Hot Stuff (21 page)

It was time to come clean. At least it seemed that way to me. I needed to confront Em about the jewelry store diamond ring heist, and the professor who had been accused of sexual battery. James and I also needed to tell Detective Ted Conway that James had been pushed from the ship. His life had been threatened. All hands on deck.

“Skip?” She picked up on the first ring.

“You heard?”

“Oh, my God. Apparently, the boat's gate wasn't secured.”

“Apparently, he was pushed.”

She was quiet for a moment. “So someone has tried to implicate him with the knife, and now they tried to kill him?”

“Either that, or scare the hell out of him. I think they may be trying to get us off the case.”

“Are you really that close to solving it? I mean, we haven't got any solid clues. Why would someone try to kill him? Unless they thought he was a lot closer to solving the murder than he is.”

I closed my eyes and pictured her face. Soft blonde hair framing her cheekbones and that wide-eyed innocent look.

“We need to talk.”

“Great. I've got some stuff on Joaquin Vanderfield and Juan Castro. Where do we meet?”

“How about your place?”

“Maybe someplace neutral.”

Either Ted was staying over, or she was afraid I would want to. Either way, it was not a good sign for our relationship.

We met at a small café four blocks from L'Elfe. Em had an iced vanilla latte. I had a coffee, black.

“Juan Castro lives in his car.”

She cut right to the chase.

“What?”

“At least he did. He parked the car in the L'Elfe lot overnight. He'd sneak in when Mikey Pollerno would open to do the setup and he'd take a shower in the locker room. It was his home for several months.”

“And you learned this from?”

“A little bit from Ted,” she said sheepishly. “He let some of it slip. It seems they arrested him for vagrancy once after he started work there.”

Cops had records of things like that. We didn't. But then, we had Ted. Or Em did, so we weren't totally in the dark.

“And I did a background check on our Juan. He's been in trouble for petty larceny, for peddling some grass, nothing serious. But his address always came back to the same address as L'Elfe. So I started checking around. He drove a beat-up 1996 Dodge Intrepid and it was always there.”

“Really.” I knew how it felt to drive a beat-up clunker. But Castro's car wasn't in the lot anymore so at least his vehicle ran. Mine was still waiting for a new battery.

“It turns out some of these restaurant guys are nomads, Skip. They move around a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't at
least one other person in that kitchen who's considered homeless.”

“Do you think Chef Jean knew?”

“I would think that Marty knew. Bouvier, he is too removed from the day-to-day stuff, and he's got other restaurants to worry about. I don't get the impression that he's that hands on.”

And I was immediately reminded of Sophia Bouvier, who was screaming at the salad guy on the yacht. That seemed pretty hands on to me.

“What about Joaquin Vanderfield? Anything on him?”

She nodded and sipped at her fancy latte. We hadn't decided who was going to pay yet, but her drink was around six bucks. Mine, a dollar twenty.

“Get this. He graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando.”

“No kidding.”

“He did. Near the top of his class.”

“My God, Em, Le Cordon Bleu is a big deal. I mean, Amanda dropped out of a second-tier school after one year.”

“Yeah. Don't let James hear you call his alma mater a second-tier school.” She shook her finger at me. “Anyway, this guy is apparently a top-notch chef, but his attitude got in the way.”

“With all due respect to your friend, Amanda, I would think that Joaquin had a reason to be upset.” I would have been pissed off as well, but the idea that his anger led to her murder was stretching things a bit.

“It's worse than that.” Em took another sip, set the cup on the table, and leaned toward me. Her voice was softer now. “He got into it with a sous chef in Sarasota at a place called Darwin's. The ruckus caused quite a stir.”

“What happened?” I took a gulp from my coffee and felt the caffeine start to do its job.

“Darwin's apparently is a pretty good operation, and they had this sous chef named Andy Potts.”

“Potts? Works with pots and pans?”

She didn't return my smile. “This Potts was the kind of guy who was very much a hands-on supervisor. Sometimes he'd take over a cook's station if he thought things weren't moving fast enough or if he thought the quality was suffering.”

“And?”

She looked over her shoulder as if she was afraid someone was going to hear her. “Joaquin Vanderfield is known for his temper. He's the one in the kitchen who will throw a pan at the wall, or swear loud enough for the dining room to hear him curse.” Em sipped her beverage. “Throwing a pan against the wall is not tolerated in a professional kitchen, at least that's what I've heard.”

I was sure she was right.

“Anyway, Vanderfield became enraged when Potts called him out on a dish he was preparing. Apparently Potts didn't think a dish was prepared correctly and he announced it to the kitchen. Words were exchanged, along with some shoving, and Vanderfield went after Potts with a knife.”

“No.”

“Oh, yeah.” She nodded emphatically. “According to reports, he pushed him against a wall, held the knife to this neck, and told him that if he interfered with his cooking again he was going to slit his throat on the spot.”

“What happened?”

“Ten minutes later Joaquin was out the door, looking for another job.”

