Out of the Frying Pan

by Robin Allen

  At first I was so annoyed that I didn’t see a single chef’s coat when I walked in, I failed to see the blessing of having the scene of the crime to myself. My denseness continued as I entered the walk-in to find something I could eat unheated, standing up, and with my hands.

  Earlier, Cheri had returned from there with bread when she went after the champagne, but all I found were raw eggs—presumably the ones the Friends had gathered during the tour—an unlabeled tub of something thick and brown that could have been either chocolate sauce or year-old beef stock, and a gallon bucket of shelled pecans dated two days earlier. Finally. Something that hadn’t been laid or born.

  I would violate health code if I laded out a handful with my bare, unwashed hands, especially after I had sifted dirt and handled an alcoholic newcomer’s medallion. But oh, my stomach wanted them now. I searched the shelves for a box of rubber gloves or a cup to scoop them with. I didn’t find any of those, but I did see a little white bottle on the top shelf. OxyGrowth!

  Fourteen

  That was a twofold whammy for Good Earth because aside from the possibility of it being the murder weapon, storing chemical compounds above food is a critical health violation, even if they are natural and organic.

  I had the same problem as in the storage pantry—no way to lift it down without leaving my fingerprints. I left the walk-in to fetch gloves, a plastic bag to preserve the evidence, and a stepstool to reach it, but before the door clicked shut, I heard voices. Dana’s cooks.

  “And then she said, ‘I asked for cough syrup, not corn syrup,’” Cheri said, and they all laughed.

  “Remember that time we ran out of liver—” Tarzan noticed me. “Need help with something?” he asked.

  “I missed dinner,” I said. “Do you have any green bean casserole left?”

  “We tossed it,” Kelly said. “Sorry.”

  “And we’re getting ready to join the party,” Tarzan said quickly, probably to forestall me asking them to stay and make something for me, even though, as far as they knew, I had saved Dana’s life and they should be falling all over themselves like Jewish grandmothers to feed me.

  “I thought you had to do one more coffee service,” I said.

  “It’s coffee in the kitchen if anyone wants it,” Tarzan said. “Bjorn said he’d handle it.”

  “Poppy!” Ursula called from the doorway.

  “Busy, Ursula,” I said over my shoulder.

  “I have a message for you,” she said.

  “Is that Ursula York?” the other male cook said, smiling like an aspiring backup dancer glimpsing Madonna. Was he interested in her as a chef and cookbook author or as an exonerated murderess? Perhaps he killed Dana and wanted tips from Ursula on how to beat the charges.

  Oh, wow. I just heard my thoughts. One of Dana’s cooks could have done it. I knew that Dana was gifted and manic—think Ursula, but with twenty more years of experience—but bad enough to incite someone to end her life?

  Not impossible.

  A restaurant kitchen is a lot like a department in a traditional business. The chef is the manager, and the sous chef, line cooks, prep cooks, and dishwashers are the employees. The manager gets indigestion over such things as costs, profit margins, and employee morale, and the employees make as little effort as possible to keep their boss happy so they continue to receive a paycheck.

  Occasionally, managers do things that employees don’t agree with—cut hours, dock pay, make unwanted romantic advances. And occasionally, every employee would make the same request of a wish-granting genie all three times: make my boss drop dead. Did one of Dana’s cooks decide to grant that wish? And to what end? Dana White is Vis-à-Vis and the White Wolff Inn. Without her, the restaurants would probably close their doors for good, and those cooks wouldn’t have a timecard to punch.

  I didn’t know of any motives yet, but they’d had several hours’ worth of opportunity. And what better time to do it than on a busy night in an unfamiliar kitchen with a bunch of inebriated strangers on the premises?

  “Momentito,” I said to Ursula, then to the spellbound cook, “She’s my stepsister. Why? Think you’re going to be out of a job soon?”

  “No. I’m … she’s brilliant.”

