Toast Mortem (19 page)

“That’s not a recipe,” Clare said.

Quill raised her eyebrows. “It looks like a recipe.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “What she means is it isn’t food.”

Quill looked at the recipe again. “Eggs are food, cereal’s food . . .” The penny dropped. “Oh. You mean it’s not gourmet food.”

“Have I ever told you how much I hate the word ‘gourmet’?” Meg demanded passionately.

“Not that I recall,” Quill said.

“There’s
food
, that is, delicious, nutritious, wonderful
food
, and then there’s stuff like this.” She flicked the paper with a contemptuous finger. “I wouldn’t serve a farm animal stuff like this, much less a human being.”

“You are so right,” Clare agreed. “What’s worse, I’ll bet you fifty cents that ‘mar’ means marshmallow. One ten-and-a-half-ounce package of marshmallows.”

“Oh my God,” Meg said. “I’ll bet you it is. Gaah!”

Quill, who was fond of marshmallows and even fonder of puffed cereal with a little cream and lots of raw sugar, dragged matters back to the point. “So what was this doing in LeVasque’s hand?”

“Beats me,” Clare said.

“Maybe it’s part of a poison pen letter,” Meg said. “You know: dear Chef LeVasque, cook this, you bozo! Sort of like giving him the finger. Did the scrap of paper look like stationery?”

“It was from a yellow pad. The ones with lines. There are probably five million lined yellow pads in the northeastern United States alone.”

“So what do we do now?” Clare asked anxiously.

“We go undercover at Bonne Goutè. Or rather, you two do. I can handle things on my own here for the rest of the week. The party’s Friday, right?” She frowned. “That doesn’t give you two a whole bunch of time.”

“The menu was posted Sunday night,” Clare said. “So the fresh stuff’s been ordered. I imagine everyone’s been working on their part of the meal. I was supposed to do tarte pêche, for example. And of course, I haven’t done a thing about it.”

“I’ve got a copy of the menu somewhere around here.” Meg got up and began to rummage in the pile of papers stacked on her coffee table. “I’ll make a list of the ingredients and see what we can come up with. It’s too late to order anything in quantity, so I’ll just have to cope. I remember thinking there was a real challenge in there.”

“I don’t suppose you’d just want to follow his original menu?” Quill said tentatively. “It’d leave you more time to investigate.”

Meg didn’t bother to dignify this with an answer. She dug into an accordion file and emerged with the invitation to the Welcome Dinner. “Here it is! Yep. I was right. Goat. Goat and quail.”

“Goat?” Quill said, who hadn’t paid attention to the menu at all. “I don’t think the Chamber members know about the goat.”

“It’s a locavore menu,” Meg said. “Only local foods. It’s called chevon, of course, to sneak it past the people who’re put off by the idea, but it’s actually very delicious. And really good for you. Chevon roti. Hmm. He meant to roast it. Idiot. It’s much better braised.”

“Come to think of it, neither Miriam nor Howie was hounding me for tickets,” Quill said. “So at least a few of the Chamber members know about the goat.” She shook herself. “Anyway. Here’s what we need to do. I thought we’d take a logical approach here, and divide our investigation into three categories: means, motive, and opportunity.”

“Sounds good,” Clare said nervously, “except that the person with the means, motive, and opportunity is me.”

“Yes, well. We’ll exclude you, of course. Let’s begin with opportunity. Who was at the academy between the hours of one and two that day?”

Clare made a face. “About a hundred day-trippers in the tasting room, for starters.”

Quill beamed at them. “And who among them had a chance to snatch the weapon from our kitchen?”

Clare smiled. “They all came in from Buffalo on a tour bus that morning. But there was a class earlier in the morn—”

Quill, eager to make her point, interrupted her. “So we can rule out the day-trippers.”

“But what about the breakfast class?” Clare insisted. “Your WARP people or the urps or whatever they’re named. They came in for Basic Brunch Techniques.”

Quill rubbed her forehead. “Hm. But they hadn’t met LeVasque before, had they?”

“Probably not.”

“Still . . .” Quill thought a minute. “Meg, you missed the butcher knife when?”

“Monday night. Around eight thirty.”

“And you, Clare, when did you last use the knife?”

“Monday night, around eight o’clock.”

