Footsteps in the Dark

by Josh Lanyon

  Relief swept through me. “I am so happy.”

  “You’re welcome.” As Mac opened his car door, he turned back to me. “I’ll be there for dinner.”

  Chapter Five

  At seven o’clock Sunday morning I stuck a sign on the door announcing that the Eelgrass would open at five, and got to work.

  It felt good to walk into the darkened space, turning on the lights as though I were some kind of wizard bringing the kitchen to life.

  I unlocked the office and found my chef’s coat but had to search to locate my apron. Eventually I found it in the bar. Undoubtedly it had been worn by Dorian, who frequently forgot his own gear. As I tied the strings, I felt through the pockets for any detritus Dorian might have left.

  Sure enough, I removed two corkscrews and a couple of ballpoint pens with the Eelgrass logo on them. But I also found a small, clear sandwich bag containing a photograph. An actual picture, printed on paper. It looked old, with faded Kodachrome colors and one bent corner. It showed two men and two boys on a fishing boat, holding up the homely bulk of a delicious Pacific halibut. The final item was an Eelgrass bar napkin with Mac’s phone number written on it.

  I’m not in the habit of memorizing numbers, and I never added Mac to my official contacts, but I’d been seeing his digits pop up frequently over the last couple of days.

  So before Dorian died, he had taken down Mac’s number in addition to visiting Evelyn. What did I make of that? Had he feared for his life? Had someone threatened him? Did he ever get a chance to use this number? And why hadn’t it been discovered when the police had searched the place? Wouldn’t they have recognized Mac’s personal number?

  Then again, maybe not? Who actually memorized numbers these days?

  Hardly anybody.

  And a bartender having a phone number written on a napkin wasn’t exactly an unusual occurrence. I knew I should call Mac and report it right away, but I didn’t want the cops coming around again before I even had a chance to open. I slid the baggie into my back pocket.

  I know it sounds selfish. And it was, but that’s what I did.

  I put the picture and number on the back burner of my mind and got to work prepping ingredients for my dinner service.

  An emergency order phoned in to my purveyor the previous afternoon meant that one hour into my usual routine a grizzled old Native guy arrived at my door, holding a thirty-pound box of live, local scallops.

  Being superstitious (and secretly softhearted), I muttered a quiet apology to the shellfish, then set about shucking them.

  I found myself saddened by the waste of removing the coral and mantle from the adductor muscle. When I was twenty-one, I’d gone to Japan on a whim, and there eaten a scallop—gonads, gills, and all—and it had been delicious.

  It had been a revelation to me, and I wondered if Mac would be game to try it, since I knew few others on the island would be so inclined to experiment.

  I set aside three large scallops for him and went to work on the others, leaving intact the sac of vivid orange coral (a.k.a. gonads) curled around the familiar cylindrical white muscle. I wasn’t sure anyone would come dine, really. But I felt like giving them a treat if they did—a reward for still believing in me.

  Because that’s how I like to reward loyalty: by providing surprise gonads.

  I checked my messages. Sam hadn’t answered yet. I wondered if she’d gone to the mainland. If she didn’t show, I didn’t know what I was going to do. There would be no front of house person—nobody to serve the food or pour drinks.

  I texted Lionel to make sure he planned to come to work, and he replied with a jaunty, Yeah, chief, still gonna be in at 5 like I said.

  It was around noon when Evelyn walked in through the open back door.

  “You should get a lock put on that,” she said. “Anybody could come in here anytime.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Were you knocking in the front? I’m sorry if I didn’t hear you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I could see you back here.” Evelyn held a plastic grocery bag in one hand and a knife case in the other.

  “What’s up?” I turned my attention back to my parsley chiffonade.

  “I came to help you.”

  I heard a rustling of plastic and saw that she’d pulled a white chef’s coat out of the plastic bag and was buttoning it on. She tugged at the bottom and frowned.

  “I think I must have shrunk,” she said. “They say you shrink when you get old.”

