The door to the guestroom was open. The two of them were lying on the bed, Marc’s head resting on Coolie’s lap. She was stroking his forehead and singing him nursery rhymes in French. His eyes were closed. He didn’t look any less miserable, but at least he’d stopped crying.
“Dinner’s on the table. No arguments. We all need some food. Come on, it’s getting cold,” I ordered with something close to my usual spunk.
I turned to go back to the kitchen and heard the squeak of bedsprings behind me.
I was pretty generous with the wine, pouring glass after glass of an Italian Pinot Grigio—thank you, again, Uncle Dom.
We ate in silence.
Marc sort of pushed at his food, but managed to get a few bites in to sop up all the wine he was guzzling. Coolie, as is always the case with these thin girls, ate every single frigging morsel. I didn’t say anything until we’d finished dessert.
“Marc, I didn’t tell them at headquarters about your thing with Étienne because it’s your business. But if you didn’t, I’m going to rip you a new one.”
The guilty flush on his face told me all I needed to know.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Do I call the police, or do you decide to grow a pair and dial the number yourself? The phone in the living room on the end table will give you some privacy.”
I knew I sounded unbearably snotty and, in a horrifying way, overbearingly maternal, but I was feeling a tad cranky. An enormous amount of the greatness that I’d gleaned from a decent meal and a couple of glasses of fine wine had been destroyed by Marc’s immaturity and stupidity.
Coolie’s mother might be bat-shit insane and her father might be a suited-up thug, but they had inculcated some manners in her. Picking up immediately on the irritated tone in my voice, she pushed her chair back as a prelude to leaving the room.
Before she could stand, I motioned with my hand to have her to sit back down. “Don’t bother. Marc’s getting up. He’s going to be on the phone for some time.”
“Don’t think so. None of their business,” he drawled, sounding all Texan and cocky, obviously trying to brazen it out with me. Who in the hell did he think he was dealing with?
“I think differently,” I shot back. At Coolie’s raised eyebrows, I said, “Seems he left out some details that the police might be interested in.”
“None of their business,” he repeated, but this time with a decided pout in his voice. I wanted to smack him.
“That’s not for you to decide. This is now bigger than you and your father.” I pointed out. I knew I sounded somewhat cryptic, but I was trying to preserve a modicum of his privacy.
Marc didn’t react to that, but began staring at the tablecloth, absentmindedly twirling the wine in his glass.
All right, Marc, if you want to play it that way. I grabbed his wine glass and placed it out of his reach.
“Have you given any thought to the idea that maybe it wasn’t Shelley they were looking for?”
His head snapped up, his eyes wide.
“That maybe your stirring up the shit to fuel your vendetta against Étienne made you really disliked?”
He shook his head in a panicked “No.”
“That maybe other things are going on at the school that you don’t know about and your snooping—”
With a tortured groan, he pushed back away from the table and ran out of the room. He had gotten up with such force, his chair clattered to the floor.
After a few seconds we could hear the low murmur of his voice interspersed with the occasional agitated “I’m sorry,” as he made his mea culpas to S.F.P.D.
“I know about his father,” Coolie confessed. She got up, righted the chair, and began clearing our plates. Where’s a videocam when you need it? Here was Coolie in her Audrey Hepburn shades, clothed in Urban Outfitters chic, loading up my dishwasher. “Marc asked me about my black eye. I told him about my father laying into me because I wouldn’t leave École. Then he told me about Chef Étienne being his father, and acting like Marc was something that crawled out from under a rock. Kind of funny, huh? He wishes he had a father and I wish I didn’t. Do you think—”
“Coolie,” I began and then stopped, not knowing how much to reveal. First of all, what I knew (Allison’s fight with Marilyn, Allison’s secret engagement to Antonello, and Marc’s stupid attempts to get his father fired by digging up stuff with which to blackmail Benson) didn’t add up to murder. Oh sure, a lot of people might get fired should any of this come to light, but I couldn’t see any connections between Marc, Étienne, Benson, and Allison. Somehow, Allison figured into this, otherwise why destroy her locker? My caustic remarks to Marc aside, could Shelley’s murder have been some random burglary gone bad? Regardless, I couldn’t exactly admit that S.F.P.D. had an undercover cop masquerading as a student. For reasons as yet unknown. To me. I stifled an internal grumble.
