by Robin Allen
The previous week, I had called her at 4:30 after a stakeout to make a lengthy report about black market beef that turned out to be horse meat. “I thought you wanted me to check in after every inspection,” I reminded her. “You insisted on it, actually. If I remember correctly, you said, ‘If you don’t call in after every inspection, Markham, you’re fired.’”
“Yeah, well, now I don’t.” She swept crumbs off her desk and into her lap. “Go home, Markham.”
As I walked to my Jeep, I pulled my phone out of my backpack to call Nina to check on Mitch, but the screen lit up with an incoming call before I could dial. I answered the way I always do when I don’t recognize the number. “Go.”
The most odious, intolerable, insulting sound came through—an automated voice. Before I punched the End key, I heard, “from an inmate at the Travis County Jail.”
I put the phone back to my ear and was told that I could accept the charges or listen to what the charges were. It took me a moment to figure out that the fake operator meant the phone charges, not the charges against Ursula. I had to pay to talk to her?
I punched the right numbers then said, “Ursula?”
“Oh, Poppy! Thank goodness.” Her voice quivered. “I’ve been trying Mom and Mitch for hours. They’re saying I murdered Évariste!”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “But, that’s impossible. You were in the weeds all night.”
In a flash, her tone went from desperation to indignation. “You think being busy is the only reason I couldn’t have done it?”
“No, but there are laws that prevent the police from making arrests without a good reason.”
“They say they have proof.”
“What proof ?”
She hesitated, then started crying. I heard a woman in the background say, “Don’t be wastin’ the phone on tears, girlie. Git on wicher business and git off.” I pictured a large Black woman, wild hair bleached red, kicking Ursula’s heels and bumping up against her back as I had seen women do the one and only time I was in jail.
A couple of months earlier, I had inspected the kitchen at the jail when I covered for another inspector who had been arrested for DWI. Out of curiosity about the workings of a jail, and hoping to catch a glimpse of my shamed colleague, I asked if I could see where they housed inmates.
A female guard escorted me to the women’s jail. Small cells ringed a large room where the inmates spent the day watching television, making phone calls, and occasionally fighting over what to watch or how much time someone spent on a single call. Each woman stayed on the phone as long as the patience of the other inmates would allow. After a few minutes, the women turned rowdy, forcing the talker off the phone and to the back of the line. With all those dead-end calls Ursula made trying to get in touch with Nina and Mitch, she must have waited in line for hours before she finally reached me.
I softened my voice and asked again. “Ursula, what proof ?”
She sucked in a breath and whispered, “Évariste was killed with my knife.”
I tried to picture where Ursula’s knives had been in Markham’s kitchen the night before. She wailed to cover the dead air. “Ursula, listen to me. The police must have made a mistake.”
“They won’t set bail.”
“Can they do that?”
“I don’t know!” Women cackled in the background. “Poppy, I am so scared and everything is happening so fast.” She choked out another sob. “I can’t spend another second in here. Has Mom called Ari Gross?”
“She didn’t say, but I’m sure she did. Ari and Ira were at the party last night, weren’t they?”
“What, are you a cop now? I wouldn’t know if they were at the party because I was cooking in the kitchen all night!”
“Okay,” I said, “if it really was your knife, then someone might have done this just to set you up.”
“I thought about that, but the only person who hated me was Évariste.”
What kind of deluded life had Ursula created for herself that let her believe that she was liked and admired by everyone? Even the Dalai Lama has detractors, and Ursula is no Buddhist monk. “Really, Ursula? You can’t think of anyone else who might have a grudge against you? Maybe a cook you fired for giving you cooking advice? Or a waiter whose orders you screwed up on purpose because they complained once about long ticket times? Or a supplier you stopped using because you found out they gave another restaurant a better deal?”
“What are you talking about?”
Yes, she was deluded. She had done all of that and worse.
I told her what happened to Mitch and that Nina had gone to the hospital to be with him. “That’s probably why they didn’t answer when you called.”
