If You Can't Stand the Heat

by Robin Allen

  Mrs. Luna turned to me. “This must be your lovely wife.” She extracted her hand from John’s, who looked as pale as an uncooked biscuit, and lightly touched my arm.

  I took a moment to enjoy the look of panic on his face, then said, “Poppy Smith. We’re so honored to be showing Rodrigo’s work tonight.”

  John resumed normal breathing, and Mrs. Luna and I made small conversation about her son’s life’s work. She took me around to see some of her favorite pieces, describing how Rodrigo set traditional Aztec images in stained glass, using old window sashes as frames. John Without stayed on me like a little boy tracking the ice cream man, making sure I didn’t expose this farce to Mrs. Luna.

  We stopped in front of an eight-foot-tall portrait of a man in a colorful headdress, his barrel chest and muscular legs bare, his vitals concealed behind a blink of a loin cloth. “Montezuma,” Mrs. Luna announced proudly. “My Rodrigo spent two years on this.”

  “Incredible,” I said, hoping she didn’t notice that the wife of an art dealer couldn’t come up with something more arty and descriptive. I turned to John. “Darling, don’t you have some shorts like that?”

  John Without made a sound like a Chihuahua choking on gristle, but Mrs. Luna laughed. I could tell she liked me and probably found John to be obsequious and perfidious, an accurate reading. I thought she would appreciate me putting him in his place.

  Mrs. Luna led us past an Aztec calendar, then collages of doves, fish, and cats, then stopped in front of a face with large round eyes and two tusky fangs. “Rodrigo’s first piece,” she said. “A Tlaloc mask.”

  “You must be so proud of him,” I said to her, then to John. “It’s like looking in a mirror, isn’t it darling?”

  My stand-in fake husband turned a lovely shade of eggplant, then he took a deep breath and asked, “Don’t you have that thing you need to get back to?” I didn’t know his voice could get that high.

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Luna. “And we were having so much fun.”

  “John’s right,” I said. “I’m the assistant manager on the late shift at Wendy’s and we’re cleaning grease traps tonight.”

  John’s eye began to twitch, but I saw another reporter coming toward me and didn’t have time to revel in his discomfort. “I hope to see you again soon, Mrs. Luna,” I said, shaking her hand quickly. Then I punched John in the arm. “See you at home, darling.”

  I threaded my way through the throng of art lovers, feeling a little sad about deceiving such a nice woman, and feeling a lot disgusted that she really believed I had said “I do” to that patronizing little elf.

  I couldn’t leave, though, not without knowing what happened to John With. I found him in the stock room lining up empty frames according to size. “Are you okay?” I asked, closing the door.

  He looked up, his eyes red and puffy. My heart hurt for him. “We’re losing our lease,” he whispered.

  “No, John.” I moved toward him.

  He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “We found out today. Someone bought the whole block. They’re going to build—”

  “Condos.”

  Fresh tears started. “Everything we’ve worked for …”

  “You’ll find another space.” I felt like an idiot for saying something so trite, especially when I knew it wasn’t true. Four Corners had a sweet location with plenty of parking and similar art businesses surrounding it. It would be hard to find another space that even came close.

  I put my arms around his waist and laid my head on his chest.

  John touched his chin to the top of my head. “Thanks Poppy Markham.”

  I pulled away, still holding onto his waist, and looked up into his troubled face. “It’s Poppy Smith tonight.”

  Then the door opened and John Without and Mrs. Luna entered just in time to hear me say, “but Poppy Jones has a better ring to it.”

  The next morning, I showered and dressed quickly so I wouldn’t have to face the Johns. I had left the stock room saying, “Sorry you had to find out like this, darling.” At least I had left Mrs. Luna with no doubt that the Johns were straight.

