Why was life so . . . confusing, upsetting, hard? It wasn’t supposed to be this way, was it? Being a grown-up really could suck.
And here I had thought that when I became a grown-up, I would have all the answers. But all I seemed to have right now were questions. What was going on with Jean-Charles, Fiona, Desiree, Adone, Chef Gregor, and a scientist from UC-Berkeley? And with two murders, this certainly seemed to be about far more than a truffle, no matter the uniqueness. But if it wasn’t about a truffle, then what?
A world-renowned chef, I seriously doubted Jean-Charles could be some closet murderer. Although Romeo had certainly seemed open to the idea, which I both understood and resented. I had to admit that each of us has murder in us—even me. My mother pushed me tantalizingly close so many times. Okay, that was a bit of hyperbole, but still, I could envision pointing the gun at someone and pulling the trigger. But it would take something incredible—protection of life and limb, of family.
Unwilling to resort to snooping through drawers and closets—the police had already looked, anyway—I closed my eyes.
What would push Jean-Charles to take matters into his own hands?
And why was I being drawn into the middle of this dangerous game? A tickle of fear prodded what was left of my rather spotty good sense. I squelched it.
Could Jean-Charles be protecting his sister’s reputation? Possible, but would he sacrifice his own in the process? Doubtful. No, there was something else going on—a high-stakes game I could just catch a faint scent of. Desiree’s circumspection didn’t make me feel any better.
She knew something; I could feel it. Where were the thumbscrews when I needed them?
Torture was something the French would understand.
Chapter Nine
I pushed myself to a seated position, swiping the hair out of my face. Worry about the future only wasted the present. Time to pull on the big-girl panties and get to work.
Launching myself to my feet, I strode out of the room, leaving behind my trip down memory lane . . . and the whiny pansy-ass I’d become. What had happened to the gal who shot first and asked questions later?
When I hit the family room, I felt the old piss and vinegar flowing through my veins. It felt good to have me back.
Chantal and Desiree huddled together on the couch, a nice, warm flame burning brightly in the fireplace. Desiree looked up as I walked in. “Christophe, he is okay?”
“For the moment. He wants his father.” I parked myself in front of the blaze. The warmth enveloped me—I hadn’t realized how cold I was. Chilled to the bone by too little food, too much emotion, and a lethal dose of worry.
“Yes, with no mother, his father is most important.” Desiree glanced at her own daughter. “Jean and I, we have not made the best choices for our children.” She brushed back the hair from Chantal’s forehead.
“You both do the work of two,” Chantal whispered.
“I thought Jean-Charles’s wife died in childbirth.”
“Oui.” Desiree’s face clouded. “It was horrible. So sudden, she died in Jean’s arms. Her mother, none of her family, got to say good-bye.”
“They weren’t there for the birth?” Warmer now, I eased a bit further from the fire.
“They live very far away, several hours outside of Caracas. They’d made plans to come the following week. We had not met them before—Jean’s courtship and wedding, it was very fast. All fire and heat.”
“That didn’t burn out fast,” I finished the thought.
“No. They were very much in love.” Desiree paused as she gave me an appraising look, then nodded. “I am glad Jean found you. We have been worried. He has not had another since his wife died.”
“The heart can take a long time to heal.”
“I think it was not so much the heart, but the pain. So much loss.” Desiree brushed a curl out of her daughter’s eyes. “Christophe was very early. We almost lost him, too. Jean was frantic. I think my brother has been afraid to love again.”
That made perfect sense to me.
“It was all over so fast.”
My heart felt heavy for all of them—and I needed to explore a painful present on top of a horrid past. “We need to talk.” I caught Chantal’s attention. “Could you leave us alone for a bit?”
The girl eyed me, then shot a questioning glance at her mother. At Desiree’s nod, she pushed herself slowly to her feet, then sauntered out of the room with slouchy indifference, telegraphing her irritation at not being included in the grown-up discussion. Teenagers. The fact that the human race hadn’t died out years ago bore testament to a parent’s boundless love and endless patience.
