Killer Gourmet (17 page)

“A cylindrical object, about an inch wide,” Savannah replied.

“Something heavy and hard enough to do some substantial damage,” Dirk added.

“That's weird,” Otis said. “We heard he was stabbed to death.”

A guarded expression crossed Dirk's face.

Savannah knew that look. Most cops played their cards close to their vests. Dirk kept his in a safe in his back pocket. He gave away only what he absolutely had to in the course of an investigation.

While it wasn't her natural inclination to leave a single word unsaid, she had to agree that his method was best.

“Yeah,” Dirk replied. “If you happen to see a big bloody knife lying around somewhere, we'd like to know about that, too.”

Savannah took a step closer to Emmett. “I'll bet you see a lot that goes on back here in this alley, don't you?”

He gave a curt nod.

“As a military man, you're a trained observer. I'll bet not much of anything gets past you.”

“Yeah, but what I see, and what I hear . . . I keep to myself. I stay out of trouble that way.”

“I can understand that,” Savannah said. “But you traveled all the way to Afghanistan to fight for freedom and justice. A man like that doesn't stop fighting for those precious things just because he comes home.”

Otis looked down at his feet and shuffled from one mismatched, duct-taped sneaker to the other. “I guess that's true. What do you guys want to know?”

“Absolutely everything that you saw or heard that night,” Dirk told him. “We'll take anything you've got.”

“But first,” Savannah said, “why don't we go inside out of this hot sun. I've got a sudden hankerin' to buy one of this country's war veterans a drink.”

“Sorry it's just a beer,” Savannah told Otis Emmett as she and Dirk sat across from him at a table in the corner of the restaurant. “But they aren't set up to serve food just yet.”

She was keeping her voice low, so as not to interfere with Ryan and John's continued staff meeting.

Otis closed his eyes, savoring a long draft of the beer in a frosty mug. Then he licked the foam off his mustache and said, “Don't worry about that. I'm just so happy to have this. I don't remember when anything tasted this good.”

“I'm glad you're enjoying it,” she said. “There's another where that one came from, once you're finished.”

“But sooner or later you're gonna have to tell us what you saw,” Dirk interjected. “Ain't nothin' free in this world, you know.”

“Yes,” Otis said. “I know that all too well.”

“Then let's hear it.” Dirk pulled his notebook and pen out of his jacket pocket. “Everything you've got.”

Otis drained the glass, settled back in the booth, and began, “You're going to want to hear what happened the first night they all showed up here. The night I met the two of you, and you were wearing those funny old clothes.”

Dirk bristled a bit but didn't say anything. Savannah knew he was taking offense at having his mother's gift, the flannel plaid shirt, called “funny” and “old.”

She would remember this the next time he insisted on wearing it out to dinner. Her argument would go something like: “Even a street person made fun of that shirt, Dirk. You aren't going out with me, dressed like a homeless lumberjack.”

“You're referring to the night of the tasting,” Savannah told Otis.

“I didn't get to taste anything.”

“It was an audition, of sorts, for Chef Norwood, to show the new owners—those two fellas sitting there at the bar—what he could do.”

“Well, whatever the reason they were here, some stuff went down that night that might have led to what happened later.”

“What did you see?” Dirk asked, obviously growing impatient.

“I saw that chef—the big, tall, fat guy—just outside the back door, pushing himself onto a pretty young woman. I heard her tell him that she had just dropped by to give her husband some bus fare so he could get home later. But the big guy was trying to kiss her, trying to feel her up. And it was obvious she didn't want anything to do with him. It was disgusting.”

Otis reached up and ran his fingers through his matted beard, as though combing it. “I was just about to go over and tell him to leave her alone when that guy over there came out of the door and told him to stop or else.”

“Which guy?” Savannah asked, anticipating the answer.

“The tall, skinny Mexican kid, sitting at the end of the row.”

Savannah and Dirk turned to look, but she knew he was referring to Manuel.

So Manuel had pulled the chef off Celia more than once. Savannah noted the fact that neither of them had mentioned that.

Liking both of them as much as she did, she hoped their little omission wasn't indicative of anything too incriminating.

“Okay,” Dirk said. “That's good to know. What else?”

“There was another argument even before that,” Otis continued. “The big guy had it out with some fancy dude. I don't see him over there.”

“How did that go down?” Dirk asked.