“And who, other than the three of us was in the kitchen?”

Meg ticked the names off on her fingers. “Mike, Carol Ann, Devon, Mallory . . . and the miserable son of a gun himself.”

“LeVasque. Right. So what are the odds that LeVasque himself took the knife?”

“But, why?” Clare asked.

Quill shook her head. “We don’t know that, do we? But I can think of a couple of reasons right off the bat.”

“You’re bluffing,” Meg scoffed. “Why would he steal a knife from my kitchen?”

“He was in the middle of a dirty tricks campaign, wasn’t he? My first thought is he wanted the knife to set you up for something awful. His fingerprints weren’t on it, were they?”

Clare shook her head. “Not as far as I know.”

“We should make a note of that, just in case.” Quill wrote
knife fgprints DK????
on her notepad.

“That little bastard,” Meg marveled.

“Now, now.” Quill looked at the growing list in satisfaction. “Okay. Now, when you guys go undercover at the academy . . .”

“Should I dye my hair?” Meg asked sarcastically.

“Shut up. You need to find out where these staff members were.”

“Which staff members?” Clare asked.

“The ones who hated his guts,” Meg said.

“Everybody hated his guts.”

“We’ll start with the most obvious motives,” Quill said. “If we have to move on down to the guy who mows the lawn or the people from WARP, we will. And you can help us here, Clare. Who hated him the most?”

“Me,” Clare said promptly. “He was blackmailing me, or as good as. But after me? Madame, I suppose.”

“Why would she wait to kill him after all these years of marriage?” Meg asked. “Why not, like, right after the honeymoon?”

“They had a huge fight over money Sunday afternoon. He spent a lot. He drew a whole slug of cash out to buy that Mercedes a couple of months ago and he’d drawn a whole bunch more out earlier in the week. Madame was livid. Told him if he took any more she was going to divorce him.”

“Good,” Quill said. “I’m putting a star after her name.” She put down her pencil and looked at them. “Which brings me to something important. Did any of you notice how she talked about him last night?”

“Coldly,” Clare said.

“With indifference,” Meg said.

“In the past tense,”
Quill said. “Didn’t she? Didn’t she say ‘I had’ and ‘he was.’
How did she know he was dead?
”

“Wow.” Clare blinked at Quill. “You’re really good at this.”

“Not at all,” Quill said modestly. “Okay. Who else have we got for suspects?”

“Pietro Giancava, the sommelier. He does cheeses, too. He had a green card. I know for a fact that LeVasque threatened to send him back to Italy if he complained about his salary one more time. And his green card is due to expire at the end of the month. Madame wanted to keep Pietro on. He’s a wizard at picking good reds. And he’s got a great palate for cheese.”

“Raleigh Brewster?”

“Raleigh’s a friend of mine,” Clare said, her color rising. “She could no more stick a knife in somebody’s back than . . . I don’t know what. Anyhow, she didn’t kill him.”

“We need to rule her out, at least,” Quill said gently. “You never know where these things are going to go. What if the police discover she had a motive? We can’t just exempt her because of a feeling.”

“You’re exempting me because of a feeling.” Clare looked from Meg to Quill and back again. “By God, you aren’t, are you? I can see it in your faces.”

Meg covered Clare’s hand with her own. “There was one incident here at the Inn, years ago. Quill and I made a very good friend.” She paused. “Anyhow, it turned out badly.”

Clare set her jaw. “I suppose you turned this person in?”

“We’ll tell you the story sometime,” Quill said. “And no, we didn’t. We didn’t have to.”

Clare sighed. “Right. So I turn rat fink on my good friend Raleigh. You haven’t met her yet, but Raleigh has a daughter. She’s off for orientation at Ithaca College this week. She’s cute. Really cute. She hit eighteen in July, and LeVasque hit on her.”

“Hit on her?” Meg said. “Like, how do you mean?”

“From what I can gather, it was just a grope and a lewd suggestion. But Divia’s back for Labor Day weekend, and then she’ll be back during school vacations, and Raleigh was worried sick.”

“The man was disgusting,” Meg snorted.

Quill looked at the names on her list. “Jim Chen?”

