by Leslie Karst
The screen was lit up and the icon at the top right informed us that the charge was at one percent. “Yes!” I said. “How much do I owe you?”
As soon as I sat down in the T-Bird, I plugged the phone into Jackie’s charger, and this time when I started the car up, the phone sprang to life. I let the engine idle as I swiped the black screen.
Oh, no. ENTER PIN, it read.
“I don’t suppose you know your mom’s phone password, do you?”
Evelyn frowned. “No. I wonder if it’s different from her computer. Try Coco. Or maybe my name?”
“Nope,” I said, when neither this nor any variation on Evelyn worked. “And I don’t suppose you even know how many characters she used.”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
Great. No way would we be able to unlock the thing. Jamming the car into gear, I headed out of the parking lot. “We should take it to the police,” I said. “They for sure have some techie cop who can get it unlocked. We could drop it off now, on the way back to my place.”
“No,” Evelyn answered with a vigorous shake of the head. “I bet I can come up with the password. I really want to see what’s on the phone before we turn it in. Just give me a day or two, and if we can’t figure it out in that time, we can take it to the police then.”
“Okay,” I said. “But it better not get stolen like that computer was. And you have to promise you won’t tell Vargas when we found it when we do give it up.”
“I promise.”
Once home, Evelyn brainstormed password ideas, which I tried, only to have all fail. Birth date? No. Previous pets’ names? No. Wedding date? Nope. Divorce date? Well, Evelyn didn’t know that one for sure, so who knew.
After about ten minutes of this, I got bored. “Just jot your ideas down, and I can try them all at once,” I said, heading to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee. “I’m going to go work on my staff scheduling until it’s time to leave for Gauguin.”
“Will do.” Evelyn tapped a forefinger on her phone a few times, then began murmuring words into its voice recognition app.
I retired to the study, and after an hour and a half of work, had come up with a tentative schedule that seemed like it would make everyone in the front of the house fairly happy. Everyone, that is, except the hostess, Gloria, who’d asked for both Christmas and New Year’s Eve off. No way was that going to work, nor would it be fair to the other staff.
I’d just finished penciling in all the names on my scheduling pad when the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine” rang out from my phone. “Hey, Nichole,” I said. “How’s it?”
“Good. Great, actually. Mei just found out she has tomorrow off at the gym, so we thought we’d come down to Santa Cruz to stay the night tonight, if it’s not too late notice.”
“No way. It’s great timing. I’d normally be working, but Javier’s off tomorrow to go to a wedding, so he’s taking my place tonight. We can have a night on the town together.”
“Nice! I’ll text you later to let you know when we’ll be there.”
After hanging up, I stood up from the desk and stretched, then went in search of Evelyn. “Time to go make pasta,” I said, poking my head into her bedroom.
Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into the Gauguin parking lot. “You need help getting inside?” I asked as Evelyn started to climb out of the car.
“Nope.” She popped open her cane and stepped onto the uneven concrete surface. “I’ve done it enough times now that I know where all the potholes are. I’ll be fine. As long as the door’s unlocked, that is.”
Javier’s car was already parked in the driveway, and I could see his silhouette through the window of the garde manger. “Yeah, I’m sure it is. But I’ll wait just to make sure.”
Once she was safely inside the building, I locked my car and headed on foot for the Pacific Garden Mall a block away. I was hungry and knew exactly where I wanted to have a bite to eat: The Streets of Delhi.
Chapter 20
The pop-up was far less busy than when I’d been there on Wednesday, as it was now that slow period after lunch yet well before dinner. Two customers were sitting at the small table in the waiting area, but they got their food and left before I finished studying the offerings on the chalkboard. I’d been hoping to try out the Singapore noodles this time, but they weren’t listed today. The Tom Kha Gai soup, however, was still on the menu, and the sight of the name sent a little shiver down my back.
