A Cookbook Conspiracy (9 page)

Savannah, truly exhausted now, folded her arms on the bar
and rested her head on them. I left her and met Derek halfway across the room.

“How’s she doing?” he asked.

“She’s beat. I don’t know how she’ll deal with the police.”

“She’ll be fine,” he said, taking hold of my hand. “She’ll rally. She’s your mother’s
daughter.”

“Aw,” I said, smiling. “That was the exact right thing to say.”

He shrugged. “It’s true.”

We continued walking along the waterfall wall. “You know, Derek, this could’ve been
a simple robbery gone wrong. The back door was wide-open when we walked in and this
isn’t the safest of neighborhoods.”

“It’s possible, of course,” he said. “The police will have to interview the kitchen
staff to find out if anything has gone missing.”

I stopped dead. “Oh, hell. The cookbook.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond as
I raced across the room to Savannah.

“Wake up, Bugs,” I said, rubbing her back to get her attention.

“Are the police here?” she asked, her voice groggy.

“Not yet. Savannah, the cookbook. Where is it?”

Baffled, she glanced around, then frowned at me. “We don’t use cookbooks, Brooklyn.
Baxter’s got a notebook of recipes and—”

“No, no,” I said in a rush. “The old cookbook you gave back to Baxter, with the leather
box I made. Where is it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said wearily. “It figures you’d only care about that stupid
cookbook.” She waved her hand, dismissing me.

“I don’t only…Never mind.” I couldn’t get too miffed at her in her present condition,
but I
did
care about that book. And I wasn’t about to let it get damaged or destroyed by some
overzealous fingerprint cop during a police search.

Or worse. What if it was bloodstained? What if Baxter had been holding the book when
he died? It could be ruined beyond repair.

Save the book
. The phrase and the policy had been drilled into my brain at an early age. With that
one thought in mind, I rushed back to the kitchen to search for Baxter’s cookbook.
But as I reached out to push the door open, I stopped.

Really? Was I seriously going to strut into the very room where the bloody corpse
of Baxter Cromwell lay sprawled on the floor?

“That would be a big
N-O
,” I muttered, shivering at the thought, and trudged back to the bar. “Okay, it’s
probably on a shelf in the kitchen, safe and sound. I’ll get it later. After, you
know, they take him away.”

“You’re nuts,” Savannah muttered.

Derek was more sympathetic. “Do you want me to find the book for you?”

“Would you mind?”

“Of course not. We should get it out of there before it winds up in police custody.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Derek understood what could happen to the book if we
didn’t take charge of it immediately. “Thank you.”

But just as he turned toward the kitchen, a deafening cacophony of police sirens blared
out, followed by the screeching of multiple brakes, ending directly outside the front
door of the restaurant.

There was no time to search for the book.

The police had arrived.

“Jeezo, Wainwright, I thought we were friends. Why you do me like this?”

That was SFPD detective inspector Janice Lee’s smart-ass greeting to me as she strolled
across the expansive restaurant dining room. She was followed by her partner, Nathan
Jaglom, and two men carrying thick steel briefcases. The two guys were dressed more
casually than the detectives, and I figured that with those fancy cases, they had
to be the crime scene investigators.

Four uniformed cops had walked in a minute earlier and had already scoped out the
kitchen and Baxter’s body. Now they were securing the doors inside and out with yellow
crime scene tape. Derek, Savannah, and I were corralled into the bar area and told
to stay put.

“I’m sorry, Inspector Lee,” I said, and meant it. After all, it was one o’clock in
the morning. No wonder she looked less than
thrilled to be here. “It’s all my fault. I begged the dispatcher to call you guys
because I know you’re the best.”

I didn’t mention that she’d be less likely to think I was the killer if I actually
asked for her.

Lee paused to consider my words, then nodded. “True. We are the best. I admire your
perceptiveness. But I can’t forgive you for interrupting the awesome
NCIS
marathon I was in the middle of.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I can tell you how season two ends.”

“But then I’d have to kill you.”

“Inspector Lee, lovely to see you again,” Derek said as he approached and shook her
hand.

“Hello, Commander Stone,” Janice Lee said, her voice suddenly half an octave higher.
Derek had that effect on all women, no matter how kick-ass tough they were.

