“Jacob,” Emily said to the beardless man standing near her, “what’s going on?”
Jacob paused to peek at his watch, which Sarah couldn’t help but notice looked a lot like the Rolex Harlan wore. “I met Richard in the other room, by the Southwind booth, about three hours ago.”
Sarah wished he would talk faster before she was overcome by the sick fishy smell coming from the refrigerator. She doubted anything in there wasn’t spoiled. She certainly didn’t want to find out.
“We spent a good amount of time pulling booth stuff like tablecloths, plastic forks, and cups together,” Jacob said. “About an hour or so ago, we decided we needed to start on the food for tonight’s catering job. When we came in here to do that, we saw the puddle. The refrigerator door was ajar. I started to stick my hand in to see if things were still cold, but that’s when Richard noticed the power cord was cut. We immediately called Chef Marcus at the restaurant.”
Emily shook her head and then brushed her hair back out of her eyes. “Marcus, I didn’t realize you were planning to prep the Holt dinner here, rather than at the restaurant.”
The folding chair creaked as he shifted his weight, forcing Jane to quickly step away from him. She puffed out her chest as she faced Emily.
“After Chief Mueller gave us permission to come back into the Civic Center this afternoon, nobody knew where you were. Marcus and I decided I should set up my Expo station and whip up the Holts’ dinner, while he focused on Southwind’s lunch and dinner service.”
From the still way Emily held herself, Sarah couldn’t tell if her sister was shooting daggers at Chef Marcus and Jane, but there was no question he turned his face to avoid meeting Emily’s gaze.
“I guess we’ll simply have to explain what happened when we apologize to Mrs. Holt for not being able to complete the job,” Jane said.
Emily glared at her. “Canceling isn’t part of the Southwind style of doing business. We have to make this work. Of course, we can’t take a chance of using anything from this refrigerator or freezer. We’re simply going to have to start over for the dinner we’re catering for the Holts tonight.”
“But we don’t have time,” the much younger woman chef said as she stepped away from Jacob and Richard. She waved a tattoo-sleeved arm in the direction of the refrigeration unit. “The Holt party is at eight and it’s after three.”
Sarah thought she heard an audible sob or sigh from Chef Marcus, but it was overshadowed by Emily’s firm voice.
“We can’t back out of a private dinner Chef Marcus agreed to have Southwind cater,” Emily said. “That’s not the kind of reputation any of us wants our restaurant to get, is it?”
The two men and the woman, who towered over them, shook their heads.
“Luckily,” Emily said, “the Holts are only having ten dinner guests. Has anyone checked the other refrigerator?”
“Yes,” the tattooed woman replied. “It doesn’t appear that it was tampered with.”
“Good,” Emily said. “That means our salad and vegetables are okay. We can serve a partially cold buffet dinner.”
“I can make a vegetable appetizer tray if you do a grocery run for the main dish,” Richard volunteered. “When you get back from the store, I can help with something else.”
“Perfect,” Emily said. “Richard, there are extra cutting boards you can use under one of my tables in the Southwind booth area. Prep for a tray for twelve. In the meantime, Jacob and I will do a quick food run.”
Emily looked at Jane, who still had a hand resting on Marcus’s shoulder. “Jane, please help Richard. The two of you can wash, tear, slice, and separately bag enough lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers for a big salad. We’ll put it together at the house.”
“But . . .” Jane said.
The man, who Sarah remembered was Richard, ignored Jane and began walking to the next room. Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off him. Unlike the copper-skinned woman who had one obvious tattoo, every inch of his skin appeared to be inked. He even had tattoos on his hands and across his knuckles.
Jane’s loud objections to Emily’s instructions drew Sarah’s attention away from trying to decipher his artwork.
Emily cut Jane off. “Either go help Richard or leave.”
Jane bristled but hushed after Chef Marcus took her hand and held it, saying something quietly to her. Whatever he said, Jane smiled. She let her hand linger in his for another moment before she went off in the same direction as Richard.
Despite his pep talk to Jane, Chef Marcus remained seated, his face now back in his hands. Sarah tried to figure out why. It wasn’t like he was a new chef. Surely, even if his young staff hadn’t been through a time-crunch crisis before, he had.
“Grace,” Emily said to the woman chef, “until Jacob and I get back with more food, you and my sister can throw out everything in this refrigerator and freezer.”
Chef Marcus softly moaned again.
“Chef Marcus, why don’t you help Richard and Jane until Jacob and I get back?”
With effort, Chef Marcus rose and ambled in the direction Jane had gone.
Turning back to Grace and Sarah, Emily said, “Grace, this is my sister, Sarah Blair. Sarah, this is Grace Winston, my right hand. Besides the two of you throwing things out, would one of you grab a sheet of paper and list what the two of you are tossing? Oh, and, Sarah, use your phone to take pictures of this area and what ends up in the garbage. I’m sure the insurance company will want us to document as much as possible.”
“Em, don’t you think you should call the police first?”
“The police?” Grace asked.
Sarah pointed to where the plug was in the wall but the cord lay frayed on the floor. “This looks deliberate. It seems to me we should leave this area untouched until the police see it.”