“Is Mitch okay?” she asked.
“He will be.”
“What was he doing lifting a tray of dirty dishes, anyway? The heaviest thing he’s lifted lately is a nine iron.”
I laughed, glad she wasn’t too distraught for a tease about Mitch’s new hobby. “Mitch doesn’t know he’s a senior citizen,” I said. Then I told her about the gang of French guys arriving at the restaurant to film Évariste.
“Oh!” she said, tapping her fingernail against the mouthpiece, which had the same effect as rapping tongs against a countertop. “Call Jamie!”
Ursula could do brilliant things with beef, chicken, and vegetables, but her brilliance ended there. Jamie Sherwood ran a foodie website and had actually made up words to describe Ursula’s cooking. “Ursalicious” came to mind.
He is also my ex-boyfriend. We had parted ways three months earlier and while I hadn’t stopped thinking about him, I had avoided all contact.
“You’ve been charged with murder,” I said. “How is a restaurant reviewer going to help you?”
“He writes other stuff,” she said. “He has connections at the paper and on the police force. He can vouch for me.”
Not for the first time, I wondered if she had a crush on him. “You know it doesn’t work that way. This isn’t Mayberry.”
“You just don’t want to call him because you’re still mad at him.”
“Yes, I am. If I thought Jamie could help you, I’d call him, but he can’t. Let’s let Mitch’s lawyers work on this, okay?”
I heard more cackling in the background, then a woman barked, “Time up Victoria Secret.”
“Please call Jamie,” Ursula insisted. “I don’t know exactly what he can do, but he can help somehow. I can’t stay in here, Poppy.”
“Okay, I’ll call him,” I said, having no intention of doing so. All of this would be cleared up if I had to find the real killer myself.
“Thank you,” Ursula squeaked before the line went dead.
It wouldn’t be a good idea to call Nina either. If I updated her on Ursula’s new situation, she would insist again that I get her daughter out of jail. Ursula had just used up all my nice and I couldn’t trust myself to be tolerant of Nina’s ludicrous demands. It looked like Ursula would be in jail for at least the weekend, and Mitch was in good hands, so I fired up the Jeep and turned toward home. Seven miles and ten minutes the only two things between me and my bed.
I pulled up to my house and cursed when I saw a blue car parked in my driveway. Not just any blue car, but a blue car that had parked there regularly for two years until the owner of the car decided to park somewhere else one night.
I left the Jeep on the street so he could leave as soon as I told him to, which would be the first thing out of my mouth.
He hopped out of his car to follow me to my front door. Dressed in faded jeans and a gray t-shirt, he looked harmless. He didn’t fool me, though. I caught his familiar scent of shampoo and shaving cream. The scent of a rogue. “I don’t want to talk to you, Jamie.”
“It’s not about us,“ he said. “It’s about the murder.”
We arrived on the front porch at the same time. Had Ursula conjured him somehow? “What does a food writer care about a dead chef, except to joke about him in cyberspace?”
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Jamie examined his fingernails, which prompted me to look at my own rough hands. Just one night back at the restaurant had done so much damage. “I’m tired, Jamie, and I don’t have time for your little boy games.”
“This isn’t a game,” he said. “And you know I write about—”
“Everything food, amusing or not,” I said flatly, reciting the tagline on his website, Amooze-Boosh.
I unlocked my front door and left it open as I dropped my backpack on the floor, kicked off my shoes, and flopped onto the couch. Jamie took it as an invitation to keep talking. “I want to do a story on the murder at Markham’s and I need you to be my inside source. I’ll keep you anonymous, of course.”
He said “the murder at Markham’s” as if the headline of his story had been turned into a Broadway play. I wanted so badly to close my eyes, but if I did that, I would become sleepy and vulnerable. I needed to get him out of my house before he talked me into doing something stupid. “No, Jamie. Go away.”