Derek turned to her partner. “Inspector Jaglom, how are you?”

“Hey, there, Commander.” Inspector Jaglom lifted his chin in greeting. “Ms. Wainwright.
How’re you doing?”

“I’ve been better.” I shook his hand. “But it’s good to see you, Inspector.”

“Yeah, you too.” Jaglom nodded absently as he took out his notepad and began to make
notes. He rubbed his sleepy eyes with one hand and I felt another twinge of guilt.
He wore a rumpled shirt under his sports coat and he looked like he’d been dragged
out of bed, forced to cut short a good night’s sleep. Which was, no doubt, exactly
what had happened, given the time of night.

Because I paid attention to such things, I noticed that Inspector Lee had added a
few more pounds since the last time I’d seen her. She was a beautiful woman, but she’d
been painfully thin when we first met. Since then, she’d given up cigarettes and had
begun to gain weight. She probably hated the weight gain, but she was tall enough
to handle a few extra pounds. I thought she looked happier and even prettier than
before. So much so that I wondered whether she might have a new boyfriend.

She probably wouldn’t take kindly to me asking her if that was the case. Maybe I’d
bring it up later.

She looked around the room, taking in the coffered ceiling, the murals, the slate
water wall, the glass-backed bar. Untying her fabulous Burberry trench coat, she draped
it over the back of a barstool. “Nice place.”

“Nice, yeah. Except for the pesky dead body that’s bleeding out on the kitchen floor,”
I said gruffly.

She cocked her head. “That’s sarcasm, right?”

I sighed. “I suppose it is. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You almost sounded like a cop there for a minute.” She sniffled and patted
her chest dramatically. “You make me so darn proud.”

I shook my head. “You’re a strange woman, Inspector Lee.”

She bared her teeth in a grin. “You betcha.”

Homicide inspector Janice Lee had been a part of my world ever since the Abraham Karastovsky
murder. She’d also been assigned to investigate the Layla Fontaine murder last year
at the Bay Area Book Arts center, where I’d been teaching a bookbinding class. And
then there was the grisly Alex Pavlenko murder a few months ago, which took place
in the bedroom of my best friend, Robin. Robin had been devastated and vulnerable,
so I wasn’t about to let her face the cops alone. I was right there when the detectives
showed up.

Most recently, Inspectors Lee and Jaglom had worked on the murder case of Joseph Taylor,
a Richmond District bookstore owner I’d known for years.

I had discovered poor Joe’s dead body in his shop, surrounded by his beloved rare
and expensive books. Someone very evil had sliced his neck open with a paper-cutting
knife.

Who said the book biz wasn’t cutthroat?

So I couldn’t blame Inspector Lee too much for her snippy remarks; the fact was, we
did tend to meet under gruesome
circumstances. But I liked her, and I was sure that underneath her prickly surface,
she liked me, too. We had similar tastes in Szechuan food and good wine. I coveted
her trench coat and most of the shoes I’d seen her wear. We should’ve been great friends,
had even planned to meet for a glass of wine sometime, but murder kept getting in
the way.

While Derek and Inspector Jaglom spoke in quiet tones over by the row of booths along
the wall, Inspector Lee pulled out her notepad and focused on me. “I’ll just get some
of the preliminaries out of the way so we can move on to the main event.” Flipping
through the pad, she came to a clean page and began to scribble something on it. “So,
tell me about the dead body in the kitchen. Male or female?”

“Male. Baxter Cromwell. He’s the owner of this restaurant.”

She gasped. “The bad boy chef? He’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“Crap,” she muttered. “That’s gonna bring out the bloodsucking paparazzi.”

I was surprised she’d ever heard of Baxter, let alone expressed distress over his
demise. But I supposed even cops watched the Cooking Channel.
Bad Boy Chef
was the lame title they’d chosen for Baxter’s cooking show, but it suited him and
it had made him famous.

I hadn’t even considered the fact that Baxter was a celebrity and the news of his
murder would be broadcast around the world. Part of me wanted to begrudge Baxter his
fame because he’d been such a louse to both me and Savannah, but then I thought of
him lying dead in the kitchen and my resentment faded. Slightly.

