Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “Probably.”

  “Have you found the honey?” Victor asked.

  “Not yet. But I know where it is.”

  “Put back the meat,” Buzz said.

  He nodded. “I knew you’d figure it out, Carol.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Victor left, toting his now empty ice chest. He didn’t ask if we’d tell about his attempted theft. Either he knew we wouldn’t, or he assumed he couldn’t do anything about it if we did.

  “How did you know Victor would be in here?” Buzz asked.

  “I didn’t. That’s not what I expected at all.”

  The Use-First shelf was at shoulder height for me. I sat down the rolling pin and shoved aside containers.

  “Carol, I told you I’d have Ray clean that.”

  I squatted and peered up through the wire shelf. I pulled off my chef’s smock and rolled up my sleeves.

  “Today,” Buzz added.

  “Help me.”

  “Help you what?”

  I pushed a five-gallon, white bucket full of dill pickles to the edge of the shelf. “Lift this down to my shelf.”

  “You want me to put junk on your shelf?”

  “Come on, Buzz. This is no time to joke around.”

  He hoisted down the heavy bucket. “What is it time for, Carol?” I handed him one of Ray’s unlabeled, plastic, mystery containers.

  While he held it, I pried open the lid. Inside was what looked like a squash puree. I stuck my hand into the goop. “Nope. Not here.” I grabbed Buzz’s towel from my shelf, wiped my hand and reached up again.

  My arm froze. This was silly. Fortier wouldn’t want to get dirty to retrieve his honey. I tapped my lip and inspected the containers. At the end of the shelf sat a gallon glass jar filled with a Cajun-spiced cornmeal mix. It didn’t need to be in the refrigerator except that grains could hatch weevils and the cold decreased the possibility. This cornmeal was Fortier’s special blend, something the other chefs wouldn’t dare touch. And the meal would shake cleanly away from the jar.

  Excited, I crossed the room and lifted down the jar.

  Buzz set the plastic container on my shelf and held the heavy jar for me. I screwed off the lid, plunged my arm into the cornmeal, and fished for the prize. I pulled up a jar dripping golden grains. A puckered Christmas lick-and-stick tag clung to the red and white ribbon around the jar’s neck. I read: To: My honey. From: Your honey. The penmanship was feminine and tentative.

  The door sucked open.

  “You did find it,” Victor said, as though he had to see the fact to believe it. “Ever since you came to the house, I knew you would. You were like a woman possessed.”

  Buzz shot me a look.

  “You know about that?” I asked Victor.

  He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I’m the one who had to tell The Kid our visitor wasn’t Suzanne.”

  His gaze returned to our eyes. It held a silent plea.

  I quite seriously considered becoming an accessory to murder. When I looked at Buzz, I could tell he was also thinking about it. I supposed we already were accessories having allowed Victor time to make a phone call, although, I rationalized, at that moment I had not yet found the evidence.

  I sucked on my lip. “She hit me, Victor.”

  “I am very sorry about that, Carol.” He looked contrite. “She probably thought she could get that honey, as long as you didn’t find it, but she got scared with you coming in here every day.”

  “You knew all this time?”

  “I wondered. Ever since that puto got my honey.”

  “Why didn’t you take the honey just now?”

  “Oh, I am not as clever as you, Carol. I didn’t know it was here.”

  Of course not, I thought, but Esperanza did because she knew exactly the type of thing Fortier would do. Maybe Delores had even told her. “Why did she kill him?”

  Victor shrugged. “You can’t tell your kids who to like. They jus’ hate you. I think Delores loved the puto. But like a father. He shoulda been her stepfather. Instead he gave Esperanza money and said, ‘Get an abortion.’ Well she did,” Victor said. “I am ashamed I didn’t kill him then. He still came around. I couldn’t believe it. Finally, I put a knife to his throat and he got the message. When he got with Delores, it felt sick. He used to play with her, take her on the swings.”

  I tightened my grip on the jar and picked up the rolling pin. With Buzz there, it seemed unlikely Victor would lunge for the jar, but I wasn’t about to end up with another fat lip. “Victor, this is a tough decision for me, but Esperanza will need a good lawyer.”

