Out of the Frying Pan

by Robin Allen

  That was the second time I had seen Bjorn become animated at the sight of Cory. What was it he said in the storage pantry when Cory escaped him? He was hard to pin down. And then Bjorn refused to answer my perfectly innocent question about why he wanted to talk to him. I thought that was a mystery for another time until Bjorn twisted up a handful of the back of Cory’s T-shirt.

  Eleven

  Cory wrenched out of Bjorn’s grasp and spun around to face him, using the mountain of white linens as a physical buffer between him and his attacker. What on earth was so important that Bjorn refused to wait until after the party to talk to him? They both lived and worked at the farm and saw each other more regularly than a married couple. I doubted Bjorn wanted to know if Cory wanted his breakfast eggs scrambled or poached, or to ask after the health of the pumpkin crop for their Great Gourd preserves.

  I needed to get close enough to hear, yet not so close that they would notice, but that was impossible due to the din of inane conversations that had increased with free alcohol consumption. “I love how green this grass is!” “Shazam! I poured beer in my wine and made it fizzy!” “What do Cornhuskers taste like?”

  I wouldn’t hear a syllable unless I stood right next to them.

  I have seen enough arguments—had enough arguments—to know that the one who picks the fight is the most invested and therefore the least aware of who is listening and taking notes. Also, Bjorn couldn’t see me over that mound of linen, so I stood with my back to Cory and pretended to be interested in Betelgeuse and Rigel in the night sky.

  “Look,” Cory was saying, “I did what you made me do, and it didn’t work.”

  “Then who voted for her?” Bjorn insisted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You better not be lying to me, kid. You know I still got—”

  “Bjorn, I told you I don’t know! And now everything’s all messed up. Just leave me alone!”

  Cory took a step back and we connected rump to rump. “Excuse me,” he said, not seeing me as he escaped with his dirty white burden.

  Which left me standing in front of Bjorn, but he didn’t notice me because he was trying to set Cory on fire with the laser beams of his hateful gaze.

  “Hey, Bjorn,” I said. “Enjoying yourself?”

  He grunted, then turned to me with residual combustion in his blue eyes. I admit I flinched, but I didn’t back off. The first two times I had talked to Bjorn, I was a nosy party guest and had tried to be nice. But my friend was dead and the time had come for me to be a nosy investigator, which meant that I was done with nice. “What were you and Cory talking about? What vote? The one involving Dana?”

  Dana’s name acted as an accelerant, making his eyes burn hotter, but he didn’t answer me.

  “Why are you so against Dana being president of the Friends?”

  He cocked his head. “How is this your business?”

  “Simple curiosity,” I said. “Like I’m curious whether you’ve solved that fly problem Valdes keeps citing you for.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.” He picked up the empty soda can, crushed it in his hand, then rabbited through the grass without speaking with anyone else.

  Jamie was still conferring with Randy at the bar, but he had stayed tuned in to me and Bjorn. The next time he glanced over at me, I took an imaginary sip from an imaginary glass—the universally recognized mime for bring me a drink—then stationed myself by the back hedge to wait for him.

  He joined me a couple of minutes later.

  “Where’s my wine?” I asked.

  “Wine?”

  I repeated the sipping motion.

  “Oh, I thought you were telling me your mouth hurts,” he said. “It’s looking a little better, but it could just be the light.”

  I said, “Bjorn killed Dana,” at the same time Jamie said, “Randy’s acting guilty,” then we both said, “Really?” and then, “You first.”

  Jamie Sherwood is the only male in the civilized world who is not a fan of the Three Stooges and was already frustrated with this mild hijinks.

  “Go,” I said.

  Before we even interviewed our suspects, Randy had the most reasons for wanting Dana out of the way, so I expected Jamie to tick off ten fingers’ worth of facts he had gathered to support his assertion, but he said, “Randy’s hiding something.”

  “The fact that he put the peroxide in Dana’s cup?” I asked.

  “He’s acting nervous.”

  “Because he knows we’re onto him?”