Stepping up to the counter to place my order, I poked my head through the window to check out who was in the kitchen. I could see Sarah at the far counter dumping the contents of a saucepot into a large plastic container, but she appeared to be alone. No sign of Rachel. Which came as a bit of a relief, but was disappointing at the same time. I would have liked to get another good look at her, to see if she could in fact have been my attacker the other night. And to observe how she reacted to seeing me again.
Oh, well. Maybe Sarah would spill something important about Rachel if I could get her talking. Which—based on our previous conversations, when she’d been quite the chatterbox—wouldn’t be too hard, I figured.
Looking up, Sarah smiled and flashed a “just a sec” gesture, finished scraping the pot clean, and then came over to the window.
“Hey, Sally,” she said. “We actually just closed for the day at two, but I could get you something real quick if you want.”
“Oh, you’re not open tonight?”
“No. The other pop-up that shares the space has Friday nights. We have to be out of here by three-thirty so they can come in for their prep work.”
“Ah. Got it. Well, I’d love some of the Butter Chicken if you still have any.”
“No worries,” Sarah said. “That’s what I was putting away, but I can heat up an order for ya. Rice?”
“Sure. Jasmine, if you have it.”
“You got it.”
Remembering what she’d said about playing bass in a band, I asked if she had a gig tonight, to get her talking.
She ladled a portion of the creamy orange-colored chicken back into the pot and set it on the stove, then returned to the window. “Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact,” she said. “So I’m actually glad we’re closed Friday nights. Tonight’s our first night at this really cool jazz bar.”
“Oh, yeah? Which one?”
“Nick’s, that retro place out in Aptos Village. Why? You thinking of coming?” Hope spilled from her eyes at the possibility of a few additional patrons. The more drinks the bar sold tonight, the better the group’s chances were of being asked back.
“Maybe. I have some friends coming down from the City, and it might be a fun thing to do tonight. Are you expecting a lot of people?”
She shrugged. “Rachel and Maya both said they’ll be there, and I’ve asked a few other people too, but you never know if they’ll actually come or not.”
She left to stir my chicken and, deeming it sufficiently heated, heaped a mound of rice into a to-go box, then spooned the curry on top. “Here ya go,” she said, sliding the cardboard container into a paper bag and passing it to me.
“Thanks.” I handed her a twenty and she made change. “So, speaking of Rachel,” I said, “last time I was in here she seemed kind of … I dunno, gruff, like she really didn’t want to talk to me. I can’t imagine any reason she’d be mad at me, can you?”
Sarah closed the register and leaned on the counter. “I’m not sure why she’d be upset with you. Unless maybe it’s because of your relationship to Evelyn—and by extension, to Jackie.”
“Oh, because of whatever caused Rachel to quit, you mean?”
“It turns out she didn’t quit. Jackie fired her.”
“Really?”
Sarah nodded. “Yeah, I just found out the other day. Rachel told me that when she and Jackie had started up The Curry Leaf, she’d thought of it as belonging to them both, but after a while it became clear that Jackie felt like it was her place. That she was the creative person behind it all and R
achel was just an employee. Even though Rachel had helped tweak the recipes and the curry spice mixtures and everything.” Sarah frowned and chewed her lip. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this. But then again, you own a restaurant, so I guess you’d understand.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “And I totally understand how Rachel would feel. That would really suck, doing so much to make a place so successful and then have the owner not even appreciate how much of it was because of you.” Exactly how Javier must have felt before I asked him to be co-owner, was what I was thinking. “And it’s not as if I was friends with Jackie,” I added. “The last time I saw her was like twenty years ago.”
This seemed to satisfy her. “Well, anyway, I guess they had a big fight about it one night when Maya and I were gone, and Jackie ended up firing Rachel.”
“Whoa. I wonder why Rachel had told you she quit?”
“I guess she didn’t want me to be uncomfortable still working for Jackie. Or maybe she was just embarrassed, I dunno. But now that she’s running this place, she probably figured she might as well tell me what really happened. You know, since it looks like it might actually work out between us. It’s not good for couples to have secrets.” Sarah smiled and stood back up from the counter. “Anyway, I really should get back to cleaning up.”
