Cooking Up Murder (9 page)

WAS THE NOTE MEANT FOR ME? DID IT REFER TO
Drago's death?

And if so, was it a warning?

It was the next night, but questions still swirled around my brain.

Fortunately, between that and the headache that felt like it was going to rip apart my skull, I didn't have a chance to think about how the rest of the class had progressed after the explosion.

Perhaps I should say regressed.

My goat cheese bundles turned out soggy. My skewered veggies were limp. And the bacon pinwheels? Well, let's just say they gave the term
crispy
a whole new meaning.

Which I suppose in the great scheme of things was better than how crispy I would have been if the explosion hadn't thrown me back and out of the blast range.

Just thinking about it all brought me back around to the note.

And that made my head hurt all over again.

I massaged my temples with the tips of my fingers while I listened to Jim get us started on night number three: Superb Salads and Dazzling Dressings.

"Freshness, that's the key." Jim stood at the front of the room, a bunch of romaine in one hand and an expression on his face that was almost transcendent. This guy loved to cook. I mean, he really loved it. Go figure.

"You always want your vegetables to be as fresh as possible," Jim said. He rolled the
r
in
fresh
, and the sound tickled its way up my spine. "They need to be nice and crispy."

There was that word again.

I groaned.

"Are you all right?" At least Eve remembered to keep her voice down. Neither of us wanted to be caught talking in class again. "You look worried."

"I'm fine," I whispered back.

Eve didn't look convinced. She shot a look across the room toward the stove where I'd nearly been fried the night before. It had been fixed, Jim assured us, and it was as clean as a whistle. Still, Beyla had refused to work there again, and I for one couldn't blame her. The Incredible Hulk had taken her place, and Beyla and her cooking partner, John, were working one station closer to us. I made sure I kept my voice down so she couldn't hear me.

"I'm just thinking," I told Eve. "That's all."

She nodded. "I know just what you mean. I've been doing a lot of thinking, too."

I'd told Eve about the note, and I knew it had only cemented her theory about our mysterious classmate's guilt.

Eve was 100 percent positive that it all came down to Beyla.

"I'm telling you, Annie, she looks as guilty as hell," Eve said.

"She doesn't." I knew this for a fact, because I was looking right at Beyla, and Beyla was calmly going about her business as usual, unpacking her ingredients and setting up her cooking station.

But Eve wasn't about to take logic into consideration.

OK, I admit it. Mentioning the note to Eve had been a major blunder. I knew it the moment I opened my mouth. But let's face it, I had a good excuse. I'd been pretty upset. And worried. I'd been thrown for a loop (literally and figuratively), and so darned confused by the whole thing, I'd just naturally shared my discovery with Eve.

And Eve had just naturally blown the whole thing out of proportion.

Sure I found the note. Sure the stove went kablooey. But that didn't mean that one thing was related to the other.

Did it?

In my ordered, logical mind, I liked to think it didn't. Because I knew in my ordered, logical mind that if it did, I was still in danger.

Call me the queen of denial, but I had decided to believe that the note had nothing to do with me. That it wasn't referring to Drago's death. That the whole stove incident was nothing more than an unfortunate accident, and that I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The explosion was a desperate attempt by the culinary gods, that's what it was. A not-so-subtle way for the powers that be to warn me to stay away from anything that even resembled cooking.

And the note?

It had simply fallen out of somebody's purse or pocket.
You are next
in line at a doctor's office.
You are next
because whoever "you" was had a birthday coming up.
You are next
for a haircut or a nail appointment or for a tire rotation down at the garage.

Delusional? Sure. But it beat thinking that Beyla was out to get me.

While I was busy pondering all this, Jim told us to start stripping romaine leaves off the bunch, and I did, setting them in a colander so that I could rinse them.

"Maybe the note wasn't meant for me at all," I suggested to Eve. "Maybe it has nothing to do with any of us. Or maybe someone left it there for Beyla."

"Yeah." Eve sniffed. "That's why you saw her putting a pen back in her purse."

"I didn't say anything about a pen. I said I saw her with her purse."

"I'll bet there's a pen in it."

"I'll bet there's one in yours."

"OK. Fine. If that's how you want to be." Eve tossed the last of her romaine into the colander and turned on the water. "Maybe she didn't write it. But if that's true, why--"

Eve's words stopped as if they'd been snipped in half by scissors. Her colander was still under the spigot, and water was still running over her romaine. But Eve was frozen in place. All it took was one look at the doorway to know why.

A man had just stepped into the room.

Tyler Cooper.

"My hair looks like hell." Still staring toward where her ex-fiance was introducing himself to Jim, Eve ran one shaking hand over her ponytail. She blinked rapidly, her eyes moist with emotion. "Kaitlin must have mentioned to him that she saw me. That's got to be why he's here. He didn't know where to find me before now."

It didn't seem likely, at least not to me, but there was no use pointing it out. As her theories about Beyla proved all too clearly, once Eve got something into her head, it was nearly impossible to dislodge it.

That's why I didn't bother to mention that Tyler was a cop, and that cops can find anyone anytime they want. And that Eve hadn't moved since the days when she and Tyler were a couple, that her phone number hadn't changed, and that he'd bought her cell phone at the same time he bought his own. Her number was only one digit different from his.

"Ladies and gentlemen . . ." Jim tapped a spoon on the side of his metal colander to get our attention. He wore a serious expression, and a thread of uneasiness knotted in my stomach.

Why was Tyler Cooper at Tres Bonne Cuisine?

"We've got a visitor, and I'm going to let him explain what he's doing here." Jim turned to Tyler. "This is Lieutenant Tyler Cooper of the Arlington Police Department. He's--"

"Here to see me," Eve said under her breath, standing a little straighter.

