I grimaced, then jumped when a stack of pans clattered to the floor in the kitchen.
“Ooph,” Brad said. “How ‘bout you go deal with that? I’ll start a big pot of oatmeal out here on the grill. All you’ll gotta do is put it in a bowl… that and keep it from burning. After I get it cooking, though, I gotta go.”
I jumped up on my hands to lean over the counter and slapped a kiss on Brad’s cheek.
Brad was right. I was completely and absolutely distracted. Once again, I was in over my head with the café. The more I thought about it, the more jumbled my nerves got, and the more I messed up even the simplest of dishes.
Brad was on his feet and coming around the end of the counter about the time I was going to head into the kitchen. That’s when the café’s front door chimed. I wanted to call out that we weren’t serving food yet, but I bit the words back.
Instead, I turned around ready to negotiate a lengthy wait while Brad’s oatmeal cooked. But seeing the person standing in the doorway stopped me in my tracks.
“Brenda!” I dashed my way around the end of the counter with my arms flung up into the air and tackled the woman who had been there for me before anybody else had.
“Go on now, girl,” Brenda laughed. “You’re gonna flatten me, you keep carryin’ on like that.” That’s what she said, but she hugged me back with strong arms which felt as though they’d never let me go.
I pulled away. Her hair was as thick and black as ever, but worry and lack of sleep had seemed to crease her eyes a little deeper. “How’s your grandma?” I asked.
Brenda crinkled the bridge of her nose. “Mawmaw’s in and out, comes and goes.” She waved a hand up around her head to indicate that she was talking about her grandmother’s mind. “She was the one who raised me, and I want to do right by her, but it was just too much for me alone. The home I got her set up in is nice, though. The people are nice. It’s clean.” She took my hand and held it in hers. “But hearin’ from you is the best thing that could’ve happened right now. For me, anyway. This is a welcome break.”
“You’re the welcome break,” I said and pulled her in for another hug.
She wrapped her arms tight and rocked us both from side to side as she groaned with happy contentment. Breaking away, she said, “Girl, you gotta tell me what trouble you’re in now. You messing around in one of them murders?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but Brenda held up her hands, stopping me.
“Wait. Wait a minute. I don’t even want to know. I just wanna know one thing. The person you got in here after me to help out, is he dead?”
I threw my head back and laughed but stopped when I saw that she wasn’t laughing with me. “No, ma’am. He’s fine as far as I know. I think he’s just had some life stuff come up.”
“Well then, if it’s life stuff and not death stuff, then we can get to work. Heck, what am I sayin’? I’d’ve stayed even if you said you found him strung up by his toes in the pantry. No, I wouldn’t. Yes, I would. I don’t know what I’m saying.” She turned her attention away from me and pointed. “Bradley Hugo Calderos, step away from that pot.”
“I was—”
“I don’t care what you was. Step away from that pot and go out there and fight some bad guys or write some tickets or do whatever it is that you do.”
Brad smiled at me. And then to Brenda, he said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“He was making some oatmeal,” I whispered. “I, uh, butchered his eggs.”
“Oatmeal!” Brenda exclaimed. “If I have to look at another bowl of oatmeal, it’ll be too soon. That’s all that home of Mawmaw’s ever wants to serve. And why is he doing it out here, anyway? What’s wrong with those fancy stoves you got in that huge kitchen of yours?”
“The kitchen’s on loan,” I said. My words were backed up by the new sound of clamoring pots and a few choice words by Chef John. No smooth sailing today.
Brenda’s brows went up. “Do I want to know?”
I shook my head. “Not really, not unless he gives us some of his pastries. He’ll be gone by this afternoon.”
“Good enough,” she said, waving me away. “You go do you, and I’ll make sure everybody who comes in gets fed.”
“Thank you, Brenda!” I threw my arms around her for another hug and then made a beeline for the kitchen.
Inside, Chef John was looking more than a little flustered. “My soufflé fell.” He tossed a pan into the sink with a clatter. “It fell. I have not had a soufflé fall since I was in grade school!”
