If You Can't Stand the Heat

by Robin Allen

  “For what?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I stepped off the elevator and saw Nina on the couch where I had left her the day before.

  “Is it his head?” I asked.

  She closed her eyes, willing the tears to stay back. I sat next to her and took her hand. It felt cold, the skin as thin as tissue silk. She took a deep breath. “He had a mild heart attack the other night. That’s probably why he fell.”

  “He’s having heart surgery!”

  “They’re putting a stent in an artery.” She wrapped a cold, bony arm around my shoulders. “He’s going to be okay. He has to be.”

  I closed my eyes and slowed down my breath, and understood for the first time in my life, that my father wouldn’t be around forever. Hot tears dripped onto my lap. How could that be? Mitch was Superman. There wasn’t enough kryptonite in our galaxy to take him out.

  I let Nina soothe me, which seemed to soothe her, and we sat huddled together for a little while, probably looking like mother and daughter to the people getting off the elevator.

  “This waiting is killing me,” Nina said. She stood up and adjusted her cardigan. She wore yellow capri pants and a white cotton twin set that showed off her tan. Her clothes looked fresh, but deep lines etched her face. “Can I get you some coffee?” she asked. “The stuff in the machine is undrinkable, but I could go to the lounge.”

  Tragedy seemed to bring out the best in Nina. “I’m okay right now.”

  “Have you heard from Ursula?” she asked.

  “Not since yesterday. I’ve been thinking about the murder, though, and have some ideas about who might have done it.”

  “Really?” she said, sitting down again. “How soon will Ursula be out of jail?”

  Maybe Nina had a real hearing problem. She could get checked out while she was here at the hospital. “I said I had ideas. I don’t have any proof. But Jamie’s helping me.”

  “Jamie!” she said, clapping her hands. “Are you two getting back together?” Nina likes Jamie, but not because he’s a good guy. She likes the reviews he gives Ursula and Markham’s, and especially that he mentions her name as Mitch’s wife.

  “No, we’re not getting back together. He has access to information I need, and he believes me that Ursula didn’t do it.”

  “Well, of course Ursula didn’t do it.” She busied herself settling back onto the couch, slipping off her kitten heels and tucking her pedicured feet under her. I made a mental note to pumice my heels.

  After she arranged a Vogue magazine on her lap, I asked, “Who do you think killed him?”

  “How should I know?” she said, her peevish tone returning. “He was a horrid, classless little man. He had no business in Ursula’s kitchen in the first place. Your father knew how Ursula felt about him, but he did nothing. He deserved what he got.”

  Did she mean that Évariste deserved to be killed or that Mitch deserved to have a heart attack? “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

  “Well,” she said, already backing away from her strong statement, “I’m not glad he’s dead. I’m glad he’s out of Ursula’s hair. She doesn’t need anyone’s help. She can handle Markham’s just fine on her own.”

  “Why would you think Évariste was there to help Ursula?”

  “Because he was.”

  We were in dirt-clod territory again. “Nina, Évariste was there to help boost sales.”

  “Then why was your father talking to him about a partnership?”

  “Partnership? Like an investment?”

  “Ira Gross is in Monte Carlo doing due diligence on Évariste right now. Ari went with him and they took their wives. That’s why they couldn’t make opening night.”

  Ari and Ira Gross, of Grimm, Grimes, and Gross, LLC. “So that’s why Ari isn’t here to represent Ursula.”

  “They’re coming back as soon as they can get a flight.”

  “Does Ursula know about this partnership?” I asked.

  Nina ran a manicured finger along the razor-sharp crease in her pant leg. I took it as confirmation that she did know. Great, another reason for her to kill Évariste.

  “Who else knows?” I asked.

  She counted on her long fingers. “Me, Ari and Ira, Trevor—”

  “Trevor knows!”