“Please don’t tell me you liked him,” I said.

Lee thought about it. “It was a good show and he was entertaining enough. But he thrived
on creating confusion and distrust among his contestants. I could see how someone
might learn to hate him enough to kill him. Did you know him?”

“Yes. And he was as big an ass as you can imagine.”

Lee stared up at me through narrowed eyes. “So did you kill him?”

“Of course not,” I said, scowling. “Why would you even ask that?”

She shrugged. “I’m a homicide cop and a murder has just happened, so I ask. That’s
why I’m here, right? Because there’s been a murder. What I can’t figure out is, why
are
you
here? Is this how it’s always going to be, Wainwright? Murder happens and you show
up?”

“No!” And there went my blood pressure. “I stayed because my sister found the victim
lying in—”

“Get off her back, Jan,” Jaglom said, elbowing his partner’s arm. “Let’s get down
to business.”

“That’s what I’m doing, Nate,” she said mildly, and craned her neck to get a better
look at Savannah for the first time. “Your sister, Wainwright?”

I frowned at her sudden interest, but it was my own fault for mentioning Savannah.
“Yes, my sister. And she didn’t kill Baxter, either.”

Lee raised an eyebrow at my snarling tone, but it was too darn bad if she took offense.
I wasn’t about to let her browbeat Savannah to tears.

“Savannah,” I said briskly, since she’d zoned out again and I needed to get her undivided
attention. “This is Detective Inspector Lee, the homicide detective I was telling
you about.”

Savannah’s eyelids fluttered as she brought the world back into focus. She blinked
at the cop and quickly hopped off the barstool. Holding out her hand to shake the
inspector’s, she said, “I’m so happy to meet you. Brooklyn has said so many nice things
about you, and I’m as confident as she is that you’ll find Baxter’s killer and bring
him to justice.”

Inspector Lee was clearly bemused by Savannah’s enthusiastic greeting. My sister shook
her hand firmly and energetically, and I
could see a tiny portion of Lee’s cynical outer coating melt in the face of Savannah’s
positive vitality.

Lee finally pulled her hand away and tried to regain her command over the situation.
“Ms. Wainwright, I’d like to ask you a few questions about your relationship with
the deceased.”

“Of course, yes, please ask me anything,” Savannah said. “I’ll do anything I can to
help you.”

“Inspector,” I interjected quickly, “you don’t know my sister yet, but believe me,
she didn’t have anything to do with Baxter’s death. Really, she doesn’t have enough
killer instinct to swat down a fly.”

“Flies have just as much right to life and happiness as we do,” Savannah said.

Ugh. No they don’t
, I thought.

Lee’s eyebrows popped up, and then her eyes narrowed skeptically as she turned and
looked at me.

I just smiled and nodded. “Yeah, she’s for real.” After all, we were talking about
the girl who had once become a fruitarian to protest the senseless killing of vegetables.

“Carrots have feelings, too,” had been Savannah’s battle cry back in the day.

Now as a chef, she was willing to slaughter baby carrots and squash and onions left
and right. And yet, there was still no way she would ever hurt another human being.
It wasn’t in her fiber. But Lee would have to ask the questions, anyway. I had faith
that she would come to the same conclusion soon enough.

“Are you going to interrogate me at police headquarters?” Savannah asked the inspector.

“That probably won’t be necessary, not right away,” Lee said, equivocating. “We’ll
need to examine the crime scene first, so I’m going to ask you to sit tight here in
the bar area for a little while.”

“Okay. Oh, but wait.” Savannah held up her gloved hands. “Can I take these off?”

Lee shot me another glare, so I rushed to explain that while waiting for the police
to arrive, Derek had come up with the brilliant idea to glove her hands to protect
any evidence she might’ve picked up along with Baxter’s blood.

Inspector Lee couldn’t argue with Derek’s logic, but she wasn’t happy with one part
of my explanation. Turning to Savannah, she said, “You touched Mr. Cromwell’s body?”

“No, I just touched that bloody knife,” Savannah said. “It was sticking out of his
stomach and I thought it would help if I got it out of him, but it didn’t help. He
died anyway.”