Toast Mortem (14 page)

Madame rubbed her hand over her considerable jaw and looked Meg and Quill over. “You two. Sit down.”

Meg and Quill sat in the two chairs the farthest from Madame. Madame continued to stare at them.

“Lovely place you have here,” Quill offered, as the silence stretched out.

“You’re Margaret Quilliam,” Madame said suddenly, ignoring Quill’s attempt at social pleasantry. “Bernie thought you might come and work for us. You make a decision yet?”

Meg said, “Hah!” and folded her arms across her chest.

“Thought so.” Mrs. LeVasque shrugged. “There you are, then.”

Quill felt her jaw drop.

“There you are then, what?” Meg demanded. “You’ll stop trying to drive us out of business if I come and cook for you?”

“Of course not. But Bernie didn’t like to be balked, and it’s pretty clear you balked him.”

“This is outrageous,” Meg muttered between clenched teeth.

“It’s an explanation,” Madame said. “And once I’ve got an explanation, I always had ways to keep the Maitre in line.”

She pronounced it “may-ter,” with no attempt to soften the vowel or roll the “r.” With Mrs. LeVasque, it was becoming clear that what you saw was what you got.

“Clare? I hear you’re working for these two, now?” Madame jerked her thumb at Meg and Quill. “Yeah? Well, all that would do is make him madder, don’t you see.” This was said with an air of such kindly explanation that Quill bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. She cleared her throat to get Madame’s attention. “But neither of these things is going to happen, Mrs. LeVasque. Meg isn’t ready to give up her situation at the Inn . . .”

“I’d rather be
dead
,” Meg exploded. “I’d rather eat a rat!”

“. . . And Clare is a wonderful addition to our staff. So we’d like to come to an understanding if we could.”

Madame sighed. “I’ll have to talk to him.”

Quill, heartily encouraged by the burgeoning success of her negotiations, decided to press on. “Perhaps if you asked him to come and meet with us? Right now? It’d be such a relief to us all to settle this.”

Madame looked around the table. “Who saw him last?”

“I thought I heard him on the phone in the office about seven,” Raleigh said.

“That would have been me,” Pietro said.

A man who was Chinese, compact and round-faced, raised his hand with an eager smile. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. “I’m Jim Chen, Chef Quilliam,” he said. “Seafood and fish mostly. Just let me say how much I admire your way with aspic . . .”

“Which is a shot at me,” snapped the aggressively drab middle-aged woman next to him. Her graying brown hair was skinned back from her forehead and pulled into a painfully tight bun. The thick lenses of her spectacles made her eyes look bulgy. “I’m Mrs. Owens. Fruits and jellies along with the fruit and veg. Not to take anything away from your aspic, Margaret, but you might think about how long you soak your gela—”

“Be quiet, Mrs. Owens,” Madame said flatly. “Jim, any idea where Bernie is?”

Jim Chen shrugged.

“You have anything to add other than advice for Miss Quilliam, Mrs. Owens?”

“No, Madame.” Mrs. Owens sniffed.

“Then just shut up for a while, okay? Pietro, go look in the wine cellar, will you? He’s probably after another bottle of brandy.”

Pietro tossed his head and said frostily, “I am not a sheep dog, Madame. If you wish to recover M. LeVasque, perhaps you would like to go yourself.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Raleigh shoved her chair back. “I’ll go get him. The wine cellar, Madame?”

Mrs. LeVasque shrugged. “That’s my best guess.”

Raleigh left the room to an uneasy silence, which was not broken until they heard her scream. It was short, high, and panicked. Quill was out of her seat and rushing toward the wine cellar before she had her wits together.

LeVasque lay facedown in front of the Rieslings. A blade was buried in his neck. A piece of paper was crumpled in his left hand. And there was blood all over the beautiful stone floor.

—From
Brilliance in the Kitchen
, B. LeVasque

 

 

“I keep telling you. He was already dead when I got there.”

Raleigh’s face was ashen, but her voice was steady. She sat in the chair she had abandoned to go search for LeVasque two hours before. Lieutenant Harker from the state trooper barracks loomed over her. He looked just like the ring-necked vultures Quill had seen on a recent National Geographic special: skinny, malevolent, and ready to feast on corpses.

Quill, Meg, and Clare were clustered at the far end of the table, with the members of the academy. Madame’s face was a stone. Mrs. Owens picked nervously at her cuticles. Jim Chen and Pietro Giancava sat with their arms folded across their chests, legs extended, in attitudes of fake unconcern.

Despite herself, Quill yawned. Harker’s head came up and his pale eyes found hers. Quill suppressed a shudder.

“It would have to be him,” Meg muttered. They had encountered Harker before. “At least he stopped glomming on to you after he heard you married Myles.”

“Hasn’t made him any smarter, though.” Quill rubbed her arms, although the room wasn’t cold. “And if he’s decided Raleigh’s the murderer, nothing short of a lightning strike will change his mind. Meg, I’m so tired!”

Meg took her hand and held it. “You’ve had an awful day. It’s been an awful night.”

“Maybe I should make some coffee,” Clare said. “The cops wouldn’t have a problem with that, right?”

“Go and do it,” Madame said flatly.

“Talk to Sheriff Kiddermeister,” Quill suggested. “He’s really in charge here. Harker’s just trying to horn in.”

