by Kilby Blades
Delilah’s returning smile was wicked. “Oh yes I did. Believe me—while I have you, we’re gonna work.”
Delilah pulled stools Shea hadn’t seen from beneath the huge steel-topped kitchen island, placed one next to Shea and motioned for the woman to sit. Delilah produced a notebook and paper from somewhere before pulling up a chair. Shea untied the pastry box and breathed in the happy scent of the bun she had sorely missed, picking it up greedily as she waited for Delilah to walk her through.
“I figured we’d start with burgers. They’re the most important dish. We do dozens of covers of burgers every night.
“Which could mean the burgers are fine,” Shea reasoned. “I’d try fish sauce in the patties to give them a little umami and call it a day.
“As for the other stuff…” Shea watched as Delilah diligently wrote down her suggestion. “What did people used to order that they don’t anymore?”
Delilah hummed. “Probably the roast beef. People complain it’s tough. I keep telling Dev to order better meat, but he’s telling me we’re ordering from some sustainable, free-range bull farm where they sing them lullabies every night and give them hoof massages.” Delilah rolled her eyes. “You know how crunchy Dev is.”
“Mind if I take a look at what you’re using?” Shea asked.
Delilah rose and gestured to an area of the kitchen Shea hadn’t seen, away from the open part where they sat, with the huge stainless-steel prep counter in the middle and prep stations off to another side.
“The walk in’ll be a little cold,” Delilah warned as she led the way.
Off of the main rectangle was a short hallway with a fire exit all the way on the end. On the right side were two offices, probably one for a chef and one for a business manager. On the left is where staging racks for large vats of supplies, a pantry, and the walk-in refrigerator were. Shea didn’t mention how many walk-ins she’d stood in before.
The fridge itself was clean and well-kept, a good sign overall. In some restaurants, there were problems in both the front and the back of the house. It was clear Delilah knew her way around a kitchen and had good habits, and maybe even good instincts around a few things.
“Here we are,” Delilah said, locating a stack of clear-wrapped packaged meats, which did indeed sport seals and certifications and markings from what looked to be a very high-quality farm. As soon as Shea read the label, she knew the problem, but made a closer inspection of the meat as well. Just as she’d anticipated, there was hardly any marbling.
“It’s the wrong cut of meat for stew. You’re getting tri-tip, when what you really want is chuck. Chuck comes from a fattier part of the body and the fat is what makes meat tender and not-too-dry going down.”
“But we cook it ‘till it falls apart…” Delilah said.
“All meat will fall apart eventually if you cook it long enough, but tri-tip is still pretty hard to stomach. It’s good with other preparations, but it doesn’t do well in stews. Seriously, half of your problems with your meats come down to the fat.”
Delilah shook her head a little and said under her breath. “Yeah, well … Dev’s got a thing about that.” Snapping out of whatever hit her quickly, Delilah looked back at the freezer supply. “So what do you think I should do with all of this? There’s a lot left.”
“You could make a special…” Shea suggested.
“But what? Savory food really isn’t my forte…”
Shea thought about it for a minute. “You know, some of the best-tasting foods really are simple. If you cut this right and marinate it, you can do an à la minute grilled steak with a Chimichurri sauce that will keep for days. A two-element dish may still be better than a recipe that isn’t working.”
“Amen to less complexity,” Delilah said, already seeming convinced. “But I’ve never made Chimichurri. Have you?”
“Ironically, no,” Shea admitted. “But I know exactly how it’s supposed to taste. If you try out a recipe, I can tell you what it needs.”
“That’s kind of amazing—you know that, right? I went to culinary school, but only on the baking side. I can make Grand Marnier souffle but I can barely scramble an egg.”
“I’m a product of my environment.” Shea followed Delilah out of the fridge, figuring she didn’t risk anything by telling Delilah something she’d already told Dev. “You don’t grow up in a restaurant without learning a thing or two.”
