Death of a Crabby Cook (5 page)

“Jakey!” Aunt Abby said, sounding more anxious than glad to see him.

Jakey?

She set down the knife and wiped her hands on her apron. “Darcy said you might talk to the cops for me. Did you find out anything?”

He nodded. “May I come in for a minute?”

“Of course.” Aunt Abby rinsed her hands in the sink. Jake stepped inside and inhaled. “Smells good in here. What's cooking?” He looked in the pot of boiling water on the stove.

“Water,” I said smartly.

“Crab mac and cheese,” Aunt Abby added, drying her hands on a towel. “What's up, Dream Puff Boy? If you talked to the cops, then spill it. Don't hold anything back.”

I loved it when my aunt talked like a mob moll.

“I just got off the phone with a friend at SFPD.” He popped a small piece of crab into his mouth, then licked his lips.

“Wow,” I said. “That was fast.”

“And?” my aunt said.

My heart suddenly started racing at the news we were about to hear. Or it could have been that lip licking.

“He said they don't know exactly what killed Jameson yet, but there were no signs of struggle or injury on the body. No stab wounds, gashes on the head, things like that.”

My heart leapt. No knife wounds. That had to be good news for Aunt Abby.

Jake continued. “They found him in his office, sitting in his chair, slumped over his desk.”

I knew about the office, but none of the details. I was impressed with Jake's connections. “Maybe he had a heart attack!” I said, then glanced at Aunt Abby for her reaction. Her eyes were wide. From anticipation? Or fear?

Jake shook his head. “They think it might have been something he ate.”

“Like what?” Aunt Abby asked.

“Some kind of soup. They found a bowl of half-eaten soup on his desk.”

“So it was accidental food poisoning,” I said, relieved.

Jake bit his lip, as if he didn't want to say what he was about to add. “Maybe not so accidental.”

“You're telling us the police think Oliver Jameson was deliberately poisoned?” I asked, stunned at this news. I looked at Aunt Abby, but she didn't meet my eyes. Her pink cheeks went as white as her still-clean apron.

“Soup?” she said quietly.

Uh-oh. I felt my stomach lurch, as if I'd just eaten a bowl of poisoned soup myself. Aunt Abby said she had been in that office sometime before Oliver Jameson died.

They say the proof is in the pudding. Or in this case, maybe it was in the soup.

Aunt Abby and I worked together in silence after Jake left. I didn't know what my aunt was thinking, but I pondered the latest news—Oliver Jameson had been poisoned, seemingly by a bowl of soup, in his own restaurant office.

Was it accidental, as in food poisoning?

Or deliberate, as in someone had murdered him?

The police would no doubt find evidence that my aunt had been sneaking around the place, leaving fingerprints and who knew what else that a forensics team could uncover. I set down the wooden spoon I'd been using to stir the noodles I'd just tossed into the pot of boiling water and turned to my aunt. She was ladling the crab mac and cheese mixture into small disposable cups.

“Aunt Abby, you heard Jake,” I said to her, frowning. “The cops are going to dust Jameson's office for fingerprints if they haven't already and they're going to find out you were there. Why did you lie to them? You're bound to be discovered. Isn't obstruction of justice a felony? You could go to jail for that.”

My aunt avoided my gaze. “Wouldn't you have done the same thing?”

“No. But then again, I wouldn't have gone snooping
around in the guy's restaurant either. What were you thinking?”

Aunt Abby stopped filling the cups and took a deep breath. “I told you, Darcy. I was looking for something—anything—to keep Oliver Jameson from bothering me and the other food truckers.”

I knew what she meant. “You wanted something to blackmail him with, didn't you?”

Aunt Abby tilted her head, almost coquettishly, and finally returned my gaze. “I wouldn't call it ‘blackmail,' exactly. More like . . . ‘leverage.'”

Shaking my head at her recklessness, I asked, “What did you expect to find? Bad checks? Doctored books? Naughty pictures?”

She shrugged and went back to her ladling.

I pressed on, ignoring the bubbling noodles. “Did you touch anything in the restaurant kitchen on your way to Jameson's office?”

“No,” Aunt Abby said, focused on scooping up the mac and cheese mixture. “I mean, I don't think so. Except maybe . . .”

“Except maybe what?” Extracting information from Aunt Abby was like pulling crabmeat out of a tiny claw.

She batted her long lashes. “I may have moved a few of his things around in the kitchen. You know how chefs are about their
mise en place
.”

“Their what?”

“
Mise en place
. Their kitchen stuff. Chefs like their utensils and prepped food arranged just so. That way they can access things quickly. Sort of like a doctor and his instruments. Or a reporter and her pencils.”

Ha. “So you—what?—messed with his meese-on-whatever?”

“It's pronounced
meeze awn plaas
. It's French, you know.”

Frustrated with her answers, I snapped, “I don't care if it's Siberian. You touched his stuff! Your fingerprints will be all over that too! And since you worked for the school district, your prints are on file.”

