The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier

by J. Michael Orenduff

  “So you took restaurant money that should have gone to Molinero or the investors, and you used it to pay your friends.”

  “They are not my friends.” I drank some of my margarita. “Well, some of them are.” I took another sip. “You know what’s really weird? I was reading last night about Escoffier embezzling money and supplies from the Savoy hotel, and I find out the very next day that I’ve been doing the same thing.”

  “What did Escoffier do with the stuff he took?”

  “Evidently he used some of it to support his mistress in Seaside.”

  A mischievous smile crept across her lips. “And you gave some of it to your mistress.”

  “Maria is not my mistress. We’ve never so much as kissed.”

  “Try telling that to the judge when it comes out you spent the night in her apartment.”

  I signaled for Angie.

  “Your glass is half full,” said Susannah.

  “It feels half empty,” I said, “like me.”

  I asked Angie to bring me some aspirin. I know you’re not supposed to take medicine with alcohol, but it sure is easier to wash it down with a margarita than with a glass of water.

  “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

  “It’s the restaurant syndrome, Hubie.”

  “Restaurant syndrome? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Maybe you know it by its original name, le syndrome de restaurant.”

  I groaned. “Please, no more French words and phrases.”

  “But that’s it. That’s the syndrome. You start working in a restaurant, and you have to learn all those French terms. It begins to affect your thinking, like the twins thing.”

  “The twins thing?”

  “Yeah. You know, like how twins have this special language that makes it easy for them to communicate with each other, but it messes them up when they try to deal with normal people. Restaurant workers are like that. We may start out normal, but after you begin using words like prix fixe, hors-d’œuvres, à la carte, escargots, and raison d'être, you get a little crazy.”

  “Raison d'être?”

  “I think it’s a raisin soufflé.”

  “No. I think the phrase for a raisin soufflé is au courant,” I said.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “it affects your judgment, and pretty soon you’re doing crazy things like actually eating snails because you think of them as escargots and don’t realize they’re just slimy snails. And the next thing you know, you’re funneling money from the restaurant to your personal account.”

  “I didn’t ‘funnel money’. I was just trying to keep the place in business.”

  “I could see the changes come over you, Hubie. I noticed it when you called me up there to waitress. You weren’t yourself. Taking charge, showing leadership, inventing dishes.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  She laughed. “Admit it, that is not exactly you.”

  “You’re right. But I really invented only one dish, the schnitzel con tres chiles. Rafael invented all three appetizers. Even Miss Gladys contributed with Tafelspitz Sangre de Cristo.”

  “I can’t imagine what Alain thought about that one.”

  “He said it had a certain Je ne sais quoi.”

  “See. There you go again with the French. I hear that all the time, Hubie. What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know what.”

  “Really? I thought you would know.”

  “I do know. It means I don’t know what.”

  “If you don’t know what, how can you say you know what it means?”

  I raised my glass. “To le syndrome de restaurant.”

  53

  “Larceny.”

  Layton Kent puffed the word out like a smoke ring, closing his mouth behind it lest it should float back on him. “Unsavory,” he said.

  “I’m innocent.”

  He peered out over what must surely have been the largest martini glass in the world. The curve of its flared cone rose almost a foot from the thin base.

  “All my clients are innocent, Hubert.” He gave me a thin smile. “And when they are not, I make them so.”

  The waiter had brought the glass straight from the freezer. The frost evaporated while the gin and vermouth were stirred.

  “No olive?” I asked after the waiter departed.

  Kent’s stare conveyed his disdain of olives. We were at his table overlooking the eighteenth hole. The golf course was beautiful with its rolling contours and assortment of deciduous trees, few of which were native to New Mexico. Their leaves were gone, of course, it being December. The grass was yellow. The tawny scene was relieved by the green piñon and ponderosa pines. The sun had warmed the air enough that the scenery was despoiled by old gentlemen in stretch-waist pants being pushed to their limits. Both the men and the pants. I recalled that Will Rogers said, “Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it's called golf.”

  The three ounces of gin and one once of vermouth looked lost in the flower-vase-sized glass. Maybe the idea was to make the portion seem abstemious. He took a sip, placed the glass on the table, and read the papers I’d brought.

  “As I have come to expect, you acted incautiously, but not feloniously. The prosecution will no doubt attempt to represent that diversion of the proceeds to the staff was unlawful enrichment, a claim without which they have no case. However, the investors could have harbored no hope of gain had Molinero closed the restaurant as he planned to do. Thus, keeping it open did not damage the investors, and had the possibility of benefitting them.” He looked up at me. “There is, however, one problem. Looking at the numbers you have presented me, five thousand dollars seems to be missing.”

  “I took five thousand dollars out of the ten I took to Santa Fe on Friday because I had used five thousand of my own money to pay the staff on Thursday.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the credit card charges we took in on Wednesday needed to clear, so I made an advance to the restaurant.”

  “But there is no indication of a withdrawal of five thousand dollars from either of your bank accounts on any of those days.”