“Uh-uh,” Delilah insisted. “Tasting the ingredients in foods isn’t something you pick up by osmosis. You have, like, some kind of superpower.”
By then, they had returned to the table and Shea had reached to pick up the first of her buns.
“Everybody has a superpower…” Shea trailed off. “It just so happens mine is knowing that brown sugar and orange zest are your secret ingredient in these.”
As she mentioned the morning buns, she gave Delilah a little wink.
Delilah narrowed her eyes, even as she looked impressed. “You are a dangerous woman, Shea Summers. And if you tell anyone the secret ingredient in my buns or anything else I make, I’m cutting you off.”
Shea swallowed a bite of bun. “Come on. You know that’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”
After eating the whole thing, Shea reached in her bag for her laptop, asked Delilah for the Wi-Fi code and started up her machine. Shea had already begun to push the laptop toward Delilah when she noticed that Elle West’s email was still open in a browser. Shea was saved when Delilah randomly popped out of her seat. It gave Shea time to discreetly close her window. It also gave Shea a second of privacy to have a mini heart attack. She’d averted suspicion only because Delilah had needed a pencil.
“How’d everything turn out with Dev on Friday night?” Possibly from a sense of panic, Shea blurted one of the conversation starters she had in her pocket. Lulls between the two of them could invite Delilah asking questions of her own. There was only so much that could be said about the food, and food itself could become a dangerous subject. Better for Shea to steer the topic.
“Not good,” Delilah said bluntly as Shea typed best chimichurri sauce recipes into the search bar. “It’s the third case of vandalism down at the mills. And I’m not talking about defacing something—I’m talking major property damage. You know Margareta Walton?”
“I don’t know much of anybody yet.”
“She’s the one with all those dogs? Walks them all at the same time on Oliver Street on Saturdays and she’s always carrying, like, five bags of poop?”
Shea smiled, because she guessed she did know Margareta Walton. Shea’s smile disappeared when she remembered what they were talking about. “Wait—she didn’t get hurt, did she? Brody said there was an accident.”
Delilah nodded. “There was an explosion, down at old Number Eight.”
“Number Eight?” Shea stopped her search for Chimichurri.
“Before things went the way it did, the big industry was lumber. Everyone worked in the mills or drove trucks or were part of the cutting operation. You wouldn’t know it walking down the street now. Now, there are only a few mills left—like Number Eight—and they’re already on their last legs. Margareta’s husband, Brick, is the janitor. When the explosion happened, he was on the other end of the building, cleaning up. He got lucky and walked away, but still…”
“What do they think happened?” Shea still didn’t understand. “I mean, couldn’t it have been an accident? Were any of the conditions in the plant unsafe?”
“There’ll be insurance company inspectors, I’m sure,” Delilah said with distaste. “The Fire Marshal came to the scene and he and Dev agreed: the explosion was deliberate.”
“That’s terrifying,” Shea breathed. “Who would do something like that?”
“That’s just it,” came Dev's familiar baritone from the corner. “A whole lot of people have a motive.”
Shea didn’t know whether the thrill that shot down her spine at the sound of his voice was arousal or fear. Its smooth tones had haunted
her imaginings of all kinds. For the moment, he was focused on other criminals. But for all she knew, the day might come when Dev himself would read Shea her Miranda rights.
Shea half-expected Delilah to scold Dev for sneaking up on them. Instead, she rose out of her stool and gave her brother a hug. Dev looked like he needed one. It had only been two-and-a-half days since Shea had seen the man and he looked like he might not have slept in all that time.
The moment between him and Delilah was tender and sweet. She was short enough next to him that he could tip his chin and easily kiss the top of her head. Shea imagined what they must have been like as children; she wondered who had taken care of who over the years, and how.
“When was the last time you ate?” Delilah coaxed him to follow her to the counter, reaching beneath it and pulling up yet another stool. His bare forearm brushed Shea’s as he slid into his chair. His arm was on the “very” side of warm. Even the parts of him that weren’t touching her seemed to radiate heat.