  “Come on now, I can’t expect you to come in here and do my work for me,” I protested.

  “I didn’t think you did, or you wouldn’t look so surprised,” she said. “Give me something to do.”

  “I can’t pay you,” I said. “I can’t even pay myself.”

  “Don’t worry. You can trade me lunch credit.” She glanced swiftly around the room and saw the piece of paper lying on the table behind me. “Is this your prep list?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Looks small.”

  “I’m not expecting too many clients,” I admitted.

  “What’s for dessert?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Got apples?”

  I told her I did. She then quizzed me on the availability of a few basic staples.

  “I’ll make tarte tatin, then,” she finally announced. “It’s easy, and people like the fancy name. Hopefully by the time I’ve finished that, you’ll have found something else for me to do.”

  Evelyn set about peeling apples for the tarte tatin while I continued with my preparation.

  “Julie wants to know if you’re single.” Evelyn started to place the sliced apples into the pan of bubbling caramel. “If you are, there’s a physical therapist at the medical center, who she’s been trying to set up for ages. Do you like massages?”

  “Can we all get massages or just Drew?”

  I glanced up to see that Sam had entered through the back door. She wore her usual work attire: black pencil skirt, spangled black sleeveless top, and patent leather clogs. The red streak in her black bob had turned purple, and her eyelids gleamed with crisp, freshly applied eyeliner.

  I won’t say I was astonished to see her turn up ready to work, but it definitely hadn’t seemed like a sure thing. I decided to go for diplomacy and positive reinforcement.

  “Sam,” I said, “I’m so glad to see you.”

  Sam offered a tentative smile, though she frowned immediately when she saw Evelyn working over the stove.

  “Evelyn’s helping me out today,” I said.

  “I’m broke and need to work for my supper.” Evelyn spoke without looking up from the pan full of apples.

  Sam and I locked eyes. Her expression questioned my sanity. I answered with a helpless shrug. Sam went on her way.

  We worked throughout the day, speaking occasionally. Sam had misplaced an invoice for an order of lettuce, something that normally wouldn’t have fazed her at all, but I guess it showed how edgy we both were, because she couldn’t seem to stop searching for it. Neither of us mentioned Dorian. Sam just tidied the bar herself. Evelyn took a couple of breaks, visibly fatigued but unwilling to admit it. I thought of cutting her loose, but the fact was I did need the help, and I sensed in her a need to help me—and also to dispense various criticisms of my technique. This rankled my pride, but I took it anyway because: elders. And because she was right.

  Though I was glad Lionel wasn’t present to hear Evelyn busting my balls all day.

  Fifteen minutes before we were to open for dinner, Lionel himself arrived, cloaked entirely in the blue rain poncho he always wore in inclement weather. Beneath this he wore his usual uniform of baggy sweatpants and a T-shirt for a band I didn’t recognize.

  “Hey, chief, there’s a whole line of people waiting outside to get in,” he said in an excited rush.

  “Really?” Glancing up, I saw that this was, inconceivably, the case. Though I felt a shadow of disappointment to see that Mac was not among them. �
�Damn.”

  “That’s what I said.” Lionel then saw Evelyn, and cocked his head theatrically before saying, “Hey, Granny.”

  “Hey, Fuzz Nuts,” Evelyn replied. “Best get to work now. You’re three minutes late.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Lionel replied. But when he turned, he rolled his eyes so far, I thought he could use them to massage his brain.

  Sam appeared at the food pass-through, looking happier than I’d seen her look in weeks.

  “Did you see the line? Are you ready for me to unlock the doors?”

  I made a point of surveying the kitchen in the manner of a king gazing out across his kingdom.

  “Ready whenever you are.”

  ***

  The dinner service was so busy, I didn’t notice when Mac arrived. The only thing that clued me in on it was Lionel returning from bussing a table in the dining room, singing “Fuck Tha Police” under his breath.

