged for the can opener. Someone knocked on the door.
Damn. I threw the stinky blouse back over my head and answered it.
“Finally you’re home,” Etta said. “You need to come with me.”
“I need to go to bed,” I corrected.
She put a hand on one hip and gave me the devil eye. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Poor Abe is curled up in some jail cell while his wife and daughter are crying themselves to sleep with worry, and you need to go to bed. I don’t think so. Not until you’ve looked his daughter in the eye and explained to her why you won’t be helping bring her daddy home.”
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling. Ugh, I needed to get a broom out to get rid of those cobwebs. “This is blackmail you know.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door. “I know.”
I wasn’t a complete pushover. I fed Meow first.
Sitting in the passenger seat of Etta’s 1970s, buttercup-yellow Dodge Charger, I closed my eyes. In part because they were so tired, and in part because her driving made me nervous.
“Now, Izzy, Mr. Black’s wife and daughter are… special. I need you to be on your best behavior.”
My eyelids sprang open. I’d never received a warning to behave from Etta. Of the pair of us, she was far more likely to act badly, and almost every conversation we had included her telling me to let loose, get a greater sense of adventure, and live a little.
“No matter how you feel about Abe, you need to keep it to yourself,” she continued. “To these two, he’s their adored, loving father and husband. And you better keep the lid on it tight. Joy, that’s his daughter, is a real smart cookie. Real smart. You know she earned herself a scholarship to the swanky Frederick Academy? She’ll pick up on any hints you drop.”
Wasn’t that where Vanessa’s daughter went? If so, the scholarship must’ve been worth thousands. I felt chastened and hoped I could hide my feelings adequately. “Got it.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes before Etta broke it again. “I don’t know why you hold such a grudge anyway. Abe never actually hurt you.”
Only because I ran away as fast as I could. And then made a bargain with him through a window with a Taser between us.
Okay, he’d been apologetic about it, and most bruisers probably wouldn’t have struck a bargain with me, let alone honored it. But it’s hard to think well of someone after the terror of being chased down the street, certain you’re about to have your bones broken one by one. I’d always disliked jogging, but now I was scarred for life, so it would be his fault if I got fat too.
Even pushing my feelings about Mr. Black aside, this whole thing reeked of being a bad idea. It was one thing to assist Connor—a professional investigator who had agreements with the police—to investigate a case. Especially one I had personal involvement in. But it was quite another to work without any professional guidance or approval and paired with an amateur septuagenarian sleuth who was entirely too fond of adventure and her Glock.
I shuddered to imagine what Police Commander Hunt would have to say about it should he find out. He’d put me in handcuffs for interference quicker than Meow could catch a cockroach. Not that there was any reason for him to find out, but still. And if Mr. Black didn’t murder the victim, then someone else did. Someone who wouldn’t appreciate us poking around.
Someone who had a track record of murdering people they didn’t appreciate.
Connor was right. “Absolutely not” should be my answer. I spent the rest of the trip steeling myself to stay strong no matter what Etta had planned for me.
Mr. Black’s home was, to put it nicely, a pile of crap. It was a small, squat building in Vermont Square that needed a new roof, a new fence, and a new coat of paint. A beat-up, maroon Dodge minivan from a former century sat out front.
Contrary to Etta’s prediction, Mr. Black’s wife and daughter were not crying in their beds, but they both had anxiety pinching their faces despite their efforts to hide it. Mrs. Black, or Hallie as she’d asked me to call her, was in a wheelchair, and their thirteen-year-old daughter Joy had a black eye and a bandaged wrist. For a brief second I wondered whether it was for show to garner my sympathy. Then I shoved the notion away, ashamed to have thought it. As if my scanty detective skills were worth the effort.
“Hallie and I will put the kettle on,” Etta said. “Why don’t you let Joy show you what she’s been working at?”
