Cooking Up Murder

by Miranda Bliss

  “Who’s the one who still seems to care so much?” Tyler got up, too. He turned to Eve, both fists on his hips.

  He moved so fast, the table bucked. Miss Magda’s crystal ball tipped. Eve and Tyler were so busy facing off, neither of them noticed.

  I darted forward just in time to catch the crystal ball before it rolled over the edge of the table and landed on the floor. Bracing the hefty item in my hands, I stood next to the table, wondering what to look at. The floor? The ceiling? The Eve vs Tyler heavyweight match being slugged out right in front of my eyes?

  It seemed like a safe bet, so I decided on the table. But what I saw there nearly blew me away.

  A computer disc.

  It had been hidden under the crystal ball. Because of the curvature of the glass and the reflection of the light, nobody ever could have seen it when the ball was in place.

  My mind raced. This was the disc Yuri talked about. It had to be. Beyla must have found it at the gallery and brought it here. But why? And why would she kill the fortune-teller and leave the disc behind?

  I would have loved to think my way through the puzzle, but it was a little hard to concentrate with the sounds of Eve and Tyler going at each other echoing through my head.

  “You think I care?” Eve snorted her opinion. “Honestly, Tyler, you have grits for brains.”

  “At least I have brains,” he shot back.

  “And what a pity you never use them. If you did, you’d know the two murders are connected. Beyla came here last night. I know because I followed her from the gallery that Drago owned. You want to know why, Tyler? My goodness, I’m surprised you haven’t figured all that out for yourself by now.”

  “Oh, I’ve figured out the Beyla part. But you apparently haven’t.” The noise Tyler made from deep in his throat was more of a growl than a laugh. “Your imagination is running away with you, Eve. You’ve been reading too many books, if you read at all. You’ve concocted something straight out of a James Bond novel. Do you think that life really works that way? So what if Beyla went to the gallery? That’s not all that surprising, is it? After all, she was Kravic’s bookeeper. Or didn’t you know that? As to why she went to the gallery last night… why would she bother? The place has been locked up tight since Drago’s death. What would she want there?”

  “What would she want? How about a-”

  Before Eve could blow our entire investigation with two little words, I opened my hands and let the crystal ball slip. It hit just where I inteded, right where the rug ended and the hardwood floor began. The crash made both Eve and Tyler shut their mouths and brought the crime scene techs running.

  I didn’t stop to think about right or wrong. I didn’t debate the ethics of the situation or my obligation-moral or otherwise-to authority.

  Who knew I could be so downright underhanded?

  While Eve, Tyler, and the crime scene techs were all busy staring at the thousands of glass shards that littered the floor like fallen stars, I whisked the disc off the table and tucked it into my purse.

  “YOU’RE KIDDING ME, RIGHT? YOU TOOK IT? RIGHT out from under Tyler’s nose?” Eve practically crowed. “Annie Capshaw, you are the bravest and the coolest thing on two feet!”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  As we drove away from Clarendon, my hands were shaking against the steering wheel.

  Eve chuckled. “When Tyler finds out, he’ll have a cow.”

  “He’d better not find out!” I flicked on my blinker and waited for the opportunity to turn left, slanting Eve a look as I did. “You’re not going to tell him. Not ever. If you do, I could be arrested. Tampering with evidence is a crime, isn’t it?”

  Eve gulped down her horror. “I guess it is. I never thought of that.” She crossed her heart with one finger. “I swear, I’ll never breathe a word. Not to Tyler or anybody else. Besides, once we give the disc to Yuri, it won’t matter. You won’t have the disc, and Tyler will never be able to prove where Yuri got it. You’ll be home free.”

  I liked the sound of that. A life of crime, it seemed, did not agree with me.

  By the time we got to my apartment building, parked the car, and got upstairs, I was lightheaded and my knees felt as if they were made of jelly. I needed chocolate, and I needed it bad.

  If only I hadn’t eaten my emergency Hershey bar the night we found Drago’s body.

  I peeked in the pantry and saw the Nesquik jar was empty. Apparently I’d forgotten to restock the last time I was at the store.