  “So I hear,” I said, then stepped outside to speak with her. “What’s up?”

  “Daisy and Erik left,” Ursula said. “She wants you to call her as soon as they announce the winner of the recipe contest.”

  “Now that we’re on the topic, I hear you’re planning to include my recipe for salmon cakes in your cookbook.”

  She grimaced. “Your recipe?”

  “If it’s the one Markham’s serves, then yes, my recipe.”

  “That’s not yours,” she said with certainty.

  “It’s not yours,” I said at the same time my cell phone rang. “We were already serving it when you invaded my kitchen. Ask Mitch.”

  “I will,” she said, then walked toward the Field as if Mitch were in there.

  Jamie was on the other end of the line. “Where you at?” he asked. He sounded upbeat, so he must have gotten something good from Colin. Or maybe his stomach was full of food and wine. Satiation can have that effect on one’s disposition.

  “I’m in the kitchen dying of starvation,” I said.

  “Meet me in the washing shed.”

  “Right,” I said. Thirty seconds later, I asked him in person, “What did you get from Colin?”

  “He was driving off when I reached the parking lot,” Jamie said.

  “Where were you this whole time?”

  “Having a smoke with the cooks.”

  Jamie doesn’t smoke, but he’ll hold a lit cigarette while he hangs out with people who do. He hears a lot of gossip that way.

  “Did they admit to treason against Queen Dana?” I asked.

  “They said she hasn’t been feeling good lately, and she put Colin in charge of the Wolff this summer while she runs Vis-à-Vis.”

  “Dana handed Colin a hot downtown restaurant, and he quit to hawk wine for Randy Dove?”

  “They thought it was strange, too, but none of them knew why he quit,” Jamie said.

  “Randy may be right that Dana fired Colin. He may have stolen from her or something.”

  “It’s on my list to follow-up,” Jamie said. “How did you get Randy to open the cooler?”

  “I told him I wanted to investigate the possibility of food poisoning. He didn’t want to play along, so I had to pull a fast one. When you saw us, we were on our way to dump the possibly contaminated ice so I could get a better look at the money. It’s about five thousand dollars or so in a plastic bag. Randy told me he won a bet.”

  “That’s some major wager.”

  “I thought so, too. Should be a good story if you can find out who, what, and why.”

  “If Randy told you the truth.”

  “Why else would he have that much money on him?” I said. “And don’t say money laundering.”

  Jamie pressed his lips together.

  “We also might need to look closer at Cory for Dana’s murder.” I told him that Cory used food-grade hydrogen peroxide during the washing demo, and that he was alleged to have stayed behind to make up extra CSA boxes, but the two from the demo were the only ones on the pallets. I pointed to them in the corner. “Maybe he stayed behind to kill her.”

  “Maybe,” Jamie said in a way that sounded a lot like, “doubtful.”

  “Are you shooting down my suspects to stall for time until you hear from Baxter?”

  Which reminded him to check for missed calls on his phone. “No, but Cory Vaughn? Why would he?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to determine,” I said. “Do you know who Dana was going to choose as her vice president? Randy told me that’s who’d become president.”

  “Her husband, I imagine.”<
br />
  “And if Herb doesn’t want to do it?”

  “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” I said, crabby from lack of food and cooperation. “But what if?”

  “I don’t think there’s a procedure for that,” Jamie said. “Maybe another election.”

  “And Randy remains president in the meantime?”

  “Probably, but why would he want Dana out of the way just to remain president for another month or two?”

  “Maybe he wanted a do-over with an opponent he could beat.”

  “Maybe,” he said, again in the tone of doubtful. “What else did you find?”

  I pulled the medallion from my pocket, but he didn’t see it because he was looking past me toward the archway. “Nothing,” I said, making a fist around the coin. “Mosey on back to Mindy Corrosion.”

  Jamie frowned at me. “Have you eaten anything tonight?”