Dev seemed mildly disoriented as he attempted his answer. “You know … I can’t remember?” It came out more like a question than it did a statement. “I can’t even remember the last time I had my juice.”
Delilah stayed standing and began to move around the kitchen, clearly on her way to cooking something Dev would like. Shea pushed the box of morning buns toward him. He was so out of it she didn’t think he saw them. Then, his eyes lit up.
“Hell yeah.”
He devoured the bun faster than Shea had ever seen anything devoured, then seemed self-conscious as he noticed her watching. He took a large swallow and said, “Sorry. I’m just really hungry.”
She put her hands up in the universal sign of surrender before pointing to herself.
“I’m not judging. That’s me, at the bakery, every single morning.”
She pushed the box toward him and threw him an impish smile.
Dev lowered his voice and shook his head in awe before half-whispering, “You ought to taste the blueberry scones. Seriously—they’re like crack.”
14
The Unsolicited Advice
Dev
Dev didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until he found himself looking up at the ceiling, the fluorescent lights and rather uninteresting paneled gypsum board coming into focus. It was far less pleasant than waking up beneath downy comforters, snug in bed beneath the sloped-roof wooden rafters of home.
The cramped office held a sofa Dev could tell had been used for sleeping a time or two. He’d just come in to access the books. It didn’t matter that he’d pulled two all-nighters in three days given the trouble at the mills. He still had to process payroll if Big Spoon employees wanted checks.
After he’d logged into the accounting software and gotten it going, he must have migrated to the couch and fallen asleep, which he really hadn’t meant to do. The paperwork he had to do in relation to the investigation seemed endless. He’d planned to do it at The Freshery and relieve Betty early. That week alone, he’d asked her to double her hours at the store.
“How’d she do?” Dev asked, rubbing the back of his neck with his palm as he made his way out of the office, down the hallway and into the kitchen. He’d run his fingers through his hair in a vain, mirrorless attack against bed head, in case Shea was still outside. A glance at his watch a minute earlier had told him he’d slept clean through the dinner rush, so he didn’t expect her to be. He didn’t think too hard about the compulsion to organize himself for her.
“She was brilliant,” Delilah said plainly, sparing Dev a brief glance as she Saran Wrapped something or other. It was late if she was the only one left cleaning up. The waiters ladled soups and plated desserts and tidied up those stations, but most of the cleaning fell to the chef.
“She had a ton of great ideas.” Delilah multitasked as she gushed. “She spent all afternoon helping me come up with a special that turned out to be a big hit. She gave me tips that fixed a few dishes, like, instantly.”
“I asked her whether she was a chef or something.” Dev riffed off of Delilah’s awe. “She brushed it off, said she just had some kind of talent. I’ve never seen any talent like that before.”
“Yeah, well…” Delilah looked up briefly and gave Dev a bit of a look. “She all but told me to stop letting you do the ordering. That extra-lean meat you insist on is half the problem.”
“What else did she say about me?” Dev tried to sound nonchalant.
Delilah lifted the vat of whatever she had just packed up. Dev backtracked, heading her off and opening the door to the walk-in. She set the vat down in the fridge with a sigh and a forearm wipe to her brow before answering with a distracted, “Nothing.”
Delilah seemed in no hurry to leave the cool confines of the fridge. She was sweating a bit and she seemed tired. But there was something more tonight, and there had been something more earlier as Dev had watched her huddled with Shea. It was something he hadn’t seen in his sister’s expression in weeks: a look of hope.
“Well, when is she coming back? Sounds like you’ll be needing her for a while. Maybe I’ll come by on Tuesdays and work with her on the order. You think she might—”
Dev stopped short when Delilah cut him off. “Uh-uh.”
Snapping out of brainstorming mode, he watched as his sister crossed her arms in front of her. Dev knew he was in trouble when she narrowed her eyes.
