Out of the Frying Pan

by Robin Allen

“How about I go into the Field and watch everyone?”

  “You know what they all look like?”

  “I know Randy Dove. He’s giving me full glasses of Opus because he wants Markham’s business. Mike Glass is our Waterloo rep, and I recognize the family from tonight, Perry, Cory, and Brandon.”

  “And Kevin,” I said. “And see if you can get Mike to tell you what happened after Randy choked at dinner.”

  “Roger that,” he said.

  I felt better after talking to Drew. He has that effect on everyone, which is what makes him such a good restaurant manager, and a good man. Everything always has an answer, and if you can’t see it right away, Drew somehow makes you believe you will eventually.

  Before I could push the safety bar on the walk-in door, it flew open. Nina stood on the other side, her purse in hand, another purse on her lips. I was already cold, but I swear her presence dropped the temperature ten degrees.

  “I’ve been to the moon and back looking for you,” she said testily. “I want to go home.”

  I looked past her at Bjorn sitting on a stool at the prep table, three white ceramic cups of coffee in front of him. “I’m in the middle of something,” I said.

  “I’ll be happy to take you home, Nina,” Drew said.

  Nina looked up and smiled. “Oh, Drew, I didn’t see you there.” She patted hairs that are never out of place. “If you don’t mind.”

  I would be nicer to her if she talked to me that way.

  “It would be my pleasure,” he said, easing us both into the kitchen. “Do you need anything before we go?”

  “Maybe one more trip to the ladies’ room,” she said, then to me, “You might want to take a look in a mirror some time tonight, Poppy.”

  After she left, I said, “How’s my mouth?” I lifted my chin to give him a better view. “Feels like the welts are going down.”

  He gave my face a thorough inspection. “Almost unnoticeable.”

  “You know she’s not my mother, right? You don’t have to be that nice to her.”

  “I’m being nice to my boss’ wife,” he said. “Besides, she brings me coffee from Dolce Vita whenever she comes to the restaurant.” He gave me a light peck on the nose and said softly, “I’ll be back in an hour. Watch yourself.”

  Ick. Gin.

  I saw Drew to the kitchen door, then went over to Bjorn at the prep table and picked up a cup. “Smells good,” I said.

  “My own blend,” Bjorn said. “Did they leave any food in there?”

  “Not really.”

  “I can make you an omelet,” he said.

  Bjorn seemed like a different person, more relaxed and at peace. Perhaps the stress of having intruders in his domain had twisted him up earlier and their departure allowed him to unwind.

  “I’m vegan,” I said.

  “Oatmeal?” he suggested.

  “With some raisins?”

  “I can do that.”

  Bjorn slid off his stool and crossed to the dry storage shelves on the far wall. He had been unattended in the kitchen while Drew and I experimented in the walk-in and could have occupied himself with anything, including, I realized, poisoning my coffee. Is that why he was being so nice? I wanted to get something in my stomach, but I also wanted to survive the evening, so I poured my coffee down the sink drain.

  Bjorn returned with a tin canister of oatmeal. “It’ll be a few minutes. More coffee?”

  “I’ll never sleep,” I said, then didn’t know what to say next. I wan-ted to ask him about Cory and Dana and the vote, but didn’t want to set him off and be banished from the kitchen, or worse—make him want to take revenge on my food. Can you imagine the things that could go undetected in a bowl of oatmeal? I decided to work up to it with something neutral. “How’s Tanya?” I asked.

  “Haven’t seen her.” He reached under the stove for a saucepan, which brought him eye-to-eye with my knees. “Did you fall down?” he asked.

  It’s not often that a fish throws you a line with which to catch it. “You heard Dana passed out, right? This happened when I knelt on the floor to resuscitate her.”

  He stood and emptied oatmeal into the saucepan, then went to the sink and poured water into it. “Looks like it’s from the floor mats,” he said. “Indentations from the pressure.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but they wouldn’t last this long. Plus, it stings a little.” I waited a significant beat. “Like from a chemical.”

