by Robin Allen
He crossed his arms and raised one dark eyebrow, amusement in his eyes.
“I, uh, was just admiring this boating scene on Will’s door.”
“Really,” he said.
“What took you so long?” I asked, changing the subject to wipe that knowing look off his face.
“Valet guys are slammed.” The look stayed put.
We sat ourselves at a two-top near the bathrooms, a table that Markham’s never seats no matter how busy we are. A constant stream of people flow past the table, the audible flush of toilets is loud and unromantic, and the occasional foul odor wafts out when the bathroom door opens. No waiter is ever assigned to the table, so I stopped the first black apron I saw whizzing by, which, to my delight, happened to be Belize.
“This isn’t my section,” she said.
I had already excused her for dismissing me the morning after the murder, but she didn’t get to do it twice. I needed information. And I was the owner’s daughter. “It is now,” I said. “Please bring over some menus.”
She looked like a hungry cat that had been fed an organic kiwi, and stopped short of hissing at me. When she stalked off, Jamie said, “Ease up, babe. We’re here to get information from her.”
“We’ll get it. And I’m not your babe.”
“I didn’t mean my babe, I meant a babe.”
“I know what you meant.”
Belize brought glasses of ice water and menus to the table, and as she recited the dinner specials, I examined this waitress who seemed to have everyone tied in knots. I saw nothing special about her looks—straight black hair in need of a trim, wary brown eyes, heavy makeup. Her voice had a flintiness that made her sound older and harsher than her years. She told us that Chef Trevor offered Ginger Salmon en Papillote with cumin carrot coins, Tournedos Bontecou with white truffle sauce and steamed asparagus, and one other dish I didn’t need to listen to. I knew exactly what I would get with the Saddle of Roasted Hare á la Évariste.
Jamie ordered his favorite crabmeat nachos, half without crab for me, and a bottle of pinot noir. The look of disgust on Belize’s face told me her thought process: I’m in the weeds so bad I can’t even think straight, you’re forcing me wait on you, and now you’re ordering a bottle of wine? I better get a really good tip. Her attitude already had her tip on a downslide.
When Belize left, I leaned across the table and Jamie automatically leaned into me, our faces inches apart. He smelled like cinnamon. “Pretty sure the salmon is Trevor’s,” I said.
“Because it doesn’t have one of Évariste’s names attached to it?”
“I’d make a pretty good detective, huh?”
I sat back and watched Will, poised as a prince, standing at a four-top near the bar. He held menus in one hand while pulling out chairs for three well-dressed men with the other. He whispered something to Belize as she passed by, then picked up dirty cups from the next table and took them to the wait station. On busy nights, the general manager’s job could morph from host to expeditor to busboy to waiter within five minutes. I didn’t miss that job, and I didn’t want it back, in spite of the cushy office.
I turned back to Jamie, who had been watching me watch Will. “Do you still attend ABRA meetings?” I asked.
“I never miss them. That’s where I hear all the good gossip.”
“What’s the dirt on Will?”
Another waiter delivered our appetizer. Jamie placed his napkin in his lap. “Nothing. This is the first time I’ve seen him.”
A large man with a black moustache hummed softly as he passed us on his return from the bathroom. Jamie wrinkled his nose. “This is the worst table. Why didn’t they get rid of it during the renovation?”
“Beats me. But if they had, you’d have to stop boasting on your website that you have a permanent table at Markham’s.”
We sipped our water as I looked around the dining room again, feeling a twinge of sadness. Even with all matching place settings arranged on pearl-white tablecloths, the rich leather chairs against a background of heavy blue drapes, and professional lighting recommended by expensive consultants, nothing could make up for Mitch’s absence. Was I the only one who noticed that no Markhams were running Markham’s?
“Does it feel strange knowing that Ursula isn’t in the kitchen?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said, serving each of us a nacho.
After two years of nearly constant companionship, Jamie and I had lost our facility for small talk with each other, but I wasn’t ready for the Big Talk. Not yet. “How come you never complain that I like to drink red wine with everything?” I asked. “Nina says I’m uncouth.”
