Cinco de Mayhem

by Ann Myers

  “Can you think of anyone who was particularly upset?” I asked, pen poised.

  DeeDee squished her face into deep thought. “No . . . well . . . Ivan, one of the dishwashers, he was real upset and waved around a knife, but that was months ago and, anyway, he’s in jail for violating parole for domestic violence or something.”

  Part of me hoped that Ivan had broken out of jail with one of Ida Green’s tortilla shanks. I wouldn’t feel guilty fingering a suspect with a domestic violence conviction.

  As I pondered Ivan, DeeDee clamped her hand to her heart, relief washing over her face. “Oh! All this talk of killers made me forget. I’m an idiot! I am stupid! I already know who killed Mr. Napoleon!”

  I stopped breathing. My body tensed in case the murderer appeared and I had to whip out the handcuffs or pepper spray.

  DeeDee’s head bobbed. “Yeah, yeah, everybody knows. The tamale lady. The sweet older lady who runs Tía Tamales. It’s a shame. I love her tamales. My mom’s real upset. We get all our Christmas tamales from Tía’s. The best are her sweet ones with the dates and prunes and the piloncillo, you know that dark cane sugar that’s shaped like a cone and tastes kinda like molasses? It won’t be Christmas without those tamales.”

  It wouldn’t be Christmas without Linda either. Before I could give DeeDee my Linda-is-innocent speech, she was scooting off to a customer waving from the far side of the patio. “Sorry!” she called to me as she left.

  So was I. I could delay no longer. Time to face Brigitte. I stepped inside and smack into Brigitte. She dodged me with poise.

  “Inside or out?” she asked automatically, before recognizing me and grabbing me in another bone-crushing hug. Mid-hug, right about when my back felt about to crack, I resolved to tone up. I’d renew my gym membership and sweat and lift weights. I’d do more than walk to work. I’d jog. I’d take up yoga. Right. The last time I tried yoga, I threw out my neck. Maybe I’d start by buying a mat and getting a yoga book from the library. I’d jog to the library.

  Brigitte released me. “So good of you to come by, Rita!”

  “I wanted to check on you,” I said. Yeah, check on her alibi and her flirting, I thought before reining in my teenage emotions.

  She grabbed my hand. “I am the one who should be checking on you. What a shock you had too. I can’t thank you enough for trying to help Napoleon. Such a shock for everyone . . . to think he’s gone. You must think me awful to keep the restaurant open.”

  I didn’t, I assured her. “Staying busy is good in times of grief, that’s what my mother always says.” Mom also claims that adobe walls abet burglars and that I’ll eventually be lured home by an intense longing for her tuna-noodle hot dish. In other words, Mom does not always base her opinions in reality. However, Mom was probably right about staying busy to combat grief.

  “My mother says the same,” Brigitte said. “Most of all, I am here because it is what Napoleon would want.” She waved for stressed DeeDee to take over the hostess station. “That girl,” she complained as we walked through the dining room. “I will have to make some changes around here.”

  Poor DeeDee. Had she dodged Napoleon’s firings only to be guillotined by Brigitte? Brigitte stopped to shift a table a microscopic distance, and I took in the bistro. The plaster walls and viga ceiling beams were pure New Mexico. The décor was subtly French, with marble-topped tables and wicker chairs sporting cushions in Provençal patterns. Edith Piaf again quavered on the sound system, softy crooning a mournful tune. A bartender in a white shirt and black vest polished wineglasses behind an ornate, dark-wood bar stocked with exotic liquors. Before his cowpoke hot dog attire, Don Busco had stood right there. I recalled a moment from a happy hour about a year ago. Don had chatted with me and Cass about dream jobs. We pretty much had ours, we’d said. We were lucky. He’d gestured to the bar and said, “I definitely have mine.” Not soon after, he’d been fired and publicly maligned by Napoleon. Did he resent his former boss enough to kill? Had his anger been seething and simmering for months?

  Brigitte suggested that we have coffee in her office. We passed through the kitchen, where she made us two mugs from an espresso machine the size of a small refrigerator. “Back here,” she said, leading the way through swinging double doors. Walking through a dark hallway, we passed a small room filled with the usual restaurant backroom paraphernalia of excess linens and utensils. Brigitte announced that the next office was hers. While she unlocked her door, I peeked in the half-open doorway of the room across the hall, expecting more supplies. What I saw brought me to a gawking halt.

