Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (23 page)

CHAPTER 39

C
ommissaire Lacroix was even more furious than Capucine about the denouement of Brissac-Vanté’s mysterious sequestration. Not only was he frustrated that the case had slipped through his fingers, but he was also resentful at having lost face on the eve of his retirement. Capucine had no trouble at all in persuading him to keep all the wiretaps in place.

The taps proved eloquent. Almost overnight Brissac-Vanté snapped out of his post-trauma depression and shifted into overdrive, embarking on a flurry of phone calls so frenetic that the daily summaries arrived in sheaths almost an inch thick. The gist of it all was that he was scrabbling to pick up the reins of his former life. He had detailed discussions with the executives of all his investments, long conversations with his partner at his agency, and he harangued Prosper Ouvrard daily about the profitability of Chez La Mère Denis. More perplexing were the repeated calls from Chéri Lecomte to Brissac-Vanté’s cell phone. He would either ignore them or cut them off by pressing the red NO button. Commissaire Lacroix’s interpretation was that the ordeal of the kidnapping had drawn Brissac-Vanté tightly into the bosom of his family to the exclusion of his mistress. Capucine was less sure but could come up with no better explanation.

Despite the cornucopia of information, the days continued to slip by, producing no material leads in either case.

One night Capucine arrived home to the familiar scene of Alexandre sitting in the worn and cracked leather armchair in his study, laptop on lap, cigar stub clenched tightly in jaws, near-empty glass of whiskey precariously balanced on chair arm.

He held up the palm of his left hand in a gesture for silence, pursed his lips, hit the
ENTER
key.

“
Voilà, pour toi,
you bungling incompetent.” He snapped the laptop shut.

His scowl volatilized like the evanescent blue flame of a flambé. He dropped the laptop on a pile of magazines, rose, and took Capucine in his arms. “My day has finally blossomed.” He kissed her deeply. “Come into my casbah down the hall and let me ply you with bubbles that will tickle your nose and elevate your thoughts to heights of passion.”

“I don’t need bubbles for that,” Capucine said, kicking off her shoes, extracting her pistol and handcuffs from the back of her trousers, dropping them on a mound of paper on Alexandre’s desk. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Alexandre examining her bottom. “Do these trousers make my
fesses
look that fat?”

Alexandre gave one of her cheeks a playful slap. “That’s for listening to silly people.” He kissed the back of her neck, his hands exploring. “Perfection, as usual.”

In the kitchen Alexandre eased the cork out of a bottle of Deutz, filled a flute for Capucine, and kissed her chilled, damp lips once she had drunk. This process continued for a good moment, until Capucine, ravenous, wriggled out of his grasp.

“There’s no way I’m skipping dinner tonight, you geriatric satyr. What are you making me?”

“Japanese
ravioles de langoustine
. It’s a little dish I invented myself. Brittany prawns in little ravioles made of
gyoza,
on a bed of sautéed cabbage, with a nugget of lemon mousse on top, and a sauce made from the claws and a few spoonfuls of crème fraîche. You’re going to love them.”

“Gyoza?”

“You know, those thin rounds of pasta the Japanese use for the dumplings you love so much. You buy them ready-made in packages.”

Alexandre bustled around the kitchen, preparing his
mise en place.
He ducked his head into an old armoire he had purloined from his parents’ attic, foraging loudly, apparently searching for some seldom-used spice. He muttered something largely incomprehensible above the tintinnabulation of bottles and jars. The only fragment that Capucine understood was “hot gossip.” This was one of Alexandre’s most irritating dramatic techniques, dropping a partially audible bombshell in an attempt to stoke her interest.

Extracting his head, he reiterated. “Bet you didn’t know that Thierry Brissac-Vanté fired Prosper Ouvrard.”

“Actually, I did,” Capucine crowed. “We got it off the wiretap yesterday.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Police business.”

Alexandre ducked his head back into the armoire and resumed his search.

“Well, then, I won’t tell you who he’s hired to replace Ouvrard,” he said, barely audibly over the din.

On her stockinged tiptoes, Capucine walked over to the armoire and kicked Alexandre’s protruding posterior. He jerked up, banging his head against a shelf. When he finally extracted himself, she crossed her arms and scowled at him.

