by Leslie Karst
“Hi, Evelyn,” one of the women said. “We just want to say how sorry we are about Jackie.”
“It was such a shock,” the other put in. Then, noticing me for the first time, she held out her hand to shake. “Hi, I’m Sarah,” she said. “And this is Maya. We worked with Evelyn’s mom at The Curry Leaf, her pop-up.”
“Good to meet you. I’m Sally Solari, Evelyn’s cousin.”
Sarah’s polite expression changed to one of pronounced interest as she took my hand in a strong grip. “Really? You’re the one who owns Gauguin, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Oh, I love that place,” Sarah said. “I mean, I’ve only eaten there once, since it’s kind of pricey for someone on my budget, but I thought the food was amazing!” She glanced at Maya, then back at me. “Um, I know you might think this is a little weird, given the occasion and all, but I was wondering—any chance you might be looking for a new cook right about now? ’Cause, you know …” She inclined her head in the direction of the chapel.
“Maybe,” I said. “We don’t have any positions open on the line, but we’re always on the lookout for good prep cooks these days.”
“That’s okay. I don’t really have enough experience to be a line cook at a place like Gauguin, anyway.” Sarah stuffed her hands into the pockets of her black jeans and laughed.
“So you’re not going to keep The Curry Leaf going?” I asked.
“I don’t see how we could. Neither of us has the money to do it, and even if I could afford it, there’s no way I’d want to run my own restaurant. It’s way too much work.”
Amen to that, I thought.
“And also, Jackie and Rachel—until she left, that is—” Sarah nodded in the direction of the woman who’d extricated herself from their group and was now standing by the sandwiches looking our way. “They did all the creative part of the cooking. I’d come in and basically just fry and reheat things and plate them up.”
“Besides,” Maya added, “it was Jackie’s business, not ours. It wouldn’t feel right reopening the place now that she’s gone.”
A large guy who’d just filled a plate with sandwiches overheard this last comment and strode our way. He had on a shiny black-and-orange Giants baseball jacket and an expensive-looking straw fedora with a black-and-white-striped hatband.
“You’d better not reopen,” he growled. “If you do, you can be sure I’ll sue your ass.”
He took a step toward the two women, and I was trying to decide whether or not to intervene when someone else stepped between the two of them, placing his hand on the big guy’s chest. It was Max, the man who’d spoken during the memorial service.
“Hold on, Al,” he said, pushing him backward. “This is neither the time nor place.” Max took the man by the arm and steered him away, talking him down as they moved off.
“What was that about?” Maya asked.
Sarah shook her shaggy blond hair and exhaled, allowing her shoulders to relax. “I have no idea,” she said. “I don’t even know who that guy is.”
“It’s my mom’s ex-boss, from Tamarind,” Evelyn said.
“So what the hell was he going on about?” Sarah turned to look at the two men, who were standing near the refreshment table, talking in hushed but animated voices.
Evelyn shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “He’s just a jerk. And it doesn’t matter anymore, anyway.”
Vargas joined us at this point. “You ladies all right?” he asked with a nod toward Al, who was still staring at us with a scowl.
“We’re fine,” I said. “Jackie’s ex-boss just seems to have some kind of a chip on his shoulder, is all. Which brings me to the next question: what are you doing here today?” I moved closer to him and lowered my voice. “Have you decided that Jackie’s death might not be a suicide after all?”
“Just covering all my bases,” he answered noncommittally, then, at the sound of his phone, pulled it from the pocket of his khaki slacks. He took a few steps away and spoke quietly for a minute. “Gotta go,” he said, returning to our foursome. “Something’s come up.”
“Wait.” I put a hand on his forearm. “Before you leave, I wanted to let you know that Evelyn found Jackie’s laptop at the house.”
“Really? Where? Because my officers searched the entire premises.”
“In her secret hiding place under the mattress,” Evelyn said with a smile, prompting the detective to slap his forehead in frustration.
“Did you find her phone too?” Vargas asked.
