A Cookbook Conspiracy (26 page)

“We won’t know anything for sure until the police have finished,” Derek told her,
keeping that smooth tone in his voice. “Then I’ll call Inspector Jaglom again and
try to get more information.”

“Good. That’s good.” Kevin nodded desperately and wrung her hands as if looking for
a lifeline to cling to.

Savannah’s nerves didn’t seem to be doing much better, so Dalton knelt before her
and took her hands in his. “Peter’s not in any trouble. He’s just being questioned.
They won’t arrest him.”

I willed his words to be true. Then I looked at Derek. “Did Inspector Jaglom tell
you how they found out about the blackmail?”

“No.” He thought it over. “I’m not going to wait to phone him. I’ll call right now
and leave a message for him to call me when they’re finished.”

“Would you?” Kevin said, rubbing her arms nervously. “I’d like to know that Peter’s
all right.”

Savannah caught my gaze and raised an eyebrow quizzically. I gave her a quick nod.
We were reading the signs and Kevin’s feelings for Peter definitely seemed to be growing
stronger. I would love to see them get back together—if the man Kevin loved didn’t
end up rotting in a jail cell.

But even as that thought crossed my mind, I pushed it aside. I just could not imagine
Peter as a killer.

As Derek stepped into the small foyer to make his telephone call, Kevin continued
with the pacing.

“Can I get you a drink or something?” I asked.

“What?” She glanced at me as if she had just realized I was there. “Oh. No, thanks.
I’m just nervous.”

“I understand.”

She brushed her thick, dark hair back from her face and massaged her neck. “Oh, God.
I’m just afraid his reason for being blackmailed might be so much worse than the others.
Which means his motive for murder is stronger. At least, that’s how the police will
see it. Won’t they? I assume that’s why they brought him in.”

“So you know the reason why Peter was being blackmailed?”

She flopped down in the chair across from me, leaned over, and held her head in her
hands. “Yes.”

“You don’t have to tell us,” Savannah said quickly.

I flashed her a look of disbelief along with my telepathic message:
Are you crazy? Let’s hear it!

“You’re right, I don’t have to tell you,” Kevin said, “and I wouldn’t if Peter hadn’t
already confessed to everyone about the blackmail. Now, though, I want you to know.
Maybe if the
people in his life know what he’s been through, he’ll finally be able to let it go.”

“It might help,” I said encouragingly. Okay, I felt a tiny, tiny twinge of guilt.
Yes, I wanted to help Peter and Kevin. Of course! But my inherent inquisitiveness
was clamoring for information, too.

Kevin shook her head in weary confusion. “I’m still upset that he actually paid Baxter
money to keep it a secret.”

Derek stepped back into the living room area. “I left the inspector a message.”

Savannah smiled at him. “Thank you, Derek.”

“Come and sit down,” I said. “Kevin is about to tell us why Peter was being blackmailed.”

“Yes, very juicy stuff,” she said, and I was glad to see her humor was returning,
despite the unhappy revelation she was about to make.

“I can see we’re all ears,” Derek said, his lips twisting sardonically as he looked
straight at me. Was there anything better than having a man in your life who knew
all your foibles and loved you anyway? He pulled a chair away from the dining table
and sat.

The confession was juicy indeed. Kevin revealed that when Peter first opened his restaurant
in London, he worked with a partner who tried to cut corners everywhere possible.
Peter was too busy keeping the kitchen running at the highest possible level to pay
attention to his partner’s bad habits. That is, until the day the knucklehead went
out and purchased a large order of fish that wasn’t quite fresh. When a number of
Peter’s customers came down with food poisoning, the restaurant was almost closed
down by the health department.

Peter disbanded the partnership and cleaned up his act immediately. He took control
of his business and reestablished relationships with all the vendors the partner had
alienated.

“Baxter must have found out somehow,” Kevin said, “and was able to use that information
to extort money from him.”

I suddenly remembered my conversation with Peter the other night when I happened to
mention poisoned fish. No wonder he had turned so pale. He must have thought I was
either psychic or just plain evil.

Savannah sighed. “The last thing a chef wants is a reputation for making people sick.”

