If You Can't Stand the Heat

by Robin Allen

  She took a deep swallow of her drink that would have given Dean Martin pause, but she didn’t even blink. “Then who killed him?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said, squeezing lime into my drink. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

  She took another swallow of her martini and my eyes fixed on the olives in her glass. I should have eaten those pears.

  “Okay, talk,” she said.

  “You know that Évariste was in a partnership at Markham’s with Mitch and Nina, Will Denton, and three other men.”

  “Oui. Yes. Of course,” she said.

  Yes, of course, everybody knew. “Were he and Will in any other ventures together?”

  “Ventures?” she asked, taking an olive into her mouth. I was glad it wouldn’t go to waste. “What does this mean, ‘ventures’?”

  I suffered a sip of gin. “Were Will and Évariste partners in anything else?”

  BonBon pulled a pack of cigarettes and an ebony cigarette holder from her purse. I thought only Cruella de Vil and Batman’s nemesis, the Penguin, used those things any more. She inserted a cigarette into the holder, then ignited the tip with a lighter. I tried to stifle a sneeze and sounded like a baby gurgling her first word, kee.

  Brian returned with her martini and told BonBon that the Driskill bar was nonsmoking. BonBon took another drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke toward him. “Comment?” she asked innocently, then took another greedy drag.

  He winked at me, then produced a small glass ashtray from his pocket and held it out to her. “Défense de fumer,” he said, smiling graciously. “S’il vous plait.”

  BonBon shrugged, then plucked her cigarette from its holder and tamped it out in the ashtray. She had gotten her nicotine fix. I suspected she knew there was no smoking in the bar. In fact, a city ordinance forbids smoking in all public places in Austin.

  She sipped her fresh martini, recrossed her legs, then said, “What is your question?”

  “Did Will and Évariste invest in anything else besides Markham’s?”

  “We invested, yes, in a few restaurants.”

  “In Austin?”

  “Certainly not,” she said as if I had suggested Africa. “Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, some place in California.”

  “How are they doing?” I asked. “In light of … uh … Évariste’s death.”

  She tapped her empty cigarette holder absently against her front teeth. “They are gone.”

  “Were they sold or did they go out of business?”

  “What does it matter?” she said impatiently. “They are gone.”

  I couldn’t stand it any more. “Can I have an olive?” I asked.

  She shoved her glass toward me. “Take them.”

  I slid an olive off the plastic sword with my teeth. The vermouth tasted strong. “I want you to know that Markham’s is honoring Évariste’s memory by serving his food this weekend.”

  She pulled the ebony stick from her mouth and demanded, “Who is making his food?”

  Her reaction startled me. I thought she might think Ursula had been sprung from jail. “The restaurant’s sous chef, Trevor Shaw, is filling in.”

  “Mon dieu!” she cried, leaping to her feet and sweeping into the elevator that had opened as if it understood French.

  “Mon dieu,” I repeated, leaning back on the couch. Trevor?

  Brian returned to check on us. “Everything okay over here?” He picked up BonBon’s empty martini glass and napkin in one expert move.

  “Just dandy,” I said. “I hear you’ve been kickboxing.”

  “Not very well.” He winced as he extended his left arm. “Jamie may need to fill in for a couple more weeks.”

  “Do you know that woman I was with?”

  “Not by name, until today when she gave me her room number. But she comes in here a lot. One of the other guys she’s with usually buys the drinks.” He laughed. “I had to learn how to say ‘No smoking, please’ in French because she always pretends not to understand when I say it in English.”

  “Three guys?” I asked. “Mid-fifties, dressed in suits?”

  He nodded. “Usually three. Sometimes four.”

  Mon dieu.

  I considered following BonBon to her room, but she was upset, or maybe insane, and I didn’t want a replay of the bloody fries incident. I might need her later, so I let her go and headed back to Markham’s.