  “Oh,” fell out of my mouth. I blinked and added a hopefully tactful, “Wow . . . that’s . . . ah . . . impressive.”

  Brigitte stepped across the hall and opened the door wider. “Oui. Napoleon’s office. It is, how do you say? Pure him.”

  You could say that. Pure arrogance pretty much summed up the man himself. The recently deceased’s office was decorated in dark wood trim and leather chairs. But those weren’t what stopped me. It was the life-size portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte in his famous hand-in-jacket pose.

  “Yeah, pure him,” I agreed. I craned my head around the door to take in the wall-sized portrait. The other walls featured framed culinary awards and photographs of Napoleon with famous people. There was Napoleon shaking hands with the President, Napoleon serving the governor a crowned rib roast, Napoleon posing with Jay Leno in a cranberry red vintage truck, and Napoleon presenting a basket of golden croissants to the cast of Breaking Bad. I was peering at what I thought was Napoleon cheek-kissing celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis when Brigitte called to me.

  I crossed the hall to her closet-sized headquarters. Spreadsheets covered her desk. She tidied some into neat piles and placed them on the floor, apologizing as she did. “I handle all the accounting for all of Napoleon’s enterprises. Bookkeeping is never done. You must excuse my mess.”

  “You haven’t shared a mess until you’ve lived in a tiny house with a teenager,” I joked. We sat in chairs made of molded, modern plastic. I was surprised to find that they felt great, the butt- and back-hugging opposites of Flori’s carved-wood punishers. For a few minutes we sipped our coffees, which were dark and strong and just what I needed. In other circumstances I would have felt the need to fill the void with small talk, but with Brigitte, the silence seemed as comfortable as the chairs. She gazed beyond me, toward Napoleon’s office door. I wondered what she was thinking and what I should say. Petty prospects flashed through my mind. So . . . tell me about your handsome dancing alibi for the time of Napoleon’s murder. Did you take your alibi home with you? No. I didn’t want to know. I was here to investigate a murder.

  I placed my mug on the white glossy table that served as her desk. “The night of Napoleon’s . . . demise—” I started to say.

  She jolted upright and gasped. “Napoleon?”

  I knew I should have started with small talk, not words that sent Brigitte bolting from the room.

  Chapter 12

  Once again I smacked into Brigitte, this time her back. She’d stopped short in the doorway to Napoleon’s office.

  “Mon dieu, I thought . . .” Her voice trembled. So did her back, filling the half-open door to Napoleon’s office.

  I pushed the door open wide. A figure in a black chef’s coat and a puffy-topped chef’s hat was ducking under Napoleon’s desk. For a second I thought, as Brigitte must have, that I’d seen a ghost.

  She, however, quickly recovered her senses. “You are not Napoleon! What are you doing here?”

  The figure gave up trying to hide under the office furniture. As he rose, his puffy hat toppled, revealing a receding line of strawberry red hair.

  “Gerald Jenkins!” I exclaimed. To Brigitte, I said, “Have you met our city health inspector?” I jammed my fists into my hips.

  Brigitte wrinkled her nose. Oozing scorn, she said that she had not had the pleasure.

  “I have every right to inspect,” Jenkins sputtered. “I don’t
have to notify the restaurant beforehand.” He stepped on the hat, crushing it to fallen-soufflé flatness. “I’m done in here. I’ll be leaving now.” He picked up a paper shopping bag and headed our way. Neither Brigitte nor I moved from the doorway.

  “Why are you in disguise?” I demanded. “I saw him earlier this morning,” I told Brigitte. “He came to Tres Amigas to threaten us and he wasn’t dressed like this.”

  Brigitte stepped into the room. “Why indeed?” she demanded.

  Jenkins backed up and nearly into the oil painting of the original Napoleon. Under the portrait, the inspector seemed small and inconsequential. Had I really been scared of him? Surely Napoleon hadn’t been, but had that been a deadly mistake?

  “I’m . . .” Jenkins drew out the word, hedging for time. “I’m undercover. Common practice and none of your business. Anyway, your own waitress showed me back here. Chubby girl with some stutter name. DaDa. FooFoo, Mimi?”

  “DeeDee!” Brigitte fumed.

