By Familiar Means

by Delia James

  Julia promised she would call soon, and we said good-bye and hung up. I climbed the steps back to Market Street. I stood staring at the old drugstore that was supposed to become the new coffee shop. The door was sealed off with crime scene tape, and there were a couple of orange-and-white sawhorses in front of it, but there weren’t any cars that I could see. The few pedestrians passing by turned to look, but nobody stopped.

  Show’s over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

  Which was good advice, I told myself. I needed to get home. I’d left Grandma B.B. on her own for long enough. There was something in the way she’d assured me she’d find plenty to keep her busy that made me nervous. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. If I’d been having a bad few days, things must have been even worse for her. I’d at least had some time to adjust to Portsmouth and all that came with it. Grandma had been thrown in at the deep end. Plus I was hungry and thirsty, and I needed to check my Web site to see if I had any more e-mails from possible clients, and . . .

  And what I did was stand right where I was and keep on staring. Down the sloped street, where the river curved, I could see the grand white expanse and sparkling windows of the Harbor’s Rest hotel. Flags fluttered from the gabled roof and seagulls hovered hopefully in the blue sky.

  I wondered what was going on over there. Had the police found the other end of the tunnel yet? Had they found Jimmy Upton’s sister? It occurred to me that Old Sean might be tending bar at the hotel today. It was almost four o’clock. I could stroll in, have a drink, ask a couple of questions . . .

  I rubbed my forehead. Anna Britton, what the heck are you thinking? Helping Jake and Miranda find out if their new building was haunted was one thing. But was I really going to try to play Nancy Drew with Lieutenant Blanchard breathing down my neck? Miranda was right about one thing. If I started asking questions about Jimmy Upton or his murder, Blanchard was going to notice, and he was going to want to know why, and he probably was not going to like the answer.

  But Jake and Miranda needed more than just an assurance that their new building was free of negative energies. They were confused and they were hurt, and it was really clear that Lieutenant Blanchard wanted to make trouble for them. They deserved definite answers.

  My phone rang. I pulled it out and checked the number.

  “Hi, Martine!” I said as I hit the Accept button.

  “And exactly when were you going to tell me you found a dead body under Market Street?” she answered.

  Martine Devereux is the chef at the Pale Ale, a historic Portsmouth tavern. She has also been my best friend since forever and is a big part of the reason I came to Portsmouth at all.

  I winced. “I guess Kenisha called you.” Kenisha had been busy on the phone this morning.

  “Kenisha shouldn’t have had to call me,” snapped Martine. “I’m your best friend, Anna. You are supposed to have me on speed dial for this stuff.”

  “I was going to call you, but I didn’t—”

  “Britton, if you say you didn’t want to bother me, I am hanging up this phone because we are through.”

  Don’t you hate it when your best friend has a good point? “I’m sorry, Martine. You’re right. I should have called. It’s just . . .” I heard her drawing in a very deep breath. “I am not saying I didn’t want to bother you! But everything’s happened so fast, and I didn’t know how bad it was going to get until this morning.”

  “Just how bad did it get?”

  “Bad,” I admitted. “Getting called down to the police station by Kenisha’s lieutenant bad.”

  Martine was quiet, and when she did start talking again, her voice was low and serious. “Anna, I may not be one of your witches, but I’ve known you longer than anybody you’re not related to. Do not push me away from this.”

  Now it was my turn to be quiet. The hurt in Martine’s voice was real, which was bad enough. What was worse, though, was that she was right. Again. Lately, I had been preoccupied with my new friends in the coven. They were all entirely welcoming of Martine, but although she believed in the magic, she was emphatically not interested in taking up the practice herself. It did create a gap. I’d been letting myself drift to one side of it, and away from her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “The worst part is, I could really use your help.”

  “Say, ‘Please, Chef.’”

  I felt myself smile. “Please, Chef. Pretty please, with locally sourced, organic and sustainably harvested sugar on top.”

  I heard her try to smother a laugh and I grinned. “And exactly what is it you need my help with this time?”

  “That dead body? It was a chef, a man named Jimmy Upton.”

  “Upton?” Martine let out a long, low whistle. “You’re telling me somebody killed Jimmy Upton? Dang. I wonder what took them so long?”

  * * *

  I think I set a land-speed record getting to the Pale Ale. I paused just long enough to call Grandma B.B. She didn’t pick up, but I left a message telling her where I was going and that I’d be back home in another couple of hours. Probably.

  I didn’t need to bother with the bus this time. Portsmouth was founded long before cars were ever dreamed of, so the oldest buildings in downtown are within fairly easy walking distance of one another. In next to no time, I was sitting with Martine in her cramped office in the back of the kitchen.

  Martine Devereaux is an African American woman with dark brown skin and a build like a professional athlete. She runs her kitchens with the efficiency of a Swiss watch, or would have if Swiss watches were filled with knives, fire and organic kale.

  It was Monday, so even though it was going on five, the restaurant was closed and the kitchen was as empty as it ever got. That is to say, the crew had gone home while Martine got to stay and wrestle with the invoices, orders, time cards and schedules piled up on her desk in stacks of multicolored paper. Such is the glamorous life of the executive chef.