  “Delores was the only baby Esperanza had left,” Victor said, “and Fortier was going to kill her. In the heart.” He clasped the left side of his chest as though it ached.

  “I have to call the police, Victor.”

  He smiled. He knew that I knew he had made a phone call, a secret we could never speak. With his knowledge of safe houses, in ten hours or so, Esperanza would disappear into Mexico.

  “It’s what you have to do, Carol.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Chad and I sat on the back steps. Lola napped in the crushed Peruvian lilies. I held Chad’s hand, but the way his foot jiggled told me that he needed his nicotine fix. This probably wasn’t a good time to talk. But it had taken weeks for me to gather the courage, and I felt ready now.

  “Chad, what would you think if I decided to make a career change?”

  “And become a cop?” His voice was almost surly and he retracted his hand.

  “No. I’m a little old for that.”

  He patted the pocket of his flannel shirt.

  “They’re on the table,” I said.

  He ignored this. “Let’s see. Not a cop, then a private investigator?”

  “Sorta.”

  “Sorta?” He stood. The yard was too small for pacing. He looked through the sliding glass door to his package of Vantage on the table.

  “Remember how I mentioned Rat Dog? She traces down deadbeat dads? Maybe I could do work like that. Not too dangerous.”

  “The way this case was ‘not too dangerous’?”

  “Esperanza wouldn’t have killed me.”

  “She killed Fortier.”

  That was the bottom line. Poisoned him. I remembered that summer afternoon with Patsy and Suzanne. The memory stirred up guilt the way nudging beached seaweed stirred up gnats. Had my glib holding forth trickled back to the kitchen? Both Suzanne and Patsy loved to gab. Had I inadvertently planted the idea for murder in Esperanza’s head? Had she taken my book Deadly Doses out of my locker and leafed through it for ideas? Doubt and fear swarmed around me, thick, but amorphous. I couldn’t bat away the feelings, but I wasn’t ready, yet, to voice them. Clearly, though, I needed some productive way to use the plotting, dark part of my character, so that it didn’t spill uncontrollably into harm.

  As though he sensed my emotional turmoil, Chad sat and took my hand again. “Do you think they’ll catch Esperanza?”

  I shook my head. “No. But she may never see Delores, or Victor, or Abundio. She’s lost the most important thing in her life—her family.”

  “But she saved her daughter. Her motivation was noble,” he said. “Not like greed or revenge.” He rose and stretched. “Speaking of noble, I’m going to see a hypnotist.”

  Inwardly I applauded, but I didn’t say anything on the off chance that he meant to see a hypnotist for a reason other than to stop smoking. He kept stretching elaborately, as though warming up for a big event.

  “I would have tried hypnotism before, but I hate the idea of losing control of myself.”

  “If you pick someone reputable, I don’t think you have to worry. He won’t make you oink like a pig or anything.”

  “It’s not that,” Chad said with irritation.

  Enough irritation that I almost wanted him to go take a puff.

  All right, it wasn’t that, so what was it? He didn’t want to lose control. That was understandable given what had ha
ppened to him when he was little, given what his life had been like when he didn’t control it. I took a deep breath.

  “Sorry.” I wished my mother were present to witness the moment. She would have collapsed on top of Lola in the flowerbed. Sorry was a rare word in my lexicon.

  Chad smiled grimly.

  I could see now that the topic of the conversation hadn’t really changed. Indirectly, we had been discussing control the whole time. In his own way, Chad was apologizing for needing to control me, for not letting me go, not encouraging a career change.

  And, for once, with the smoking, I had backed off, released my control, letting him find a solution. I wondered, sadly, if Buzz would find one.

  I clapped. “I’m so glad you’re going to try this, Chad!” One hurdle at a time, I figured. I had a lot of practical stuff to sort through before I could make a career change.

  Chad glanced toward the cigarettes on the table and then sat back on the steps. “So what happened with Suzanne and Eldon?” He switched to this lighter subject to keep himself from the cellophane packet.

