B008KQO31S EBOK (16 page)

But the rest of the world uses more discretion when filling their plates and their bellies than we often do. Give me lots of legumes and not much meat, give me whole grain bread so thick and chewy that I forget about butter—I never
completely
forget about butter, but I suffer temporary amnesia if the bread is good enough—give me beans and lentils and couscous and spinach pasta, give me vegetables until I can’t eat another bite.

Give me Indian and Thai, Szechuan and Hunan, Spanish and Moroccan, Italian and Greek. Give me big salads and interesting combinations of flavors, give me color and spice. This kind of food is guilt-free and filling, it’s gorgeous to look at and, as an added bonus, it gives my colon a daily workout.

There are always a few things to avoid, but they’re obvious ones—I’m not a dim sum fan, and I don’t eat anything deep-fried, I pass on the most sauces because they’re sugar city. Steamed rice, preferably brown and chewy, is my carb of choice, and I lean heavily towards vegetarian offerings, turning a blind eye to the pleasures of fat.

I
love
Indian food. I love the colors and the smells and the complex artistry of it. I love how it looks and how it surprises your tongue and how many different combinations and permutations of everything there are. I love spicy accented with sweet, maybe some sour. I even love the names of everything—string the names together to make a caravan to the unknown.

And when it comes to conjuring a little bit of nirvana in the kitchen, Chandra is the best.

Her restaurant is small and never crowded, a bit too far from the university for students and a bit too redolent of wondrous curries to attract the suits. It’s decorated in dirtied vivid hues that Elaine would never put together but that work all the same. They make me wonder whether my vision could ever stand to visit India.

Or maybe I was just thinking that way because I was with Nick. He’d probably been there a hundred times. I didn’t ask.

Chandra changes the look often, mixing and matching her collection of plates and linens. Today our table had a cloth of giddy pink edged in gold embroidery, topped with another laid diagonally in a yellow that would make your eyes pop all by itself. It shimmered against the fuchsia, then hummed when the waitress set plates of persimmon red on top. The table on my right had a green cloth as its base—it was exactly the hue of avocado paste and was vibrating quietly where it came close to the pink.

Lucia would have loved it.

I thought about tucking something bright pink among the greens of Mrs. H.’s hellebores, just for fun.

I followed my usual menu strategy and enjoyed the wealth of possibilities for their own sakes. I chose what I would eat carefully, then drank lots of water and enjoyed every single bite. Eating slowly is another one of my state secrets.

So is
savoring
.

Nick meanwhile hoovered his way down Chandra’s sumptuous buffet twice before he stopped for breath.

“This—” he punctuated the work with an intense green look at me “—is really good. You are officially an angel of mercy.” He ran a piece of naan bread around the rim of his plate to catch the last of some sauce, then closed his eyes and did a little savoring of his own.

I watched him, then just about jumped through the ceiling when he suddenly opened his eyes.

“What’s in this? There’s a spice I don’t know in this curry. It’s darker, maybe deeper. What do they use?”

“She, not they. Chandra.” I sipped my water. “And I have no idea.”

“She doesn’t share her recipes?”

“I’ve never asked.”

He was clearly incredulous. “Why not? This is fantastic.”

“Well, I don’t cook, so there’s no point.” I shrugged. “I just come here.”

If I had been trying to deflect his attention, I’d just failed. Nick propped his elbows on the table to give me his undivided attention. Butterflies on pins have nothing on what I was feeling in that moment.

“How can you not cook?
Everyone
cooks. What do you eat?”

That steady look should come with a warning label. “I make toast and herbal tea. I nuke broccoli. These are the extent of my culinary talents.”

He snorted, threw his napkin on the table and picked up his plate to return to the buffet. “No wonder you’ve lost so much weight. You’ve got to eat, Phil.”

It took me a minute to find my voice. “I
do
eat! That’s my problem!”

But he didn’t get it. “You’re not eating much here. And you ate nothing this morning.” He shook his head. “You’ll fade away to a shadow, Phil. You need to take care of yourself.”

“For God’s sake, I’m hardly anorexic.”

He looked skeptical. “Women take these fashion magazines too seriously. Phil, it’s healthy for a woman to have some meat on her bones, not to mention that it’s sexy for a woman to have curves...”