“No, just the computer,” I said. “It’s actually in my car, if you want me to run out and get it for you.”
“No, that’s okay. I really have to get going. But could you bring it to the station Monday morning? The tech guy won’t be in till then, anyway.”
“Sure thing.”
We shook hands goodbye, and when I turned back to our group, both Maya and Sarah were eyeing me curiously.
Chapter 8
It was still raining as we left the memorial service reception, so I had Evelyn wait under cover of the hall’s entryway while I dashed out to the parking lot to fetch the car.
Folding my lanky body into the driver’s seat, I started up the rattly engine, then used the side towel I keep to wipe down the inside of the windshield. The T-Bird was a super-cool car, and I the envy of folks who’d watch me cruise down the street in the creamy-yellow convertible, but I did sometimes miss the luxury of electric windows and a windshield that didn’t completely fog up every time it rained.
“So what the heck was that guy Al going on about back there?” I asked once Evelyn had gotten settled into the passenger’s bucket seat. “Why would he want to sue Sarah and Maya for continuing your mom’s pop-up?”
She waved her hand. “Oh, he’s got it in his head that Mom stole some of the Tamarind recipes when she quit, and that because of that he’s been losing customers over the past couple months to her pop-up. It’s another reason she was so stressed the past few months.”
“Huh.” I wondered if any of it was true. Restaurant owners have little legal recourse against ex-employees who take recipes with them when they leave. Nevertheless, it’s considered very bad form for departing chefs to co-opt a recipe for their new place, especially if they didn’t create the dish. And it’s even more of a no-no if they start competing with the same dish in the very same town, which is what Al had apparently been accusing Jackie of doing.
“But Mom swore she didn’t take any recipes,” Evelyn went on. “She said Al was just mad at her for quitting, and for telling people that the guys had been harassing her in the kitchen.”
I downshifted to slow for a truck that had lurched out in front of me. “Well, even if she didn’t use any of their recipes at The Curry Leaf, if it’s true that Tamarind did start losing money right after she opened the pop-up …” I glanced at Evelyn, who was chewing her lip.
“You’re right,” she said. “It sure does give Al reason to be mad at my mom. But mad enough to want to kill her?”
I had no answer for this.
We rode the rest of the way in silence, Evelyn tapping her fingers against the aluminum rods of her cane, me trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I seemed to be getting myself mixed up in yet another murder investigation.
By the time we got home, it was pouring down buckets, which—due to the vicious wind that had come up as well—managed to drench the both of us in the time it took to get from the garage to the front door. We shook the rain off our jackets and hung them to dry, then greeted the two dogs, who were acting as if we’d been gone for three days as opposed to three hours.
Evelyn retired to her room to rest, pleading sleepiness brought on by her non-twenty-four condition. But I suspected she was also emotionally drained from the afternoon’s activity. From experience, I knew it wasn’t easy having to attend a memorial service for your own mother.
“No worries,” I said. “Have a good rest. I have to be at work in a little bit, so I’ll se
e you when I get back tonight if you’re up. And if you’re hungry later on, don’t forget the leftovers from last night’s dinner are in the fridge.”
An hour later, I parked the T-Bird in the Gauguin parking lot and let myself through the side door into the garde manger. Tomás was at the counter, dicing a mirepoix of carrots, celery, and onions for the stock pot.
“Hey, Tomás,” I said. “¿Qué pasa?”
“Not much,” he replied with a shrug.
I leaned against the sink and watched as he returned to his chopping. His strokes were sure and fast, and the dices—though it hardly mattered for a stock—were evenly matched in size. After a moment he set the knife down and sighed.
“Sorry if I seem grumpy. It’s just that I heard a buddy of mine got caught up last night in an ICE bust at that taqueria down the street. He didn’t have his papers with him, so they carted him off to jail.”
“Oh, man. I’m so sorry, Tomás. But if he does in fact have the right papers, he should be released really soon.”
“I guess.” He didn’t seem very convinced.
