Killer in the Kitchen (20 page)

“Oh? Why do you say that?”

“Well, I mean, if my wife was playing around with another guy, I might do the same thing.”

Was he implying that Marcie Fowler had been involved with Leboeuf in a romantic way?

“You know this for fact?”

“Yeah. I saw them together.”

“When? Where?”

He laughed; it was more a cackle. “The night that Leboeuf got it. She was in the kitchen at his so-called bistro. ‘Bistro.' Fancy name, huh?”

“Marcie Fowler was with Gérard Leboeuf the night he was murdered? What time was that?”

Trotter shrugged and drank. “Two, three, after the place was closed.”

“Was that the only time you've seen them together?”

“It's enough, isn't it?”

“Did you see them—I mean did you see them in some sort of an embrace?”

Another shrug, another drink. He refilled his glass.

“Not exactly, but I wasn't born yesterday. I know hanky-panky when I see it. Never did understand why a looker like her would stick with a buffoon like Fowler. What's he got? Money? No. Looks? No. He's got a temper. That's what he's got. You know, I bet he beat her and that's why she turned to
Leboeuf. For a little comfort.” He chuckled. “I'd have given her a little comfort, too.”

I hadn't expected this turn of events and had to grapple with my thoughts to put them in some semblance of order. “What exactly did you see take place between the two of them?”

“I saw him give her like a secret smile when she walked in the back door. ‘I knew you would come,' he says, all tickled. And she goes, ‘Were you serious about this?' holding up this love note he must have sent her. And then he pulls her toward him, and says ‘I can be serious.' And I'm thinking, ‘Oh, boy, wait till the wife sees this.'”

“Well, that's certainly news,” I said.

“Hey, I'm a good guy. I like to help out.”

“I appreciate you being candid with me, Mr. Trotter, so let me be candid with you. I don't know if you're telling me the truth about Marcie having an affair with Leboeuf.”

“Believe what you want. It's no skin off my nose.”

“What I do believe is that you were
not
telling the truth when you told the authorities that you saw Brad Fowler stab Gérard Leboeuf.”

He squirmed in his chair, as though I'd poked him with a stick, and glared at me. “I tried to be helpful. If you don't appreciate it—”

“Let me tell you why,” I quickly added. “I had the opportunity to read your statement to the police.”

“You did?”

“Yes, and something you said stayed with me. It didn't fit with the facts.”

“Everything I said was factual. I can't help it if you aren't up with what went down.”

“You said that you saw Brad Fowler lift his hand and drive the knife down into Leboeuf.”

“Yeah. He did.”

“But Leboeuf was stabbed in the spleen, probably from the side. He was stabbed by someone who held the knife low and thrust it at him from that position.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, what does it matter—up, down, sideways? So what?”

“It matters a great deal, Mr. Trotter. I'm sure that Sheriff Metzger and the other investigators will recognize that inconsistency, too, once they have a chance to go over your statement more carefully.” I paused. “The punishment for perjury is pretty harsh.”

My admonition had an effect on him. He fidgeted; at one point the shotgun almost slid off his lap. I sat quietly, waiting for him to speak. When he did, his voice packed the strength it had earlier in our confrontation. What he said surprised me.

“You're a big shot in town, aren't you?”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“But you write all those books that sell millions of copies, right? I heard about you.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“You want to get Fowler off the hook, I can tell. What I mean is that maybe I can change what I told the cops about seeing him kill Leboeuf. You would like that, right?”

“If what you told them originally wasn't true, then, yes, you should amend your statement to them.”

“Yeah, I could do that, ‘amen my statement' or whatever you said, but—”

“But what?”

“Look, I'll level with you. I've got to get what's coming to me. I've been kicked around by one boss after the other, guys who didn't know squat about running a restaurant compared to me. I got screwed when I was a cook in the army by sergeants who wouldn't know a dishwasher from a refrigerator. I should have had my own place, but there was never money to open a joint. I worked fifty, sixty hours a week for these clowns and got paid beans. You know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“So I'm entitled to something.”

“I'm listening. But what does this have to do with me writing books?”

“Like I said, you must be rolling in dough. If you could—well, maybe top what I got for making that statement to the police, I could change it and—”

“You were
paid
to say that Brad Fowler killed Leboeuf?” I tried to keep the shock out of my voice. “Who paid you?”

“Look, what's the difference? If you take care of me, I'll take care of you. You want your buddy Fowler off the hook, and I can get him off the hook—for a price. Make sense?”

