by Leslie Karst
“No, never. But Mom wouldn’t have let him. She knew I didn’t want people messing with my records. When she wanted to listen to music, she’d use her phone.”
“Well, do you remember anything unusual ever happening when he was over? Any argument or conversation they had?”
Evelyn lay back on the bed and drew up her knees toward her chest as she contemplated my question. “There was one time,” she said. “It was pretty late at night, and I came down to get a glass of cranberry juice. When they heard me on the stairs, they got quiet all of a sudden, like they didn’t want me to hear what they’d been talking about.”
“Did you hear?”
“Only a little. It was about the recipes, how Al was telling people that Mom stole them, I’m pretty sure.”
“Do you remember anything specific that they said? The exact words?”
“Well, I definitely heard the word recipes while I was still upstairs in the hall, but as for anything else …” Evelyn closed her eyes, brows wrinkled in concentration. “Wait, I do remember something.” She sat up and turned to face me. “Right before they stopped talking, I heard Max say ‘Rub my back’ or something like that. Because I remember worrying—from the way he said it—that maybe I was interrupting them in the middle of, you know …”
“You think they were romantic?”
“Mom never told me they were involved, but I’m not positive she would have, if they were.”
“Huh.” This put a whole new spin on things. “You know whether he likes cranberry juice, by any chance?”
“I have no idea.” Evelyn slid off the bed and started for the door. “I’m going to use the bathroom. Back in a sec.”
I perused the closet while she was gone but found nothing other than clothes, shoes, and a collection of handbags. I’d just opened a leather messenger bag to see if it might contain Jackie’s cell phone when I heard a shout from the bathroom.
“Sally, you have to come in here! I think I found something!”
Dropping the bag, I tore down the hallway. Evelyn was standing at the sink, holding out her index finger as if pointing at the wall. “What is it? Where am I supposed to be looking?”
“Here on my finger, and on the counter, too—between the soap dish and the wall. Some kind of powder.”
I examined her finger and saw several tiny grains of something white. Next I looked where she’d indicated on the white tile surface. “I don’t see anything on the counter,” I said.
“Look closer. That’s where this stuff came from.”
Leaning over, I squinted at the white tile and finally saw it—a scattering of minuscule white granules. But it would have been easy to miss if I hadn’t known exactly where to look, lying as it was on the white tile.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “I wonder if it could be some kind of drug.”
“Drugs? Are you sure?”
“Well, it’s not like I’m an expert or anything, but it sure looks like it could be a drug to me.”
Evelyn reached out for the white powder, but I grabbed her arm. “No, don’t touch it again. We need to call the cops. Here.” I took hold of her hand and brushed the granules from her finger onto the counter at a spot away from the others.
Next I pulled out my phone and called 911. After telling the guy who answered what we’d found and where, and how it was the same location as where Jackie Olivieri’s body had been found the week before, he said he’d send out a unit right away.
“Well,” I said to Evelyn once I’d hung up, “we might as well go down and see if anything else is amiss while we’re waiting for the cops. And we can look for your mom’s cell phone, too.”
After a thorough search of the entire downstairs, however, there was no sign of either the phone or anything else out of place in the house—other than a bent screen and open window in the laundry room, which told us how the intruder had gained entry to the house.
“I’m impressed you discovered that powder on the counter,” I said as we waited for the police on the living room couch. “I could barely see it, even after you pointed it out to me.”
“I was just looking for the soap dish and my hand touched the stuff. I could tell right away it was something weird.”
At a knock on the front door, I jumped up and was surprised to see Detective Vargas standing on the front porch.
“Ms. Solari,” he said with a half smile. “We meet again.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” The smile spread to the rest of his mouth. “But really, I think we’ve known each other long enough now that you can call me Sally.”
“All right. And in that case, I suppose you should call me Martin.”
Ah, so that’s what the M on his name tag stands for. “Will do. So I’m surprised to see you here. I figured they’d just send the cop on the beat.”
“I heard the call come through while I was in my car, and since I wasn’t too far away, I thought I might as well stop by and see what you found.”
“Well, that’s actually a good thing,” I said, “because there’s something I wanted to tell you about what happened last night.”
“Yeah, I read the report this morning. You okay?” The concern in his eyes was evident as he studied me for signs of the attack.
I resisted the urge to reach up and touch my neck. “I’m fine,” I said. “Though it was pretty scary. Anyway, neither Evelyn nor I believe the break-in was a simple burglary. We think it’s related to Jackie’s death, that it might have been her killer coming back to look for something they left here that could incriminate them.”
“Do you have anything concrete to support this theory?”
“I do. I was still kind of out of it when the cops came last night, so I forgot to mention it to them at the time, but whoever attacked me had a distinct aroma about them. They smelled strongly of one of the curry spices used in Southeast Asian cooking.”
Vargas frowned. “So who do you suspect …?”
“Well, both Al, Jackie’s old boss at Tamarind, and Rachel, the woman who worked at The Curry Leaf with her, are cooks at Southeast Asian restaurants. So they would for sure smell like curry spices. But between the two, for my money, I’d go with Rachel.”
