Murder Has a Sweet Tooth (12 page)

Even another kiss wasn’t enough to make me believe that. It was Thursday evening, and Bellywasher’s had just closed. The only ones left in the restaurant were Larry, Hank, and Charlie, three of our usuals, who’d stopped in late after their bowling league and ordered the day’s blue plate special: hot dogs, beans, and fries. (Just for the record, the blue plate special is never on the menu. No one besides Larry, Hank, and Charlie even knows about it. Jim keeps a supply of hot dogs just for them because they’ve been coming to Bellywasher’s for, like, forever. See? Didn’t I say that Jim was the greatest guy in the world?)

We were standing in the kitchen, and I pushed away from Jim, the better to wring my hands and pace. “They take classes, Jim. Over at Sonny’s. I’ve heard you talk about Sonny’s. It’s a good cooking school.”

“Sonny Fleming has a reputation, that’s sure enough. He’s got good technique. He’s excellent when it comes to presentation. I hear his shop isn’t nearly as well stocked as Jacques’ . . . er, Norman’s . . .” Force of habit. Jim twitched away the slip of the tongue and continued. “Sonny’s gaining a reputation. He’s a fine, skilled chef and a marketing genius, as well. He’s making a name for himself.”

“And these ladies are actually interested enough to take lessons from him. Go figure.” I couldn’t, because I’d never wanted to take that first cooking class back when Eve signed us up for it. She was trying to cheer me up after my divorce, and in the great scheme of things, I guess it worked. That class was where I met Jim, and got my first introduction to murder and to being a detective.

Even that wasn’t enough to lift my spirits.

I thought of the stove that had once exploded right in my face at Très Bonne Cuisine. “What if they ask me to bake bread?”

“It takes hours to make bread. There’s no time for that at a wine tasting.”

I remembered all the foods I’d taken to new heights of crispness. “Then what if they want me to cook the main course or something? What if it’s a rack of lamb? Or fondue? Oh, my gosh, do you remember right after we first started dating and you came over for dinner and I was trying to impress you so I made dessert fondue?”

No doubt Jim did. But then, it’s hard to forget an evening where we spent hours getting the chocolate splatters off the countertops, the cupboards, and the kitchen floor. Even that, though, wasn’t enough to deter him. “A wine tasting means cheese and nibblers. Nothing more. And you know a thing or two about cheese, don’t you?”

“I know that when I don’t burn it, Velveeta melts well.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “You dinna learn that from me, that’s sure enough. Concentrate, Annie, and think of all you’ve picked up here at Bellywasher’s. Try again. Tell me what you know about Asiago.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Fresh Asiago is smooth,” I said. “Aged is crumbly. You sprinkle it on salads and soups and pasta.”

When I opened my eyes again, Jim was smiling. But he wasn’t done with me yet. “Neufchâtel,” he said.

I concentrated. Food was something I liked, even if I wasn’t very good at preparing it. If I thought of Neufchâtel simply as something to eat, rather than as an ingredient . . .

“Soft and slightly crumbly,” I said, and when Jim’s eyes lit, I was inordinately proud of myself. “I know the rind is edible, and that some people say the cheese tastes like mushrooms. Sometimes it’s called farmers’ cheese.”

“One more.” He narrowed his eyes, and I knew he was going to try to stump me. “Mizithra.”

That nearly did me in. But hey, I might not be much of a cook, but that doesn’t mean I give up easily. For some reason, his mention of the Greek cheese made me think of the mountain of invoices currently on the desk in my office. A lightbulb went off and I beamed at Jim. “You just ordered some,” I said. “A lot, in fact. Mizithra is made from sheep or goat milk. You can serve it as an appetizer with olives or tomatoes, or as a dessert with honey. Or you can serve it with pasta. With the amount you ordered, I’m thinking that you’re adding it to the menu.”

“In pasta and as a dessert.” He made me a showy bow. “You know far more about food than you give yourself credit for. And as a reward for answering all my questions right, I’ll prepare some of each cheese for you to take to the wine tasting with you.” He moved toward the big industrial refrigerator that took up most of one wall of the kitchen. “A nice platter of Asiago and Neufchâtel with fresh fruit and some crusty bread. How does that sound? And I’ve been looking for an excuse to make some mizithropita. Mizithra with butter and honey, baked in phyllo. Sound good?”