  “Well,” I said with enthusiasm, “Suzanne asked Eldon for days off.”

  “Days off! Whoa! But from what you’ve told me, wouldn’t he just give them to her.”

  “Oh, he did.”

  “So, what’s the punch line?”

  “Suzanne told him she needed the time because her herpes were flaring up. She figured that would discourage his interest.”

  We laughed together for the first time in weeks. It felt good.

  ~*~

  Lebkuchen

  Unlike Carol Sabala, most of us do not have a professional bakery at our fingertips. Lebkuchen is not as easy to whip up as chocolate chip cookies. A person needs to be motived. For me, the motivation is love of a good spice cookie.

  Here’s my recipe, a modification from Betty Crocker since I don’t like things as sweet as most recipes dictate, because I couldn’t find citron in April when I went to make the lebkuchen, (I’m sure it would be more available during the Christmas, fruitcake-baking season), and because I didn’t have any allspice. You get the idea. It’s not really Betty Crocker at all! I also use organic ingredients as much as possible.

  3/8 cup honey

  1/2 cup black strap molasses

  3/4 cup brown sugar

  1 egg

  1 tsp. grated lemon peel

  1 tbsp. lemon juice

  2-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

  1 tsp. each of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg

  1/2 tsp. soda

  2 tbsp. dried orange peel, dampened ahead of time to render soft so you don’t break anyone’s tooth!

  1/3 cup chopped walnuts

  Optional icing: I used my mom’s simple powder sugar/milk mix to create a thin icing to brush across the cookies. If you’ve never made this icing, start with 1/2 cup powdered sugar and add the tiniest dab of milk to it. Stir until all lumps are dissolved. Add miniscule amounts of milk until you have a glaze. Remember that the icing will continue to melt/thin on top the warm cookie.

  Combine the honey and molasses in a saucepan and heat to boiling. Cool. Stir in sugar, egg, lemon peel and juice. Mix in the other ingredients and chill for at least 8 hours.

  Heat oven to 400 degrees. For one sheet of cookies, scoop about 1/3 of the dough onto a lightly floured board. Keep the remaining dough refrigerated. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters. Place 1 inch apart on greased baking sheet. Bake 10- 12 minutes.

  Remove from baking sheet. Ice while warm. Cool and store in an airtight container with a slice of orange. Makes 3-5 dozen, depending on the cookie cutter size.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from One Tough Cookie, Vinnie’s next Carol Sabala Mystery.

  One Tough Cookie

  A Carol Sabala Mystery, Book Two

  ONE

  1994

  Thirty teenagers stared at me. They were neither rude nor terribly interested. Alvina Jameson, the teacher, had herded the students into two concentric semicircles before the stainless steel table. I wanted to shoo them back a full step. I could hear one kid’s wheezy breathing.

  “I thought she’d be a man,” a tall boy in the outer circle whispered.

  A tiny girl with long, long hair whipped around. “Geez, Chendo, Mrs. Jameson told us her name was Carol Sabala.”

  Despite the boy’s assumption about a baker, society had cut inroads into sexism. About one third of the cooking class was male. A few of the students appeared mildly curious about what I would concoct with the flour, yeast, eggs, almond extract, and sugar. I was a little curious, too. I’d made Danish dough hundreds of times, but never in such a small quantity, and never for an audience. Of course, it didn’t matter if the recipe flopped, as I’d lugged in a five-gallon bucket of chilled, prepared dough for the actual baking.

  The group hovered with limited jockeying, and my admiration soared for Alvina Jameson, who smiled encouragingly at me from the end of the table. I rolled up the sleeves of my chef’s jacket, and pushed up the cuffs of the pink turtleneck under it.

  “First you need flour...”

  A couple of students snickered, which disconcerted me. I had not intended to be funny. “I’m so used to mixing dough to make two or three hundred Danishes, that generally I don’t measure anything.”

  “See, Mrs. Jameson,” the tall boy said, “she’s a professional cook and she doesn’t measure.” The boy had long-lashed eyes stuck in a remarkably clear brown face.

  Mrs. Jameson responded with a soft “Chendo,” and a finger to her lips.