  I checked the stash I kept in the freezer for those times when I absolutely, positively needed chocolate and none was to be had anywhere else, but even the cache of chocolate chips I usually kept squirreled away was gone, too.

  It had been a stressful summer.

  I settled for salt and vinegar potato chips. I ripped open the bag and plunked down in one of the kitchen chairs.

  “My nerves are shot,” I said, tipping the bag toward Eve.

  She reached in for a handful. When that first, tangy taste of vinegar hit her tongue, she made a face. “Mine aren’t.” She grinned. “I’m still too jazzed thinking about what you did to Tyler. That no-good slimeball. Did you hear him? ‘If you read at all.’” She echoed Tyler’s words from back at Magda’s in a singsong voice. “He’s got a lot of nerve. If he only knew how smart we both are! And he will, too, won’t he? As soon as we get this case cleared up.”

  She crunched into another handful of chips. “We can do it, don’t you think? Now that we have the disc, we can prove that Beyla stole money from the gallery. That will give us the motive we’ve been looking for. Then we can prove that Beyla killed Drago and probably Magda, too. My gosh, Annie!” Eve blanched. She stopped dead just as she was reaching back into the potato chip bag.

  “Do you suppose Beyla was inside the tea room strangling Magda while I was outside waiting for her to come out?” she asked.

  “Looks that way.” There was no use denying it, but I knew I had to get Eve’s mind off poor, dead Magda, or she’d end up convincing herself that there was something she could have done to stop the murder. There wasn’t. Not without her risking herself and her own safety. I had to change the subject, and fast.

  “I absolutely think we can solve the case,” I said loudly, heartened to see her smile in response. “We’re close. We’ve got exactly what we need now.” I glanced toward my purse and the disc inside it. Suddenly, the thought of how it got there washed over me.

  The salt stung my tongue. The vinegar soured in my stomach. My throat tightened.

  “If I don’t get arrested and thrown in prison for the rest of my life first!” I murmured.

  “There, there.” Eve reached over and patted my shoulder. She left a trail of crumbs and salt in her wake, and when she moved back, I brushed it away. “That’s not going to happen. Remember? Vow of silence. Nobody’s ever going to know where that disc came from. And if Yuri ever says we gave it to him… well, we’ll just deny it. Why shouldn’t we? Everything we’ve done, we’ve done to help the authorities. I don’t see them solving Drago’s murder.”

  “Except Tyler said something about that, didn’t he?” I reached for another handful of chips, the better to smother my doubts. “He said he’d figured out Beyla’s part in the whole thing.”

  “Yeah, just like we have. But he hasn’t been able to prove it. If he could, he would have arrested her by now.” Eve brushed crumbs from her hands and went to the fridge to get two bottles of water. She set one down in front of me. “He can’t prove anything because he doesn’t have the disc. We do. Which makes us way smarter than him. Take that, Tyler Cooper!” She twisted the cap off the bottle, and I couldn’t help but think that as she did, she pictured herself wringing Tyler’s neck.

  Eve took a long swallow before she spoke again. “Let’s get this disc over to Yuri and be done with it. What do you say, Annie? Let’s call Yuri.” She reached for the phone. “Where’s his number?”

  I dug it out of my purse along with the disc. “Maybe we
’d better take a look at the disc before we hand it over to him,” I suggested. “Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to make a copy, either. You know, in case something happens to this one. Beyla might try to steal it back.”

  “Or kill Yuri for it!” Eve gulped a too-big swallow of water and coughed.

  I hadn’t thought of that scenario, but after what happened first to Drago and then to Magda, I wouldn’t be surprised. I went into the bedroom and dug through the desk drawer for an extra disc. Eve joined me a moment later.

  “I want a look first,” I told her, inserting the disc we’d found at Magda’s into the proper drive. We waited for the disc to boot. When it did, my anticipation melted like an ice cube in the summer sun.

  “It’s not in English.” Her nose wrinkled, Eve pointed at the screen. “How are we supposed to know what it says when it’s not in English?”