I looked to where the restaurant items I'd examined earlier sat on the counter. “Did you take those from the Fin and Claw?” I asked, cocking my head toward them.

“Just stuff.” He yawned and shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “So what? I figure I gave more than I got. He didn't even know how to divide a kitchen into stations, much less a dining room. He would've had everything mixed together. But he wouldn't listen to me. Jerk!”

I pulled my cell phone from my jacket pocket.

He blinked. “Who're you calling?” His words were slurred.

“I'm calling my cab company to take me home.”

“But what about our deal?”

“Mr. Trotter, we don't have a deal. This was an enlightening conversation, but now it's time for me to leave.”

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was frightened at that moment. Trotter had been steadily drinking since he sat down. He had a shotgun, presumably loaded, on his lap. He'd admitted to me that he'd been paid to make a false statement about having seen Brad Fowler kill Gérard Leboeuf, and he'd offered to make another false statement in return for money. It occurred to me as I reached the cab company and asked that I be picked up at his address that he had every reason to harm me, to raise the weapon and shoot me.

I stood, straightened my skirt, and walked to the door, expecting at any moment to hear—and feel—the blast of a sixteen-gauge shotgun. But there was nothing, just silence. I stepped out onto the front porch, drew in a series of deep breaths, and waited beneath the overhang of a small factory entrance for the taxi.

On the ride home I knew that I had to call Mort Metzger to tell him that Jake Trotter's statement about Brad Fowler was false. It had been paid for.

And then I had to talk to Marcie Fowler.

M
ort's wife, Maureen, answered my call at the sheriff's home.

“He's not here,” Maureen said. “Working late on some case.”

“Do you know how I can reach him?” I asked.

“He called a half hour ago from his office. He might still be there.”

I caught Mort as he was preparing to leave.

“What's up, Mrs. F.?”

“I just left Jake Trotter's house,” I said.

“What were you doing
there
?”

“Mort, have you had a chance to review Trotter's statement claiming that he saw Brad Fowler stab Leboeuf?”

“Haven't gotten around to it yet, Mrs. F. One of the detectives from the state took it down. Gave me the gist of it, that Trotter saw the murder.”

“Trotter lied, Mort. I just returned after confronting him.”

“Now, Mrs. F.—”

“Wait, Mort. Please listen. Seth said Leboeuf was stabbed in the spleen. That's on his side, under his rib cage. Trotter said that he saw Brad raise the knife and bring it down from above.”

“That doesn't mean he didn't see it happen, Mrs. F. He's not the brightest guy. Maybe he just put it wrong.”

“No, Mort. He was paid to make his claim.”

“
Paid?
Who paid him?”

“I don't know, but I intend to find out.”

“No, Mrs. F. I'll do the finding out. That's my job, not yours.”

“I don't want to interfere with your job, Mort. You know that. We had an agreement. If I run across something like what happened with Jake Trotter this evening, I'm supposed to call you first. That's what I'm doing.”

“And I appreciate that, Mrs. F. I know I told you to pass along any information, but now you have. So leave the rest to me. Thanks for the report. I'll follow up on it.”

He hung up before I had a chance to tell him about what Trotter had said about having seen Leboeuf and Marcie Fowler together the night of the murder. Could that have been true? Trotter was a liar. That was now an established fact. Worse, he was someone who would lie for money, even if it falsely accused another person of a heinous crime. Was there any truth to what he'd said about Leboeuf and Marcie? Could I believe
anything
he said?

I called the Fin & Claw and asked to speak with Marcie.

“She didn't come in tonight,” Fritzi said. “Just as well. It's slowed down the past hour.”

“Is she at home?”

“That'd be my guess.”

His guess proved sound. She answered on the first ring.

“Marcie,” I said, “I need to speak with you. It's urgent.”

“Have you heard anything new about Brad?”

“Maybe,” I said, “but that's why I want to sit down with you. May I come over?”

“Oh, I don't know, Mrs. Fletcher. It's getting late. Can't we talk on the phone?”

“No, we cannot. Would you prefer to come here?”

She hesitated before saying, “Yes, I guess I would prefer that. Can't you tell me what this is about?”

“Not on the phone, Marcie.”

She sighed. “All right. I'll be there within the hour.”

