Cooking Up Murder (15 page)

And number two?

That was pretty much a no-brainer. Monsieur Lavoie could have disposed of the whatever-it-was simply by tossing it over the side of the Dumpster. But he didn't.

Whatever he was getting rid of, Monsieur wanted to make sure it was gone for good. As in smashed to smithereens.

Apparently whatever it was, he wanted to make sure no one else found it, either.

"I'VE GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU."

Eve was waiting for me at our cooking station when I got back from our lunch break. I half laughed, wondering how a roast beef or a ham sandwich could cause the shimmer of excitement in her eyes. But then I noticed that she wasn't holding either. Suddenly, I was glad that I'd had that yogurt after all.

"Bread dough?" I put away my purse and pulled out my own bowl. The dough inside was as flat as a pancake. "Looks like I could use some."

"No, silly." Eve made a face and looked around to make sure no one was listening.

I looked around, too, and just like my dough, my spirits fell. All around us, our fellow students were returning from lunch and checking on their creations. I could hear their murmurs of amazement when they saw how what had been heavy, dense balls of water and flour had magically transformed into light and airy clouds of yeasty-smelling wonder.

"I've got something better than bread dough."

Eve's word yanked me away from my thoughts, and I remembered that she wasn't the only one who'd accomplished something on our lunch hour.

"I've got something, too," I told her. "Information. About Monsieur Lavoie. He's up to something. He was out in the back parking lot smashing glass."

Eve dismissed my findings with a shake of her shoulders. "This is better," she said.

"But it could mean something. Whatever he was breaking into a million little pieces, it was obvious he didn't want anyone to find it. Or identify it. What if it was--"

"Foxglove?" Eve stuck something so close to my nose, I had to back up so that my eyes could focus and see what it was. It was a thin glass vial stopped with a cork, filled with what looked like a dried herb.

"Foxglove?" I parroted the word and automatically grabbed for the vial. Not that I knew what I was looking for, but I turned it in my fingers, studying the dark green leaves from every angle. "How do you know?"

"Well, what else could it be?" Eve rolled her eyes. "That's what Drago died from, wasn't it? Foxglove poisoning."

"And you're thinking of using it yourself now?"

Eve wasn't in the mood for jokes. "She left it here," she said, with a meaningful look at Beyla's empty workstation. "That's where I found it."

"You did?" I thought back to the inspection I'd done before I headed downstairs. "No way. I looked."

"In the drawers?"

Of course not. I never would have dared.

I didn't need to explain that to Eve. That's the thing with a best friend--she knew more about me than I did about myself. Including that I'd never do anything that rash, that sneaky, or that borderline dishonest.

Now she also knew that I could have cracked our case wide open and didn't. Because I was too cautious to take a chance.

My gaze traveled to Beyla's station. Like ours, it was complete with a cupboard for pots and pans, a shelf (where we'd left our bread dough to rise), and two drawers. I knew one of my drawers had knives and graters and meat thermometers and such in it. I kept my purse in the other. "You mean--"

"Did I snoop? You betcha!" Eve grinned. "It was worth it, too, wasn't it? Look at it, Annie. Isn't it amazing?"

I took another gander at the vial of dried herbs in my hand.

"But how do you know--"

"Come on, what else could it be? I'd bet anything this is the stuff she used to try to poison you in class last night."

The very thought made my stomach a little queasy. I pushed the vial back into Eve's hands. "No way."

"Why not?"

"She wouldn't be so dumb as to leave it here."

"She didn't think anyone would find it. I mean, not without a warrant or subpoena or whatever. Besides, Beyla didn't know she wasn't going to be here today--she couldn't have known she was going to get sick. She was probably going to take another shot at killing you."

"Oh, that's a pleasant thought!" I angled a look at the vial before Eve tucked it in her purse. "How are we going to find out for sure?"

"What it is?" Eve wrinkled her nose. In her mind, she'd already made up her mind that the vial was filled with foxglove. She wasn't anticipating my scepticism. "We can't taste it."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"Somebody here might know."

"And we can't take the chance of asking."

Eve's golden brows dipped low over her eyes like they always did when she was thinking hard. "I know!" Her eyes lit. "I've got just the person who can help us. We'll go see her tonight. After class."

"Not tonight we can't," I reminded her, just as Jim stepped out of the kitchen and toward the front of the room.

Eve took a look at him, and her excited expression melted. "I forgot."

Honestly, I didn't know how it was possible.

I'd been trying to forget. And between playing detective, trying to deduce what Monsieur Lavoie was up to, going to get that yogurt for lunch, and stopping for that double scoop of chocolate raspberry from the ice cream place I passed on my way back from the whole foods store--just to settle my nerves--I'd nearly done it, too.

Nearly.

Because just thinking of spending time with Jim after class made me feel as light as a cloud and as airy as my bread dough wasn't. And just thinking that I'd been invited along only because he was being polite . . .

