Death al Fresco

by Leslie Karst

  He was nodding now, and it sounded as if he’d started to cry again. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I just got so mad when I saw the two of them like that. I couldn’t help it. All I wanted was for him to tell me I was still important to him, that he hadn’t switched from liking me best to her.” Bobby’s voice caught, and he broke off.

  I wasn’t sure if he was going to say anything further when he almost whispered, “But Gino just laughed at me when I told him that. Said I sounded like some kind of sissy.”

  “That must have been awful,” I said, shifting my position once more.

  Bobby nodded. “He didn’t get it at all. But he was like my dad. Better than a dad, ’cause he treated me like a real pal.”

  “But then, that night by the bocce court, when he was being so cruel,” I prompted him. “You just couldn’t help it…”

  “I didn’t mean to do it! But he kept fighting back, and he was laughing at me. So I hit him. And pushed him over the side.” More sobs, followed by harsh panting.

  A car pulled up outside at this moment, and its headlights streamed through the shop windows, momentarily blinding me.

  And, I realized with a gasp, illuminating my face for all the world to see.

  The car lights shut off and Bobby jumped to his feet, as if brought back to life by the realization that it was me he was talking to.

  A second later he was coming at me, arms outstretched and fury in his eyes.

  Chapter 29

  Right before he reached me, our gazes met, and in one of those time-slows-down moments, I noticed again the patch of acne on his face—like that of a teenager with raging hormones.

  Bobby made a grab for my neck, and when I ducked, his momentum made him fall on top of me instead. Without thinking, I tried to take hold of his arms, but my bandaged hands proved useless as anything other than padded boxing gloves. He was panting hard now and hissing into my ear. “You! I knew you were bad when you said that stuff on the phone about telling the police about me.”

  Huh? Rolling over on my side, I tried to wriggle free from his grip around my waist, but he was too strong for me to escape. What was he going on about? And then I remembered the phone conversation I’d had yesterday morning with Eric—boy, did that seem like a long time ago. So Bobby had heard me.

  “Too bad you didn’t drown, too,” he growled. “How come Gino had to die and not you?” At this point he momentarily relaxed his grip, allowing me to roll once more onto my back. And as I rolled, I aimed a sharp kick with my knee to his middle region.

  “Aiee!”

  Success. Collapsing onto his side, Bobby released me to grab hold of his crotch. I scooted out from underneath the whimpering man and was about to sit up when another form came hurtling down on top of Bobby.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” the deep voice commanded.

  Detective Vargas.

  Another shape hovered overhead, peering down at me.

  “Eric,” I said. “You got my text.”

  “Text?” he deadpanned. “I didn’t see any text. We just thought we’d do a little after-hours shopping is all. And hey, it looks like we ended up with the perfect gift to take home.”

  Vargas was giving Bobby his Miranda warning as he snapped a pair of cuffs on the still prostrate figure.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked Eric.

  “Long enough to hear plenty to put him away for a long while.”

  “So, what? You were just standing there, waiting, while a madman was trying to throttle me?”

  “Well, you were doing such a good job of getting him to talk, it seemed a shame to interrupt. And we did come to your rescue as soon as—”

  “As soon as he was out of commission and it was no longer needed,” I finished.

  Eric held out a hand to help me stand, but I waved him off. Not only do I dislike being treated as helpless, but I couldn’t have grabbed hold of him in any case—not with the bulky bandages on my hands. Using my knuckles to push off from the floor like some kind of clumsy ape, I made it to my feet. “So now what?” I asked.

  “Now Vargas takes Bobby down to the jail and I get you back to the dinner for a stiff glass of limoncello.”

  “Sounds awesome. Too bad it’s not on the menu tonight.”

  “Well, that hasn’t kept Mario from passing bottles of the stuff around to all the folks who are still there,” Eric said, taking me by the arm. “C’mon, leave the detective to his business, and let’s you and I go have us a well-deserved drink.”