  “No, when I walked up to the bar, Randy was telling Colin he wanted him to finish working the dinner on his own so he could leave. Colin was having none of it, saying he was too new and didn’t want to be left alone.”

  “So because Randy wants to leave early, you think he killed Dana?” I asked. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to compete with me—my perp is guiltier than your perp.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s all the stuff we know from before—the dirty campaign, the personal attacks between him and Dana, the Friends loss.”

  “Did you uncover anything new?” I asked.

  “Okay, why did your perp do it?”

  “Uncross your arms and be nice,” I said. “Bjorn is super ticked that Dana was elected president of the Friends.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea, but he cornered Cory and wanted to know if he voted for her. Cory said he didn’t and didn’t know who did.”

  “So because Bjorn is upset about the Friends election results, you think he killed Dana?”

  I ignored his sarcasm. “How could one vote make a difference? It’s not like a real presidential election where the popular vote decides the Electoral College votes.”

  “That’s why it doesn’t make sense that the election would rankle Bjorn,” Jamie said. “Dana being president wouldn’t affect him. It’s the farmers who have to work with her.”

  “Election or not, he has strong negative feelings for Dana,” I said. “You saw him after she told him he was a one-trick pony and she’d never hire him.”

  “Actually, I missed that.”

  “Well, I told you. Bjorn was furious, and no doubt embarrassed that everyone heard her say it. Plus, Dana died on Bjorn’s turf.”

  “What did Bjorn say about that?” Jamie asked.

  “He took off before I could ask.”

  “Let’s get back to Randy,” Jamie said. “He had motive, too, but did he have opportunity?”

  “Randy stormed off with Mike Glass after the choking incident,” I said.

  “That certainly can be called opportunity. Did you see where they went?”

  “No, but none of Dana’s cooks mentioned seeing Randy or Mike in the kitchen.”

  “Why would they?” Jamie said. “They don’t know Dana died, and they don’t know you think it’s murder.”

  I gave his arm a few quick taps. “Oh! I’m remembering something! After I checked on Dana’s cup, I tried to find the bottle of peroxide they keep in the freezer, but it turned up missing, so I hunted up other sources. I found some OxyGrowth plant food in the outside storage pantry. The main ingredient is peroxide.”

  Jamie smiled. “You suspect the plants? Think they were taking revenge on Dana for cooking their comrades?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Plants aren’t homicidal.”

  Jamie laughed. He looked adorable.

  “Before you told me Dana died, I was in the storage pantry trying to call you to tell you that Randy thought Colin had been fired, but kept getting interrupted—Randy, Mike, Perry, Megan.” I paused, thinking back to whether I had seen Brandon or Cory in the pantry and remembered Brandon carrying the tray of dirty linens right before that. “Cory, Bjorn, and Kevin. All of them came back there. Maybe they were looking for the OxyGrowth.”

  “Do you know for sure it was OxyGrowt
h in her cup?” Jamie asked. “And why would they need it if the deed had already been done?”

  “No, I don’t know for sure it was OxyGrowth,” I said. “Maybe they were returning it. Not everything is logical. I just think it’s significant that they went back there with some excuse or another, especially Randy, Bjorn, and Cory.”

  “Our perps,” Jamie said.

  “You’re getting a lot of mileage out of that word,” I said. “And why are you so resistant? It’s like you don’t want to know who killed Dana.”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “But we don’t know for certain it’s murder, and there are people whose job it is to find killers.”

  I opened my mouth to refute that, but heard, “Jamie!” and saw Mindy waving her arm as if she were going the distance on a mechanical bull.

  “Hold that thought,” Jamie said to me.

  I closed my mouth and waited for Mindy to herd herself through the Field. When she reached us, she extended a full glass of red wine to me. I had a warmhearted feeling for her until she said, “Hold this for me.” She pulled a cell phone from her space-age purse and started texting as she asked, “We all set for tomorrow?”

  Jamie recognized that she had started to multitask and answered, “The major players are in place and everything’s a go.”