“And if not, maybe I could ask my friend Nichole to help out. She’s an immigration attorney up in San Francisco.”
“Thanks, Sally,” he said, smiling now. “I’ll let you know if that’s necessary.”
Heading upstairs, I took the stairs two at a time, and as I turned the corner into the office I almost collided with Brian. The cook mumbled a curt “Sorry,” then hurried past me down the narrow hallway.
“What’s up with him?” I asked Javier.
He looked up from the ledger he was studying and waved his hand. “He’s just mad because I asked him, instead of Kris, to switch nights with me next weekend so I can go to a friend’s wedding up in the City. I tried to explain that it was because he’s the more experienced cook, but he just stormed off without letting me finish. For some reason he’s got it in his head that I’ve been favoring her over him.”
“Did he at least agree to swap nights?”
“Yeah, though I doubt I’ve heard the last of his bitching about it.”
* * *
We had a full house that evening. Saturdays are always a big day for Gauguin, but ever since a rave review in the local newspaper several months back, our weekends had been consistently crazy busy, even on rainy nights like this.
We’d been open for about an hour and I was at the grill station, searing a pair of plump fillets for two orders of salmon with habanero-lime butter, when a burst of shrieks emanated from the dining room. I looked out through the pass window just in time to see three of our card-stock menus fly off the reception desk, one coming dangerously close to poking a customer in the eye at table two. A gust of wind had blown open the front door, lifting the menus into the air. Before Gloria, the Gauguin hostess, had time to rush over to close the door, I had a glimpse of the sheets of rain streaming down the sides of the awning onto the restaurant’s front porch.
The shrieks in the dining room turned to laughter as a boom of thunder was followed by the flickering of lights.
“Great,” I said to no one in particular. “That’s all we need—a power outage.”
I glanced over at the line, where Javier and Brian were scurrying about tending saucepots and sauté pans. If they’d noticed the lights going off and on, they showed no signs of it.
By a quarter to nine, most of the remaining grill and hot-line orders had been sent out to the dining room, and the restaurant was beginning to clear out. “Fire table four!” Brandon shouted at me through the pass, and I threw two New York steaks and a salmon fillet on the charbroiler. Only four more grill tickets left, thank goodness.
I was brushing the steaks with a mixture of olive oil, black pepper, and chopped garlic when the lights went off again. Damn. After what seemed like forever, they came back on and I let out the breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.
Flipping the two steaks, I reached for the brush to baste their other side, and then the kitchen went dark once more. I counted out the seconds, waiting for them to flicker back to life. When I got to fifteen, I set down the brush. The only illumination in the kitchen was from the propane flames of the charbroiler and the blue-white gas flames at the Wolf range.
Brandon was at the pass window. “What do we do know?” he asked in a panicked voice.
Having the power go out during winter storms is nothing new in Santa Cruz, and I’d worked several shifts at Solari’s when it had happened, so I knew the drill.
“Tell the customers to stay put,” I said, “and go grab the battery-powered table lights from the storage closet and get them set up. Anyone who already has their food is free to stay and finish it, and we’ll send out any orders that are already cooked.”
“What about the tickets?” the waiter asked. “The POS isn’t gonna be working.”
“Well, they’ve all been printed out, so if people don’t have cash to pay, we can use the credit card reader and restaurant cell phone. They’re in the top drawer of the hostess stand.”
“Got it.” Brandon turned to confer with the other waitstaff, who’d come up behind him while I spoke.
Javier finished plating up two orders of Coq au Vin au Gauguin and set them on the pass. “Order up!” he hollered over the din of chattering customers that now filled the dining room. Nothing like a minor emergency to get folks animated. “I’m gonna go check on the generator for the freezer and walk-in,” the chef said. “It’s supposed to go on automatically when the electricity goes out, but I better make sure it’s working. This might last a while and I sure don’t want to lose any food.”
“Can’t we use the generator to get the lights back on?” Brian asked, turning a pork chop that he had searing in a pan.
