That evening, Fiona reluctantly left Sukey in her room. The dog couldn’t be allowed in the kitchen, and she didn’t want her out in the street at dark, when it would be easy for a thief to steal her. The Yorkie happily took the chew toy she offered and settled down on her new flannel blanket.
Aaron had told her about the break-in at her old apartment. She wanted to believe it was coincidence. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a fool. She simply couldn’t understand why anyone would want her. Or Sukey.
As Fee hurried into the kitchen late, Dinah waved a knife at a pile of vegetables and returned to slamming oven doors and flinging pots into the capacious sink. The evening staff was already there, handling any duties Dinah couldn’t while the cook danced around, preparing food for Delphines high-end guests.
Fee wanted to peek into the dining room, but Delphines had its own waitstaff. Since she couldn’t meet the diners, she couldn’t tell what food they really needed. Chopping veggies was all she was good for. That, and worrying.
“We got vegetarians coming in,” Dinah shouted over the noise of banging pots. “You know a vegetarian soup recipe? I like chicken broth in my soups.”
“You have veggie stock in the freezer,” Fee reminded her. “I made it earlier.”
“Tasteless,” Dinah declared. “No bacon, no sausage, just what, beans?”
“How many servings?” Fee reached for a soup pot.
Dinah spread her thick ruby-lipsticked lips and flashed a toothy white smile of satisfaction. “Make it for a dozen, and I’ll freeze it.”
Soup chefs got paid more than scullery help. Fee had a feeling that didn’t matter here. She’d rather make soup than scrub pots or serve guests anyway. “You’ll have to use the pasta as a thickening agent if you reheat,” she warned. “It will be mush.”
“You make it taste good. Let me worry about the rest.” Dinah returned to flinging shrimp into her bubbling skillet.
Other people found kitchens to be hell on earth, and Fee could see their point. Heat, slamming pots, furious shouts, flashing knives. . . But she loved it. The aroma of herbs and juices absorbed her the way music did others. She practically floated from station to station, gathering what she needed. She could forget the evils of the world and focus on feeding the hungry.
She tried to picture the people who might eat her soup and decided that on a cool spring evening, they’d like warmth and comfort. Or maybe she did. Anyway, she prepared a rich mushroom broth, added the—admittedly weak—veggie broth, then set one of the lodge employees to chopping carrots. Pasta instead of potatoes, she’d already decided, and some withered but still fresh tomatoes. Cannellini beans for protein. Maybe next time she’d throw in quinoa, but Dinah didn’t have any.
By the time it was ready, the kitchen was redolent with bay and rosemary, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten yet. She was practically drooling.
Dinah served the soup with her fresh baked hearty grain bread, and Fee crossed her fingers and prayed. She wanted to succeed here. She wanted to make Dinah happy that she’d taken a chance on her. She was practically giddy from working in a real kitchen instead of the filthy roach joints she’d been reduced to lately.
She was immersed in plating orders for a table of three when Thomas, the maître d’, entered the kitchen. Brown-skinned, wrinkled, and not very tall, he didn’t seem a likely candidate for sturdy Mariah’s father, but he held himself with a dignity that easily matched his daughter’s proud carriage.
“Cass wishes to speak with the soup chef.”
They’d only prepared one soup tonight. Fee clenched her fingers nervously. She’d heard the other Lucys speak deferentially of Cass, the woman whose family had once owned the entire mountain. She knew little else about her and threw a questioning glance to Dinah. The cook merely shrugged and pointed at Fee.
Thomas waited expectantly.
“I can’t go out there,” Fee protested. “I’m not dressed.”
“Fresh apron.” One of the lodge staff handed it over as if a cook being called to the front was routine.
Maybe it was common here. Fee had never worked a fancy restaurant kitchen before. Pulse pounding, she pulled on the fresh apron, removed her net cap, and ran her fingers through her springy hair. She’d been dying to see Delphines, although she’d hoped to do so as a customer, not a minion. Oh well, she could dream.