  Because it was Martine, there were also cups of butternut squash soup and slices of the amazing sourdough rye bread that her in-house baker produces, because she had rightly guessed that being at the police station had caused me to miss at least one meal. We ate, and I filled her in on what had been happening, all of it, including the stuff about the Vibe and the (possible) ghost in the old drugstore.

  “Well, if anybody was going to keep hanging around and being a jerk instead of heading off into the afterlife, it’d be Jimmy.” Martine had taken all the weirdness of my current life absolutely in stride. It was helped by the fact that her grandparents came from Haiti. She didn’t talk about it too much, but I had a distinct feeling her grandmother had a few extra abilities of her own.

  “Sounds like he was . . . special,” I said. I also spooned up the last of the delicately spiced soup from my mug. No matter what the circumstances, I did not let Martine’s food go to waste.

  “In a whole lotta ways,” agreed Martine sourly. She bit off a piece of sourdough crust. “I actually met him last year at the Taste of Portsmouth festival,” she told me around her mouthful. “I was still being considered for this job, and I was . . . call it ‘auditioning’ for the owners. They wanted to know if I could look good for the press and the public, as well as cook.”

  “Have you got a face Food TV would love?” I suggested.

  She nodded. “So, they let me pull together a recipe for the festival’s media night, and there I was, public face on, handing out the food. It was a potato soup with sorrel and watercress and Gruyère cheese. Simple, warming, not too heavy. We used vegetable stock instead of cream—”

  “And Jimmy was there?” I interrupted before she could really get going. I love her, but when Martine starts talking food, it is a long time before she stops.

  “This kid comes up to the table and he takes a cup of soup and he starts . . . needling me is the only word for it. He smells it, tastes it, starts aski
ng all about the cooking techniques and the ingredients and where’d it all come from and where’d I get the recipe and on and on forever.” Her jaw hardened. “And I’ve got a line of people behind him, and I’m smiling and I’m trying to be polite, because my potential new bosses are there, along with every food critic and blogger on the seacoast, and finally this kid turns to the woman he’s with and he just shrugs. ‘Whatever. It’s boring, it’s bland and it’s the product of a very ordinary mind,’ he says, and pitches the cup into the garbage.”

  “He did that?” I clutched at my own soup cup as if it might suddenly be snatched away from me.

  “Oh, yeah, and then he walks off with his privileged little nose in the air. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except for who he was with.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Gretchen Hilde.”

  I’d already heard that name today. “She’s the head of the family that owns the Harbor’s Rest.”

  “That’s her.” Martine gestured toward me with her soup mug. “I was sure I’d just been sunk. I thought maybe it was a race thing going on, or a woman thing. You get that in some kitchens. But it turns out it was just a Jimmy thing. Upton got off on confrontation. Whenever he saw anybody who might become the competition, he attacked them first.”

  “Did he want the Pale Ale job?”

  “No. He was already Mrs. Hilde’s golden boy. He just wanted to make sure she knew she’d made the right choice. His way to do that was to demolish everybody else.” She shook her head. “I didn’t like him, but I will say this—Jimmy had the kind of touch that only comes along once in a blue moon. He really could have been great.” Martine loves the art of cooking. When she sees a talent, she acknowledges it generously, no matter whom it’s attached to.

  Martine tipped her mug this way and that, watching the last drops of soup dribble across the bottom. “Anna, are you really going to do the Nancy Drew thing again?”

  “No,” I said immediately, but that only made Martine look down her nose at me. “Well. Maybe. But just to help Jake and Miranda. Lieutenant Blanchard is looking cross-eyed at them, and I feel responsible.”

  Martine made the kind of face she normally reserved for sour milk and split sauces. “In what way are you responsible for Upton finally making somebody so angry that they got drastic on his lily-whites?”

  “I found the tunnel. If I’d just left things alone, Jake and Miranda wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “Maybe not right away, but this is the kind of thing that comes back to haunt you, whether there’s a real ghost or not.”

  “All the more reason we should try to help.” The words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to think about them. But this was the truth. It might not have been smart, but I couldn’t stand by, not knowing what I knew.

  Not being who I was.

  “Did you ever meet Jimmy’s sister?” I asked her.

  “He had a sister?”

  I took that as a no. “Jake and Miranda said she worked in the coffee shop for a while, but she split . . . erm . . . left, and they don’t know where.” Come to that, Frank had said Jimmy didn’t have any family in the area.

  “News to me. But it sure doesn’t sound good.” Martine picked up her remaining bread and tore it in two. She looked at the crumbs for a while, making up her mind how much more to say.

  “And you think it’s not the only thing that doesn’t sound good?” I prompted.

  “No.” She sighed. “Listen, Anna, what do you know about kitchen organization?”

  I shrugged. “Only what you’ve told me.”

  “Okay. Upton was the sous chef at Harbor’s Rest. In a traditional French-style kitchen, the sous chef is responsible for making the sauces, and that is a very serious, very high-level job. The sous is also the head chef’s right hand and gets to be large and in charge.