“It was before the rest of those workers got here. The only ones here were those two guys you say own the place and the chef. Then some rich poser type pulls up back there in the alley in a fancy Mercedes. He gets out and goes through the back door. It wasn't half a minute before I could hear the chef and him arguing like crazy.”

“They were yelling?”

“No, more like hissing under their breath. I figured they didn't want the others to hear them.”

“But you heard them,” Dirk said, cutting him a suspicious look.

Otis grinned. “Okay, I'll admit it. I sorta worked at hearing them. I was back by the rear door checking out the car when I heard this pissed-off whispering talk, so I had to check it out. I'm the curious type.”

“Me too,” Savannah said. “I understand completely. Please continue.”

“The fancy guy was saying something like, ‘This is why you left me? You're deserting me and our business when it's in trouble? In trouble because of you, that is. And you're doing it for
this
dump?”

Savannah felt her blood pressure rise at the term “dump.” ReJuvene was a beautiful restaurant. Who did that guy think he was anyway?

Actually, she had a theory about who he was.

“Did you catch a name?” she asked.

“Yeah. The chef called him ‘Yale' as he was leaving. He didn't stay long at all. Yale . . . that's kinda a hoity-toity name for a dude, don't you think?”

“Not especially,” Dirk said, “but if you think so, when I have a son, I won't name him Harvard or Oxford.”

“Did anything else happen that first night?” Savannah asked Otis.

Something crossed his eyes, something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but before she had a chance to analyze the moment, it had passed.

“Other than the fact that they wouldn't give you a handout,” Dirk said.

“Yeah, that.” Otis shrugged. “Whatcha gonna do? Some people are generous and buy you a cold beer. Some people wouldn't give you the mud scrapings off the bottom of their shoe. Go figure.”

“Then let's go on to the night when Norwood was murdered,” Savannah said. “Please tell us everything you heard and saw, and don't leave anything out.”

“That's the funny thing about it,” Otis said. “I didn't see much that night. There was one little squabble, some yelling, cursing, and a couple of pans flying. But that was about it . . . until . . . you know . . . afterward.”

“Tell us about the squabble,” Savannah said.

“I heard the chef yell at somebody. You could tell it was him, because he had that deep, unusual kind of voice. He always talked like he was being interviewed on television or reading the news, you know?”

Savannah chuckled at this simple but accurate description of Chef Norwood's pretentious delivery. “Yes,” she said, “we know. Go on.”

“I sneaked over to the door and listened to see what was up.” He blushed a bit. “I know it's not very classy to eavesdrop like that, but without TV or the Internet, we don't get a lot of entertainment on the streets.”

“So you sneaked up to the door, and what did you hear?” Dirk said, growing impatient.

“I heard the chef yelling at that guy, Manuel. He was chucking pots and pans at him and telling him that if he didn't like working for him, he could get the hell out. Then some other people came into the room and put a stop to it.”

“Yeah, we were some of those people,” Dirk said. He glanced over at the staff. “But the people in the kitchen wouldn't tell us what the fight was about or who was involved. Norwood just ordered everybody out of ‘his' kitchen.”

“What happened next?” Savannah said. “Please try to remember everything you saw and heard from that argument with the pots being thrown until—”

“Until that other chef gal started screaming bloody murder?” Otis interjected.

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Nothing. I mean, nothing important. I guess they were just cooking and serving and all that. After a while, three of them came outside to smoke.”

“Which three?” Dirk asked.

“The two Mexican guys over there and that chef gal with all the crazy tattoos.”

“They stayed out there how long?” Savannah asked.

“Oh, I don't know. Long enough to smoke one cigarette. Then the gal went inside.”

Savannah perked up. “She did?”

“Yeah. I heard her say she had to go to the bathroom. And that's when the tall Mexican kid came over to me and asked me if I was hungry . . . if I'd like something to eat. He said he felt bad that they hadn't given me anything that first night and he wanted to make it up to me.”

“And he went inside by himself?” Dirk asked.

“Yeah, but don't go thinking anything suspicious about my buddy there. I walked right to the door with him. I could see inside, all the time, he was making me up a big takeout container, and he didn't kill anybody.”

“Could you see Chef Norwood through that open door?” Savannah asked.

“Yeah, I saw him, but he was facing away from me, and he didn't see me. He was all absorbed with shoveling food into his mouth.”

“So Manuel made you a container of food, and the chef was still alive at that point,” Dirk reiterated, “and that Francia gal was in the bathroom and Carlos was still standing outside?”