As I waited for her arrival, I did what I'd been doing ever since Gérard Leboeuf had been murdered. I added to my notes, which by now took up almost a full pad of yellow, lined, legal-size paper. I'd transcribed most of my observations to my computer as a backup, my version of a belt and suspenders, to make sure if one went missing the other was still available. As I wrote, I realized that Marcie had become an enigma. The thought that she might have been involved in some sort of liaison with Leboeuf was appalling. Was it true? If so, would she admit to it when confronted? I doubted it. When she'd confessed her doubts about Brad and said that maybe he
had
killed Leboeuf, I'd chalked it up to the strain she was under and dismissed it. But when she'd followed up later, telling me that Brad had asked her to lie about what time he'd returned home the night of the murder, I had to admit that her revelation wasn't what I would have expected from a wife fighting to establish her husband's innocence.

Originally I'd thought that Jake Trotter had provided the authorities with his alleged firsthand knowledge of the murder because he was attempting to deflect attention from himself as a possible suspect. That same thought now crossed my mind
where Marcie was concerned. If she had been involved romantically with Leboeuf—and that was still a very big
if
—could that relationship have deteriorated to the extent that she would have plunged a knife into him during an argument? Although Trotter was an unreliable witness, I believed him when he'd said that he'd seen Marcie in the kitchen with Leboeuf the night of the murder. If that were true, why was she there?

Yet another question to ask when she arrived.

I put the kettle on for tea and waited anxiously for her to pull into the driveway. When she did, I opened the door before she rang the bell.

“Hello, Marcie. Thank you for coming.”

“I wasn't going to,” she said, “but my curiosity got the best of me. Since you wouldn't tell me what it was about over the phone, I figured it must be significant. I hope I haven't made the trip for nothing.”

“I appreciate you coming. Would you like some tea, coffee, maybe wine?”

“No, nothing for me,” she said.

I decided to forgo tea, and we settled in the living room.

“Well, I'm here,” she said. “What's so important that it had to be discussed tonight?”

Her combative stance mirrored her attitude that night in the Fin & Claw, although she had called the next morning to apologize. Again, I was sensitive to what she'd been going through and was careful to not allow any pique I might be feeling to surface.

“Marcie,” I said, “let me first begin with some good news.”

She'd been pouting on the couch. My words caused her to sit up, and animation replaced her sullen expression.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Are you aware that Jake Trotter gave a statement to the police that he'd seen Brad kill Gérard Leboeuf?”

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth became a slash. “I learned about it this afternoon from Brad's attorney, Ms. Syms. I don't have words for what a contemptible liar he is, Mrs. Fletcher. How could any human being do such a thing, make up a story to put someone else in jeopardy? Brad is facing a lifetime in prison because of Trotter. Sure, they didn't get along, but that's no way to get even. It's despicable!”

I let her emotions settle down a bit before saying, “I know that he lied, Marcie, and I've informed Sheriff Metzger about it.”

“How do you know? Can you prove it?”

“Let's just say that Mr. Trotter admitted to me that he was paid to say that he saw Brad kill Leboeuf.”

“
Paid?
Someone paid him to say that? Well, find that person and you've found your murderer. Who is it?”

“I don't have an answer for you yet, but Sheriff Metzger has assured me that he'll follow up. But while this is good news for you and Brad,” I continued, “there's something troubling that I feel compelled to raise.”

“What?”

“I find this awkward to ask, but did you and Gérard Leboeuf ever have an affair?”

I expected her to react emotionally, perhaps even angrily, but didn't expect the extent to which she responded. She leaped off the couch, went to the window, her hands clenched into fists, turned, and shouted, “How dare you even suggest such a thing?
How dare you?
”

“
I'm
not suggesting it, Marcie, but someone else has. I need to clear the air.”

All the anger and resentment dissipated, as though someone had opened a valve. She returned to the couch and slumped onto it.

“I need to ask you another question,” I said.

She raised her hand to stop me. “Whoever said that Leboeuf and I had some sort of relationship going must have been smoking dope. I detested the man. To think that—”

The sobs burst forth, and she wrapped her arms tightly about herself. I waited until she'd gained control of herself. I wasn't sure now if her emotional outbursts were genuine or a delaying tactic. Nevertheless, I forged ahead and asked the second question that was on my mind.

“Were you with Leboeuf in his kitchen the night he was killed? Be careful what you say.”

“Why would you think that?” she asked.

“Because you were seen there after the restaurant closed.”

She guffawed. “Who told you that—the same liar who said Leboeuf and I had had an affair?”