"Here to tell us some rather disturbing news," Jim finished.

Eve's shoulders drooped. She looked at me, confusion clouding an expression that only moments before was wavering between hope and disbelief. Before she could say a word, Tyler cleared his throat and stepped to the center of the room.

I have to admit, I was never quite sure what Eve saw in Tyler. Just like I couldn't quite remember what it was about him that I didn't like.

Oh, he was good-looking enough. He was a smidgen under six feet tall, with broad shoulders, sandy hair, and eyes that, in the right light, looked like they were lit with blue neon. But with Tyler . . . well, his physical appearance wasn't nearly as important as his attitude. And Tyler had attitude to spare. I suppose it was one of the things that made him a good cop. Tyler was tough, and every move he made was designed to make sure no one would ever forget it.

We knew it now, just by the way he stood there with his shoulders squared and pulled back slightly, his chin raised, his jaw tensed. He sized up each of us in turn, and I swear, he didn't even flinch when his gaze landed on Eve.

Now I remembered what I didn't like about Tyler.

He had a cold, cold heart.

"Most of you have probably heard by now that a man died in the parking lot behind the store two nights ago," Tyler said. Apparently, not everyone did know. There was a buzz around the room and I automatically looked Beyla's way.

She didn't even blink an eye.

Tyler silenced the class with a look. "His name was Drago Kravic. Did any of you know him?"

My hand twitched. Twelve years of Catholic schooling had taught me nothing if not how to be honest. Eve slapped her hand over mine to keep it in place.

Beyla didn't move a muscle.

"It doesn't matter if you did or didn't know him," Tyler went on. "What does matter . . ." Again he glanced around the room. It wasn't like I had anything to feel guilty about--well, except for fibbing to Kaitlin Sands--but just the touch of Tyler's icy blue gaze made me shift from foot to foot.

"We were sure he had a heart attack," Tyler said. "Now . . ." He shrugged. "Well, let's just put it this way. This morning, an autopsy was performed on Mr. Kravic. And now we know that he was murdered."

Murder?

The single word shivered through me, turning my blood to ice water. If Drago was the victim of a killer,
you are next
took on a whole new meaning.

I clutched the countertop to steady my suddenly wobbly legs as Tyler finished up. "Maybe you saw something," he said. "Maybe you heard something. That's what I'm here to find out. You just go about your business and do your cooking. I'll come around and talk to each of you in turn."

"Ladies room," Eve said. She turned off the water, grabbed her purse, and ducked out. I wanted nothing more than to go with her, but I knew it would be suspicious if I did, so I stayed put. While I waited, I forced myself to keep busy. I rinsed my romaine and broke it into bits, just the way Jim recommended. My bits were too bitty, and when I added what was supposed to be a drizzle of olive oil, it turned into more of a rainstorm. The salt and fresh ground pepper I sprinkled on sort of clumped in the oil and sank to the bottom of the bowl. I crumbled some blue cheese just like Jim showed us and got more on the floor than in the salad.

All the while, I was watching out of the corner of my eye as Tyler walked around the room.

Eve was back in a flash, a fresh coat of lipstick on her mouth, a little more mascara on her lashes. "Has he been by yet?" she asked, but she wasn't looking at me. Her eyes followed Tyler as he made his way from station to station, talking to my fellow students and writing in a leather-covered notebook.

When he got around to Beyla, I stopped to see what was going to happen. I couldn't hear more than the low rumble of Tyler's voice and Beyla's higher-pitched, murmured replies, but I knew he was asking questions, and she was answering them. She nodded now and then. She shook her head.

I'm no mind reader, but my guess is that she told Tyler exactly what she'd told us the night before: Drago? Drago who?

And then it was our turn.

I wasn't imagining it: there was a bit more swagger in Tyler's walk when he sauntered over. I could feel the tension that tingled through Eve's body like electricity.

"Why, if it isn't Eve DeCateur." Tyler grinned at Eve and acknowledged me with a tip of his head. "And Annie Capshaw. I might have known I'd find you two together."

"Do I know you?" Eve stepped back, her head cocked, and studied Tyler for a moment. I had to hand it to her, she could look as poised facing down an ex-fiance as she had onstage back in her beauty pageant days. If I hadn't just spent how many hours listening to her go on and on about Kaitlin Sands, even I would have been convinced that Eve didn't care one iota about Tyler.

He was cold, but she was cooler.

I shivered.

"Why yes, I think we have met." Eve's Southern accent had never been more pronounced. Her eyes wide, she pointed one perfectly manicured finger in Tyler's direction. "Didn't you write me a ticket once on the George Washington Parkway?"

"Never worked traffic, ma'am." Tyler turned to a clean notebook page, a signal that the pleasantries, such as they were, were over. He was all business now. "I understand you two were with Drago Kravic when he died."

Eve didn't so much frown as she pouted. In a pretty sort of way, of course. "Why, that sweet little Kaitlin told you that, didn't she? I'll bet that little girl just tells you all sorts of things. Sharing. It's so important to any relationship." She finished her riff with a lift of her shoulders. "Now, what was it we were talking about?"

"Drago Kravic." Tyler was not amused. I could tell because a muscle twitched at the base of his jaw. "What can you tell me about him?"

"Not a thing, of course," Eve said, at the same time I blurted out, "We saw him with Beyla, just a little while before he died."

Eve gave me one of those looks but I wasn't about to be put off. She might have steamrolled me into keeping quiet when Kaitlin questioned us the night Drago died, but that's when we thought the man had died of a heart attack. Now that we knew it was murder . . .

Well, it was my civic duty to tell Tyler everything I knew, wasn't it?

"You saw the deceased? With her?" Tyler's laser gaze swiveled over to where Beyla was chopping parsley while she talked quietly to John. "She just told me she didn't know the man."