Killer Gourmet (5 page)

Francia's skin had an olive tone, and her eyes were deep brown, nearly black. Now that she had calmed down, they were virtually expressionless. Her hair was a dark brunette, and she had dyed several bright blue streaks in the strands near her nape.

Okay
, Savannah thought,
so she isn't afraid of needles or a little unconventional hair color. Hardly indicators of whether she's capable of hacking a guy to death
.

“Then you weren't in the kitchen when he was killed?”

“No.”

“Where were you?”

“Out back in the alley with Manuel and Carlos.”

Savannah nodded toward the two men in the opposite corner, who were draining their beer glasses with gusto. “Those guys over there?”

“Yeah.”

“What are their jobs?”

“The tall, skinny guy is Manuel. He's a kitchen steward. The shorter, heavier guy is Carlos, the prep cook.”

“And all three of you were out in the alley? Together?”

Francia nodded, toying with her glass.

Savannah's spirits sank a bit further. She had started with three possible murder witnesses, and after asking only a few questions, she was down to zero. Not only were all three absent from the murder scene, but they appeared to have alibis. One another.

“What were you three doing out there in the alley?” Savannah asked.

“Having a smoke. It was a tough service. We needed a break before we started the cleanup.”

Savannah thought for a moment, took a drink of water, and said, “Before you went outside to have your smoke . . . where was the chef?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Who else was in there with him?”

“Nobody. Just the three of us. The waiters and busboys were out here, cleaning up.”

“Yes, I know. I saw them. When you last saw Chef Norwood, what was he doing?”

“Pigging out on the leftover desserts. He always does . . . I mean . . .
did
that. How do you think he got so big?”

Savannah couldn't help noticing a twinge of sarcasm in Francia's voice. Maybe a touch of bitterness, too.

“He did that all the time,” Francia continued. “At the end of a service, if it wasn't nailed down, it went into his mouth. The guy definitely had some food issues.”

Yes, there it was. Definitely more than a touch.

Francia Fortun had not liked her boss. No doubt about it.

But then, Savannah had spent only a couple of minutes in Norwood's presence and something told her that there weren't too many people on earth who had enjoyed his company.

She also suspected that, although there might be a lot of people at Norwood's funeral—him being a celebrity and all—there wouldn't be many genuine mourners.

Cynical and cold as the thought might be, Savannah had decided that, although most people improved the world while they lived in it, there were a few who actually improved the sad ol' earth by leaving it.

Chef Norwood struck her as maybe being one of those. So if there was no love lost between Francia and her boss, no big surprise there.

Savannah tried to remember all that Ryan and John had told her about Francia Fortune. They said she was a gifted chef in her own right, and originally, they had considered hiring her instead of her boss.

Savannah searched her memory, trying to recall why they had changed their minds and gone with Chef Norwood. She'd heard something about Norwood giving Francia a poor reference. Didn't he say she lacked the initiative necessary to run a kitchen? Maybe she was a good cook but not such a strong leader? Something like that.

Suddenly, it occurred to Savannah that Francia might have harbored a great deal of resentment toward her boss. More than just the common dislike that others might feel toward him. And who could blame her?

From what Savannah had observed, he wasn't exactly a sweetie pie who endeared himself to others. How many people had to have a deadly weapon snatched from their hand on their first night on a new job?

“How long had you known Chef Norwood?” Savannah asked.

“Seven years. It would have been eight years this next September twenty-fourth.”

Savannah did a quick mental listing of those nearest and dearest to her heart. For the life of her, she wouldn't have been able to name the exact date when she had met them for the first time.

“There's something special about that day?” she asked. “Some reason why you would remember it so well?”

“Of course it was a special day. I'll remember it until I die. It was the day I won Capocuoca Extraordinaire.”

When Savannah gave her a blank look, she added, “A chef's competition in Venice once a year. The grand prize is an apprenticeship with a master chef.”

Tears flooded Francia's eyes. She quickly blinked them away, but more took their place. “That was the happiest day of my life. I felt like I'd won a huge lottery. No, better than a lottery jackpot. Finally, I could fulfill my destiny. I was on my way to accomplishing my dreams. I was so full of hope.”

She took a used napkin from the table, held it to her face, and cried into it.

Savannah reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “There, there, darlin',” she said. “You just had an awful shock. A few tears are to be expected.”