I looked at the line of ramekins. There were twenty of them lined up in a row. Nineteen of them had chocolatey goodness pillowing over the top. The twentieth had disappeared inside the ceramic cup.
“These look amazing,” I said.
“Amazing? You know nothing! You’re just a girl playing a game in a place not meant for games.”
Ouch.
Silence dragged out between us, and then Chef John lunged for me, making me jump back, but he grabbed my hand.
“Forgive me. I am an idiot. You’ve been nothing but gracious to me. It’s just that I cannot send up nineteen soufflés. It cannot be done. I cannot do it.”
I was afraid to ask, but did anyway. “What’s wrong with sending nineteen?”
“It’s not an even number!” he bellowed, his face growing redder. Then he took a breath. “Forgive me,” he said, calm again.
I looked at the ramekins and then at him again. “What if you sent up eighteen and let me have the nineteenth? I’d love to have the nineteenth.”
Hope transformed Chef John’s face. “You would?”
I nodded. “Yes, I really would.” And I meant it. I was praying that my stomach didn’t start growling.
Chef John gave me the biggest smile I’d ever seen on someone who wasn’t a little kid. “Yes, okay then. That’ll work.” He released my hand and waved a come-in arm at the open kitchen door. “Now! Now! Get on with it. Take them all. Take all the pastries, all but those two platters over there.” He turned to me and took my hand again, his beautiful eyes looking deep into mine. “Those are for you. Thank you again for lending me the use of your beautiful kitchen. I am forever in your debt.”
The man was intense, but thankfully his attention stayed on me for only a moment before focusing with laser intensity on the small army of servers who funneled in. They gathered up all the sinfully scrumptious creations that Chef John had made as he whipped off his apron. He followed them out the door and turned for the banquet hall entrance, and I finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The kitchen was a disaster, but at least it was mine again. I knew that Chef John had plans of cleaning everything up himself and returning the kitchen to me in the same state I’d given it to him, but I actually liked to clean. Besides, the man was more exhausting than the cleaning. The sooner everything was back in order, the sooner I’d be able to hug Chef John goodbye.
The trash was overflowing, so I made that my first task. I shoved as much as I could down into the bag, tied it off, and then hoisted it out to the dumpster. I’ll admit I felt weird about using the very thing that might have been a murder weapon, but the desire to declutter my kitchen overrode my queasiness.
Outside, one half of the dumpster’s lid was already open, so I started to do a discus twirl with the garbage to throw it into the top.
“Hello?” A slender man with thick black hair stepped out from around the corner of the dumpster. He was wearing a lavender button-up shirt tucked into brown corduroy pants.
I couldn’t help it. I was mid-twirl when he materialized out of nowhere. As a result, I let go of the bag mid-twirl and it went catapulting into his chest. To his credit, he caught the bag with only a half-staggered step backward. The contents of the bag squished and broken glass clinked. Something in the bag shifted, and then the bottom of the bag ripped open and dumped all the contents right onto his shoes.
He stared in dismay at his shoes and everything disgusting that was piling up on top of them. �
�Oh,” he said. “Oh. Ew. That’s bad. Really bad. Is something rotten? I think I smell rot. My shoes are ruined. What am I saying? Who cares if my shoes are ruined?”
“I’m so sorry!” I hurried forward and gingerly took what was left of the now empty bag out of his hands while he took a step backward from under the heaping mixture of empty cartons, cracked egg shells, icing remnants, and a myriad of other items.
“It’s okay. Really.” He shoved his hands deep into his pants pockets. I guessed him to be late twenties, yet something about him felt older. His eyes seemed haunted, and his shoulders sagged wearily. It was as if he carried the weight of the world upon them.
“Is there something I can do for you?” I asked. I still had no idea why he was here or who he was.
“Um…” He looked from me to the dumpster and ran a hand through his hair. “This is awkward,” he said when he looked back at me. “I was told that my father died here. More specifically, there.” He pointed under the dumpster.