  As if my annoyance was due to a lack of calories and carbs and not his fawning over that drugstore cowgirl! “I haven’t had time, what with trying to figure out who killed Dana.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Let me know when you hear from Baxter.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes and returned to the Field, and I placed a call to my other asset.

  “Are you finished with Sherwood?” Drew asked.

  “We were talking about Dana. He’s gone now. Where are you?”

  “In the parking lot. Stay where you are.”

  Drew joined me a few moments later, a scowl on his face that I thought was owing to Jamie, so I didn’t ask if he was okay.

  “Did you see who was in the office?” I asked.

  “No.” His gloom deepened. “The voices stopped, so I knocked on the door to, you know, pretend to be looking for the bathroom. No one answered, so I went by the parking lot to the other side and there’s another entrance they must have gone out.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Not everything is going to go as planned.”

  Drew nodded. “What did you find?”

  I quickly filled him in on Randy’s claim that he won a bet, me making him dump the ice so I could examine inside his cooler, my theory that the money bag was important, and finding a bottle of OxyGrowth in the walk-in.

  “I also found this.” I showed him the medallion. “Trevor helped me get it from under the pallet the CSA boxes are on.” I told him what Trevor had explained about its significance. “I don’t think it means anything to us, but whoever lost it may have seen something.”

  Drew took the coin and rolled it back and forth across his knuckles, then dropped it into his palm. “Do you see that mark?” he said, pointing to a thin, bright-pink slash near the rim.

  “Nail polish,” I said. I knew then that the coin didn’t belong to Dana because her fingernails were always short and natural. “Good catch.” I put the coin in my pocket. “Let’s both keep an eye out for pink nails.”

  “Did you say you found OxyGrowth in the walk-in?” Drew asked.

  “Violating health code on a top shelf,” I said. “Come help me get it down and test it.”

  We hadn’t gotten past the kitchen’s threshold before we encountered our first obstacle: Bjorn at the countertop plugging in a coffee pot. He looked up when he heard me groan. “You guys want some coffee?” he asked.

  What was this? Bjorn Fleming being nice for no reason? “Sure,” I said.

  Bjorn walked over to the deep freezer, which had been locked again. Drew and I watched him scroll through the combination, but he couldn’t snap it apart. He turned to the right to look at something on the wall, then tried the combination again and it opened. “New lock,” he said.

  I stepped closer to him in case he had the idea to steal evidence—or plant some—but he pulled out a bag of coffee beans. As he went about grinding the beans, I approached the freezer with the unreasonable hope that a Good Samaritan had returned the measuring cup I had safekept there earlier. They hadn’t.

  I glanced at the wall and saw three numbers written in pencil underneath the first aid kit. What was the point of locking the freezer when anyone with eyeballs and opposable thumbs could get the combination and open it?

  I was glad to have time with one of our suspects, but that OxyGrowth in the walk-in wasn’t going to test itself. When the bean grinder stopped, I said, “Hey, Bjorn, I’m starving. Mind if I get something from the walk-in?”

  “Help yourself,” he said as he filled a carafe with tap water. “But we may be out of food after those storm troopers moved through.”

  “Do you have any gloves?” I called over the running water.

  He used his elbow to point to a shelf under the prep table. I plucked a few from the box, then beckoned Drew into the walk-in with me. I handed him a glove, then pointed up to the OxyGrowth bottle.

  Drew tugged a glove onto his right hand, then took down the bottle from the shelf. It looked like the bottle from the storage pantry, but it wasn’t the exact same one, unless someone rinsed off the mud. But why? And why put it in the walk-in? The fact that nothing made sense was making this whole investigation much more difficult. Probably the killer’s intent. It would take the police forever to catch up to the nuances of all this evidence. Lucky for them Drew and I were on the case.

  “I think we should try to eliminate possibilities,” I said. “Let me test this to see if it acts the same as what was in Dana’s cup.” I put on gloves, then opened the tub of pecans and pinched out a piece.

