Crucible Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 5) (7 page)

“When did Barrett leave yesterday?” I asked.

“Right before noon, I think,” said Busy.

“And did he make his one-thirty?” I asked.

“I believe so,” said Busy.

“Which means you saw him after the fact,” I said.

The security specialist nodded. “Yeah. I think we were both in the office yesterday afternoon from…I want to say about three-thirty to four. Maybe four fifteen.”

“How did he seem?” I asked.

Busy pursed her lips as she stared at her desk. “Well, now that you mention it, he seemed a bit distracted. Almost scatter-brained. Which is odd for him. He’s always so focused. I mean, he
was
always so focused.” She glanced up at Steele. “You’re sure he’s the one?”

Shay gestured at the sketch, still on the woman’s desk. “Unless you think that’s not him. We should probably have you come in to identify his body, actually.”

“With my schedule?
Great.”
Busy’s eyebrows knit together momentarily, then loosened as her shoulders slumped. “I mean…yeah, sure. I’ll do that, of course. I’m just…a little overwhelmed, that’s all.”

Given the woman’s demeanor, I could tell she didn’t have much left to tell.

I rapped my fingers on the edge of Barrett’s desk as I thought. “So we know Barrett bailed on his regular lunch crew the day of his murder, but we don’t know where he went or why. As a human of the male persuasion, I know how important lunch is to productivity and overall sanity, so I think it’s safe to assume he ate somewhere, and if he was distracted upon his return, I’d also wager he met with someone and received news he didn’t expect. So the question becomes, who did he meet, and what did they talk about?”

My three detective companions all nodded in thought, but Shay was the only one to speak. “That seems to jive with the evidence we found at Barrett’s apartment.”

“Evidence?” said Rodgers. “What evidence? That place was a mess.”

Steele shot Rodgers a single raised eyebrow. “What? Don’t tell me you missed it?” She shared the look with Quinto and me. “You, too?”

I sighed. Crisis of confidence back on the stovetop. Hopefully my kettle of self-assurance wouldn’t start whistling soon.

9

Back at Barrett’s apartment, a pair of bluecoats had taken positions at the door, though I didn’t recognize either of the slack-jawed beat cops. We flashed our badges as we stepped between them and into the chaos within, Rodgers, Quinto, and I following Steele.

She led us through the entryway, taking a right into the kitchen, stopped, and pointed. “There.”

I followed her finger. On the far counter, firmly amid the clutter but in no way hidden from view, was a white oyster pail takeout container.

I silently cursed myself—and not
simply
because Shay noticed the potential clue and I hadn’t. To be fair, neither Quinto nor Rodgers had seen it and noted its importance, and I’d more or less accepted that Shay’s observational prowess far outpaced my own. It was my deductive instincts that made me a top-notch investigator and arguably the most indispensible member of our team. But I
was
upset with myself for how I’d approached Barrett’s flat.

I recalled how I’d stood in the living room, thinking about how I should look for evidence of Barrett’s movements. Tracking his eating habits would’ve been a perfect way to do that, but I let myself get distracted by the state of the apartment. Because of the chaos, my mind shifted from investigating Barrett to investigating the intruder, and while it was surely a worthwhile avenue to follow, it was also a mistake.

Shay stepped around the dishes and silverware on the floor to reach the boxy, waxed paperboard container. She hefted it and brought it to the island in the center of the room, which was mostly free of debris.

She frowned as she looked it over. “Hmm. Plain white, no marks. I couldn’t remember it perfectly, but I was hoping it had a restaurant name on it or something.”

Quinto shuffled across the kitchen to the far side, where he found a wastebasket next to the cabinets. He bent over and stuck a mitt in it as he rummaged through its contents. After a moment, he straightened, a crumpled brown paper bag in hand.

“Might’ve been in this.” He brought it over and flattened it against the island. “But…it’s blank, too. So no help there.”

Rodgers nodded toward the waste bin. “Quinto, was there anything else in there? More food containers?”

“No oyster pails,” said the big guy. “But there were a few other old food cartons, and some scraps. Plus junk that fell in there during the break-in, I guess. Why?”

Rodgers pointed to the pail. “Well, tracking Barrett by his food is a good idea, but how do we know this is from yesterday? It could be a week old, for all we know.”

