Scam Chowder (12 page)

“Thursday's tight. I'm busier than I expected this week. I'll phone you when I know more about my schedule.”

Would he know more when he talked to his ex?
Val might as well get information from him while she could. “Did you find time to check out Scott Freaze?”

“Not thoroughly. Online reviews about his investment business are mixed. People who complained about it had investments that didn't do well at a time when everyone's investments were going down. I'll research him more when I get a chance. A call's coming in on the room phone. Talk to you in a day or two.” He clicked off.

Disappointed, she trudged home. Last weekend when Gunnar arrived in Bayport after nearly a month away, she'd anticipated spending a lot of time with him and getting to know him better after the shaky start to their relationship. In the past three days, they'd managed only a few hours together and the next few days didn't look more promising, especially if he was trying to fit both her and the blonde into his schedule. To be fair, Val had also been pressed for time ever since the chowder dinner.

 

 

A faint burning smell hit her as she opened the front door.
Not again.
Granddad often scorched his morning toast, but he didn't eat toast this late in the day. She raced through the sitting room and dining room.

From the butler's pantry, she saw water overflowing a pot on the stove, hissing and sputtering onto a red-hot burner. On the other back burner, round seeds crackled, popped, and flew into the air from a sizzling frying pan. She zoomed toward the stove.

Granddad backed away from it, stepped on a cookie sheet, which sat on the floor for some reason, and flattened cookie dough with his shoe. “Look what you made me do, storming in here like that!”

Val grabbed the lid lying idle next to the stove and clapped it over the frying pan full of mustard seeds. The seeds kept popping, hitting the metal lid like machine-gun fire. She moved the overflowing pot from the hot burner to one that wasn't glowing red and turned off all the burners. All the while, the oven gave off intense heat, its door open and covered with splats of dough.

Granddad pulled a metal spatula from a drawer and tried to scrape off the dough stuck to the open oven door. “Don't just stand around, Val. Help me out here.”

She didn't know where to start. Inside the oven, dough globules hung from the center rack like Dali's melting clocks. “What happened here, Granddad?”

“Your stupid cookie recipe says to shape the dough into balls and space them out on the cookie sheet. When I went to put the sheet in the oven, the balls started rolling off. I tried to catch them and more of them fell off. I put the cookie sheet on the floor to get it out of the way.”

“That's where I came in.” His bright pink cheeks alarmed her. He looked as if he'd spent an hour under a sunlamp. “Your face is red from the heat.” Or anger. Val took the spatula from him and pulled the trash can toward her. “I'll get the dough off the oven. What's in the pot with the boiling water?”

He straightened up. “Noodles.”

“How long have they been cooking?”

“Ten minutes or so.”

“Drain them or they'll turn to mush.” If they haven't already. “The colander's in the cabinet next to the sink.”

She bent down and concentrated on lifting off the dough before it baked onto the oven door.

“Doggone it. Half of the noodles went down the drain.”

She stood up and checked the sink. Sure enough, pasta the size of rice had escaped from the colander. “If I'd known you were making orzo, I'd have suggested using the strainer.” Of course, he could have looked at the size of the orzo and realized it was smaller than the holes in the colander.

“You should have known. The box is right there.” He gestured toward the counter where a food processor, mixer, garlic press, juicer, and zester sat, along with myriad ingredients.

“How could I miss it? It's behind the flour and sugar, and surrounded by butter, lemons, maple syrup, parsnips, olives, and half-a-dozen other things. What happened to your five-ingredient limit on recipes?”

“I was making three five-ingredient recipes at once.”

“Oh, it's the Codger Cook Three-Ring Circus. Focus on one recipe at a time.”

“I was going to, and let you make the rest of the meal, but you were so late, I figured I'd starve if I didn't make more food.” He gestured at the counter with his palm up. “This is what happens when I listen to you.”

She was used to his finger pointing, but blaming her for a kitchen disaster that occurred when she wasn't even home took some fancy footwork. “How is this my fault?”

“You accused me of running a scam with the Codger Cook column. You lumped me with people like Scott. Well, you won't be able to call me a fraud once I get this cooking stuff down.”

She had three strikes against her—her cookie recipe, coming home late, and calling his column a scam
.
Up until today, he'd needed only free access to her recipes. The cutesy names he gave them and his cornball writing style made her cringe, but until now his new career had made few demands on her time. If he really tried to cook, more kitchen disasters loomed, and more cleanups.