  “I’m not sure how much you deserve one,” I said with a last glance at Vargas and Bobby. “But I’m pretty sure I do.”

  * * *

  Early Sunday morning the storm returned with a vengeance. But I didn’t care. It could pour torrents for the next week straight, I thought as I lay snuggled in bed with Buster stretched out beside me. We’d made it through the big sister-cities dinner without the tent collapsing under a pool of water, and I wasn’t going to be able to grip my bike handlebars for several days. So for now, let it rain.

  I hadn’t gotten home till almost twelve the night before. Eric and I had drunk our limoncello—several each, actually—and after he left I’d stayed at the restaurant a while to hang out with my dad. With my hands bandaged as they were, I couldn’t do much to assist with the cleanup, but I’d kept him company as he and the other kitchen staff wrapped up containers of Sunday gravy and cabbage rolls, decanted half-filled bottles of wine into larger ones to save for cooking, and scrubbed and wiped down the range top.

  Dad and Emilio had been oblivious to the two arrests made during the dinner, so I gave them a detailed account of Anastasia shoving Bobby in the water and then Bobby’s manic behavior afterward at his father’s shop. “So I think Bobby probably did grab Anastasia down on the boat landing,” I said, “given the way he was acting later. Just like she and Angelo said.”

  “But do you think it was her who knocked Gino into the water, or Bobby?” Dad asked.

  “Bobby admitted that he hit him and then shoved him over the side. And it’s clear now that Bobby was also the guy Anastasia saw that night out by the Marcella, right after Gino came on to her. Bobby sounded pretty upset with Gino—jealous of him, or of his attentions to her, anyway. And that was clearly the reason the two of them fought that night. But the whole thing is pretty strange.”

  “Well, at least I’m out of the picture as a suspect now,” Dad said, then hoisted a hotel pan full of chicken cacciatore and headed for the walk-in.

  As I lolled about in bed the next morning, listening to the redwood window frame rattle in the wind and rain, I considered what my dad had said. He was obviously no longer a suspect—no doubt they’d dropped him as soon as I’d been knocked into the ocean—but I did still wonder how Gino’s cap might have ended up in his boat.

  Closing my eyes, I envisioned the scene that night by the old Monterey clipper: Bobby hiding behind the kiosk waiting for Anastasia to pass by, then creeping up toward Gino. And Dad’s skiff was near the back of Solari’s, not twenty feet from where Anastasia had said she and Gino had been standing.

  Bobby must have confronted Gino, after which they argued. That had to have been when Sean looked out back and saw what he thought was an old man arguing with Gino. But in the dark, with his thin, slouching figure, I could see how Sean could have assumed Bobby was one of the old guys who hung out back there by the bocce court.

  Then there must have been a struggle. Bobby had said that Gino had been fighting back. And if that had happened over by Dad’s Boston Whaler, the cap could easily have fallen off and landed inside. And then they ended up at the wharf railing, at which point Bobby hit the old fisherman and then pushed him over the side to drown.

  I was interrupted in my musings by my cell going off. Reaching over the snoring Buster, I grabbed it from the bedside table. “Hey, Eric. What’s up?”

  “I just got off the phone with Vargas. He wants you to stop by the station when you have the chance to make a full statement.” />
  So Eric was going to be all business this morning. No “How ya doin’, babe,” or any of his usual affectionate banter. I must have scared him out of that. Which was a good thing … wasn’t it?

  “No problem,” I said. “I was planning on doing just that as soon as I had some coffee.”

  “Good. Anyway, since I was there last night and assisted with the arrest, he’s keeping me in the loop about what’s going on with Bobby.”

  “And?”

  “And it appears that even after he was Mirandized, he kept on blabbering the whole way down to the jail. And boy, oh boy, did he confess.”

  I sat up, startling Buster out of a dream that, from the way his paws and nose had been twitching, involved chasing a small, furry critter. “What did he say?”

