A Cookbook Conspiracy (10 page)

“Aw, jeez.” Lee looked at me and shook her head. “I’m having déjà vu all over again.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered, and my stomach took another dip. As I’d realized earlier,
Savannah’s scenario with Baxter was alarmingly similar to my own experience the night
of Abraham’s murder. I’d managed to get plenty of his blood on my hands, too.

Inspector Lee turned to one of the CSI guys standing nearby. “Claypool, you got your
kit with you?”

He gripped his heavy briefcase. “Never leave home without it.”

“We’ll need a couple of swabs and some evidence bags over here.”

Claypool rushed over and set his silver case on an empty barstool. After carefully
removing Savannah’s gloves, he stuck them in separate bags and labeled the bags with
a black marker. Then he pulled out a long cotton swab and a small vial of liquid.
He rubbed the cotton tip over Savannah’s bloody right palm, then added a few drops
on the swab and watched it turn a different color. He dropped the swab into a straw-sized
plastic container and snapped it shut, then repeated the procedure with her blood-smeared
left hand.

“Better take her shoes and jacket while you’re at it,” Lee added. So Savannah slipped
out of her chef’s coat and her shoes and handed everything over to CSI Claypool, who
packed it all into large evidence bags.

“That was fascinating. Thank you,” Savannah said. “May I wash my hands now?”

“Yeah, hold on.” Lee glanced around and spied the one female officer standing near
the hostess podium, going over the surface with her flashlight beam. “Hey, Fleischman,
can you accompany Ms. Wainwright here to the ladies’ room?”

“You bet,” Fleischman said, and jogged across the room to meet Savannah.

Jaglom approached with Derek. “Jan, the commander here tells me there were half a
dozen other chefs here tonight, all old friends of the victim. They’re all staying
at Campton Place over in Union Square and Cromwell provided rental cars or limo service
for all of them. I’m thinking we ought to have one of the uniforms round them up and
get them over here for preliminary questioning.”

Lee grimaced. “Tonight?”

“We have to,” he said. With a shrug, he added, “If one of them is our guy, we could
lose trace evidence if we wait till morning.”

“Good thing I’ve got DVR,” she muttered, then soldiered up. “Okay, let’s do it. You
want to bring ’em here or meet ’em down at HQ?”

“Might as well do it here,” Jaglom said, glancing around the room. “Saves time and
they can each walk us through it one by one.”

Lee considered, then nodded. “Sounds like fun.”

“Be right back.” Jaglom motioned to the nearest uniformed officer and met him halfway.
They talked for a minute, then the inspector wrote something on his notepad, tore
the page out, and handed it to the cop, who nodded as he read it.

“We’re going to be here all night,” I muttered, and decided to kick my shoes off.

Derek said nothing, just nodded and put his arm around my shoulder.

Jaglom turned back to his partner. “I’ve asked Commander
Stone to check out the kitchen with us. He was first on the scene and I want him to
verify that nothing’s been disturbed.”

“Good plan,” Lee said. “Let’s get this done.”

Derek and Jaglom led the way, followed by Inspector Lee and the two CSI guys.

I glanced around. My sister was still in the ladies’ room with her police escort.
One cop was on the phone and the other was still searching the front part of the restaurant.
I decided to stick with Derek and the detectives and followed a safe distance behind
them.

We turned down the hall and saw the fourth uniformed officer standing guard at the
kitchen door.

“Marston.” Jaglom nodded to the cop as he snapped on a pair of thin rubber gloves.

“Evening, Inspector,” Officer Marston said.

Lee slipped her hands into gloves also, and then noticed me following her. “You’re
not going in there.”

“I won’t touch anything.”

“That’s right, because you’re not going in there.”

“But I need to make sure something wasn’t stolen.”

She didn’t bother to hide her irritation. “What?”

I gave her the quick version. “Savannah gave Baxter a red leather book box I made.
There’s an old book inside. I didn’t see it when we came in earlier and I’m worried
it might’ve been stolen.”

“A book,” she said derisively.

I speared her with a look. “An extremely rare, very fragile, two-hundred-thirty-year-old
book. It could provide a motive for the murder.”