“Well,” Coolie shrugged her shoulders before loading the last fork into the dishwasher. “If my father is on the Board of Directors, then it stands to reason that the school is most definitely a Mafia front, and I—dishwashing liquid?”
Mid-choke, I pointed to the cupboard under the sink.
“—for one, would immediately assume that Chef Shelley was murdered because of something that Marc had uncovered. I imagine his,” she paused, filled the reservoir, shut the door, and pushed the start button, “curiosity about the school, on any level, wouldn’t have been appreciated. They were probably looking for him, found her, and then for some reason had to kill her.”
I stopped breathing. Just for a second. As my wine glass was empty, I made a grab for Marc’s and finished it in one enormous gulp.
“Probably money laundering.” She began to wipe down the counter. “At the school, I mean. Since my father does not do small time, the money they are funneling through the school must be phenomenal. Sort of what he’s good at. He’s certainly put his Harvard MBA to good use, hasn’t he?” She squeezed out the sponge and threw it against the backsplash; it fell into the sink. She frowned. “Small wonder that I have no desire to follow in his footsteps, but then again, I take after my mother’s side of the family. We might be crazy, but we are rather honest. Mainlining, hanging ourselves, raging alcoholism, jumping off of buildings? Anything that is remotely self-destructive and we’re all over it. Consorting with Mafiosi, however…Chef Mary, what’s wrong?”
I was utterly speechless during this monologue. An uncommon state for me, but the nonchalance of her voice juxtaposed to the what she was actually saying—tossing off that her father is a henchman for the mob and by the way, where’s the soap? How do you respond to that? At something of a loss, I gave myself a couple of more seconds to get it together by pouring us both another glass of wine.
“First of all, it’s just Mary. Bag the ‘chef’ stuff unless we’re at school. And secondly, are you saying that the school is a front for…” I made indiscriminate hand gestures with my free hand. The other one had a death grip on the wine bottle.
“Most definitely. If my father’s on the Board,” her mouth turned down in another, deeper frown and she took a swig of wine. Holding up her wine glass, she beamed. “This really is a nice wine, isn’t it? I should buy a case.”
I suppose if you’d been brought up by that sort of father, the reality that he was a mobbed-up lackey for a bunch of Tony Soprano types wouldn’t be jaw-dropping. Talk about that walking in someone else’s shoes shit. My litany of complaints regarding my brilliant, completely dysfunctional father seemed ridiculous in comparison. In addition to his abysmal parenting skills, his most glaring sins were a penchant for Cuban cigars and nightly tête-à-têtes with a bottle of twenty-one year old Glenfiddich Grand Reserve single malt scotch whiskey; self-destructive, but not sinister. Given a choice of fathers, I’d choose self-destructive jerk over immoral troll any day.
“Why did you come to the school, then, if you knew he had some association with it?”
“
I didn’t know,” she admitted. “He’s got fingers in a lot of disgusting and illegal pies. I never thought he’d be associated with a cooking school. And certainly not École. That’s why I came to the west coast, trying to avoid any schools in the Midwest or the eastern seaboard. His traditional criminal stomping grounds. I doubt he has ties in Europe, but I wanted to stay close in case Mom had a breakdown. Which she always does. Have breakdowns. But…” She threw her hands up.
“Maybe you could apprentice somewhere overseas. Hey, why were you at school? I thought you were going to clear out your apartment.”