  “Basically the same things we heard him say at his dad’s shop, but with more detail. That while they were arguing he’d picked up an oar he found in a boat just to scare Gino, but when he kept laughing at him, Bobby whacked him with it and shoved him over the side. And then when he saw Gino floating there in the water looking like he was dead, I guess he freaked out and ran away.”

  Just as I’d been envisioning.

  “And he also mentioned you,” Eric added.

  “Me? What did he say?”

  “That you deserved what you got, which was apparently a blow to the head with a bocce ball that someone had left lying around. He said you were a busybody—though he included a not-very-nice modifier with the phrase—and that you were always looking at him funny. Is that true? Were you looking at him funny?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, I guess I did sometimes look at him maybe a little more intently than normal. ’Cause he’s seemed kind of off of late. And he’s had a case of acne, which is pretty unusual for someone his age.”

  “Weird,” he agreed.

  “Yeah, but it is one of the symptoms of copper toxicity. As are paranoia and acting strange in other ways. So did you tell Vargas about my theory—that he got poisoned from sanding and painting Gino’s boat without proper protection—you know, wearing gloves and a mask and stuff?”

  “I did, and he’s going to have tests run on Bobby.” Eric chuckled.

  “What?”

  “Vargas told me to tell you you might just make a good detective after all if you ever decide to change careers.”

  * * *

  Kris and Brandon were setting out the mise en place inserts for the hot line when I walked into the Gauguin kitchen at four o’clock that afternoon. Our old cook, Reuben—who’d left the previous July to head up the kitchen at another restaurant—was at the Wolf range, stirring a sauce pot. He’d agreed to come in tonight as a favor to me since his new place was closed on Sundays.

  “Ohmygod, what happened to your hands?” Kris exclaimed.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said, waving off her horrified expression. “I cut them up on some barnacles while, uh … swimming, is all.” They’d no doubt learn the truth before long, but I didn’t really feel like talking about my ocean ordeal right this minute. “Is Javier up in the office?”

  “Yeah,” the line cook said. “But he’s in a bit of a sour mood today. He came in about fifteen minutes ago and headed straight upstairs without even saying hello.”

  Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good.

  I found Javier standing at the office window, staring down at the neighbor’s backyard. I came to stand next to him, but he barely acknowledged my presence. The apple and plum trees had begun to shed their foliage, which was now scattered about the lawn in a brown-and-orange carpet. As we watched, a gust of wind swept up a pile of leaves and swirled them around in a miniature tornado.

  “Okay, what’s wrong?” I said after the whirlwind had died down. “You still mad at me?”

  “Mad at you?” Javier frowned, as if he didn’t understand the question. “Oh, right,” he said. “That. No, I’m not mad at you.” With a sigh, he turned from the window and sat heavily on the desk chair. Then, noticing my bandages for the first time, he looked up. “What the hell happened to your hands?”

  I gave him the truthful but abbreviated version of my run-in with Bobby, then told him about Bobby’s bizarre behavior and arrest the night before. “So, anyway, it looks like I won’t be back on the Gauguin hot line for a few days at least,” I said, displaying the thick wrappings about my hands. “Any chance Natalie could work a few more nights this week?”

  This prompted yet another sigh, even louder than the first.

  My gut tightened. He was still mad at me. And for good reason, too. “Oh, God, Javier, I am so sorry. I know I’ve been completely useless lately, but this time there truly was nothing I could have done to prevent—”

  He held out his hand. “No, stop. It’s just … I’ve realized that it’s not going to work.”

  I was about to protest that we could make it work, that we simply needed to talk things through, when he turned to face me. The utter devastation in his eyes told me it wasn’t us he was talking about.

  “It’s Natalie,” I said, and he nodded. “You two had a fight.”

  “Worse than a fight,” he said, slumping over onto the desk. “If it was just that, it would be easy. We could talk it over and then kiss and make up and everything would be fine. But this … I don’t know.”

  I took a seat in the green wing chair across from him. “What happened, Javier?”