  He ignored the beat and the imputation and fired up a burner, then placed the saucepan on the stove. “We’re all organic out here,” he said. “No chemicals.”

  “Don’t y’all use food-grade hydrogen peroxide as a natural cleaner?” I considered that I might be on dangerous ground mentioning the murder weapon to the possible killer, but Bjorn didn’t know I suspected foul play, and cleaning habits were a perfectly legit conversational topic for a health inspector to have with a cook.

  “Not lately,” he said. “Kevin says it’s too expensive.” He poured himself more coffee, then indicated the dry storage shelves on the other side of the kitchen. “Bring me the raisins.”

  “Sure,” I said. Out of habit, I took my time walking over there, glancing the compass, west, north, east, and south, but only with my eyes. Health inspectors have to act just as sneaky and clever as restaurant staff. If a cook saw me twitch my head to look at a half-eaten plate of French fries on the counter, it would have disappeared by the time I washed my hands and looked again. Nothing caught my attention until I saw a bulging linen bag in front of the shelves.

  A full linen bag is the perfect place to conceal small contraband—a fifth of vodka for a quick nip here and there throughout the night (or morning, depending on how close you are to needing a newcomer’s medallion); stolen cash, wallets, clothes, jewelry, pens, drugs, or credit card receipts from waiters, managers, cooks, and customers; frozen steaks or seafood, especially right before a full bag is exchanged for an empty one; and murder weapons.

  Even though restaurants know that the linen bag is a good hiding place, things still go missing that way. Most restaurants make the dishwasher or one of the wait staff rummage through the contents looking for accidentally discarded flatware, plates, bowls, cups, ramekins, and the aforementioned stolen items, but the inspection is perfunctory. Think of the things you have put into a napkin—chewed-up gristly meat, mucous, coughed-up phlegm, puke, blood, smushed spiders or roaches. Now imagine you’re a waiter assigned to dredge through the napkins at the end of your shift. And now imagine how much effort you’re going to put into it.

  I didn’t want to dig through the linen either, not only because I had left my haz-mat suit at the office, but because I would have to explain it to Bjorn. It would be something else entirely, however, if the bags fell and spilled their contents. I wedged a leg between the bag and the shelves then threw my hips back to dump it over. It’s a thin metal frame under a canvas sack, so it should have made as much noise as a Las Vegas blackjack dealer dispensing cards. However, the bag’s strings had been tied to a small, lidless tub of flatwear on the shelf, so that came down with it, making as much noise as a dollar slot machine paying off a jackpot.

  Bjorn rushed across the kitchen. “What are you doing?” he demanded, sounding like the Bjorn of yore.

  I smiled innocently. “I guess I’m not as skinny as I thought. I’ll clean this up.”

  “I got it,” he said, swatting at my hand that had reached for the bag. He put his leg against the spilled contents as he stood the bag up and all the whites went neatly back inside.

  “Why are the linens tied to a bunch of forks?” I asked.

  He dropped to one knee and started clinking the forks into the tub. “To alert me in case they came to pick it up and I wasn’t here.”

  It made sense that Bjorn wanted to know if a vendor had come into his kitchen when he was
n’t around. It’s not unheard of for them to throw a few loose items into the linen bag before hauling them to their truck. However, my guess was that he wanted to know that the peroxide and measuring cup he had hidden within would soon leave the farm.

  “They’re right there,” Bjorn said, pointing to a low shelf.

  “What?”

  “The raisins.”

  “Wait, do you … ” I sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”

  Bjorn jumped up and dashed to the stove. “See what you did!” he cried, snatching up the smoking saucepan.

  Um, no. “It’s okay,” I said, walking up to him. “I’ll wash the pot and we can make some more.”

  The pot clanged when he flung it into the sink. “That was the last of it.”

  And why shouldn’t that be the last of it? Maybe I wouldn’t be so hungry if I considered my time away from food as a fast to help purify my system and make me more virtuous. “Can I have some of those shelled pecans in the walk-in?” I asked.