I shook my head, still miffed at myself. “Not likely. Busy said Barrett was a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Last time I checked, leftover burgers, fries, and sandwiches don’t get stuffed into those kinds of boxes.”

“Busy?”
Shay gave me a narrowed-eye glance. “Wait, is that what you’re still calling Sal in your head?”

“Come on,” I said. “You know how I think. Are you that surprised?”

Shay shrugged. “Not really, I guess. But there’s an easy way to solve the riddle of this food’s age.”

She snagged a plate from a nearby cabinet and set it on the island. Then she flipped open the oyster pail’s top and dumped the contents. Sesame chicken tumbled out, with an assortment of julienned vegetables and a congealed sauce.

Shay took a sniff. “Smells okay, as far as I can tell. Quinto?”

The big guy peered at the dish curiously. He snorted and grabbed a fork from a nearby countertop. “Alright. Back it up. Let me see what secrets my taste buds can divulge.”

“Whoa,” said Steele, holding up a hand. “I was asking for a second opinion on a sniff test, not for you to go into pie eating contest mode.”

“You were going to put your stomach on the line with day old chicken?” I asked. “That’s quite the commitment to the job, pal.”

Quinto ran his tongue across his teeth as he stared at the meal, the fork still gripped tightly in his enormous hands. “Um…yeah.
Commitment to the job.
That’s it.”

A crunch from the direction of the entrance turned all our heads. One of the members of the CSU team, clad in a heavy wool coat over her thin white one, pulled her foot up from the floor, a collection of glass shards revealing where she’d stepped.

“Um…sorry about that,” she said, and then as she noticed Quinto hunched over the plate with fork in hand, “Are you eating the victim’s leftovers?”

“Of course not,” said Quinto. “We’re employing cutting edge culinary tracking techniques. Consuming a dead man’s food would otherwise be highly unethical, not to mention weird…or so this crowd would have me believe.”

The CSU gal shook her head and stepped gingerly in the direction of the bedroom. Quinto put down the fork.

Shay patted the walking brick wall on the arm. “While your willing sacrifice is admirable, Quinto, I don’t think anyone needs to taste Barrett’s day-old stir fry—mostly because I don’t see how doing so would help us track Barrett’s movements. But that isn’t to say this dish can’t tell us where he ate.”

“Or didn’t.” There was quite a lot of food on the plate. Either the restaurant our ex-scrummage star had dined at served mammoth portions, or more likely, he hadn’t enjoyed the cuisine.

Steele ignored me and pointed at the dish. “My point is, every restaurant makes their dishes differently. If we can figure out what makes this one unique, we might be able to find out where Barrett went.”

She grabbed Quinto’s discarded fork and went to work dissecting the meal’s components. “Let’s see. There’s chicken, of course. Lightly breaded, and with black sesame seeds, not white. Julienned carrots, shaved cabbage. And…” She poked a green semicircle with the fork’s tines. It put up resistance.

“Celery?” offered Rodgers.

“Leek.” Steele leaned in and took another sniff. “The sauce seems par for the course. Sweet and sour, with elements of orange and ginger. But there’s a mystery spice I can’t put my finger on.”

“Or tongue, rather,” said Rodgers.

He chuckled. No one else did.

“I could still take a bite, you know…” said Quinto.

Steele snapped her fingers. “That’s it! It’s not a spice, per se. I’d wager it’s spiced wine. That would explain the elements of citrus I’m smelling.”

Quinto hung his head, crushed that his discerning tastes hadn’t been called up from the bench and allowed to enter the game.

I gave my partner a nod. “Well…color me surprised.”

She smirked. “You didn’t think I could isolate ingredients by smell alone?”

“Please,” I said. “I’m shocked you don’t already know where we’re going. Sesame chicken fusion, with black sesames and leeks?
Leeks?
How have you not dragged me to this place yet?”

Shay gave me a piqued look, but the smile didn’t disappear. “We’re on the east side, Daggers. I don’t often stray this far for lunch.”

“And thankfully, you’re much like Barrett in that sense,” I said. “According to Busy—and yes, I’m going to continue to call her that—Barrett left work yesterday around noon. She doesn’t know when he came back, but it couldn’t have been any later than one-thirty. That gives him an hour and a half to make it to a restaurant, eat, come back here to drop off leftovers, and still make it back to his job, all of which means the restaurant he bought this food from can’t be that far away—unless he took a rickshaw, of course.”

