Hot Stuff

by Don Bruns

I sensed hesitation. He squinted his eyes and looked away from me, toward the door to his mini-office.

  “Well?” I didn’t really need the dishwasher gig. Confront the boss and take the chance of never scraping a plate again.

  “I’ll take care of Chef Marty.” He studied the mahogany desktop.

  “And I’ll find James. But you’ve got to understand, everything we’re doing is working toward closure. I’d love to report to you that your staff totally checks out, but they don’t. There are a lot of problems with this staff. First of all you’ve got a setup guy who thinks that Amanda was pushy and self-serving, a missing dishwasher who had a crush on her, and a very disappointed sous chef who is not happy that Amanda Wright was promoted to head chef of her own restaurant. He’s also not happy that you told everyone James was next in line. Plus,” I finally took a breath, “there’s a feeling that she was seeing someone on your staff. Your pastry chef, Kelly Fields, says Amanda hinted at a romantic fling. Amanda even told Juan Castro that she was seeing someone, but we have yet to figure out who that person might be.”

  He looked up at me and blinked. “An affair? Really? Someone actually believes that she was having an affair with someone from my staff?”

  I just shrugged my shoulders. I’d gotten the impression it was almost common knowledge.

  “I don’t allow that in my kitchen.”

  “It’s what we heard.”

  Bouvier let out a breath and pursed his lips.

  “I’m not saying that it’s not possible, but—”

  And I wanted to tell him his wife was even involved, telling James that she feared her husband was a suspect in the murder. Which was suspect in itself, since we weren’t aware anyone was even considering Chef Jean.

  “I’ll take care of my end.” The little chef stood up. He pointed to the door and I exited. I’d bought myself a little time, but my roommate had better show up soon. James was once again the major thorn in my side.

  Walking into the kitchen, I saw Sophia in a sparkling silver gown, her ample back to me, dressing down the guy who was making the salads.

  “Two tomato slices, and they should balance the plate. I want a memorable presentation. Do you understand? Two, not three.” She turned to me with a scowl, drink in hand. “And where’s your friend the sous chef?”

  I wondered who really did own this company.

  I also wondered where James was. It didn’t take long to find out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The polished teak deck that surrounded the yacht was emptying as the revelers searched for their seats in the main cabin. I walked the deck to the rear of the yacht where there were no lights. The rising moon cast a golden shimmer that bounced over the rippling water, and I could barely make out what lay ahead. As I rounded a corner, I heard the voice screaming.

  “Man overboard.”

  I froze. It had to be James. Not the voice, but the actual body. The man overboard was James. I knew it.

  Sprinting toward the sound, I saw one of the uniformed deckhands toss something into the water. It settled on the surface as a floodlight flashed on the inky sea, blinding me for a moment.

  I closed my eyes and reached for the railing. Opening them I could see someone flailing in the water, grabbing for the life ring buoy as it floated just beyond their grasp.

  “Quick,” yelled another deckhand, “toss another one. Somebody with better aim this time.”

  Through the air the round buoy sailed, this time hitting the bobbing body on the head. The swimmer appeared dazed, and I was afraid they were going to let this life ring move out of range. And as I watched, eyes wide open, the body went under. For a long moment there was no motion, nothing except two life-saving rings floating on the water and that brilliant light, bouncing off the shimmering surface.

  “I’m going in,” yelled a deckhand who was stripping off his jacket.

  I should have. I’d been on the swim team in high school and the person wasn’t that far out, but I think I was still in shock, realizing it might be James.

  Then, with a lunge, whoever it was broke the surface and grabbed the second white lifesaver and hung on tightly as two men in white pulled on the rope, dragging my business partner through the water. No doubt about it, it was James.

  There was applause from the assembled guests as they moved to the railing to watch the rescue.

  He looked like a beached white sea mammal, dark hair matted over his face and his skin pale as a ghost.

  As they pulled him from the bay, he grabbed the ladder and shakily climbed on board.

  “What happened?” A man who appeared to be the captain of the vessel approached him.

  James glanced at me, shivering as a deckhand wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. Still shaking, he shook his head slightly and said, “I tripped. I’m embarrassed to say, I tripped.”

  The captain pointed to the gate where guests walked on to the boat. “Was it unfastened?” Walking to the hinged metal gate, he grabbed it and pushed. It held firm, not moving an inch.

  “I don’t know.” James brushed the wet hair from his eyes, as another deckhand offered him a large plush towel.

  A crowd had gathered, guests from the party interested in the latest diversion. It was probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I mean how many times in your life do you hear someone shout, “Man overboard?”

  “There’s a stateroom to your left,” the captain took him sternly by the elbow and guided him away from the gathering. “We’ll get you some dry clothes.”

  I followed close behind.

  Once inside the room, the captain opened a closet with a wardrobe of white uniforms.

  “You can shower there,” he pointed to a bath area, “and change into one of these.” He seemed to notice me for the first time. “You’re a friend?”

  “Yeah. Roommate.”

  Spinning back to James, he said, “Tell me what happened, young man. Accidents like this do not take place on my boat.”