Grace stepped away from the refrigerator, but Emily motioned her back.
She faced off against her sister. “We simply don’t have the time. We need to clean up before we can cook. There can’t be the slightest possibility of cross-contamination from the rotten shrimp, scallops, chicken, and other proteins. If we get rid of them and clean our surfaces, we should be able to pull off tonight’s dinner safely, but it’s going to take all of us working at full force starting now.”
“Peter won’t be happy with you mucking up his crime site.”
“If I wasn’t a bit spooked that Bill’s death and this cord being cut might be related because someone is out to get Southwind or Marcus, I wouldn’t call the police.” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “We don’t have the time to wait for the police to come or chance them closing our booth down as a crime scene, so while I’m calling Peter’s office, you two snap some photos and start cleaning the refrigerator out.”
While Emily placed the call and wandered into the next room, Grace began pulling a large drum trash can across the room. Sarah rushed to help her, but Grace waved her off. “I’ve got this.”
She pointed toward a chest of drawers. Its top was being used as a workstation. “There’s paper and a pen in the second drawer and, while you’re over there, grab us each a pair of rubber gloves from one of the boxes on top.”
Sarah did as she was told.
With their gloves on and the can positioned, Grace opened the refrigerator all the way. The odor intensified. Grace stepped up to the refrigerator as Sarah silently debated whether it would be immature to hold her nose while they worked.
Chapter Ten
Sarah couldn’t believe it. Six twenty-five and the Southwind van was loaded and ready for everything to be delivered to the Holts.
“Thank you, everyone. We did it,” Emily declared.
Sarah and Emily stood in the middle of the parking lot as Grace squeezed into the front seat with Chef Marcus and Jacob. They waved as the van pulled away.
“I should have gone with Marcus, too.” Jane stomped away from them toward the Civic Center.
From mid-parking lot, Sarah watched Jane yank
the building’s door open. For someone who was so broken up last night, Jane’s cozy behavior around Chef Marcus made Sarah wonder exactly how close they were.
Maybe Sarah’s investigation would reveal a secret involvement between them so Jane could become the prime suspect. After all, if Chef Marcus and Jane were super-chummy and Bill had found out, Jane, rather than Emily, might have been the one in danger of being fired. Taking it one step further, Jane, being Bill’s girlfriend, would have been just as familiar as Emily with Bill’s allergies. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for her to feed him Emily’s rhubarb crisp, telling him it was hers.
Sarah made a mental note to find a way to ask the other line cooks if they’d noticed anything going on between Chef Marcus and Jane. It was too bad Emily hadn’t sent Jane in the van with the food.
“Em, why didn’t you let Jane go with Chef Marcus? It would have gotten her out of your hair for a few hours.”
“If we were staying to serve, Jane would have been the first in the truck. She’s good at that.”
“So?”
“Mrs. Holt requires caterers to be gone before her guests arrive. She likes things to look like she whipped dinner up herself.”
“Under those conditions, I understand you sending Grace and Jacob to set everything up, but Chef Marcus?”
“He didn’t go along to help with food preparation.”
Sarah wrinkled her brow, trying to figure out why he was along for the ride if he wasn’t working.
“Chef Marcus is the master of charm,” Emily said. “His job is to make nice to Deborah Holt so that down the road the first catering company she calls or tells her friends about is Southwind.”
Sarah nodded. Even as Harlan’s receptionist, she understood the importance of always making Harlan’s clients feel welcome and appreciated. Sending Chef Marcus was clearly good business. The question was whether the idea was his or Emily’s. If she had to bet from what she’d seen during the past day, not only was Emily a competent chef and dynamo kitchen manager, but she had business brains, too. If she was this good working for other people at twenty-eight, Sarah could only imagine how far Emily might go in the culinary world. That was, if she didn’t end up spending the best years of her life behind bars.
Sarah wished she had a talent like Emily’s or enough money to go back to school. So far, Sarah had scratched several options off her list of possibilities. For years she’d dreamed of a law-related career, but marrying Bill changed all that. Cooking also was a definite failure. Considering her limited computer skills and so-so filing, her outlook as a top-notch receptionist probably was about level with her cooking. She was lucky Harlan was such an easygoing boss.
At one time she had added wife to her failure list, but after some reflection and a little counseling, Sarah concluded her problem in the marriage area was in her choosing ability rather than from any deficit in her performance.
The arrival of a police cruiser interrupted Sarah’s pity party. Chief Mueller was driving.
Peter zeroed in on Sarah and Emily as he got out of his car. “Hi! What’s going on?”
“It’s about time you got here,” Emily said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you here about the sabotaged refrigerator?”
“Sabotage? First I’ve heard of that.”
“Our police force at work again. Don’t your people ever communicate?”
Peter’s neck flushed, but other than looping his thumb through one of the belt loops negated by his choice of suspenders, he didn’t move.
Emily stood her ground, toe-to-toe to him. “This afternoon, our staff found the main refrigeration unit’s power cord cut. I reported the crime to your office.”
Seeing Peter’s jaw muscles twitch, Sarah interjected herself into the conversation. “The power source to the unit appears to have been intentionally severed. Would you like to see it?”