Otis nodded. “Having a second smoke.”

Savannah glanced around the room, recalling the scene from her point of view. “And the two servers and a busboy were in here, cleaning up, and so was the bartender.”

“Everybody's accounted for,” Dirk said, dejected.

“Okay,” Otis continued, “then this guy you're calling Manuel came out with my dinner. I sat down on the other side of the alley on that old tractor tire. I was eating it and thinking it was about the best food I'd ever ate in my life when all hell broke loose with that screaming. Man, that gal has a set of lungs on her!”

Savannah recalled the sound—all too well. The memory of those shrieks still caused her skin to crawl and her headache to pound.

She pressed her forefingers to her temples. “Then you're absolutely sure that nobody, nobody at all, walked in or out of that back door between the time that you saw Chef Norwood standing there alive in the kitchen and when you heard Francia scream?”

“Absolutely sure. I'd stake my life on it.” He stopped to drain yet another drop from his beer mug. “I was pretty excited about that dinner. It was the best I've had in years. But if anybody had walked through that doorway, I would've seen them.”

“How can you be so sure you would have noticed?” Dirk asked.

“Because I was watching that door like a hawk. I was afraid the chef would come out and see me eating his food and try to take it away from me. I had to make sure that didn't happen, because I was dying to taste that raspberry pie thing.”

“You and me both,” Savannah said with a sigh. “You and me both.” She turned to Dirk. “Whatcha say, big boy? Does our new best friend, Otis, deserve another beer?”

Dirk jumped to his feet. “Another cold one for the best—and only—eyewitness we have in this stinkin' rotten case. And while I'm at it, Otis, my man, I'll see if I can round you up some pretzels.”

Otis smiled broadly. “Now you're talkin'. And if you can score me some peanuts, I'd take those off your hands, too.”

“V
an, are you sure you feel okay?” Dirk asked her when they were heading home from the restaurant. “I don't mind driving if you aren't up to it.”

He reached over and placed his hand on her thigh. “And I'm not just trying to finagle a way to drive the Mustang either.”

She gave him a suspicious sideways glance, but the sincere look on his face told her that he was seriously concerned.

“Don't fret,” she told him. “You know I can't stand it when you fret.”

He gave her leg a squeeze. “Babe, I passed the ‘fret' stage a couple of days ago. Now I'm starting to get worried. You're tired all the time. You're cranky all the time. You've been dizzy a lot. And today at the beach you did a serious face plant in the sand. Something's wrong.”

She groaned and shook her head. “Dirk, how many years have you known me? During all of those years I've been tired and cranky. And how many times have you called me a ‘dizzy broad'?”

“That was a term of endearment, and you know it. I want you to go to the doctor and get checked out.”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Lots of reasons. I don't have time to right now. We're working this case. And now Gran's here, and I need to entertain her. Your mom and dad are coming for a visit next month, and I need to repaint the living room and kitchen before that. But most of all, I don't go to the doctor unless I'm sick. And I'm not sick—except maybe sick of having people worry about me when they don't need to.”

She turned the Mustang down her street, but she pulled over to the curb several houses before hers.

Turning in her seat, she faced Dirk directly and gave him one of her icy stares—specifically designed to strike terror in the heart of the staree.

“Now you listen to me, you worrywart husband of mine. I want you to stop this right now. We're almost home, where Granny is going to be waiting with open arms. I haven't seen her for a month of Sundays, and I want this visit to be really nice for her and us. So don't you dare mention a word of this again until after she has left. I don't want her to hear you get all in a tizzy about nothing. You hear me?”

He matched her, stare for stare, and said, “I promise you that I won't say anything in front of her, 'cause I don't want to worry her either. But if you and me are in a room by ourselves, all bets are off.”

Before she knew what he was doing or could fend him off, he had grabbed her and nailed her with one of his best, knee-wobbling kisses.

When he finally let her come up for air, he said, “I listened to you. Now you listen to me. I put a wedding ring on your finger, girl. A pretty damned nice one at that.”

She glanced down at the gorgeous diamond on her finger. There was no denying that one. When it counted, stingy, cheap ol' Dirk had broken character and forked over the big bucks. She had to give him that.

“That affords me certain privileges,” he continued. “And before you make some unladylike, silly joke, it's not just between the sheets that I get to exercise those husbandly rights.”

As he paused for a breath, Savannah debated whether to reach up and yank out a wad of his hair or to grab him, hold him tight, and ask him for another one of those kisses.