  I sensed the hesitation in James’s voice.

  “I don’t know. I came out from the kitchen for a smoke break, leaned against the gate, and it swung open and—”

  “I thought you told me you tripped.”

  “Sort of. Look, I’m safe, and I’m sorry for any disturbance.”

  “Disturbance? I don’t think you understand what’s happened here. First of all, we have to file a report and there will be an investigation. This isn’t simply a small accident.” He wore a scowl on his face as he seemed to go over a mental checklist. “The Coast Guard, the Miami Police, they’ll all have to be notified.”

  This was going to be a black mark on a ship’s captain who apparently had a stellar reputation. And I gathered there would be paperwork. Lots of paperwork.

  “Get your shower, change, and I’ll be back.” He turned with military precision and walked toward the door.

  “Hey, Captain.”

  The man turned his head, pulling on the brim of his cap.

  “I could have drowned.”

  The scowl was replaced with a serious frown. He paused as if waiting for the timing, then spoke.

  “You didn’t.”

  He continued out the door.

  “What the hell, James?”

  “I was pushed, amigo.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re positive.” I was surprised to realize that I wasn’t surprised. We both knew there were people who weren’t happy with James working for Bouvier. Still, attempted murder was a pretty serious charge.

  He glowered. “Somebody’s hands at my waist, shoving me through that gate. It wasn’t fastened, Skip, and when I hit the water, I think I blacked out for a second.”

  “How long were you in there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t swim well, but when you see your life leaving in the form of a large, white luxury yacht, you swim like hell and yell at the top of your lungs. A lesson in survival in case this ever happens to you.”

  I though
t for a moment.

  “My question should be, what the hell were you doing out there?”

  He nodded, a knowing look on his face. “I was summoned.”

  “Summoned?”

  “You and I were talking for a moment, and when I went back to my station there was a note from one of those sticky pads. Somebody’d stuck it on my cutting board. Just a scrawled message saying ‘meet me on deck by the gate in five minutes. I have some information.’ “

  “Signed by?”

  “No signature. I thought maybe Marty or the big guy himself.”

  “It couldn’t have been any of the people we consider to be suspect. Juan Castro, Joaquin Vanderfield, they’re not even on board. So who?”

  James was dripping in the bathroom, taking off his clothes, and running the shower.

  “You told me that Kelly Fields said Amanda could have been screwing Chef Marty. Didn’t you say that?”

  Sighing, I told him, “What I said was, Kelly simply alluded to the fact that Amanda could have had her pick of guys. Mrs. Fields didn’t feel there was a real good chance that the sous chef was doing it with Juan Castro. I think she said the dishwasher wasn’t Amanda’s type. So she said that Amanda could have even been having an affair with Chef Marty. It was like, she could go right to the top.”

  “Well, Chef Marty is here. On board.” He started to step into the shower, then stopped.

  “You know, Skip, she was damned good looking.”

  “I agree.”

  “But getting her choice of men? I don’t get it. I mean, I may not be the best judge of people, but I went out with her and I didn’t see it. She wanted your undivided attention. It was almost her job to make you fall in love with her immediately.”

  “There are guys who apparently are looking for that.”

  “Guys who are desperate. Guys who aren’t happy with their lives.” He stepped into the steamy stall, and I walked outside. Chef Jean was rounding the corner.

  “Jesus, what the hell happened, Moore?”

  “An accident, Chef. That’s all it was.”

  “Well, he’s going to cause more problems than the two of you are probably worth.” He turned and headed back to the main cabin. I watched him halt and look back over his shoulder. “This may have been a big mistake. Hiring you two.”

  Six thousand bucks, slowly sinking in the sunset. “Chef Jean, I just gave you a damned good reason why we should stay on this case. We know who the players are. One of them may be Amanda’s killer. Maybe none of them are. But, we’re following every lead. We want this killer caught as bad as you and your wife do.”

  Bouvier and the captain of his ship, worried about the stain on the boat’s reputation. Worried about the news that would by now be Twittered all over the world, and worried about its effect on business and the success of the restaurants, the spices, cutlery, and pots and pans.

  I’d been worried about James’s life. If there was one thing this case didn’t need was another murder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  It was time to come clean. At least it seemed that way to me. I needed to confront Em about the jewelry store diamond ring heist, and the professor who had been accused of sexual battery. James and I also needed to tell Detective Ted Conway that James had been pushed from the ship. His life had been threatened. All hands on deck.

  “Skip?” She picked up on the first ring.

  “You heard?”

  “Oh, my God. Apparently, the boat’s gate wasn’t secured.”

  “Apparently, he was pushed.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “So someone has tried to implicate him with the knife, and now they tried to kill him?”

  “Either that, or scare the hell out of him. I think they may be trying to get us off the case.”

  “Are you really that close to solving it? I mean, we haven’t got any solid clues. Why would someone try to kill him? Unless they thought he was a lot closer to solving the murder than he is.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured her face. Soft blonde hair framing her cheekbones and that wide-eyed innocent look.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Great. I’ve got some stuff on Joaquin Vanderfield and Juan Castro. Where do we meet?”