But how many men approaching their eighties tackled something totally new? She was proud of him for doing it. “I'll pay for my sins by cleaning up. You go sit down. Be careful not to slip with that dough on your shoes.”

He didn't slip, but he did leave bits of dough along the path to the kitchen table. “All this work, and I haven't even started making the chicken. It beats me how cooks get everything ready at the same time.”

She cleared away enough space on the counter to work. The longer he had to wait for dinner, the grumpier he'd get. “I'll cut the chicken in small pieces. It'll cook fast.”

While it cooked, she made parsnips with mustard seeds, the side dish he'd chosen. She also salvaged the cookie dough that hadn't rolled away or gotten smashed under his foot.

When she put the food on the table, he dug in. Between bites, he told her how he'd spent the day—taking Ned to lunch to make up for leaving him out of the chowder dinner and then going to a movie.

“Was the movie any good?” she asked. Maybe she and Gunnar could—No, that wouldn't work. He was busy . . . with another woman.

“The plot was dumb, and the acting terrible. I don't know why they can't make good movies anymore. What did you do besides work at the café today?”

“Talked to Irene and Junie May. I found out that Junie May and Scott spent time together Saturday before the chowder dinner.”

Granddad's white eyebrows jumped halfway up his forehead. “She could have poisoned him with something that wouldn't take effect until later.”

If guilty, Junie May was playing a deeper game than Val could fathom. Why would she mention arsenic if she'd used it to poison Scott? “She said something that surprised me. The research she did on Scott convinced her he was a legitimate financial adviser with happy clients. Do you have any proof that Scott defrauded Ned? Does he have any paperwork?”

“He didn't get an account statement yet.”

“All you have are rumors of Scott's dishonesty and no more facts than Irene had when she spread rumors about food poisoning here. Scott might not have been a swindler after all, but a victim of gossip.”

Granddad rolled his eyes. “As usual, Val, your instincts about men are all wrong. Scott's worse than we thought. I found out something today that made my blood boil.”

Chapter 13

Granddad put his fork down and folded his arms. “An eighty-year-old man committed suicide a few months ago after losing his life savings. He trusted a financial expert who gave investment seminars at his retirement community. I'd bet my Codger Cook apron that Scott was that expert.”

Val pushed her orzo salad around the plate, her appetite gone. “That's terrible. How did you find out about it?”

“A woman at the Village told Ned and me. She heard it from a friend of hers at the retirement place where it happened, just outside Washington.”

Thirdhand hearsay. “Can you ask the woman for the name of the place where the suicide occurred? If we have that, we can find out if Scott gave seminars there. And if he didn't, we'll at least know he wasn't the kind of monster who drives people to suicide.”

Granddad raised one hand like a cop stopping traffic. “Why would we spend any time on that? We should focus on who killed him so I don't get blamed for it.”

“We need to know more about Scott. The character of the victim was the key to solving the murder in June.” Last month, she and Granddad had used each other as sounding boards for theories about that murder, but with him smitten by Lillian, Val doubted he could be objective about this crime. “When we talked about that last murder, you kept giving me lists of five suspects with motives. Can you do it again this time?”

“We had five guests besides Scott. I guess that means five suspects. Maybe Junie May was Scott's accomplice. He could have had a hold over her and forced her to vouch for him, or she might have wanted all the money they scammed for herself.”

“That would give her a reason to insist on Scott's honesty and to plant the idea that someone else killed him. According to Junie May, Irene was afraid her husband would invest money with Scott and lose it.”

“So Irene's number two on the suspect list. Omar's number three. I don't know what his motive could be, but Scott sure looked at him funny. I gotta put Thomasina and Lillian at the bottom. No motive.”

Val was surprised that he put Lillian on the list at all. “We need to know more about Omar. What was he like at the dinner?”

“Overly polite and hoity-toity about the wine.”

“What do you mean?”

“He brought two bottles of white wine. I told him we already had wine chilled for dinner. Then he said to use his wine instead, because it was exceptional. He'd already chilled it to the perfect temperature in his car's wine chiller. The show-off even opened his exceptional wine with a corkscrew he carried in a leather case.”

Val laughed. “Your corkscrew wasn't good enough.” A funny story and a possible clue about Omar. Assuming he'd actually brought exceptional wine, an online search might narrow down places where he could have bought it. That might help Val track him down.