  “I don’t know, Sugar Pop … it’s one thing to talk to people, but this … ”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. I handed the pecan to him then opened the bottle and poured a quarter teaspoon of the OxyGrowth into its little red top.

  Drew was right, though. There were so many things wrong with what we were doing. Conducting a chemical experiment in the walk-in would be a critical health violation for Good Earth if they got surprise inspected at that moment. We hadn’t officially reported any crime, so investigating Dana’s death on our own instead of waiting for the police might result in a charge of obstruction of justice. And then there was the small matter of tampering with evidence.

  I made eye contact with Drew and nodded for him to drop the pecan into the liquid. “It takes a few seconds,” I said. I lightly sloshed the lid to wake up the action. Still nothing. I poured more liquid from the bottle into the top.

  “Maybe it’s diluted too much,” Drew offered.

  I brought the lid up to my nose and sniffed, drenching my olfactory senses with a most foul, disgusting, stomach-churning stench. I drew back and extended my arm to get the vile stuff away from me.

  “Chemicals?” Drew asked.

  “Gin.”

  Fifteen

  “Why all the theatrics?” Drew asked.

  “I got sick on gin when I was fifteen.” I laughed. “At this very farm, actually. Me, Daze, Brandy, and Kevi drank gin and orange juice that Kevi snuck from his parents’ house. I threw up in the car on the ride home and Goodie Luke Shoes told my parents why. They put me on restriction for two months.”

  “Poppy Markham broke a rule?” Drew said.

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t a rule until the next morning.”

  “Gin’s used in cooking, right?”

  “Stored in an OxyGrowth bottle?” I’ve seen liquor decanted into everything from a turkey baster to an old fire extinguisher. “No, this is a secret stash.”

  “The newcomer’s?” Drew asked.

  “That’s what I’m thinking, so it probably isn’t related to Dana’s death.”

  “Someone may have tried to give Dana gin, but mixed up the OxyGrowth bottles and poisoned her instead.”

  “Okay, yeah, that’s a workable theory,” I said, “but I’m still not sure if she drank OxyGrowth. Let’s see if we can find a real bottle of the stuff and test it.”

  Drew nodded. �
�In light of this stash, the lush has to be someone at the farm.”

  “It could also be a one-time thing,” I said. “Whoever it is may have wanted something harder than beer or wine tonight.”

  “A normal person carries it with them in a flask,” Drew said. “Do you think it’s Bjorn’s?”

  I shook my head. “I heard him tell Dana he’s been sober six years.”

  “Alcoholics have been known to lie,” Drew said.

  Bjorn knocked on the walk-in door and called, “Coffee’s ready.”

  Drew poured the tested liquid down the floor drain, then popped the gin-drenched pecan piece into his mouth. “Yum,” he said as he screwed the top onto the bottle and returned it to the shelf. He removed his gloves and shoved them in his pockets, and I did the same.

  “After we drink coffee,” I said, “I’m going to stick around and talk to Bjorn and look around a little more.”

  Then I must have sighed out loud because Drew said, “What?”

  “I can comb through the kitchen pretty good, but what if it’s not here? There are a squillion places to hide stuff on this entire farm. The killer could have buried it or poured it out. It could be in the chicken coop, in their car, at their house. Heck, Dana’s cooks could have taken it.” I waved my hand in the direction of the hard-to-find evidence. “It,” I repeated. “I don’t even know exactly what I’m trying to find.”

  Drew put his hands on my shoulders and waited for me to meet his eyes. “You’re looking for a bottle of food-grade hydrogen peroxide or OxyGrowth, or the measuring cup Dana was drinking from.” He kissed me on the forehead. “You need to eat something.”

  “But we’re running out of time,” I said. “In a couple of hours, the party will be over.”

  “You want to solve this tonight?”

  “Sure. I’m getting pretty good at catching killers. If I could just catch a break. I have too many suspects and I can’t be everywhere at once.”