  He clasped his hands in front of his belly then nodded toward the other side of the kitchen. “Grab a bag so you can take them back to the party with you.”

  I returned to the storage shelves and slipped a plastic bag off the top of the stack.

  It was the same kind of plastic bag that held Randy’s money.

  Sixteen

  It had the word GOOD encircling a green and blue image of the earth. It was the farm’s old logo, which is why I didn’t recognize it when I saw it in Randy’s waistband.

  Ten or so years ago, the sons convinced their parents to bring their business into the modern era, which included putting up a website for e-commerce, switching the newsletter from black-and-white printed copies to full-color copies delivered via email, and modernizing the logo. In the newsletter, we learned that the boys wanted something completely different, but Perry and Megan said their logo had become a recognizable trademark. They ran a contest for subscribers (they love contests) to design a new one with those two directives. The one that received the most nods was an updated version from the rounded hippie image to a graphic woodcut style.

  This development triangulated into the only people with access to the kitchen, and thus, those old bags: the farm’s owners, employees, and guest cooks. But since I already had a list of suspects, I narrowed them down further to people who had both a reason and an opportunity to have dealings with Randy, which meant that whoever gave Randy all that money was either a Vaughn or a Mc-Dougal. Or Bjorn Fleming.

  If the money was a payoff on a bet, was it related to the farm? Had they wagered on the success of the garlic crop? The number of people to attend the dinner? How many eggs a particular hen could lay in a month? No, I was thinking too small. This was thousands of dollars. What sort of bet would be worth risking that much money? Yesterday’s Texas Longhorn’s game, certainly, but why didn’t Randy just say so?

  I passed Bjorn on my way to the walk-in and smiled to assure him that I didn’t suspect him of dirty dispensations. When I stopped in front of the door and pulled a glove from my front pocket, the gold newcomer’s medallion came out with it. The coin tinkled as it hit the concrete floor, then rolled to Bjorn’s feet.

  He bent down and picked it up. “What are you doing with this?” he asked quietly. It was more of a menacing quiet than a sad, thoughtful quiet.

  I went with the truth. “I found it in the washing shed.”

  “Where in the washing shed?”

  “In the dirt under the CSA boxes from the demo.”

  Before I could ask why he wanted to know where I found it or discover its relevance to Dana’s death or call finders-keepers, Bjorn made a fist around it and raced out of the kitchen. By the time I decided to follow him—because with an exit like that, where else would he go except to hunt down the person who lost the coin—he had vanished.

  My amateur investigation was forcibly and prematurely concluded, however, when two police cruisers and two American-made black sedans prowled into the parking lot. No sirens or lights, so they weren’t in a hurry.

  I retreated down the walkway and called Jamie. When he answered, I said, “You finally talked to Baxter, I see.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, somebody talked to somebody because four cop cars just pulled up. Did you tell anyone Dana died?”

  “No, did you?”

  I hesitated.

  “You told Cooper, didn’t you?”

  “I needed his help, but he wouldn’t have said anything. Maybe the police are here for some other reason.”

  “I thought you needed my help.”

  “Not as much as Mindy does, apparently.”

  “Where are you?” Jamie asked, annoyed.

  “My new headquarters, the washing shed.”

  “Meet me by the bandstand,” he said. “Perry and Megan are getting ready to announce the winner of the recipe contest, and I need to tell you something I found out.”

  “I think I’ll stick with the cops.” Two uniformed officers stayed near the parking lot, while two others followed two guys in suits past me on their way to the Field. “Belay that,” I said. “See you in two shakes.”

  I hung up and followed the officials to the archway where the uniforms paused, legs wide, both thumbs hooked into the fronts of their utility belts. They blocked the escape of a few guests who had panicked at the sight of the law, but none were my suspects.

  Most everyone had kept their eyes on Perry and Megan on the stage. Perry shuffled some papers in his hand, then bent down to put his mouth to the mic and said, “Bear with me.” Megan smiled at the audience, her glittering eyes turning overcast when she registered the official uniforms.