“I’ll check on it,” she said brusquely, and marched off to join her partner and Derek,
already in the kitchen.

I lingered a few yards behind until Inspector Lee disappeared into the kitchen. Then
I gave a little wave to Officer Marston, who nodded and pushed the door open for me.

“Thanks,” I said, and slipped inside. Apparently, he hadn’t gotten Inspector Lee’s
directive to keep me out. I wasn’t about to give him a heads-up on that.

I pretended to be invisible as I hovered near the door. Peering around for the book
box, I deliberately shielded my eyes from the sight of Baxter’s body in the middle
of the room. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to see the body to know it was there. I
could smell the blood. Had my ability to detect that acrid odor grown more acute because
of the many crime scenes I’d come upon recently? Another weird question to ponder.

I ignored the police activity and focused on the walls and counters and shelves between
the cooking and service areas. But I didn’t see the book box or the cookbook itself
anywhere.

Derek stood beside the back door leading to the alley. It was closed now. “This door
was ajar when we arrived. I would wager that the killer exited here, ran down the
alley, and disappeared.”

“Who closed it?” Lee wondered aloud.

“I pushed it closed,” Derek admitted, then explained, “I was careful. Didn’t touch
the handle, just shoved the wood panel with my shoulder. I didn’t want to take the
chance that someone would wander in.”

“Probably a good idea.” Jaglom crouched to study the lock and the door handle. “I
tend to agree on general principle that whoever did it left this way. I can’t imagine
he’d go skipping through the restaurant and out the front door. He’d be sure to be
seen that way.”

“He or
she
,” Lee added.

“The killer could also be a stranger who snuck into the kitchen through that open
door,” I said, busting myself. Now Lee would probably toss me out of the kitchen,
but I had to say something to divert her from honing in on Savannah as her main suspect.
“It could’ve started out as a crime of opportunity. The door was open. Baxter was
the only one left in the kitchen and the thief
might’ve thought he was easy pickings. But Baxter fought back and the guy grabbed
the first weapon he could get his hands on. The fish knife.”

They all stared at me and I shrugged self-consciously. “It’s just a theory.”

“Not a bad one,” Jaglom said as he used his gloved hand to pull the door open cautiously.
Stepping out into the back alley, he took a look around, staring to his right and
left for several long moments. He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and angled
it in both directions, then walked out of sight. After a minute, he returned to the
kitchen. “It’s black as pitch out there at this time of night. And it’s not an alley,
just a passageway between buildings, maybe three feet wide, with a gate leading to
the sidewalk. The gate’s open, so I’m guessing that was the escape route. We’ll need
to get a search started ASAP.”

“Too late to canvass the neighbors,” Inspector Lee mused as she took a cursory look
outside. “We’ll get a team to go out first thing in the morning. Somebody might’ve
seen or heard something.”

Mrrooowww
.

We all turned at the sound coming from the open door and watched a cat poke its head
inside.

“Hey, kitty,” Inspector Lee said, crouching down to lure the cat closer. When it rubbed
its fat, furry body against her leg, Lee gently scratched its neck. “Where’d you come
from? I’ll bet you saw something bad going on here earlier. You want to talk about
it?”

I stared at her in disbelief. Once again, Inspector Lee had managed to surprise me.
“You’re a cat lover?”

She stood and glared at me. “Wainwright, I thought I told you to stay out of here.”

But I was paying attention to the cat. “Is it hungry?”

“I doubt it,” Jaglom said. “That’s the fattest cat I’ve seen in a long while.”

“I suspect it’s been well fed,” Derek said dryly, picking up the big cat before the
creature could wander farther into the kitchen. After holding it in his arms for a
moment, he began to laugh. “Good lord, this animal is hugely pregnant.”

“Aw, it’s a mom cat,” Lee said, giving it a quick scratch behind its ear.

“Kittens,” I said eagerly, before I could stop myself. What was I thinking? This was
an alley cat, probably feral. Except there wasn’t an alley outside the door, just
another building. Fine, she wasn’t an alley cat, but still, I didn’t need a kitten,
for God’s sake.

