Stick a Fork In It

by Robin Allen

  Not even three minutes had passed before someone rattled the door handle, trying to enter the office. It saved me from having to respond. I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t make me sound like a jerk.

  “She was coherent but in critical condition after surgery, and the doctors didn’t know if she would make it or how long she had.” He shifted in his chair. “They had her on a mess of immunosuppressant drugs, so I couldn’t be in the same room with her, but I could see her through a glass window and talk to her through an intercom. I thought about you a lot and remembered what you went through when Iris passed so suddenly. I spent every moment I could with her and told her all the things I’ve always wanted to.”

  “I’m so sorry, Drew. Is she okay now?”

  He shook his head. “She hung in there for a few days, but her system was weak, and she contracted pneumonia. Contracted. Like she agreed to it.” Drew made a fist and rubbed his left quad muscle. “Mine was weak too, and I caught some sort of super bug. It locked onto my leg and started eating away the fascia.” He pulled up his left pant leg to show a prosthesis. “They cut me off at the knee,” he said with a self-conscious laugh.

  I must have looked horrified, not only at what I was seeing but because of how I had been acting. Conclusion jumping is often followed by tripping on your assumptions, then falling on your face. My stars, what he must have gone through—was still going through. I felt the beginning of tears.

  “Please, Poppy.” He put his hand on my knee. “Don’t make a big deal about this. I went through lots of rehab and had lots of counseling. I’ve learned to live with it.”

  I met his eyes. “Why didn’t you call? I would have been there for you.”

  “I wish you had been,” he said. “I was depressed for a long time, as you can imagine, and by the time I was ready to tell you, you were dating Jamie Sherwood.” Had I not been looking at him so closely, I would have missed the anger backfilling his eyes. “I still keep in touch with some ABRA people and heard you broke up a few months ago.”

  “We did,” I said, “but we’re on a slow mend.” I didn’t want to discuss Jamie with him. “What brought you back to Austin?”

  “I was tired of the snow and I missed…my friends. I came straight here and asked Mitch if he could use me.” He smiled. “Or what’s left of me.”

  What do you say to something like that? I didn’t know, so I brought us back to a safe topic. “I know Mitch is happy to have someone he can trust running the restaurant.”

  “And you?”

  I stood up, and Drew came up with me. “I’m happy it’s not me.”

  “I’m here to stay this time, Poppy.”

  “Ursula will be glad to hear that. I think she’s tired of breaking in GMs.”

  He laughed. “I read an article on Sherwood’s website where people said Ursula was touchy and liked to throw things, but I haven’t seen any of that. I’ve only been here a few days, but she’s nothing like what I had prepared for.”

  I knew that Ursula was interested in Drew, and from his comment, I could guess at his interest in her. But if I told him that people aren’t always as they appear to be or that no one at Markham’s had thought it impossible that Ursula had stabbed a rival chef in the heart, he might think I was jealous. And I couldn’t say with certainty that I wasn’t. After the story I heard, I no longer thought that Drew and Ursula deserved each other. But I also hadn’t been put in charge of karma.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said.

  He pointed to my legs. “I also wasn’t prepared for those pants.”

  “Neither was I.”

  x x x

  By the time I left Drew’s office, I had just enough time to make a sandwich with Ursula’s freakishly evenly sliced carrots and beets before driving over to Lunch and Larder. When I arrived at noon, I saw several snack trucks pulling into the parking lot to either knock off after their breakfast shift or restock for the afternoon. It presented a wonderful opportunity for a few sniper inspections, but it was one I had to let pass because I didn’t want to jump Olive’s gun and be put on disability leave.

  I would have caught one or two mobiles with a blank food temperature log or drinking from uncovered cups. Not critical violations, but not something they should get away with either. Today it’s a spilled drink in the potato salad, tomorrow it’s an outbreak of Streptococcus.