  Trevor wasn’t around, or rather, I didn’t see his motorcycle in the parking lot, although at one o’clock it should have been there. He needed to check reservations, oversee the prep, and develop the specials for the evening. Surely he hadn’t already become so full of himself he thought he could skip that part. Not even Mario Batali was that good.

  As I sat in my car thinking about my next move, Trevor roared into the drive and skidded to a stop near the side of the building. I waited for him to park and remove his helmet so I could gauge his mood. He walked with his head down, hands shoved into his front pockets. He didn’t look happy, but that wouldn’t stop me. I met him halfway in the parking lot. He didn’t see me until he stepped on my shadow.

  “Hi Trevor,” I said. “Everything okay?”

  “Poppy, hey, what are you doin’ here?” I’m used to cooks not being excited to see me, but this was a first for Trevor. Everything about him looked disappointed.

  “My last name is on the sign out front,” I joked. “What are you doing here?”

  “I, uh, I’m cookin’ tonight.” He was way off his usual game of banter and flirtation. I had never seen him this serious. Even his cocky standing slouch looked a little meek around the edges.

  “Can I ask you about something?”

  He checked the time on his phone. “I’m way late,” he said, walking past me toward the door. “Later, okay?”

  “I’d prefer to talk now.”

  He stopped and walked back to me. “Yeah, okay.”

  “What were you doing around the time Évariste was killed?”

  A nervous laugh caught in his throat. “What kind of question is that?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he said, “You were stand-in’ right next to me and saw me gettin’ slammed from all the orders, tryin’ to stay out of the weeds.”

  Actually, I hadn’t been in the kitchen when Évariste died, so I couldn’t vouch for Trevor, or Ursula. But he didn’t need to know that. “So, do you think you talked to Belize in her car before or after he was killed?”

  Trevor exhaled hard and looked away. “Before or after?” I demanded. I was getting good at pretending I knew more than I did.

  He squinted up at the sun. “I have no idea.”

  I have always disliked that answer. “No idea about what?”

  Trevor and I roasted on the frying pan of the blacktop like two bratwursts. He turned his head to wipe his upper lip on his sleeve. “Before, okay?” Then he told me he had been dating Belize for a couple of months. She insisted that he not tell anyone and said that if he did, she would deny it and stop seeing him.

  Trevor and Belize? That was like finding out Justin Timberlake was dating Sandra Bernhard. “Do you know why she wanted your relationship to be a secret?”

  “I figured she didn’t want Ursula to find out, which was fine with me. It wasn’t a big deal, except when Évariste put his hairy paws all over her and I had to pretend it didn’t bother me.”

  So that’s what had set him off. “You call threatening him with a meat cleaver pretending it didn’t bother you?”

  He hung his head. “Not one of my finer moments. Poor guy didn’t even know what he did to tick me off.”

  “Belize told me you had a smug look on your face that night in her car. What were you two talking about?”

  “Smug?” He looked surprised. “I wasn’t smug, I was happy. Belize was early-on that night, so she got to leave early, right? Usually when we’re workin’ the same shift, we’d find a way to hook up. If I was already at the restaurant, she’d come to work a few minutes early and call me when she was in the
parkin’ lot. Well, not the parkin’ lot. She’d wait down the street so no one would see us. You know how Ursula is about takin’ personal phone calls, so I’d leave my phone on vibrate and feel it go off in my pocket. Then I’d take a quick break and we’d meet in her car.”

  “How did you get away that night?”

  “I said I burned myself and needed to bandage it. Once I was off the line and in the dry storage, it was easy for me to sneak out the back door.”

  Tributaries of sweat sprang out on my neck and ran down my back and chest toward my waistband, but the heat wasn’t just from the sun. Trevor’s attitude burned me, too. He was the sous chef. He knew better. “I can’t believe you left everyone hanging just so you could feel up some waitress in her car!”