She rolled her eyes as if she didn't really care, but her face flushed cherry red, giving away her anxiety underneath. Maybe she was finally beginning to realize how serious this was.

She sighed. “Darcy, his things are probably covered with lots of other fingerprints besides mine. That doesn't prove anything.”

“Yes, it does. It proves you were there when you said you weren't. Those
other
fingerprints no doubt belong to the people who work at the restaurant. You had no reason to be there—and yet, you were sneaking around your competitor's place of business.”

“Well, they can't tell
when
the fingerprints were put there, can they?” Aunt Abby argued.

“No, but—” I took a deep breath. I needed to calm down. The timer for the noodles sounded and I poured the contents into a colander that sat in the stainless steel sink. Once the water drained off, I dumped the noodles into a large bowl and stirred in the premeasured cheese and cream, as Aunt Abby had directed. After making sure the pasta was thoroughly coated, I set the spoon down and resumed my inquisition.

“Aunt Abby, you have to call that detective—what
was his name?—and tell him the truth. It will only look worse for you if you don't, because he's going to find out. Remember what happened to Martha Stewart?”

“You mean that time she burned her soufflé on her TV show?”

“No, the time she was convicted of obstruction of justice and went to prison!”

“Darcy, I can't tell him I was lying! I've worked too long and hard making a go of my business and I'm not going to the slammer just because of some small fib about where I was when.”

Small fib? I was sure that's what Martha Stewart thought too.

Before I could argue, I felt the equivalent of a 4.5 earthquake rock the bus. A deep voice at the door said, “What's all the commotion?”

Apparently Aunt Abby and I had been shouting loud enough to attract the attention of the chef next door. Chef Boris Obregar stood in the doorway, his round face flushed, his large head topped precariously with a tall white toque. Boris was the owner of the Road Grill food truck, which was parked next to my aunt's bus. Her bus had listed the moment he'd hoisted his sizable weight onto the lower step. This man loved his own cooking.

Boris was loud and crude, and I didn't care for his menu selections. He served what he called “exotic meats,” but what I'd call “road kill” food—burgers made from possum, hot dogs from ground snake, and something he called “gator balls,” which I only hoped wasn't a literal label. Aunt Abby called him Boris Badcook behind his broad back. No doubt he had his fans, but I had a feeling a lot of the male customers came to get an
eyeful of his attractive assistant, Cherry Washington. She tended to offer up a pair of ample boobs when taking customers' orders. With her long mocha legs, short-shorts, low-cut tops, and halo of tight black curls, she could have gotten a job at any Hooters in the state. Why she chose to work with Boris and his freaky food was a mystery to me.

Just the thought of eating wild animals made me almost consider becoming a vegetarian, like Sierra and Vandy, the vegans who ran the Vegematic truck. But Boris's food was wildly popular with a diverse crowd, and the man himself was a jovial guy with permanently rosy cheeks, a cropped white beard, and caterpillar eyebrows. While he reminded me of Santa Claus, his red face wasn't from the cold, and he was jolly. More likely his coloring came from the vodka I'd seen him drinking behind his truck during breaks. He'd even offered me a hit one time when I spotted him having a snort.

“I could hear you two arguing way over to my place,” Boris said, a remnant of his Slavic accent punctuating his words. “You want to drive the customers away? Bad enough there's been a murder in the neighborhood.”

Odd. We had only just learned that Oliver Jameson's death was a possible homicide. “Why do you think Oliver Jameson was murdered?” I asked.

Boris shrugged his beefy shoulders. “What else could it be? The guy was asking for it. Everybody around here hated him. He hassled Willow, the vegans, Jake, everyone. He used to send me poison-pen letters, threatening to shut me down, just because I serve exotic gourmet fare to my patrons.”

Gourmet?

“He threatened you?” Aunt Abby asked, perking up.

“Sure. About half a dozen times,” Boris said, wiping his sweating brow with the bottom of his heavily stained apron. Were those dark streaks human blood?

“Where are the letters?” I asked, thinking Aunt Abby was on to something. The police would want to know about this.

“I tore 'em up,” he said, gesturing with his hands.

“What? You should have saved them,” I said.

“What for? I didn't plan to reread them.”

“You could have turned them over to the police,” I argued.

“They were poison-pen letters. They weren't signed, ‘Love, Oliver.'”

“But the cops might have found fingerprints or something,” Aunt Abby added. “And they could have been used as evidence, in case he did something else to you. Something worse.”

“Oh,
pah
!” Boris said. “I got my revenge.”

That caught my attention.

Boris laughed. “No, I didn't kill him. I ripped up the last note he sent me, went into his kitchen, and threw the pieces all over the food. Ha!”

“What did he do when he found out?” Aunt Abby asked, wide-eyed.

“Nothing. I told the woman chef working there to tell him, ‘Nobody messes with Chef Boris.' I'm sure he got the message, because he didn't bother me again.”