  “How about your place?”

  “Maybe someplace neutral.”

  Either Ted was staying over, or she was afraid I would want to. Either way, it was not a good sign for our relationship.

  We met at a small café four blocks from L’Elfe. Em had an iced vanilla latte. I had a coffee, black.

  “Juan Castro lives in his car.”

  She cut right to the chase.

  “What?”

  “At least he did. He parked the car in the L’Elfe lot overnight. He’d sneak in when Mikey Pollerno would open to do the setup and he’d take a shower in the locker room. It was his home for several months.”

  “And you learned this from?”

  “A little bit from Ted,” she said sheepishly. “He let some of it slip. It seems they arrested him for vagrancy once after he started work there.”

  Cops had records of things like that. We didn’t. But then, we had Ted. Or Em did, so we weren’t totally in the dark.

  “And I did a background check on our Juan. He’s been in trouble for petty larceny, for peddling some grass, nothing serious. But his address always came back to the same address as L’Elfe. So I started checking around. He drove a beat-up 1996 Dodge Intrepid and it was always there.”

  “Really.” I knew how it felt to drive a beat-up clunker. But Castro’s car wasn’t in the lot anymore so at least his vehicle ran. Mine was still waiting for a new battery.

  “It turns out some of these restaurant guys are nomads, Skip. They move around a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t at least one other person in that kitchen who’s considered homeless.”

  “Do you think Chef Jean knew?”

  “I would think that Marty knew. Bouvier, he is too removed from the day-to-day stuff, and he’s got other restaurants to worry about. I don’t get the impression that he’s that hands on.”

  And I was immediately reminded of Sophia Bouvier, who was screaming at the salad guy on the yacht. That seemed pretty hands on to me.

  “What about Joaquin Vanderfield? Anything on him?”

  She nodded and sipped at her fancy latte. We hadn’t decided who was going to pay yet, but her drink was around six bucks. Mine, a dollar twenty.

  “Get this. He graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando.”

  “No kidding.”

  “He did. Near the top of his class.”

  “My God, Em, Le Cordon Bleu is a big deal. I mean, Amanda dropped out of a second-tier school after one year.”

  “Yeah. Don’t let James hear you call his alma mater a second-tier school.” She shook her finger at me. “Anyway, this guy is apparently a top-notch chef, but his attitude got in the way.”

  “With all due respect to your friend, Amanda, I would think that Joaquin had a reason to be upset.” I would have been pissed off as well, but the idea that his anger led to her murder was stretching things a bit.

  “It’s worse than that.” Em took another sip, set the cup on the table, and leaned toward me. Her voice was softer now. “He got into it with a sous chef in Sarasota at a place called Darwin’s. The ruckus caused quite a stir.”

  “What happened?” I took a gulp from my coffee and felt the caffeine start to do its job.

  “Darwin’s apparently is a pretty good operation, and they had this sous chef named Andy Potts.”

  “Potts? Works with pots and pans?”

  She didn’t return my smile. “This Potts was the kind of guy who was very much a hands-on supervisor. Sometimes he’d take over a cook’s station if he thought things weren’t moving fast enough or if he thought the quality was suffering.”

  “And?”

  She looked over her shoulder as if she was afraid someone was going to hear her. “Joaquin Vanderfield is known for his temper. He’
s the one in the kitchen who will throw a pan at the wall, or swear loud enough for the dining room to hear him curse.” Em sipped her beverage. “Throwing a pan against the wall is not tolerated in a professional kitchen, at least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  I was sure she was right.

  “Anyway, Vanderfield became enraged when Potts called him out on a dish he was preparing. Apparently Potts didn’t think a dish was prepared correctly and he announced it to the kitchen. Words were exchanged, along with some shoving, and Vanderfield went after Potts with a knife.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She nodded emphatically. “According to reports, he pushed him against a wall, held the knife to this neck, and told him that if he interfered with his cooking again he was going to slit his throat on the spot.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ten minutes later Joaquin was out the door, looking for another job.”

  We both sat there, letting it soak in. Here was a guy with some anger-management issues who had threatened someone’s life when all they did was offer some constructive criticism. How would Vanderfield react when he thought someone was taking away a job that belonged to him? I flashed back to my first sight of the feisty cook, his dark brooding look, three-days’ growth of beard, his knife strapped to his side, and his obvious contempt for Chef Marty. Yeah, this guy was one to watch.

  “So what do you think?” She stared at me from across the table.

  “We’ve got nothing.”

  “Yes, but we’re starting to build a case. A little more about Castro, a little more about Vanderfield, and maybe we start seeing some progress.”

  “What’s up with Ted? What else has he shared?”

  “Not that much.”

  I paused. I didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to sound like some college kid with his first serious girlfriend who was asking inappropriate questions.

  “Em, you and Ted, have you—”

  “Slept with him?”

  I sheepishly nodded my head, hoping she wouldn’t answer.

  “No.” She shook her head, seemingly embarrassed that I had even asked. “I don’t go to bed with the first attractive man that asks. I would hope you’d know me better than that.”