“Right. No problem.” I picked up my to-go container, grabbed a fork and napkin from the box on the counter, and started for the door. “So see you tonight, maybe.”
“I hope so. That would be awesome!”
It’ll be even more awesome, I mused as I headed down the street, if I can get Rachel to talk to me.
I had almost an hour to kill before picking up Evelyn after her pasta-making session, so I took my chicken curry up to Abbott Square to pass the time. This close to the winter solstice, the light cast by the low sun was not all that warming, but nevertheless, the tables at the public piazza were nearly full. Folks out for their holiday shopping, or merely taking a late lunch, sat with panini and glasses of beer, their faces turned toward the weak sun. Everyone was simply happy to enjoy some time outdoors after the previous weekend’s gusty rainstorm.
Taking a table near a group of women chatting and knitting with brightly colored skeins of yarn, I opened the box of curry and dug in with my bamboo fork. The seasoning was perfect—hints of cardamom, black pepper, and cumin with none overwhelming another, the chunks of tender chicken blanketed in a creamy sauce spiked with tomato and ginger.
Wow. This was far better than any butter chicken I’d had before. Was it one of the recipes Jackie had created at Tamarind, or had she and Rachel developed it on their own afterward? I didn’t remember it ever having been on the menu at The Curry Leaf. Had it been, I would have surely noticed, since it’s one of my favorite Indian foods.
Curious, I took out my phone and pulled up the Tamarind website to check their menu for the dish. Yes, there it was: “Makkhani Murghi, Chicken in Butter Sauce.”
My thoughts returned to the intruder at Jackie and Evelyn’s house on Wednesday night. Ev and I had discussed the possibility of it being someone out to steal any recipes Jackie might have kept at home, which theory jibed with their smelling like freshly grated galangal. My attacker obviously hadn’t been holding anything in their hands (Don’t think about those gloved hands, Sal), but they could have had a small notebook or stack of recipe cards in their pocket.
As I savored the luscious butter sauce enveloping my chicken curry, I became even more convinced that was indeed what the intruder had been after. A recipe like this—along with all the others Jackie had no doubt compiled—would be a colossal boon to any purveyor of Indian or Southeast Asian food.
Especially someone like Rachel, who was just starting out and needed to make a quick splash in order to establish her own clientele. And then I realized something that made my breath catch: the Butter Chicken had first appeared on Rachel’s menu two days after the break-in at Jackie’s house. Coincidence? I wasn’t so sure.
I finished my curry, tossed the box into the trash can in the corner of the piazza, and headed back to Gauguin.
No one was in the garde manger when I got there, but white dish towels covered most of the counter space, upon which strands of flour-dusted pasta lay like golden tresses cut from the head of a fairy-tale princess.
I found Javier and Evelyn upstairs in the office. “They make drying racks,” Evelyn was saying. “These things with dowels sticking out at all angles, that you can hang the pasta on.”
“Well, we’ll have to get some of those,” Javier said with a laugh. “Because right now it’s taking up all the counter space of my cold food prep area.”
“Hey, guys,” I said, coming into the room. Javier, I noted with amusement, started at my sudden entrance but Evelyn did not. Was her sense of hearing so much better than his that she’d heard me walking down the hall? “You finished up early, I see.”
“Yes, Javier was quite the quick learner. I don’t think he’ll ever be as good as my nonna, but for a non-Italian, he’s not bad.” Evelyn stood. “You ready to head back home?”
“Yeah, it’d be nice to have a little time before Nichole and Mei arrive.” At a buzzing in my pants pocket, I pulled out my phone and examined the screen. “Aha. Speak of the devil.”
It was a text from Nichole: MEET AT YOUR PLACE AT 5?
PERFECT, I sent back. AND I HAVE A PLAN FOR TONIGHT.
Now, even more than before, I hoped I could talk Nichole and Mei into going to hear some jazz tonight. I had a few questions to ask Rachel.
