by Robin Allen
I flipped the switch on the coffee maker, a sleek, burnished silver gizmo that I had never really gotten the hang of using. I didn’t even know Porsche designed kitchen appliances until Jamie gave the thing to me as a birthday present.
While the coffee brewed I took the longest, hottest shower my water heater allowed. There’s something deeply satisfying about washing off significant amounts of dirt and ickiness. Restaurant cooks experience this, as do, I imagine, coal miners, garbage collectors, and armed insurgents. In a few minutes, all the sweat, filth, and frustration washes down the drain, leaving your body and your outlook clean and renewed. Could the water in jail refresh anyone? Was Ursula even showering?
As I dressed, my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since noon. I scooped up a handful of raw pecans and poured a cup of fresh coffee into a mug Jamie had set out, the one he bought for me when I started my new job. White ceramic with “Health inspectors do it with gloves on,” in bold red letters. I added maple syrup to the brew then sat at my kitchen table and tried to see things from a detective’s perspective.
Ursula’s knife as the murder weapon couldn’t be ignored, but it didn’t mean anything in and of itself. Every cook brings their own personal knives with them to work. They’re usually kept together in a canvas roll that has slots for whatever knives the cook needs on a regular basis. Some cooks buy ready-made kits, and some cobble together their own sets from here and there as they have the funds. A respectable collection could take years to acquire and cost several thousand dollars.
I had forgotten to bring mine last night and borrowed from Trevor and Shannon, but not without cross-my-heart-stick-a-needle-in-my-eye promises to return them immediately after I was finished with them.
When their knives are not in use, cooks don’t store their rolls out in the open. They find a place that’s the safest and most convenient to access, like on a high shelf or inside a rarely used stock pot. Ursula stores her knives in different places depending on what she’s working on, but I know she trusts her cooks and wouldn’t have kept a close eye on them.
The killer could have been any of the hundreds of guests in and out of the restaurant that night, but it’s unlikely any of them could have gotten their hands on Ursula’s knife.
Unless …
Unless it was someone Évariste had brought back to tour the kitchen. But that seemed unlikely, too. Even if they had found someone’s knife roll, the guests I saw would have been too drunk to open it, much less hit a bull’s-eye.
Still, Ursula’s attorneys could successfully argue that anyone with access to the kitchen that night had access to her knives. That argument might also get her out on bail, assuming that’s how bail worked. I had managed to live my entire life without having to know how bail worked. Darn Ursula.
So how would the cops build a case against her? I began by making a list of pros and cons in my head.
On the pro list I put the arguments I had witnessed between Ursula and Évariste in the few hours I had been around both of them. In my mind, they blended together into one big verbal ultimate fighting match. Évariste didn’t seem to take anything seriously, and he undermined Ursula’s authority. He made the kitchen prepare an entire menu of dishes they had never cooked before, but he didn’t stick around during service to help or answer questions. The night celebrated his Texas debut, but he didn’t cook a single dish, leaving everything to Ursula and Trevor.
When I put myself in Ursula’s shoes, Évariste became my rival. One who had a formal education from the best culinary school in the world, an instinctive cooking brilliance, an international reputation, a quick wit that easily charmed reporters and party guests, successful restaurants in Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, and a coveted Michelin star. As Ursula, I felt inferior and insignificant. I also wanted to do anything to get him out of my life.
On the con side, I put the logistics of the head chef killing the guest of honor at the busiest and most-watched restaurant in Austin that night. Ursula was consumed with preparing hundreds of complicated meals and simply didn’t have time. She worked on the line the entire night, surrounded by witnesses. Even if she could have left the line, she wouldn’t risk her life and her future for something so trivial in the grand scheme of things, would she? And to do it with her own knife and leave it at the scene? No, General Ursula York would never be that careless. She had already endured Évariste for two weeks; she could have gone four more days. Plus, it would have scandalized Nina, and while that would have been a reason for me to do it, it would have deterred Ursula.
