“So, you two got along well?” I asked.
“We did.”
Once again, Eric’s answers seemed to come a little too quickly. So much so that it drew my suspicion. Before I had a chance to follow up again, Eric cut me off.
“Ask around if you don’t believe me,” he said.
“Don’t think we won’t,” I replied.
Eric clearly didn’t have people challenge him very often. As the boss, he may have been used to getting his way, but I was prepared to go toe to toe with him.
Joe seemed to feel that chasing down other leads would be more beneficial. “Back to these restaurants that Claude got on the bad side of.”
“What about them?” Eric asked.
“Do you think any of those restaurant owners would be angry enough with him to be driven to murder?” Joe said.
“With all that I have seen and reported in my career, I wouldn’t put anything past anyone,” Eric replied.
That somehow managed to be both vague and menacing at the same time. Eric was turning out to be a regular shark in suspenders.
Joe continued his questioning. “Any names come to mind?”
“A couple,” Eric said.
“What are they?” Joe replied.
“Steven Zell and Carl Dempster.”
“Why them?”
Eric snickered. “Read the reviews Claude left of their restaurants. That’ll give you all the answers you need.”
With that, Eric looked like he was done talking to us, regardless of whether we’d finished all of our questions.
He continued. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work. There’s a deadline calling my name.”
Chapter Ten
We could have forced the issue, but it didn’t seem like it was worth it. Eric wasn’t going to volunteer any further information, and we didn’t have any leverage to make him talk. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if there was enough reason to believe he was a suspect. Sure, he’d been guarded with us, but that alone was far from a sign of guilt.
Joe and I decided to leave Eric to his deadline. There were a number of more concrete leads to follow up on. That being said, we would have been remiss in our investigative duties if we left the newspaper offices without poking our heads around a little.
Eric had given us the go-ahead to do some digging around the office. He may have said it offhand, but we took it to heart. Joe and I headed directly to Eric’s sassy receptionist, Tracey, curious to see what insights she could give us.
It turned out the answer was none. That was highly disappointing. The receptionist’s desk was often the hub of gossip in an office. On more than a few occasions, the boss’s receptionist actually knew more about the boss’s life than his own wife did.
If Tracey knew anything, she wasn’t giving it up. Like her boss, she was quite guarded, careful not to volunteer any information she didn’t have to. That seemed to be true of everyone working at the paper. It was a surreal experience, interviewing a half a dozen people with little or no useful actionable information to show for it. Between the receptionists, columnists, and reporters, they all seemed to respond from the same pool of answers.
A half a dozen times, we heard that there were no quarrels between Claude and any of his co-workers, Eric or otherwise. Finally, Joe and I gave up. Either Claude really did get along with everyone he worked with, or his co-workers were amazing at hiding their discontent. Either way, Joe and I had plenty of other leads to chase down and didn’t want to delay any longer in getting to them.
***
Before hitting up the restaurant owners Eric had mentioned, Joe and I read the reviews Claude had left for their establishments. It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least. The word evisceration came to mind as I read one of the reviews. I’d never been much of a fan of Claude’s writing, and I was immediately reminded why. Part of it was because like he was too snobby for his own good. The other reason was that I’d lost my sense of culinary adventure the older I became.
I knew of a handful of restaurants that had never served me a bad meal. That was good enough for me. Apparently, I was in the minority. Claude’s review column was one of the most popular in the entire paper. Thousands of readers cared very deeply about his opinion when it came to food. When a man had that much sway, his words could make or break a business.
In the case of Steven Zell, it broke the back of his bistro. As I finished Claude’s review of Zell’s Bistro, I was in a state of shock.
Joe wrinkled his nose as he looked my way. “What’s the matter?”
“This review.”
“Is it that bad?”
“It’s nasty. I don’t think I’ve ever read a review this bad.”
Joe had a difference of opinion. “I don’t know that it could possibly be as bad as this one he left for Carl Dempster’s café.”
I challenged him. “Fine. Let’s hear it.”
“I’ll spare you the full gory details. I think the review can be summed up with these few sentences—Dempster's café is an embarrassment to good taste. I don’t know how Carl Dempster was allowed to open a place of his own. The man is unfit to flip burgers at a fast food restaurant, no less operate a supposed café.”
I winced. “Wow. That is brutal.”
“Do you still think yours is bad?” Joe asked.
“Mine is still worse.”
Joe braced himself. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
“Zell’s bistro is a scab on the restaurant industry that refuses to heal. If I was Steven Zell, I’d give a refund and apologize to every customer that has ever walked through the door of the bistro, quit the restaurant business, and take up janitorial work.”
Joe sat across from me in a state of disbelief for a moment.
I ended the silence. “I told you it was bad.”
“It was more than just a bad review, it was a personal attack.”
I nodded. “When Eric said Claude knew how to stir up controversy, he wasn’t kidding.”
“I guess the question is, did that controversy come back to kill him?” Joe asked.
Chapter Eleven
After reading the lacerating reviews of Carl’s and Steven’s restaurants, Joe and I knew we needed to pay them both a visit. As Carl’s new workplace was geographically the closest to the newspaper, we stopped there first.
