by Maymee Bell
“You know Charlotte and I didn’t do this. I was with you.” I reminded him how I’d seen him at Small Talk Café.
“So that leaves Evelyn Moss.” His chest heaved when he released a big sigh.
“What about the other staff members?” I asked, then gave some suggestions, “Like the tennis and golf pros? Or the spa service people?”
“All checked out.” His words were short. “I’ve done my job.”
“I told you earlier there’s no way Evelyn would’ve or could’ve done it.” I scoffed. “Evelyn seems to be hard as a brick, but she’s a softie underneath. Don’t tell anyone I told you. Besides, as a chef, the whole killed-by-his-skillet thing seemed so personal. And you really can’t say it’s an inside job.” I’d seen enough TV crime shows to know that. “What if Emile let someone in? Take me, for instance.” I gestured to myself. “I came in with my parents’ card, so you won’t find my name in the database. I’m not a member.”
I asked questions that blew his theory out of the water.
“You have to think about the day. Was it a delivery day? Was it laundry pickup day? Who let them in the gate? They aren’t members, so they get in here somehow.”
His body shifted and stiffened after my remarks.
“You don’t understand how a busy kitchen really works.” I tilted my head to one side. “There are so many moving parts. Not just one person runs the show. Not just Emile. There’s more than one cook, more than one waitress. All the deliveries it takes to get food on one plate.”
The wheels in his head were turning.
“But you really need to look at that skillet.” I pointed my finger at him and lowered my eyes. “Why would someone get so mad at him that they’d whack him?”
For some reason, the lack of seasoning in the skillet bugged me. “We don’t have a motive yet. You stick to the baking and I’ll stick to the investigating,” he warned. “I’m just saying that you need to watch your back.”
“I live among eight million people in New York City and I’ve never felt more scared than I do now,” I grumbled, gnawing on the edge of my cheek and contemplating the rushed decision to take over for Emile.
I’d never even thought that he’d been killed over anything other than personal revenge.
“It’s much easier to commit a crime in a small town like Rumford than a big city where big brother is always watching.” Carter stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked on the heels of his shoes, staring at me. “Unfortunately, the RCC doesn’t have any sort of video security or surveillance. Something about privacy rights, since it’s so pricey to belong here. Not that I’d know.”
His words weren’t comforting to me, but I’d made a promise to Evelyn, which meant I had to put my doubts and fear aside to get the job done. Besides, I had to get Charlotte’s cake baked and in the refrigerator so I could ice and decorate it for the big day.
“Excuse me.” A young man shoved between us. He hurried over to Jane, asking her all sorts of questions. He’d obviously heard the news.
Carter pulled the notebook out of his pocket and flipped through it.
“That’s Nick, Emile’s sous chef,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to do a quick interview with him before I let you get the kitchen up and running.”
“Yeah, sure,” I agreed.
Carter walked over to the staff, who were busy prepping for the day. I followed him. They all turned to look at us. Jane had come back into the kitchen and joined us.
“Hi,” I greeted them. I told them who I was, how I was connected to the RCC, and that I was in charge of the cake for the wedding of the season. I wanted to make sure they knew me, my credentials, and that I wasn’t a threat to them. “I’m going to fill in for a couple of days for Emile.” I turned to Nick. “Nick, can you please go with Sheriff Carter for a quick interview and then come see me when you’re finished? I’m gonna need you to give me a quick rundown of things around here.”
My nerves had calmed a little bit since learning that Emile had a sous chef, which meant that Nick was Emile’s right-hand man. He should be able to pick up wherever and whenever Emile needed him to. Upon death was no greater time, in my opinion.
“Sure, Chef.” Nick nodded and headed on out of the kitchen with Carter.
“Why don’t I show you around while he does that,” Jane suggested.
“That’d be great. I’m not going to lie—I’m a little rusty around the kitchen since I’ve been working as the pastry chef, but I know that with you and Nick, I’ll be able to run it until Evelyn gets a new chef.” I followed her into the central work area. “I love the newly remodeled kitchen.”