Joy gave me a shy smile. “Did you wanna see?” She was small and skinny and seemed to be made up of all arms and legs. The exact opposite of her father. She wore her hair in a tight braid that was too severe for her thin face and large brown eyes. Although now at the end of a long day, some less cooperative tendrils had slipped free.
“I’d love to,” I said.
It was impossible not to appreciate the differences between Vanessa’s daughter and Joy. I hoped the posh school wouldn’t tarnish her sweetness.
She led me out to the backyard and switched on the outdoor lights. There appeared to be some sort of obstacle course set up on the dried-out lawn. There were a bunch of solid-looking platforms of varying sizes and angles made from packing crates, a sturdy picnic bench, several bars including an old swing set without a swing, and a ten-foot section of wall mounted to a tree.
“Watch this.” Joy peeled off her faded purple jacket and sprinted at the first bar which she leaped up and grabbed, then swung, twisted, and launched herself onto a nearby platform like an acrobat. Except instead of sticking the landing and taking a bow, she rolled with the momentum and leaped onto the next platform, then threw herself at the wall, which she managed to run up in defiance of gravity. She used the wall to change direction and then ran in a series of precise leaps from the picnic bench to several of the platforms, followed by a bar that I would’ve slipped off even without her speed, and finished with another acrobatic flip.
I clapped as she landed and jogged over to me, her face flushed.
“It’s called parkour,” she explained. “It might seem crazy, but there’s real strategy and technique and discipline involved—like a non-combative martial art. I love it!”
“Is that how you hurt your wrist?”
“Uh, yeah. Normally I’d do more swings and stuff, except I’m meant to be resting the sprain. But it’s not that dangerous if you don’t do it on rooftops and that kinda thing. Mom and Dad let me practice since it’s the one type of physical exercise I’m interested in. It challenges my mind and my body at the same time, and I don’t like team sports or anything. Well, I’m pretty sure. I’m not that popular at school, so I wouldn’t get picked anyway.” The last admission had her gaze dropping to the ground, her scuffed-up sneaker playing in the dirt.
“Well I’m impressed,” I said. “What did you say it was called?”
Her eyes lit up again. “Parkour! Did you know it was developed from military obstacle course training?”
After Joy finished enlightening me about this whole new world of exercise, we returned to the kitchen for the promised cups of tea.
“He hates that job,” Hallie told me when we’d all settled around the dining table. Like her kitchen, she was small and neat, used to making the most of what she’d been given. And she believed her husband would never have been arrested if it wasn’t for his profession as a bruiser. “You know the first time he had to hurt someone, he came home and cried?”
I felt a stab of disbelief. “Then why does he do it?”
Her voice cracked. “For us. He does it for his family. He got laid off from his factory job at General Motors three years ago and couldn’t find another position. He applied for anything and everything, but twelve months passed, and we couldn’t remortgage the house anymore. We sold it, moved here, and still couldn’t put food on the table. When the debt collectors came knocking, they made a comment about taking Joy as collateral, and he threw them out on their asses and sent them running home with their tails between their legs. Their boss offered him the job.”
“Mom, swear jar.” Joy pushed a battered porcelain pig onto the table using her one good hand. The parkour demonstration must have taken a toll on her injured wrist.
Hallie tearfully pulled a coin out of her pocket and popped it in. “Sorry, honey.”
Joy patted her mom’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay. They’ll get him out of this, won’t you?”
She turned her wide eyes to me, and I had the distinct impression she’d figured out what was going on and was playing me like a fool. Nevertheless, it worked.
“All right. Tell me about the case.”
It was Joy who answered. “Dad was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr. Bergström, that’s his boss, told him to go beat the victim up. So he did. The coroner placed the time of death about an hour later. A nosy old man across the road saw Dad leaving, so there’s an eyewitness and his DNA on the vic. But it doesn’t prove he did it. They don’t have a motive or a murder weapon. It’s all circumstantial. And Dad would never kill someone. He doesn’t enjoy hurting people, but the police like him for it anyway. They’re prejudiced because of his job, but that’s wrong. That’s not what the law says. But humans are imperfect, so we need to accept it and then convince them otherwise.”