He knew anything made with honey and phyllo was right up my alley. I knew that we were done talking about food when Jim’s expression grew serious.

“I’ve talked to Alex’s attorney,” he said. “A trial date’s been set.”

Talk of a trial made what Alex was going through all too real. I felt guilty for worrying about my cooking skills (or lack of them) when we had something so much more serious to think about. I wrapped my arms around myself. “And bail?”

Jim’s mouth pulled into a frown. “No luck. But the attorney—Melanie—she says she’s going to keep trying. If Alex surrenders his passport and I vouch for him, she says there’s a chance he’ll be able to make the wedding.”

“But that’s not good enough, is it?” There was a high stool nearby and, suddenly feeling drained, I leaned back against it. “I want to have Alex here for the wedding, of course, but—”

“Did somebody say the magic word?” I swear, Eve has radar when it comes to talking about weddings. She burst into the kitchen looking like a ray of sunshine in a lemon yellow taffeta dress with a swingy skirt and spaghetti straps. It wasn’t what she’d been wearing last time I saw her out in the restaurant, and I realized that sometime after we’d locked the front door, she must have ducked into my office to change her clothes. That could only mean one thing—Eve had a date.

“Perfect timing!” she crooned. “The wedding is exactly what I wanted to talk to you both about.”

“Er . . .” I looked to Jim for guidance, but since he knew better than to try and put the brakes on Eve—or to get between two best friends—he grabbed a nearby towel and pretended to be busy wiping off the stove even though Marc had already cleaned it and it was spotless. I knew I was on my own. “We weren’t talking about the wedding,” I told Eve. “Not exactly, anyway. We were talking about Alex.”

“Oh, pshaw!” Eve can get away with saying things like that. She’s a former beauty queen with a honey-thick Southern accent. When she tossed her head, her blonde hair gleamed in the overhead lights. “I’m not the least little bit worried about Alex. You’re going to take care of that, Annie. By the time the wedding rolls around, we’ll all be laughing about this crazy mix-up. You’re going to prove who really killed that poor woman and Alex won’t ever have to think about this whole mess ever again.”

“I’m glad you have that much faith in me. I’m just not sure—”

“Of course you are.” Eve waved away my protests with one perfectly manicured hand. “You always work things out. You’re not going to let Alex down. I know that, Annie. So does Jim and everyone else. That’s why we can worry about other things. Like . . .” She took a deep breath and looked from one of us to the other. Why did I have a feeling I wasn’t going to like whatever it was Eve said? “Wedding favors!”

“We’ve talked about that. Jim and I thought—”

“Oh, I know what you thought. You thought you’d give something small and tasteful to every guest. A candle shaped like a wedding cake maybe. Or an African violet plant. That’s all well and good. For an ordinary wedding. But then I got to thinking, and what I was thinking was, who’s going to remember a wedding where what they get is a small and tasteful favor?”

“So we’re talking big and not in good taste?”

Eve was on a roll so she ignored Jim’s comment. She reached into the Kate Spade bag she had on one shoulder and pulled out what looked like a spiral-bound—

“Calendar?” Call me slow, but I couldn’t put the concept of calendar and wedding favor together. I stared at her in wonder.

“Not just any calendar. I had a special sample made.” Smiling with every ounce of beauty-queen charm she had, Eve flipped open the calendar. Open, it was bigger than a regular piece of copy paper, maybe twenty inches tall by eleven or so inches wide. She happened to open it to the page that showed July. On one page, the dates were marked with boxes. The other page was a picture of Eve’s pup Doc in a swimsuit and little terry-cloth beach cover-up. Eve was so excited, she could barely keep still. “Every month features a picture of Doc. Isn’t it adorable?”

“It is. He is.” A smile pasted to my face, I reached for the calendar and paged through it. In August, Doc was dressed in back-to-school duds. He even had a backpack. September showed him in an apple orchard. He was wearing overalls and a straw hat. Predictably, in October, he was dressed in a Halloween costume, a little red devil, complete with horns. “This is—”

“I know. Brilliant!” Eve sparkled as only Eve can. “Everyone’s going to love it, because everyone loves Doc. And look . . .” She plucked the calendar out of my hands and flipped through the pages. “Here in April, the date of your wedding is marked so that everyone remembers your anniversary. And Doc . . .” She made a little
ta-da
gesture to show off the picture of Doc in a tux. Where she’d found another Japanese terrier owner to go along with the plan, I don’t know, but there was another dog in the picture. She was dressed like a bride.

