Authors: Don Bruns
Silence.
Then I heard it. The faraway sound of those rubber-soled shoes marching back down the hall.
“Maybe he's leaving.”
“Maybe.”
A pause right in front of the door. We heard the click, then nothing. Now it was unlocked and someone appeared to be outside waiting for us to make the first move.
We waited, maybe two minutes, it might have been three. Neither of us moved an inch. Just as I was about to open the door, just pull it open and step into the hallway, someone pushed on it hard. He stood there, a sneer on his face, a knife in his hand.
“It's too bad I had to come in when I did. You broke in here to steal something out of the office.” He glanced at the chest with its open drawers. “What? Knives? And I catch you in the act. Boys, I'm pleased to say I don't think you're going to be working here anymore.” He gave James a cheesy smile. “Much less heading up the South Beach operation.”
Vanderfield the pirate, a three-day stubble on his face, stood there, tapping the silvery blade in the palm of his hand.
“You didn't even know we were here.”
“I did not. I was going to do some research on a new menu item, but let me say it's a pleasant surprise.”
He ran his tongue over his lips, as if in anticipation of what was to come next.
“So are you going to kill us? Like you did Amanda Wright?”
“Oh, you think I killed the lovely, talentless Amanda. She wasn't bad in the sack, but couldn't cook her way out of a soup pot.”
“You couldn't take the fact that she was getting the promotion and you weren't.”
The sous chef gave us a grim smile.
“You've got this whole thing figured out, don't you?”
I was staring out into the hall, wondering if James kept him occupied, I could go around Vanderfield and head for the open door. But that left James with the knife-wielding cook.
“We were just leaving,” James's voice was a little higher than normal. Higher with a slight quiver.
“Oh, I don't think so.” He took two steps toward us, and that's when I saw the flash as a cast-iron skillet came crashing down on his head.
“Maybe I killed him.” Em stood there shaking, the iron weapon balanced in her hand.
James was pale and I'm not sure I was any darker.
“God, James, you almost kill a cop with a truck door, and now I'm facing possible manslaughter charges for killing a sous chef. I'm not sure we're cut out for this stuff, guys.”
“What the hell brought you here? How did you get in?”
“The door was propped open. And I thought about your situation and was feeling pretty bad that I'd kind of talked the two of you into taking this job. Then I refused to back you up. I got worried, having you here by yourselves.”
I took some offense at the statement. “You didn't think we could handle it by ourselves?”
“Was I correct?”
“What do we do now?”
She pulled out her cell phone.
“Call Ted.”
“It's three in the morning.”
“He said twenty-four-seven.”
“Maybe he had something else on his mind.”
“Grow up, Skip.” But she knew it wasn't going to happen.
Em called and he answered on the third ring.
“Ted, we've got the sous chef Vanderfield here at L'Elfe. He was attacking Skip and James with a knife, and I hit him pretty hard with a skillet.”
I could hear his voice through her receiver.
“Jesus.”
“Do you want to come over here?”
She switched the phone to speaker.
“Let me think. How many laws have you guys broken?”
She studied James and me. “Probably several.”
“I think the guy is alive.” James was on his knees, listening to Joaquin Vanderfield breathe.
“He's alive, Ted. But he'll have one hell of a headache tomorrow morning.”
“Did he confront you?”
“No. He didn't know I was here.”
“So, he's coming at Lessor and Moore with a knife and you think that proves he's Amanda's killer? Is that your jumping-off point?”
Again she looked at us, and James nodded.
“He had a knife in his hand, Ted. I assumed, as did the boys, that he was going to use it. That's all I know.”
Once again, “Jesus.”
“Do you want to come over?”
“No. Should I? Yes.”
“We'll wait.”
It took him twenty minutes and he arrived alone. I expected the cavalry.
“Where do you get off breaking into someone's business?”
James looked at the floor.
“My God, do you know that the police have to get search warrants? And even then we've got to have a lot more to go on than a hunch.”
“In our defenseâ”
“You have no defense.” Conway looked me straight in the eye.
“We needed to get confirmation on the knives.”
He just shook his head and walked over to the chest.
“So, hot shit, what did you learn from your break-in?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “We may have learned nothing.” I had yet to absorb the impact of James's knife in Chef Jean's drawer.
“So my entire jaunt out here at whatever god-awful hour this is, is for nothing?”
He leaned against the door frame of the office, leaving us to stand and take his criticism. “I've never had use for private investigators, they're more trouble than they're worth. And you two? Rank amateurs.”
He pulled on Kelly Fields's shiny pan, still wedged in the top of the open chest.
“Where the hell did you get this idea?”
“YouTube,” James said sheepishly.
“Not bad.”
“Thanks.”
“Does this guy,” he motioned to Vanderfield who was still out cold, “have a key?”
James nodded. “Probably.”
Conway studied the fallen sous chef, kneeling down and checking his pulse.