Finally, Francia composed herself, wiped her tears, and blew her nose on the napkin. She rumpled it and tossed it back onto the table. Suddenly, the pain and vulnerability disappeared from her face, to be replaced with anger and bitterness.

“But it is what it is,” she said, her jaw tight, her eyes cold. “Nothing in life ever turns out the way you think it's going to. For every dream you have, there are ten assholes out there ready to stomp on it, to grind it into the dirt.”

Savannah gulped, thinking that even on a bad day, even when half a box of chocolate truffles wouldn't lift her mood from the doldrums, she wouldn't have uttered a comment as caustic as that.

“Sometimes,” Francia continued, “it doesn't even take ten of them. One can do it. One can ruin your life, destroy your hopes, turn you into somebody you don't even recognize anymore.”

Shooting Savannah a quick, cautious look, the sous-chef reached for her wineglass and drained the last drop from it. Suddenly she looked uneasy, as if afraid she had said too much.

And she certainly had.

“He was that bad, was he?” Savannah said in her most sympathetic, big sister voice.

Francia shrugged, trying to look casual, but it was too late. “Yeah, he was that bad. Ask anybody here who worked with him. Ask any of his so-called friends who were here tonight. He thinks they came to support him, but they didn't. They were here because they were hoping to see him fall on his face, once and for all.”

“Who were they, these people you're talking about?”

“I don't know for sure, because I was in the back the whole time, but I took a look at the reservation list when I first got here. And there were several of ‘his' people.”

“Like whom?”

“His ex-girlfriend, who hates his guts now. His former business partner, who's suing him, by the way. His current girlfriend, who must've figured out by now what a pig he is.”

Savannah couldn't help brightening a bit. Maybe she wasn't at square one with zero possibilities. Perhaps she had some viable suspects after all.

She picked up her water glass, took a sip, and in as casual a manner as she could muster, she asked, “Of the folks you just mentioned, is there anybody in particular who stands out? Anybody you think could have done such a thing?”

“Who knows? All of them? None of them? He wasn't known for bringing out the best in people. But then, you know that. You saw him in action. You're the professional. What do you think?”

What do I think?
Savannah asked herself.
I think ol' Chef Norwood had himself a passel of enemies inside this building tonight. And I think we're going to have a booger of a time trying to figure out which one got to him first.

A
s a general rule, Savannah was never happier than when those she loved most in the world were gathered around her kitchen table. Feeding friends and family was third on her list of great passions.

Number one was catching bad guys—and the occasional bad girl—and making them pay for their evil deeds.

Number two was taking a long, hot bubble bath while nibbling a piece of quality chocolate. And since she had married Dirk, the bubble bath/chocolate routine was solidly tied with hitting the sheets with her hubby. Whichever one she was doing at any given moment . . . that was number two.

But tonight, the guests who were gathered around her kitchen table were hardly in a festive mood.

Usually she was plying them with food and drink of the highest caliber. But since they had just consumed a large meal, no one was interested in the plate of home-baked chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies she had set before them.

The gruesome sight they had all seen on the restaurant kitchen floor hadn't exactly whetted anyone's appetite either.

Ryan, John, and Tammy were all studying the screens of their tablets, peering at photos they had taken of the crime scene.

Still stuck in yesteryear, Savannah, Waycross, and Dirk had used their digital cameras and printed out the pictures from the printer stashed beneath Savannah's home office desk. Their photos were spread across the table, all the more lurid in the red light cast by the stained glass dragonfly lamp overhead.

“At least we've got the murder weapon,” Ryan said, holding up his tablet for everyone to see and pointing to the close-up of a bloody knife that was lying on the floor between the stove and the body.

“You mean
weapons
,” Dirk told him. He picked up one of the photos and shoved it under Ryan's nose. “Dr. Liu said it was probably that knife that did the damage on his belly area. She'll know for sure once she's got him on her table and can measure the depth of the stab wounds and all that. But she said it was a meat cleaver that opened up his head like that.”

“Did you find it?” Waycross asked.

“Yeah. It was on the floor a few feet away, over near the garbage cans.”

Ryan shuddered. “Grisly. I'm sure I saw worse when I was in the bureau, but it's been a while, for sure.”

“Somebody had it out for him,” Savannah said. “Big-time.”