“Ohhhh… You’re, uh…”
“Sebastian Drysdale.” He stepped around the pile of trash and offered me his hand to shake. “Do you work here, at the café?”
My chest tightened. I was talking to Oliver Drysdale’s son—the object of Zoey’s affections and possible killer of Ollie.
I refocused on Sebastian’s question. “I own the café. I own the banquet hall, too.”
“Oh… right. Yeah.” He looked from me to the bottom of the dumpster, pressed his lips together, then looked back at me. “You, uh… you found him?”
“I did. I’m sorry. Mind me asking why you’re here?” I didn’t mean to come off as harsh or insensitive, but I needed to know why Sebastian was here. It was possible he’d left some piece of incriminating evidence behind and he’d come to retrieve it.
Sebastian looked past me toward the banquet hall door. “I went to the conference yesterday after the fact, for a while. Well, that’s not true. Truth is I was already there when I got the news, and I just stayed there rather than leave. They all kept staring at me, then there were side glances, and then side glances with whispers.” He refocused on me. “They think I did it.”
“Did you?”
“No, and I was going to ask you the same. Did you kill my Pop?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Do you know who did? After all, this is your place. You were here.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t.”
“But you found him?”
“I did.”
“And he was wedged in under there?” He pointed at the bottom of the dumpster.
“He was.”
“How can that be? Pop liked his food. He was twice as wide as that empty space under there.”
“I’m really sorry, Sebastian. I wish I could tell you.”
“You wish you could tell me but you don’t want to incriminate yourself or someone else? Or you wish you could tell me but you don’t know?”
“That last one,” I said. “I don’t know.” I considered telling him I was working on finding out but decided to keep that to myself. I could still use the opportunity to learn a bit more from him. “Has your girlfriend made it to town?”
Sebastian’s gaze flicked past me to the banquet hall door as he answered my question with a question. “My girlfriend?”
The boy had better not take up playing poker. He had a tell as big as a flashing neon sign.
“Yes, with the death of your father, I figured she might want to be by your side right now.”
“Oh, yeah… yeah.” His gaze flicked past me again toward the banquet hall. “She’s, uh, she’s tied up with her own family drama right now.”
He left it at that, not saying more. I was acutely aware that his answer wasn’t an actual answer to my question. He’d said nothing about whether or not she was in town, but it was my guess that she was. I suspected she was upstairs in the banquet hall at that very moment. I hadn’t been up there to visit during the conference, but I imagined the packaging industry had more men than women in it. Just a hunch. That meant if his girlfriend was up in the banquet hall, the chances of being able to narrow the odds down to a select few would be pretty good.
I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at the kitchen’s open back door. “Sebastian, would you come inside? Sit and visit for a while? Did you know I’m friends with Zoey?”
“Zoey? You are?” He looked past me toward the banquet hall door again. “To be honest, I don’t want to go back into the conference. They’ll all stare at me—with either pity or suspicion. What am I saying? They’ll look at me with both.”
“So you’ll come in?”
“Yes, please. I’d love to.” He went from the awkward guy standing at the spot of his father’s death to gracious guest.
He really was quite charming, and I could see why Zoey liked him. There was a disarming quality about him that made me believe I was safe with him and that he would forever have my best interests at heart.
We walked to the open door.
“Uh, you wanna give me your shoes? I can give them a quick clean up.”
“No, no. I couldn’t… Could you? You wouldn’t mind?”
“No, really. I wouldn’t mind. I promise.” I smiled at him reassuringly, and he slipped his shoes off and left them just to the side of the door, outside. I then took him through the kitchen in his socks and into the dining area where I sat him at a table. I whispered to Brenda to load him up with whatever she could offer that might keep him there and headed back outside to do a fast cleanup of the disemboweled garbage bag and its discharged contents. But before I touched the trash, I pulled out my phone and shot off a fast text.
“Scooby alert: I need you!”
Chapter 11
My phone chimed almost immediately as the responding text came in.
“You okay? In danger? Need police? Where are you? I’m on my way!”
A pang of guilt squeezed my heart. I had worried Joel.