The front of the restaurant wasn’t full. It was mid-week in off-season, and Hillvale was out of the way for city diners unless there was a special event. Fee noticed a few familiar faces sitting around the linen-draped tables. Fresh spring flowers in Mardi-Gras colored vases decorated the room. Underneath discreet pendant lights, Kurt and Monty were sitting with several business suits. She recognized one of the suits as the lodge manager and another as Xavier, the lawyer who handled the resort’s rentals. A third one wasn’t familiar but had the same privileged aspect as the bankers from earlier in the day.
Thomas led her to a table where silver-haired Cass sat with a couple of older women Fiona didn’t know. They didn’t look too scary. She kept her eyes down and inhaled the scents. The soup was good. She would swear to it by the odor alone. So she concentrated on the women, sensing a whiff of loneliness, along with a smell that she couldn’t exactly identify except that it reminded her of someone who was conflicted.
“The soup needs barley,” Cass said peremptorily. “But otherwise you have duplicated my family’s recipe to perfection. How did you do that?”
Maybe if she rolled her eyes back in her head and fainted, she wouldn’t have to answer that.
But Cass was a Lucy, Fee knew. One assumed the other two women accepted weirdness or were also Lucys. It was just. . . she really couldn’t explain.
“Dinah didn’t have barley. I want to try quinoa next time. Recipes should be experimented with and updated.” As usual, she’d said too much. She could have stopped with the lack of barley. Biting her bottom lip to shut it up, she clasped her hands in front of her as if she were a student and dared a quick glance at the older woman.
Cass showed no expression. “I didn’t ask for a lecture. I asked a question. Where did you obtain your recipe?”
This was how she always landed in trouble. People wanted explanations for the inexplicable. She got frustrated because she couldn’t tell them what they wanted. And then she opened her mouth and let anything fall out. Cass deserved her respect, however, which was more than most of her customers did.
“I don’t use recipes,” she said, honestly, forcing herself to meet Cass’s eyes. “I smell what is needed.”
The older woman’s eyes widened, but she nodded slowly, as if processing that inanity. “Interesting. You might wish to speak to Mariah or Keegan about the Malcolm journals they’re having scanned and computerized. There may be information about your talent in one.”
Malcolm journals? They weren’t likely to have anything to do with her own family, so Fee had no idea what Cass was talking about. She simply dipped her head in acknowledgment. “May I bring you anything else?”
Cass studied her through dark blue, almost hypnotic, eyes. “No, but come visit me when you have time. I think you’ll do well here.”
Fee practically fled back to the safety of the kitchen, where no one paid her any attention. She leaped back into the fray until the last of the meals had been plated.
Dinah pointed a spatula at her. “We got clean-up covered. You go home and feed that doggie.”
Fee almost melted in gratitude. It had been an emotionally draining day. Aaron had said he’d leave her box of precious possessions outside her door. She could comfort herself with Big Bear and put her familiar lavender sheets on the bed.
She didn’t leave past the few late diners in front. Refusing to believe she was in any danger walking the block to Aaron’s back door, she dropped her battered messenger bag over her shoulder, and slipped out the kitchen exit.
She’d walked and biked far more dangerous streets than this. Aaron had let her store her bike in his workroom
, so there was no obvious indication of where she lived. The way she looked at it, the bike was more identifiable than she was. She’d never stayed in one place long enough to make friends. She really had no identifying features—which might be why poor Peggy was dead. If they really were after her, the meatheads didn’t even know how old she was or the color of her hair.
Belatedly, it occurred to her that because Peggy’s ex was related to Fee’s former boss, Snakebite Guy might actually have thought Peggy had been the one to take Sukey. But it had been Fee’s things that had been trashed.
In the dim light from the big street lamp in the front parking lot, she found the new security camera at the alley connecting to the main street and waved at it. Some of the kitchen staff had reported seeing Walker installing it. If she had anything to hide, a camera might be a nuisance, but she felt vaguely reassured that the police of this town cared enough to take precautions.
As she applied her key to Aaron’s back door, a stench of fish billowed entirely too close behind her.