“I was wondering,” Tammy said as she played with her bottle of mineral water and tried to avoid looking at the pictures, “if it had anything to do with the disturbance that went down earlier, when you guys had to go back there and settle things down.”

“Those two guys, Carlos and Manuel, didn't seem to think so,” Dirk replied. “When I squeezed them there at the restaurant, they said what happened earlier was no big deal. They've worked for Norwood a couple of years and said that's just par for the course with him. Apparently, he was even better at throwing fits than he was at cooking.”

“And pots and pans,” Savannah added. “Maybe he threw one at the wrong person and that led to him getting his hide perforated.”

“Or maybe he just tossed one too many and sent somebody over the edge,” Tammy suggested.

Waycross combed his fingers through his thick red curls and leaned back in his chair. “I'll tell you what.... I like to think of myself as a peace-loving sorta guy, and I've got all my front teeth to prove it. But I wouldn't abide somebody I worked for chuckin' skillets at me, right and left. That wouldn't happen more than once or twice before I'd be takin' some action of my own.”

Savannah gave him a soft smile. Of all of her eight siblings, Waycross was her favorite. The eldest of her two brothers, he had been forced at a young age to assume the role of patriarch in their less than conventional family.

Their absentee father had done little to contribute to the raising of his younguns. As a long-distance truck driver, he spent most months of the year on the road and away from his family. Sadly, Savannah had figured out that this lifestyle suited him quite well. Far more than that of a caretaker father.

The caretaking of the nine-child Reid brood had been left up to their mom, Shirley. But just as sadly, Shirley had been ill-suited for the role of motherhood. She much preferred to hold down a barstool at the local tavern than to assume less recreational duties like feeding hungry kids, washing dirty clothes, or applying bandages to skinned knees.

Eventually, the state of Georgia had intervened, and the children—all nine of them—had been placed in the custody of their grandparents, Granny and Grandpa Reid.

A short time later, Grandpa had gone to meet his Maker, and little Waycross had become the “man” of the family. Like Granny Reid and Savannah, he had done his best to fill the parental void for the rest of the children.

Although not all of them had become solid and upstanding members of society, most had managed to stay out of jail. And in the small backwoods town of McGill, Georgia, that pretty much constituted “turning out good.”

“Now, Waycross,” Savannah said, “you've got just enough of Granny in you that I wouldn't put it past you to give somebody a good skillet smack if you felt it was necessary. But that's a far cry from what we've got here.”

“No kidding.” Dirk pointed to the gruesome pictures spread across the table. “This attack wasn't just meant to slow Chef Norwood down or curtail his meanness.”

“That's for sure.” Savannah got up from her chair, walked over to the kitchen counter, and began to go through the motions of making another pot of coffee. Most of the night was gone already, but she knew they would be at it until the break of dawn.

Homicide investigation was many things, but it wasn't your usual nine-to-five job.

As she scooped up an extra portion of coffee, she added, “Whoever killed Chef Norwood, they weren't aiming to just take him down a notch or two. A bunch of stabs in the belly and, as if that wasn't enough, some nasty whacks across the head with a meat cleaver. Nope. Somebody intended to demolish that boy altogether.”

 

“You're taking your bubble bath now? Let's see.... You're three hours behind me. So it's seven o'clock in the morning there in California.”

Savannah settled back into the mountain of sparkling bubbles and felt her tense muscles begin to relax immediately. It wasn't just the deliciously hot water. It wasn't the flickering candlelight that gave the tiny bathroom its cozy ambience. It wasn't the fact that she had pulled the shades and locked the door, figuratively shutting out the world.

No, it was because Savannah was talking to her beloved grandmother. So far, nothing in her life had been so terrible that a talk with Granny Reid couldn't make it at least a bit better.

She pressed the cell phone a little tighter to her cheek and smiled. “Yes, Gran. It's only seven in the morning here.”

“Then something's going on. You're a nighttime bath-taker, like me, unless there's something bad in the wind. A kidnapping? A robbery? Some man did his wife wrong and she took a baseball bat to him?”

“Murder.”

There was a brief silence on the other end, then Granny said, “Murder's bad, all right. As bad as it gets. Anybody we know?”

“The chef at Ryan and John's new restaurant. It happened last night at the end of dinner service. It was their grand opening. Somebody decided to cut him up into fish bait right there on the kitchen floor.”

“Boy, howdy. That must've put a damper on the festivities.”