“Nina doesn’t love you.”
You still love me? He wanted me to say that. But he didn’t get to just sprinkle a little Jamie Sherwood charm here and there and make my heart thump with longing. I put him on notice. “True, but at least she backs up her sentiment with appropriate actions.”
He shot me a hard look, which turned into a charming smile when Belize showed up with the wine. She remained stone-faced as she presented the label to Jamie, who nodded a confirmation.
As she removed her wine key and prepared to open the bottle, I said, “I need to ask you some questions about the other night.”
She looked up at me, but didn’t say anything. I looked at Jamie who had taken an interest in the bricks on the wall.
“Well?” she said, using her forefinger to guide the corkscrew into the center of the cork.
“BonBon thinks you were having an affair with Évariste, and Ursula and Shannon both told me Trevor and Évariste had words over you.”
“And?” She pulled out the cork, removed it from the screw, and handed it to Jamie.
This girl made Oliver North seem gabby under oath. “And I want to know why you lied to me about you and Évariste having a relationship.”
“I didn’t,” she said, plunking down the bottle of wine on the table, hard enough to punctuate her answer, but light enough to call it an accident.
“I think she was about to crack,” Jamie said as she walked off.
“Shut up.”
While the wine breathed, I told Jamie about Mitch’s negotiations with Évariste. “According to Nina and Ursula, Mitch thinks I can’t be trusted with restaurant secrets.”
“That’s odd,” he said, pouring half a glass of wine into my goblet and the exact same amount into his.
“I know,” I said. “I can’t believe he thinks I would blab! I never blab. I’m like a bank vault with information.”
“No, it’s odd that Mitch would want to partner with Évariste. His name is curdling in Las Vegas.”
“What’s wrong with Évariste’s name? Aside from the fact that it sounds like a blood disease.”
“I told you he owes a lot of money to investors, right?” he said, sipping the wine and holding it in his mouth, chewing before swallowing. “Nice.”
I sipped mine, but swallowed without chewing. “Very. Tell me about Las Vegas.”
“I have some restaurant friends up there and checked around. Nothing’s official, but there are rumors that Évariste’s investors were so unhappy with him that they demanded early repayment.”
“Mitch’s lawyers have been in Monte Carlo checking him out. They probably already figured out he’s bad news.”
“There’s even more bad news,” he said. “There are also rumors that he was about to lose his Michelin star.”
“What!” I said, choking on a mouthful of wine.
“That’s the rumor.” He sat back in his chair and popped the rest of a nacho into his mouth.
“Didn’t a chef kill himself a few years ago because he lost a star?” I asked.
“Bernard Loiseau at La Côte d’Or. He had three stars, and rumors floated about that Michelin would be dropping him down to two. But it turned out not to be true. The last thing he ate was his hunting rifle.”
The Michelin star is the most coveted culinary honor in Europe. It got its start in 1900 w
hen touring the countryside in an automobile became all the rage. To help travelers wear out their tire treads faster, the Michelin family—yes, the tire people—published a rated guide to hotels and rooming houses. The guide has evolved into the single most powerful arbiter of European restaurant worthiness, and the opinions of the anonymous reviewers, in the form of stars, are accepted as gospel. Careers are built or broken within its pages, but most chefs handle the loss of a star less definitively than Bernard Loiseau.
“Losing his only star would be a big deal to Évariste,” I said, “but I don’t think he’d kill himself over it. He was more surly libertine than Samurai warrior. Although if you listen to Ursula, Évariste hated her enough to frame her for his death.”
To Jamie’s confused look, I said, “Don’t try to make sense of that.”
“Rather than someone framing her,” he said, “it could be dumb luck that Ursula is in jail and the killer is free.”
“That would send things in another direction entirely if this had nothing to do with Ursula.”
“Indeed.”
“Amado told me he didn’t like the way Évariste talked to him or Belize. He said Évariste was fat and mean. Maybe Amado was protecting her honor.”
