Cooking Up Murder (14 page)

"You're trying to integrate the wet and dry ingredients," he reminded me. "Not beat them into submission. Funny, I never thought of you as an aggressive sort of person," he said out of the corner of his mouth.

He'd thought of me?

Now he was being cruel.

Maybe I did want to see him in a striped jumpsuit.

I gave the bread another slap. "I'm not aggressive, I'm thorough."

"Thorough's one thing. Obsessive is something else. Here, step aside." He was already reaching into the bowl of flour I had out on the counter and dusting his hands with it, so he nudged me aside with a bump of his hip. "You're worrying too much about the right way to do this. You're so tensed up, you're not even breathing, and because your muscles are strained, you're working too hard. Think of this as Zen baking. Relax. Loosen up. Take a deep breath."

He turned to me, and I realized he wasn't just offering advice. He actually wanted me to do it, and he was going to stand there and wait until I did. Stand there, wait, and stare.

I didn't know how long I could keep my cool with him looking right at me. What's a girl to do? I inhaled.

He cocked his head.

I breathed a little deeper.

He narrowed his eyes.

I gave up and sucked in a good, long breath.

"That's it. Now let it go. Slowly. There." He inhaled and let the breath out slowly, too. I have to say, as the last of our mingled breaths faded away, I did feel a little calmer.

"Your own nature determines your style," Jim said, rolling those
r'
s like there was no tomorrow. "Don't worry about what you read in a cookbook or what I tell you up there at the front of the class. Do your own thing. Decide what feels good to you. Which way do you like it, Annie, hard or soft?"

He was talking dough kneading. And I was thinking about . . .

Well, no use getting into that.

Suffice it to say that I gave myself a mental slap.

"I've never made bread before," I said, deciding it was better to stick to the truth than give in to the fiction playing out in my head. "I don't know if I'm a hard kneader or a soft kneader. Maybe I'm not a kneader at all. Maybe bread isn't my thing."

Jim's smile was understanding--either that, or he just felt sorry for me. "Bread is everyone's thing. What do they say it is? The staff of life? Look." He buried his hands into the soft mound of dough on the counter in front of us. "You want to work this shaggy mass until it's a nice, smooth ball. See, like this." He used the heels of his hands to push the dough away, then gently brought the far edge of it forward and folded it over itself. "Lightly. Carefully. There's yeast in here, and don't forget, yeast is a living thing."

"A living thing that we're going to kill when we put it in the oven." I don't know what was wrong with me. I wasn't usually this cranky. I apologized with a quick smile. "I guess I'm just feeling a little inadequate," I confessed.

That much was true. In a black-and-white wraparound skirt and a tiny black top that showed off her store-bought tan and a whole lot more, Eve looked like a million bucks this afternoon. And even though I'd made the extra effort to look nice because I knew we'd be meeting with Jim after class, in my khakis and green tank, I felt like loose change.

Because I didn't want to think about it, I glanced around the room. My fellow classmates were all busy kneading away, their movements as graceful as if they'd been choreographed.

"Beyla and John aren't here." I don't know why it hadn't registered before but now I noticed that their workstation was empty. I threw out the comment to Eve, who was busy working her own dough on the counter beside Jim. "They've never missed class before."

Jim commented before Eve could. "They called. Each of them. John said he had to work. Some unexpected meeting. And Beyla said she wasn't feeling well."

"I'll bet." Eve pursed her lips and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. Her hands were deep inside her dough, and she pushed it, folded it, and flipped it as expertly as if she'd been a bread baker in some past life. "I hear that killing people makes you feel not so good."

I shot her a warning glance at the same time Jim turned to her with a glimmer of interest in his eyes. "You think so?" he asked.

I knew I had to intervene before she did any more damage to our investigation. I dipped my hands in the bowl of flour. "Better get going on this," I said, my voice as sprightly as anyone's can be who isn't actually looking forward to what needs to be done. I sank my hands into the dough. "We don't have all the time in the world, and . . ."

And I forgot that Jim was already kneading the dough.

We met in a silky, glutinous sort of grasp. Our hands slid across each other's, then stuck.

Zen or no Zen, I forgot to breathe.

Jim was apparently not having the same problem. He settled his hands a little more comfortably under mine and smiled. "You finally seem to be getting the hang of this! Now decide. Hard or soft?"

"Soft." The word came out of me on the end of a little gasp, and when I felt Jim's hands twitch like he was going to pull away, I automatically held on a little tighter. "No, hard," I said. "Definitely hard."

"Hard it is then." He gave me a wink and slid his hands out from under mine. "You go ahead and give it a try while I see how everyone else is doing."

Except that even after he walked away, I couldn't move a muscle. I was frozen there, my hands in the goo that I knew would never be decent-tasting bread, my breath trapped behind a knot in my throat, my heart ramming against my ribs like the bass line in a heavy metal rock song.

"Oh, that was good!" Eve practically purred the words, and I wondered if she was making fun of me. But when I looked at her, she was grinning.

"I didn't look like a dope?" I asked.

"Honey, you couldn't look like a dope if you tried."

My spirits were buoyed, but there was only so long they could stay afloat.

My shoulders drooped. "I looked like a dope. He thinks I'm a dope."

She clicked her tongue and flipped her dough. "If he thought you were a dope, he wouldn't have asked to meet with us tonight."