“So, even if he's the killer, he has every right to be here.”
None of us said a word.
“I'm in a real mess here, kids.” He squinted his eyes, looking at James, then me, finally coming to rest on Em. “If I cover this up, and I get found out, it's my job. It's a criminal act.”
“And if this guy is the killer?”
“Based on what? He's got a key to the place?”
We did have a very lame premise.
“He came at us with a knife,” I ventured.
“You just broke into his employer's business.”
James studied the chest. “Did you fingerprint the guy?”
“They fingerprinted everyone in theâ”
“He skips nights, shows up late on other nights. Maybe your guys missed him.”
“So you're suggesting that if we didn't print him, then those prints we can't identify on the knife handle might be his.”
My roommate nodded, a smug look on his face. He'd bet on Vanderfield from the beginning.
Taking a deep breath and gritting his teeth, Conway looked out into the hallway at the comatose body. “You three, take a hike. I'm going to talk to the sous chef and get another handle on what happened here tonight.”
“Detective, there's one more thing.”
His lips pursed, he frowned. “There's always one more thing.”
I pointed to James's knife.
James was shaking his head, as if to say “Don't give that to him. No.”
“The knife, with the slight nick in the blade, I'm pretty sure it's the one that was stolen from James's locker.”
He looked confused.
“You're talking about the knife that was stolen from the locker the same night someone took the murder weapon andâOh. What you're insinuating isâ”
“I think the murder weapon came from this chest. And whoever killed Amanda Wright replaced that murder weapon with James's knife thinking no one would notice.”
Em smiled, looking impressed with my deductive reasoning.
“Bouvier.” James and Conway said it together.
“I don't think we have his prints on file.” The detective studied the knife lying on its bed of green felt.
“What if they compare the unknown prints on the murder weapon with those on James's knife and they both match Jean Bouvier or Joaquin Vanderfield?”
“Could be a logical explanation.”
“Maybe. But would you look a little harder at that person?”
He thought about it for a second. “It's not conclusive by any means, but it would warrant a harder look at one of them, I suppose.”
“So you're going to print Bouvier.”
“And Vanderfield, if he isn't already on record. Get me a kitchen towel. I'm wrapping up the evidence.”
“No search warrant?” James had to push it.
“I now know how to break into this tool chest, Lessor. If I get a positive on the prints I will replace this knife and get the warrant. Don't lose too much sleep over it, okay?”
I got the impression that Ted Conway could do just about anything he wanted to do and get away with it. Sort of like James.
“Ted,” Em put her hand on his arm, “thank you forâ”
“No. You're not out of the woods on this one. Not yet. I'm covering all bases, and I'm covering my ass. You tried to kill the guy out there. Your two friends,” he waved his hand in our direction, “they did exactly what I was afraid they'd do. They went over the line, they interfered with this investigation, and they were about to withhold information that may very well have led us to the killer.”
It was even worse than I thought. There seemed to be nothing good coming out of this scenario.
“We'll be in touch.” James was already headed toward the kitchen and freedom.
“Yes, we will. You can count on it.”
Out in the parking lot, I said it for all of us. “We're in some deep shit, my friends.”
“If we flushed out the killer, all will be forgiven,” James said. “Furthermore, there's no evidence we were ever there.”
I glanced back at the kitchen door, the security camera pointing at me, recording nothing. The CD was in James's back pocket.
“Not the most efficient police work.”
“What do you mean, pard?”
“James, he doesn't know if they printed Vanderfield, and they didn't even bother with Bouvier.”
“This would not be a good time to tell him how stupid we think he is. He's a little pissed at us.”
Em kicked at a piece of gravel, sending the stone out into the alley.
“Yeah, and I guess my dream of being Mrs. Ted Conway is never going to happen now.”
Em called at nine. I was passed out, hoping for a long sleep, but I knew she had to have some news.
“Vanderfield was printed. Those aren't his on the murder weapon. And Ted ran some serious interference to get somebody at the lab to run James's knife early this morning. Guess what? Your roommate's prints are on his own knife.”
No surprise.
“They ran it for all the chemical tests and, thank God, there was no human blood. Traces of this and that, but nothing to raise a red flag.”
“How much trouble are we in for the break-in last night?”
“Vanderfield was going to file charges, get Chef Jean involved, until Ted confronted him with the fact that there was no proof anyone had entered. It seems the CD that records all the security cameras was missing. He's got nothing.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ted told him if he pursued this in any way, he'd be interfering with an ongoing investigation.”
“So our cover may be really blown this time.”
“Maybe, but hang on because here's the real news.”
I hung on.
“Two unidentified prints on James's knife are identical to two unidentified prints on the murder weapon. It's a match.” I could sense her smile over the phone. “You guys did it, Skip. Congratulations. Do you hear me? You hit a home run.”
What is it they say? Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn? That's us.