  On Sunday, visiting hours at the jail flip-flopped from Saturday’s hours for N through Z, so instead of waiting an entire day to see Ursula, I could see her first thing. I signed in at 7:00 am and waited for an hour. I almost didn’t recognize her when she walked in the room. Her vibrant red hair had matted into a dull penny brown, and bruise-colored circles echoed under her eyes. She looked worn out and defeated. In the kitchen, she was always in control, and always had things to be in control of. But here, she controlled nothing, not even who she talked to or when.

  She snatched up the receiver. “Mom says Ari Gross is in the country and will be in town tonight. Maybe he can talk them into setting bail.”

  “Maybe,” I said, trying to inject hope into the word. “In the meantime, I’m still working on proving that you’re innocent.”

  “Having any luck?” She smiled with one side of her mouth, making her comment seem derisive, but I didn’t hear it in her voice.

  “I think so.” I didn’t want to overwhelm her with information, so I took things one at a time, starting with Belize and Trevor. “Did you know they were secretly dating?”

  “No. But what does Trevor’s dalliance with some nothing little waitress have to do with who killed Évariste?”

  “Maybe nothing. But Belize is the reason Trevor threatened Évariste with a meat cleaver. Do you think something was going on with Belize and Évariste?”

  She held up her hand. “Please, Poppy, the bologna is making me sick enough without that nauseating image. But to answer your question, I doubt it. If Belize was having an affair with a famous French chef, she seems like the type of girl who’d want everyone in the restaurant to know about it. And even if she was, but managed to keep it a secret, there would at least be rumors, and I’ve never heard any.”

  “Say there was something going on. Do you think Trevor was jealous enough to kill?”

  “It’s possible. But why would he use my knife? What good would it do to frame me?”

  “Well, with Évariste gone and you in jail, he’s the acting chef at Markham’s.”

  “Belize is a money-hungry opportunist,” she said, not willing to admit Trevor’s possible role in this. “Maybe she killed that French fornicator and framed me to ensure Trevor’s rise to the top so she’d be dating the chef at Markham’s.”

  I told her about Évariste offering Trevor a personal sous chef job.

  “That explains their sudden coziness,” she said. “Trevor’s not as tough as he pretends to be. Évariste would have scalloped his potatoes within six months.” She started to sound like her old self. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night. Are you sure Évariste owns two percent of Markham’s?”

  “Now it belongs to BonBon.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t have aspirations to take Évariste’s place in the kitchen.”

  “Trevor wouldn’t be happy about seeing her, either.” I told her about Jamie’s fake interview with BonBon, and about the flash drive and BonBon’s attempts to get it from Trevor. “Do you know about a deal Mitch was making with Évariste?”

  She pushed lank hair behind her ear. “Just what Mitch told me about partnering with Évariste for his name.”

  “His name?”

  “That’s what he told me. Mitch was in negotiations with Évariste to rename the restaurant ‘Évariste Bontecou’s Markham’s Grille and Cocktails’ or something like that. Like Emeril does.” She snorted. “Emeril probably hasn’t cooked in half the restaurants his name is on. Évariste would have been like that.” She traced a dirty crack in the Plexiglas with her thumbnail.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this name deal before?”

  She looked at me, confused. “You already knew. You said Nina told you.”

  _____

  When I had gone to sleep the previous night, all of the pieces of these puzzles had been tumbling around in m
y head, but Ursula had given me a piece I hadn’t even known was missing. It seemed that Évariste was involved in two different partnerships: one with Will and his investors that gave him two percent of Markham’s, the other with Mitch to use his name. That changed everything.

  I called Jamie as soon as I left the jail and asked him to meet me at his office. I told him that I was standing in line for the only thing I knew would both apologize for waking him up that early and get him out of bed: migas tacos with extra cheese and jalapeños from Taco Xpress.

  Taco Xpress is an Austin landmark that didn’t sell out to developers. Well, it did, but it worked a deal to rebuild the restaurant a few hundred yards down the street, bigger, funkier, and more colorful. On the weekends, the place is impossibly busy. But the number of cars in the parking lot in no way indicates the chaos inside because it’s within walking distance of several neighborhoods. At 9:00 am, the line already snaked out the door.