“Okay, okay. It’s Aiko Kikuchi.”

“Who?”

“You know, that very pretty woman who was the executive culinary advisor to Dong. Didn’t you tell me you went there with Jacques the other night? It just so happens I interviewed Aiko this morning. As soon as I heard the rumor, I picked up the phone and she was generous enough to share her morning tea with me.”

“Brissac-Vanté is turning La Mère Denis into a Japanese sushi place?”

“Not quite. She insists she’s going to create true Japanese-French fusion, something she was only playing with at Dong.”

“Will it work?”

“Who knows? At first blush, I’d say no. It’s obviously aimed at attracting the Saint-Germain glitterati. But that crowd doesn’t like to cross the Périphérique to eat. The idea’s not bad, but it would have been a safer bet in the middle of the Eighth Arrondissement. But you never know in the restaurant business. Of course, it’s bound to be a hot spot for a few months if Brissac-Vanté can get some spin going. Maybe his plan is to sell the restaurant when it hits its apogee. I’ll bet Ouvrard and Delphine Duclos are none too happy. They had high hopes for Chez La Mère Denis.”

 

“Actually, we’re both
extremely
happy. We’re going to America. To New York.”

“Why are all French chefs so attracted to New York?”

“I’ll tell you why. It’s not that complicated. But I’m starving and was just going to make myself some lunch. Will you join me?”

Capucine accepted with a smile.

“The hostess cooking lunch at Chez La Mère Denis. Things certainly have changed, haven’t they?” Delphine Duclos asked with a laugh that was nine parts genuine to one part cynical.

Even though apparently nothing had been changed, the kitchen seemed dead. The long row of burnished copper pots still gleamed over the three piano stoves. The long stainless-steel counter opposite the ranges had been scoured until it glinted. But it wasn’t the rosy warmth of a scrub-down after a hard day’s work; it was the cold buff-up of departing lodgers.

Delphine went to the center range, turned a dial, pushed a button. The explosive whoosh of a bull coughing was heard. The piano had come alive.

“It’ll only take a minute or two to heat up,” Delphine said as she went to the service refrigerator in a corner. From her vantage point, leaning over the shining counter, Capucine could see that it was almost entirely empty. Delphine returned to a spot opposite Capucine with a plastic container, a supermarket tub of crème fraîche, a few grassy sprigs of what looked like tarragon wrapped in plastic film, and a half-empty bottle of Sancerre tucked under her arm.

“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m really just a novice cook. And when you live in an environment like this, you don’t have a hope of learning. The first time you try anything, people start laughing.”

She produced a white nylon cutting board and a large kitchen knife with a blue plastic handle from under the counter. The plastic container turned out to contain two large chicken breasts, which Delphine cut into cubes. Then, with a machine-gun rat-a-tat, she chopped the tarragon into fine confetti.

“I thought you didn’t know how to cook?”

“Not the way these guys do,” she said, waving her arm at the empty kitchen.

She selected a big copper pot from the rack, filled it with water, shook in some sea salt from a box, placed it over the hot central eye of the piano, and came back to lean across the counter from Capucine.

“New York, you said?”

“Yes. It’s absolutely amazing. Prosper has three offers to start up restaurants there. And the salaries are unbelievable.”

“You’re leaving Paris because of the money?”

“Not just that. Prosper feels New York has become the food capital of the world. He thinks French chefs do so well there because they are freed from the crushing weight of tradition. He says it’s no longer possible for a chef to be genuinely original in France.” She laughed. “He feels sorry for Aiko Kikuchi and her French-Japanese fusion. Even if she succeeds, it will be the success of a dog walking on its hind legs, not very well done but amazing she can do it at all.”

“Why did Brissac-Vanté hire her? I thought the restaurant was making money under Chef Ouvrard.”

“Your husband is the one you should ask that question. I was just the hostess here.” She laughed, this time nine parts cynicism to one part mirth. “Okay. I’ll tell you why. Because he’s smart. Prosper just doesn’t have the name in France to pull people out of Paris to eat here. Even though I’m prejudiced, I’d be the first to admit it would have taken him years to build an image. So the restaurant would have limped along with good days and bad days. Let me tell you, when you’re operating a restaurant on a three-star budget, those midweek doldrums will eat you alive.