  “Somebody will be able to read it.” I consoled myself with the thought while I clicked through a couple pages of what I guessed was Romanian. “Yuri can probably translate it. He never came right out and said he was Romanian, but I’ll bet he is. He knew that Beyla and Drago were lovers back in Romania. That means maybe he knew them back then. He’ll for sure know what this says.”

  “All the more reason to tell him what we found.” Eve had brought the scrap of paper with Yuri’s phone number on it into the bedroom with her. She reached for the bedside phone.

  “Not so fast.” I waved to her to relax as I started paging through another couple screens full of incomprehensible writing. “Let’s at least make the copy first,” I said. I had every intention of doing it, except that I was too fascinated by everything on the screen to stop.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it,” I said, so engrossed, I was only vaguely aware of Eve standing behind me. “Yuri says that Beyla stole money from the gallery, and that the proof of her scheme is on this disc. But you’d think if this had anything to do with stolen money, there would be numbers. Lots of numbers. Like a ledger or an account book. There’s nothing like that here. There’s just writing. Page after page of it.”

  The phone still in her hand, Eve leaned over my shoulder. “Maybe she’s explaining how she did it.”

  “I don’t think she’s that stupid.” The little bar at the right side of the screen showed that there were more pages I hadn’t seen. I scrolled down.

  “You’re not going to learn Romanian just by looking at it.” Eve clicked her tongue. “I’m calling him,” she said. In the screen, I saw the reflection of Eve with the phone to her ear. “There’s no way we’re going to find out what it says otherwise. And I’ll tell you what, I’m just dying to know.”

  I was only half listening.

  Something on the screen had caught my eye.

  There in the middle of all the Romanian were bits and pieces of things I recognized. Not words, exactly, but letters and numbers. I pointed at the screen, even though I didn’t know if Eve was looking or not.

  “It’s a list,” I said, and I scrolled down some more.

  That’s when the pieces clicked.

  “Yuri? Hi, it’s me, Eve. Eve DeCateur. Sorry you’re not there and I have to leave this message. I really wanted to talk to you.”

  I heard Eve’s voice as if it came from a million miles away. It bumped around inside my head, smacking against the realization that hit me like a freight train.

  “You met me at your gallery,” she was saying in her sweetest Southern belle voice. “And you know my friend Annie. Annie Capshaw? She’s the one I’ve been working with on the you-know-what. You know, the case we’re trying to solve. The one that involves you-know-who and the art gallery.”

  I jolted out of my daze and turned in my chair. “Eve, hang up the phone.”

  She waved aside my protest. “Listen, Yuri, I’m calling because-”

  “Eve, hang up the phone.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I just wanted you to know that we’ve got what you were looking for. The-”

  I didn’t know I could move that fast. Not until I snatched the phone out of Eve’s hand and hit the Off button.

  “Annie Capshaw! What on earth has gotten into you?” Eve tried to take the phone back, but I threw it over to the other side of the room. “Do you know how rude that was? I didn’t even finish leaving my message.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?” She tipped her head, trying to work through the thing. “I just don’t understand you. First you want Yuri’s help. Then you don’t. How are we going to know what that disc is all about until we get him to tell us?”

  “We don’t need his help.” I grabbed Eve’s arm and tugged her closer to the computer. “Look!”

  “At what?” She bent at the waist and narrowed her eyes. “It’s a list. Big deal. It’s-”

  “AK-47. HK MP5. M16.” I read over the list. “It’s guns, that’s what it is.”

  “What?” She sprang back and looked at me as if I’d suddenly started talking Romanian.

  I pointed to the screen. “AK-47. M16. I’m no expert, and I don’t know jack about weapons, but I recognize these names. This has nothing to do with the art gallery, Eve. It has nothing to do with stealing money. At least not gallery money. I don’t know what the rest of the pages mean, but I’d bet anything that Beyla… She’s not cooking the books. She’s smuggling guns into the country.”

  Seventeen

  WE WERE IN OVER OUR HEADS. WAY OVER OUR heads.

  I knew it the moment I saw the names of those guns pop up on my computer screen. It took a little convincing and a little more explaining, but Eve (who before my minilecture on global politics and federal crimes was inclined to think that lawbreaking was lawbreaking whether we were talking guns or art gallery money) finally understood, too.