My fingers flew over my phone’s keyboard in a quick series of messages.
“I’m fine.”… “Safe”… “No police, please!”… “Need you to take pics of all the women in banquet hall RIGHT NOW. Think one of them is Sebastian’s secret girlfriend. I’ll find you later. Can’t talk now.”
“I’m on it!” Joel’s text came, then a moment’s pause before a final note. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
I smiled, happy and warm inside.
Next, I shot off a text to Zoey. “Sebastian’s here! Gonna question him. Can you come?” It was early morning. She was likely asleep, but it was worth a try.
“On my way,” was Zoey’s near-instant reply.
I put my phone away, picked the trash up, got Sebastian’s shoes looking almost as good as new, washed my hands, and then hurried back out to the grill. Looking over to where Sebastian sat, I saw that Brenda had given him a cup of coffee. She also had a huge serving of french toast and bacon frying up.
“It’s for both of you,” she said, giving me a wink. My stomach growled in anticipation.
“Zoey’s on her way,” I told her.
“I’ll make more,” Brenda reassured, then she handed a cup of coffee over for me.
I breathed it in and moaned. Why was everyone’s coffee so much better than mine?
Sebastian looked pensive sitting at the table alone. He was worried. He held his cup of coffee in both his hands and stared down into it with all of the enthusiasm and forlornness as when he was outside staring at the dumpster.
I headed over, put his shoes on the floor next to his chair, and sat down.
“Oh! They look wonderful. Thank you!”
I nodded and smiled a quiet “you’re welcome” and then said, “I texted Zoey, let her know you were here. She’s on her way.”
“Oh…” he said, perking up even more. He looked out the window and across the street to Zoey’s apartment building. A woman who could have been a body double for Cindy Crawford’s legs walked by wearing a bright red miniskirt. Sebastian didn’t
notice.
He looked back at me. “Have you and Zoey known each other long? I’m sorry. I’m afraid she’s never mentioned you to me.”
I knew that I shouldn’t feel hurt by that. It was obvious that Sebastian meant a lot to Zoey, but I doubted she would have ever told me about him. Her not telling him about me wasn’t a measure of how much I meant to her. If the packaging conference hadn’t been held here again, I would probably have never learned that Sebastian even existed.
The girl liked her secrets.
“We’ve known each other a few months,” I said. “We met when my cousin sold me this café.”
That was a start, but I knew I needed to tell him more. I needed him to trust me. I needed to establish a sense of camaraderie between Sebastian and me. I needed him to feel that I could relate to what he was going through, without judgment.
I took a deep breath and then blew it out, letting my tension go. My shoulders relaxed, and I saw Sebastian’s relax a little as well. It was time to peel back the onion skin and give him a glimpse below the surface.
“I found myself in a bit of trouble,” I said, “after I took over the café. A woman died and a lot of people thought I’d killed her.”
Sebastian’s eyes went wide, and he sat back from the table.
“When that happened, Zoey was there for me, really there for me. Nobody else was, not like she was. She believed in me, and together we got things figured out. Together, we found out what had really happened to that woman.”
“Oh…” Sebastian lowered his gaze and sat forward again, resting his hands on the table. He wore the expression of a lost puppy dog. “Now it’s me people are looking at, wondering if I killed my Pop.”
Hook, snag, and reel.
“Did you?” I’d already asked the question once. I figured that asking it again wouldn’t hurt. Maybe I’d get lucky and he’d mess something up about his story. Although that wouldn’t be lucky for him or Zoey, considering Zoey’s heart was on a collision course with pain if he was guilty.
“No,” Sebastian answered. There was no hesitation. There was nothing about it that was meek or mild or overblown. It was just a simple answer, and it felt incredibly honest and sincere. If the guy was a conman, he was good! Everything in me yelled that he was telling the truth, yet somehow that made me feel all the more leery of where the lies were hidden—because there had to be some hidden somewhere. If there weren’t, this guy was too good to be true, which took us right back to him being a great big faker.
A Berry Baffling Businessman Page 7