  “Ursula told him,” she said. “Your father didn’t want anyone to know who didn’t have to. You know how rumors fly about.” She waved her hand in the air to illustrate rumors in flight. “But Ursula said that Trevor was becoming hostile toward Évariste, and she had concerns that if Trevor continued, he would be putting his future at Markham’s at risk if the deal went through.”

  Trevor’s future was already at risk. So was Ursula’s. If Évariste invested in Markham’s, everything she worked for would be gone in the time it took her to say “Oui, Chef.” Évariste would become executive chef, which would demote Ursula to sous—if Évariste would even allow it—which would put Trevor under her, near the bottom.

  I stood and paced in front of the couch trying to get a handle on what this meant. Not much money would be involved, but certainly prestige, and I had never known Trevor to be satisfied with what he had. I even suspected that he had started romancing Ursula so she would promote him to sous chef over me. And now, not only had Évariste been taken out of the game, a conviction for Ursula would take Trevor off the bench and move him to first string. Trevor was good, but too young and inexperienced to run a kitchen. It’s a high-level management job that requires many more skills than just braising beef tips and mashing potatoes.

  Yet in spite of all that, Markham’s was opening that night with Trevor as quarterback.

  Jamie had told me that I may not be happy with the way things turned out if we investigated the murder, and he was right. While the impending partnership would have immediate effects on Trevor’s career, Ursula and her attitude toward Évariste would be as welcome in Markham’s kitchen as a cannibal at a daycare. Mitch had appointed Ursula to executive chef because he was married to her mother, but she kept the job because she knew what she was doing. And then some culinary school canid had sneaked into her kitchen, threatening everything she had worked for. Had Ursula taken matters into her own hands?

  I sat on the low table across from Nina. “Why didn’t Mitch tell me about the partnership?”

  “You know too many food people,” she said. “He couldn’t take the chance of this leaking out.”

  I stared at her. My own father didn’t trust me?

  A man in blue scrubs and a sweat-soaked surgeon’s cap walked into the waiting room, followed by another man carrying a clipboard. “Ms. Markham?” the surgeon said.

  “Yes,” Nina and I said at the same time.

  “Wife, daughter,” Nina said, giggling like a geisha, pointing first to herself then to me. “How is he?” She cast an expert glance at his left hand, ever alert to any man of means she could set up with Ursula. He wore a shiny gold band, but I amused myself thinking about how Nina would have handled his request to meet this wonderful daughter of hers. Well, you can’t meet her just yet. She’s indisposed at the moment.

  Nina held onto my arm as he told us details of the stent operation and that Mitch came through it all quite well. We could see him in a few hours, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, he would be able to go home in a day or two. “Just keep him away from stressful situations,” he said.

  Had he seen a newscast recently?

  “There’s no reason for both of us to stay here,” Nina said. She put a hand on my back and guided me toward the elevator, pressing the down arrow. “You go on. I’ll call as soon as your father wakes up.”

  That wasn’t the first time I had been hustled toward an exit. Managers and cooks did it all the time when it looked like I had finished my inspection and hadn’t seen whatever it was they were hiding. Nina hadn’t stored rat poison on top of canned tomatoes or come to work with a cold. I stepped
into the elevator wondering what my stepmother could be hiding?

  I didn’t feel like doing any more inspections, which left me free to speak with the only person who could give me real answers about the partnership between Mitch and Évariste.

  Évariste had been staying at the one of the oldest and most expensive hotels in Austin, the Driskill on 6th Street, and I hoped BonBon hadn’t checked out. I knew that the front desk wouldn’t tell me her room number, so I went around the back of the hotel to the service entrance, flashed my badge at the guard, then turned into the room service hallway. The café’s assistant manager fluttered his hand over his heart when he saw me.

  “Relax Luis,” I said. “I’m not here for an inspection. But from your reaction, maybe I should be.”

  “Not at all,” he said. “We’re above ninety-five for sure.”