“Even if he didn’t frame Ursula, would he let her take the rap for him?”
“Possibly so, but probably not. Amado worships Ursula.”
“What if this wasn’t a crime of passion?” he suggested. “What if his death is related to his Michelin status or his financial situation?”
“And I quote, ‘I don’t think casinos or investors got hold of Ursula’s knife and stabbed Évariste on his smoke break.’ Isn’t that what you said a few hours ago at U of J?”
“Darn your memory.”
Belize materialized to take our order. She had just delivered food to a four-top and held a large oval tray smeared with grease in her hand when she approached our table. She dropped the short end of the tray on the floor and caught it between her legs. “Have you decided on entrées?” she asked.
Even before the renovation, when Markham’s served T-bone steaks and bread pudding, waiters knew better than to approach a table with a dirty tray in their hand. Tipsy from the glass of wine I’d had on an empty stomach, I became annoyed at Belize’s attitude toward me and Jamie. “We’ll be ready to order as soon as you get back from returning that tray to the wait station.”
Belize looked at me as if to ask if I was serious, but when she saw my face, she knew the answer. She pulled the tray up and walked off without saying a word.
“What is with you tonight?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, but then changed my answer as my reasoning formed in my head. “No, I do know. Ursula is in jail and Mitch is in the hospital, and everyone around here is acting like neither of them exist. Will is striding through the dining room like he’s lord of the manor, and Trevor has everyone in the kitchen saluting with both hands. And now Belize is acting like I’m a pain in her side. Me! My last name is on the sign in front of the building she works in, the guest check she drops at every table, the menu we’re ordering from, and even the apron she’s wearing. I’ll be signing everyone’s paycheck until my dad gets out of the hospital, and I think I deserve more than a crappy table by the bathroom and an ornery waitress.”
I flung myself back in my chair, then heard what I had said. It happened so rarely that Mitch needed me in an official capacity, I had forgotten that I was a backup signature on paychecks. Monday was the fifteenth, which meant I would have to sign checks.
Jamie poured more wine into my glass. “We’ll get this figured out, Poppycakes.”
Belize returned without the tray. “May I take your order, ma’am?”
Jamie ordered for both of us, Pasta Primavera for me and the Salmon en Papillote for himself. Trevor could handle everyday menu items with or without Ursula, but Jamie wanted to see what he could do on his own. So did I.
As we waited for our food, Jamie and I drank our wine and talked about people we knew and happenings in the Austin restaurant world. After the months I had spent trying to expunge all traces of Jamie from my life, I could hardly believe we were sitting in a restaurant, talking and laughing like old friends with no secrets between them. We were within striking distance of being on a date, and I needed to be careful.
A few minutes later, Belize arrived at our table. She placed two fresh appetizer plates in front of us, then presented three jumbo shrimp prepared scampi-style with butter, garlic, and parsley. As big as Shaquille O’Neal’s fingers and the perfect shade of pink. “The kitchen apologizes for the wait,” she said.
By “the kitchen” she meant Trevor. So, he knew that my waitress was Belize, my table number was eleven, and my dinner companion was Jamie Sherwood. Trevor would make sure that everything brought to our table was perfection on a plate. “Oy,” I said.
Jamie knew exactly what I meant. “I am the most influential food writer in the city. And this is what amounts to Trevor’s debut.”
“Only because Ursula is in jail,” I said. “This seems too convenient, doesn’t it? That two heavyweight chefs are out of the way, and Trevor is cooking for a hundred people two days later.”
Jamie placed a shrimp on his plate and said, “If you’re right, Trevor has pulled off the caper of the year.”
“If I’m right, and I can prove it, Ursula can get out of jail and I can get on with my life.”
Jamie cut into the shrimp and I watched as he chewed his first bite, closing his eyes to give more attention to his senses of taste and smell. By the time he opened his eyes, I knew the verdict. “Heavens to Murgatroyd,” he said.