  I didn’t know what the truck looked like, but if I had to guess, I would imagine that with a stupid name like Pizza Pig, it was painted pink and had a caricature of a fat, grinning pig gobbling a whole pizza. The parking lot was mostly empty, and I didn’t see anything like that, so I went over to the dispatch kiosk to confer with the office manager, a skinny woman with bottle-red hair and teal eye shadow.

  “Good afternoon, Poppy M,” Magdalena Zapata said through a microphone grill.

  “You’re looking quite comfortable behind that glass, Magda Z.”

  “It’s my little ice-cold piece of heaven. You want in?”

  “You’d never get me back out,” I said. “I’m looking for Pizza Pig.”

  “They already in trouble with the food police?”

  “Not yet. I need to do a mobile permit inspection.”

  “Another one?”

  “Not another, just one. They made the appointment a couple of days ago.”

  “What? They told me you did the inspection and they’re waiting on the piece of paper.”

  “Not us.” I wiped sweat from my upper lip. “We’re experimenting with doing them on location. Pizza Pig is one of the first.”

  Normally the vendor has to bring the truck to our offices to prove that they’re actually mobile. Keeping Olive away from customers is one of the special privileges of being an SPI.

  “Lying jerks,” she said, shaking her head. “Spot two-eighteen.” She stood up to look past me into the lot. “Doesn’t look like they’re here. I saw them earlier, though.”

  “Have they been serving food?”

  She plopped back into her chair. “I don’t know for sure. They’re not one of mine, so I don’t pay attention to anything but their rent check.”

  “What does the truck look like?”

  “Like a member of Congress.”

  I laughed. “Can you be more specific?”

  “Plain old white one. Not new. A few dings here and there.”

  “Like a hundred other ones out there.” I slid my card to her through the metal well. “Can you call me when they show up?”

  “You got it,” she said. “But it wasn’t me, okay? And it wasn’t me who told you to check out the Epicuriousitiness truck. One row back and two spots over.”

  “Epi what?”

  “Curiousitiness.”

  Another stupid name for a snack truck. “Are they here?”

  “Early, early morning, like five. I’m not here, but the cameras are. Something’s not right. They never use the commissary.”

  “I’ll set my alarm,” I said. “Stay cool, Magda Z.”

  “I’ll never be as cool as your pants.”

  I returned to my Jeep and called Olive to find out what she knew about Pizza Pig missing their appointment. She answered the phone coughing. “Hold on,” she rasped. After a community theater production’s worth of choking and what sounded like her performing the Heimlich maneuver on herself, she said, “How’s it hanging, Markham?”

  “Like the moustache on a walrus,” I said. “Pizza Pig is on the trot.”

  “It’s lunchtime,” she said, swallowing a big messy gulp of something. “They’re probably out serving pizza.”

  “Olive, this is a permit inspection. They can’t be out serving pizza.”

  “We do surprise inspections at lunchtime, Markham, not permits.”

  “You’re the one who scheduled this for noo
n. Can we reschedule them for next week or have them come to the office? And ask the other inspectors to keep an eye out for the truck in case they started slinging dough ahead of time. According to Magda Z, it’s a plain—”

  “You can wait for them.”

  Waiting would be the perfect excuse to cancel my shopping trip with Nina, and I would have agreed if the temperature hadn’t started flirting with 90 degrees right in front of me and if Olive hadn’t said that the way she did. Sometimes it’s the little things.

  “I’d rather make them wait,” I said. “Losing a week’s worth of business from drunk frat boys after the bars close on Sixth Street might encourage them to respect my time.”

  “Same time tomorrow, then,” she said.

  “But I thought we didn’t do permit inspections”—click—“at lunchtime.”

  Whether I was busy with Pizza Pig and Capital Punishment or I was having a boomerang conversation with Olive didn’t matter. I still had a good excuse to call Nina and cancel our mall crawl.