We both sat there, letting it soak in. Here was a guy with some anger-management issues who had threatened someone's life when all they did was offer some constructive criticism. How would Vanderfield react when he thought someone was taking away a job that belonged to him? I flashed back to my first sight of the feisty cook, his dark brooding look, three-days' growth of beard, his knife strapped to his side, and his obvious contempt for Chef Marty. Yeah, this guy was one to watch.

“So what do you think?” She stared at me from across the table.

“We've got nothing.”

“Yes, but we're starting to build a case. A little more about Castro, a little more about Vanderfield, and maybe we start seeing some progress.”

“What's up with Ted? What else has he shared?”

“Not that much.”

I paused. I didn't want to ask. Didn't want to sound like some college kid with his first serious girlfriend who was asking inappropriate questions.

“Em, you and Ted, have you—”

“Slept with him?”

I sheepishly nodded my head, hoping she wouldn't answer.

“No.” She shook her head, seemingly embarrassed that I had even asked. “I don't go to bed with the first attractive man that asks. I would hope you'd know me better than that.”

“I wasn't suggesting—I just thought—hell, Em, I don't know what to think. You and I are on two different paths and it's not always easy to—”

As I spread my hands on the table, she put hers on top of mine. “Skip, I think he's working toward that, but it's not going to happen. I am not going to let it happen. There are a lot of emotions going on inside, but I care for you more than you think I do. Let's not go there again.”

I let out a breath. Inside, I was cheering.

“I needed some perspective, Skip. Sometimes this thing with you and me, it just seems to go nowhere.”

I was afraid the next question would queer the relationship altogether.

“I've got another question.”

“What? I just told you that I am not screwing around. That
should be enough questions and answers for one session, don't you think?”

“Under normal circumstances. But these aren't normal circumstances.”

Em sighed, brushing at some imaginary speck on the table-top in front of her.

“What's your question?”

“Before I ask—”

“Skip, ask the question. I don't need qualifiers. If you ask, then it must be important.”

It was as if she already knew what was coming.

“Who stole the diamond ring from Kahn's Jewelers?”

She shook her head. “I promised myself I wasn't going to revisit that story, Skip. Can't you respect that?”

I reached out and touched her hand. She immediately withdrew it, burying both of her hands in her lap.

“I think it's important.”

“Well, I don't think it is.”

A stand off.

Em looked into my eyes for fifteen, twenty seconds, studying them.

“How much do you know?” she asked. “Or I should say, how much do you think you know?”

“I talked to Amanda's mother.”

“Oh, Jesus. No. She's vulnerable. How could you do this? She doesn't even know the story, Skip.”

“I gathered as much.”

Em grabbed for her purse, pulled out a ten, and laid it on the table.

“Let's take a walk.”

She'd picked up the tab, so it was her call. I followed her out the door into the dewy Miami night.

We walked a city block. No words were exchanged. Dim streetlights highlighted a laundry, a boarded-up restaurant, and a twenty-four-hour FedEx business center.

“You see, it's not important who stole the ring.”

“I talked to Kevin Kahn.”

“What? You what?” She spun around and stopped in her tracks. Looking at me like she'd never seen me before, she said, “Do you have any respect for our relationship? Behind my back, you talked to these people?”

“He threw me out of his store. What the hell happened, Em? I thought I knew you. Apparently, I don't know you at all.”

She covered her face with her hands.

“There's something in that story that is important. What is it?” I needed to know. Even if it meant a rift in our relationship. “If it reflects on Amanda, then maybe there's something there. Something that we can use to understand her better.”

“Oh, I understood her.” She said it in a sarcastic tone of voice as she turned and started walking.

“I thought she was your friend. The way you just said—”

“Do all your friends play by the rules?” Raising her eyebrows she looked at me in the streetlight. “I'm reminded of one of your best friends.”

“Somebody else just asked me that. Kelly Fields. The answer, of course, is no. And you're right, James is a good example.”

“Well, Amanda didn't always play by the rules. But she was a good friend, a listener, and loyal. So I let things slide.”

“What things?”

“Her relationship with Kevin Kahn. His father did not ap -prove. She was from the wrong side of the tracks, you know what I mean?”

I was from the wrong side of the tracks. Way down the
tracks. Of course, I understood. But I didn't want to bring up the abortion. That was up to Em if she wanted to go there.

“They were sixteen, and getting pretty serious, and his dad was ready to put his foot down.”

“Come on, Emily. We're talking about kids. Sixteen year olds. I mean they were just kids. I had the hots for you back then.” I still did.

“We weren't serious, Skip. You and me. At least I wasn't. As I recall, we weren't even dating then, were we? These two were inseparable.”

“So what? They were going to get engaged?”

“He told her he wanted to show her something at the store. Kevin was working by himself on a Saturday and he invited her to stop by. I think she did that often, and when there were no customers in the store there was some fooling around in the back office. I'm pretty sure she told me that.”

“Kinky.”

She shot me a look.

“So, for whatever reason, she asked if I wanted to tag along.”