She put down her fork and jumped out of her seat. “Be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To rummage in the recycling bin while it's still light outside.”

 

 

An hour later, with the kitchen cleanup behind her and Granddad reading the newspaper in the sitting room, Val sat in front of her laptop in the study. She opened a browser window and typed in the mul-tiword French name of the wine Omar had supplied. The hits that came up included reviews of restaurants serving wines from the vineyard listed on the label. She narrowed her search by adding
Maryland, Washington, D.C., Delaware,
and
Virginia
to the search box. Fewer matches came up, none for restaurants near the Eastern Shore. Val opened another browser window and typed
Omar
in the search box. One by one, she copied the name of each restaurant she'd found by searching for the wine and pasted it into the search box with Omar's name. Her fourth search produced a hit—a review of a restaurant that consistently placed among the top five eateries in the Washington area. The restaurant's sommelier was Omar Azamov. Bingo!

According to the review, the sommelier arranged to import wines directly from small vineyards that didn't sell to retail outlets in the United States. The reviewer described the restaurant's five-course wine dinner as the best meal he'd eaten paired with the best wine he'd drunk in years. He suggested making reservations a month in advance.

Val brought up the restaurant's website replete with photos of beautifully arranged tables and food. The sample menu did not include prices. Saturday night had to be busy in a high-end restaurant like that. Yet, instead of going to work last Saturday, Omar had come to Granddad's dinner with the perfect wine to accompany chowder, not something he could buy around Bayport. The wine clue might not convince Granddad that his girlfriend had invited Omar well in advance of the dinner instead of at the last minute, but it convinced Val.

An online search for Omar Azamov gave Val his address in a Virginia suburb of Washington, a link to the review she'd just read, and one to his Facebook page. That page didn't show his face, only hands presenting a wine bottle. The page listed a Washington, D.C., restaurant as his current place of employment and three restaurants where he'd previously worked, all in the Baltimore-Washington area. It also gave the dates when he'd earned an Introductory Sommelier Certificate, a Certified Sommelier Certificate, and, just a few months ago, an Advanced Sommelier Certificate.

Val had met a certified sommelier in New York two years ago during her former life as a cookbook publicist. He'd coauthored a cookbook focused on dinner parties with wine pairings. She looked up the sommelier's e-mail address on her contact list and sent him a message, reminding him who she was and asking if she could talk to him by phone.

Her cell phone rang and displayed the name of the real estate agent she'd tried to reach earlier in the day. Maybe by now the agent knew if Lillian's Annapolis house had a lien on it.

“Hey, Val. It's Kimberly. I wanted to call you earlier, but I was, like, totally swamped today.” She had a high-school cheerleader's voice with enough volume to project to the top of the bleachers. “Sorry I can't help you. You have to contact a title search company or an attorney to look up liens on a property. You can do the search yourself at the courthouse, if you have the time.”

Val didn't have the time or inclination to search through courthouse records. Maybe her mother would spring for a title search to find out if Lillian was a woman in financial straits and a possible gold digger. “I also had a question about the property owners. The woman listed on the tax records for that house said she's a widow, but a man with the same last name is listed as a co-owner. I suppose he could be her son. Can you access personal information like the age of property owners?”

“Not easily, but the name could be her dead husband's. If a married couple owns property with right of survivorship, the deed doesn't have to change after one of them dies. The one who's still alive just needs to show a death certificate to prove ownership when the house is sold.”

The property record told Val nothing about who lived in the house. “Thanks for the info, Kimberly.”

“No problem. I owe you for giving me a referral to Mrs. Z.”

Everyone called the elderly woman with the long last name Mrs. Z. Val had met her once, after the last murder in Bayport, and remembered her and her macaroons fondly. “Did you sell her house yet?” She doodled a one-story house with as much artistic talent as any six-year-old.

“She listed the house with me, but then changed her mind like a week later and took it off the market. She wants to move closer to her son and his family in Chicago, but she's afraid of making a mistake.”

Poor Mrs. Z, widowed after sixty years, unsure what to do next. Val had suffered the same indecision before her move to Bayport last winter. It had taken her a while to decide whether to stay. Now Gunnar was hesitating too, having trouble finding a place in Bayport, hearing the siren call of his former fiancée.

Aha! A possible solution to two problems.