  “Oh, what a pity,” Nina said. She put a lot of effort into sounding disappointed, so my father must have been within hearing range. “I want to find your color. That black you always wear is so cliché for a blond. I’m thinking ruby, emerald, sapphire.”

  Jewel colors. No surprise there. “I don’t always wear black,” I protested. “In fact, I’m wearing silver and amethyst right now.”

  My stepmother was right, though. I wear black all the time, but only because I work all the time and black hides the gunk I have to slide around in. We lied to each other about rescheduling soon, and then I called Jamie.

  “Hey, Poppycakes. What’s the good word?”

  “I’m a cliché blond who wears too much black.”

  “It works for Madonna,” he said, “but your clichés look better.”

  “Thanks, but Nina doesn’t think so. We’re supposed to go shopping for jewel colors.”

  “Put me down for ruby red.”

  “You’re down,” I said. “How are you coming on those crime scene photos?”

  “You may not believe this, but the record of physical evidence from an active police investigation isn’t that easy to get ahold of.”

  “Aren’t you the guy who got a Michelin guide reviewer to write an anonymous article about how their stars are awarded?”

  “I am, and I’m calling in twice as many favors for this.”

  “Now I owe you a favor.”

  “Good,” he said. “What—”

  “But don’t ask me any questions about the Sharpe place.”

  “—is one plus one?”

  “Daisy invited us over for dinner tonight.”

  “Both of us?”

  “One plus one. Six o’clock.”

  “Just making sure I heard you right,” he said with a couple of ounces of joy in his voice. “I’ll pick you up at five.”

  x x x

  Like Miles Archer, the contractor fixing up my house specializes in home remodeling, but unlike Miles, he had not taken on a project beyond his abilities. He’d had to rebuild an exterior wall and redo the interior walls that had been damaged—basically every wall in the house—as well as pull up the carpet. I had asked him to finish it out like a ski lodge, with lots of wood everywhere, which he said would take a little longer.

  On my way home to have a look-see at their progress, I passed CapTex Restaurant Supply and remembered that Jesse Muñoz figured into this story. Miles had asked Todd for cash for the sink that first day because Jesse had cut off their credit.

  I hadn’t seen Jesse since I left Markham’s, so I decided to stop in and say hello. Maybe see what I could find out about Capital Punishment’s financial situation.

  I doubled back and drove past a long line of cars in the parking lot before I found a space. Inside were several chefs, managers, and owners examining stemware and flatware or turning dials and taking measurements of convection ovens. Jesse keeps every item on display and plugged in because a $1,000 deep fryer can be as much of an impulse purchase for a chef as a $100 sauté pan.

  I walked through the showroom looking for Jesse and waving to people I knew, which had me raising my hand every few feet. Some people stopped and asked about Mitch and Ursula, some smiled briefly and went back to their browsing, and some suddenly needed to be somewhere else. It all depended on their last health score.

  One of these days, when food service is done entirely by androids that are programmed to follow the rules, everyone will be happy to see the health inspector.

  I found Jesse by the major appliances speaking with Herb Wolff and Dana White. Jesse threw a peace sign at me. I caught it with a nod, then played with high-speed blenders while I waited. Maybe I could make a frozen drink for Trevor. The Cool Kid. No, he needed something with teeth.

  Jesse finally shook hands with Herb and Dana, then walked over to me. “Is that what they’re making health inspectors wear these days?”

  So that’s why everyone was smiling at me as if I were wearing ridiculous silver and purple pants. “I’m testing my tolerance for humiliation,” I said, extending my right hand, then made a fist before he could shake it. “Sorry. It’s the hurt one.”

  “I can dig it.” Jesse tapped his fist to mine. “How is Ursula liking the new slicer?”

  “Ursula got a new slicer?” When I ran the kitchen, I used to ask Mitch for a new one at least once a month, but he said we didn’t use it enough to justify the purchase, and I insisted that we would use it more if it sliced more carrots than fingers.