“What did the letters say?” Aunt Abby asked, her frown deepening.

I turned to her. “Aunt Abby? Did you get letters too?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I'm just curious.”

Chef Boris lifted his toque, revealing a bald pate, and scratched an itch with a sausage-sized finger. When he was done, he replaced the hat. I hoped he washed his hands frequently.

“Mostly crap like, ‘Stop the slop, you pig!' and ‘Serving rat soufflé, you rodent?'”

Hmm
. Aunt Abby had mentioned she suspected Oliver of planting a rat in her kitchen a week or so ago. Coincidence? Too bad Boris had destroyed possible evidence that Oliver had been threatening him. It might have taken the focus off Aunt Abby.

“I gotta get back to work,” Boris said. “Just thought I'd check on you when I heard the shouting, what with this murder and everything. By the way, I'm serving a fried eel omelet today for the festival. Stop by for a sample.”

Just the thought of putting a piece of eel—dead or alive, raw or cooked—in my mouth made me want to heave.

As soon as the XXL chef stepped off the bus, the vehicle leveled itself, but a small aftershock followed, causing a teetering spoon at the counter's edge to fall. The spoon hit the floor and slid under the stove. I bent down to retrieve it.

And screamed.

“What's wrong?” Aunt Abby said, startled by my reaction.

I reared back, shaking my hand as if something was stuck to it. “There's a rat under the stove!”

Aunt Abby grimaced. “That rat bastard!” she mumbled, then asked, “It's dead, right?”

“I don't know! I didn't check its pulse!”

“Jameson!” Aunt Abby said, venom in her voice. “I'm sure he planted it there. I don't know how he got in here, but it had to be him. Talk about vermin. He's the epitome of the word. Rodenticide is too good for that rat bastard.”

Stunned, I looked at Aunt Abby as if she'd just confessed to murder.

Aunt Abby read my mind, as she often seemed to do. “You can relax, Darcy. I didn't kill Oliver Jameson with rat poison, if that's what you're thinking.”

I blinked.

“I didn't kill him with anything!” she added.

“Do you keep rat poison on the bus?” I asked.

“Of course. But I only use it in the bait box.”

Hmm. I wondered if the police would look for rat poison in Aunt Abby's bus. “Where do you keep the actual poison?”

She nodded toward a high cupboard door at the far end of the bus. “Check for yourself,” she said. “Meanwhile, I'm gonna get rid of the body.”

For a moment I thought she meant the body of Oliver Jameson. Then I remembered the rat.

While Aunt Abby slipped on disposable gloves and knelt down on the floor, I pulled the box of rodenticide from the cupboard and read the label.

“Contents: Bromethalin. Warning: Highly toxic. Can cause paralysis, convulsions, and death. . . .”

Death.

“It is illegal and unsafe to use rodenticides in any area where food is being prepared or served unless it's contained in a bait box. . . .”

I wondered if it was illegal to keep the package of pellets in the cupboard.

I read on:
“Use bait stations and traps filled with rodenticide pellets and place them outside the building to prevent vermin from entering. Check with local authorities for correct usage in your area.”

Would the local authorities be knocking on the door any minute?

Aunt Abby stood up, holding the trap by her gloved fingertips. A dead rat the size of a small lobster dangled from it. I turned away, nauseated. “Get that disgusting thing out of here!”

The lifeless pest didn't seem to bother Aunt Abby as much as it did me. Holding the trap at arm's length, she stepped out of the bus and headed for the community Dumpster a few yards away.

How had that rat gotten inside Aunt Abby's bus? Was it dead or alive when it entered? And would the police wonder what other rat my aunt Abby might have disposed of lately?

•   •   •

After we finished preparing the first batch of crab mac and cheese cups—a dish Aunt Abby was calling Crabby Cheerleader Mac and Cheese—she and I worked on the other popular comfort foods that were my aunt's specialties—the Fire Drill (eye-watering chili), the Field Trip (BLT wedge salad), and the Science Experiment Spaghetti. By the time the gates opened at eleven a.m., we were amped and ready to rock. Thoughts of rats, poison, and murder were the furthest things from my mind.

I braced myself as the stream of crab lovers swarmed into the area. The constant rush kept us both hopping, me mostly at the service window, Aunt Abby with the cooking. By two p.m., when the crowd had died down a
bit, I was more tired than I'd ever been working at the newspaper. Interviewing people for a story was a piece of cake compared to working in a food truck. The small kitchen was in shambles, I reeked of fish, and my sleek brown hair had been steamed into bushy waves. How my aunt did this every day at age sixty-plus was mind-boggling. I wasn't sure I'd last another hour, let alone a week.

I really needed to write—and sell—my “Food Truck and Festival Cookbook” proposal to a publisher. Fast.

“Take a break,” Aunt Abby said after handing a straggling customer the last in a third batch of her Crabby Macs. “You deserve it. You did a great job. I couldn't have done it without you, seeing as how Dillon didn't stick around for very long.”