“Hey, Kimberly, would Mrs. Z want to rent out her place?” Val turned her house doodle into a boat. Maybe Mrs. Z's house could serve as a mast holding Gunnar steady until his interest in the blonde waned. “She could try living near her son. If it doesn't work out, she can come back here.”

“Most people want a year lease. She thinks that's too long. And she doesn't want to clear out all her furniture.”

“I know someone who might welcome a shorter-term lease and even some furniture in the place.”

“Really? I'll sound out Mrs. Z about it and let you know. See ya.”

Val navigated back to the website for the restaurant where Omar worked. She jotted down the phone number and checked her watch. Nine o'clock. The dinner hour would still be in full swing at a fancy restaurant like that. Better to wait until the patrons thinned out and the sommelier had less to do.

Meanwhile, she could do other online research. She typed
arsenic poisoning
into a search box. The sources she skimmed distinguished between acute and chronic arsenic poisoning. She narrowed her search to acute cases and found out that even a quarter teaspoon of an arsenic compound was enough to kill a healthy person. Gastrointestinal symptoms could appear within half an hour after ingesting the poison or take several hours to show up, depending on the amount consumed and the individual.

That meant Scott could have been poisoned either before or after he arrived at the dinner. When his symptoms began, he'd finished his chowder, though the others hadn't. Unfortunately, the time required for the arsenic to take effect didn't rule out poisoning by chowder. Eating salad, passing bread, and conversing could have slowed down the pace of the meal. And given Scott's
tummy problems,
which Thomasina had mentioned, the poison might have affected him more quickly than the average person.

When Val finished reading up on arsenic, she phoned the restaurant where Omar worked and asked to speak to him.

He came on the line thirty seconds later. “Omar Azamov here. How may I help you?”

“This is Val Deniston. We met briefly on Saturday night before you left the dinner party at my grandfather's house. If you can spare a minute, I'd like to ask you a question or two about the dinner. Lillian invited you to my grandfather's house. Have you known her long?”

“A year or so.”

Whatever he and Lillian had cooked up between them, they'd worked with different ingredients. Wouldn't she have known the son of an old friend for a longer time than that? “Did you know any of the other guests?”

“I'd never met them before that night.”

A carefully worded answer. Perhaps he'd known
of
them without having met them. “With your experience—”

“Ms. Deniston, I really must return to my duties.”

“Just one more question, which perhaps only you can answer. Having worked in restaurants, you may remember people's food preferences better than the others at my grandfather's dinner. Do you recall which chowder each guest wanted at first, before they changed their minds at the table?”

“Lillian and I asked for the light chowder. So did the gray-haired woman, whose name I've forgotten.”

“Irene.”

“Yes. The other guests requested the creamy chowder. Your grandfather did not tell us his choice. Truly, Ms. Deniston, I must put the phone down.”

“Thank you for your help. I hope we can talk again.”

“Good-bye.”

Val hung up, satisfied with the phone call despite its abrupt end. Someone less polite than Omar would have hung up on her sooner. Assuming what he'd said about his short acquaintance with Lillian was true, then what could have brought the two of them together? Omar didn't come across as someone who shirked his duties. Still, he'd spent Saturday night away from his job, prime time at any restaurant. Val would need to dig further to find out why and how Lillian had convinced him to show up at the Codger Cook's dinner party.

She'd done enough research for tonight. Tomorrow she'd have to get up early to buy café provisions at the market.

 

 

At six-thirty Wednesday morning, Val dressed in a turquoise T-shirt she could wear later for tennis and black Capri pants she'd swap out for white shorts to wear on the court this afternoon. She grabbed a package of peanut butter crackers to tide her over until she made coffee and a real breakfast for herself at the café. Her Saturn still smelled of dead fish, but the odor was far less pungent than two days ago. On her way to the farmers' market, she drove with her window wide open to let in the cool morning air.

The market opened for business at eight, but she'd made a standing arrangement to pick up produce, eggs, and artisan bread an hour before that. Today the market also offered fresh chickens raised on a local farm. She couldn't resist.

Her purchases filled four recyclable bags, one devoted to melons. She drove back along a country road toward Bayport. Before reaching town, she turned onto another rural road leading to the racket and fitness club. As usual this early in the morning, the club's lot was less than a quarter full. She toted the bags into the club, two in each hand. Rushing into the café alcove, she suddenly felt like an ice-skater. Her tennis shoes slid out from under her on the tile floor. She dropped the bags on her way down and tried to break her fall. The back of her head smacked against the floor.