Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel (21 page)

Probably she would not want to talk to me, but I was pretty confident I could at least get my foot in her door. After all, chefs had a totally unfair advantage when it came to launching a charm offensive.

Normally, if I want to bribe somebody, I do the cooking myself, but I was operating under some unusual time constraints here. One of the advantages of being a chef in Manhattan, though, is you are a member of a tightly knit community of fellow professionals not averse to handing you the occasional curry hot pot to go out the back door, no questions asked.

I had to look up the address for Exclusivité. From what little I’d been told, I was expecting to arrive at a street-level shop or spa. Instead, to my surprise, the cab pulled up in front of one of Manhattan’s iconic glass and steel skyscrapers just a couple blocks off Columbus Circle. It was only a guess that I’d find Karina Alden at her office, but you didn’t develop and run a luxury product business without being a workaholic. Having been a badly gut-punched workaholic, I knew all about the comfort of being able to throw yourself into your job when you didn’t want to think—especially if it involved not thinking about one of O’Grady’s Q&A sessions.

I paid off the cabbie, grabbed the receipt (hey, it was a business expense), and climbed out onto the curb. The night was warm, and the traffic on the sidewalk and down the street
was brisk. A quick check of my carrier bag showed I hadn’t spilled anything yet. A quick check of my cell phone said Brendan hadn’t called or texted.

A quick look where I was going showed Scott Alden on the other side of the lobby’s tinted windows, striding out of the elevator.

I froze like a guilty teenager when the light snaps on, and I looked around frantically for a tourist to duck behind. But Mr. Alden was too busy texting and checking his watch at the same time to notice some random, out-of-uniform chef standing by the curb. He breezed out through the revolving door, letting the rotation point him toward Broadway, and headed down the sidewalk without once looking up.

Okay. Unexpected,
I thought as I was remembering how to breathe again. It also told me two things: (1) Karina was in fact in her office; (2) I wasn’t the only one feeling the need to check up on her. I did find myself wondering how that particular father-daughter conversation had gone and what kind of ground it had covered. I knew nothing about Scott Alden, except that he was rich, a T-typ, he didn’t much like Lloyd Maddox, he might have tried to get access to Oscar’s office, and, according to Trudy, his main goal in life was to keep everybody calm and happy.

So, who was he here to keep calm and happy?
That question followed me through the revolving door and across the gleaming lobby, and I had the feeling it wasn’t going away any time soon.

This was not the kind of building just anybody could wander into. I had to give my name to the guard at the desk, who in turn had to make sure somebody upstairs would agree to take charge of me before he’d agree to give me a pass and buzz me through.

That somebody turned out to be Karina Alden herself.

“Charlotte. I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said by way of an extremely left-handed greeting as I stepped off the
elevator. But considering the last time she’d seen me was in the company of Linus O’Grady, I couldn’t really blame her for the lack of warmth.

At some point, Karina had swapped out the designer dress for black slacks and a long white coat that buttoned all the way up to a high, closed neck. It looked like a cross between a lab coat and my own chef’s uniform. A bitter smell hung around her, something that vaguely reminded me of the taste of AA batteries.

I must have made a face. “Sorry,” said Karina. “I’ve been in the aromatics lab. It can get a little strong.”

“You were looking kind of rough…before. I wanted to see if you were okay.”

“You did or O’Grady did?” Karina was clearly not in the mood for any kind of verbal dance. This was a state of being I could completely respect.

“Linus O’Grady is not going to send me to ask his questions for him.”

She thought about this. “No, I suppose not. I’m sorry. It’s been a very bad time.” Her face had that blotchy red complexion that indicated either a four-martini lunch or a recent crying jag. I was betting on the crying jag. In fact, she looked drawn tight enough to snap.

That, at least, I could help with, which helped ease any guilt I might have about coming to poke at a woman who could be guilty of nothing but lousy relatives and terrible taste in boyfriends.

“Have you had dinner?” I asked.

Karina eyed my shopping bag. “You did not bring a casserole.”

“Curry hot pot.”

As a trained chef, I can spot the moment when someone’s stomach starts doing the thinking for them. I saw this moment blossom in Karina Alden’s brown eyes, and I smiled. “Got a microwave in this place?”

Before much longer, the two of us were seated in a small lunchroom tucking into curry and rice heaped onto paper plates, and washing it down with bottles of sweet tea from the vending machine. Karina ate hungrily and steadily. I waited until her fragrant, steaming helping had shrunk by about half, before trying out the opening I’d worked out all the way across to Midtown. Now was the time to pray Felicity had been right about the breakup.

“He was a royal pain in the ass,” I said.

Karina choked on a swallow of tea and regarded me warily. “Don’t tell me you dated him too?”

“No. Dodged that bullet.” I smiled and said a silent prayer of gratitude for accurate relationship gossip. “But I saw him in action.”

“I wish I had. I don’t know if it would have mattered,” she added wearily. “The whole thing was stupid, and I knew it was stupid, and whenever he wasn’t around, I regretted it. But when he was around”—she shook her head—“it didn’t matter if it was stupid or not. It was just so much
fun
.”

I let that one settle. Exclusivité took up a large chunk of this floor, which meant the rent alone would be more money than Nightlife saw in a good month. We’d passed doors labeled
DEVELOPMENT LAB: AROMATICS,
and
RESEARCH,
and
ANALYSIS
, as well as a half-dozen private offices. Karina had to work long and hard to keep this all going. I could understand the attraction of a little fun.

“At first it was strictly business.” Karina took another sip of sweet tea. “Oscar was looking to add boutiques to his restaurants with specially branded products. He wanted a fragrance with his name on it, and he’d come to talk to us about making the juice. Things sort of went from there.”