I watched her until she was out of earshot, then I hit her mother with both barrels. “Your brother is a suspect in a double murder investigation, and you are not being honest with me.” I kept my voice low, but I couldn’t keep it from shaking with worry, anger, and probably a host of other emotions I didn’t want to think about.
“Double?” Through her fatigue, she looked genuinely shocked.
“Mmmm, a scientist from a premier university.”
Her brows crinkled. “What could he have to do with this?”
“I haven’t a clue. This whole thing is a mystery, but your brother is in more than a bit of trouble.”
To her credit, Desiree didn’t try to deflect. She didn’t even deny my accusation; she just looked tired. She rose and stepped around the bar. I warmed myself by the fire and cooled my heels while she found a suitable wine and uncorked it. Dispensing with pretense, she chose two of the largest glasses, filling each to within a millimeter of the brim. Sort of the French version of doing shots, I guessed.
Handing me a glass, she stepped in beside me, absorbing the warmth. “Truly, I do not know what is going on.” She took a sip of her wine and practically groaned. “Jean, he has impeccable tastes.”
I wasn’t going to be sidetracked by Jean-Charles’s likes and dislikes. “You have your suspicions, though.”
“Oui.” She narrowed her eyes, staring steely-eyed into the past or the future—it was hard to tell which. “How do I know I can trust you?”
I fixed her with a blank stare. “Jean-Charles has impeccable taste.”
Her head swiveled in my direction. She shot me a sardonic grin. “Touché.”
“I make good happy-face pancakes as well.”
Her brows crinkled. “What is this?”
“Deflection.” When the confused look remained, I waved it away. “A poor attempt at humor to break the tension. Never mind. Why don’t you tell me what you know, and what you suspect, and we’ll try to put some pieces of this puzzle together.”
She weighed my suggestion for a moment, then gave in. “About a month ago, some of my clients started complaining. I did not know what to do with this. I have never had an unhappy customer.”
“Never even one dissatisfied customer?” My voice rose in admiration. “You wouldn’t be looking to change careers, would you? Perhaps to hotel management?”
She smiled thinly. “When your products are few, and your suppliers are your friends, keeping customers happy is not difficult.” She pressed her nose into the bowl of the wineglass and inhaled deeply. An ingrained ritual I wasn’t even sure she was aware of doing. “So, when I hear complaints, I am confused. I call Jean. He asks some questions for me. It seems that my shipments are being tampered with. I don’t know where or how.”
“And what did your brother suggest?” I tried to keep my sinking heart out of my voice.
“He wanted to track the shipments.”
“How?”
Desiree looked like she was mulling over exactly how to explain it, so I waited.
“What do you know about cold-chain tracking?” She smiled at my blank stare. “Okay, well, it’s actually technology that has been around for a while. You have a corporate ID badge, correct? One that you hold in front of a scanner?”
I nodded.
“That’s the same technology. It’s calle
d RFID and involves radio waves. When the tag is read by a reader, information can not only be read, but imprinted as well. So, if I put a tag on one of my shipments, every point at which it is within one hundred feet of a reader, that information will show up on the tag.” She signed and shook her head. “I am making this very simplistic, but you understand, non?”
I picked up the train of thought. “So, when the package arrives at its ultimate destination, all of the waypoints along the way can be discerned from the RFID chip.”
“In theory.” She swirled the wine in her glass while she talked. “The United States government is very interested in using the technology to keep the food supply in this country safe from terrorist tampering. They have installed readers almost everywhere.”
That sounded very scary—like the cameras on the city streets watching us all. “So your original shipments weren’t tracked?”
“It is an extra expense.” Filling her mouth with wine, she swished it around before swallowing. She gave an almost imperceptible gesture of appreciation. “And there was no need, at least for most of them.”
“How much information can be stored on the chips?”
Desiree took another sip of wine. “It depends on the type of chip. Most of it is out of my ability to understand. But I know that the chips can be read from a hundred meters or more and can be read through the packaging.” She looked at me, pausing. “They can even be implanted in humans.”