Eleven
Wednesday, late evening
Comfortably stuffed on Dinah’s delicious étouffée, Monty shook Victor Portelli’s hand. If the broker saw the farm development as an opportunity to invest, Monty would break bread with him anytime. Houses and new business were all good.
Outside in the parking lot, he watched the investment man walk off with Fred Roper, their lodge manager, who’d introduced them. “Should we have Walker check that guy out?” he asked Kurt.
His brother shrugged. “Nouveau riche. We’re too poor to be proud.”
Before Monty could reply, a scream rent the night.
Fiona’s scream.
Without second thought, Monty raced toward the lane behind the café—the lane Fiona would have to take to her room.
More bellows and screams followed—Monty couldn’t discern fear from fury from pain. Cursing himself for thinking she would be safe, he raced into the back lane fully prepared to launch his famed tackle and knock heads into the ground.
He almost stumbled over a slight form in the semi-dark. Fiona? With rage, he shifted to defense mode. Bracing himself with one leg on either side, fists up, he searched for the attacker.
Instead, he saw a shadowy Fee standing shakily at Aaron’s back door. She was clutching her elbows and staring over the hill, with no danger in sight. What the f. . . ?
Emerging from the alley, Kurt cursed, but before either of them could act, the kitchen’s back door spilled a square of light into the darkness. A beam from a flashlight trotted out in the gnarled hand of the maître d’.
“Go get the girl, Mr. Mayor,” the sprawling body beneath him spat out in disgust. “I just tripped in these damned heels.”
Dinah. He was playing caveman for Dinah, who could probably carve grown men into pumpkins. Monty stepped back, left Thomas and Kurt to help the cook, and marched toward Fiona. His pulse still hadn’t slowed down, but she seemed unharmed. “What the hell happened?”
“Someone grabbed me.” Fee pushed past him to fall on her knees beside Dinah. The cook had refused help and was sitting up on her own. “Are you okay?”
“I’m good.” Dinah primly adjusted the bodice of the low-cut cocktail dress she’d been wearing under her apron.
Fiona hugged the cook, then glanced up at Monty. “I screamed, and Dinah came running.”
The flashlight caught a gleam of silver. Thomas bent over to retrieve a long-bladed kitchen knife. “She was watching to see you safely home.”
The image of the cantankerous transgender cook wearing heels and wielding a butcher knife left Monty’s head spinning. There may have been a good reason Dinah had left New Orleans to hide in Hillvale.
Kurt sensibly brought the out-of-control conversation back to a more relevant point. “Where’s the attacker?”
Monty held out his arm to support the cook as she stood up. Dinah winced, but he couldn’t tell if it was from the flashlight beam in her eyes or pain. Dinah wasn’t exactly young, so he kept an eye on her as she reached her feet in her pointed heels. She wobbled and leaned on him.
Fiona glanced worriedly from Dinah to the dark downhill mountain. “I don’t like being grabbed from behind,” she said in that quiet, guarded voice Monty was starting to recognize. There was steel in that tone, if one listened.
He might not know rocket science, but he knew people. He suspected she wouldn’t tell her tale in front of strangers—or at all, if he didn’t yank it out of her.
“We’d better call Brenda and Walker,” Monty told the gathering kitchen workers. “Take Dinah somewhere she can sit down and make her stay until Brenda arrives.”
Thomas offered a courtly arm to a limping Dinah, and the kitchen staff hustled her off. Kurt lingered. Monty pointed him toward the others. “Walker will be home, probably in bed. You can call him from the phone in the café’s office.”
His big brother scowled and followed the crowd.
Once he had Fiona isolated, Monty instinctively caught her waist, unsurprised when she collapsed against him. She was shaking so hard that he was amazed she could still stand. “What did you do to the attacker?” he murmured against her thick curls.
“I smelled him,” she said with what might be a hysterical giggle. “I haven’t survived this long by being weak.”
Monty rubbed her back, wondering what the hell he was doing. But she wasn’t objecting, and he needed the reassurance that this slender waif was okay. He waited for her explanation. He was learning Fiona liked to use her words sparingly. He had some understanding of why, if she said things like that very often.