  “Capital!” she said. She slid her phone closed and held out her hand to me for the glass of wine, which is when someone bumped my arm, sloshing most of the liquid out of the glass and onto Mindy’s new boots.

  The look she gave me—a mix of disbelief, accusation, and hatred—stopped my apology. Like the looks Pam Ewing flung at Sue Ellen Ewing.

  “I’m sure it was an accident,” Jamie said, taking the almost-empty wine glass from me with a look that was a mix of disbelief, accusation, and confusion. He took her elbow. “Let’s get you to the ladies’ room.”

  As they walked off, I wanted to open my lungs in an Olympic scream of frustration. That Jamie was here all of a sudden, at the party and in my life. That the night I had planned to devote to Drew had been ruined by Jamie’s premature presence and now Dana’s demise. That Jamie was more interested in schmoozing that East Coast interloper than discovering who killed his friend Dana.

  But I’m a grownup, so I didn’t scream. I fumed instead.

  And then Drew was there with his arm around me. “You okay, Sugar Pop?” he asked. “You look kind of discouraged.”

  Drew! With all the excitement of working on the case, I had forgotten I had this ally. I didn’t need Jamie Sherwood or his permission to find the murderer. I had a new helpmate. “Just the opposite,” I said. “Let me tell you a story.”

  We moved to our dinner table, which was still empty and quiet for the moment while Nina and Ursula intercepted Mr. Amooze-Boosh and Ms. Foodie’s Taste near the archway. I hadn’t seen Daisy and Erik in so long, I figured they left.

  I told Drew that Dana had died in the ambulance, then backtracked to explain about Dana winning the election; her altercations with Randy and Bjorn; Randy sending champagne and a message to her via her old sous, Colin Harris, who had either quit or been fired; and my suspicions that someone had probably killed her with food-grade hydrogen peroxide.

  “Interesting,” Drew said when I had finished. “I think you’re right that Randy Dove and Bjorn Fleming have the best motives.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “It could be anyone, though.”

  “Do you want to help me figure out who?”

  “Sure,” he said. “We’ll be like Turner and Hooch.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Who’s Turner and who’s Hooch?”

  “Woof,” he said. “Where’s the cup with the peroxide?”

  “In the deep freezer in the kitchen.”

  “Let’s take a gander at it.” Drew stood and held out his hand to help me up, but I didn’t take it. “With our eyes,” he said.

  “I locked it with a combination lock.”

  “Make up some health reason you want to see inside, and we’ll get one of the farmers to open it.”

  “Oh, good idea.”

  Moments later, Drew and I were standing in front of the freezer, but I didn’t need to come up with a reason to have it opened. The lock was already off.

  Dana’s cup was gone.

  Twelve

  Drew and I didn’t have time to do more than look questions at each other because we heard angry voices on the other side of the wall. Now that everyone was a suspect, everything was suspicious, and two people arguing in the office during a party was on the high end of suspicious. We stood as still as totem poles, straining to make out their words.

  I caught Drew’s eye and mouthed, “Anything?”

  He shook his head. “If we can’t hear them, they can’t hear us,” he said in a normal voice.

  I shut the freezer door, then squeezed between it and a butcher block, and put my ear to the wall. “Male and female,” I said. “He’s saying he can’t believe she voted for Dana.”

  Drew leaned in, and I closed my eyes to listen harder.

  “What are y’all doing?” a girl said. We looked back to see Cheri and Kelly standing in the doorway.

  Drew loudly kissed the air in front of me, then said, “Picking the wrong place for some private time with my girl.” He took my hand. “Come on, Sugar Pop.”

  The two cooks moved aside to let us leave.

  “Did either of you take the measuring cup from the freezer?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you see someone else take it?” Drew asked.

  “No.”

  “That would be too easy,” I mumbled.

  Drew and I left the kitchen for the washing shed but hadn’t gone two feet before Babs Tucker, a sales rep with Lone Star Supply, stopped me. She held a napkin-wrapped can of Shiner Bock in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. “It wasn’t you who told me,” she said, obviously having enjoyed several free beers, “but Beefalo Bull’s walk-in busted a coupla days ago, and they got all their meat in coolers on ice.”

