Stick a Fork In It

by Robin Allen

  She laughed. “Oh, because even on my worst day, I do not have that much hair on my legs.”

  Yikes. “Were you with him then?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “One of his tires was low, so he took my car.” She bounced the strings of her tennis racquet against her open palm. “You’re awfully curious about my husband’s personal life.”

  “I’m curious about why he would return to the restaurant when the electricity was out and no one was supposed to be onsite,” I said. “I’m wondering if it had something to do with the permit inspection.” I hadn’t wondered that at all, but I could have. “Do you know why he went back there?”

  She bent over to zip the racquet onto the side of her bag. “He told me he had a meeting.”

  “With who?”

  Ginger stood and crossed her arms. “With you.”

  “Me-ee?” She had to be making that up. “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what he said. That you were coming back to finish up and he needed to be there.”

  “I told Todd I would be back around two o’clock. You were standing right there. It could hardly be considered a meeting with Troy.”

  “All I know is that my husband left to meet you at the restaurant.” She sounded triumphant and suspicious at the same time, as if she could hang this whole thing on Troy’s romantic interest in me.

  I should have thanked her and wished her good day, but I didn’t know when or if I would speak with her again, and I had to know. “Is it true that you wanted to divorce Troy?”

  She dropped her hands by her sides. “Who told you that?” Answering a question with a question.

  “Just a rumor I heard.”

  She picked up her tennis bag and slung it over her shoulder. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said curtly. “I’m teaching a private lesson at Martina Navratilova.”

  x x x

  While I waited for the valet to bring my Jeep around, I thought about Ginger’s three bombshells, starting in the order they had been dropped. Miles Archer was Danny’s brother-in-law! I didn’t know what it meant to the big picture, but this nepotistic detail—which would force Danny to choose sides between his wife’s brother and an immature business partner who didn’t respect him—couldn’t be unimportant.

  From what I had seen and heard, Danny mostly sided against Troy. I couldn’t blame him. Twenty years on, Troy still called him Danny Dull, still treated him like a high school dork instead of a successful businessman. Troy’s similar treatment of Miles would only compound Danny’s hatred. And if Danny’s wife knew about all of this, she could have Lady Macbethed him into killing their tormenter.

  I had been thinking that Danny and Todd were plotting together, but now I had to consider a new alliance. If Danny killed Troy, he could have enlisted Miles in a cover-up. Did he have Miles plant the suicide note the day he stained the floors and everyone else was away so Danny could later “find” the note and insist Todd take it to the police? For the same reasons, Miles could have killed Troy and then Danny planted the note to protect him. I needed to find out where everyone was the afternoon Troy died.

  A brain tumor would explain Troy’s eccentric behavior and his medical discharge from the marines. I wish I had thought to ask Ginger if the tumor was inoperable and how long he had to live and did he act crazy because of the tumor or because he had a death wish? With all the smoking and drinking he did, he may have known he didn’t have many more days on this earth. Is that why he refused to change the grand opening date?

  Ginger had not denied wanting to divorce Troy, which was as good as an admission. If it was because of the brain tumor, that would make her more heartless than she appeared, and she already looked like the dictator of a South American country. Unless she was leaving him for a more altruistic reason, like she loved him so much, she couldn’t watch him kill himself. Nah. But if he was dying, why would she kill him? Why would Todd, for that matter?

  Jamie called as my Jeep came around the corner. I held up a finger to the valet, then went inside to take the call. “Did you find Philip?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “And you’re not going to believe where.”

  twenty-six

  “Markham’s Grille and Cocktails,” Jamie said.

  “It’s Cocktails and Grille,” I said. “How did you find him?”

  “I called Mitch to see if he still had Philip’s personnel file with a phone number or address.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Mitch told me you sent Philip over there for a job.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “And you didn’t mention this because…”

  “I forgot,” I said, and then I had to change the subject because one of the reasons Jamie likes me is because I’m always on top of things. “Would you like to have an early dinner?”

  “Where oh where shall we meet?”

  “I need to freshen myself,” I said, walking out to meet the SNOBS valet. “First one there gets a table in Philip’s section.”

  I wouldn’t have anything nice to change into after I showered at the Johns’s house, and I refused to go through another day wearing a gay man’s clothes. Maybe I really should go shopping with Nina. Or…I could shop while Nina was in the vicinity. I asked the valet guy to hold the Jeep for a few minutes, then ran into the boutique. I picked up a sleeveless black linen dress that was on sale and black sandals that weren’t, and charged them to Nina’s account.

  x x x

  Philip was not waiting tables. He was working as a host, which would have been perfect on any other night, because at 6:15 pm when I arrived, he would have been mostly standing around chatting up waitresses and could have answered hundreds of questions. But Four Corners was having a gallery opening for a photographer who took black-and-white portraits of circus performers in the seventies, which meant that every restaurant in the area had an early dinner rush.