She handed him her purse. It nearly took his arm off.
He peered in. “You carry rocks?” he asked with incredulity, shifting the strap to his shoulder.
“I can’t afford weights, and brass knuckles are illegal,” she said primly, pushing from his arms. “Rocks are free.”
Cold air rushed between them. He wanted her back in his arms. “Rocks?” he repeated idiotically. “You’re not tall enough to bash a kid over the head, much less a full grown man.”
“Heads are hard,” she said with a shrug, taking back her bag. “Soft places work better.”
Monty winced as he got the message. “I could still take you down, and I’d be even more furious.”
For the first time, she met his eyes with defiance. “Not if I smack the side of your face with that bag while you’re bent over, groaning.” She hesitated again and glanced back to the shrub-covered hill. “And then I kicked him. He stumbled backward, tripped over that dark rim, and pitched down the hill. He’s still down there somewhere.”
“Of course, you did,” the mayor said in what sounded like resignation, checking the shrubbery for broken branches where her attacker had fallen.
At least he hadn’t glared at her in incredulity or called her a liar. Fee was starting to like the mayor a little too much. She had especially liked his strength in holding her, and that he’d known she needed a moment to pull herself together. Beneath all that muscle was a man who understood.
Growing up, she had shared foster homes with other kids who had taught her self-defense, in one way or another. She’d used her rocks before, but usually, she hopped on her bike after striking and had her meltdown elsewhere. She longed to escape into the safety of Aaron’s shop and hide in her room now.
But she’d kicked a man down a mountain. With the departure of Thomas’s flashlight, they only had the dim light from the security lamp in the parking lot to study the bits of dry brush leading downhill.
“I didn’t hear him run,” she said in a small voice.
“This isn’t like the bluff. There’s no steep drop off. He’s probably just hiding.” Monty glanced up at the sound of running footsteps. “That will be Walker. He lives just up the road. Want to wager his bride is right behind him?”
Since Walker’s new bride was the Viking Samantha, Fee didn’t take that bet.
Kurt hurried from the kitchen exit to join them. �
�Brenda’s on her way. I’ve asked a couple of the staff to wait in case we need them.”
“Harvey was out on his nightly roam,” Walker said as he arrived and studied the situation. “I have him watching the cars in the parking lot. Why are we looking down there? Don’t tell me anyone tried to run down the hill. It’s an obstacle course in daylight.”
Fee clung to her elbows and wished for invisibility. She heard voices talking in the parking lot—departing guests? She shivered from the chilly wind and said nothing as more feet jogged down the alley. Monty draped his jacket over her shoulders. She snuggled into the scent of sexy competence, reassured by his diplomacy as he gave a minimalist explanation of what had happened. The mayor, helping her—she had to be living some kind of dream. Or nightmare.
Men gathered. Walker barked directions. Wild-haired Samantha and black-braided Mariah arrived. Fee knew they lived near each other and not far from town. Kurt’s wife walked up from their house down the highway. The women argued over who should take Fee home with them.
“Sukey needs a walk,” Fee told anyone listening. She wasn’t wearing the right shoes or clothes to go mountain hiking in the dark. She just wanted the world to right itself so she could return to normal and walk her dog.
The lingering scent of fish told her the world might never be normal again.
At her words, Monty instantly swiped the key she still held. He unlocked the door and punched in the guest code on the alarm. “All of you, stay here until I can check for intruders.”
“That’s a security alarm,” Fee said patiently. “There are no intruders, unless everyone in town knows the code,” she added wryly.
“I’m Aaron’s landlord. He has to give me a key and the code.” Monty proceeded into the interior, flipping lamp switches to illuminate the spooky barracks of the antique shop.
Despite her irritation, she was grateful for his presence. Aaron’s shop wasn’t a happy place on a good day.
“Sam has an extra bedroom and a garden where Sukey can play,” Mariah was saying as she followed them in. “We’ll all walk there together. No one will dare approach you in the police chief’s house.”
Azure Secrets Page 9