Savannah chuckled in spite of the subject matter. How many people had a grandmother who would say a thing like that? She didn't know any. And if there was only one in the world, Savannah was glad she had her.

“It certainly did. And we were up all night trying to figure things out. I'm going to take this bath and go straight to bed. Dirk's already in there, snoring like a cartoon bulldog.”

“Hmmm.”

Savannah could practically hear Granny Reid's mental wheels whirring.

She scooped up a handful of bubbles and blew on them, sending their glistening iridescence into the air. “Okay, Gran. Whatcha up to? I can hear you thinking three thousand miles away. You're plotting mischief, I can tell.”

Gran laughed. “That's the trouble with you, Miss Smarty-Pants. You think you know everything.”

“Not everything,” Savannah returned. “But I'm an expert on my grandma. And right about now, you're wishing with all your might that you were out here so you could help us with this case. Am I close?”

“Close? As usual, sweet pea, you're spot on. I've been saving up birthday and Christmas money, and it's about to burn a hole in my pocket. How would you and that new husband of yours feel about a visit from—?”

“Yes!” Savannah practically jumped out of her Victorian clawfoot bathtub.

“Are you sure? I don't want to impose on a couple of newly—”

“Dust off your suitcase and travelin' bonnet, Gran, and start makin' tracks in this direction. There's nothing we'd like better.”

 

“Are you kidding?” Dirk said over his breakfast eggs and sausages later that morning after they had both taken a sleep that was little more than a glorified nap. “There's nothing I'd like better than a visit from Gran. As long as she understands we're working a case here and we're not gonna have time to take her to the beach and Disneyland and all that touristy stuff.”

Savannah swallowed a bite of her eggs, mixed with a bit of grits and a dollop of cream gravy. “Of course she understands. Why do you think she's coming? As much as she adores the Mouse, you couldn't hog-tie her and drag her to Disneyland in the middle of a murder case. Knowing Granny, I reckon she'll want to be right here, smack-dab in the thick of things.”

“You know, it's been proven that distracted driving is more dangerous than drunk driving,” Savannah told her disgruntled passenger.

“Who's distracted?” Dirk shot back. “You're not talking on your cell phone. You're not texting. You're not even messing with the radio. What's distracting you?”

“Not
what
,
who
.”

“Who?”

“You.”

“I'm not distracting anybody. I'm just sitting here, minding my own business, not saying a word about the fact that you're the one driving and I'm just cooling my heels over here in the passenger seat.”

“You'd better not put your heels on my seat. I just gave them a good cleaning with that special leather conditioner.”

“You fuss more with this car than you do your hair.”

“You're darned right I do. And that's why, until you get another car, I'm driving and you're riding shotgun.”

His mood sank, if possible, even lower. His pouty lower lip protruded a bit farther. “They crunched my Buick. Flat as one of your grandma's pancakes.”

“I know, sugar.”

“They killed it.”

“After that wreck, it was already dead. They were just putting it out of its misery.”

“I miss that car. I had a lot of good times in that car.”

“You ate a lot of junk food in that car. I think every taco wrapper and empty French fry bag was still on the back floorboard when we wrecked it.”

“I'm never going to find a car as cool as that one was.”

“You have to at least try. Sooner or later, you'll have to put a period to the end of your grief and move on. You'll have to risk your heart and learn to love again.”

He turned to her and gave her a long, searching look. “You're messing with me, right?”

“Absolutely.”

He snorted. “Well, that's nice. I'm heartbroken and my wife laughs at me. And worse yet, she won't even let me drive her car.”

“That's right. She won't. She saw what you did to yours. Let's face it, kiddo—one of these days you're going to actually have to break down and go car shopping. You know, spend money. Your least favorite activity.”

“Oh, just hush and drive.”

“I can't. Your poutiness is distracting me. Every time we go someplace—”

“—and you drive . . .”

“Yes, and I drive, you sit over there with a sour puss on, radiating your disapproval. Being the codependent, fix-everything-for-everybody sucker that I am, I can't concentrate on my driving. So cheer up before I wreck this car, too.”

She was surprised to hear him chuckle under his breath.

“We'd have to break out the bicycles,” he said.

“Yeah, right. Like that's gonna happen.”

At least she had put a smile on his face for a moment. Her job was done. Her destiny fulfilled. All was right with the world.