He shut the door, leaned his back against it, and put his hands in his front pockets, staring at me in that way he had. Jamie’s t-shirt clung to his muscular chest and showed off new biceps. And his hair was longer than usual. He looked beautiful.
His voice dropped an octave. “You look good, Poppy.” He smiled, revealing one perfect dimple in his left cheek.
I had to be strong. “No, Jamie.”
He raked a hand through glossy dark curls. “Why not?”
Good question. Why not let someone with sympathies toward Ursula and Mitch write about the tragedy? Jamie had access to many more sources of official information than I did, so he could use his contacts to keep me informed about the investigation. And I could make sure he didn’t report anything too ugly about what happened. I knew he wouldn’t leave my house until I gave in. I could change my mind later when I came to my senses.
“It must be the thirty umpteen hours of no sleep,” I said. “But okay.”
He actually rubbed his hands together. “That’s more like it.”
“First exclusive quote: Ursula York did not kill Évariste Bontecou.”
“Wait.” His hands stopped moving and his brown eyes glimmered. “The police think Ursula killed Évariste?”
“Oy,” was the last thing I remembered saying before I closed my eyes and passed out.
_____
I woke up around 4:00 in the afternoon to find that Jamie had put a pillow under my head and tucked me into the couch with my favorite afghan, the psychedelic one my mother knitted for me the Christmas before she died. I had a crick in my neck from sleeping wonky, and man-oh-man, did I need a shower. I wouldn’t have blamed Jamie for wearing gloves when he lifted my head onto the pillow.
My thoughts yo-yoed between sheets and shower, but as soon as I walked into my room, sheets won. I changed into pajamas then dove under the covers, savoring that first touch of warm cheek to cool pillow.
I had just closed my eyes when the hammering started.
When the real estate boom hit at the turn of the current century, price rather than location dictated where people bought homes, turning neighborhoods upside down. Young families walked their dogs past the beer can-strewn front yards of unofficial frat houses. Widows in white clapboards cultivated herb gardens next door to multimedia artists in purple brick homes with hair to match. And my quiet evenings in my eight-hundred-square foot pre-war chicken coop were constantly interrupted by the Johns.
John With and John Without (hair) used to be my neighbors on my left, but after they made all of the repairs and improvements they could force onto, into, and under that house, they sold it to an investor from Houston for four times what they had put into it, then bought the house on the other side of me to start all over again.
And they had started renovations during my nap time.
I pulled the comforter up to the headboard and draped my arm over my eyes, pitching a little tent with my elbow. The hammering continued and the tent started drifting down around my mouth, making it difficult to breath.
“Not like that!” John Without said. It wasn’t so much the yelling as the “you’re such an idiot” tone of voice he used that pried my eyes open.
I have a harmless, but not-so-secret crush on John With. He’s six-foot-two and solid without being muscle-bound. He has a crooked smile and lovely olive skin that gets too dark in the summer months, but looks just right in the winter. He’s generous and sweet, and always in a good mood.
He didn’t deserve to be talked to like that, and I deserved a peaceful afternoon. I threw off the covers and marched outside. John With stood near the top of a ladder, crouched under an eave nailing something to the house. John Without held onto the ladder with one hand and a Cosmopolitan with the other, looking like the dictionary definition of a poseur.
John Without is the opposite of his boyfriend in every way. Not only without hair, but without tact, charm, or height. He stands five-foot-eight with a close-cropped tonsure of dirt-brown fuzz surrounding his pale head like a bathtub ring, a scrupulously trimmed goatee, and beady blue eyes. He sounds like a castrato when he’s ticked off, which is most of the time. He works out obsessively and loves to expose his triceps cuts and muscular quads. That afternoon, he had chosen to greet the neighborhood in red, white, and blue spandex. John With has a more reasonable style and usually dresses in hiking shorts and a polo shirt.
Together they own Four Corners, a small, successful art gallery in a strip center a couple of blocks from Markham’s. I never understood how those two got together in the first place, but like every romantic relationship I’m not involved in, it’s none of my business.