Before she could decide, he recovered his wind and continued his speech. “I've got only one of you, Van,” he said. “While, most of the time, that's more than enough, I do want to keep the one I've got for as long as I can. So get that pretty little butt of yours to the doctor and find out what's going on with you.”

She sighed and shook her head. Then she drove the Mustang back onto the road and headed for home.

“You're plumb crazy, you know,” she said as she pulled into their driveway.

“For wanting my wife to go to the doctor when she needs to? That makes me crazy?”

“No. That makes you a sweetheart.” She reached over and chucked him under the chin. “But calling my overly curvaceous, abundantly proportioned butt ‘little' . . . boy, that makes you nuttier than squirrel poo.”

 

When Savannah stepped into her living room, all hell broke loose.

Actually, the screaming, the running, the outflung arms, the grabbing and the grappling, the free-flowing of tears—it was all just Savannah greeting her grandmother and vice versa.

A bystander who wasn't familiar with the overly rambunctious, spirited customs of the Reid family's womenfolk might have thought it was a reenactment of the First Battle of Bull Run.

As a child, one of Savannah's favorite things in the world was to have her grandmother pick her up and twirl her around in a circle while both laughed uproariously. But over the years—and neither of them could remember the exact moment it had happened—their roles had reversed. It was now Savannah who did the picking up and twirling.

But the hysterical giggling and the tight, lingering, loving hug that followed were the same.

Dirk, Tammy, and Waycross stood quietly by, smiling and waiting for peace to be restored. Long ago, they had learned not to interfere with this ritual.

It was a matter of self-preservation. Amidst all the running, screaming, twirling, and hugging, one could get hurt.

When they were finally finished, Gran turned to Dirk and opened her arms to receive him. He, too, gave her a hearty hug, though it would have registered a bit lower on the Richter scale.

“Why, darlin', just look at you!” she said, as she placed her soft hands on his cheeks and turned his face from side to side, checking him out. “I swear, you get handsomer every day. Seems that being married to my granddaughter has done you a good turn.”

“It sure has, Granny. But I'm getting fat eating her good food three times a day.”

“Aw, hush that nonsense. People make way too much of a fuss over that weight business. When I was a girl, the old-timers used to say, ‘You need an extra ten pounds on your bones, just in case you get sick.' If you get too skinny, you might blow away in a windstorm.”

Savannah glanced over her grandmother's figure, which, even under the billowing, floral-print caftan, appeared quite rotund. And looking down at her own ample curves, she did a bit of quick math and decided that the Reid family could survive several bouts of the bubonic plague without worrying about cyclones and such.

A bit weary from the exertion of grandma-whirling, Savannah felt the sudden need to sit down in her comfy chair. But good, old-fashioned Southern hospitality demanded that some sort of refreshment be served before the hostess's hind end was allowed to touch a chair of any kind.

“How about a big, tall glass of sweet tea, Gran?” Savannah asked her. “And some chocolate chip macadamia cookies to go along with it. I know you like pecans better, but I baked them to bribe a medical examiner, and she's not from Georgia, poor girl.”

Gran smiled up at Savannah, her bright, young eyes sparkling in an old, wise face. “You know me too well, sugar. I never met a cookie I didn't like.”

Savannah turned toward the kitchen a bit too abruptly, and once again the floor beneath her began to tilt a bit. She hesitated only for a second, but that was long enough for Dirk to take notice.

“Hey,” he said, reaching for her arm. “Let me go get that tea and the cookies. You girls have got a lot of catching up to do. So sit down over there, make yourselves comfortable, and get to it.”

Savannah looked up at him and, for a moment, she just stood there, loving him with her eyes—not just for his offer of help but for covering for her with Granny.

“Why, thank you, darlin',” she said. “Aren't you just the sweetest thing? Grab yourself an extra cookie for payment.”

He chuckled as he walked away. “Why do you think I offered to do it?”

“Now there's the Dirk-o we know and love,” Tammy said as she and Waycross settled close to each other on the sofa.

Savannah couldn't help noticing that Granny noticed. But that was to be expected. Gran had raised two children of her own and nine grandchildren besides. Over the years she had perfected the fine art of supervising young people. And part of that skill was knowing, at all times, who was doing what with whom in the Romance Department.

Wasting no time, Savannah made her way back across the room to her rose-print, chintz-covered chair. She sank into it gratefully and waited for the inevitable onslaught of black furriness. It didn't take long for her lap to be filled with cats, both of them begging for attention.