  Brigitte seemed to be losing focus on our true problem. I nudged her. “Brigitte, let’s see what he has in that bag. There’s no food preparation or storage going on in this office, right? That means he’s here snooping in Napoleon’s business.”

  Brigitte uttered one of the few words I remembered from high school French. A curse. The bag ripped as she tore it from Jenkins’s hand, and a manila envelope fell out.

  Jenkins grabbed at the envelope but Brigitte was faster. “Let us see what is in here, oui?” she said, a hard edge to her fluid French accent. We peeked inside to find a wad of fifty dollar bills.

  “Caught, bare-handed!” Brigitte announced. “Rita, we shall call the police, maintenant.”

  “Red-handed,” I corrected automatically, although I was all for calling the police toute suite. My phone was in Flori’s tote bag of crime fighting tools, across the hall in Brigitte’s office. I imagined slapping the pink fluffy handcuffs on Jenkins and hauling him into the police station. In this fantasy, Bunny booked him for burglary and murder. Case closed. Linda would be freed. Then I’d be free too, back to my own mundane problems, like working on Victor’s house, detecting whether my daughter was dating, and determining a perfect date menu. Jenkins held up his wrists, mockingly. Ready for cuffs, if only I had them.

  His thin lips opened to a sneer. “Call the police if you want. I’ll tell them you’re stealing my money. See my name on the envelope? It’s mine, for consulting services. Napoleon owed me, and he’s not about to write me a check from the morgue, is he? I came to collect it myself.”

  Brigitte held the money behind her back. “What ‘consulting’ services?” she asked. “I have never heard of this, and I am the general manager and the accountant of Monsieur Napoleon’s restaurants.”

  “Ha!” Jenkins laughed, and not in a happy way. “Like he’d tell the ‘accountant’ everything. I sent Napoleon my bill. If he didn’t get it to you, that’s not my problem.”

  I willed Brigitte to call the police. She continued to fuss about finances. “Consulting on what? Where would I enter this charge?”

  “I do private consulting,” he said with a mean snicker. “I help clients meet their restaurant health inspection needs.”

  Needs like staying open and avoiding public shame. My resolve wavered. Here I was, antagonizing Jenkins again. He’d set his sights on Tres Amigas for sure. What would Flori do? She wouldn’t shrink away and hide. She’d invited Jenkins over! Plus, I wasn’t stepping up to protect Napoleon’s office or even for Brigitte. No, I was doing it for Linda. Gerald Jenkins had just snooped his way to the top of my suspect list.

  “What kind of consulting were you doing for Napoleon?” I asked. “Planting cockroaches in Linda Santiago’s tamales? Losing the permit paperwork for Crystal’s juice cart? Or was he paying you off for a made-up health infraction at OhLaLa? Did he resist? Say he’d call the police? Is that why you killed him?”

  Brigitte and I, as one, stepped toward Jenkins. Slippery as he was slimy, Jenkins scooted around Napoleon’s desk.

  “You can’t threaten me!” he sputtered.

  “It is no threat,” Brigitte declared with all the boldness of Flori. “Napoleon had friends in high places, and as manager of his legacy, so do I. I have spoken to Napoleon’s financial backer in Dallas. He gave me temporary control over managerial decisions and I am making one now. About you, Mr. Jenkins. I will not let you make a mess of me or my friends.” She threw her arm around my shoulder, gripping with such strength I had to hold back a wince. I wasn’t about to correct her English.

  Jenkins’s smirk turned upside down. He glared in the direction of the envelope full of cash, now held loosely at Brigitte’s side. For a second I thought he might grab at it.

  Brigitte must have sensed it as well. She stuffed the envelope in her back pocket. “If this is a legitimate payment, send me a detailed invoice and I shall consider it,” she said, shaking an accusatory finger at Jenkins. “But if I suspect anything, how do you say, fishlike? Then I shall call the police and IRS and your supervisor too.”

  My fantasies of hauling off the slimy health inspector fell flat. With an indignant huff, he pushed past me, departing with another version of his earlier threat. “You’ll be sorry you messed with me,” he snarled as he slunk past.

  Brigitte and I stepped out into the hall to make sure he left.

  “This is horrible,” she said as the swinging doors swung closed on his departing form.

  I agreed and was about to say so, until she continued.

  “How do I account for this cash? What line do I put it under?”