  Old news. Gavin had already shut them down and made them destroy hundreds of dollars’ worth of meat, then let them reopen after they fixed their walk-in and promised to study the Texas Food Establishment Rules handbook.

  “I’ll look into it,” I told her, because I didn’t want Babs trading on the truth with the next gossip she tripped over.

  Drew and I watched her weave past the office and into the parking lot, then he went into the storage pantry while I stayed guard outside. “The OxyGrowth is on the top shelf,” I said.

  “Where?”

  I joined him in the pantry, pointing up. “It’s right … dang it!”

  We searched the other shelves but found no white bottles. I thought Drew might have concerns that I was making the whole thing up, but he said, “We’ve got ourselves a right good mystery.”

  “It could get dangerous,” I said, giving him a chance to take himself off the case.

  “Whatever gets me away from listening to Nina and Ursula have a non-fight over Trevor.”

  I smiled, thrilled to have him not only helping me, but encouraging my efforts. I needed to be cautious, though. Drew was smart, but was he wily? If he didn’t have the skill to do this on the Q.T., he might hamper me or possibly jeopardize the investigation. I decided to task him with something small to test his abilities.

  “I’ll hang around the office and see who comes out, okay?” Drew said, giving his own self something small. “What’s your next move?”

  I pulled my badge from my pocket. “I think I’ll take a peek inside Randy Dove’s cooler.”

  Which turned out to be more challenging than applying lipstick to a pig.

  “No customers behind the bar,” Randy said, trying to wave me away with the hand that wasn’t pouring wine into his glass. “Go, go.”


  Were I an agent with the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission, I would have encouraged Randy to comply by reminding him who I worked for, but the health department has no jurisdiction over his business. Still, I tried. I took a step closer to him and brought my badge up to his eyes. “We’ve had a possible food poisoning incident tonight and I need to examine the contents of your cooler.”

  Randy stepped in front of a blue Igloo the size of an ottoman. “I didn’t make the food, Dana did. Talk to her.”

  “I just came from speaking with her cooks,” I said. “I need to inspect all consumables on the premises.”

  Randy looked at Dana’s former sous chef. “Can she do this?”

  Colin nodded. “She’s a health inspector.”

  I pressed my lips together, trying to temper the triumph sneaking into my smile. “It won’t take but a minute,” I said.

  “What if I refuse?” Randy asked.

  I leaned into him, getting a whiff of wine mixed with sweat. “I’ll put a Detained sticker on it, which means you can’t access the contents, then I’ll contact the police and get a search warrant.”

  The landscape of Randy’s face changed from garden-variety annoyance to outrage. Jamie was right: he was definitely hiding some-

  thing.

  I made a show of looking behind him. “Is that Dana?”

  Randy whirled around, and I used the pointy toe of my boot to flip open the cooler lid. If my open mouth hadn’t prevented me from putting my lips together, I would have whistled at what I saw.

  Colin whistled for both of us. “Where did that come from?” he asked.

  The cooler was halfway full with ice, which is what coolers are designed to hold, but the ice wasn’t chilling Chardonnay or champagne or a personal stash of oysters on the half shell. Sitting on top was a clear plastic bag stuffed with money.

  Randy slammed the lid shut—as much as a plastic cooler lid can be slammed—and said, “It’s nothing.”

  That’s the opposite of nothing, I thought as I sat on the cooler and crossed my legs. “Randy, let me tell you a story,” I said. “A couple of weeks ago, I was doing a routine inspection of a Cuban restaurant and saw a flamingo in the dry storage room. Yes, a live one. Not only do flamingos not belong in restaurants, they don’t belong in the possession of the average citizen. Now, I didn’t get too excited about it because maybe they had a really good reason for keeping a flamingo in the dry storage. So I asked the manager. He told me that the bird had a hurt leg, and sure enough, I saw a bandage on the standing leg.”