Derek’s Dynamo Dogs was a hot dog stand near the beach. It was also the unofficial signpost of Carl having hit rock bottom. As we arrived at the hot dog stand, it was clear that Carl had taken the ultimate fall from grace.
This was a man who just two years ago had been the owner and head chef of his very own café. Now, he’d been reduced to selling hot dogs to tourists. Not that all of this was Claude’s fault. Granted, Claude’s soul-crushing review had led to the beginning of Carl’s downward spiral, but Carl had taken his plight to brand-new lows.
Shortly after the eviscerating piece about Carl’s café ran in the paper, his business began to tank. Even with the severe dip in business, the café somehow managed to limp along for nearly nine months before finally shuttering its doors for good.
While losing his business was certainly a blow, it wasn’t the end of the world for Carl. He got a number of job offers to work as a chef in other restaurants. Unfortunately, by then he was damaged goods. His confidence was shot. He was nothing more than the shell of the former chef that he used to be.
Carl burned through one job after another, his monstrous ego outsizing his level of talent. A lot of people were willing to put up with arrogance as long as someone had the skills to back it up. Only, Carl’s ego never ratcheted down, despite the erosion of his cooking skill. Finally, after burning every bridge he crossed, the only restaurant owner in town willing to take a chance on him was Derek Dalton.
That’s how Carl ended up working at a hot dog stand. Ironically, for someone who spent his days in a customer service position, Carl was sorely lacking in customer service skills.
He was a grumpy,
beer-bellied, forty-five-year-old man with cold bloodshot eyes and a hangdog face weighed down by the sorrow of his broken dreams.
“What can I get for you?” Carl grumbled.
Joe flashed his police badge. “A few minutes of your time.”
Carl immediately tensed up. “What’s this about?”
“Why don’t we talk about it on that bench over there? Or, would you rather we talk about this in front of your boss?” Joe asked.
“Yeah. All right. I have a ten-minute break coming up anyway.”
Carl turned to his boss, Derek, who was running the register at the stand, told him he was taking his break, then met us at the bench that Joe had referenced.
Now that he was out of earshot of his boss, Carl’s attitude changed significantly. Unfortunately, it was for the worse.
He snapped at us. “What’s the big deal coming to my work and looking to start trouble?”
If there was one thing I knew about my brother, it was that he hated taking lip from suspects. This time was no different.
Joe stared him down. “Don’t take that tone with a police detective. You hear me?”
Carl saw the fire in Joe’s eyes and let up on his sour attitude. He was still annoyed but tried to restrain himself.
“Look, what do you want?” Carl asked.
“We’re here about the murder of Claude Giraud,” Joe said.
Carl scoffed. “Then you’re in the wrong place.”
“Really? What makes you say that?”
“So, that’s what this is about? You’re here to accuse me of murder?” Carl replied.
“We’ve been going through some of Claude’s old reviews. The one he left about your café was pretty eye-opening stuff,” Joe said.
Carl tried to shrug my brother’s comment off. “The key word there is ‘old.’ That review was from two years ago.”
“Are you saying you’re over it then? That having your café be called an embarrassment to good taste doesn’t sting anymore?”
“Yes.”
Carl’s mouth said one thing, but his eyes said another. There was an undeniable anger inside him that he was trying to keep bottled up. He may not have thought that I caught it, but I did.
I made my skepticism quite clear. “Carl, I find that hard to believe. I mean, here you are, working at a hot dog stand—”
He didn’t let me finish my sentence. “Everyone has to make a living.”
That argument didn’t fly in this case. “Really? You used to own your own restaurant. Now you’re serving hot dogs on a stick. All of this started with Claude’s bad review.”
Carl kept trying to throw me off the scent. “First of all, we serve thirty-five different kinds of hot dogs. Second, as I told you, Claude left that review a long time ago.”
I fixated on his eyes again. Before, I had focused on the cold look he’d given me. This time, the bloodshot look in his eyes was what caught my attention.
“Carl, are you okay?” I asked.
He was dismissive of my question. “What are you talking about?”
“Your eyes—”
Once again, he was quick to interrupt me. “Oh. That. I’ve been working a lot of hours and haven’t been getting much sleep.”
I pressed further. “Is that all?”
He got testy with me. “That’s what I just said.”
I didn’t believe he was telling us the whole story, but he clearly had no intention of elaborating.
Joe was ready to move on to a new topic. “Mr. Dempster, where were you last night between nine and nine thirty?”
Carl hesitated far too much for the answer he gave. “I was just finishing up work.”
“Really? So, if we ask Derek right now if you were still here at nine thirty, he’ll be able to confirm that?” Joe replied.
Carl quickly revised his story. “I mean, I was driving home from work.”
“Alone?” Joe asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you happen to stop at Claude Giraud’s place on the way?”
Carl’s temper got the best of him. “No.”
Carl didn’t seem to realize that the more a person lost control of their emotions, the more it made them look like they were lying. I had found that the best way to counteract a fiery temper was by keeping an even keel. The calmer I remained, the more it seemed to set a suspect off. And, when a suspect flew off the handle, they often unwittingly revealed useful information.