  “Jimmy got this job by climbing over a bunch of people who had been there longer.”

  “Sounds like the kind of situation that could generate a lot of resentment,” I said slowly.

  Martine’s nod was also slow. “If Jimmy Upton was murdered, you are going to have a whole long list of suspects to choose from, even without any missing sister. And it’s going to include pretty much the entire Harbor’s Rest kitchen staff.”

  15

  Martine had to get back to work. Staffing schedules waited for no chef. She did have one other piece of advice for me.

  “If you want to find out what was going on with the service staff at the hotel, you should talk to Kelly Pierce. She’s their food and beverages manager, and she’s new,” she added. “She was brought in to help turn things around, and she’s not a Hilde, so there’s no family stuff going on with her.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You are the best, and I’m coming by next Monday. This time I promise it’s strictly the girl’s day. No magic or corpses.”

  “I’m holding you to that, Britton,” she told me. “Oh, and pro tip: If you do go talk to Kelly, take coffee.”

  I walked out into the fall evening. I wasn’t thinking of much; I just started strolling toward Market Square.

  What was I doing? Did I really think I could help Jake and Miranda? Yes, I’d been able to help out before, but that was when I’d just been caught up in the situation. Not to mention the fact that I’d been a suspect then and needed to try to clear my own name. This was different.

  I sat on one of the benches in front of the North Church. I wished I had my cat with me. I wished I knew what I ought to do.

  What I did do was get out my phone and dial Grandma B.B.

  “Hello, Anna!” she said. “Where are you, dear? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Grandma. I was just wondering if you were home.”

  “Oh, well, no, not right now. I thought since you were busy, I’d catch up with some old friends. Maybe we should meet somewhere?”

  “I don’t want to interrupt the reunion,” I told her. “If you’re near downtown, we can meet at the River House for dinner. You’d love the fried clams.” Thanks to the soup and bread with Martine, I wasn’t actually hungry anymore, but after the day I’d been having, I desperately wanted a moment of normality.

  “Sounds perfect, dear. How about . . .” She paused, probably to check her watch. “Seven o’clock?”

  “Great. You’ll be able to find it all right?”

  “Of course I will. What a question.”

  We said good-bye and hung up. I looked around at the passing crowds of tourists. According to the church clock, it was just five thirty. I’d meant to get to the library and do a quick little bit of research for the murals, but they’d be closing up now. I could spend the time walking along the river and getting my head together after my eventful day. I could do something entirely mundane like heading over to the Circle K to pick up some cat food.

  I could do all kinds of good, sensible things.

  What I did instead was turn down Market Street and head straight for the Harbor’s Rest.

  * * *

  I’d been in the Harbor’s Rest exactly once, and that was for a celebratory dinner after I’d been initiated into the coven. The food was great; the wine was great; the dining room was elegant and old-school. I’d promised myself I’d come back. I just never imagined it would be under these circumstances.

  The hotel’s entrance had kept all its Gilded Age splendor. There was a fancy plasterwork ceiling, polished wood and marble-tiled floors. All the art on the walls had heavy gilt frames and looked like it had been commissioned especially for the hotel, especially the oil painting that showed a cluster of cats sitting in what was clearly this very lobby.

  That bar was the most famous part of the hotel, at least locally. Its bay windows provided a beautiful view of the marina and the river. There were plaques and framed newspaper clippings on the walls telling how Babe Ruth had gotten into a fight
in there with some Red Sox fans who took exception to his move to the Yankees. There were photos of the gangsters and silent movie starlets who drank bootlegged champagne there. Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman had drunk and fought and written masterpieces here. Various Roosevelts and Kennedys had wined and dined constituents, donors and other connections here.

  It was the right time for the predinner rush, but the bar was only about a quarter full when I walked in. Men in Lands’ End khakis and women carrying designer purses sat at little round tables with beers or delicately colored cocktails in front of them. Martinis seemed to be a favorite, and when I saw who was behind the bar adding a spiral of lemon peel to the glass in front of him, I was not at all surprised.

  “Young Sean!”

  “Anna!” Sean flashed me a smile and a wave with his free hand, while he set a drink on a server’s tray for her to take over to the waiting customer. “Pull up a stool.”

  “Does Martine know you’re moonlighting?” I asked as I climbed up on a seat on the short side of the bar by the door. I’d met Sean because he was the head bartender at the Pale Ale.

  He laughed. “Like I could do anything behind Chef’s back. I’m helping Dad out today. He had an errand to run. Can I get you something?” He gestured toward the shelves of empty glasses and full bottles.

  “What have you got?” I am not much of a drinker, but Sean’s mixtures were like Martine’s food, something not to be passed up lightly.

  He studied me for a minute and then touched his fedora brim like a salute. “I know just the thing.”

  I watched as Sean went to work with his bottles and his shaker. As usual, he was sharply dressed. Today, in addition to the fedora, he wore a bright blue shirt, black-on-black patterned vest and black tie. The effect was cheerful, stylish and ever so slightly vintage.