  “Mitch told me it was to help her with the cookbook, but I got the feeling it was also an apology.” Jesse doesn’t miss much, so chances were good his feeling was right on. And even though he couldn’t know that the unfairness of it had reached me all these years later, he could tell it unsettled me, so he changed the subject. “What brings you in?”

  “I’ve been inspecting the Sharpe place going up on Slaughter.”

  He straightened a price tag under a $400 blender. “It’s a stressful business, this restaurant business.”

  “Do you think Troy Sharpe killed himself because the stress got to him?”

  “Opening a restaurant anytime is hard, but especially in this economy.”

  “Money trouble?” I asked, trying to sound as if it had just occurred to me.

  “It’s possible,” he said. The great thing about people who like to gossip is that they never ask why you want to talk about something that’s none of your business. But Jesse doesn’t like to gossip. “Why are you interested?” he asked.

  I thought it might come to this and had prepared an answer. “One of the cooks at Markham’s is thinking about jumping ship and I want to make sure he’s not going to sink before they get started. He’s a good cook, but Ursula wouldn’t take him back if things don’t work out.” I shrugged. “Just looking out for Markham’s.”

  It was mostly the truth. Whenever any new restaurant opens, every manager, cook, food server, bartender, dishwasher, and busboy at least considers applying for a job there, and that would include Trevor. It’s also true that Trevor is a good cook. And it’s true that Ursula wouldn’t take him back if he left.

  “Danny MacAdams seems to know what he’s doing,” Jesse said.

  “Then let me ask you this. Why would you take someone off credit and make them pay cash?”

  He seemed surprised that I knew that, but said, “If they don’t pay their invoices, but I’ll let them slide depending on the situation. Or if I find out they’ve stopped paying their linen and food vendors and it looks like they may start doing the same with me. Or…”

  Herb and Dana arguing over whether a fine-dining restaurant should have a microwave in the kitchen had taken my eyes away from Jesse, but I turned back when he didn’t continue. “Or?”

  “If
they request to be cash-only.”

  “Did they?”

  “We’re talking what-ifs, Poppy.”

  Of course they requested it. Why else would Jesse make sure he had my attention before he told me? “Okay, in general, why would someone request to be cash-only?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. I didn’t think he was keeping it from me. “I will say that in thirty years of selling restaurant supplies, this is the first time I can recall anyone doing that.”

  nineteen

  Jesse had given me another something to puzzle over on my way home. When Miles had asked Todd for money for the sinks, Todd told him to charge it to their account, which meant that they had been on credit at some point. So why change? Had they made the same arrangements with other vendors? Did Miles receive his payments in cash?

  Todd and Danny had seemed surprised when Miles told them they were cash-only, so it must have been Troy who made the arrangement with Jesse. Unless Todd and Danny were pretending they didn’t know. But why do that?

  And did this have anything to do with Troy’s death? I couldn’t see it, unless it was somehow related to Troy’s personal financial situation. The only people I could ask were the very people who would want Troy dead, and not even I could finesse an answer for why a health inspector needed to know about a dead guy’s financials. But Jamie could. I would ask him to help me on our way to Daisy’s for dinner.

  Whether for love or money, whoever killed Troy knew about his rope trick and had used it to make his death look like a suicide or an accident, so it had to be someone who had been inside the restaurant.

  Ginger had the strongest motive in the love category, and the only car in the parking lot that day had GSHARP on the license plate. After I discovered Troy, I assumed that he had driven Ginger’s car there, but what if he hadn’t? According to Miles, Ginger had accused Troy of being a no-good scoundrel. Maybe she’d had enough and went there to ask him for a divorce, because who wants to be married to a scoundrel? Especially an immature one who smelled like stale cigarettes and beer. Troy hangs himself from grief, and then she takes off in his car? Unlikely. I had seen Troy and Ginger in action. He would have been more upset to lose a gurney race to Todd than to lose his wife.