A Cookbook Conspiracy (32 page)

“Did she ever mention to you that she lost it?”

“No.”

“Maybe she took it off in the ladies’ room that night.”

“Oh, right,” Savannah said. “When she went in to wash her neck.”

I chuckled. “Okay, that was stupid.”

“We have to give it back to her,” Savannah said.

Derek shook his head. “No, it’s evidence. We have to give it to the police.”

“Do we have to tell them where we found it?” I asked.

There was silence in the car while we contemplated the consequences of informing the
police that Peter was a kleptomaniac. It didn’t seem to have any bearing on the deaths
of Baxter and Montgomery. Or did it?

“I’ll call Inspector Jaglom and tell him we have it,” Derek said. He brought the car
to a stop in front of our building and waited for the traffic to break before turning
into the garage below.

“What’ll we tell Colette?” Savannah wondered.

“Let’s not tell her anything until we think this through,” Derek said. “I’d like to
find out how Peter got it from her, but that won’t happen until he regains consciousness.”

I frowned at him. “Do you think Colette…”

“I don’t know what to think,” he said as he backed his car into his reserved parking
space. “Let’s talk this through upstairs.”

*   *   *

D
alton got an earful from Derek, who blamed his younger brother for letting the womenfolk
out of his sight. Okay, Derek didn’t actually say that, but that’s how I was reading
it.

Dalton fought back like any brother would. “It’s not my fault. They said they were
going off to the market. Why would I suspect them of lying? Look at the two of them.
They’re the epitome of innocence.”

“Oh, hell, yes,” Derek said, casting another heated glance at me. “The innocent one
whose hobby is murder. And her sister, who could have told you that she was flying
to the moon for lunch and you would’ve bloody believed her.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Savannah insisted.

My hobby was
not
murder. And apparently, I told myself, Derek and I were not finished with our conversation.

“Leave them both out of it,” I said to Derek. He looked directly at me, and I met
him stare for stare. I really do love Derek very much, but I’m not going to be treated
like an idiot child. “I get that you’re angry, but don’t direct it at Savannah or
Dalton. I already told you I’m to blame for everything. I dragged them both into it
and I’m sorry. I suck. But enough already.”

I’d reached the point where I was about to cry again, and that was so not going to
happen. So instead of humiliating myself, I stomped off to my bedroom to wallow alone
for a while.

I curled up on the love seat and recalled the good times when Derek and I had worked
together so closely on other murder cases. We’d had such fun. Well, except for those
awful times when I’d stumbled upon dead bodies and those other bad times when I was
confronted by cold-blooded killers.

Was I maybe romanticizing the past a little too much? It didn’t
matter because it seemed that those days were over. And that was sad. And since I
was sad and wallowing anyway, I wondered if maybe Derek was over me and our relationship,
too. For a few minutes in the car, it had felt like we were okay again. Now, I wasn’t
so sure. And that hurt a lot.

Suddenly I was irritated at myself. Why in heaven’s name was I sitting alone in my
room, brooding? I hadn’t done anything wrong, and oh, by the way, I’d probably saved
Peter’s life because I had shown up there.

If Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dangerous wanted to give me more grief, I would be ready for
him. I walked into the bathroom and splashed water on my puffy eyes, something I’d
been doing a lot of lately.

I patted my face dry, slapped on some moisturizer and lipstick, and walked back into
the bedroom just as the door opened and Derek stalked in. He came straight at me,
wrapping his arms around me and holding on.

Okay, this was nice. If this was a prelude to round two of our fight, it was a good
one. We stood like that for a long time. He stroked my hair and kissed my neck.

“I was so bloody afraid,” he murmured. “I heard you scream. And then Savannah screamed
and then…nothing. I shouted your name, but you never came back on the line.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, feeling my eyes well up again. Damn it, I really did suck.
I should have called him back. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

“Going forward from here,” he said, pointing his finger at me, “the first person you
call is me.”