  A cross-section of Austin had descended that morning—college kids and yuppies in their orange and white UT gear, hippies in their cut-off shorts, young families whose babies were young enough to sleep through all the noise, couples sitting across from each other reading the paper. Jamie and I used to do that. If he was quietly absorbed in a story, he would tap my foot with his under the table every so often to let me know he was thinking about me.

  As I neared the counter, I automatically scanned for obvious health code violations, like missing hair restraints on cooks or employees drinking from open cups instead of ones with lids and straws. I saw nothing.

  Twenty minutes later, I had my hand inside a bag of warm tacos, feeling around for the extra containers of hot sauce I had requested. I drove to Jamie’s office, a large open space downtown near the railroad tracks that he shared with a graphic designer and two freelance writers. Jamie hadn’t arrived yet, so I sat on the stoop and rolled my idea around, remaining cautiously optimistic that I had dug long enough and deep enough, and been lucky enough, to hit something solid.

  I jumped up when I saw Jamie’s car, feeling a little wobbly from the anticipation of what we could discover and elation at seeing him again. Being with him the past few days had started to heal my heart. Maybe I was ready to forgive him.

  He dressed in black jeans, hiking boots, and a green t-shirt. His wet hair hung in his eyes and he hadn’t shaved. He looked better than I knew he felt. Early sets with Zzaj often turned into late-night jam sessions, with lots of beer to call down the muse. “Tacos, hot sauce, coffee,” he said, “in that order.”

  I held up the bag of tacos as he unlocked the front door. He let me enter first, then flipped light switches and turned on the air conditioner. “I’ll make coffee,” I said on my way to the kitchen.

  I returned with two steaming cups and waited for Jamie to “Heaven” and “perfection” his way through two tacos. When he had come back to life, he asked, “How’s the jailbird?”

  “Dirty and grouchy, but that’s not why I’m here. I need you to look something up for me.”

  He wiped grease from his fingers with a paper napkin, then sat up in his chair. With me instructing over his shoulder, he punched in some names and addresses. We both watched as the information came up on the screen.

  “Would you look at that,” he said. “Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego. They’re all there.” He grinned up at me. “Nice work, Detective Poppycakes. Now what?”

  “First, I want to find out how Mitch hooked up with these guys so we can figure out a way to get unhooked. Then I’ll keep working on who killed Évariste.” I stopped. “But I guess I’ll have to wait until Tuesday when we open again to talk to Trevor. Dang. I feel like I’m so close to figuring this out.”

  “I could find out where Trevor lives,” he offered.

  “Belize too?”

  “You got it.” He stood and looked into my eyes. “Sally Field and Jeff Bridges.”

  “Stay Hungry?”

  He wrapped his hands around my wrists and pulled me to him. “Kiss Me Goodbye.”

  Jamie leaned into me and I closed my eyes, excitement mixed with fright as I felt myself sliding over the cliff.

  The front door scraped open. “Jamie?” a female voice called. “You’re here bright and …” she hesitated when she saw us, “early.”

  The girl with bad timing was Kimberlee, one of the writers who shared his office. She dressed like she was going to meet some of her sorority sisters for Sunday brunch, which in Austin meant a Greek life t-shirt, running shorts, too much makeup, and flip-flops.

  “Sorry,” she said, disappointed. Was she the one?

  “That’s okay,” I said, pulling away from Jamie, glad for this unlikely rescue. What was I thinking, anyway? I was this close to kissing him! No preparation, no list of pros and cons, no evaluation about whether it was a good idea, which it certainly was not. Yes, he was handsome, chivalrous, smart, and sweet, but those golden nuggets couldn’t tip the scale against the lead brick of my broken heart.

  “There’s coffee in the kitchen,” Jamie said to her. He still held my hands, but he knew he had lost the moment. “Almost nearly,” he said, letting go of me.

  “But not quite hardly,” I finished.

  He combed his fingers through his hair, which had started to dry into long, shiny curls. “I made a mistake, Poppy. One I’ve regretted every day for the past three months.”