  Philip sailed around the dining room bussing tables, taking appetizer orders, and opening bottles of wine for waiters who couldn’t spare the five to seven minutes it took to do it themselves. He told me that one of the cooks had burned his hand and Drew was in the kitchen cooking, so I helped out with hostess duties. I asked him questions as we walked through the restaurant together after seating guests or when we met up at the hostess stand. The good thing about doing it that way was that Philip didn’t have time to think about my questions, so he answered quickly. The bad thing was that I couldn’t always look him in the eye to know if he answered truthfully.

  “When did you start protesting the Sharpe place?” I asked.

  “About a month ago,” Philip said, then picked up a stack of menus. “How many in your party?” A woman indicated five adults and a small child.

  “How did you find out about the restaurant?” I asked.

  “When I applied for a job there. Do you need a high chair, ma’am?”

  “Wait…you wanted to work there, but you protested the construction?”

  “Troy asked me to,” he said. “Can you follow me with a booster seat?”

  “Troy asked you to what?” I said after we settled the six-top.

  “Protest construction,” Philip said. “We have about a ten-minute wait, sir. May I have your last name, please?”

  “Sherwood,” Jamie said. “Two for dinner.”

  “Jamie Sherwood?” Philip said, his words tinged with awe. “I’m honored to meet you in person.”

  “No need to alert the kitchen,” Jamie said. “I’m not reviewing anyone.” He looked at me. “Wait for you at the bar?”

  “Drinks are on me,” I said to him, then to Philip, “Troy asked you to protest construction of his own restaurant?”

  “The protest was just a cover.”

  “That explains why it was so lame,” I said. “A co
ver for what?”

  Philip laughed. “What do you expect from a bunch of waiters and business majors? Troy said he would pay me and some buddies to hang around and watch the place.” He checked the wait list, then announced, “Treehorn, party of four.”

  As I watched Philip seat two couples at what would forever be known to me as George and Laura’s table, someone approached the hostess stand from the bar. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was Jamie because two women who had been chirping about where to go dancing after dinner suddenly stopped and smiled at something behind me. It’s not easy dating a beautiful man.

  Jamie handed me a glass of red wine. “This okay with dinner?”

  A lot of people, Jamie especially, like to choose a wine after they decide what to eat so that the wine complements the food—Chardonnay with shrimp, Cabernet Sauvignon with filet mignon, Muscat Canelli with raspberry sorbet—but I drink red wine with everything, so Jamie orders his meal to complement the wine.

  I sipped the crimson liquid. “Malbec?” I asked, trying to impress him.

  Jamie hung his head in mock disappointment. “Pinot noir.”

  “I like it,” I said. “Troy hired Philip and his friends to watch the restaurant about a month ago.”

  “That’s interesting. Why?”

  “I’m fixin’ to find out.”

  Jamie scrammed as Philip returned. “I think we’re finally winding down,” Philip said. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “Why did Troy want you to watch the restaurant?”

  Philip wiped a menu with a damp towel. “He didn’t tell me. He said to hang around as much as possible and keep our eyes open.”

  “For what?”

  He hesitated, then said, “Why all the questions about Troy?”

  I was pretty sure Philip wasn’t the killer, and revealing my suspicions might make him interpret something he had seen in a different way. “I don’t think he killed himself,” I said.

  “You know, I don’t think he did either, but I can’t say why.”

  “Mine is just a hunch, too,” I said. “So, why did he hire you?”

  “He didn’t tell me. We’d meet every couple of days and I’d report on what we saw. The first few times, he handed me an envelope full of cash, but then he started giving me excuses why payment would be delayed.”

  “What did you report to him?”

  “Construction workers coming and going, building material deliveries, the snack truck arriving and taking off, when the other bosses were there.”

  “Nothing unusual about that.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Philip said. “But Troy wanted to know everything.”

  “Did he ever ask about anything in particular?”

  “Sometimes he would want to clarify what time something happened. But mostly he would stand there and write stuff down.”

  “Troy took notes?”

  “Yeah,” Philip said. “He kept a little notebook in his back pocket.”

  “Did anyone else know about your arrangement?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t seem like it.”

  A waitress asked Philip to water her section and said she had a two-top ready to be sat. I took those two single women to her table in the second dining room, far away from Jamie.

  When Philip and I met up at the hostess stand again, I asked, “Are you sure it was Troy, not Todd, who hired you?”

  “That was one of the first things Troy talked about,” Philip said. “He wanted me to make sure it was him before I reported anything.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “We had a code. I would say something like, ‘I hope your restaurant fails.’ If it was Troy, he would always say, ‘Say that in Latin.’ I’d know it was Todd if he said something that made sense, like, ‘You’re wasting your time, slacker.’ After a while, I could tell them apart, but Troy insisted we always use the code.” He looked at me. “Do you think Todd had something to do with this?”

  “It’s possible,” I said, not wanting to get him off-track with my theories. “Did your friends know that you weren’t really protesting?”