“Scary.”
“Much of life is like that, non?” She held up her glass, the fire lighting the blood-red wine. “Good things can be used for bad purposes.”
I couldn’t argue—the line between good and bad was razor-thin.
“My brother, he suggested his new chip, so we could see exactly where the packages went. Maybe this way we could determine who was altering them.”
“And in doing so, you stumbled into something a bit bigger.” I swirled the wine in my glass—carefully, as Desiree had overfilled it.
Desiree acknowledged the obvious with a quick shrug, which I caught out of the corner of my eye.
“So,” I continued. “Which shipment was the first to be chipped?”
“We started with the truffle.”
“Chef Gregor’s? The white Alba?” I thought perhaps that was redundant, but she sidestepped my ignorance, which I thought nice.
“This is the one.” A look of disgust pinched her face.“Truffles, especially one like that, must be kept cool and used within days of their harvest. And it was of exceptional quality, so I thought the chip a good thing.” Her Gallic shrug and pursed lips, turned down at the corners, exaggerated and expressive, reminded me of her brother, which hit my heart.
I slammed the lid on my emotions—they never facilitated logic. “And what about Fiona? When did you speak with her last?” As I raised my glass to my lips, I kept my eyes fastened on her over the rim.
Desiree left my side in front of the fire and stepped behind the bar to refill her glass—and stall for time. Her inner struggle marched across her face as she concentrated on the task at hand. Finally, she apparently reached some conclusion. When she looked at me, her face was calm, her eyes clear.
“I arrived only this morning, early.”
I lowered my glass without taking a sip. Apparently, I had been holding it there poised, wondering, waiting, and forgetting about the wine.
“I was angry to begin, and I’d had many hours to get even angrier—it is a long flight from Provence.”
I sensed she was a woman who didn’t like to be prodded, so I didn’t.
“I went looking for Fiona.” She stopped for a moment. I thought I saw her shiver. She rubbed her arm with her free hand. “I found her.” Desiree’s voice dropped to a whisper. “In the food truck.” When she looked up at me, her eyes were haunted. “She died before I could get a knife and cut her loose.”
“You were there?”
“Oui.” A tear trickled from the corner of her eye. She wiped it away with an angry swipe.
“Did you see anyone?”
She shook her head.
“Who knows about this?”
“My brother. That’s what we were talking about when you brought Christophe.”
Desiree’s hand shook as she lifted her glass to her lips and drank deeply. She dabbed at her lips with a napkin as she set her glass down. “The box the truffle had been in was there.”
“With Fiona?”
She nodded once, her curls bouncing, then recoiling. Why I noticed that, I don’t know. “The Alba was not. The box Jean had stored it in was open, the truffle gone. I took the box and gave it to him.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Was the tracking chip with the box?” I didn’t know enough to even sound intelligent.
“No, but the truffle had been in Jean’s refrigerator—at least that’s what he told me. I assumed he had taken the chip already.” She looked at me, her eyes large and unblinking. “I am in trouble, non?”
“Did you kill Fiona?”
Desiree’s head whipped back as if I’d slapped her. Her anger flared and then was gone—like touching a flame to gunpowder. She answered me with a word in her native tongue, not one I was familiar with. However, delivered with force, her meaning was clear. “Of course not! But I feel responsible. I tried to save her.”
“Then you don’t have much to worry about.” I glossed right over the fact that the police would take a dim view of removing evidence from the scene of a homicide. And they wouldn’t like the fact Desiree did sort of a hit and run by leaving the scene and not reporting the death. I had no idea how to spin all that with Romeo, not that it was my problem. But if I wanted her help, keeping her out of jail seemed like a good place to start. Assuming I trusted her in the first place. Which, at this point, wasn’t a given.
As I thought, I remembered the wine in my hand. My thoughts elsewhere, I swirled the liquid, sloshing a bit on my hand. Ignoring it, I stuck my nose in the bowl of the glass and sniffed. The full bouquet, fruity and bold with hints of spice and smoke, captured my attention. I sniffed again, then took a sip. “My God, what is this?”