  The beauty of Chendo’s skin made him seem nerdy to me. Apparently stepping on a high school campus caused one to revert to stereotypes.

  I hadn’t looked forward to this presentation. Eldon, my boss, had pressured me to come, saying the demonstration would be good P.R. A reporter from the Register Pajaronian was supposed to be here. No such person was in evidence.

  I yammered about “proofing the yeast,” and smiled when some kid whispered about the muscles in my forearms, the result of years spent spiking volleyballs and stirring batches of dough.

  I’d acquiesced to Eldon, the kitchen manager, for two reasons. First, it was useless to fight him on issues involving the image of Archibald’s kitchen, where I was the main baker. I sighed. Going on ten years. Most of my adult life. Second, he’d hinted that there was a “mystery” for me to solve at the school, that Alvina Jameson wanted someone unofficial to “check into.” I was flattered. I’d gained a reputation, at least among the kitchen staff, because I’d solved a murder case, but that had been over two years ago. I’d toyed with the idea of becoming a private investigator, but my husband Chad had been, and continued to be, dead set against it.

  Eldon knew which buttons to push to get me to comply with his wishes. We had, though, compromised on my dress. I had agreed to wear the top half of our uniform, the white chef’s jacket and chef’s hat, if I could forgo the creepy hound’s tooth pants for regular jeans.

  “I don’t think that’s the right image,” Eldon insisted. “It doesn’t look professional.”

  “I’ll believe I’m a professional,” I replied, “when I get paid like one.”

  “That outfit would not accurately represent the way we dress at Archibald’s.”

  “How am I going to check out this mystery for your friend if I stick out like a maraschino?”

  His soft face twisted into a moue of disapproval. “Mrs. Jameson is not that kind of friend.”

  As I finished the Danish dough and hefted the bowl over to Alvina Jameson, I wondered how she and Eldon did know each other. I rolled the already cooled, manageable dough from the five-gallon bucket. The demonstration was going well. When I lapsed into silences, Alvina breezily filled them. “Look, class, at how she rolls the dough. A light touch.”

  “Do bakers make good money?” The boy who asked was as tall as Chendo, but filled out and beefy. He wore a red cap twisted backwards.

  I f
elt like telling him that every twist of his cap shaved off I.Q. points, but instead I said, “No. I, fortunately, have a husband who works.”

  “Do you have any kids?” The girl was the one with the Godiva hair who’d set Chendo straight about my gender. She was so tiny only her chest and smooth, soft face showed above the table.

  Alvina Jameson shot the girl a look to say the question was inappropriate, but the girl tipped her head of luxurious brown hair and gazed at me.

  “I used to,” I said dryly, “until I got this new recipe for pot pies.” I enjoyed watching her figure it out. Her dark eyes popped. “I’ll demonstrate that recipe next time Mrs. Jameson invites me to speak.”

  Eldon had supplied me with a generous two-quart container of expensive Danish filling, a mixture of marzipan, cream cheese, sugar, and slivered almonds. I brushed a thin layer onto the rolled dough, and sliced the dough into sixty strips.

  “Do you always have to wear that dorky hat?” the beefy kid asked.

  “Javier!” Mrs. Jameson scolded.

  That was a hell of a question given his backward cap, but I kept my voice neutral. “It’s either this dorky hat or a hair net.” Thank God I’d won the argument with Eldon about the pants.

  “I’d rather wear a hair net,” he pushed.

  “Not if you had all the hair I have.” My braided mane hung down my back, any loose auburn wisps secured under the hat rim. I picked up one of the dough strips and twisted it like a locker room towel for snapping.

  “Wow,” Javier said sarcastically.

  Mrs. Jameson edged close to his big shoulder. It didn’t seem possible that she could intimidate him, but Javier wiggled, turned from her and wilted.

  In about one second, I wrapped the dough around my forefinger into a Danish. I picked up another and another, fast as a machine, and I could see the kids grow suitably impressed. Chendo offered a genuine, “Wow.” Showing off, I made Danishes with my eyes closed and then I shaped a few behind my back.