Hot Stuff

by Don Bruns

  “Dude.”

  “I know.”

  “When did this chick ever have time to work?”

  “Just out of curiosity—” and I was curious, “did you ever—”

  “No. Never. We’ve been over this before.”

  “It wouldn’t be beyond you to—”

  “Skip, let’s get to the matter at hand. I’ve got two pieces of metal in my pocket. I’ve had some success with opening at least one lock, and I’m hoping I can do it again. I need you to keep an open eye, be a lookout.”

  If James was caught, I was caught. As usual, my best friend was putting me in a very vulnerable situation.

  Pulling the paper clips from his pocket, he looked back at the kitchen. No one was in view.

  “This is the tension wrench,” he said as he gently inserted it into the lock. “And this is the rake.”

  Slowly, carefully, he pushed the bent metal into the upper portion of the slot. Then he started wiggling it.

  “You have to apply the tension, then get the tumblers to fall. You jiggle, put some tension on the wrench, jiggle some more—”

  He was reveling in the method, when all of a sudden he stopped.

  “Tara’s office door.” He was whispering. “I think it just opened.”

  “Shit.”

  We both pressed up against the wall, holding our breath.

  Ten seconds went by and there was no more sound from the kitchen office.

  We stood perfectly still. If someone walked down that hall, we would have some explaining to do.

  I could hear fans in the kitchen and a faucet being opened. Water splashed in a stainless sink. Someone started whistling off key, and the water stopped.

  “How the hell are we going to explain what we’re doing?” I barely mouthed the words.

  James motioned toward the locker room.

  “We go back there. We were just getting cleaned up and lost track of time.”

  A door slammed shut, and I froze.

  “She’s back in the office. We’ve got time. She’s doing the books and that’s a long process.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  “Skip,” he whispered again, “this means that Kelly Fields is a primary suspect.”

  I was quiet. I really liked her. However, her relationship with Amanda Wright didn’t seem to be symbiotic.

  “Think about it, man. Amanda was hitting on her husband. She had the perfect motivation. And, she was on the boat that night.”

  “I know, James. But she’s getting back with him. Nothing happened. So it makes no sense that—”

  “Dude,” he was slow and deliberate, “Amanda was hitting on Kelly’s husband. In a brief, unguarded moment, in a moment of passion, of unbridled violence, she stabs the girl. Repeatedly. Picture it, Skip, she wants to save the marriage. She’s got kids, she’s got—”

  “Pick the damned lock. If you’re that good, prove it to me.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  He wiggled the rake. This wire of a paper clip, bent out of shape, he moved it rapidly inside the lock, all the while holding the tension wrench, another paper clip jammed into the bottom portion of the slot, to the left, putting pressure on the mechanism. Back and forth he jiggled the rake as I continually checked down the hall, keeping my hood pulled tight around my face.

  If we got caught or if Tara came back out, holy hell would break loose. Pretending to be kitchen personnel wouldn’t sit well with the staff, but breaking and entering, stealing CDs, there had to be a penalty of several years in prison for that. My guess. I hadn’t had time to research the sentence.

  “Hurry up.”

  “It’s going to take a minute or so.”

  “Longest damned minute I’ve ever experienced.”

  “Minutes are minutes, Skip.”

  The temperature in the building must have gone up ten degrees or those hoodies were warm, because I was sweating and I saw perspiration on James’s forehead. Jiggling that piece he called the rake seemed fruitless. It was only a matter of minutes before Tara or some other employee would wander down the hallway and see us breaking the law.

  “James, let’s go. Screw the CDs. We cannot get caught doing—”

  “It’s open, amigo. Quick. Inside.”

  Opening the door, he stepped inside and I followed.

  James gently closed the door, and we stood in the dark office, lit only by the lights in the hallway shining through the small window in the office door.

  “Where are the CDs?”

  “Right there, beside the monitor and the recorder.”

  “Five of them. These must have video from the night in question.”

  I grabbed the plastic discs and stuffed them under the sweatshirt. James opened the door, glanced in both directions, and we exited.

  “Take off your hood. Hell, we look like thieves,” James said.

  “Take off the shirt,” I replied. “It’s eighty degrees in here and probably eighty outside.”

  “Good point.”

  I wrapped the CDs in the cloth as we headed out through the kitchen. Tara walked out of her office, startling us both.

  With a questioning look she said, “Getting out a little late, aren’t you?”

  “Just talking back there.” James pointed toward the locker room. “Taking our time, you know?”

  She studied us for a moment.

  “Anything in the shirts?”

  We both shook our heads. Maybe she thought we had food.

  “Nothing, just heading home.”

  She nodded to us and walked back toward Bouvier’s office.

  “Thank God we got out of that one.” James watched her walk away, obviously admiring her butt.

  “Let’s just hope these are the right CDs.”

  “We’ll know in about fifteen minutes. Em is waiting up for us.”

  Stepping out into the humid Miami night, I took a deep breath. The pungent odor of saltwater and seaweed permeated the air, fresher than the mixed smell of grease and food inside.