“We will help in any way we can.” She tapped the fryer and started her tour of the new-to-me facility. “This is the fryer, stove, second stove, and wok station.” She pointed to all the industrial appliances in a row situated under the long hooded vent. “At the very end is a stainless workstation, and next to that is just a dry storage shelf.”
She turned around and showed me the double stainless steel workstations with the double sinks before she took me into the dry storage room.
“We have eight dry storage shelves in here,” she noted.
“There are two doors in here.” I didn’t remember this room having two doors. “Did they add another door recently?”
“No. It was just blocked with stacks of boxes before. When Chef Emile took over, he wanted to make sure no one interrupted his cooking time. With the delivery men and the RCC being off country roads, they were sometimes late because they’d get behind a tractor or a cattle run, so Emile made it easy for them to just come in through the back door and drop the dry storage here.”
“Without him checking the list?” I asked.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Chef Emile was very particular about what he ordered. Only he could place the order, but he did have Nick check off the items to make sure we’d gotten them all.”
“That’s good.” It seemed like a lot of good teamwork in the kitchen. That was something that would have been nice for me at The Manhattan. I was in charge of all my deliveries, checklists, and anything else that went along with the desserts.
“I’ve worked as a waitress in a lot of different restaurants. It wasn’t until Emile hired me that I really started to love the job. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes Emile acted crazier than a sprayed roach, but it was one of those work environments that ran smoothly. I always knew my place.” She walked out of the dry storage room and headed to the far right of the kitchen where the dishwashing station was located. “I always knew how Emile wanted it.”
“I spent a lot of time in here,” I joked, noticing that nothing had changed.
Jane ignored my joke and continued, “Unlike Evelyn. She hired him. She knew his process, but they butted heads on a daily basis.”
On the right side was the double sink, along the back wall was the minute-and-a-half-cycle industrial dishwasher, and next to that was the rinse-off area. Above the three areas were the bussing buckets used by the busser to clear the tables.
“Evelyn is harmless.” I started to go into my defense mode about her but got interrupted.
“Hey there.” A young man walked into the room, grabbed an apron off the hook on the wall, and replaced it with a Rumford High School backpack. “Is it true about Emile?” he asked Jane while chomping on a wad of gum.
“Yes. Can you believe it?” Jane asked.
“Yeah. He was a jerk. Did they question Evelyn?” he asked. “You a cop?” He shot his question at me.
“Oh, no,” Jane giggled. “Far from it. This is Sophia. She’s going to be in charge until Evelyn replaces Emile.”
“Only here a couple of days to help out. What’s your name?”
“I’m Patrick.” He pulled a skull cap from out of his back pocket and slipped it over his short brown hair. I couldn’t help but notice the skull tattoo on his bicep. “I’m in the school-to-work program.”
He put his hand in his front jeans
pocket and pulled out all the contents along with the white pocket liner. He unloaded a couple of packs of gum on the counter and shoved the liner back in the pocket.
His gum popped every time he chewed.
“A high school student at Rumford?” I asked, noticing he wasn’t a fan of Emile and was much bigger in stature than Emile.
“Yep.” He reached up on the shelf and hooked three clear water glasses with his fingers in each hand. He lifted the lid of the ice maker and scooped up ice to put in the glasses. “Not for long, because I’m heading off to college next year. Hopefully on a scholarship.”
“That’s awesome. I graduated from Rumford High too.” I wanted to keep my ear to the ground and keep up on what was going on in the kitchen.
Not that I was going to be there long, but staying to myself and staying out of others’ gossip obviously didn’t do me any good, since I’d been the last to know about Noah at The Manhattan.
“Cool.” He wasn’t impressed. “I can’t wait to get out of this town and this stupid job.”
“I’m showing Sophia around, though she worked here in high school too.” Jane tried to make up for Patrick’s lack of manners.