Evelyn was nodding. “I agree. I don’t see my mom inviting Al in for drinks, which must be what happened that night. But Rachel? Sure. Especially if she’d wanted to come over to try to make things right with Mom.”
“Okay.” Vargas was jotting down some notes on the pad he kept in his pocket. “I’ll check out this Rachel woman. In the meantime, you wanna show me what you just found?”
Evelyn and I led the detective upstairs and into the bathroom, and I pointed out the white power on the counter. Vargas peered at the granules, then shook his head with what sounded almost like a growl. He turned toward me, his face severe. “Has anyone been in this room since the night of Ms. Olivieri’s death?”
“No,” I said, suddenly defensive. “Unless the person who broke in last night came in here. But the officers who responded to our call didn’t do much of a search of the house, since they were so convinced it was just a burglary that we’d interrupted.”
Okay, Sal, I chastised myself. Don’t lose your cool.
I took a slow breath before going on. “In any case, though, I doubt whoever was at the house last night took the time to come in here and snort drugs. I’m thinking this must have been here ever since Jackie died.”
The detective’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just taking out my frustration with my officers—who should have been the ones to discover this, not you. I should be thanking you, Sally, instead of being so snippy.”
“It was actually Evelyn who discovered it,” I said.
“Indeed?” He turned to Evelyn, new respect in his eyes. “Well, thank you, then.”
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he removed a point-and-shoot camera and took several photos of the counter and the white powder. Next, he pulled out a pair of disposable exam gloves and a packe
t of small plastic evidence bags, then extracted a business card from his wallet.
“These over here were touched by Evelyn,” I said, indicating the granules that had been on her finger. “And she may have touched some of the other powder, too.”
Vargas nodded as he snapped on the gloves, then used the card to scoop up the grains and place them in two separate bags. Removing a felt-tip pen from his shirt pocket, he wrote several lines of information on each bag and slipped them into his jacket.
“We’ll get this tested right away,” he said, heading out to the hallway. “But I’m sorry to say, I suspect it will only end up supporting our initial finding of intentional overdose.”
Once downstairs, he shook Evelyn’s hand, then mine, and opened the front door. “Thanks for your good work,” he said. “And do let me know if you happen to run across any more evidence my officers missed.” I couldn’t tell for certain, but I was pretty sure he was chuckling to himself as he headed out to his car.
Evelyn plopped down onto the sofa. “So you think there’s any way he’s right? That Mom was doing drugs the night she died? I know that’s what he was implying.”
“I don’t know.” I leaned against the arm of the couch, thinking it certainly now appeared that might at least be possible.
She sank down lower, shoving her hands into the cushions behind her, as if she could maybe hide herself away within the guts of the couch. Kind of like what Buster did during a thunderstorm. “Maybe I’m being naïve,” she said, “but I just don’t believe it. I would have known if she’d been taking drugs.”
Digging her hands even deeper, she let out a moan that reminded me of a wounded animal. It was obvious that, despite her protestations, part of her believed it to be true about her mom. Why else would she be so despondent?
But when she let out a yelp, I jumped up and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Evelyn, snap out of it. Really, it’s gonna be okay.”
She rooted farther into the depths of the couch, and I held on to her even tighter, worried she might be having some sort of fit. “C’mon, you gotta get it together, girl.”
Her right hand popped out of the cushions. “Ohmygod!” she shrieked.
“What?” I shrieked back.
Thrusting her hand toward me, she opened it to display the prize she’d extracted from deep within the sofa.
It was a smartphone.
“Oh, wow.” I stared at it a moment before asking, “Is it your mom’s?”
“Is it a Droid?”
Taking the black phone from her, I examined it. “Yep.”
“Then I bet it’s hers.”
I clicked the button to activate it, but nothing happened. No surprise there, since the device had been hidden away in the couch for over a week now. “The battery’s dead,” I said. “You know where the charger is?”
“I have no idea.”
Chapter 19
Concentrating on work that night was difficult.
Evelyn had come up with the bright idea of trying her mom’s car for a phone charger, and—after locating the keys on a hook in the kitchen—we’d been elated to find one inside the Subaru parked in the driveway. I’d plugged the phone and charger into my T-Bird’s outlet (which had been originally designed as a cigarette lighter), but when I turned on the ignition, the screen remained black. After the fifteen minutes it took to drive home, when the device still hadn’t lit up, I decided something had to be wrong.
Googling the issue quickly informed me that when a phone battery is allowed to go completely dead, it’s not uncommon for it to no longer take a charge at all. We’d likely need a new battery to get the thing working again. And since I needed to be at Gauguin for work in a half hour, we’d have to wait till tomorrow to do anything.
So there I was, deglazing a pan with brandy and butter, monitoring a saucepot of beurre blanc, keeping an eye on a tray of duck confit in the oven, and sautéing an order of broccoli rabe with anchovy butter, all the while trying to take my mind off that stupid phone that wouldn’t charge. Could it hold the secret of who killed Jackie?
I was plating the broccoli rabe up next to a medallion of pork tenderloin that Brian had just sent over from the grill station when Tomás came darting out of the garde manger, a pair of small metal trays in his hands. He swapped out the full containers—sliced red onions and spot prawns—with the nearly empty ones in the mise en place area next to the hot line, then started back to the cold food room.