After dropping off our entrées, Belize spent as little time as possible at our table, making it difficult for me to question her again, so I listened to Jamie rave about the salmon. He used words like “velvety blend,” “flakey texture,” and “delightful treat,” already writing the review in his head. Trevor passed the pre-flight check and had been cleared to fly solo.
Guests still occupied every table at 8:30 when Jamie and I finished our espressos. I needed to talk to Will about employee paychecks and get a master key, but I knew he would be busy for at least another hour, so Jamie and I went to a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse downtown. “We’ll make it dinner and a movie,” is what I had missed hearing him say on the phone earlier. In spite of my best efforts, this had turned into a real date.
Jamie dropped me in front of the restaurant a little after 10:30 PM. A few guests still lingered in the dining room. Two or three couples in for a late-night supper, one drunk guy trying to feed his drunk girlfriend crème brûlée with predictable results, and the three men I had seen Will seat a few hours earlier, two half-full bottles of red wine on their table. Belize cleared their dessert plates, ignoring heavy-lidded appraisals of her body. One tried to slap her bottom, but missed and cuffed the back of her leg. Money never can buy class.
I found Will in his office counting cash from the waiters’ checkouts. Customer checks, credit card slips, and bundles of paper money covered the desktop, and a long paper chit curled from the adding machine to the floor.
“Hello Poppy,” he said. “Sixty … eighty … nine hundred. I thought I saw you leave a couple of hours ago.”
I eased into a chair across from him. “I’m just keeping an eye on things until my dad and Ursula get back.” As if they had taken a Caribbean cruise leaving me to fetch the mail and feed the dogs until they returned. “Are you doing a check run on Monday?”
He glanced at the calendar on his desk. “I believe so.”
“I can come in later in the afternoon to sign them,” I said.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I don’t think Mitch will be out of the hospital by then, and even if he is, he’ll be recovering at home.”
Will wrapped a rubber band around a thick stack of twenties. “Let’s hope they let him out sooner, but Mitch doesn’t sign checks anymore. I’ll be in Sunday morning to do the p
aperwork.”
It was unlike Mitch to trust anyone so completely so quickly, especially a restaurant manager. But okay, I conceded, maybe as the general manager, Will did need check-signing privileges. I should have felt relieved that I didn’t have to perform that duty. I was another step removed from Markham’s, which was what I wanted. So why did it feel like being left out?
I stood up and walked slowly to the door. “This etched glass is beautiful, Will,” I said, running my finger along the curved hull of a sailboat.
“I’ll give your compliments to my wife.”
“She’s an artist?”
“She dabbles.”
I had attended enough openings at the Johns’ gallery and personally knew enough artists to have a more-than-amateur eye for professional art. “If this is dabbling, I’d like to see what she can do when she gets serious.”
He glanced at a photograph on his desk. Will at the beach, his arms around identical twin girls, blond curls blown into angelic faces. His wife must have been the photographer. She had talent there, too.
“While I’m here,” I said, “do you know what Évariste and Trevor were in a glitch about?”
A look of annoyance crossed his face when I sat down again. “Was there a glitch?”
“You didn’t hear about Trevor threatening Évariste with a meat cleaver a few hours before I …” I coughed to cover my almost admission. “Before Évariste was found murdered. Everyone saw it.”
“I heard nothing. Of course, something like that would get lost in the aftermath.”
“What about BonBon?”
“What about her?”
This was like deboning Coho salmon. “Do you know why she slapped Évariste?”
“I don’t know her well enough to even venture a guess, but I will say they seemed to have a tumultuous relationship,” he said. “Really, Poppy, I don’t want to seem unhelpful here, but I’m exhausted and I just want to finish these checkouts and go home. I haven’t seen my girls in days.”
“Sure,” I said, and stood.
Between the red wine at dinner and a couple of hours in a warm, dark movie theater, I felt sleepy, but I still had work to do. Real work. Covering for Kawasaki didn’t mean I could put all of my SPI investigations on hold. A weekends-only bar in the warehouse district had been operating without public toilet facilities. I gave the owner a week to fix it or risk being shut down. By me. That night.