“Your mother said it was your idea to have him do the wedding.”

“She said that?”

I nodded, and Karina turned her head away, but not before I saw the anger burning underneath her carefully applied blush.

“I had nothing to do with his getting the wedding job,” she said grimly. “Oscar went after that all on his own. I haven’t talked to Deanna since before she announced the engagement, and I don’t expect we’ll be talking much again in the future.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.” Karina set her jaw. It completely changed her face. When she was just sad, she had a softness about her. But as the anger took over, that softness melted, leaving behind nothing but stone and steel. “You see, I’m not the important one. I’m not the heir to the big magical empire, so none of the Maddoxes give a damn about what I do or where I go. Deanna looks at that and sees freedom. She doesn’t see that Dad and I can just be thrown overboard. It doesn’t matter if I tell the Maddoxes all to go screw themselves and walk out. Nobody cares. They care about keeping Deanna happy and passing on the damned…magic.”

“But if the…magic is something you inherit, wouldn’t the Maddoxes be a little worried about Deanna marrying a vampire?” The list of things vampires cannot do includes making babies. It’s kinda tough to pass something on to the next generation if there’s not going to be a next generation.

“It’s been mentioned,” said Karina blandly. “Mom insists she’s got the whole thing handled. I heard her telling Grandfather.” Karina took a long swig of tea. “She says there’s nothing for him to worry about. She says marriage or no marriage, this affair won’t last, and she’s got the…magic safe. That was before Gabriel and Deanna really went lovey-dovey, though.” She added to the tea bottle with a frown.

“So, Deanna and Gabriel had been going together for a while?”

“Oh yeah. We’d been seeing Gabriel and his blood
relations around a few parties, and Deanna’d been flirting with him. Trying to cause trouble yet again. Everybody’s always cleaned up after her, so nothing she could do would go really wrong, for her anyway. It was part of that whole witchy-princess thing.” According to Brendan, the Maddox clan had a roughly democratic structure. If you broke too many rules, you could be voted off their particular island. But from what Karina was saying, it sounded as though the heir to the Arall got immunity from that challenge.

“Mom’s tried everything to bring her in line,” Karina went on. “Taking the car, cutting off her allowance, kicking her out of the house…When we were teenagers, I don’t think a week went by without some new shouting match between them.” She poked her fork into the curry, turning over pieces of lamb as though looking for more pleasant memories. “Anyway, dating a vampire was about the only thing she hadn’t tried. Jumped right in with both feet. I knew she would,” Karina added softly, but then she shook herself. “Anyway, she wakes up one morning and tells me she’s in love. I thought it was just another part of the game. I thought we—” She cut herself off and shook her head hard. “God, this has just gotten so messed up.”

That was another one of those understatements, but it wasn’t going to do either of us any good if I pointed that out. “And it’s family, which makes it worse.”

“You have no idea.”

“Yeah, I kind of do.”

“No, you…oh.” Then she clearly remembered whom she was talking to. “Well, maybe you do.”

I helped myself to a little more rice so I wouldn’t have to look at her while I said, “Must be hard on your dad.”

“Probably. I wouldn’t know.” She shrugged and speared a piece of carrot with her fork. “We haven’t talked much since I walked out.”

In a way, it was a relief to meet somebody without a world-class
poker face. But the fact that I could read her meant I was reading yet another uncomfortable question.
Why are you lying to me, Karina? Are you trying the act out for O’Grady? Or for your mother?

I decided then and there to go for the approach I knew best—the direct one. “Karina, the cops think Oscar might have been murdered.”

“I know,” she told the last of her tea, quietly, sadly. “I’m not surprised.”

“Do you have any idea who might have done it?” Karina scowled at me, and I shook my head. “I’m not asking you to tell me.” That was not strictly true, but there are limits to how far you can force some issues. “But, if you do have any ideas, you can trust O’Grady. He plays fair.”

Karina got to her feet. She picked up her paper plate, took it over to the garbage, and pitched it. She kept her back to me for a long moment. “Anybody could have killed him,” she said. “Anybody at all.”

When Karina did face me again, the look I got tried to be pointed but melted quickly—and I suspect involuntarily—into pleading. “I’m sorry. I’m getting really stupid now. I need to go home.” Her eyes shone bright with tears and badly suppressed anger. This woman had been crying a lot already today. She was about to start again, and she didn’t want witnesses.

This was something else I could understand.

I collected my tote, said my good-byes, and left her to it. She trusted me enough to make my own way back down that long hallway, past all those doors with their neatly engraved brass plaques. I read them over, and I thought them over, all the way down in the elevator.

Here’s the thing. One of the reasons I’d been able to go on at length with O’Grady about all the ways you couldn’t poison someone at a restaurant is because any formally trained chef knows all kinds of ways you
can
make people sick,
or even kill them. We all get extra classes at culinary school designed to make sure we don’t accidentally poison our clientele, or blind them, or paralyze them, or cause massive organ failure. And believe me, if stupid enough and angry enough, I could do all of that and a little bit more.

But mine wasn’t the only profession that handles potentially hazardous chemicals. My stomach clenched as I turned through the revolving door and out onto the sidewalk where the city’s lights held back the dark. I liked Karina Alden. I did not want to be thinking like this about her at all.

In a blatant attempt at self-distraction, I yanked out my phone and tried Brendan’s number for the umpteenth time. This time, he actually answered.

“Are you sorry?” I asked him as I ducked across Central Park West. Brendan owed me an apology for all those messages I’d left on his voice mail that he hadn’t answered.

“Yes,” he replied. We’d sort out exactly what he was apologizing for later. We always did. “But things have gotten a little crazy here.”