“Hold on a sec, Tomás,” I said, and he came to stand by my side. “I was wondering if you’d heard any news about your friend who got taken into custody.”
“Yeah. His wife brought in his papers, and it took a while, but they finally let him go yesterday.”
“Oh, good. Glad to hear it.”
Javier, who’d been listening in as he sautéed a pan of our Spot Prawns with Citrus and Harissa, leaned over once Tomás had gone and asked, “What was that about?”
I started to tell him about the immigration raid down the street the previous week, but before I could finish, the sound of a pan crashing to the floor across the room made me jump.
“Sorry,” Tomás said, then crouched down to retrieve the metal insert that he’d dropped.
While Javier turned to give the prep cook some good-natured ribbing, I wiped my brow with a side towel and tried to calm my shaking body.
“Wow, you look like you just saw a ghost,” Javier said, returning to his shrimp. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I answered with a forced smile. “It just startled me is all.” Javier scattered a handful of orange chunks in his pan, tossed everything together a few times, then spooned it over a bed of basmati rice. “So, Evelyn’s still coming over tomorrow to show me how to make her grandmother’s pasta, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the plan. How ’bout if I drop her off around two? That’ll give you a couple hours.”
“Sounds good.” Wiping clean his sauté pan, he grabbed the next two tickets off the rail, handed me one, and set to work on an order of Duck á la Lilikoi.
I heated my pan for another side of broccoli rabe. But as I swirled clarified butter about its stainless-steel surface, I couldn’t help but keep glancing behind me. For the image of those gloved hands reaching out to grip me by the throat was now seared into my brain.
* * *
Two hours later, the tickets had slowed to a trickle and Javier and Brian were discussing the specials for the coming weekend. As a concession to Brian for having to switch nights with him this coming Saturday, Javier had asked the cook if he wanted to come up with some dishes of his own.
“I had this idea for a turmeric chicken,” Brian was saying. “I found a bunch of fresh turmeric and galangal today at this Asian market over the hill, and I was thinking we could serve it with lemongrass-scented rice and a papaya chutney.”
Javier nodded. “Sounds great. Go for it.”
“Awesome,” Brian said, and headed back to his grill station. I followed him over to the charbroiler.
“So, do you know a lot about curry spices?” I asked.
“A fair amount. We had a few Indian and Thai dishes on the menu at Le Radis Ravi, that place in Los Gatos I worked at years ago.” And then he spun to face me, his eyes flashing anger. “What, are you worried my turmeric chicken will suck?”
“No, no,” I said. “Not at all. I have utter confidence in you as a cook.” Though my confidence in his ability to handle stress had just fallen back a notch again. “It’s just that I’m wondering if you’d be able to describe the smell to me of some of the curry spices.”
He tilted his head. “Huh? How come? You thinking of trying some out in a recipe?”
“No, it’s just that, well … I met this person who had this smell on them that I thought might be a curry spice, and I’ve been wondering what it was.”
“Okay …” Brian still seemed puzzled by my request, but with a shrug, he grabbed a chicken quarter from the cooler and threw it on the grill, then motioned for me to
follow him. “Here,” he said, leading me into the walk-in fridge. “You can check out these spices I bought today for the turmeric chicken. Can you describe the smell you’re looking for?”
“Sort of woody, I guess.”
“This?” Brian plucked a stalk of lemongrass from the bunch on the shelf and thrust it at me.
“No, I know the smell of lemongrass. This was more, I don’t know, spicy. Like black pepper, and maybe citrus?”
Brian frowned, then handed me a knob of something that looked like ginger but was much more orange. “How about this? It’s fresh turmeric.”
I lifted it to my nose. “No. This is woody, but not in the way that smell was. It was almost like pine needles.”
“Aha!” With a smile, the cook pawed through the cardboard box of produce and came up with another knob of something that was much paler in color. “I bet it was this.”
“Ginger?” I said, taking the root from him. “I don’t think so.” But when I inhaled its pungent fragrance, a wave of nausea swept over me as the memory of the masked face leaning in to hiss in my ear came flooding back.
“That’s it,” I managed to say. “What is it?”
“Galangal,” said Brian. “It’s a common Southeast Asian spice, but it’s probably most known in this country for being used in Tom Kha Gai. You know, that chicken-coconut soup?”
I did know. It was one of my favorite Thai dishes.
And it had been one of the offerings chalked onto the board at The Streets of Delhi, Rachel’s new pop-up, the day I’d been attacked.
* * *
Evelyn and I didn’t get to the cell phone store the next morning until almost eleven, since both of us had slept in. The salesman examined the device with the same mixture of distain and boredom I’d come to expect whenever being assisted by a twenty-something tech geek.
“Well, it looks like it’s probably the battery,” he finally said after trying in vain to get it powered up via his charger. I snorted and gave Evelyn a “which is exactly what we said when we came in” nudge to the shoulder.
The man took the phone into the back room to search for the correct battery and emerged several minutes later. “There ya go,” he said, plugging the device into the charger once again and setting it on the counter with a self-satisfied smile.