Murder Alfresco #3 (4 page)

“There is when you put a splash of this in it,” said Sunny, holding up a bottle of house red.

Rivka shook her head. “I don’t know how you can drink coffee like that.”

“Hair of the dog.”

“Dog hair would be preferable.”

“You mock my traditions, but someday you will know the truth and be forced to admit the wisdom of my ways. This recipe is an ancient Portuguese panacea straight from Catelina Alvarez’s kitchen. One shot of good, strong espresso, one spoonful of honey, one splash of red wine, a little hot water to thin things out, and suddenly the world is a beautiful place. It’s better than Prozac.”

“Why not crumble some Prozac on top? You’ve got the caffeine, sugar, and alcohol covered. All that’s missing is the hard stuff!’

“Don’t tempt me.” Sunny finished stirring the concoction and swallowed it, then went over to the oven and let the hot air warm her arms and face. It was good to be in her kitchen, in her restaurant. The world may not be an entirely beautiful place, she thought, but at least Wildside was still here with its warmth and good smells and friendly noises to fill up the day. After a night like last night, the heat of the kitchen was the best medicine she could imagine. What would be ideal now would be to bake. She wanted to put her hands into a bowl of dough and knead it, feel the soft, floury mixture crumble under her fingertips and gradually coalesce into a smooth, compact ball. The smell of baking bread would fill the kitchen and banish any bad juju from the night before. With a pang, Sunny remembered the girl’s face. She had seen those eyes and would never forget them. The image flashed in her mind against her will.

“You really do look beat,” said Rivka. “Did you go out last

night?”

“Very.”

“Let me guess. Andre Morales the Mexican Bacchus kept you out late partying again, then took you home and ravished you until the cocks crowed.”

“You’re half right, but the cock never even got close to crowing.”

“Oh, really,” said Rivka, raising her eyebrows. “No wonder you’re all ruffled.”

It wasn’t a bad job to do the day’s butchering, but it wasn’t the best job either, and neither Sunny nor Rivka particularly liked it. It was hard work that required both strength and skill with a sharp knife. Some tasks were easier than others. Slicing strips of bacon from the slab of cured pork was no big deal. On the other hand, Sunny had never enjoyed preparing chickens for roasting. The smell of rosemary and lemon chicken roasting in the oven was pure heaven, but the smell of raw chicken on the cutting board, with its sallow skin and pockets of jaundiced fat, was enough to put her off poultry altogether no matter how many times she faced it. A hectic morning was no time to be squeamish, and as a cook, Sunny was very rarely that. She liked to get her hands dirty, liked the texture of all kinds of ingredients, including the slip and slide of raw meat.

Rivka was already working on ravioli with broccoli rabe filling, a time-consuming dish that was a challenge to get just right so they didn’t come apart. Sunny reviewed the list of meats that needed prepping. If they did more business, they could order whole sides of beef and pork and make their own cuts. Since Wildside was so small, Sunny worked with the local butcher, who delivered the specific cuts she wanted each morning. All she had to do was trim and shape them. The fish and fowl were another story. When she bought trout or dorado, it came gutted but otherwise whole, as did most of the poultry and game birds. Tuna, salmon, and halibut arrived in heavy slabs to be filleted. Squid, grass shrimp, oysters, and lobster were delivered whole
and, in the case of lobsters, oysters, and grass shrimp, alive. Depending on the menu, the day’s butchering could take two hours or more.

In the walk-in, Sunny picked up a rainbow trout and admired its compact little body and the spray of dots across its silken belly. They would be panfried more or less as is. Next to them was a tub of baby quail ready to be stuffed with a mixture of wild mushrooms, prosciutto, and herbed bread crumbs and tied up in pretty bundles. Sunny took the tub to a workstation. She picked up a quail, turned it over in her palm, examined the translucent white skin dotted with purple, then put it back in the tub and carried it back to the walk-in, where she chose instead a shallow tray of squid that had arrived earlier that morning, according to the label written on masking tape.

The squid went better because she refused to acknowledge anything remotely animated about them, and because these particular squid, normally a bargain, had been unexpectedly expensive. Any squid with the nerve to command the price she’d apparently paid deserved to be gutted and stuffed with lobster meat. At nine dollars a plate, the upper limit of what she could charge for a calamari appetizer, the restaurant was practically taking a loss on one of her favorite spring dishes. It was almost as bad as the live grass shrimp that she bought from a guy in China Camp and used in the outrageously delicious fritto misto that was the new star of the appetizers. There was nothing more succulent than fried grass shrimp with fried slices of lemon and herbs and aioli to dip in, and almost nothing she made less profit on. The shrimp always sold out, but if Heather and Soren, Wildside’s waitstaff, didn’t sell all of the calamari by tomorrow afternoon, these little squid would be a foolishly pricey donation to Friday night’s dinner, since she still refused to open Wildside
on the weekends. The thought gave her a headache. The cala-mari would simply have to sell.

She selected a worthy specimen, removed the feather bone, pulled the head free, and drew out the viscera. Separating the ink sac from the mess of entrails, she punctured it and squeezed its oily contents into a tiny bowl out of habit since it wasn’t enough to do anything with, thinking at the same time how she needed to find a delicate way to persuade Rivka not to overcook the squid. There had been an incident, admittedly after reheating during a Friday night dinner, when the calamari had had the consistency and durability of surgical tubing. Monty suffered through a serving, looking like a dog trying to chew bubblegum. Getting calamari just right was an art that required constant vigilance. She’d mentioned it once already, but apparently it hadn’t sunk in because the last batch she’d tasted had been slightly rubbery. She would have to be more convincing in her lesson, without of course raising the Chavez pride and ire. The woman did not like to be told what to do.