Clare shook her head. “Can’t think of a thing, there. Jim and Mrs. Owens don’t get along, but she really asks for it. Jim himself gets along with everybody. LeVasque called him names, and Madame herself never heard the term politically correct, but then, the two of them treated all of us that way. And it isn’t as if Jim can’t find another job. He gets better offers all the time. But his family’s here in Ithaca, and he loves the area.”

“Put two stars next to Chen’s name,” Meg said to Quill.

“On the theory that the least likely person did it? If the least likely person turns out to have done it, we’ve really messed up this investigation. Nope. We get results by proceeding in a methodical way, and that’s what we’re doing. We’ll move Jim to the bottom of the list.”

“Motherhood has made a
huge
difference in this woman,” Meg said to Clare. “Huge.”

“Mrs. Owens,” Clare said. “She’s my favorite pick.”

Quill poised her pencil over her list. “Motive?”

“I wish I could come up with something. Anything. But if you want the truth, I think she had something on him, and not the other way round. She’s lousy at her job. The very idea of that woman giving
you
advice on condiments is laughable, Meg. And she’s lazy. Not to mention mean. I have no idea why LeVasque kept her on. She had every reason to keep him alive, well, and signing her paychecks. She couldn’t get a job at a truck stop.”

Quill, who had eaten at one or two very good truck stops in her time, made a note: no obvious motive. “Okay. We’re ready. When do you two want to start?”

Clare got up and began to collect her things. “I think I’ll get over there right now, if there’s nothing you need me for tonight, Meg.”

“Nope. I’ll get Bjarne and Elizabeth set to cover me for the next three nights, and then I’ll come by and join you. We’ll need a meeting of the staff tonight anyhow, so I can reset this menu.”

“Has anyone talked to Madame?” Clare asked. “She doesn’t mix much in the kitchen affairs, but she is head of the academy now.”

“Elmer and Adela went to negotiate with her. I’m pretty sure she’ll . . .” Quill broke off at the sound of a knock at Meg’s door. “I’ll bet that’s Doreen and Jack.”

It wasn’t. It was Dina, and she didn’t look as if she brought good news.

“Sorry, guys. But Davy’s downstairs with that horrible Lieutenant Harker.” She bit at her lower lip and then took a deep breath. “I’m afraid they’re asking for you, Clare.”

—From the foreword of
Brilliance in the Kitchen
:
“My Incredible Life”

 

 

“We’re keeping well out of the way of the police investigation, Myles.” Quill adjusted the pillows behind her back and cupped the cell phone closer to her ear. Outside her bedroom window, the early sun flooded the vegetable garden with pale gold. “But I did want you to know what’s going on.” The reception was so clear that she could hear the concern in his voice. Concern, tinged with slight exasperation.

“I’ll put a word in about Harker,” Myles said. He didn’t say to whom. He never did.

“Now you’re sounding grim. Whatever word you put in last time I had to deal with him seems to have had a lasting effect. I’m fine. I mean, he’s still the creepiest guy in Tompkins County, but he isn’t hassling me. And I’ll tell you something really good. Davy’s growing into the job. I know you said he would, eventually, but I hadn’t really noticed until now. He’s going to be a good sheriff, Myles.”

“I miss you,” he said suddenly.

Quill felt her throat tighten. “I’m getting sentimental after three years of marriage,” she said lightly. “If you say anything else, I’m going to weep.”

“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “It shouldn’t be too much longer before I can get back.”

“Don’t give me a date,” Quill said. “I’ll just obsess over it. Are you ready to talk to Jack? You’ve had a chance to look at the pictures I e-mailed last night? Well, it’s this morning, for you, isn’t it?” He didn’t answer that, either.

“I liked the pictures a lot,” Myles said simply. “But the one with Jack asleep . . . that’s a beauty. But where the devil did that cat come from?”

Quill looked at Bismarck, who was peacefully curled up at the foot of the bed. “That’s Clare’s cat. Meg brought him back here last night, to keep in her room while Clare’s lawyers get this jail thing sorted out. When I checked on Jack last night, the cat was curled up with him, purring like anything. I think we might have made a mistake using door levers instead of knobs. He just stuck his paw up, pulled the door levers down, and walked right in. Bismarck, I mean. Not Jack. Anyhow—Doreen doesn’t lock up until I get in, and Meg never locks up at all, so I guess he took advantage.”