I walked over to the trendy buffalo fencing they had installed the week before. “Hey Johns,” I called.
They both turned at the sound of my voice. John With smiled. “Hey Poppy Markham!”
John Without took in my pajamas and bare feet, then let go of the ladder to raise his wristwatch pointedly to eye level. “Are we interrupting something?”
I ignored him and looked up at John With. “Are y’all going to be hammering much longer?”
John With said, “No.” John Without said, “Yes.”
The sun had turned the crown of John Without’s head a piggish shade of pink. He said, “What John means is, we just started and we’ve only got a few hours of daylight, so we’ll be done when it’s dark.”
John With smiled his crooked smile. “You trying to sleep?”
“Of course she is,” said John Without in the tone of voice that had propelled me out of bed. He waved his pink drink in my direction. “She’s wearing sleepwear in the middle of the day.” With a few choice words, he had managed to make me look like a no-job-holding loser and John With sound like a dunce. If John With refused to come over to my side, he could at least find a nice guy who respected him, and who didn’t get his clothes at Spinal Tap swap meets.
Again I ignored John Without and addressed John With. “I just need to sleep for a couple of hours.”
John Without rolled his eyes. He probably would have stalked off were it not for his instinct to protect his possession from jammie-clad sirens like me.
“No problem,” John With said, descending the ladder. “We have a thousand things we can work on inside.”
“John!” John Without whined, stomping his foot. Pink liquid sloshed out of his glass and down his hairy forearm. “We need to fix that today.”
But John With had already turned toward the house. “See you later, Poppy Markham.”
“I hope so,” I said, making my tone purposely suggestive.
Inside, I crawled back under the covers, wondering why neither of them had asked about Évariste or Ursula. Either they didn’t know what happened, which was likely why John With hadn’t asked, or they didn’t care, which was why John Without hadn’t. Regardless, I was glad not to talk about the murder.
_____
I woke up to a ringing phone. I usually don’t answer my land line because it’s either a tel
emarketer or Olive trying to sneak past my radar because she knows I don’t have caller ID, but I was groggy and momentarily confused. I brought the receiver to my ear. “Go.”
“Poppy!” Nina said, “I’ve been calling you for hours!”
“What’s wrong! Is Mitch okay?”
“Your father is fine,” she said. “I heard from Ursula.”
Nina seemed strangely calm as we discussed the new developments. Perhaps, like me, her emotions had been discharged by the initial urgency of our double-decker family calamity sandwich. Emotions are useless in emotional situations. Facts are important, and speculation can help. As I had done with Ursula, I assured Nina that the police had made a mistake and she would be released soon. “Probably tomorrow. We can throw a homecoming party for Mitch and Ursula,” I said. Nina loves any excuse for attention and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she called her caterer when we hung up.
“Is Mitch really okay?” I asked. I resented that I had to rely on her for information about my own father.
“He’s been singing.”
I couldn’t have heard her right. “Mitch doesn’t sing.”
“He does now,” she said, amused. “Rat Pack numbers. When I left his room to call you just now, he was entertaining his nurse with ‘That’s Amore.’”
“Frank Sinatra?”
“Dean Martin.”
“Can I see him?”
“In the morning. He’s resting.”
“I thought you said he was singing.”
She hesitated. “He told me he wanted to go to sleep.”
My suspicious health inspector kicked in. “Is that what he told you, Nina, that he wanted to go to sleep?”
She sighed, exasperated. Or caught in a lie. About what, though? “I need to go,” she said suddenly.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded. “Is it Mitch?”
“Nature calls.”
I hung up, then looked at the time on my cell phone—7:23 PM. Jamie must have turned off the ringer. I had missed several calls.
I went into the kitchen and saw that Jamie had prepared coffee for brewing. A note on the counter read, “Everyone knows Ursula is in jail, so don’t worry about spilling the beans.” He had trailed a few coffee beans over the paper.