  Mac sat in his usual place by the window, his back to the wall, where he could see everyone on the sidewalk and everyone in the dining room.

  How strategic.

  Again, that dissonance slithered through me. There was no denying I found him attractive. Obviously. I’d set aside special shellfish just for him.

  And yet…a cop? Really? The personalities of the cops I’d met ranged from rule-obsessed wiener to fascist sociopath.

  Had I somehow become masochistic during my tenure at the Eelgrass? Had entrepreneurship warped me so completely that I’d begun to find authority figures comforting?

  For a second I nearly gave up my plan of making his “special-special,” then went into heavy rationalization mode. Even if this guy was just as diametrically opposed to me as I suspected him to be, it couldn’t hurt to suck up to him a little. If I got him to like me, it might make him think twice before finding a reason to convict me.

  So I stuck to the plan. I removed only the black sac of guts from the scallops and placed them back into their shells. I added some butter and a little soy sauce and left them to grill while I made the pasta that would accompany them—lightly dressed that with mentaiko citrus cream sauce and added a fresh vitamin-C-laden tomato salad on the side so that Mac would not die of scurvy before being able to clear my name.

  “Are we serving this?” Sam squinted at the plates with grave suspicion. “He ordered the special.”

  “Tell him I decided to substitute something else,” I said. And when Sam looked as though she might refuse, I added, “If he doesn’t want it, he can send it back.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Hokkaido-style scallops, pasta with mentaiko yuzu cream, and grilled tomato with sesame and ginger.”

  “Oh my God, are you into him?” Sam raised her eyebrows in alarm.

  “Please just take it before it gets cold.”

  I tried not to watch as Mac received my gift—not because I didn’t want to know what he thought, but because I didn’t want to be caught watching. I spied what I thought looked like an expression of stunned delight, which could have also been shock.

  Sam returned immediately.

  “He doesn’t want it remade, but he wants to talk to you when you have a moment. I told him I’d comp it, but he refused.”

  I finished my last two tickets and took off my apron. I left my chef’s coat on, wanting to counter his uniform with mine, even though he had dressed in plain clothes.

  “How are you enjoying your meal, Deputy?” I asked.

  “It is so, so good. I’ve never even seen anything like this.” Mac gave me a bigger smile than I’d previously seen on him. It made him look younger. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”

  It’s not that this has never happened to me before. At certain venues, it’s actually pretty common to be summoned to explain the intricacies of your culinary creations. But in my experience, the guys—it was always guys—who demanded explanations just wanted to show off their influence over the kitchen staff. I’d never been invited to sit down and talk about how and why I made a dish with a person who seemed so impressed with me or so deeply awed by what I’d created.

  So I told him all about the ingredients—what they were and where they came from. Mac listened, nodding occasionally, but mostly eating.

  It made me wonder whether dining with a companion was unusual for him. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember him ever being anything but alone. There were no new customers, so I stayed at the table, talking. I went on from the mechanics of the dishes to the first time I ate scallops prepared in this fashion—how I ordered them accidentally, then was too embarrassed to say so, but also confused about how to approach this weird food.

  “It must be fun to travel,” Mac remarked. He was almost at the end of his pasta.

  “Yeah. I like it.”

  “Is that experience why you decided you wanted to be a chef?”

  “Not exactly. I was the problem child. I got expelled in high school for fighting. So I went to work with my dad, doing construction. He had a job in the city doing renovations on this restaurant. Dad and I stayed with my oldest brother, who was in college, while we were doing the work on the restaurant. One day, the chef needed a dishwasher at his other restaurant, and the owner offered to pay me cash to fill in. I was sixteen years old. The rest is history. How about dessert? Evelyn made a fancy apple pie.”

  Mac brightened. “Absolutely.”

  I went back into the kitchen to plate the tarte tatin. I noticed that Evelyn hadn’t dated the container—probably not that big of a thing in her day, but now an offense against the health-department gods. As I reached into my back pocket for a Sharpie, I touched the napkin and photo Dorian had left there.