“It’s a shame you have no way of proving that,” I said.
He fired back at me. “Neither do you. In fact, you have no way of proving anything. Now, if you’ll excuse, I have to get back to work.”
Carl then scuttled away. It was crazy. I had never seen someone in such a hurry to get back to a hot dog stand in my entire life.
Chapter Twelve
Carl’s haste to get away from us and our probing questions aroused enough suspicion in Joe that he decided to assign a patrol car to keep tabs on him. If Carl did so much as look the wrong way, we’d hear about it.
With Carl under surveillance, Joe and I headed over to question the other restaurateur who had been lacerated by one of Claude’s reviews. Zell’s Bistro was a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard specializing in American cuisine. Due to its prime location in the shopping district, I had always known the place to be busy.
Of course, as it was on the other side of town from where I lived, I rarely went there. In fact, I hadn’t been there once since Claude’s review had been published nine months ago.
Oh, how things had changed. When Joe and I entered the bistro, the place was a ghost town. There were more employees inside than customers. One thing the bistro didn’t have a shortage of, was specials. Everywhere I turned in the restaurant, there were signs indicating deals.
The bistro was offering an all-day happy hour, half-off appetizers, and entrees that were almost too cheap to be believed. All the stops were being pulled out. Yet, they had little business to show for their efforts.
Typically, when I went into a restaurant, a host or hostess was there to greet me. This time, the owner, Steven Zell, was acting as the host. That seemed very curious. Was he understaffed, or did he just not have enough business to make paying a host worthwhile?
He was a diminutive man, barely over five feet tall, with circular-framed glasses, short brown hair, and the figure of a man who had eaten a lot of bacon double cheeseburgers in his life. Coincidentally, that also happened to be one of the specials today. Had we been here for a meal instead of to question a murder suspect, I could have gotten the burger with a bottomless basket of steak fries for less than seven dollars.
Steven greeted us with a tone that reeked of car salesman-style desperation. “Welcome to Zell’s. I hope you two are hungry because we have some sweet deals for you today.”
“Actually, we’re not here to eat,” Joe said.
Steven furrowed his brow. “Then why are you here?”
Joe pulled out his police badge. “We have to ask you some questions about the murder of Claude Giraud.”
I watched Steven’s face closely to see how much the look on his face changed. Surprisingly, he didn’t panic. Sure, his enthusiasm evaporated, but he remained very calm and businesslike.
“Sure. Why don’t we go back to my office?”
Steven led Joe and me through the kitchen to his office. Now that we were away from the public and behind closed doors, I expected to see some sort of shift in his mood. If he was under any emotional duress, it wasn’t showing.
“I’m not quite sure why you’ve come to talk to me,” Steven said.
“Like I told you, we need to ask you some questions about the murder of Claude Giraud,” Joe replied.
“Yeah, you said that, but I don’t know why you think I had anything to do with that.”
“We’ve read the review he left for your restaurant.”
“So, because he wrote a bad review of my restaurant nine months ago, you think I killed him?”
It was
amazing how calm he was being, almost like we were talking about the weather rather than a possible motive for murder.
“The review seems to have killed your business,” Joe said.
“Well, you guys are here during an off time in the day. Come back at dinner and you might see a different story,” Steven reasoned.
“Come back at dinner. You mean when every item on your menu seems to be on sale for fifty percent off? The last time I saw this many things on sale, the place was going out of business, and they were desperate to even sell the wall fixtures. Now, are you seriously going to sit here and pretend that Claude’s review hasn’t hurt your business?”
“It certainly didn’t help. Still, that’s no reason to kill the guy.”
“Isn’t it? Do you have some other source of income we don’t know about? Some stash of cash somewhere?”
“No.”
Joe was growing tired of listening to Steven pretend like the idea of potentially shuttering his restaurant wasn’t a motive for murder.
“Mr. Zell, you can downplay the motive all you want, but I’ve seen people murdered over far less. This business is your livelihood, and without it, how would you pay your bills?” Joe asked.
“If I did have to close this place up for good, I’d find something else. Losing this place wouldn’t be the end of the world,” Steven replied.
At first, I thought Steven was just being cool, calm, and collected. Now, he was so emotionless and robotic that it came across as completely calculated. As if he was expecting us to arrive at some point and had planned accordingly.
Steven continued. “Face it, you guys are barking up the wrong tree.”
Joe did not give up that easily. “You say that, but the fact is, murder is often a crime of passion. People get blinded by rage. They seek revenge at all costs.”
“Look at me. Do I look like I’m blinded by rage?” Steven replied.
“You say that, but when we walked in the bistro, your mood was completely different. You reeked of desperation and craved our business. Now that you’ve found out we’re investigating Claude’s murder, you’ve started acting like a robot. Those are two distinctly different moods that you managed to flip between in the blink of an eye. Who is to say this nonchalance of yours isn’t just an act you’re putting on?” Joe asked.
Hope Hadley Eight Book Cozy Mystery Set Page 37