  “That’s because I didn’t get it from the bank. I had at my house.”

  His eyes widened slightly. “You had five thousand dollars in cash at your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “In my secret hiding place.”

  “Where did the money come from?” He held up a palm before I could answer. “If the money was from an illegal source, do not answer my question.”

  “It wasn’t illegal. It was from the sale of an old Laguna pot.”

  “Was the buyer given a receipt?”

  Oops. “No. I was in Santa Fe. Tristan was tending the shop.”

  “Was the buyer known to him?”

  “No. Is this going to be a problem?”

  He took a sip of his martini, then closed his eyes and seemed to be daydreaming. But I’ve seen that pose before and realize that Layton never daydreams. “You did make an entry into your revenue log of the five thousand as soon as you returned from Santa Fe and learned that your nephew had made the sale.”

  “Well, it was sort of hectic going back and forth to—”

  “That was not a question, Hubert. It was a statement that you did make an entry into your revenue log of the five thousand as soon as you returned from Santa Fe and learned that your nephew had made the sale.”

  “Oh. Right. I did.”

  “And you dated it properly.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you put it in your store safe.”

  “Actually, I put it in—”

  “Your store safe.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Very good. ‘Secret hiding place’ is not a phrase one wants to utter in court. You do understand what duces tecum means, do you not?”

  I started to say it sounded like a pair of twos had won a poker hand, but remembered Layton’s
sense of humor. Or, more accurately, his lack thereof.

  “Make sure you bring all the records,” he directed. “And make sure all the things you have told me today are in them.”

  The waiter arrived and asked Layton if the gentleman would be joining him for lunch. I looked at the entrance to see if someone was waiting for permission to come to Layton’s table. Then I realized the gentleman was me. Or I. If I were truly a gentleman, I guess I would have known which pronoun to use.

  Layton shook his head, and I left.

  54

  The hearing on Thursday was brief and my participation even briefer.

  It felt like the meeting of some secret society like the Masons or Skull and Bones. I figured it would be in a big courtroom, but we were in a small hearing room instead. A guard of some sort stood by the door and another one next to another door behind a raised desk which I assumed was probably called a bench. They wore sidearms. I couldn’t imagine why. Aside from the two guards, there were only five people in the room, a young lady named Rincon from the District Attorney’s Office, her assistant, Layton, one of his paralegals, and me. None of us looked like violent felons, although Ms. Rincon did wear a rather stern expression which became positively severe when I smiled at her.

  The guard next to the bench yelled, “All rise.”

  The judge was a wizened little fellow with stringy hair and a face full of broken veins. He eyed the two steps to the bench as if they were the north face ascent to Everest. After perhaps twenty seconds during which he seemed to be debating whether to make the climb, he hiked up his robe with his left hand, placed his right one on the bench for support and slowly mounted the steps.

  He took his chair and mumbled for us to be seated. Then he directed Layton and Rincon to approach the bench. They whispered among themselves for ten minutes, but I wouldn’t have understood them even had they been audible because they were speaking legalese.

  My nerves had begun to fray that morning when I put on my suit. Nothing good ever happens when you’re wearing a suit. Now I was in a room being guarded by two guys with guns, and an aged drunk was going to decide my fate based on a conversation which, for all I knew, was an example of speaking in tongues.

  I was beginning to hyperventilate. The phrase, ‘the wheels of justice’, sprang to mind. I remembered the saying that those wheels grind exceedingly slow. I felt like I was being dragged into that mill to be ground up, like corn being ground into meal between two heavy stones.

  Then, out of the miasma of irrational dread, came a flicker of reason. I focused on it until it brightened into the light of understanding. I knew who killed Barry Stiles and I knew why. I figured the killer had an accomplice. I had a hunch who it was but wasn’t certain. I feared others might be in danger.

  55

  The judge took the matter under advisement. Layton asked that I be allowed to remain out of custody and under my own recognizance. Ms. Rincon made no objection. Maybe smiling at her was not a mistake.

  I almost wished I’d been sent to jail so that I wouldn’t have had to get up at five the next morning and drive to Santa Fe.

  I parked a few blocks away so that no one would see the Bronco near the restaurant. I was happy to find the locks had not been changed. The building was quiet and dark, but I tiptoed around just to make certain I was alone. I would have embarked on this mission after leaving court, but I knew the place would be full of staff preparing for the dinner rush. There were too many late night callers to try it under cover of darkness. Early morning is definitely the best time to do a B & E at a restaurant. No one is ever around. Susannah had told me once that B & E is what they call breaking and entering in detective fiction. I had even learned how to loid a lock from a mystery she insisted I read.

  That wouldn’t work on the door I wanted to open. Its deadbolt could be moved only with a key. But the top half of the door had a window through which I had seen Molinero sitting at his desk the day I sought his approval of my charger design and asked him how he kept his office so clean because I wondered what Scruggs was doing in the office and how he had gained entry.