  I had to ask Mac about these, I thought. Yeah, it might ruin the mood, but I should still do it. I would just wait for the right time. Plus, I wanted a piece of this pie myself.

  So I came back with two plates, reseated myself, and said, “But enough about me. What about you? How did you get into police work?”

  At the change of subject, Mac shrank a little and shrugged. “I joined the sheriff’s office to help my mom pay the bills after my dad wasn’t around anymore.”

  Mac’s change of demeanor when speaking about this didn’t encourage me to continue along these conversation lines. But ultimately my curiosity won out.

  “Did you not want to be a cop when you grew up?”

  Mac paused, fork held in midair as he gazed out into the rainy autumn night—as if I’d asked a question too difficult to answer.

  Maybe I had.

  I gave him some space and kept eating my luscious slice of fancy pie. I was about to casually introduce a new subject when he continued.

  “My dad was a really good guy and a great deputy. I guess I wanted to be like him, but I didn’t necessarily want his job. Now I’ve been doing it for twelve years, though, so I don’t know what else I’d do.” Mac finally ate his bite of pie. “I can’t imagine going to college now. I’d be so much older than everybody else.”

  I hadn’t expected his answer to be so candid.

  “Older people go back to college all the time.”

  “Yeah, but in this job I’m already halfway to retirement,” Mac said. “I suppose I’ll think about doing something crazy like going to school when I’ve finished out my twenty-five years.”

  I couldn’t imagine doing anything for twenty-five years and said so. Mac just laughed.

  “How long have you been cooking?”

  “Fourteen years.”

  “See? You’re more than halfway there.” Mac gave a smile.

  “Yeah, except there’s no retirement…or really any other sort of benefits. The best thing you can hope for is to sell your place to somebody who invariably takes what you made and runs it into the ground.”

  “Wow. Outlook so bleak.”

  “Just realistic,” I said.

  “It might be precarious, but at least you get to live the life of an artist.”

  “Artist? Oh please, I spent an hour today making
french fries.”

  “Fancy french fries.”

  “They’re still fries. That’s hardly artistic.”

  Mac gave a shrug. “I think you’re an artist.”

  Normally, I’m a sucker for a good compliment, but Mac’s, delivered with such sincerity, made me shy.

  “Listen, I’m going to have to go back to the kitchen soon, but I found something.” I handed him the napkin and photograph I’d found in my apron. “That’s your phone number, right?”

  The napkin didn’t faze him, but when he saw the photograph he became transfixed, turning it over and scrutinizing every part of it.

  “That’s Dorian’s handwriting on the napkin. I think he might have been wearing my apron. I don’t know what the photograph is of,” I said.

  “It’s all right. I do.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing to do with the case,” Mac said.

  “If it’s nothing to do with the case, can I have it back?”

  “I think I’ll keep it.”

  “Are you kidding? This could be evidence.”

  “I told you it doesn’t have anything to do with the case.” Mac met my glare with stone-faced refusal.

  “Is it the reason you were outside the restaurant that night?” I demanded.

  Mac ran his finger along the edge of the photograph. After a few seconds, his easygoing demeanor returned.

  “Okay, yes. It’s none of your business, but I’ll tell you. Dorian called me and said he had something for me. At the time I thought maybe he’d decided to become an informant rather than get caught in a big bust. He asked me to meet him outside, but he never showed up.” Mac’s eyes returned to the photo, and his expression seemed almost tender. “He must have found this picture of my dad while he was going through his grandma’s old photo albums.”

  I took this information in and said, “Which one is your dad?” Though looking closely, I realized the answer was obvious. The brawny man sporting a shock of dark hair and giving the camera a charming grin closely resembled Mac.

  “The guy on the left,” Mac said. “Next to him is Bill Lindgren. The boys are the Lindgren twins, Charlie and Troy. I couldn’t say which is which.”