I imagined myself smiling and waving good-bye as he headed up the river.

"Get a grip, Annie," I muttered to myself. I had to keep it together long enough to find out how much Jim knew. He was getting uncomfortably interested in our investigation, and Eve and I couldn't afford to take any chances.

Besides, it was just a couple of drinks.

I glanced over at Eve, who was busy applying a fresh coat of lip gloss.

It was going to be a long night.

Ten

"SIT STILL! RELAX! YOU'RE DOING FINE."

I wasn't.

For the umpteenth time since we arrived at Whitlow's On Wilson, I shifted my position in the vinyl booth. "I just can't get comfortable," I told Eve.

She glanced over to the bar where Jim had gone to get our drinks. "Stop worrying, will you. He's not looking at you under a microscope."

"No, he's looking at
you
under a microscope." I sighed.

Eve stuck out her tongue.

I did the Zen thing again, drawing in a breath through my nose and letting it out through my mouth. By the time Jim sidestepped his way through the crowd between the bar and our table and showed up with Eve's lite beer and a glass of Chardonnay for me, I was almost human again.

Almost.

He went back to the bar for his own drink, and I leaned over to Eve.

"What if he wants to talk about cooking?"

I cringed at the memory of the loaf of bread I'd produced earlier that day. If NASA ever needed a substitute for moon rocks, something told me they'd give me a call.

"Don't worry about it!" Eve laughed. She could afford to; her bread was light and airy and delicious. "You heard what Jim said back in class. He said good bread takes practice. I was just lucky, that's all."

"And I'm a disaster." I pretended to sip my Chardonnay, but I was really watching Jim over the rim of my glass.

"Honestly, Annie, Peter needs to be drawn and quartered. No, that's too good a fate for that no-good, lying cheat." Eve's lips thinned, her eyes narrowed. I'd seen that look before, and I knew she was imagining some kind of bizarre revenge that she'd talk about with glee but never carry out. "What that man did to your self-esteem is criminal."

The word snapped me back to reality.

"Speaking of criminal . . ." It wasn't easy to see past the groups of people standing between us and the bar--I had to sit up and crane my neck. If I leaned just the right way, I could look between a tall, bald guy with his back to me and a woman in a red sequined top and too-big hair to see Jim paying for the drinks. I needed a moment to talk to Eve before he got back to the table. "You don't think he's involved, do you?"

"Jim?" Eve's eyebrows shot up. It was clear this was one piece of the puzzle she hadn't considered before. "No." She shook her head, convinced. "He's too much of a hottie."

"Hot has nothing to do with it."

"He's too friendly."

"Maybe because he wants to find out how much we know."

"He's too--"

"Talking about cooking, are you?"

The way Jim said
cooking
made my knees weak. He pronounced it like
kook
.

Kooking
.

It was adorable.

Maybe he wasn't a bad guy after all.

"Actually, we were talking about crime."

Eve always was one to lay her cards on the table. Jim, it seemed, was more into the poker-faced approach. He settled himself in the booth across from us. His beer was the color of chocolate and the foam on top was as thick as whipped cream. He took a sip and grabbed a pretzel from the bowl in the center of the table.

After another sip of beer and a bite of pretzel, he cleared his throat. "So you think Beyla killed Drago?"

"Nobody said that. Not exactly." I felt like somebody had to give the amateur detectives' version of the surgeon general's warning. Before we said something we might regret later, we had to make sure all our bases were covered. "We're not accusing Beyla of anything."

"Sure we are!" So much for subtlety. Eve waved away my attempts at being impartial. "She hated the man. Pure and simple. She couldn't stand his guts."

Jim cocked his head. "And you know this, how?"

"We don't know it," I interjected before Eve could get us in any deeper. Somebody had to retain some sort of standards. "We don't know anything about Beyla and Drago's relationship, except that she says she didn't know him, and we know that's not true. We saw them fighting in the parking lot the night Drago was killed. And even though she says she didn't, we know she met him even before that night."

Jim didn't have to ask--I knew what he was thinking.

"I did some research," I confessed, and I wondered if Jessica Fletcher ever felt as foolish as I did at that moment. Did anyone in Cabot's Cove ever come right out and say that she was nothing but a busybody? At least now Jim knew there was more to me than just bad cooking--he knew I was nosy, too.

"I went to the library," I continued, because there didn't seem to be much point in not explaining myself. "I went through the microfiche and checked the local news stories. I found one about the opening of Drago's art gallery."

"Beyla was there," Eve interrupted. "She was in a picture with Drago."

"That's very good." Jim took another sip of his beer. "Did you think of doing that bit of research on your own?" He aimed the question at me, not at Eve, and for a couple seconds, I hesitated. What was it called when you told lies about people, libel or slander? Could Jim be angling for a piece of the pie when he turned around and reported what I'd said to Beyla, and then Beyla turned around and sued me for it?