But the cat was friendly, with very pretty, attentive blue eyes. And Derek wouldn’t
have picked her up if she hadn’t been clean. Her fur was mostly white, but her face
was black and she had a few black spots scattered across her back and on all four
paws. She looked like she was wearing four little black boots. I mentally named her
Bootsie.

“She’s well fed and cared for,” Derek said, holding her up for a cursory examination.
“But there’s no collar. I wonder if she has a place to go home to.”

“I hope she’s not homeless,” I said.

“We’re working here, people,” Lee groused.

But she’d already revealed her soft marshmallow center, so I just smiled and kept
my mouth shut. She and Inspector Jaglom got back to the business of examining the
body and the surrounding area for possible clues.

Derek reluctantly set the cat down outside and closed the heavy door to keep it out.

Bon chance, Bootsie,
I thought, feeling a little sad that I wouldn’t get a chance to see the pretty mom
cat’s kittens.

Derek noticed my look and gave me a sympathetic smile. There he went, reading my mind
again.

“That knife is ridiculous,” Inspector Lee said as she knelt near
the body. “It’s huge.” She gingerly clamped the tips of her fingers around the end
of the knife handle while the CSI guy leaned over and held a large evidence bag open
for her.

“It’s heavy, too,” she added as she slid it into the bag.

Jaglom snorted. “I think that blade was bigger than my head.”

Lee glanced over at her partner. “And that’s saying a lot because we all know you’ve
got a big head.”

Jaglom pushed a thick strand of curling gray hair off his forehead. “My wife says
a big head is a sign of wisdom.”

“Your wife should be a stand-up comedian.”

He chuckled. “She keeps me laughing.”

For the next ten minutes, I stuck close to my unobtrusive spot near the swinging door,
watching the detectives work when I wasn’t scrutinizing every visible inch of the
room in search of some spot where Baxter might have shoved the cookbook. There were
cupboards and shelves everywhere, but they all seemed to be taken up by equipment
or utensils or dishware.

With Inspector Lee occupied, I tiptoed along the back wall and carefully began opening
the sliding cabinets. A stack of large stainless-steel bowls took up one entire shelf.
I checked inside the bowls, but there was no book box hiding there. The other side
held three extra food processors. The next cabinet revealed more large white plates
on the bottom shelf, salad plates on the top.

I was growing discouraged. It was possible that the book was in here somewhere, but
I remembered Baxter’s reaction to receiving Savannah’s gift earlier that night. It
was beyond dismissive. Baxter had been downright contemptuous of the book and couldn’t
seem to get it out of his hands fast enough. Considering that response, why would
he take the time to find a protective hidey-hole for a book he didn’t want in the
first place?

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he had flung the book across the room or tossed
it on a wet counter.

So where was it? Had the killer taken it as a token or a prize? Had one of the other
chefs casually lifted it with plans to keep it? Or did one of them have an even stronger
reason for wanting the cookbook?

Did the book contain something valuable? I considered the recipes I’d read so far
and rejected that idea.

But what about the intrinsic value of the book itself? Rare, unique, wonderful. How
could anyone leave it behind? But not everyone loved books for their own sake. Maybe
the killer had grabbed it to sell for quick cash.

I thought of Kevin’s visible reaction to seeing the book. She’d certainly had her
eye on it. Had she stolen it? I hoped not. Because right now, I was fairly certain
that whoever had taken the cookbook was also the person who had killed Baxter.

I finally left the detectives to their business and wandered out to the bar to keep
Savannah company. She had fallen asleep again with her head resting on her arms, so
I whispered her name a few times.

She opened one eye and saw me. “I’m so exhausted.”

“I know, Bugs.” I sat on the barstool next to her. “Bad enough that you’ve been on
your feet all day, but then you had to go through the trauma of finding Baxter dead.
I blame myself for not forcing you to come home with us earlier.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

Wasn’t it? I wondered. It seemed to be my karma to come across dead bodies lately.
And I wasn’t even sure I believed in karma. Wasn’t it like payback for something I’d
done in a previous life? Whatever it was, finding dead bodies was getting to be a
habit with me. And more and more frequently, the people I loved became collateral
damage.

After another ten minutes, Lee and Jaglom walked back into the bar. Inspector Jaglom
apologized to Savannah for keeping her waiting.