“Kikuchi has a reputation and will have fabulous profit margins. There will be a lot of talk about cuts of very expensive fish, but her menu will really be all about ramen noodles. Brissac-Vanté’s doing the smart business thing. He’s hiring a celebrity. He’ll kick it off with a blitz of publicity, and when the restaurant takes off, he’ll sell it to a movie star or somebody like that, get his money back, and tant pis if there’s collateral damage.”

“That’s what my husband suspects he has in mind,” Capucine said.

The plops of vigorously boiling water became audible. Delphine reached under the counter and rooted around. She seemed to have hung on to a rudimentary pantry. She produced a nearly full box of spaghetti. Holding a large sheaf of pasta in the loops of index and thumb of each hand, she lowered it into the pot of boiling water and drew her arms together. The spaghetti fanned out elegantly, forming a perfect circle, the edges sticking out over the rim of the pot. As the boiling water softened the bottoms, the spaghetti sank slowly into the pot until it disappeared altogether. Delphine smiled a secret little smile at the sight. It was obvious that cooking gave her a great deal of pleasure.

“And so you have no financial recourse against Brissac-Vanté?”

“I have plenty. But not with the restaurant. The judge gave him that lock, stock, and barrel because of his convertible debt thing. I hope he won’t mind me using his pots and pans.” This time the laughter was ten parts out of ten cynical.

“What about Chef Brault’s faïence collection?”

“Well, as you say, it was Jean-Louis’s collection, not the restaurant’s. My lawyer thought Brissac-Vanté might contest that, so he advised me to have it all crated up by professionals and sealed in a bonded warehouse. Brissac-Vanté was absolutely furious. That happened a week or two after Jean-Louis’s death. He insisted he had the right to inspect the collection and petitioned the judge to release the bond. He totally lost his temper about it.”

Delphine selected a blackened skillet from the rack, trickled a thin lace of olive oil from a large tin over the bottom, placed the skillet a few inches from the eye of the piano, and let the oil heat up until the film shimmered.

“But the judge just laughed at him. He’s still examining the situation. My lawyer tells me it’s highly likely the judge will accept that I was Jean-Louis’s common-law wife and award me everything. So I’ll wind up owning all the faïence and the hotel.”

“And what are you going to do with that?”

“The hotel? It’s still open, and I’m running it until the judge hands down his decision. Now that the restaurant is closed, our clientele seems to be entirely business types having dirty weekends with their secretaries. Actually, business has gone up. I think it’s because now there’s no risk they’ll run into anyone they know coming out of the restaurant. And when Kikuchi gets going, all that raw fish is bound to make the secretaries even hornier.”

She placed the chicken cubes into the skillet, shook it vigorously so they wouldn’t stick, sprinkled on salt and a few twists of pepper.

“But the minute the probate judge makes up his mind, I’m going to sell it for whatever I can get. That hotel was the millstone around Jean-Louis’s neck that drowned him. I loathe the goddamn thing.”

“You sound as if you still believe he committed suicide.”

“It doesn’t make any difference what happened. He was doomed, and he knew it.” There was an awkward pause. Delphine filled it by flicking the skillet so the cubes of chicken were tossed in the air, landing on their backs. She was clearly far from a novice chef.

“He took the wrong path at the crossroads. He was brilliant. A genius. All he ever wanted to do was cook. It was all he ever thought about. I tried to talk him into selling this place and getting himself hired at some place like Taillevent. He would have cooked and cooked and won their third star back and become even more famous and certainly made more money than he was making here. But, oh no. He had to own his restaurant, even though he hated everything that had to do with business management and was terrible at it. Can you imagine him trying to run an empire of God knows how many restaurants, like Ducasse? But who was I to give him advice? I was just the hostess.”

She scooped the chicken out onto a plate and poured in a good measure of white wine to deglaze the pan.

“And since he was so bad at being a
patron,
he needed something tangible that would prove to him that he held his three stars by the neck. The irony is that Lucien Folon tells me the hotel was never of the slightest interest to Michelin. The people who review the hotels are not at all the same as those who review the restaurants.”