“Annie . . .” From behind me, Jim’s voice simmered somewhere between
heaven help me
and
you tell her or I will
.

I got the message. “It’s so sweet,” I said, and really, it was. “But Jim and I, we want to keep things low-key, and you know, giving a favor that cute, it’s going to upstage the rest of the wedding.”

Eve hadn’t thought of this. Her enthusiasm melted in front of my eyes. “You mean—”

“I mean, Doc is so adorable. And all the pictures of him are adorable. But—and don’t take this the wrong way—but I—”

“You want to be the center of attention that day! Of course.” Eve couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of this sooner. “And Doc is so cute—”

“He’d take all the attention away from me. Away from us.” I wasn’t going to let Jim off the hook. I grabbed his hand and dragged him over to stand beside me. “You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, honey.” After another quick flip through the pages of the calendar, Eve tucked it back in her purse. “It was silly of me not to think of it in the first place. You’re the bride. Everyone should be watching you. Once Doc walks in with the ring on a little satin pillow—”

“No.” I couldn’t be clearer. I’d already tried beating around the bush, and Eve wasn’t listening. “No Doc. No pillow.”

“But, Annie—” Luckily, we heard a pounding on the front door, and Eve went to answer. When she swooshed back into the kitchen, she had Tyler with her.

We exchanged hellos and Jim got back to work. There’s a lot of cleanup and organization that goes on in a restaurant when the doors close for the night.

Left to my own devices, I closed in on Tyler. There were some things I’d been meaning to ask him, and yeah, I realized the chances of him giving me a straight answer were slim to none. But like I said, I don’t give up easily.

“I hear there was an anonymous tip and that’s how you found Vickie Monroe’s body in that alley.”

He wasn’t surprised I’d ambushed him with the comment. Tyler rolled back on his heels. “You did your homework.”

“But I don’t have the answers to all my questions. Like who made the call.” Pleading, I looked at him. “If we knew that—”

“If we knew that, we’d know a whole lot more about what happened in that alley.”

Encouraged, I jumped on his comment. “Which means you don’t think we do know what happened in that alley. Not all of it, anyway. You think we’re right, don’t you, Tyler? You don’t believe Alex killed that woman any more than we do.”

One hand out flat and at the level of my nose, he distanced himself from the thought. “I never said that. I just said I’d like more answers.”

“And you’re not getting them.”

“It’s not my case.”

It wasn’t what he said, it was the way he said it. I looked at Tyler hard. “You don’t think the detective who’s handling the case is doing a good job.”

“Derek Harold never does a good job.” It was more open than Tyler usually was with me. That told me how frustrated he was by the situation. So did the way he twitched his shoulders, like just thinking about Derek Harold made him want to hop right out of his skin. “Harold takes everything at face value. The man has no imagination. He can’t see past what’s right in front of his nose.”

“Like Alex being in that alley with the victim.”

“Well, it is a little hard to ignore that fact.” Tyler scraped a hand through his short-cropped, sandy hair. “And yes, the whole thing is driving me crazy. That’s why I made some inquiries. I heard talk around the office about the tip, see, and it got me to wondering. Seems the call was made from a public phone a couple blocks away, over at the corner of North Glebe and Seventh Street North.”

“Which means some well-meaning passerby may have seen Alex and the victim, panicked, and ran. Then once he—or she—came to his—or her—senses, and he—or . . .” Tyler knew what I meant; I didn’t have to elaborate. “Once the person who saw Alex and Vickie in that alley realized what had happened, he called in the tip.”

“That’s the simplest explanation. And it’s probably what happened, but—”

That one little word raised my hopes higher than they had been since Jim got that first call from Alex. I took a few steps closer to Tyler. “But?”

He breathed a sigh of surrender, and I knew why. Tyler doesn’t like showing any signs of weakness and, to him, letting me in on what he was thinking was a little too close to actually asking for help. And asking for help . . . well, to Tyler’s way of thinking, that definitely was a weakness.