  “Skip, it looked like Tara was going down to Bouvier’s office.”

  We walked to the truck.

  “Yeah?”

  “The door to the office is open. I forgot that it only locks with a key.”

  “James, she’ll think someone forgot to lock it.”

  “Maybe. But we also forgot something else.”

  “What?”

  “The CD in the recorder.” He stopped, staring back at the building. “The one showing us breaking into the office.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Em has this seventy-inch Samsung 3D television screen that is unbelievable for sports shows. We saw the Super Bowl on her TV last year, and it was almost as good as being there. Actually, I have no frame of reference.

  “So you just waltzed in and took the CDs?”

  We were sitting on her balcony, looking out at the lights from Star Island and farther to South Beach. The water in Biscayne Bay was inky black and the half moon cast a lazy, wavy pattern to the marina directly below.

  James and I sipped our beers. Em had a white wine, something I’d never developed a taste for.

  “James went on the Internet and found a video on how to pick a lock.”

  “With paper clips,” James reminded me.

  Em shook her head. “Paper clips?”

  “Hey, I was skeptical too. The proof is right there.” I pointed at the five discs on the coffee table inside.

  “Make a bomb, rob a bank, pick a lock—it’s as easy as logging on, am I right?”

  She was.

  “Five discs. Are they labeled?”

  I hadn’t even looked. They appeared to be rewritable.

  “They aren’t labeled.”

  “Why wouldn’t they label them?”

  “Because they can use them over again.”

  “Ah.”

  Em eased out of her chair, and we followed her into the condo. James and I sat down on the butter-soft leather sofa.

  “So how do we
know?” She slipped one of the discs into her player. The date immediately displayed on the lower left of the screen.

  “Question answered.”

  The date was two days before the murder.

  “Try this one.”

  I handed her the disc that had been two down in the stack.

  “Perfect,” she said when the video started. “This is the night.”

  The video started with a timer. Five p.m. Again, the numbers occupied a small section of the screen in the bottom left. The digits rapidly increased in fractions of a second. Thirty seconds later, with four different pictures on the display, nothing had happened.

  “Man,” James was frustrated, “we could be here for five or six hours.”

  Em turned her attention from the screen to the two of us sitting on her brown leather sofa.

  “We don’t know what we’re looking for.”

  “People walking in and out of the shots,” I suggested.

  “People taking breaks outside,” Em said.

  “Do we have a time of death?” James asked.

  I looked into Em’s eyes. “Did Ted share that with you?”

  Scowling, she said, “Yes. As a matter of fact, he did.”

  “Well, maybe we can fast-forward to five minutes before and see if there is any action that happened at that time.”

  “Time of death was, within half an hour, eight to eight thirty.” We’d first seen her body closer to nine p.m., within ten minutes of discovery by the waiter.

  “So,” Em walked to the player, “I’ll set this for ten till eight. That gives us at least ten minutes ahead of the possible killing.”

  Em fussed with the player, advancing the CD back and forth until we could see the on-screen timer as it registered 7:49.

  I concentrated on the whole monitor. There were four separate grainy pictures on the screen grouped in a square, the numbers increasing at a dizzying pace in a small space on the bottom left of the television.

  “This is going to be strange. Four cameras, four things happening at the same time. Hard to follow.”

  Watching the top left video I would see anyone walking from the locker room, restrooms, and showers toward the walk-in cooler and Bouvier’s office. There was no one. The top right picture was directed at the cooler entrance. Anyone walking in or out would be pictured. And they were. One of the Spanish-speaking cooks, Adelpho I believe, walked in, and almost immediately walked back out with a pan of what appeared to be chicken parts. The video was black and white, and blown up on Em’s screen, it was pixelated. I’d sold security systems for my company that were a lot higher tech than L’Elfe’s.

  My eyes drifted to the lower right picture, where traffic headed from the kitchen down the hall could be seen. An employee walking toward Bouvier’s office, the walk-in, or the locker room, restrooms, and showers would be picked up on this camera. Also, anyone walking from those areas to the kitchen would be visible. Adelpho was in that shot as well as he carried his pan of chicken to his cooking station.

  Finally, on the bottom left, was a view of the outside. The camera was mounted above the door and seemed to show a fairly wide angle of the parking lot. However, the green Dumpster was not visible and neither was the fire hydrant where they’d tied the yellow crime-scene tape the night of Amanda’s murder. Without a picture of that specific area, there would be no view of the killing. It would have been the perfect shot, but I was somewhat relieved. That image was something I really didn’t care to see.

  A minute passed and still there was no activity.

  “The outside camera,” Em pointed to the screen. “If Amanda exited through the kitchen door, we should be able to see her, right?”

  As she spoke, almost on command, someone opened the heavy steel door and walked outside.

  “Oh, my God. There.” Em stood up and moved closer for a better look.

  The harsh glare from a mounted floodlight blurred the upper body and by the time the person could have been identified, they were off camera.