  The trick now, of course, was to figure out what to do about it.

  Did I go to the police and admit that I’d stolen vital evidence from the scene of a crime?

  Did I hope that Yuri returned Eve’s phone call, and that he’d pick up the disc and we’d be rid of it?

  Or did I stick where I had been stuck since I put that disc I my computer: my brain in a loop, my mind so muddled I’d actually given out the wrong change to a bank customer that day? Since it was something I’d never done before, I guess the loop and the muddle were winning.

  By next evening’s Marvelous Meats class, I still hadn’t worked things through. Which of course didn’t explain the mess that was my cheeseburger pizza. I liked to think so, but I wasn’t kidding myself. Not anymore. As much as I tried to concentrate on the advice Jim tossed out to the class as easily as he flung ketchup, mustard, and other traditional burger ingredients onto pizza dough with the skill of a magician and the flair of an artist, I couldn’t turn my mind off.

  Guns.

  Smuggling.

  Murder.

  The words whirled around like the pickles, wine, and secret spices Jim tossed in a blender to make his own relish.

  It was one thing playing detective to try to help Eve get back at Tyler. It was another to really consider the international implications of what Beyla was doing. And I wasn’t kidding myself: I knew I didn’t know the half of it.

  It was that half that scared me half to death.

  I was just scraping the burnt remnants of cheddar cheese off my pizza pan when Monsieur Lavoie stuck his head into the classroom and wagged one finger in Jim’s direction, calling him out into the hallway. “There is a phone call for you. They say it is important.”

  It must have been. Jim was back in less than a minute.

  “Have to skedaddle,” he told the class, but he was looking right at me while he said it. “Sorry to leave you high and dry. Going to need to cancel tomorrow night’s class, too. You’ve got your recipe for the pork loin marinated in orange juice and soy sauce. Try it at home. It’s fabulous. In the meantime…” He consulted his class syllabus. “I’ll see you all back here on Friday for Delightful Desserts. Can you believe it’s our last class?”

  He headed into the b
ack kitchen and came out carrying a motorcylce helmet and a jacket, mouthing the wordsI’ll call as he walked by.

  And just like that, class was over.

  “Well, that’s weird,” Eve chirped. If I wasn’t so busy being preoccupied, I might have rejoiced that for once, Eve’s culinary results were just as bad as mine. Her pizza crust was the color of the toffee twin set she wore with her black capris. “What do you suppose has gotten into Jim?”

  “Obviously, it’s something important. He’ll let me know.”

  “You’re very trusting.”

  “Shouldn’t I be?” Until that very moment, it had never crossed my mind not to be. Not with Jim. “You don’t think-” My thought was interupped by the ring of a cell phone. It was Beyla’s. She grabbed her purse and headed out the door.

  “I’ll bet she’s up to no good,” Eve whispered.

  It seemed like a pretty sure bet.

  I tossed down the towel I’d used to dry my pizza pan. “You up for tailing her again?”

  “Are you sure you want to?” Eve’s voice was anxious.

  I wasn’t. But I still hadn’t made up my mind about what to do with the disc and the information on it. Whatever we saw Beyla do, wherever she went, whoever she met with… maybe it would help me come to a decision.

  I held onto that thought as we went outside. I clung to it as we dodged raindrops, following Beyla as she walked away from the parking lot, across the street, and a couple blocks up from Très Bonne Cuisine. By the time she got to a placed called Bucharest, I was hanging on to my hopes by my fingernails.

  We’d played it safe and smart, staying far enough back so that Beyla didn’t see us, but when she went inside the restaurant, we dared to get closer. We huddled under the awning above the front door and watched her through the rain-spotted window. She said something to the hostess, who nodded and led her away from the door.

  “Nothing.” Eve’s shoulders drooped. She spun around and leaned against the building. Her hair was as wet as mine. On Eve, slick and wet looked good. On me… well, my hair was so curly, rain almost never penetrated. And humidity only made it curlier. I suspected that right about now, I looked like I had a head full of rotini noodles, and one glance at my reflection in the window confirmed my worst fears.