“But it wasn’t even his fault,” I said. As a blackmailable (if that was a word) secret,
it was pretty slim. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. There
had to be hundreds of chefs around the world who’d had the misfortune of buying tainted
fish at least once in their careers.

“It was his restaurant, his responsibility,” Kevin said morosely. Then she began to
chew her lower lip nervously. “But there’s more.”

“More? Good grief,” Savannah said.

“Now, I doubt this had anything to do with why Baxter was blackmailing him,” Kevin
admitted. “But I might as well spill the entire jar of beans. I’m sick to death of
all the secrets.”

“Spill away,” I said, trying not to sound too eager. I was curious, I admit it. And
seriously? I needed there to be more to Peter’s deep, dark, secret past than a bad
partner who bought old fish.

“All right,” she said. “It’s just that Peter used to be a bit of a…well, a kleptomaniac.”

“What?”

Savannah glared at me. So maybe I’d shrieked the word, but honestly? A kleptomaniac?
It was positively Dickensian. In other words,
oddball weird
.

“I know it’s quite odd,” Kevin admitted. “But Peter grew up in a wretchedly poor family.
He never had much of anything nice. I’ve always had a feeling that was the reason
he was attracted to shiny things. When he was very young, he would find little bits
of glass and pretty shells and keep them in a cigar box. He showed
them to me once. But as he grew older, he started to take things that belonged to
other people. Small things, like a brightly colored pen or a Christmas ornament.”

“Doesn’t sound too awful, I suppose,” Savannah murmured aloud, although she looked
at me as if to say,
She has got to be kidding.

Good to know my sister and I were on the same mental pathway. I mean, come on. Peter?
A kleptomaniac?

“I don’t even know if he considered it stealing,” Kevin said. “And if a friend mentioned
that something had gone missing, Peter would return it, simple as that. It usually
happened around a special occasion when he wanted a memento to remember it by. Or
when he was under quite a bit of stress.”

“Does he still do it?” Dalton asked, and I noticed he didn’t sound as amused as Savannah
and I did.

“He finally went to therapy to overcome the problem. But to be honest,” Kevin said
on a sigh, “I’m afraid he might still do it once in a while. Not often, but again,
stress plays a big part.”

“I’m not sure he would want us to know this,” Derek said softly.

“Oh, the entire village knew about it,” Kevin said matter-of-factly. But she was biting
her lip again, so I wondered if Derek’s comment had upset her. “If anything went missing,
the townspeople always checked with Peter first. He was quite casual and open about
it. And honestly, it was harmless for the most part. He never took anything significant
or expensive.”

Derek’s smile was reassuring. “In that case, I don’t believe you’ve betrayed any confidences.”

Savannah said, “Maybe this was why Baxter was blackmailing him. He might not have
known about the rotten fish.”

“It’s possible,” Kevin said. “But if this was Baxter’s reason for threatening him,
Peter couldn’t have taken it seriously. Honestly, there were a hundred different people
back home who already knew about it.”

“And when you think about it,” I added, “since he was a
world-class chef, even if his secret got out, it would simply make him appear, you
know, eccentric.”

“Right,” Kevin said. “So if he did give Baxter any money over it, Peter might’ve considered
it simply a way to help out an old friend.”

“Then it wasn’t truly blackmail,” Dalton reasoned.

But Derek shook his head. “I can’t agree. I think this was the reason he was being
blackmailed. Perhaps a few folks back home knew the truth, but if Baxter was threatening
to tell the whole world of his kleptomania, Peter would have felt he had no choice
but to pay him off. I can’t imagine you’d want the clientele of your five-star restaurant
to know that the chef might be pilfering their pocketbooks while they were dining.”

“Oh. Well. I suppose, since you put it that way. No chef would want that,” Kevin mused.

“Kevin,” I said, “do you think Peter and Margot and Montgomery were the only ones
being blackmailed?”

“I have no idea. He wasn’t blackmailing me, I can tell you that much. I would’ve kicked
him in the…well, you know.”

“Yes, we know where you’d have kicked him,” I said, swallowing a laugh.

She bared her teeth in a grim smile. “And I’d have handed him his bollocks stewed
in sauce.”