  “Look, normally, I wouldn’t have done that on such a busy night, especially when we were so behind, but I wanted to tell her—” He stopped, then said, “I just wanted to see her.”

  “You wanted to tell her what?”

  His cell phone rang. “It’s Shannon,” he said looking toward the back door, then held up a finger to me while he flipped it open. “I’m almost there,” he said and closed it.

  He started to walk away, but I hooked a finger around his belt loop and drew him back. “Tell me what you wanted to tell Belize.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he said, pulling away.

  “It matters to me and it might matter to Ursula. What were you so smug about?”

  “I told you, I wasn’t smug, I was happy.” His lips tightened then relaxed. “Okay, one night Évariste didn’t want to go back to his hotel, so he asked if I’d go have a drink with him. I took him to the Ginger Man and he was drinkin’ all of these German beers, gettin’ really drunk, and he asked me what would I think about workin’ for him. I told him it would be an honor and a privilege to work with one of the greatest chefs of this century.”

  “You actually said that?”

  He laughed. “I was a little drunk too, plus he loved to hear stuff like that. Anyway, we drink a couple more beers and he offers me a job. He asks me to be his personal sous chef and travel around with him.”

  That explained the change in Évariste’s behavior that Shannon had been so envious of. “Opportunity of a lifetime,” I said.

  He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear. “It would have been. The job would be me preparin’ ingredients for him, then helpin’ him as he worked. I’d be in from the beginnin’ of every recipe. He already took some of my suggestions when he was here. I think that’s why he offered me the job. He said I had a natural talent.”

  “You couldn’t ask for a better compliment. What did Ursula think about her favorite sous chef being drafted by her arch-enemy?”

  “She didn’t know yet. Évariste didn’t want me to tell anyone. That night at the Ginger Man, right after I accepted the job, he got serious for a minute. He said it would be best if no one at Markham’s knew about his plans. He needed to finalize some other deal before my job was official.” He lit his cigarette from a pack of matches. “I told him I had to tell Ursula so she could start thinkin’ about a replacement for me. After another pint of Guinness, he finally said okay, I could tell her, but I should make sure she didn’t tell anyone else. I was supposed to let her know the night of the party.”

  “You were okay with leaving Belize?”

  “Yeah. We weren’t datin’ that long. It’s not like I’m in love with her or anything.”

  “Just territorial.”

  “What can I say?”

  “Évariste still wanted you to work for him even after you threatened him?” I have never understood how men could want to kill each other one day, then be best buddies the next.

  “Business is business and Évariste recognized talent when he saw it.” He smiled. He did look a little smug. “I thought I had blown it with him, but I apologized later, and he said everything was cool.” He tapped ashes onto the blacktop. “To be honest, Belize is startin’ to bug me. She’s real secretive, and always makin’ a big deal out of little things.”

  “What is she secretive about?”

  He glanced at the back door. “Besides us datin’? Everything. She never told me where she lived, never talked about her family. And you know how the waiters always brag about how much money they make or if they get a really big tip? Belize never does that. That’s part of what made me notice her in the first place. She seemed different.”

  “Is something going on with her and Will?”

  He pulled up the bottom of his t-shirt and dried his forehead. “I thought the same thing. When I asked her about it, she said she was a waitress and he was her manager, and that was all there was.”

  “Do you think they’re having an affair?”

  “If I’m her type, then he’s definitely not. But I get the feelin’ he knows we’re datin’. I don’t know why Belize would have told him of all people, but I think she did.”

  “Do you think—”

  His cell phone rang again but he didn’t answer it. “I really have to get in there.”

  “Just one more question.”

  He looked up at the sky. “Pah-pee!”

  “Why did Belize come back to the restaurant that night?”

  “No idea.” He started toward the back door. “She told me she was goin’ home.”

  I followed him. “If Belize found Évariste on her way back inside, why didn’t you see him?”