“Whuh-uh?” Dev asked, not really wanting to know what had Delilah in a snit.
“No growing feelings for Shea. You are, like, addicted to unavailable women.”
By the time Dev blinked in surprise, then frowned, Delilah was halfway out the door. He followed her back into the kitchen. The trail of words called over her shoulder followed behind her as she walked. “Look. She’s great—I get it. But something’s gonna go wrong. And, when it does, I don’t want things to get weird. Meeting more women like Shea isn’t why you came here. You came to figure your own shit out.”
By then, Dev’s hands were on his hips and he stopped just short of the counter, though Delilah continued to walk all the way around to the opposite side, where more cleanup awaited.
He’d heard this lecture before. Delilah had it in her head that Dev had a pattern with women—enigmatic types who felt complicated to him. According to his sister, he traded safe, sensible suitors for women who intrigued him—women who he could puzzle over and figure out. He’d made the mistake of admitting to Delilah once that he wouldn’t mind finding a woman who wanted the same things he did. Only, Delilah had her own interpretation of what that was.
“You’re right…” He said in a low voice. “Women like Shea aren’t what I came here for. I only said it’d be good for me to work with her on days when Silvio comes after you told me I suck at buying. As for whether I’ve “got my shit together,” I think it’s pretty safe to say I do. Whatever I’m suggesting now is for the benefit of the town. And don’t forget, I’m the one who brought her to you.”
Delilah rolled her eyes at Dev’s use of air quotes and seemed nonplussed by his retort.
“Please. I see her in the bakery every day. You just happened to trip on her talent. Now, just leave it at that and don’t mess things up.”
Dev shook his head, incredulous once more.
“Why would I do anything to ruin her helping us? We all stand to benefit from what she can do. If the food actually gets better, she’ll be a local hero.”
“Fine, then.” Delilah’s hand came to her hip. She lifted her chin in defiance and, with narrowed eyes, huffed out a short sigh. “If your intentions are purely professional, then turn off that stupid charm.”
“You think Shea finds me charming?” Dev had too little shame in that moment to be embarrassed by the hopefulness in his voice.
Delilah leveled a hard glare and completely ignored his question. “You have enough on your plate without adding a flirtation to all of that. You might try coming off as less available.”
“So, you think Shea wants me to be av
ailable to her…”
Delilah rolled her eyes. Whatever. She was too fun to mess with.
“I’m serious, Dev. Both of you are doing the flirty-eye thing. It’s all fun and games ’til somebody gets hurt.”
“Hey. Chill,” Dev said. “All I did was ask when she was coming back.”
Delilah gave him a look. “It’s insulting when you underestimate my powers of perception.”
Dev crossed his arms. “You’re making it sound like I want to marry the woman.”
Delilah shook her head. “I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is, I need her. And I like her. Please don’t let all your weird issues mess that up for me.”
Delilah sighed and put her hand on her hips. Suddenly, she looked even more tired than she had before in the walk-in. Bone tired, like he had been six hours before.
“Look,” she said. “I’m bitchy right now. I’m tired and it’s been a long day. But I meant what I said—I need her to help me, not be too distracted by you. Just…” she sighed again. “Focus on the investigation. And, in the meantime, let me have a helper and a friend. She’s the coolest person to come to town in a while.”
15
The Sisterhood
Shea
“Sorry I’m late.” Shea felt as frantic walking into The Big Spoon as she had an hour earlier when she’d awakened in a panic well past noon. She’d lain awake for hours thanks to an irritable thunderstorm that kept her tossing and turning until 6:00 AM. She’d become dependent on the television as a sleep aid to keep her from freaking out about being up there all alone. Only, during the storm, the electricity had gone out.
What had followed was a night so terrifying, she could barely remember its like. Humans weren’t meant to live alone in houses made of glass. The white lie she’d told Brody about knowing how to use the generator was coming back to haunt her. And she’d come to terms with something she’d resisted admitting for weeks: she wasn’t enduring solitude very well.