  He clenched and then released his jaw a few times before answering. “As soon as we started working together in the kitchen that first night here, Thursday, I knew right away it wasn’t going to work. She has a totally different style from me. She’s completely disorganized, doesn’t plan anything in advance.”

  Javier sat up and shook his head. His eyes now betrayed frustration as well as sadness. “Like—and this is just one example—I’d asked her to check how many reservations we had and then prep enough of the sides for that amount, but she just totally spaced it out, and then we were slammed all night long as soon as the rush started.” Picking up the wooden tiki, he stared glumly at its carved features. “It ended up driving me crazy working with her those three nights.”

  ‘Okay, look,” I said. “So we’ll find somebody else to work for me the next few days. You and Natalie got along fine before you worked together, so as long as you don’t do that again, I’m sure everything will be—” And then I stopped.

  Of course. That was why he was in such anguish. His dream of opening his own restaurant with her had been abruptly deflated, like a chocolate soufflé yanked violently from the oven before it had time to set.

  Our eyes met. “Right,” he said. “There’s no way we could open a restaurant together. It would never work. We both realize that now.” Letting out a long stream of air, he set the tiki back down on the desk. “So I guess you’re in luck. Since there’s no way I can afford to buy a restaurant on my own, it looks like I’ll be staying here for a while after all.”

  “Maybe there’s someone else who’d like to go in on a restaurant with you,” I said.

  Javier started to laugh, but he stopped when he saw the serious look in my eye. I reached out and laid my bandaged hand over his.

  “Any chance you’d like to become co-owner of a little French-Polynesian place here in town? ’Cause I hear tell the owner is looking for a partner to buy out half her interest, and I think you might be exactly the person she’s looking for.”

  “She’s looking for an equal partner? Fifty-fifty, with an equal say in how the business is run?”

  “Yep. And I have it on good authority that she’s especially interested in someone who wants to spread his creative wings and have full say over creating some exciting new dishes for the menu.”

  Javier grinned. “Sounds like the perfect partner to me.”

  Chapter 30

  Shafts of sunlight streamed through the towering redwoods, the beams casting bright spots on our class as if we were being lit by some celestial control booth above. The dozen painters were scattered even
ly about the concrete piazza, stepping back from their easels to gaze out at the golden hills and the Monterey Bay below, then moving back in to dab blobs of burnt umber and turquoise onto their paper.

  We’d come up to the university for our last plein air class, and Omar was in high spirits this afternoon. “You all have progressed so far in so little time,” he said, moving from student to student to check out our work. “Not a month ago, some of you barely even understood the concept of negative space, but now? Every single one of these paintings shows a strong sense of technique. And they’re full of vitality and emotion as well.”

  I stared at my landscape, wondering if the oak-dotted meadows with the expanse of bay in the distance did in fact show emotion, or if the piece was simply amateurish. My bandages had come off a few days ago and the doctor had said my hands were healing nicely, but they still felt clumsy and stiff.

  Eric wandered over and studied the painting along with me. “I like the composition,” he said after a bit. “The way the tables and chairs in the foreground are cut off at the edge, framing the picture in an unexpected way. It’s very photographic. Kind of like Degas.”

  He continued to stand there, eyes directed toward my easel but slightly glazed as if not really focusing on the painting. I had a feeling I knew what was on his mind.

  “You know,” I said, “we never did talk about what you said in the car that morning I was released from the hospital.”

  Eric turned my way but didn’t speak.

  “I was meaning to bring it up sooner, but with all that happened that night at the dinner and then, well, I haven’t seen you since…”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “No, it’s not okay. We need to talk. But not with all these people around.” I set down my paintbrush and led Eric to the low cement wall dividing the piazza from a large grassy area where several barefoot students in cargo shorts were tossing a Frisbee back and forth.

  We sat with our backs to the class, facing the glorious panorama of redwoods, live oak meadows, and the ocean far below. “Anyway,” I said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, and why it’s so hard for me to talk about it.”