One quick slice separated the head from the tentacles. She popped the beak out, rinsed the tentacles, and put them in a bowl. The remaining mantle was rinsed and deposited in a separate dish. Then she took up the next volunteer.

When all of the squid had been cleaned, she stowed them in the walk-in and, moving with detached efficiency, picked up a large section of tuna. She took a moment to hone the razor-sharp fish knife, drawing it across the stone with long, smooth strokes. A sharp knife made all the difference. Slicing tuna was a walk in the park compared to her first cooking job at a busy seafood restaurant in San Francisco. The specialty of the house was blackened catfish. Every morning she would spend the first half-hour of the day cutting the heads off live catfish, which live longer out of water
than other fish. A knife was simply too gruesome, and their bones too resilient, so she started using the bone cutter. Overkill, literally, but nothing could be faster. Their glazed eyes watched the approach of the bone cutter with dull resignation. She took to draping a white napkin over their faces before the saw came down. The sound of that bone cutter stuck with her even now.

Tuna was different. The slab of tender, rosy flesh in front of her bore little resemblance to a fish. It was a substance, not a dead thing. She arranged it on the fish board, stroked the cool flesh, and chose a place to make her first cut. The feel of that cool, firm flesh reminded her of the girl hanging from the tree. Her mouth felt dry and sticky. She took a deep breath and pressed the blade into the flesh.

The sound of the knife clattering to the floor surprised her as much as the fact that she was no longer holding it. She saw the silver of the stainless countertop and the black rubber floor mats, then darkness.

Rivka’s face was staring down at her when she came to. Her head felt heavy. The thoughts came slowly. Rivka was saying something, it didn’t matter what. Translating the sounds into meaning seemed to take tremendous effort. Finally she sat up, staring dully at the holes in the rubber mat between her outstretched legs. The facts emerged gradually. She was sitting on the floor at Wildside. A moment before, she had been standing. Interesting.

Sergeant Steve Harvey called at two o’clock, just as the lunch rush was beginning to peak and slow down.

“Hi, Sunny. Sorry to interrupt you,” he said. “Can you come by the station this afternoon around four? I’d like to review
everything one more time, just to be sure we didn’t miss anything. Does that give you enough time to clear out of work?”

Sunny cradled the phone to her ear while she plated a line of desserts. “Four o’clock should be fine. I’ll be there.”

She’d been going over the night’s events all day in her head, not that she wanted to. She couldn’t help it. Throughout their interview last night on the bench while the patrol cars’ headlights illuminated the girl’s body, Steve kept asking her if she remembered anything else about the truck, any detail or impression she might have forgotten to mention.

“Sometimes things come back to you after the shock wears off,” he said.

She couldn’t think of anything, but maybe the shock hadn’t entirely worn off yet. To say she was tired was not adequate. She had gone beyond tired to some kind of altered state of consciousness, like being drugged or feverish. And then there was that nasty thump on the head from her fall this morning. Nevertheless, the day had gone smoothly enough. The restaurant was full, the waitstaff had all shown up and were busily doing their jobs, the guests ordered lots of wine and left well fed and happy. The most difficult part was the way Rivka kept looking at her.

“You sure you don’t want to talk?” she said for the fifth time that day. “It seems like there’s something on your mind.”

“Later. Can’t talk now. Must conserve limited energy resources in order to survive lunch service.”

More than Steve’s admonition to keep silent, she avoided Rivka out of fear. She knew once she started talking about last night she wouldn’t be able to stop until she told the whole story, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to run a restaurant with anything like her full attention. In fact, she wasn’t sure what would
happen at all. Maybe she would tell her story and go to sleep and not wake up for two days. She was beyond the realm of predictability and self-control.

For now it was easier to pretend none of it had happened. She hardly said a word to Rivka or anyone else, and couldn’t bring herself to call Andre and explain her mysterious departure. Finally she left him a message at his house, knowing he was at work, saying that she’d walked out on the party because she didn’t feel well and didn’t want to bother him. What nonsense. Leaving a message, especially a bogus message, was the coward’s way out, but there was no alternative. If she was going to continue to function for the rest of the day, the only choice was to repress everything and bludgeon her way through the hours. Just before four, she told Rivka she had an appointment and left the restaurant, pedaling her bike the few blocks up the back road to the St. Helena police station.

The coffee table in the waiting room
at the police station offered one
Redbook,
thoroughly dog-eared, circa 2002, one
Reader’s Digest,
and the classified section of the
San Francisco Chronicle.
Sunny went for the
Redbook,
half hoping for a feature on layered Jello parfaits, for which she had a secret passion thanks to growing up in California in the seventies. Back then, the big dinner in the summertime, eaten outdoors of course, was barbecued chicken, potato salad, sourdough bread, and a rainbow parfait with whipped cream on top. Instead, there were articles on how to please your man in bed, embarrassing moments revealed, and how to turn your man on. She tossed the magazine back on the table and picked up the classified section. She read all the pet ads, then all the garage sale ads, then the used car ads. Still no Sergeant Harvey. Staring dully ahead, she watched employees saunter up and down the hallway behind the bulletproof glass.