“Okay.” Clare got up. Davy and two of his patrolmen stood outside the open door to the wine cellar. Inside, the forensics team did their work. The body had been taken away minutes before. Quill was glad of it. She thought she could smell the metallic reek of blood among the mingled odors of wine and fresh wood.

“You okay?” Meg asked anxiously.

“I’m fine,” Quill lied.

Clare stopped on her way across the polished floor and murmured in Davy’s ear. He blushed bright pink and nodded. Clare touched him briefly on the arm and headed out of the room to the kitchens.

Quill sighed. She hoped Davy wasn’t going to complicate things and get a crush on Clare. “But, oh, Meg, I want to go home. Did Justin say when he could get here?”

“Any minute now.”

Mrs. Owens stopped picking at her cuticles. “This Justin is your lawyer friend? I hope he doesn’t get us all arrested. In all those cop shows on television nothing annoys the police more than a lawyer showing up. Maybe,” she said with evident satisfaction, “he’ll arrest both of you and the rest of us can all go home and get some sleep.”

“Shut up, Mrs. Owens,” Madame said. “Why don’t you think of something more productive to do?” She grinned mirthlessly. “Ask Chef Quilliam about her genius with aspics.”

Mrs. Owens swelled up like a turkey cock.

“Here he is,” Meg said. She waved her hand over her head. “Justin! Over here!”

“Oh my goodness.” Quill sat up, her tiredness forgotten. Justin Alvarez looked like Benjamin Bratt. He was tall, taller even than Myles, who was six foot two in his bare feet. His coal black hair was thick and tousled. His skin was an even, gorgeous copper. He moved like an athlete, a runner, Quill thought, since he was lean.

And he had charm or tact, or something. Harker stopped him on his way across the room with that vicious swagger that was the second worst thing about him. Or maybe the swagger was the third, Quill thought. Coming right after his damp, lecherous hands and his conceit. The two men engaged in a lengthy conversation and, miracle of miracles, Harker nodded and let Alvarez on through.

He dropped a kiss on her sister’s head and extended his hand. “You’re Quill.”

“I’m Quill,” she agreed.

“Justin Martinez.” He smiled and looked at the assembled group. “And you were all present here tonight?”

“I’ll introduce you.” Meg stood up. Her face glowed. Quill felt very sorry for Jerry Grimsby, who was not going to like Justin Martinez one little bit.

Meg sighed happily, her hand in Justin’s. “This is Madame LeVasque. The, ah . . .” She fumbled to a stop.

“Widow,” Madame said bluntly. “And you don’t know these people, Margaret. These are my employees now and I’ll handle this. I’m Dorothy LeVasque, Mr. Martinez. My husband’s the one who’s headed out to the morgue in the dead wagon. The tall Italian drink of water there is Pietro Giancava. My sommelier and in charge of sauces. The inscrutable Oriental next to him is Jimmy Chen. Seafood and fish. The sourpuss glowering at Meg is Mrs. Owens. Fruits and jellies, although it’s technically fruit and veg.” Madame’s hatchet nose twitched. “And the chief suspect seems to be Raleigh Brewster, my soup and stew expert. She’s the one getting worked over by that skinny son of a bitch.” Madame’s nose twitched again. “Think you can do something about it? That woman’s no more a murderer than I am.”

Justin looked over his shoulder. “Lieutenant Harker says statistics show that the person with the body when it is discovered it usually the perpetrator.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Quill said. “LeVasque had been dead for hours before Raleigh found him.”

Justin raised an eyebrow in inquiry. “You’ve talked to the forensics people?”

“Harker hasn’t let us move out of this corner since the police showed up,” Meg said indignantly. “Not even to go to the bathroom, not until a woman patrolperson showed up, at least. So no, we haven’t talked to anybody.”

“Then how do you know how long LeVasque’s been dead?” Justin asked. He smiled, but there was a faint furrow of worry between his dark eyes. “Private knowledge?”

Quill was already regretting her impulsive comment. “No. But he was stiff. And rigor mortis doesn’t set in for eight to twelve hours after death.”

She hoped Justin would leave it at that. She should have known that the snippy Mrs. Owens wouldn’t.

“What do you mean, stiff?” Mrs. Owens demanded. “You’re not supposed to touch the body. Everyone knows that.”

“I wanted to see if he was really dead,” Quill improvised. “I touched his wrist.”

She’d known he was really dead. Nobody whose blood spilled out over the flagstone floor the way M. LeVasque’s had been was anything but dead. But that the piece of paper he held in his hand was a clue was as clarion clear as poor Raleigh’s shrieks.

She made a conscious effort to keep her hands from her skirt pocket, where the precious clue resided.

“A recipe?” Meg said. She sat at the end of Quill’s bed, her knees drawn up to her chin. It was three o’clock in the morning. Meg looked like she’d just gotten up from a long, satisfying nap. The police had finally let them go just half an hour before.

“Looks like it.” Quill yawned. “Aren’t you exhausted?”

“Funnily enough, no.”

“I’m exhausted,” Quill said rather pointedly. “Aren’t you tired?”

“You’ve had a long day,” Meg agreed. She drew circles on top of the duvet with a forefinger.

“I’m exhausted and I want to go to sleep.”

Meg looked up, startled. “Oh! Sure!” Then, “What did you think?”

“I think the recipe’s a clue. I put it back, you understand, just before Harker showed up. But I made a copy in my sketchbook. But I also think I’m exhausted. As in it’s time to put a sock in it and go to bed. I’ll think about the recipe in the morning.”