“But I did call you,” I said.

He held me at arm’s length and gazed at me. “I don’t mean from the hotel room. You
call me before you go off to follow an impulse. Please. Even if you think nothing
will happen.”

“I really didn’t think anything would happen.”

He actually grinned. “Of course not. You were in the moment and on the move.”

“Exactly.”

His smile faded. “But, darling, we’ve both had our suspicions over the past few weeks
that Kevin or Peter might’ve taken the cookbook. And then when you found out it had
been stolen from their village—”

“Oh, hell.” I grimaced, realizing I hadn’t connected the dots. Again. No wonder I
stumbled across bodies. I rarely stopped to figure out all the connections in whatever
case we were wrapped up in. As Derek said, I tended to follow my impulses. “You’re
right. I wasn’t thinking. And then I went and dragged Savannah into it.”

“Yes,” he said mildly. “Although I’m grateful you weren’t alone in that room. And
I must say, she appears to have weathered it well enough.”

“She was awesome,” I said, smiling. “She actually fought Kevin off with an egg whisk.”

He laughed. “Only a chef would think of that.”

“Only Savannah.”

He pulled me back into his arms. “But in future, instead of dragging your sister or
anyone else into the thick of it, I would prefer that you drag me instead.”

So we still have a future
, I thought, and smiled. “I promise I’ll drag you into everything from now on.”

*   *   *

D
alton, who was thankful to finally have the real Obedience Green cookbook in his hands,
returned the favor by making margaritas while Savannah prepared a delicious dinner
of black-bean-and-veggie tacos, cheese enchiladas, and guacamole. While we dined,
Derek and I concocted a deliciously devious plan that counted on several different
theories coming together at once.

Savannah and Dalton contributed to and improved on it, and I couldn’t have been prouder.
We were a real family of investigators! After dinner, I cleaned up while Savannah
made a few phone calls and arranged everything for the following evening. It was becoming
clear that my good-hearted, clean-living sister had a natural ability for scheming
and conniving that warmed me right down to my bones.

Or maybe it was the margaritas.

Derek worked from home the following day. In between conference calls, he would wander
into the dining room to monitor Dalton’s progress as his brother tried to unlock the
secrets of the cookbook code. Even though Dalton insisted it was a one-man job, he
seemed to enjoy sparring and trading theories with Derek.

Dalton had taken over the dining room table and papers were spread everywhere. Savannah
was there, too. They were all having such a good time and the subject matter was so
intriguing, I was tempted to give up on my bookbinding work and join them.

It was a dilemma for me. I should have begun the process of dampening the leather
for the cover of
Jane Eyre
, but once I started that job, I would be forced to see it all the way through. Knowing
our big plans for the evening, I decided that today was not the day to begin anything
too complicated.

Instead, I took an hour and completed the rest of the work on
Jane Eyre
, everything but the leather cover. For the endpapers, I picked out a sheet of mottled
navy and burgundy I’d made a few months ago. The blend of colors would suit the navy
leather I’d chosen for the cover. Then I glued the boards and spine to the text block
and slipped
Jane
into the book press for the rest of the day.

I tidied up my workshop, then dashed into the dining room to join the others. It was
all too fascinating, but I was stumped from the get-go. “How on earth do you figure
out the code when there are such random symbols and numbers and squiggles like this?”

Savannah agreed. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Is it just trial and error or
are there certain patterns you follow?”

Dalton was happy to explain to his rapt audience. “These days, we depend on computers
to help establish algorithmic codes. It makes decryption faster, though not necessarily
easier. Believe me, none of it is a walk in the park.”

Savannah shook her head. “I can’t imagine anything more difficult. You’re basically
starting with nothing.”

Dalton smiled at her. “I suppose digging ditches is a more difficult way to earn a
living, but this does tax my mind a bit.” He pointed to one of the cookbook pages.
“The problem with these old codes is that they required the different parties to work
together. Each of them needed access to the code pattern as well as a decoder book
of some sort.”