Granny walked over to her, reached down, and scooped up Cleo. Then she strolled over to the unoccupied end of the sofa and sat down.

As she stroked the cat's glossy head, she said to Savannah, “These two”—she nodded toward Tammy and Waycross—“have been filling me in on the case you're working on now. Sounds like a doozy.”

“I won't lie. It's a bit of a stumper.”

“Then tell me all about it—don't spare any of the gory details—so's I can figure it out for you.”

Savannah gave her grandmother a searching look and realized that she was completely serious. More than once, Gran in her infinite wisdom had solved a case for them, or at least found evidence that was instrumental in wrapping it up.

Far be it from her to disregard this offer of assistance. Why not avail herself of such valuable services, when the price of said services was a glass of sweet tea and a handful of chocolate chip cookies?

At that moment Dirk arrived with a tray loaded with the goodies. Only for a moment Savannah held her breath as he walked across the room and set his burden on the coffee table.

Yes, he was getting better and better at this domestic stuff. No doubt about it, and of course, as his wife and trainer in all such matters, she took credit for his improvement.

After all, when she had met him he had owned one plate, one fork, a spoon, and a Swiss Army knife. Platters and serving bowls were unnecessary, as he ate everything out of whatever packaging it had been in when he'd purchased it at the grocery or convenience store.

As he began to distribute glasses of tea, napkins, and cookies, Savannah told him, “Granny wants to help with our case.”

“Of course she does,” he said. “Why do you think she came out here? Just to see our ugly mugs?”

Granny nabbed two cookies, then held them close to her chest to keep them away from an overly curious Cleo. “Now, now,” she said. “You know that your ugly mugs will always be my first priority. But a murder case, especially one that's nigh to impossible to solve, that does run a close second.”

She looked over at Savannah, then Waycross, with a light of pride shining in her eyes. “My family, we're good at this crime-solving stuff. It runs in our blood. We have a fierce sense of justice and a heap of nosiness besides. And that makes us good detectives.”

“Does that go for me, too?” Dirk asked.

Granny smiled. “Reckon it goes double for you. Not only are you part of the family, but you actually chose to be—not like these knuckleheads who just got born in. No offense, y'all.”

Waycross reached over and patted his grandmother's hand. “No offense taken, Gran. Now, let Savannah go over that list of suspects on her board, and you can tell us who done it.”

 

“You're right. It's a dadgum stumper,” Gran said an hour later, as they all stared at Savannah's poster board, which was now lying in the middle of the coffee table next to the empty pitcher.

The bits of paper with the various suspects' names had been moved around from one corner to the other and shifted from one column to the next.

Now that Otis Emmett had established alibis for Manuel Cervantes and Carlos Ortez, they had joined Perla Viola in the lower-right-hand corner.

Squinting at the board—because she would never admit that she needed glasses—Granny frowned and said, “Are you sure that Viola gal passes muster? 'Cause you know as well as I do that the murderer is almost always somebody the victim is sleeping with or slept with.... Not that a lot of sleeping goes on in those cases. ‘Sleeping' is just what they call fornication these days.”

She cast a quick, suspicious glance at her grandson, sitting next to her.

Quickly, Savannah put her hand over her mouth, hiding a smirk. With Waycross's cheeks flushing as red as his hair, there was no doubt that he had the look of a fornicator about him.

And Tammy's nervous tittering was equally incriminating.

Savannah half-expected Granny to produce a hickory switch and give them a tanning out behind the barn. Or the garage, as the case might be.

Dirk, having watched the silent exchange, again came to the rescue. “I checked out Perla Viola's alibi. It's solid. She and her daughter were at that play in Hollywood—that
Phantom
thing. I called the theater and had them check the ticket numbers. They were used. And the
Playbill
she gave me had this extra paper stuck inside it, saying that one of the main parts was being played by a different gal that night. The theater manager told me that was the only night that particular insert was given out. So, no doubt about it, she and her daughter were there.”

Tammy stared down at her tablet in her lap while her fingers flew over its screen. “Yes, that's right. That night the character Carlotta was played by the understudy.”

Savannah smiled, thinking that her little friend was trying way too hard. She still felt bad about having given them inaccurate information about Manuel and Celia and was attempting to make up for it. Tammy was a perfectionist when it came to her passion, and her passion was “sleuthing.”