“And if I’m here, that means it’s almost lunchtime. From the looks of the golf course, we’re going to be swamped, and I sure don’t smell anything cooking.” He sniffed a couple of times in the air.
“You’re right.” I ran a hand down Jane’s arm. “Are you ready to help me in the kitchen?”
“I don’t know anything about cooking,” she said.
“You will,” I assured her, and headed out toward the central work area.
“Don’t mind Patrick. He ain’t worth a hill of beans in here but doing the dishes.” She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t think he was going to last long with Emile in charge, so I bet he’s happy Emile is dead. You know teenagers. They never want to listen to authority figures.”
“He sure didn’t seem upset.” I looked over the written menu that was taped up to the walk-in refrigerator. “Did Emile write this up?” The very neat and tidy handwriting didn’t go without notice. Most chefs’ handwriting was messy like the typical doctor’s.
“Yes. That’s his fancy handwriting. He made all the menus. He never strayed from it. If we sold out, we sold out and he said the members needed to pick from the other items.” She took a half apron off the hook and securely tied it around her waist. She took the hairband from around her wrist and pulled her hair back at the nape of her neck into a low ponytail. “Even with the carpel tunnel he was getting in his right hand, he still insisted on writing the menu.” She grabbed a tray. “Time to get to work.” She headed on out the kitchen door that led to the dining room.
I’d forgotten to ask Evelyn about my time sheet, which I really didn’t care about, but it would give me a reason to go back and ask her about a few things some of the staff had told me. Things like the menu and how Emile would switch up the food, not to mention how the members would send back his fancy creations because they weren’t used to eating anything with a head on it or anything they couldn’t make out as food.
The sound of shuffling and whispers coming from the other end of the hall made me jerk back to look after I’d reached Evelyn’s office door. Patrick and a young woman were giggling and talking when they rounded the corner. She had on a tennis skirt that barely covered her, and the way she had her arm hooked in Patrick’s arm looked way friendlier than a staff member helping another member out. For a split second, Patrick’s and my eyes locked. His expression was deadly serious. The girl kept talking.
After a couple of knocks on the office door and waiting a few seconds without Evelyn answering, I headed back to the kitchen, barely making it back in time before Nick bolted in through the swinging door. “It’s go time, people. Chef”—he looked at me—“let’s go.”
I nodded. I drew my finger down the menu and read off the specials.
“Chicken and Collards Pilau. Derby Pie. Company Roast and Creamy Mushroom Grits,” I rattled off.
In the back of my head, I wondered about the menu Emile had been looking at when he was killed. Those food items were nowhere on the posted menu.
Nick took off and started the ovens and grabbed a couple of cooked roasts out of the freezer. The rattle of the pans, the hiss of the gas stove, and the hum of the working kitchen got my mojo hyped up and lit my insides on fire. No matter how far I ran from my problems, my heart was in the kitchen around all the hubbub and action.
“Oh, good.” I was glad to see that I wasn’t going to have to come up with a different entrée, since I knew we didn’t have eight hours to cook the roast.
“Chef Emile always planned ahead.” Nick didn’t miss a beat and pulled the ingredients off the dry storage shelves. “Grab the Derby pies.”
Nick and I worked alongside each other with quick, sure movements, executing dishes as if we’d worked in tandem before. Emile took great pride in his kitchen and, by the detailed notes he’d left, it showed. Nick was fascinating as he worked around the kitchen. He didn’t miss a beat despite everything that’d gone on.
Jane and Patrick used the three-fold cloth napkins and silverware, along with the list of reservations, and got all the tables ready in the dining room. No matter what they said about Emile, they were working together, so he’d done something right.
The orders started to roll in along with more and more employees for their shifts. The key restaurant staff, from what I’d gathered from the shift change sheet, were Nick, Jane, and Patrick. If it weren’t for Nick, I admit, I’d have been a little lost. Once my hands started to move, it was as if the cobwebs that’d taken over my brain the last couple of weeks were brushed away and everything started to come back to me.