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You need the super-secret decoder ring.”

His lips curved. “Yes, like the ones that used to come in our breakfast cereal.”

Savannah stared at the page in front of her. “So without the secret passbook, how
do you decode this?”

“There’s always a method and a pattern to it, whether it’s obvious or not.” Dalton
sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Whoever was sending these coded messages
back and forth through this cookbook had to have a decryption chart or booklet. So
there is a pattern. And I believe I’m close to breaking it.”

“Really?” I said, hoping he didn’t hear the doubt in my voice. “How exciting.”

Dalton frowned. “Yes. What threw me off at first was the fact that some of these symbols
equal a letter of the alphabet, while the same symbol sometimes refers to a whole
word or phrase. For instance, I believe this pinwheel design here is a
W
, so it’s used with other symbols or numbers to spell out a word. But it also refers
to Washington, the general, as well as, occasionally, his headquarters or his camp
or his next maneuver. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, it does,” I said, allowing myself to feel a smidgen of excitement. “So a coded
sentence might actually spell out the word
water
using all the letters,
w-a-t-e-r
. But if it was something related to General Washington’s next move, the pinwheel
alone would be sufficient to indicate the entire word.”

“Exactly.”

“I can see how that would make things very complicated and confusing for you,” Savannah
said, gazing at Dalton with even more adoration than usual.

“It can be complicated,” Dalton said, with a humble nod of his head. “Luckily, though,
I’m very good at what I do.”

“And modest,” Derek muttered.

“So true,” Dalton said with a self-effacing shrug. Then he grinned. “Now, regardless
of whether I break the code completely or not, my gut feeling is that this gentlewoman,
Obedience Green, was recruited by the Yanks to spy on her employer, the British Army
general Blakeslee.”

“But why would a woman in that position agree to do
something that would endanger her very livelihood?” Savannah wondered.

“And quite possibly her life,” Derek added.

I walked over to the kitchen to start a new pot of coffee. “Maybe she was being blackmailed,”
I said. Because blackmail seemed to be an ongoing theme, I thought, as I poured water
into the coffeemaker.

“It’s possible the Yanks were using her,” Derek said. “Tricked her, played on her
emotions. Perhaps convinced her that one of their men was in love with her and coerced
the information out of her that way.”

“And she would’ve had plenty to reveal,” I said. “She must’ve heard Blakeslee telling
his men all sorts of things during meals or after dinner with his fellow officers
gathered around. They would be talking about troop movements and stuff like that all
the time, right?”

“And poor Obedience would report it all to her lover,” Savannah said. She had clearly
taken the cook’s side in this dastardly plot.

“Through coded messages in her cookbook,” I said, returning to the table. “Brilliant.
But how would they pass the information back and forth?”

“That’s easy.” Dalton tapped the cookbook lightly with his knuckles. “She would write
out the message in code on a predetermined page. Then she would take the cookbook
to the marketplace with her. At some appointed spot, she would leave it or pass it
on to a contact. A few days later, the book would be returned the same way.”

“Poor Obedience,” Savannah said again, with a sigh. “Betrayed by love.”

“Isn’t it possible that Obedience was the one doing the betraying?” Derek suggested.
“She and the general were in cahoots. He was deliberately feeding her false information
and she was passing it on to her friends in the revolutionary army.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Savannah clapped her hands. “I like that Obedience might’ve had
a little more gumption than just being a fool for love.”

“It’s feasible,” I said. I knew it was all conjecture at this point, but it was fun
to hypothesize. “She was very loyal to the general. He could’ve dumped her when he
found out she didn’t know how to cook, but he allowed her to stay and learn on the
job. Obedience was grateful for that.”

Dalton nodded. “I read one small passage where she spoke of being scared to death
of the American savages. So she would be extremely grateful to have a job and a home.”

“Savages,” Savannah said, frowning. “That’s probably what the British people considered
us upstart Americans back then.”