I stood and stretched, then stepped to the counter to refill my cup. I reread Jamie’s note. Even his handwriting was beautiful. I should have stuffed it down the disposal and ground it into confetti. But I didn’t. And I didn’t want to think about why.
I turned off the coffee maker and considered the predicament of a chef in jail at dinnertime. During my tour, the guard had told me that inmates were served a lot of bologna sandwiches. I had already seen a truckload’s worth of packages in the jail’s walk-in, so it hadn’t surprised me. At the time, I questioned whether an inspector’s time couldn’t be put to better use. The food was intended for a bunch of criminals, and if it was bad, so what? It would just add to the punishment they deserved. Now I felt like a jerk. Poor Ursula.
Who else? Trevor. He threatened Évariste with a meat cleaver, but he had been cooking all night too. He took a few smoke breaks out back, though. Can you kill someone in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette? Yes.
And then waltz back into the restaurant and resume plating rabbits and flirting with waitresses? Possibly.
I had seen Trevor go from simmering to sizzling within moments and then act as if nothing had been burned, but would he jeopardize the restaurant and his career? Unknown.
Belize, the waitress, had a strange reaction to Évariste yelling at her about bumping into him. I had expected her to cower, but she acted familiar with him. Did they have a personal relationship? An affair? Is that who BonBon was so bothered about? Love and money are the two biggest reasons for murder because they fuel the same kind of passion, and BonBon would be fueled by both. If Évariste left her, she would be the ex-wife of a rising culinary star. Definitely not as desirable as being the current wife. Or the widow.
So many other Markham’s people had been in and out of the kitchen and could have taken Ursula’s knife, including Mitch, Nina, and Will. Would any of them want Évariste dead? Mitch had a lot invested in the four days Évariste had been hired to cook at Markham’s. Maybe more than I realized. But I couldn’t begin to suspect my own father. And I would never be so lucky that Nina killed Évariste. She wouldn’t have stepped her designer heels behind the restaurant, much less gotten close to a dumpster full of kitchen refuse. And Will. I had seen him handle Évariste with only words, so he probably had no need to involve blood and death.
Those were the only people who had access to Ursula’s knives and had strong opinions about Évariste. At least the ones I knew about firsthand. Évariste had been at Markham’s for two weeks and could have inspired the desire for his swift elimination in any one of the other wait or kitchen staff, or even a food supplier. Heck, that kind of thinking would add me to the list.
What did police detectives do when they felt overwhelmed by possibilities and needed to take a break? They probably ignored their feelings and kept thinking.
But I wasn’t a detective. I had other options.
When I need to get out of my house and out of my head, I visit my cousin Daisy. She has a husband, kids, pets, a plant nursery business, and a calming presence a tranquilizer would envy. She’s my best girlfriend, and being around her always brings balance to my life.
Daisy’s daughter Logan answered when I called. “We just finished supper, TeePee,” she said. When Logan was first learning to talk, Daisy tried to teach her to call me Auntie Poppy. Logan would miss some syllables and it always came out TeePee. Twelve years later, she still calls me that. “We’ll save some pie
for you.”
The night turned out to be perfect for driving al fresco, but removing the top from my Jeep by myself would take too long, so I compromised and took off the doors. I drove west on Highway 290 toward Oak Hill. At the red light at the Y, where 290 splits off to go west, I watched as the driver of a black Volvo sedan with Arizona license plates threw a cigarette butt out the window.
I used to sit in my car and think vengeful thoughts when I saw something like that. Now I do something about it.
I shifted the Jeep into neutral, pulled the brake, flipped on the emergency flashers, then grabbed my badge and a pair of tweezers and approached the driver’s side. The full-grown idiot held a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette lighter in the other. He probably lived in a new condo.
I tapped on his windshield with my badge and left it positioned where he could see it. He rolled his window halfway down. “Hold on, sweetheart,” he said into the phone, then to me, “Yeah?”
“Travis County health official,” I said. “Hang up the phone.”