“Do you think Evelyn is going to be arrested?” Jane leaned against the steel worktable on the other side of the central production station where the cooked dishes sat under the heating lamp, waiting to be delivered.
“She has to be the number one suspect.” Nick put an RCC cheeseburger special and fried chicken club on the shelf for Jane to grab. “Especially after last night.”
“What happened last night?” I questioned while stirring in the cream for more mashed potatoes.
“Emile saw himself as an artiste,” Jane chirped in her best French accent. She even kissed the tips of her fingers and flowered them out for good measure. “Too good to make these hillbilly dishes. The RCC needed to expand their taste buds.”
I laughed at her attempt to say hillbilly in a French accent. It just wasn’t right.
“Emile thought he was too good to make southern dishes. He couldn’t grasp the fact that he was the head chef of a country club in Kentucky and kept trying to make this place resemble the new hit restaurant in Paris. He made the specials all these fancy dishes that barely anybody would order because they couldn’t pronounce them.” Nick stirred the sausage in the Dutch oven on the stove.
“Emile would spend all weekend going over the next week’s menu.” Jane nodded and put the plates on a big, round, black tray before hoisting it up on her shoulder and sashaying out the kitchen door.
“But what made Emile and Evelyn fight?” I asked, and took another Derby pie out of the oven, placing it on the cooling rack.
Nick snickered and shook his head. “Emile started to get sneaky. He would make up names that sounded like southern dishes but make a French dish instead.”
Maybe the menu I’d seen lying next to his body was just some new creations he’d jotted down.
I handed Nick the onions and the broth he needed to finish the pilau before pouring it into a baking dish and placing it in the oven.
“She pitched a fit last night when a couple of members complained that they were expecting something different than a thin French pastry with meat in the middle. You know southerners love their comfort food. All fat, full of carbs, and creamy.” Nick bent down and looked at the knob on the stove to make sure the temperature was set at 350 degrees.
Patric
k shoved his back end through the door with his hands full of dirty dishes.
“Ask Patrick about it.” Nick walked over to the fryer and pulled the basket of fried chicken out of the hot oil. “Everyone but me, Patrick, and Jane had already gone home.”
“Talking about the fight?” Patrick spoke as he chewed on the gum. The edge of his lip cocked in a slight smile. “It was epic. Evelyn went craaaaaazy.” He dropped the bucket of dishes on the workspace. His hand grasped the edges, and he leaned over top of it with an evil grin. “Did you hear Emile tell her that she was a nut job like all women?”
“He did?” I asked with a slack-jawed expression.
“Oh, yeah, but that’s not what sent her over the edge.” Nick slid Patrick a look. “When he said to her that she wasn’t married because no man wanted a bossy woman like her in his bed and that a woman’s place was at home taking care of kids and doing laundry was when she got that crazy look in her eye like she was going to kill him.”
“Did you tell the sheriff that?” I asked.
“Sure did. Evelyn killed him. I’m sure of it,” Nick noted, and Patrick stood next to him nodding the entire time.
“If she didn’t, she had someone else do it.” Jane caught the tail end when she walked back in. My brows knitted in a frown. The staff had even convicted Evelyn.
The rest of the afternoon, not only was good southern food baked, but the idea that Emile was killed by Evelyn had been baked and burned into each of their heads. They were worse than Bitsy’s gossip circle in her Friends of the Library Club. The gnawing in my gut told me something was not right. Evelyn wasn’t a killer. I knew it clear down to my bones.
Nick had a good grasp of the kitchen, so while I pondered over every little bit of gossip I’d heard, I decided to get started on Charlotte’s cake. There were going to be seven tiers. Luckily, the RCC kitchen had all the different-sized cake pans I needed to get started. There was even a heating core for me to use. Since I only had a few days to bake several layers, I’d be using the heating core in the middle of each layer of cake during the baking process, which would allow each cake to evenly bake and speed up the baking process.