  “Damn.” I frowned.

  “Maybe this is why Conway said there was nothing conclusive on the CD,” James said. “I mean, this could be a futile exercise.”

  “He also refused to let us see the CD,” she reminded him. “I’m not at all sure we should trust the detective.”

  I much preferred her tone now to the times she called him Ted.

  Em stopped the CD, reran the scene, but the upper torso was nothing but a blur of diffused light.

  “You know, it’s just like the security system on the kitchen door. That’s a cheap version that could be bypassed in seconds. And whoever installed this video system used the cheapest thing they could find and did a piss-poor job.” I didn’t understand kitchens or cooking, but I did know security systems. “They should have taken into consideration that light, and either—”

  “Skip, look.”

  The door opened a second time as another employee walked out. This person was a little shorter where the light didn’t catch the head and shoulders. There was less glare, but it was still hard to identify the worker as the camera was focused on their back. We saw the person, black jacket and white pants take about five steps into the parking lot.

  “Obviously, we’re not going to have much luck,” James said.

  Then, while the shorter body was still in frame, the door opened again. This time no one walked out, but the body still on screen turned around as if to say something.

  The three of us stared intently at the monitor, concentrating on the grainy, somewhat blurred face.

  Blurred as it was, there was no doubt of the identity. It was Chef Jean Bouvier.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  “So we’re not quite forty minutes before the latest time of the knifing and we’ve got somebody and Bouvier outside. Means nothing,” James said.

  Em nodded, making notes on a yellow legal pad. “There may be more of an exodus. We’ve got a lot of time left, guys.”

  “And,” I reminded her, “the killer could be someone who was never inside the restaurant. Someone who came off the street.”

  We watched in silence, as if we were sadistic voyeurs waiting for a grisly killing. Actually, we were.

  “It’s like a really bad reality show.” James watched too much TV.

  There was a gentle breeze off the water, drifting through the open door, and outside we could hear the sound of a speedboat, running across the bay in the pitch black. I could hear soft conversation on the patio next door, and hoped they didn’t hear us. Commenting on property that we’d stolen.

  “Em, we’ve got another suspect.” I needed to bring her up to speed.

  “Where?”

  “Not on the screen. Somebody we uncovered today.”

  Turning to me with a surprised look she said, “You waited until now to tell me this? What’s that all about?”

  “Look, this only happened this evening. Frankly, breaking and entering and stealing the CDs sort of overwhelmed me.”

  “So? Who is it?”

  “Kelly Fields.”

  “The baker?” I could tell she was more than surprised. The Fields girl had never been on the radar. “The one you had a date with?”

  “It wasn’t a date.”

  “After work, a beer—”

  So maybe I wasn’t the only one who had a jealous streak.

  “Anyway, she came up to me tonight and said she was getting back with her husband. She asked me not to mention our little rendezvous to anyone.”

  “Which you’d already done.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Go on.”

  “Mikey Pollerno, the setup guy, told me why the Fields separated.”

  “Oh?”

  “Kelly thought that Amanda was hitting on her husband.”

  “Hitting on her husband? You know, you guys have been making Amanda out to be a pretty awful person. She wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t that bad. Damn it, she was a friend and I—”

  James spoke up. “We
haven’t been making her out to be anything. We’re hearing it from the inside, Em. It’s not like we’re making this shit up.”

  “Here comes someone.”

  The lower right corner had movement. Someone was walking toward the locker room.

  “Sophia Bouvier,” I said. The short, squat, waddling woman was moving down the hall.

  We watched as she stopped halfway down to the locker room and opened the office door. The same office door that James had unlocked with paper clips. The door that had the jammed handle on the inside.

  “Not locked.” James studied her as she disappeared into the office.

  “Not locked?” I shook my head. “Would have been a whole lot easier if we’d lifted the CDs during regular hours.”

  “And there’s someone leaving out the back door,” Em said.

  Again it was impossible to tell who it was. The bright floodlight mounted on the building was creating an almost halo effect on the person from their shoulders on up.

  “Damn, we lose many more, there will be no one else running the kitchen,” James quipped. “Everyone is headed outside.”

  A minute later, give or take one hundredth of a second, Sophia exited the office and walked back toward the kitchen.

  “Her husband left, and how much do you want to bet she’s the next one out?”

  James called it. The outside door opened and the short woman stepped into the parking lot. We assumed it was her. She was far too short for the floodlight to halo her head, and she didn’t wear the black-and-white cooking garb.

  “You two didn’t tell me there were parties going on outside. Does this happen every night?”

  “Someone’s coming back in.” I pointed to the screen.

  As the figure got closer to the camera, I could barely make him out. It was Joaquin Vanderfield. Em scribbled something on her tablet.

  “So, was he the first person out the door? And now he’s done smoking his joint or using the cell phone?” James was watching intently, a brown bottle still in his hand but the contents a distant memory.

  “Or was he busy banging one of the waitresses up against the Dumpster?” Em had that sarcastic tone in her voice.