  “I know. It still hurts, though. A lot.”

  “What can I do to make it up to you?”

  I knew Jamie would do whatever I asked, but what could I ask? That he pay me money? What’s the market price for loyalty? That he take me on a trip? In what country do facts get erased? That he give me his daily itinerary and call me every hour so I would know his whereabouts at all times? That would make me his probation officer, not his girlfriend. And it wouldn’t make me feel better. No “thing” could make up for the fact that he had broken my trust.

  “I just need some more time, okay?”

  _____

  I had been traveling the triangle of my neighborhood, the restaurant, and the hospital so often that I found myself on Lamar and driving toward Markham’s before I realized what I was doing.

  I had intended to go to the hospital, get Nina out of the way with some raw meat stuffed with tranquilizers, then demand answers from Mitch. But since I was already at Markham’s, I figured I would do a little foraging. If I could snoop around in Will’s office, I probably wouldn’t have to talk to Mitch at all, except when I accepted his thanks for alerting him to the grim future of his restaurant that Jamie and I had discovered.

  I pulled around to the back, unlocked the door, and walked through the dark kitchen to Will’s office. The door was locked, but that wouldn’t stop me this time. Long ago, my brother had taught me the very necessary art of lock picking. At the time, I never thought I would have to use that skill, but it often comes in handy during my inspections.

  I pulled the tools from my backpack, squatted in front of the door, and got to work. The last time I picked a lock had been a few months ago. The manager of a popular deli claimed he had lost the key to his only deep freezer, so I offered to open it for him. That time, I had worked with bright lights and no agenda, and it still took half an hour. When I opened the lid, a bloody deer carcass full of buckshot was sitting on top of the frozen lox and bagels.

  The third pin had just clicked into place when I heard, “Most people like to wait at the bar.”

  “Will,” I said, popping up like a groundhog. My tools clinked as I dropped them into my open backpack. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m running checks today, remember?”

  No, I did not remember.

  “I thought I made it clear that you didn’t need to sign them,” he said.

  “You did.”

  “Then why are you here?” Will looked down at the doorknob to let me know he knew what I had been doing.

  “I wouldn’t have to break in if you’d given me a key like I asked.”

&
nbsp; Will shook his head. “As I told you before, I don’t hand out the keys; Mitch does.”

  He unlocked the door and I pushed into the office before he could shut me out. “He trusts you to sign checks, but not to hand out keys? That’s a strange place to draw a line.”

  “I think so, too.” He closed the door, then took a seat behind the desk. “I’m only here for an hour, so what can I help you with?”

  I sat across from him. “I want to know about the partnership.”

  I saw a flicker of anger in his eyes, then he said, “Also something you need to speak with Mitch about.”

  “I will about the one involving Markham’s,” I said, “but I’m curious about the other partnerships. The ones you had with Évariste.”

  He placed his hands on the desk. “What about them?”

  “Why did all of the restaurants close a few months after y’all invested in them?”

  He looked like he had swallowed peroxide. Oh, how I love catching people off-guard. And oh, how I love being right.

  Will cleared his throat then said, “Some restaurants take on investors because they want to expand, but many are in financial trouble. I’m sure you know this. My partners and I lent them money, and Évariste and I lent them our restaurant expertise.” He sighed. “But in spite of our best efforts, they didn’t make it.”

  “That makes sense. But what I’d really like to know is whether it’s just a coincidence that those restaurants and the surrounding businesses are now high-rise condos owned by you and your partners.”

  He sat back in his chair. “Poppy—”

  I pointed an accusing finger at him and raised my voice. “Is that your M.O., Will? You swoop into a dying restaurant, promising to help them with money and a famous chef, but you and Évariste run it even further into the ground so they have to close and sell to you? Is that what you were planning to do to Markham’s?”

  Will stared at me. I often use a calculated silence as a tactic during restaurant inspections, but I could see him calculating something in his silence. What I saw frightened me.