  One of the cops pointed at the bar and the four men started walking. Megan thumped Perry’s arm to indicate the new arrivals, so of course two hundred faces turned to see the cops approach an odd foursome consisting of Randy Dove, Bjorn Fleming, and Brandon and Cory Vaughn.

  The eyewitnesses fell as hushed as a snowfall, so we all heard one of the detectives announce, “Corrigan Jeremiah Vaughn, you’re under arrest.”

  Seventeen

  Holy long arm of the law! How did they even begin to suspect Cory, much less assemble enough evidence to make an arrest? Had Dana’s dying words fingered him before she died? Or maybe someone at the farm dropped a dime on him. I didn’t think his family would do it, so that left Bjorn. But how did Bjorn know Cory killed Dana? Were they in it together and Cory placed the AA medallion under the CSA boxes as a signal to Bjorn that Dana had been discontinued? Or did I see a falling out earlier, and Bjorn decided to burn Cory? Or did Bjorn falsely accuse Cory to the cops to create a smokescreen?

  The detective produced a pair of handcuffs, turned Cory around, and began, “You have the right … ”

  Cory didn’t seem surprised, but I was. Or more like disappointed. It now appeared that I had sacrificed dinner and drink to snoop for evidence and interview perps for nothing.

  Before the full Miranda had been recited, Perry and Megan were on the scene, Megan already crying, Perry not smiling for the second time that night. “What is the meaning of this?” Perry demanded of the cops.

  “Dad,” Cory said, the word loaded with resignation and apology.

  Perry glared at his son. “What did you do?”

  “It’s nothing,” Cory said, as much as admitting to it.

  Perry stood in front of the detective who now held him. “What did he do?”

  Your kid murdered Dana White, I thought, at the same time the detective said, “Possession and distribution of marijuana.”

  Whoa! Cory? A stoner? Dear little Cory Vaughn who used to hang upside down from the tire swing in the pecan grove with his mouth open to catch the shelled peas we threw at him. This made him a less likely suspect for Dana’s death, but I wasn’t ready to pull him out of the lineup. Perhaps Dana stumbled onto Co
ry’s secret garden and threatened to expose him.

  In the time it took Megan to understand what that meant—her baby boy growing an illegal crop of marijuana on the family farm—she skipped from worried to wrathful. “You’re selling pot!” she screamed. “What are you thinking!” She slapped his cheek with every ohm of anger she could generate. “How dare you, Cory! How dare you do this to us!” She raised her hand to slap him again, but the detective moved Cory aside while a uniformed cop stepped in front of Megan.

  Perry intercepted her raised hand. “Not now, Meg.”

  She turned her anger on Perry. “You think this is okay? We’re going to lose our certifications, our business license—”

  “No, I don’t think it’s okay,” Perry said gently, “but now is not the time.”

  Megan shook her finger at Cory, then squeezed her eyes shut and let out a strangled mewl.

  Perry said to Megan, “I’m going with Cory. Call Harv Gross, please. Tell him what’s happened, and ask him to meet me down-

  town.” Megan nodded, wiping her tears with the back of her wrist. Perry hugged her. “We’ll get it worked out,” he said.

  “What about the party?” Brandon asked.

  Perry watched the detectives escort Cory through the archway. “Find Ian,” he said. “He’ll handle it.”

  I didn’t know how much time I had before Ian arrived and broke up the party, but I knew it would happen before Drew returned from dropping off Nina, so I called him.

  “Hey, Sugar Pop,” he said.

  “Did you get La Niña home okay?”

  “Yes, and I’m on two-ninety, passing Congress. I’ll be there in twenty-seven minutes.”

  “The party’s breaking up,” I said. “Cops came and arrested Cory Vaughn.”

  “Cory killed Dana?”

  “Marijuana farming.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “I’ve heard his name men-

  tioned.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought everyone knew,” he said. “Do you want to meet for a late dinner? Magnolia or Taco Xpress?”