  He stopped and his face turned serious. “I don’t know. I was so wound up from everything—the busy night, the offer from Évariste, seein’ Belize. I was runnin’ to get back, so I wasn’t payin’ attention to anything except how mad Ursula would be at me for leavin’ the line for so long. I wish I had found him. To spare Belize.”

  I had lied to Trevor. I had one more question. “Do you know why BonBon would be concerned that you’re cooking Évariste’s recipes?”

  The back door banged open and Shannon stood in the doorway. “Dude, where have you been?”

  Trevor looked relieved and vaulted past me into the kitchen.

  Shannon held the door open. “Are you coming or going?” he asked me.

  “Going,” I said.

  I wanted to get home and sift through all I had learned in the past few hours, but since my home had been barbequed and I didn’t have a key to the Johns’ house, I called Jamie and asked if he needed to review any coffee houses while I bounced around ideas with him. We agreed on Mozart’s.

  It was too hot to sit outside, and I found Jamie waiting for me in the second room at a table near the front windows that overlooked Lake Austin. Two empty espresso cups sat next to his reporter’s notepad. He watched a boat loaded with bikini models motor slowly toward the dam. A woman pretending to read a book watched him from two tables over.

  I sat down across from him. “The last time I wore a bathing suit was when we went swimming in Barton Springs last summer.”

  “That was a great day,” he said.

  I hadn’t meant to stir that particular memory and quickly changed the subject. “If the parking wasn’t so horrendous, I’d come here more often.”

  “Parking will get a mention in my review.” He pointed to a cup. “You want one?”

  “Maybe later.”

  He clasped his hands together and laid them on the table. “So, what has Ursula’s private dickette learned today?”

  I told him about overhearing Will and Belize arguing in Markham’s kitchen, then about talking to Belize in her car, then my visit with Ursula and my conversation with Trevor. I skipped over my meeting with BonBon for the time being because the murder was more important.

  “You have been busy, haven’t you?”

  “And lucky.”

  “That gives us one less suspect, doesn’t it? If Trevor was going to be apprentice to one of the hottest chefs in the world, he’d be a fool to kill him.”

  “You’re right, but a lot of murders don’t make sense, so I’m not ready to rule him out. You hit on a reason for Trevor no
t to kill Évariste, but he could have plenty of other reasons to do it. His jealousy over Belize could eclipse his career aspirations.”

  “From what you told me, he doesn’t seem that into her.”

  “He could have been lying about his feelings for her.”

  “It does seem odd that Trevor didn’t see a red blob lying in the grass on his way back inside. He could have killed Évariste on the way to or from Belize’s car.”

  “Belize could have killed him, then, on her way back to the restaurant. She stabs him, then I come into the picture and she has to wait me out, then she runs inside screaming and says she found him.”

  “That’s possible. And we still can’t rule out Ursula,” he said. “Especially since she knew Évariste owned two percent of Markham’s and was going to be her boss.”

  “Ursula didn’t know about that until I told her.”

  “I thought you said she did know.”

  “She thought Mitch was in the negotiation stage with Évariste, but didn’t know he already owned two percent.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “That doesn’t seem like something that should be kept from the chef.”

  “This is Mitch we’re talking about. He plays a lot of things close to the vest. He didn’t even tell his own daughter.”

  “Regardless, whether Ursula knew it was a done deal or thought it was pending, Évariste was a threat.”

  “I know it looks bad,” I said, “and if things proceed against her, she’s in it for the long haul. So I need to find the real killer toot sweet.”

  “I have no doubt you will.” He stood and stretched, his t-shirt riding up, revealing a glimpse of his innie and a hint of a six pack. His biceps weren’t the only things he had been toning. He looked down and caught me staring.

  “I’ll take that coffee now,” I said. My face felt warm.

  “Coming right up, babe.”

  When he returned, I asked him about Will’s business partners.

  “Still working on that. I haven’t found out anything through my restaurant sources, so I’m widening the net. Knowing their names would help.”