“I did. That reminds me; I’d better get my suitcase out of the trunk. They moved everything else to your uncle’s house. It wasn’t much. Lots of cooking equipment and an ancient piano that belonged to my great great-Aunt Marjorie. She was one of Zelda Fitzgerald’s pals in Montgomery. She didn’t live very long. Jumped out the window of her room at the Peabody Hotel the day she turned thirty-six. Left a suicide note saying that she’d discovered her first gray hair and that it was going to be nothing but down hill from there. Sad.” She held up her wine glass. “I’m definitely buying a case of this. It complemented the tomatoes just perfectly. It’s not sweet enough for the dessert, though,” she added, pursing her mouth in frustration.
“I’ll lodge a complaint with Uncle Dom,” I deadpanned. I’d given up on commenting on anything but the last sentence, suffering from a mild case of mental whiplash as she ping-ponged her way from clearing out her apartment to Uncle Dom’s house to her piano to her aunt to Zelda Fitzgerald back to her aunt to the gray hair to the suicide to our dinner and finally to the wine. I practically needed a passport.
I guess if you’ve got mob lawyers on one side and constant suicides on the other, it doesn’t do to give it much thought, because the future is pretty damn bleak with those genetics staring you in the face. Aside from my father’s chronic misery and that aunt on my mother’s side who stopped speaking at the age of ten, the people in my family tended to live to be a ripe old age and were staggeringly with it. All that robust mental health was a blessing, really, since we went gray early. I couldn’t help running a hand through my Clairol-ed locks.
“Uh, Coolie, do you mind if I, uh, pass on this information to someone I know. Someone in law enforcement?”
“Be my guest.” She began dusting off imaginary crumbs from the tablecloth. “Maybe the only way to get Dad off my back is to have him do time in one of those country club prisons. I thought I was safe from him here, but guess not.”
I had to lean forward to hear her, the breezy chatter gone out the window.
“He scares you, doesn’t he?”
She nodded.
“I’ll see what Uncle Dom can do, okay?”
That got a small smile and a nod.
My limited experience with Uncle Dom’s well-heeled associates made it doubtful in my mind that Coolie’s father would spend any time behind bars, but he could incur some pretty frightful legal bills and enough headache to keep him so busy he wouldn’t have the time to jet across the country to smack his daughter around. And something told me that the law firm of Etc., etc., etc., & Porcella would be quite willing to offer their services to the U.S. Attorney’s office pro bono, if it meant hosing Robert Martin for every cent he was worth.
Marc was going to be on the phone for some time, so I excused myself, holed up in my bedroom, and called O’Connor on my cell.
“Yeah, we know about Martin.”
I swallowed a huff of frustration; thanks for telling me, asshole.
“You know?”
“Why do you think I’m at the school?”
“Oh, because you’re on stress leave, perhaps?” I laid on the scorn with a very wide spatula.
“Look, Mary, for the record, I’m not allowed to discuss this case.”
Sigh.
“How about you tell me a bedtime story about if you were going to be undercover, why you’d be at the school. Complete speculation, of course,” I wheedled.
Four beats and then he sing-songed, “Once upon a time, S.F.P.D. got a tip that money was being laundered at a magical castle where they cooked a lot of food. The Captain might be pressured by the U.S. Attorney General’s office to turn it over to them, but being the Captain, he’d hold on to the case as long as possible. The A.G.’s office might be keeping this under wraps, because if the I.R.S. hears about it, then they will take it over. And nobody wants that because the I.R.S. are dicks. In this story. Normally, they are really sweet and if Jesus Christ were alive today, he’d be an I.R.S. agent. If an Irish cop named O’Connor had heard a princess was going to teach at this castle, he would have offered to go undercover because, well, because. And if this princess had an ex-prince, he might also apply some pressure and call in a few favors. The big bad A.G.’s office would refuse to issue a subpoena for the castle’s records unless these undercover types could find probable cause. But everyone’s under the gun, because if the F.B.I. finds out about this, they will pull rank with AG because they would smell RICO material and the Feebs don’t share. In fairy tales. In real life, they are absolute peaches. Meanwhile, nothing gets done because of these fucking turf wars. Everyone on the Board of Directors of this castle would have ties to some mob boss in some part of the kingdom, but they would all have a great cover. Someone an awful lot like Martin would be smart and cover all the bases by marrying princesses with big bank accounts and having fancy degrees like he does. If they didn’t graduate from Prince School, they would make sure they looked real American and apple pie. Theoretically, of course. Own crap like baseball teams. Like Benson’s father. All would look real legitimate. If this were real. Which it is not. And they lived happily ever after The end.” He coughed.