  Everyone is always above ninety-five before an inspection. And I always hope they are when I walk in the door, but then I’ll see a cook observe the three-second rule. This rule isn’t written down anywhere, but it is universally accepted that any food that falls from a grill, stove, plate, countertop, or tray can be picked up off the floor with tongs, fork, or fingers and served to customers if the time spent on the floor is no longer than three seconds. Timekeeping, of course, is left to the person who dropped the food, and can vary depending on how many people witnessed the drop and the dropper’s rank in the kitchen. I had never seen that happen at the Driskill.

  “I’m here for a favor,” I said.

  “If I can.”

  “I need the room number for a guest.”

  He knitted his bushy brows.

  “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important,” I said.

  He walked to the computer and placed his fingers on the keyboard. “What is the name?”

  “BonBon Bontecou,” I said. Her name sounded ridiculous when I said it out loud and I expected Luis to laugh.

  He dropped his hands. “Four eighteen.”

  “I’m impressed, Luis. You know it off the top of your head.”

  “Everyone knows her room number.”

  “Because she’s such a good tipper?” I ventured, but I already knew the answer. Waiters keep big tippers to themselves, but could spend months telling and retelling the story of being unfairly stiffed.

  “Yech!” he said. “What a nasty woman!” Two passing waiters looked at him and he lowered his voice. “So demanding, so rude.”

  To his employees, Luis would downplay any guest’s behavior, but I could tell he was dying to unload about BonBon to someone, so I pulled the trigger. “She can’t be that bad.”

  “The Helmsley Palace had an easy time with the Queen of Mean,” he said. “Calling room service at all hours, insisting we bring her items not on our menu. Asking for champagne we don’t stock. Calling down every five minutes after she orders to ask what’s taking so long. She’s like a spoiled child making prank phone calls while the babysitter is off kissing her boyfriend.”

  The phone rang and he sighed extravagantly before answering it. “Yes Mrs. Bontecou? It is on the way.”

  “You’re sending something up to her room?” I asked, giddy at my luck.

  “A duck breast sandwich we had to get from the Intercontinental,” he said, lifting his chin toward a tray with a silver dome on it.

  “Don’t y’all have duck on your menu?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “She said she wouldn’t feed ours to her cat.”

  “Can I take it up to her?” I expected him to demur, to say hotel policy forbade it, to ask why I wanted to deliver food to the shrew.

  “Be my guest,” he said.

  Fetching and delivering a sandwich from outside would be a bellman’s job because technically, room service is not supposed to serve food that they didn’t make in their own kitchen. By letting me deliver it, he relieved one member of the hotel staff from having to deal with her and made me very happy.

  Luis placed the plate on a silver cart covered with a white tablecloth. “Vaya con Dios,” he said, making the sign of the cross in front of his thick torso. “Go with God.”

  Luis must be exaggerating, I thought, as I wheeled the cart into the service elevator. I rode up to the fourth floor, then followed the hallway signs to 418. The Driskill is one of many haunted places in Austin, and probably the most famous. The story goes that a woman who had been jilted by her fiancé checked into a room on the fourth floor. She went shopping all day with his credit cards, then came back to her room, sat in the bathtub, and shot herself in the stomach. Every so often, someone swears they see a ghostly figure, laden with shopping bags, entering the room where it happened.

  I knocked on BonBon’s door. “Room service.”

  The door cracked open, then nothing happened. I waited for it to open wider, but still nothing. Was this the haunted room? I turned the cart around and started to back in, but the door wouldn’t open wide enough to allow the cart inside. I turned to see what blocked it.

  It looked like thieves had tossed her room. Shopping bags and magazines, dry cleaning plastic and lingerie, clothes and high heels littered the dresser and king-sized bed. On the desk lay unopened packages of stockings, a jewelry box, a laptop computer, two Prada shoe boxes, and a melted bucket of ice with the butt end of a champagne bottle sticking up. Apparently, gambling wasn’t the only reason Évariste teetered in the red. Wedged behind the door lay a jumbled pile of Évariste’s dirty white chef’s coats embroidered with his name and Chef du Cuisine. They were large and billowy enough to be used as hot air balloons, which in a way they had been.