“What?”
“End your call now, sir.”
He did as he was told.
I bent down and used my tweezers to pick up the butt near the tip, then passed the smoldering trash through the window. “Have you seen the red, white, and blue road signs that say ‘Don’t mess with Texas’?”
He shook his head.
“There’s one right there,” I said, pointing to a sign. “It’s part of our anti-littering campaign. Perhaps you should do less talking on the phone and more paying attention to the road.”
The traffic light turned green, and a refrain of car horns blared instantly. The man looked confused about what to do. I moved the butt farther inside his car and said, “Take this and put it in your ashtray.” Again, he did as he was told. “When you get home, you can dispose of it properly.”
The light turned red and the drivers behind us calmed down. “I won’t report you to the Texas Department of Transportation.” I glared at him. “This time.”
“Thank you.”
“Have a nice evening, sir.”
Jamie and Daisy are both convinced that I’m going to bang on the wrong window one of these days, but so far everyone I’ve stopped has been too shocked to do anything but comply.
I pulled up to Daisy’s front gate around 8:30 PM and honked. Logan and Othello, a Dalmatian/Lab mix they rescued a few years ago, ran out to let me in. Logan hopped into the passenger seat to ride the few hundred feet to the house, hanging out the side to laugh at our spastic yapping escort.
We left Othello whining on the porch and entered the kitchen that smelled like fried eggplant and apple pie. I felt better already. Daisy greeted me with a long hug. My cousin is two years older, and except for the braid down to her waist, we look exactly alike and are often mistaken for each other.
Daisy prepared a pitcher of fresh lemonade, then poured three tall glasses. Logan sliced the pie and we ate as she caught me up on the new boy from Phoenix all the neighborhood girls had a crush on, club volleyball championships, and the trouble she was having with math.
“Speaking of math,” Daisy said. “You have word problems due tomorrow.” Daisy home-schooled her kids. She eased up during the summer when their nursery business picked up, but she didn’t take a break from schooling entirely.
“Yes ma’am,” Logan said. She took our plates to the sink and washed them, refilled her lemonade, then scooped up their blue point Siamese cat, Desdemona, who had settled on my lap. Logan gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “Good to see ya, TeePee,” before bouncing down the hall to her room.
“Cute boys and hard math,” I said. “I wouldn’t be fourteen again for anything.”
Daisy and I sat in silence, which was unusual, and it dawned on me what was missing: men. “Where’s Jacob?” I asked.
“Erik took him down to the valley to fetch some palm trees and do a little fishing. That’s why we didn’t come to the party last night.”
“I forgot. Sorry.”
Daisy arranged the salt and pepper shakers in the center of the table. “You’ve had a lot going on lately.”
“That’s a Zen way of putting it.”
“How in the world did our little Ursula get mixed up in a murder?”
I hit the highlights of the evening, revealing that Évariste had been killed with Ursula’s knife. My job and some recent personal events have made me jaded and I tend to suspect everyone and everything until I’m proved wrong, which doesn’t happen very often. But Daisy has always been more generous and accepting, and she has a sixth sense about people. “Do you think Ursula could do something like this?” I asked.
With no hesitation, she said, “Absolutely not. Ursula is territorial and self-absorbed, but to plunge a knife into someone’s heart? Could you imagine?” She sipped her lemonade. “On the other hand, I don’t know her all that well. Surly cooks may be the secret ingredient in her wonderful soups.”
“We won’t be calling you as a character witness at the trial.”
She laughed, then said, “How is Uncle Mitch?”
I told her about Mitch’s accident. “Somehow Nina is trying to make me responsible for his condition. Like one tasty beverage and a few harsh words could take Mitch Markham out.”
“If Mitch is still there tomorrow, I’ll take Logan to visit him.”
“He’d love that,” I said, tracing swirl patterns in the sweat on my glass with my pinkie.
I felt Daisy’s eyes on me. “What else is bothering you?”