I heard my teeth click together as I shut my gaping jaw.
“You must think I’m crazy to let my daughter know all this,” Hallie said, wiping her eyes again. “But when she’s determined, I can’t stop her from finding anything out, and I’d prefer she learned it in openness and safety rather than whatever nefarious means she’d cook up otherwise.” She sent a fond, weary look at Joy.
Joy’s eyes were still fastened on me.
Fool that I am, I found myself saying, “We can’t promise anything, but we’ll do what we can to make sure the right person goes to prison for this.”
My last thought as my head hit the pillow was how I was going to break the news to Connor.
5
It turned out that I didn’t have to work out how to tell Connor. At least not straight away. He texted me to say he wouldn’t be able to make our afternoon date.
I was disappointed, but it was the nature of our jobs. Both of us were essentially on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which was why the last two days—Christmas, which we’d spent with his family, and our lazy afternoon yesterday—had been so special. Even if they did involve a poisoning, an intimidating new client, and a lack of any real conversation.
I booted up Oliver’s laptop with my morning cup of tea and Googled the murder victim’s name. Michael Watts was the CEO of a lucrative wholesale distribution company that sold sporting equipment to retailers all over the country. The company had been founded by Michael’s grandfather and then passed down the family line until Michael was in charge.
A deeper search revealed that two warehouses had shut down in the last year, suggesting that it wasn’t going so well. Maybe that’s how he’d racked up enough debt for someone to send Mr. Black after him. He could be living beyond his means to avoid public humiliation or acquiring cash off the books to buoy up the company. But who had lent him the money? And why would they hire a bruiser to scare him into repaying the debt only to kill him an hour later?
His corporate profile showed a handsome, athletic-looking man with a bleached-white smile. He’d won a local golf tournament last year, and hi
s name also came up alongside various sport-related donations or sponsorships.
I went to his Facebook page next. His privacy settings didn’t allow me to see much, but there was a photo of him, arm slung around a dainty brunette, and a teenager I assumed was their son. A few minutes later, I’d managed to find both of their profiles too. His wife, Nicole Watts, was a member of the WECS Club, and his son, also named Michael, went to the Frederick Academy like every other WECS Club member’s child I’d heard about. I guessed that the club either recruited most of its members from mothers at the Frederick Academy, or its members were so competitive that sending their children to one of the most expensive schools in America was par for the course.
Out of interest, I looked up the annual tuition. Then I wished I hadn’t. It was forty grand a year. Per child.
That was even more concerning when I converted it to Australian dollars.
If I was lucky, the links between the WECS Club and Frederick Academy could work in my favor. Maybe I’d overhear some useful gossip while eavesdropping for Vanessa. Or maybe the WECS Club women were so self-absorbed that the murder of someone they knew would garner only fleeting attention in the lead up to the Scandalous Cause calendar.
The news coverage of Michael Watts’s death didn’t say much beyond he’d been found shot in his home Christmas Eve and that police were investigating. I wondered which unfortunate detective had gotten the Christmas shift. There was another article from last night mentioning that they had a suspect in custody. It named the suspect as Abraham Black, but there were no helpful details illuminating why the police believed he’d done it and whether they’d explored any other avenues.
Amateur sleuths in stories always had chatty contacts at the local police station, but the one policeman I knew personally was Police Commander Hunt—the top-secret LAPD liaison assigned to the Taste Society. After working with him on the last case, I was pretty sure he’d prefer to shoot me rather than help me. He’d certainly throw my ass in jail if he found out I was interfering with one of his cases. I knew because he’d done it before.
Poison is the New Black: (Bonus story: Taste of Christmas) (An Eat, Pray, Die Humorous Mystery Book 3) Page 5