“Benson’s father?”
“If those kinds of princes need lawyers, they would need a lawyer like Martin.”
I mulled over that for a second and things started to fall into place. It wasn’t some no-name company that bailed Benson out. The pharmaceutical company couldn’t make it work with Benson at the helm, and finally Benson had no choice but to beg his father for help. Being a lapdog to bottomfeeders like Martin was the price Benson paid for keeping his dream alive and kicking.
“So, in this fairy tale you wouldn’t have access to the castle’s records.”
“No. We’d have only one more week before the AG pulls the plug.”
“And you wouldn’t legally have access to their records because of this turf war.”
“No. Allegedly.”
“But what if in later chapters someone who worked there, someone who was, say, fooling around on the castle’s computers playing solitaire, just happened to find something in the castle’s database that pointed to some weird financial stuff, like the evil Chancellor was printing money in the basement, would that be enough to make the judge reconsider? I mean, wouldn’t that make an interesting chapter?”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. I could practically see the mental ping pong. The frustration of having gotten nowhere all these weeks; the bodies piling up, and he didn’t have a frigging thing. Except me. Who had a legitimate reason to be at the school after hours.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
Rather than lie or argue, I hung up.
Chapter Twenty-six
I can text message on my cell phone. I can log on. I can bring up email. I can even write email—a necessity when my sister moved out of state. I can, occasionally, open attachments. I can play solitaire and hearts. Go me. This is, however, the sum total of my technological savvy, and, as sad as that is, hard won. I acknowledge how pathetic it is. Which is why I cook. One of the last bastions of those of us whose ancestors were the original Luddites, I knew that I’d be wearing an apron and wielding a whip for the rest of my life when I saw FedEx drivers operating hand-held computers.
Machines and I do not get along. Unless it whips butter, bakes cakes, or melts chocolate, I don’t want to have anything to do w
ith it. I am one of those people who are beloved by auto mechanics; they rub their hands in glee when they see me coming. It’s like some sort of invisible tattoo is emblazoned on my forehead that says Mechanical Idiot. They can say to me, “Your left blinker doesn’t work? That will be $2000, please,” and although I’ll have a vague idea that’s patently ridiculous and it’s probably nothing more than a burnt-out bulb, chances are I will nod numbly and write the check. Because although my idiocy is obvious, I hate to admit I’m clueless, and it’s less embarrassing to write the check than admit I don’t know jack shit about cars.
To sum it up: machines + Mary = unmitigated disaster.
This begs the obvious question. How am I going to search the school’s computers when I can barely log on? I needed someone who knew food, could hack into a computer, and didn’t mind doing something nefarious. And since I am, in general, surrounded by chefs, people who seem as technology challenged as I am (because if you didn’t have to, why would you work in an industry where you are not paid well and consider it a miracle if you get bennies), the pool for potential cohorts in crime was non-existent. Add the this-will-entail-committing-a-felony factor, and I came up with nada.
Except one name.
Not going there. No way.
I flipped through every phone number listed in my cell phone. Twice.
Then I unearthed an old address book and poured through that.
Came up with no one else.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I opened my cell phone again. Reality was staring me in the face. There was only one person who fit the profile.” Needs frigging must. Swallowing my pride, I dialed.
“Hey, Thom, it’s Mary Ryan,” I said in response to his coy “Hello.” I questioned the wisdom of his answering the telephone as if trolling for a hook-up, but then again, I’m not exactly fending off the men with both hands, so I refrained from commenting on it. Plus, I needed him, so it wouldn’t be very smart of me to offend him right off the bat.
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