There was a moment of bemused silence.

“You always were a creative chef,” Savannah said finally, as Dalton squirmed uneasily
in his chair.

*   *   *

L
ater that afternoon, Derek and I were lounging in the living room when Inspector Jaglom
called back to let us know that the police had just sent Peter home. Jaglom confirmed
that they had received a call about Baxter blackmailing a number of chefs. He assured
Derek that the cops would be questioning the other two chefs who’d admitted to being
extorted.

As soon as they ended the call, Derek related the rest of the conversation to me.

“Did he tell you who called in the tip?” I asked.

“It was anonymous.”

“Damn.” I jumped up and paced back and forth along the couch. “Did you ask if it was
a man or a woman?”

“Yes, love,” he said. “They think it was a woman.”

“They
think
?”

“That’s about the same tone I took with Nathan,” Derek said, his lips quirking up.

“Well, what did he say?”

“He said they’ll analyze the tape if it becomes an issue.”

I was pretty sure my eyeballs were rolling like whirlybirds. “If it
becomes
an issue? It’s an issue!”

“Yes, love,” he said, chuckling at my righteous ire, and reached out and grabbed me,
pulling me down on the couch next to him. “I convinced him of that.”

“Good.” I leaned against him and rested my head on his strong shoulder. My poor brain
was racing with too many questions and not enough answers. “Thank you. I should get
up and call Kevin to let her know, but I’m too comfortable to move.”

“Then stay here.” He wrapped his arm around me. “And Peter’s probably called her already.”

“Oh, good thought.” I sighed and cuddled up to him. “Do you like them?”

“I presume you’re referring to Kevin and Peter. I do like them.”

“I do, too.” I glanced up at him. “I always have. And I hate seeing them so worried.
I was thinking maybe we could invite them over for dinner sometime this week. Of course,
she’s a chef, so I wouldn’t dream of actually cooking for her. But we could order
in Thai food or something.”

“Something.” Derek grinned.

“Kevin was really nice to me in Paris. I just hope she and Peter get back together.”

“Kevin is charming,” he agreed.

I frowned at him. “I’m hearing a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”

“You’ve got good ears.” He turned and faced me. “
But
I’m frankly worried that someone you consider a friend might be unmasked as a murderer.”

My mouth dropped open. “You think Kevin killed Baxter?”

“No, I honestly don’t,” he insisted, though his thoughtful scowl told me there was
more coming. “But we’ve been wrong before about such things, haven’t we?”

Frowning, I stared at my hands. We had been wrong before, damn it, and I really didn’t
want to be wrong this time. I really needed a manicure, I thought absently. Working
with paper made my nails so darn dry.

“Darling?”

“I’m thinking,” I replied grumpily. I knew what Derek was talking about. Last year,
I’d met a really nice woman while on a job, and we became fast friends. I invited
her into my home and introduced her to my family, only to find out much later that
I was being used as a pawn in a clever killer’s game. It wasn’t a good feeling and
I never wanted to go through anything like that again.

“But this is a different situation,” I claimed, determined to let the past go as we
worked toward a solution to the present problems. “I’ve known Kevin for years. She’s
one of Savannah’s dearest friends and she was very good to me when I was in Paris.
And there’s Peter, too. We’ve known him a long time.”

“I see.” He nodded soberly. “So in a way, you’re saying they’ve been vetted.”

I smiled. “Exactly.”

“All right, I’ll go along with that. The fact is, I like them both, too. So we’ll
hope for the best and proceed apace.”

Proceed apace?
How could I not love it when he talked like that?

“Aye, Captain,” I said, giving him a smart salute. Because, truly, he sounded like
the commander of Starfleet. And, yes, I wasn’t
just a book nerd, I loved
Star Trek
, too. But was that really the issue? “I’m going to call and invite her over for dinner.
Peter, too. I’ll make it Wednesday night. And I’m hoping Savannah and Dalton will
be here, too.”

“Sounds like we’re having a party,” he said, and squeezed my shoulders gently. “But
you might want to prepare yourself.”

“For what?”

His jaw tightened. “For the moment when one of the chefs you’ve grown so close to
is arrested for murder.”