“Which he didn’t,” said Steele.

“And you’re sure of this
because?”
said Rodgers.

“He dropped off food,” said Steele. “Trust me, he walked. And this apartment was on his way from the restaurant to work.”

Quinto checked the elements off on his thick fingers. “So…sesame chicken. Black sesames. Leeks. Within walking distance. Not too out of his way.”

“I think that about sums it up,” I said. “Which sounds to me as if it’s time to split into pairs and start canvassing joints. Care to bet who finds the place first?”

My word choice elicited a groan from Rodgers, which in turn caused Shay to raise a brow. I expected something similar from Quinto, but he was still too engrossed with the dish to take the bait.

“I think finding the restaurant will be its own reward,” he said, sucking on his lips as he did so.

I scratched my head as I glanced at the cold chicken and congealed sauce. I wasn’t sure I understood the appeal, but then again, Quinto had been known to enjoy fermented fish treated with lye. The man’s stomach knew no bounds.

10

My feet hurt.

Steele and I’d been at it for an hour and a half, hopping from restaurant to restaurant. We’d only hit five places so far, in part because there weren’t quite as many eateries close to the docks as I’d expected but also because we lingered in each one a little longer than absolutely necessary. Rodgers hadn’t been kidding about the cold wind.

With Shay at my side, I headed down a narrow side street and past a cooper’s repair shop. The sign read, and I quote, ‘Servicing your Staves, Hoops, and Bungholes for over 25 years!’ I snickered. The barrel-making lingo I could forgive, but really?
Servicing?

Hidden behind the place sat spot number six, an unobtrusive joint with lacquered wood paneling and faded red drapes hanging in the windows. I tugged on the door and waved Steele in before me.

A subdued din greeted my ears as I followed her: the banging of metal spoons on pans, the hiss of steam, the pop of hot oil, all muted as it traveled through a series of rice paper and wood dividers separating the kitchen from the front. Though the dividers—an obvious fire code violation if ever I’d seen one—kept some of the noise out of the dining room, they couldn’t slow the smells. Scents of fried beef, lemon, and spices tickled my nose, not to mention a savory note, perhaps from some mirepoix of sautéed vegetables.

It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, and the hole in the wall had the patrons to prove it. Despite the early hour, roughly half the tables in the joint were filled, as was the greeting stand to my right.

The hostess behind said stand, a thin, olive-skinned elf breed, held up a pair of fingers as we approached her. “Table for two?”

I held up a hand as she reached for the menus. “Let me stop you right there. We’re detectives with the NWPD, and I apologize in advance, but I’ve already gone through this a few times today. Let me explain what’s about to happen. I’m going to ask if you serve sesame chicken with black sesames and leeks and you’re going to look at me with a confused glance—good, just like that—and ask me why? And I’m going to give you a spiel about how we’re looking for someone who ate the dish I described and do you serve it? And you’re going to respond with…?”

The poor girl blinked and looked to Steele for guidance.

Shay showed her badge. “Sorry. My partner gets bored and apparently thought he’d try a more direct approach.”

“Total fail, by the way,” I muttered.

“The point is,” said Steele, “do you serve sesame chicken, and what’s in it?”

That question was more up the hostess’s alley. She cracked open the menu and showed us an entry. “Ah, yes we do. Lightly breaded, with carrots, cabbage, and leeks.”

“And black sesames?” I asked.

“I think it depends,” said the girl. “If that’s what we have in stock, probably.”

“It’s okay, Daggers. This is the place.” Steele tapped her nose. “I can tell.”

The girl glanced between the two of us, her eyes wary. “Are we in trouble?”

Steele shook her head as she put away her badge. “Not at all. We’re conducting an investigation into a patron we think might’ve eaten here yesterday. Perhaps you remember him? Tall human, muscular but starting to get into his golden years, with gray hair?”

I noticed how Shay neglected to mention our investigation was into a
murder,
but then again, my introductory word vomit seemed to have thrown the hostess off guard. No point in making her any more uncertain than she already was.

The girl shrugged. “Actually, I wasn’t in yesterday.”

I gave her a second or two as a benefit of the doubt before pulling out the verbal prodding iron. “Perhaps someone
else
here was? Waiters or waitresses?”