She led Peter into the building and the room with the sabotaged refrigerator. He bent to examine the cut power cord.
“We left it exactly as we found it,” Sarah assured him.
“But”—he glanced from his kneeling position around the now spotless room—“you destroyed any other evidence.” He stood. “I should put all of you in jail for tampering with the scene of a crime.”
Sarah bristled. This wasn’t the calm, steady Peter she remembered. She moved into his personal space. Peter flinched ever so slightly as he took a step backward.
“The Southwind folks didn’t have time to lollygag around until someone from your shop responded. Obviously, from what you just said, it’s a good thing we went ahead with what we had to do.”
“I’ll follow up on the communication failure and get some techs to check out that cord.”
Emily, who now stood beside Sarah, pointed to the big clock hanging on the wall. “Please make sure they don’t make as big a mess as last night. We won’t have time to clean up a second time before we start serving customers. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got more setup work to do.”
“I think they’ll need to do it without you tonight,” Peter said. “We got the fingerprint report back and, other than Bill’s, yours are the only prints on the fork. I think you’ve got some explaining to do.”
The line of Emily’s jaw stiffened. Sarah reached for Emily’s hand, but an angry Emily shook her off.
“I’ve told you everything I know. I don’t have any more time to waste on this tonight. Besides, how did you get my fingerprints? Off my soda can?”
“We didn’t have to resort to the soda can trick. Your prints are on file from when you applied for your security clearance to have a pass to the Civic Center.”
He placed his left hand on the handcuffs hanging from his belt. With a flip of his other wrist, he gestured for Emily to walk out in front of him. “I don’t think you understand. You now are a person of interest, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d voluntarily come down to the station and answer a few more questions.”
Sarah and Emily exchanged glances. Emily started in the direction Peter pointed but then stopped. She took off her chef’s jacket and carefully handed it to Sarah.
Sarah reached beyond the jacket and rested her fingers on her sister’s hand. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll call Harlan for you.”
Emily nodded. “Just in case, though, you better practice breaking eggs with one hand.” She forced a grin. “And I know, don’t say anything until Harlan gets there.”
Chapter Eleven
Sarah picked up her sister’s jacket from the box where she had left it when she called Harlan. She tried to wipe a smudge off its sleeve with her hand.
“That’s not going to come off without bleach.”
Sarah jerked around to see who the speaker was. The young chef with the tattooed right arm stood there. Grace. Apparently, the dinner had successfully been delivered and set up at the Holts’.
Close up, Sarah could see the ink on the arm exposed below Grace’s T-shirt was comprised of several interwoven food and vegetable designs worked around what appeared to be Japanese or Chinese letters.
Following Sarah’s gaze, Grace said, “My way of advocating farm to table.”
“Oh.” Sarah fumbled for what to say next. It wouldn’t be polite to note that the artwork didn’t convey that idea. She imagined anything she said, besides coming across as an insult, would highlight the few years’ difference in their ages was a gaping crevice.
Grace apparently saw no problem with tattoos and piercings while Sarah had been brought up to think of them as something people in business hid. Although some of her contemporaries had little butterflies or miniature symbols tucked where the sun didn’t shine, Sarah knew none would fathom the idea of getting a full-arm sleeve.
The idea of getting even a small tattoo scared Sarah. She worried too much about the cleanliness of the needle, what it would look like if her skin shriveled with age and the wings sagged, or if she simply woke up one day and hated it.
“She had to leave for a little while, but she left me here to help. What’s left to do?” Sarah began to unbutton and roll up her sleeves.
“Plenty, but we need to go to a meeting first.”
Grace whistled to catch Jacob’s attention. When he looked up, she yelled, “Chef Marcus wants us all in the other room for a moment.”
He obediently trotted toward them.
“If you’re going to sub for Emily, you better come along, too.”
Take Emily’s place? No way. Hopefully, Chef Marcus had some tasks to be done, like setting a table or sweeping a floor. She couldn’t be expected to display Emily’s food or be part of the food competitions or exhibitions without any preparation. It wasn’t part of the bargain of being a twin or a quasi-detective. Besides, having Sarah cook would do little to preserve Emily’s career. It might even permanently finish it.
Everyone already in the Civic Center’s back room encircled Chef Marcus, who stood in the open area near the refrigerators and ovens. Although still looking paler than Sarah remembered him from past days, he seemed to be back in control. He acknowledged the arrival of the last three with a nod of his head but continued addressing the group.
“First, let me tell you how very pleased with our service Mrs. Holt was. I appreciate everyone’s help pulling the dinner off, but we’re not done yet. Our setup for the Expo is behind. We’ve got a lot to do here and at the restaurant before the Expo begins, but I know we can pull it off working together.”
Chef Marcus cleared his throat. “The fact is, Mr. Blair was our champion. With him gone, our role at the Civic Center and as a premier restaurant in this community rests on our next dinner services at Southwind and our Expo performance throughout the weekend. To say it more plainly, our jobs depend on making sure the Food Expo is a success and keeping the Civic Center powers happy.”
One Taste Too Many Page 5