* * *
I hadn’t been to Nick’s in years. Eric and I had gone there a few times when we’d still lived together. We’d sit at the bar sipping Manhattans and pretending we were someplace like the Blue Note in New York City. Although, from what I’ve heard about those famous big-city jazz clubs with their squished-together tables and how-many-drinks-can-we-sell-you ambience, I’m guessing Nick’s is probably a far more pleasant venue for simply relaxing and listening to music.
On weeknights, it’s an old-fashioned piano bar with this guy who looks close to ninety tinkling out the Great American Songbook, occasionally singing along with himself in a raspy yet soothing voice. On Friday and Saturday nights, however, they have combos perform, sometimes local groups like Sarah’s and occasionally better-known jazz musicians. So it was a bit of a coup for her trio to have scored this gig.
Tonight, by the time Nichole, Mei, and I finally arrived after our leisurely dinner at the Szechwan place down the street, the joint was jumpin’. At least a dozen couples were packed onto the tiny dance floor, swing-dancing to a blistering version of Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train.” We found a table at the far back of the room, ordered a round of drinks from the cocktail waitress, and—since it was far too loud to do any talking—sat back to enjoy the band.
They were good. Really good. Especially the pianist, a gal with coal-black hair and eye shadow to match, whose hands flew over the keys with a finesse recalling the Duke himself. I turned my attention to Sarah, her fingers a blur as they attacked her upright bass. She and a young guy on the trap drum kit were focused solely on each other, their playing locked together in a tight rhythm.
The tune came to an end, and we all clapped. A lithe woman with a Joni Mitchell Court and Spark look now stepped up onto the small stage. Sarah moved a mic stand that had been sitting behind her to the front of the stage and introduced the woman as their special guest, Liz Lacey.
Liz uncoiled the microphone and slid it from its clip, then nodded to Sarah, who commenced a languid bass melody accompanied by brushes on the snare drum. After eight bars the pianist joined in, at which point I thought I recognized the song. I was proved right when the woman began to sing.
“Oh, I love this one!” I said to Nichole and Mei. It was “Cry Me a River,” and the singer was doing her best breathy Julie London imitation. I started to sing along, then noticed I wasn’t the only one doing so. There was a woman standing at the bar who obviously
knew every single word to the song.
It was Rachel. She must have either just arrived or come from the ladies’ room, because I’d scanned the place for her when we’d first gotten there. As I watched, she not only mouthed the lyrics along with the singer but punctuated the accents of the bass and kick drum with a burlesque shake of the hips.
The next song was an up-tempo rendition of “Little Did I Dream,” which got the crowd back out on the dance floor. I kept an eye on Rachel, curious to see if she’d respond to this lesser-known song with as much familiarity.
She did indeed. If anything, she seemed even more into this one, snapping her fingers and bobbing her head, then applauding enthusiastically at the end of the piano solo. Like a true jazz aficionado.
“Thanks, everyone,” Sarah spoke into the mic after the song was over. “And thanks, Liz, for that sweet singing. We’re going to take a short break now, but we’ll be back up here in just a few minutes.”
Sarah laid down her bass, then jumped off the stage and headed for the bar. Rachel gave her a hug and a kiss on the lips, causing Nichole to jab me in the ribs. “Cute couple,” she said.
“Yeah, real cute. Although one of them may well be a burglar or a murderer—or both.”
“Very funny,” Nichole said, then frowned. “Wait. You’re serious.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I sipped from my Maker’s Mark.
“Okay, what gives.” Nichole leaned across the small table, prompting Mei to do the same.
I gave them the Reader’s Digest condensed version of Evelyn’s and my theory regarding her mother’s death, and why Rachel was currently one of my favorite suspects.
“And now I find out that she’s totally into jazz,” I finished. “So it could easily have been her who was playing that Artie Shaw and Mel Tormé album the night Jackie died. I just wish I could get her to talk to me, but she acts like I have the plague every time we meet.”