  “Troy didn’t want me to tell them at first, but there was so much going on all over the place I couldn’t watch everything, so we paired up and covered a side of the building.”

  This was too good to be true! “What happened when Troy went down behind the restaurant?”

  “When?”

  “That morning I saw you. He said someone knocked him out.”

  “I can’t help you there. We were all in front gearing up to rush the gate. We did that once in a while to make the protest look legit.”

  “What happened after the police came?”

  “Nothing. Troy never pressed charges.”

  “Did you leave after that?”

  Philip shook his head. “Not until after the power went out and the construction manager cleared the site.”

  “Did everyone leave?”

  “Most of the workers had gone, but all the fancy cars were still there when we took off.”

  “Troy’s too?”

  He nodded.

  “Where did y’all go when you left?”

  “Most of us went downtown to shoot pool at Buffalo Billiards.”

  That alibi would be easy enough to check, if necessary. “Are you sure Troy never told you why he wanted this information?”

  “I asked him once and he said he was documenting construction, but I didn’t really believe him. I mean, why keep it a secret from everyone?”

  That sounded familiar and I remembered John Without doing the same thing with photos. What had Troy been up to?

  “Thanks, Philip. If you remember anything that might help, let me know.”

  He nodded, then looked at a foursome walking through the door. “Looks like we’re getting our second rush. Are you and Mr. Sherwood ready for your table?”

  x x x

  “Your clichés look fetching in that dress, Poppycakes,” Jamie said as he poured pinot into my wine glass. “Did you go shopping with Nina?”

  “Sort of,” I said. Then before I had to explain that I had essentially shoplifted my outfit, I told him about Troy hiring Philip to watch the comings and goings at the construction site.

  “If Philip is telling the truth, it sounds like Troy was spying on someone.”

  “Or everyone,” I said. “Miles told me that Troy had accused Todd and Danny of ganging up on him, and they both said Troy was paranoid.”

  “Wasn’t he worried about someone stealing his restaurant idea?”

  “Then why not hire a security company instead of Philip and his friends?” I put my napkin in my lap. “No, he wanted to do it on the sly, so he was spying on someone in particular.”

  “Troy could have discovered a secret and was blackmailing someone,” Jamie suggested.

  “Possibly, but blackmail is a lot of work, and Troy wasn’t that focused and organized.”

  “If the secret was damaging enough, Troy wouldn’t have to organize anything. All they would need is the suspicion that he discovered it.”

  “So I have to uncover some secrets,” I said.

  Jamie reached across the table and took my right hand, then turned it palm up so that we both could see the red slash that had finally started to heal. “I know I say this a lot,” he said, “but please be careful. If they killed Troy to keep their secret, they’ll kill you too.”

  I looked into his brown eyes and stayed there for a moment. I didn’t want to do anything that would separate me from the love I found there. But I couldn’t let someone get away with murder, especially someone with a murder-worthy secret. “I promise I won’t let anyone kill me.”

  Jamie released my hand. “It’s a good thing you
always tell the truth.”

  Drew arrived at our table wearing a smudged white apron over his dress clothes and carrying a big black ceramic bowl. Philip must have told him we were here. “Asian Curried Cauliflower,” Drew said as he placed the bowl and two appetizer plates on our table. “With my compliments.”

  Jamie pushed his plate away. “You shouldn’t have.”

  Drew looked at me. “It’s my pleasure,” he said, then went back to the kitchen.

  I spooned two helpings of the cauliflower onto our plates and pushed Jamie’s toward him. “It smells good,” I said, then took a bite. “Yummy in my tummy.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes at my silly attempt to lighten his mood, but he ate a bite anyway. “Heavy-handed and overdone,” he said, dropping his fork on his plate.

  I thought it was just right but didn’t say so.

  Philip delivered glasses of ice water to our table, promising that our regular waiter would be with us soon.

  “Philip told me Troy took notes on his reports in a little notebook he kept in his back pocket,” I said. “I don’t remember seeing it in the photos or list of personal effects, do you?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I’ll double-check, though.”

  “I’m pretty sure the killer took it. It’s probably why they killed Troy.”

  “Maybe Troy left the notebook at home or in his car. Why don’t you check with his wife first?”

  I sipped my wine and squinched my mouth to the side.

  “Why can’t you do that?” he asked.

  I told him about my meeting with Ginger at the SNOBS club and her abrupt retreat.

  “I know this is only the second wife of a dead man you’ve questioned,” he said—the first being BonBon, wife of Évariste Bontecou, who threw Jamie and me out of her hotel room when she discovered we weren’t lifestyle reporters profiling her for the Sunday paper—“so can I give you some advice?”

  I leaned toward him, anxious for any expert guidance from this master interviewer.

  “Stop ticking them off.”

  I gave him a wry smile. “I’ll try that next time. Meanwhile, I have a motive for Ginger to kill her husband. Death instead of divorce.”