I lost it.

“My curves have curves! And I can’t just eat whatever I want. My God, Nick, if I learned to cook, I’d be nibbling all the time and would be as huge as a house.” I was shouting and I didn’t care. “I have the slowest metabolism on the planet! Do you think it’s easy to watch every bite, to count every calorie, to pass on everything I love just to make sure I’m never Fat Philippa again? Do you think it’s easy for me to sit here and not inhale five thousand calories of goodies?”

He sat down and looked at me hard, his foray apparently forgotten. I ran out of gas and stared at my plate, embarrassed that I had admitted so much so publicly.

So loudly.

“I’m sorry, Phil. I had no idea that you were doing it on purpose.” I felt him studying me but I avoided his gaze. “I guess I put my foot back into it again.”

I pushed a bit of chicken around my plate and sneaked a peek. He looked contrite but that old wound was oozing one more time.

“Hey, Phil.”

Oh, danger danger, there was that black velvet voice again.

“Talk to me.”

“I’ve said plenty.”

Nick leaned across the table and caught my hand in his. “You look terrific, don’t imagine otherwise. I always thought you were as cute as hell.”

“Liar.”

He shook his head. “No, you’ve got this little smile that used to make me nuts.” I looked up, ever hopeful, and he smiled. “Yep, that’s the one. It’s as though you know something good but you’re not going to tell. I used to think of it as your Mona Lisa smile.”

Okay, so I was charmed. Maybe I’m easily charmed.

Maybe I still found Nick pretty irresistible.

And it was definitely getting warmer in Chandra’s, though that wasn’t because of the curry. His admiration made me get all hot and bothered.

“I thought you were going back to the buffet.” Not a smooth segue, but it would do.

“I was going to.” He watched me, earnesty personified. “Do you mind?”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s rude for me to play the human vacuum while you’re exercising such self control.”

That was it. Asking whether I minded was the sweetest thing any man had ever done.

I was officially all his. “No, I don’t mind. I might be pea green with envy, but I don’t mind. I’ll live vicariously.”

We shared a smile.

“I just got lucky, Phil. I was born with a fast metabolism.” He shrugged and stood up, lingering a moment, his expression deadpan. “Either that, or it’s Freddie.”

“Freddie? Who’s Freddie?”

“My pet tapeworm.”

I just about snorted my allotted teaspoon of mango chutney over that.

“I figure I picked him somewhere near La Paz, en route to the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu. It was bad trip, between the altitude sickness and Freddie settling in. Now, though, he keeps me lean and mean.”

Nick winked and returned to the buffet.

Freddie the tapeworm. It was sick, but kind of funny. I was still shaking my head when he came back.

“So.” He set another steaming and heaping plate on the table and I didn’t even care. “Does your mother often fix you up with types like Jeffrey?”

“I think she’s getting desperate.”

“For?”

“Grandchildren, maybe. For me to enter the blessed state of holy matrimony, certainly.”

“You sound less than thrilled.”

I shrugged. “So, maybe I’m a romantic. Don’t shoot.”

He chuckled but before he could launch another personal question, I changed the subject. “What do you think happened with Lucia?”

He sobered immediately. “I don’t know. She was there yesterday, murdered in broad daylight.” His gaze searched mine. “You’re sure there was nothing?”

“No corpse, no blood, no Lucia. It’s not the kind of thing you miss.”

Nick didn’t smile. “What did it smell like?”

I thought about that for a moment. “Like a greenhouse. Lush and humid, you know.” I shook a finger at him as I recalled. “The plumeria was in bloom—the place was filled with perfume.”

He poked at his food. “How hot was it in there?”

“Actually, it was a bit cooler than I would have expected. Some of those plants, not the orchids so much but the nepenthes and anthurium, like it hot and humid. I was surprised that someone who would bother to have them wouldn’t have turned up the heat—but then, they were blooming, so they must be happy. Maybe whoever discovered Lucia turned the heat down because they didn’t know better.”

“Or opened the windows to get rid of the smell.”

I was confused. “Of the flowers?”

“No. Of death.”

I didn’t think I needed to know that. “What do you think happened?”