My turn to click my tongue. "You don't think he wants to see me, do you?"

Eve raised her eyebrows, but she didn't have a chance to answer. Jim was back at the front of the room, calling for our attention. He told us to finish up our kneading, and showed us how to grease the container we'd use to let our dough rise. By the time I'd flipped my globe of dough in the container to grease it on all sides and covered the whole thing with plastic wrap, I'd decided the why-did-Jim-really-want-to-talk-to-us thing wasn't worth discussing. Who was I kidding, anyway? Anytime Eve and I were in a room together, guys only had eyes for her.

Except for Peter.

The thought snuck up on me and smacked me like I'd been thwacking my dough ball. Annoyed with myself, I shook my head and tucked the container with the dough in it on the shelf under our workstation.

"It's difficult to say how long it will take for your dough to double in size," Jim told the class. "So we'll take a break now. Rising time depends on the temperature of the air and of your dough. The amount of yeast you used makes a difference, too. Drafts cause problems: they'll make your dough rise too slowly and unevenly, so make sure you've got it wrapped good and tight."

I did all that and washed my hands. I was just about to ask Eve if she wanted to head over to the natural foods store for a yogurt when she informed me that she had other things to do.

"Tony." She held up her cell phone. "You remember? The librarian? I'll run outside and do that and pick you up a sandwich. You want ham or roast beef?" she asked, but before I even had a chance to answer, she was already out the door.

The other members of the class scattered. Jim disappeared into the kitchen area where we washed up our pots and pans, and I didn't want to risk going after him and looking pathetic.

I drummed my fingers against the countertop, considering my options. I decided I might as well keep playing detective.

I took a deep breath and strolled over to Beyla and John's workstation. It was as clean as a whistle. I checked out Jim's workstation at the front of the classroom, too. I suppose if I really wanted to find something, I would have given it more than a quick once-over. But I wasn't a real detective, and as I mentioned before, I didn't want Jim to be a bad guy. Besides, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing suspicious.

That took care of our suspects here at Tres Bonne Cuisine--all except one.

I gathered up my purse and went off in search of Monsieur Lavoie.

HE WASN'T DOWNSTAIRS IN THE SHOP. HE WASN'T IN
the back storeroom, either, or in the tiny, neat-as-a-pin office I could see through a doorway behind the front counter where jars of Vavoom! were lined up in tidy, come-and-get-me rows.

In fact, Monsieur Lavoie was nowhere to be found.

A real detective would have been suspicious. After all, it was Saturday afternoon, and though the store was empty at the moment, the streets outside were chock-full of summer tourists. The man had a business to run. How could he do that when he wasn't even in the store?

Of course, I wasn't a real detective, even though I was pretending to be one. Though Monsieur's absence offended my sense of order and challenged my concept of customer service, I didn't see how it affected our case.

I was just about to chalk the whole thing up as a big ol' nothing and head out for that yogurt when I heard a noise outside the back door.

Like the sound of glass breaking.

Maybe I was getting into the whole girl-detective schtick after all, because before I even realized it, I was heading to the back door, curious to know exactly what was going on.

Don't get me wrong: I still wasn't a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants sort of person like Eve. Before I got to the door, I grabbed one of the wooden meat tenderizing mallets on display with the other cooking utensils. After all, Drago had been murdered in that parking lot. I wasn't going to take any chances.

I leaned my ear to the door and heard another piece of glass shatter. Carefully, I turned the knob and just as cautiously, I opened the door just a crack. Nothing could have surprised me more than what I saw: Monsieur Lavoie. He was standing at least fifteen feet away from the Dumpster. One by one, he was chucking glass bottles into it. Just like he'd been doing the night Drago died.

"Monsieur?"

He spun around when he heard my voice and tucked his hands behind his back. Though he tried for a smile, his complexion was ashen.

"So, you are . . . how do you say it? Breaking, yes?" Monsieur shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. He looked over my shoulder toward the door. "Your classmates, they are coming out here, too?"

"No. Just me." Before the little Frenchman could see that I was using his stock as a potential weapon, I set the meat tenderizer down on the nearest counter and stepped into the parking lot. I closed the door behind me. "Speaking of breaking, I heard some noise. I thought maybe something was wrong."

"Wrong?" He laughed in that Gallic way that made me think of Pepe LePew. "What could be wrong on a day like today? It is beautiful, yes?"

It was, and I wasn't about to argue the fact. I stepped toward the street, poking my thumb over my shoulder in the general direction of the whole foods store. "I'm just heading out for a yogurt. Can I bring you back something?"

"No, no." Monsieur's smile jiggled around the edges like a poorly set Jell-O mold. "I am fine. Really. You can just run along, yes?"

"Yes," I said. "Well . . . good-bye." I set off across the parking lot and over to the sidewalk where just a few days before, Eve and I had stood and watched Beyla and Drago have a knock-down-drag-out. As I did, I noticed Monsieur Lavoie turned completely around to watch me leave. It might have been the most natural thing in the world, but I couldn't help but notice that by doing so, he made sure I couldn't get a look at what he was holding behind his back.

Was I finally thinking like a detective?

Maybe, because as I walked away, I had already decided I knew two things.

Number one: He didn't want me to see whatever he was holding.