“It’s only hooked up to the refrigeration units,” Javier said. “Those ones that power the whole restaurant are way too expensive. Oh, and you might as well toss that pork chop. We can’t do any more cooking, since the hood isn’t working.”
Brian frowned. “Oh, c’mon, man,” he said. “It’s almost done. It’d be stupid to waste it.”
“No.” Javier reached for the knob and turned off the gas under Brian’s sauté pan. “I’m not going to risk the buildup of toxic fumes in my kitchen.”
Brian slammed the pan down on the stove. In the dim light coming from the battery-powered lights in the dining room, I could see the sweat on his brow and the hardness in his eyes.
“Your kitchen. Right.” He stared at Javier for a moment, his chest rising and falling with his rapid breaths. Then, raising his arms with palms spread in an I-give-up gesture, he flashed a humorless smile. “Fine. I’ll leave you to your kitchen.” And with that, he untied his apron and dropped it to the floor, pushed past Javier and me, and headed for the garde manger.
Tomás came running into the kitchen from the cold food prep area. “What the hell’s wrong with Brian?” he said. “He just about knocked me down, he was in such a hurry to get outside.”
“I don’t know for sure,” Javier replied. “But what I do know is it looks like you’ve just been promoted to line cook for the rest of the shift.”
I ran after Brian. Javier might have been willing to let him take off in a rage, but I thought it better to try to talk him down. No matter what issues the guy might have been going through of late, Brian was a terrific cook, and I didn’t want to lose him merely because of some fit of male pique.
The streetlights were all off, and with the rain spilling down my face and into my eyes, it was difficult to make out anything in the dark parking lot other than the vague shapes of cars. “Brian!” I called out. “Wait!”
A car door slammed and its headlights flashed on, casting an eerie, rain-filled beam of light across the restaurant’s orange stucco wall and pale-violet trim. I dashed toward Brian’s VW Beetle, shouting for him to stop, but he either didn’t notice or simply chose to ignore my plea.
He backed quickly out of his spot, and as I watched the black Bug speed toward the street, its
headlights lit up my T-Bird, parked on the other side of the lot.
Wait, is that someone standing there, hunched over, next to my car?
The figure, caught in the headlights, froze. “Hey, what are you doing?” I yelled. With a glance in my direction, the person pulled the hood of their sweatshirt down over their face and took off running.
Before I even reached my car, I could see the long gash in its creamy-white ragtop. Great. Not only will that cost a bundle to fix, but everything inside is gonna get soaked.
And then I remembered: I’d left Jackie’s laptop in the car. I’d meant to bring it into the house when I’d gotten home from the memorial service, but had spaced it out. And, I realized with dismay, it had been in plain sight on the passenger seat—easy pickings for anyone who might want to swipe an expensive MacBook Air.
Switching on my phone’s flashlight app, I shined it inside the T-Bird. Yep, the computer was gone. Damn. I unlocked the door and dropped heavily into the bucket seat, oblivious to the water streaming from my clothes and hair onto the leather upholstery.
What was I going to tell Detective Vargas?
I shined my phone once more around the car’s interior, hoping I’d simply missed seeing the laptop, that perhaps it was on the floor. But no, the only item in the car besides Buster’s cushion was my wallet, which must have fallen out of my bag without me noticing.
But why, I wondered with an intake of breath, would a thief take the computer and not the wallet? It was lying on the passenger seat, right next to where the computer had been, so it would have been hard to miss.
Because it wasn’t a simple theft, was the obvious answer. They wanted that specific laptop and weren’t interested in anything else. So whoever took it must have known it was Jackie’s. But how …?
My mind went back to the reception after the memorial service, when I’d told Detective Vargas about finding the computer. Yes, I’d definitely mentioned that I’d left it in my car. So who could have heard me?
Maya and Sarah had been nearby at the time. But, I realized with a sigh, I hadn’t been paying attention to where anyone else was, which meant that pretty much anybody in attendance could have heard me say that Jackie’s laptop was sitting in my car.