“Well, obviously someone killed Lucia. Maybe they were still there when I got there. At any rate, it seems as though this person wanted to make it look as though I had done the deed.”

“The knife.”

“And the timing.” He frowned.

“I thought you heard a police siren?”

“I did. I was thinking that someone called the police to ensure I was caught red-handed, so to speak, but then that would mean that the police had found Lucia.”

“Maybe they did.”

“Um. But it’s pretty weird that there was no one there this morning. Did you see any signs that they’d been there?”

I shook my head. “Everything was pristine. Maybe too pristine. Maybe they were watching the house.”

“Waiting for me to come back? Maybe.” He turned his attention to his meal. “Or maybe they just relied on Mrs. Donnelly to keep them posted.”

“Which is funny, since she and Lucia evidently just had a big fight.”

He looked up in surprise and I told him what my mother had said.

“That’s interesting.” He grimaced. “Sounds like Lucia though.”

“You don’t think she had anything to do with the cat dying, do you?”

Nick shrugged. “I’d like to say no way, but I don’t know. Depends how angry she was. She might have put a little can of salmon out in the garden, one that had been embellished a bit.”

I shivered. “That’s not nice.”

“Those two have always at it, ever since the cats found a way into the greenhouse.”

“What difference did that make?”

“Mrs. Donnelly didn’t let them out to play, Phil. She doesn’t like cleaning litter boxes, but the cats were never excited about Rosemount winters. The greenhouse must have felt like the lap of luxury.”

I pushed the rest of my lunch away. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. The smell was out of this world. Lucia went ballistic. The only thing that stopped her from making cat stew was that I found the hole and blocked it. But war was declared.”

“Do you think sometimes that people just don’t have enough to do?”

He smiled. “Definitely.”

“I guess it’s a good thing you stayed in the Beast.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, she certainly let my mother know in a hurry that I’d been there.”

Nick looked up suddenly. “No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

He pushed his own plate away impatiently. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t like it either, but that’s not going to change my mother calling me.” My joke fell flat.

“Not that, Phil.” He pushed one hand through his hair and sat back to watch me. “I should never have looked you up again.”

If he was looking for a way to ruin the mood, that was a good choice.

“Well, it’s a bit too late for that” My tone was a bit snippy. “What are you going to do?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

“No more, Phil. You shouldn’t have been involved as much as you were. I came back today to apologize. I’m sorry I got you involved, then and now. From here on out, this is my problem.”

“Well then, don’t let me keep you.”

He leaned forward, his eyes dark. “You’re ticked off at me.”

I blushed, though I should have expected him to call a spade a spade. “So, what if I am? Doesn’t sound as though you’d care.”

“Well, you’re wrong. I do.” He lifted one eyebrow. “This is supposed to be a reconciliation lunch.”

“So you can wander off into the sunset, guilt-free?”

His features set determinedly, revealing nothing of his thoughts. “Nothing but a footprint, Phil. It’s my motto.”

“And the name of your business.”

He looked up with sudden interest and I knew I had slipped. “How did you know that?”

“Someone told me,” I lied and flushed the color of the table linens. Time to redirect traffic. “You’re not going to take the blame for what Sean did this time, are you?”

Nick picked up his fork again. He began to clean off his plate, but he looked grim and there was no enjoyment of the food in his manner.

And he wasn’t answering me.

“Tell me, do you always play the grand inquisitor?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You ask all the questions. You pry all sorts of information out of me, yet you won’t tell me anything at all.”

“It’s better that way.”

“For who?”

He cast the fork on the clean plate and pushed it away. “Why are you angry with me?”

“Who says I am?”

He studied me for a long moment and I tried not to fidget. There he went again, assessing, analyzing, replaying the conversation. I wasn’t surprised when he nailed it in one. “You’re mad that I said I shouldn’t have looked you up.”

He was right and he knew it, so I saw no reason to admit the truth.

Nick leaned forward and traced one fingertip on the tablecloth around my own fingers. He didn’t touch me but still made me very aware of his proximity. I figured that pulling my hand back would make me look skittish, so I left it there. But I stared at the rhythmic movement of his tanned fingers as he traced around my hand and around and around.