I picked at a crumb on the table. “Jamie stopped by my house today.”
Daisy stared at me as if I told her I had eaten a hamburger. “And?”
I brought my glass to my lips and looked at my cousin over the rim. “He looks good.”
In the aftermath of my breakup with Jamie, she had dried a million tears and murmured a thousand comforts. I waited for a reminder that he looked good the night he cheated on me and that he looked good the next day when I discovered his treachery. I wanted her to tell me those things. Instead she said, “That’s like saying the sky looks blue. What did he want?”
“He wants to do a story on the murder.”
“I don’t like the direction this story is going,” she said.
“With Mitch and Ursula out of commission, I have to take care of Markham’s.”
“Isn’t that the GM’s job?”
“Will isn’t family. I’ll let him do most of the work, but I promised Mitch I’d oversee things. I have to make sure Markham’s comes out of this okay.”
“Yes, I suppose you do. So tell me how keeping an eye on Markham’s requires you to get involved with Jamie again.”
“I’m not getting involved with him. I’m just going to make sure he puts the right spin on the truth.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I also want to do some poking around into the murder, and he can help.”
“Of course he can.” Raising two kids had helped Daisy refine her skeptical tone.
“Really, Daze. He put me through too much. You know that. I don’t want him back.”
“That’s good, because it’s up to you. Jamie won’t beg you.”
She was right. Jamie’s confidence and maturity is what attracted me to him in the first place. He knew himself, knew what he wanted, and never manipulated me. Almost never. It would be my choice to take him back, and as far as that went, it wasn’t a choice at all. “Now that I work all the time on these special projects, I don’t have time for Jamie.”
“That’s a chicken-or-egg statement,” Daisy said. “You took that position so you would be too busy to think about him.”
I finished my lemonade. “It’s working.”
“Too well. Yoga class isn’t the same without you, and Erik misses you on poker night.”
“He misses my money.”
“That too.” She upended her glass sending ice sloshing toward her mouth. “Have you heard from Luke?”
Luke, my aimless, glob
etrotting little brother. “He sent an email from Madrid a couple of months ago. The usual stuff: ‘eating great food, seeing great sites, you should take some time off and meet me.’ I sent him an email about Mitch and Ursula, but haven’t heard back.”
“When you do, tell him the brood and I say howdy.” She took our empty glasses to the sink then wrapped the remaining apple pie in foil while I put the pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator.
Daisy walked me out to my Jeep. “How about you come back Sunday night?” she said. “It’ll just be me and Logan and some homemade spinach lasagna.”
I hugged her tightly. “Extra garlic, I hope.”
She handed me the pie, careful to keep it away from Othello’s drooling chops. “How are you going to watch Markham’s and save the city from mad cow disease?”
“I’m babysitting Gavin’s restaurants for a couple of weeks, so I can take the weekend off if I need to. Ursula or Mitch should be back by Monday.”
“You better hope so,” Daisy said, “otherwise, you’ll get sucked back in and be making schedules and doing checkouts when you’re seventy.”
“No way,” I insisted as I started the engine. “I’m out and I intend to stay out.”
_____
The next morning I checked Jamie’s website, relieved but not surprised that he had kept his promise not to publish anything scandalous about the murder. He hadn’t written a word, actually. It was one of his hallmark moves to use silence to build suspense about what he would eventually say. Even I was curious.
Jamie worked for newspapers for years, both as a freelancer and an on-staff investigative reporter, then started a website called Amooze-Boosh. He says it’s the Texas spelling of the French amuse-bouche, a sort of pre-hors d’œuvre, that translates to “mouth amuser.”
He covers all aspects of the Austin food scene, from food and wine reviews to industry gossip to murders of famous chefs, and believes that if you give enough time and attention to something even mildly interesting, it will eventually pay off. He broke a money-laundering scandal six months earlier when he chanced upon a story about dishwashers quitting their jobs at several chain restaurants. Four restaurant managers, two county judges, and a city councilman had been indicted.