  I knew how I was going to gain entry – through that window. Not a good method if you wanted to conceal the break-in, but I had no reason to do that. I wasn’t entering as a thief. I was looking for evidence. If I found any, I was planning to carry it away in my brief case. But first I would have to make room for it by removing the roll of duct tape, the two suction cups, and the glass cutter. You can probably figure out what I did with the window, so I won’t bother to spell it out for you.

  I had never done it before, but it worked perfectly. I carried the taped glass by the two suction cups and placed it on one of the work stations. I lifted a chair through the space where the pane had been and put it down on the office side of the door. I placed a second chair on my side of the door and stood on it. I lifted one leg through the window and down onto the inside chair. Then I bent forward and swung my torso to the inside. I was now straddling the bottom of the window with one foot on each chair.

  There was, of course, a half-inch ridge of glass around the opening because the cutter wouldn’t snug up completely against the frame. I had coated that ridge liberally with duct tape to avoid performing an accidental vasectomy during this part of the operation.

  Had I been even an inch taller, I don’t think I could have made it. But once my body was on the office side, the rest was easy. I brought my other leg through and stepped down to the office floor.

  I spent the next hour going through Molinero’s desk. I found a set of books and – for the first time – gave thanks for having studied accounting. After examining the ledgers, I realized there had to be another set of books. But they were not in the desk.

  I walked to the safe and eyed its massive door. Loiding was even less of an option than it had been with the double cylinder door lock. Nor was there a window to cut. I wondered if I could drill the lock out. Go to a hardware store, purchase a huge electric drill with some sort of hardened steel bit or maybe one covered with diamonds and just drill through the door. I quickly dismissed that idea. Using dynamite was dismissed even more quickly. If I detonated enough dynamite to open that safe, I’d have to be a mile away with a remote control in order not to blow myself to bits.

  A crazy thought came to me – maybe it was open. I grasped the big handle and pulled. I pushed it up and down. Well, I did say it was a crazy idea.

  I moved the dial ever so slightly and listened for a click. I don’t know why. It just seemed like something to try. I got down on my knees and put my ear to the metal. I rotated the dial slowly through each of its numbers. The only thing I heard was the waves-hitting-the-beach noise you hear when you cover your ear.

  I stared at the safe and thought about Bing Crosby. He died when I was in my early teens, but I’m a fan of the music of my parents’ generation – the era of crooners and big bands. I remembered a line from one of his songs:

  A sentimental crook

  With a touch that lingers

  In his sandpapered fingers

  The sentimental crook was Jimmy Valentine, the safecracker immortalized by William Sydney Porter in a short story titled, A Retrieved Reformation. Valentine’s sandpapered fingers were so sensitive he could feel the clicks that revealed the combination as he turned the tumblers.

  I rubbed my fingers against the low loop carpet. Not exactly sandpaper, but it did make them feel sensitive. I laid my hand gently on the dial and turned it slowly. I felt nothing. What an idiot I am, I said to myself. If people could open safes that easily, what would be the purpose of having one? You can’t loid or drill or sandpaper-finger your way in. You have to have the combination.

  I was famished. I’m not used to skipping breakfast. I returned to the kitchen by reversing the moves I had used to pass through the window into the office. I found some sautéed beef tips and microwaved them. There were no tortillas, so I put the beef between two slices of bread. I found a white plastic tub labeled ‘jalapeñ
os’ and took it and the sandwich back to the office. I slipped through the window with ease. Having mastered the moves, I could now do it even with a sandwich in one hand and a plastic tub in the other.

  Unfortunately, the tub turned out to contain just vinegar and jalapeño juice. The actual chiles were gone. I took a sip. The liquid was acidic and hot. But it was useless because pouring it on the sandwich would have made the bread soggy. The sandwich was too plain and dry to eat. After a few bites, I rolled it in a paper napkin and tossed it in the trash.

  I looked for the combination. It wasn’t on a piece of tape stuck under a drawer. It wasn’t in Molinero’s daily planner. It wasn’t in his files under ‘C’ for combination. I went back through the books looking for numbers that had nothing to do with accounting. I went through his rolodex and found some numbers that weren’t in telephone format. One read, 234587 Cerrillos Road. Another read, Hansen Wholesale #4952. There was a heavy three-hole punch with the number 234332 taped underneath.

  I arranged the numbers I’d found into possible safe combinations: 23-45-87, 4-9-5-2, 23-43-32 and so forth. I tried all the combinations and the permutations I could think of. In the back of my mind, I knew I was on a fool’s errand, but irrational hope kept whispering to me.

  The next voice I heard was not whispering.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I turned to see Molinero glaring at me though the window.

  “I was checking to see if the safe was open,” I temporized. “Fortunately, it’s not, so I guess whoever broke in wasn’t able to get into the safe.”

  A slight furrowing of the brow indicated he might buy it, so I continued. “I came back to see if I could find my watch, but when I came in, I saw your window glass had been removed. My first thought was a break-in. But maybe you’re just having new glass installed.”

  I know it was lame, but it was the best I could do on the spur of the moment.