“A very nice Bordeaux.” She eyed me blandly—so much like her brother.
“No, not a Bordeaux . . . a Burgundy. But, not that, either. Too smooth. Rounded edges. Not the terroir you folks in France are so hung up on.” I shook my head as I took another sip, moving the liquid around in my mouth before swallowing. Holding the glass to the light, I swirled it to give the wine some air, then stuck my nose in the bowl and breathed deeply one more time. “A California pinot. Sonoma Coast?”
Desiree smiled. “Adobe Road, 2009. You have the nose.”
I didn’t gloat—unusual for me. To be honest, my ability to distinguish wines came more from a lifetime of consumption than a talented nose—not something I thought gloat-worthy.
And sniffing a connection between newfangled technology, Jean-Charles, and a dead UC-Berkeley geek in his oven, didn’t take a brilliant nose, either.
* * *
When I strode through the front entrance lost in thought, the tumult of the Babylon firing on all cylinders sucker punched me with the here-and-now. While I’d been off searching for pieces to a puzzle, life had gone on. As I struggled to catch up, I stepped to the side out of the fray and scrolled through the messages on my phone. Slowly, the music piped through the overhead sound system filtered into my consciousness. Teddie’s song. The one about me. I made a mental note to find the person responsible for putting it in the playlist and have them shot at dawn.
I blew at a lock of hair that tickled my eyes. There was that murder reflex again. I probably should worry about my escalating homicidal imaginings, but they were so far down on my current list of unimaginables, I just couldn’t work myself into much of a lather.
“Ms. O’Toole? Excuse me, please.”
I looked up into the dancing black eyes of Sergio Fabiano, our front desk manager. Dark and Mediterra
nean, he had the good looks of a movie star and the body to match. He also had the irritating habit of flicking the hair out of his eyes with an exaggerated toss of his head. In addition, he was a bit too fastidious for my taste, not that he cared—he always had a bevy of women swooning around him like a parlor-full of Victorian ladies with the vapors.
“Sure. What can I do for you?”
He leaned in close to me as if he feared someone could overhear a word we uttered. The chaos swirling around us took care of that possibility, but still he leaned closer, his hand on my arm, squeezing in a conspiratorial way. “There was a beautiful young lady”—he gave me a knowing look— “asking at the desk for the Sodom and Gomorrah Suite—if you understand my meaning. The guests in the suite also are wanting a case of duct tape, a twenty-foot ladder, a nail gun with a variety of nails in differing lengths, a radar speed detector, a timer accurate to within a thousandth of a second, and a HD video camera, with high-speed capabilities.” He ticked those items off on his fingers, apparently from memory, impressing the heck out of me. After this day, I couldn’t remember what I’d had for lunch, or if I’d even had lunch. Sergio stopped and looked at me, wide-eyed, a confused look on his face. “What should we do?”
I could smell peppermint on his breath, which reeked of a premeditated personal space violation—a total turn-off. “Who’s in the suite?”
“A Dr. Phelps is the registered guest.”
“Doctor? Of what?” I learned not too long ago that an appellation didn’t always come with the integrity and class it implied.
“He’s a computer engineer.” Sergio shrugged.
“My condolences. How much is his run-through? And what games is he partial to?” I switched my thoughts to the computation of his theoretical loss—an algorithm based on average bet and the game’s particular odds. What I would spend on keeping him happy would be a fairly small percentage of what I could reasonably expect to make off him—that’s the way the game was played. I cocked an eyebrow at Sergio. “I’m assuming he doesn’t play blackjack with a group of friends? We don’t need another group of MIT wannabes with a dream of cheating Vegas.” The math geeks were always card-counters—we did our best to ferret them out and rescind their invitation to play at our establishment, or we put them under contract not to play blackjack if they had another game they liked, such as poker. Most folks thought gambling in a casino was a god-given right. Not so. And disabusing them of that notion usually fell to me. Am I lucky, or what?
Lucky Catch Page 13