I began to think Jake Trotter had led me down a primrose path for his own amusement. Could he have been lying about both witnessing the murder and the visit to the bistro kitchen by Marcie Fowler? I hoped so, but something in Marcie's eyes convinced me to continue pursuing this line of questioning. “It
doesn't matter who told me, Marcie. What's important is that
you
tell the truth. No one is suggesting that you were involved in his death.” I waited before adding, “But you were there, weren't you?”

I could almost see her mind working, as though it were being displayed on a computer screen. When she said nothing, I followed up with, “I'm sure you had a perfectly legitimate reason for being there, Marcie. Did he send you a note, asking you to stop by? Was that why you were there? Denying it will only cause the authorities to suspect you of having killed Leboeuf. You told them—and me—that you'd gone directly home from the restaurant after it closed, but that wasn't true, was it?”

After drawing a deep breath, she managed, “He sent one of his men over with a message for Brad. I intercepted it.”

I immediately thought back to the phone call from Leboeuf in which he asked whether I thought that the Fowlers would be open to being bought out. Could that have been the message? I didn't want to put words in Marcie's mouth, so I waited for her to tell me more.

“He said he wanted to talk business, and I assumed he might make us an offer to buy us out.”

“What made you think he would?” I asked. “Had he approached you or Brad with that possibility?”

She shook her head. “No. But I hoped that was the case. I knew Brad would just tear his note into little pieces and throw it away. I couldn't take that chance.”

“Why would you entertain being bought out? I thought that the Fin and Claw represented a lifelong dream.”

“It was Brad's dream, not mine, although I told him it was mine, too. And it was for a while, but then it turned out to be a
nightmare. Isabel put every cent she could raise into the restaurant, and we signed our lives away for the bank loan.” She now took on a pleading tone. “Do you know what it's done to Brad, Jessica, to our marriage? He's become a tyrant, a monster. He's racked with guilt over his mother's death, feels that if he hadn't opened the restaurant she'd still be alive. Yet he can't let it go now. It was her dream, too.”

“Isabel had health problems for many years, Marcie.”

“I know that. Brad knows down deep that he wasn't responsible for her stroke—and neither was Leboeuf—but in his mind it's all bound up in the restaurant. It's not what he expected. The debt we've incurred, the undermining of our business, disloyal staff, broken promises, theft, a corrupt health inspector, all of it is cascading down on Brad and eating him up. It's been nothing but heartache since we decided to open the Fin and Claw.”

Her tears came again but softer this time, tears of fatigue and abject frustration. I moved to the couch and put an arm around her. “It's okay,” I said. “I understand.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “Brad didn't know I'd approached Leboeuf about buying us out. He would have been furious if he had. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't talk to Brad. He snapped at everything I said and just kept cursing Leboeuf and saying that he'd make the Fin and Claw a big success and drive Leboeuf out of business.” She managed a smile as she added, “He's so naive, Jessica, so naive. Drive Leboeuf out of business? Fat chance. I thought that if Leboeuf made a firm offer, I could take it to Brad and hope that he'd see it as a sensible way out. We had a good marriage and life before opening the restaurant. I had a good job, and Brad enjoyed working the lobster boats. The restaurant has torn us apart.”

“Had you made a date to see Leboeuf at his restaurant after it closed that night?”

“No. I went home after we closed, but I couldn't sleep. I kept obsessing about selling the restaurant and getting us out from under. I finally decided that even though Brad would be angry if I approached Leboeuf, I had to do it. I couldn't live this way anymore.”

“Brad said that when he returned home, you were sleeping.”

“He was protecting me. I'd gone to Leboeuf's restaurant with the hope that he was still there and that we could have a discussion about selling to him.”

“What time was that?”

“About two thirty, maybe a little later.”

“Brad hadn't arrived home when you left?”

“No, and I was concerned about that.”

“Did he usually come in very late after the restaurant closed?”

“He did then. We'd only been open a short time. I worried that Brad might have had a run-in with Leboeuf and that he'd be there when I arrived. Thankfully, he wasn't.”

“What happened next?”

“The front door to the bistro was locked, so I went to the back door that leads into the kitchen. Leboeuf was standing there in the kitchen, drinking a glass of wine. Chang, his manager, was with him. I overheard Chang say he had something to attend to but would be back. I waited until he left. I don't think he saw me. Then I stepped inside. I apologized for barging in, but waved the note and asked Leboeuf if we could have a talk. I think he was a little drunk. He laughed and said the note was meant for me, that he knew I would come. I asked if he was serious about talking business. He offered me a drink. I said no; it
wasn't a social call, and got right to the point. I asked if the note meant he might be interested in buying the Fin and Claw.”