  Ursula does not permit colorful uniforms in her kitchen. Her reasoning is that everyone cooks as a team and she insists that everyone wear the same traditional uniform of white coats and black-and-white checked pants. Évariste had plenty of white coats and could easily have met the dress code, so had he special-ordered a red one just to provoke Ursula the night of the party? If Évariste was that shrewd, those two weeks he spent in her kitchen must have been more hellish than I imagined.

  I saw the back of BonBon’s head in the bathroom. She sat at the vanity applying color to her thin lips, a lit cigarette within easy reach on the side of the sink. I always sneeze at my first whiff of cigarette smoke in an enclosed space. She looked up at the tiny sound that escaped.

  I saw no place to leave the domed plate, so I slid a pile of clothes away from the corner of the bed to make room. “Your duck sandwich, Mrs. Bontecou.”

  “Bring me my purse,” she said as she blotted her scarlet lips on a tissue.

  No wonder everyone from room service despised her. It was one thing to be cheap and nice, but cheap and dismissive was unforgivable. The entire hotel staff was probably counting down the days to her departure. Maybe one of them killed Évariste just to get them out of the hotel.

  I located her purse on the dresser under a lavender silk scarf. It was unzipped, so I made a show of continuing to look for it while I inspected the contents. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but it wouldn’t hurt to see what the wife of a famous chef, now famously dead, carried around with her. Wallet, makeup bag, plane tickets, two bottles of prescription meds with labels written in French, a half-full bottle of aspirin. Nothing to alert the authorities about.

  I picked my way back to the bathroom and checked for water splashes on the vanity before I placed her purse next to her. She put her hand inside and came out with a tube of lip gloss and applied it carefully over the lipstick, stroking first the right side of her upper lip, then the left.

  I stood by the bathroom door. “BonBon?”

  She looked at my reflection in the mirror, registered my street clothes, and sneered. “Where is your uniform?”

  “I don’t work for the Driskill. I work for the restaurant where Évariste was killed.” I expected some reaction to the mention of her husband’s death, a downcast of the eyes or a sad sigh, but she continued to stare. “My name is Poppy Markham. My father is Mitch Markham.”

 
; “What do you want?”

  “You speak English very well,” I said, trying to soften her with a compliment.

  “What do you expect? I learned English as a child in school. And I live half my life in Las Vegas.”

  I remembered the cards and letters from Évariste’s impromptu memorial that Amado had thrown into the trash. No doubt the widow Bontecou was capable of reading them, but she wouldn’t.

  “Can I ask you some questions about the night Évariste died?”

  She shrugged in that noncommittal, infuriating way Évariste had. French shorthand for, “You can ask, but I probably won’t answer.”

  I started with what Jamie had told me. “Is it true that Évariste owed money to investors?” She shrugged again and I kept going. “Were they the investors in Monte Carlo or Las Vegas?”

  She pulled the wand away from her lips and said, “They are the same people.”

  “Are they the kind of people who kill people who owe money but don’t pay?”

  She took a deep drag on her cigarette, then blew the smoke out one side of her mouth. “Why are you asking me these questions? Your sister killed him.”

  “She’s my stepsister, and I don’t think she did it.”

  “Her knife was poking from his heart,” she said matter-of-factly. “If it was not her, it was the girl, Belliss.”

  “Belliss?”

  “The waitress. With the ugly hair.”

  “Belize.”

  “Yes, that one. My husband was having an affair with her.”

  So I was right! Euw. “You knew?”

  “Pft,” she said, waving her hand. “He always has someone.” She still spoke about him in the present tense. “What is an affair? It is nothing.”

  “How do you know he was involved with her?”

  “A wife knows,” she said. “When I came to the restaurant, I saw her. I have seen that surprised look many times before. He never tells them about me. Anyone who reads the magazines knows he is married, but he always takes up with the ones who cannot read.”

  “Is that what you argued about in the kitchen?”