  “Bribes?” I suggested glumly.

  Back in Brigitte’s office, a puddle of cream floated on my coffee. I sipped the tepid brew anyway, wondering how to restart the conversation I’d barely begun. Brigitte, meanwhile, shuffled through the stack of spreadsheets on the floor. Priorities! I yearned to yell. Your boss has been murdered. The killer might have just been here. Feet away! Forget the accounting!

  I let Brigitte sift and mumble for a minute or two longer. “Brigitte,” I said, after she hoisted a stack of sheets to desk level. “I’ll come right out and say it. I’m investigating Napoleon’s murder because I know that Linda is innocent. She’s too kind to hurt anyone. She volunteers at the homeless shelter and gives away soup and rescues stray animals. Wolves, dogs, I’ve even seen her save a spider. We were driving to a tamale contest in Rio Rancho and there was this gigantic tarantula crossing the street and Linda drove practically into a ditch so we wouldn’t hit it. See how she is? She’s completely nonviolent. You might not believe me yet, but—”

  “Maybe I do,” she murmured, eyes following her index finger across a row of numbers.

  “You do?” I asked, surprised despite myself. What had convinced her? The soup? The wolf? Not the tarantula, which raised hairs on my arms merely thinking of it. Frankly, I’d expected more resistance since Bunny and Manny had basically told Brigitte that Linda was the culprit.

  She looked up. “I talked to Don Busco earlier. He called me to invite me to join the food carts on the Plaza. It is kind of him, non? I liked him when he was bartender here. He knows that I have always wanted to cook. Don, he says that with my French heritage, I’m destined to be a crepe natural.”

  “Great news!” I exclaimed, glad to have something to honestly cheer. I’d definitely welcome the return of crepes. Still, I didn’t get the connection to Linda’s innocence until Brigitte continued.

  “Don also told me that Linda must be innocent,” she explained. “He said that Linda is a kind and saintly person like his beloved grandmother. He has theories about the killer. A vagrant, he says. Or that man Ivan who Napoleon fired a while back.” She shrugged. “In any case, Don says that the killer must be someone else. He says I must be very careful.”

  Yeah, right. Someone else. Like Don himself. Or Jenkins. Or . . . who? I couldn’t be sure without more evidence.

  Brigitte tapped the sheets of numbers. “Honestly, I did not believe Don. I
believed the police.” She hesitated, as if debating whether to tell me. After a few beats, she said, “It is probably unrelated. I overheard Napoleon in his office last week, yelling into the telephone. Though, he often yelled. It could be nothing.”

  “Yelling?” I prompted. “About what?”

  She pursed her lips and exhaled in a quintessentially French fashion. “I wish I had heard more. As I told the police, I thought he was upset about a building he wished to acquire, a difficult real estate transaction. He turned agitated, so much so that I was concerned and listened. I think he said, ‘I will not pay you. You don’t frighten me.’ And now, I find this. Look.” She turned a sheet toward me, her finger underlining a row of numbers. I commanded myself to focus but my eyes and mind glazed over.

  Brigitte explained. “This row, it represents withdrawals from Napoleon’s business account. D’accord? I found the statements on his desk this morning. I wondered what the withdrawals were for. Not supplies or tax or payroll. Look at these, several large withdrawals of cash. One matches the amount here on the envelope with Jenkins’s name.” She patted the envelope. “Others? I do not know. Personal items, but what? He had little personal. Napoleon, he was all work.”

  “Absolutely. Jenkins is suspicious,” I said, eager to place blame on the inspector. “Brigitte, I know Napoleon was your friend and boss, but what if he paid Jenkins to shut down competing food carts for health violations? Like Linda with that cockroach. There’s no way she put that in her own tamale by mistake.”

  Brigitte shook her head slowly. “I hate to agree, but he may have. Napoleon, he considered Linda his biggest competitor among the food carts. Once he set his mind to something, he could be ruthless.” She gazed at me with the scrutiny she had been applying to the spreadsheets. “It could mean something else, Rita. Say Napoleon did what you suggest. Why would Jenkins wish to harm Napoleon, his money source? And Jenkins, he could not then blackmail Napoleon without exposing his own wrongdoing. Perhaps there is someone else involved. I must look into these numbers more closely. Maybe we can find the truth in them. Numbers are the key.”