Cooking Up Murder (27 page)

That's when the pieces clicked.

"Yuri? Hi, it's me, Eve. Eve DeCateur. Sorry you're not there and I have to leave this message. I really wanted to talk to you."

I heard Eve's voice as if it came from a million miles away. It bumped around inside my head, smacking against the realization that hit me like a freight train.

"You met me at your gallery," she was saying in her sweetest Southern belle voice. "And you know my friend Annie. Annie Capshaw? She's the one I've been working with on the you-know-what. You know, the case we're trying to solve. The one that involves you-know-who and the art gallery."

I jolted out of my daze and turned in my chair. "Eve, hang up the phone."

She waved aside my protest. "Listen, Yuri, I'm calling because--"

"Eve, hang up the phone."

She rolled her eyes. "I just wanted you to know that we've got what you were looking for. The--"

I didn't know I could move that fast. Not until I snatched the phone out of Eve's hand and hit the Off button.

"Annie Capshaw! What on earth has gotten into you?" Eve tried to take the phone back, but I threw it over to the other side of the room. "Do you know how rude that was? I didn't even finish leaving my message."

"Good."

"Good?" She tipped her head, trying to work through the thing. "I just don't understand you. First you want Yuri's help. Then you don't. How are we going to know what that disc is all about until we get him to tell us?"

"We don't need his help." I grabbed Eve's arm and tugged her closer to the computer. "Look!"

"At what?" She bent at the waist and narrowed her eyes. "It's a list. Big deal. It's--"

"AK-47. HK MP5. M16." I read over the list. "It's guns, that's what it is."

"What?" She sprang back and looked at me as if I'd suddenly started talking Romanian.

I pointed to the screen. "AK-47. M16. I'm no expert, and I don't know jack about weapons, but I recognize these names. This has nothing to do with the art gallery, Eve. It has nothing to do with stealing money. At least not gallery money. I don't know what the rest of the pages mean, but I'd bet anything that Beyla . . . She's not cooking the books. She's smuggling guns into the country."

Seventeen

WE WERE IN OVER OUR HEADS. WAY OVER OUR
heads.

I knew it the moment I saw the names of those guns pop up on my computer screen. It took a little convincing and a little more explaining, but Eve (who before my minilecture on global politics and federal crimes was inclined to think that lawbreaking was lawbreaking whether we were talking guns or art gallery money) finally understood, too.

The trick now, of course, was to figure out what to do about it.

Did I go to the police and admit that I'd stolen vital evidence from the scene of a crime?

Did I hope that Yuri returned Eve's phone call, and that he'd pick up the disc and we'd be rid of it?

Or did I stick where I had been stuck since I put that disc I my computer: my brain in a loop, my mind so muddled I'd actually given out the wrong change to a bank customer that day? Since it was something I'd never done before, I guess the loop and the muddle were winning.

By next evening's Marvelous Meats class, I still hadn't worked things through. Which of course didn't explain the mess that was my cheeseburger pizza. I liked to think so, but I wasn't kidding myself. Not anymore. As much as I tried to concentrate on the advice Jim tossed out to the class as easily as he flung ketchup, mustard, and other traditional burger ingredients onto pizza dough with the skill of a magician and the flair of an artist, I couldn't turn my mind off.

Guns.

Smuggling.

Murder.

The words whirled around like the pickles, wine, and secret spices Jim tossed in a blender to make his own relish.

It was one thing playing detective to try to help Eve get back at Tyler. It was another to really consider the international implications of what Beyla was doing. And I wasn't kidding myself: I knew I didn't know the half of it.

It was that half that scared me half to death.

I was just scraping the burnt remnants of cheddar cheese off my pizza pan when Monsieur Lavoie stuck his head into the classroom and wagged one finger in Jim's direction, calling him out into the hallway. "There is a phone call for you. They say it is important."

It must have been. Jim was back in less than a minute.

"Have to skedaddle," he told the class, but he was looking right at me while he said it. "Sorry to leave you high and dry. Going to need to cancel tomorrow night's class, too. You've got your recipe for the pork loin marinated in orange juice and soy sauce. Try it at home. It's fabulous. In the meantime . . ." He consulted his class syllabus. "I'll see you all back here on Friday for Delightful Desserts. Can you believe it's our last class?"

He headed into the back kitchen and came out carrying a motorcylce helmet and a jacket, mouthing the words
I'll call
as he walked by.

And just like that, class was over.

"Well, that's weird," Eve chirped. If I wasn't so busy being preoccupied, I might have rejoiced that for once, Eve's culinary results were just as bad as mine. Her pizza crust was the color of the toffee twin set she wore with her black capris. "What do you suppose has gotten into Jim?"

"Obviously, it's something important. He'll let me know."

"You're very trusting."

"Shouldn't I be?" Until that very moment, it had never crossed my mind not to be. Not with Jim. "You don't think--" My thought was interupped by the ring of a cell phone. It was Beyla's. She grabbed her purse and headed out the door.

"I'll bet she's up to no good," Eve whispered.

It seemed like a pretty sure bet.

I tossed down the towel I'd used to dry my pizza pan. "You up for tailing her again?"

"Are you sure you want to?" Eve's voice was anxious.

I wasn't. But I still hadn't made up my mind about what to do with the disc and the information on it. Whatever we saw Beyla do, wherever she went, whoever she met with . . . maybe it would help me come to a decision.

I held onto that thought as we went outside. I clung to it as we dodged raindrops, following Beyla as she walked away from the parking lot, across the street, and a couple blocks up from Tres Bonne Cuisine. By the time she got to a placed called Bucharest, I was hanging on to my hopes by my fingernails.

We'd played it safe and smart, staying far enough back so that Beyla didn't see us, but when she went inside the restaurant, we dared to get closer. We huddled under the awning above the front door and watched her through the rain-spotted window. She said something to the hostess, who nodded and led her away from the door.

"Nothing." Eve's shoulders drooped. She spun around and leaned against the building. Her hair was as wet as mine. On Eve, slick and wet looked good. On me . . . well, my hair was so curly, rain almost never penetrated. And humidity only made it curlier. I suspected that right about now, I looked like I had a head full of rotini noodles, and one glance at my reflection in the window confirmed my worst fears.

"She's going to dinner, that's all." Eve was disappointed. "She's not going to lead us anywhere interesting."

"Who schedules a dinner on the night of a cooking class?" I took the chance of peeking in the window again, but by now, the hostess was back at her station, and Beyla was nowhere in sight. "Beyla didn't know Jim was going to cancel class. Jim didn't even know that. He would have mentioned it to me if he did. And Bucharest . . ." I studied the lighted sign above the door. "That sounds mighty familiar. It might be--" I fished in my pocket for the piece of paper Drago had given me the night he died.

"Bucharest!" I exclaimed and held the paper up for Eve to see, my mind already spinning with the possibilities. "He wrote the address of the gallery on the back of a receipt from this place. That means he'd been here. I wonder if he ever met Beyla here. Maybe she's meeting somebody again."

Eve didn't look convinced. "Maybe she's just hungry."

"Maybe we should find out."

Just as I was about to head inside, she plucked at my sleeve. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked. "I've already gotten you into enough trouble. If it wasn't for me, we would never have started this investigation. You never would have lied to the police. You never would have concealed evidence. You never would have stolen anything, either, because you're the most honest person I know."

"And I would have never stopped being such a sissy, would I? Come on, Eve. Let's finish what we started."

The grin Eve gave me in return was all the response I needed. We headed inside.

I guess I was hungry, but then, that was no surprise--I hadn't been able to eat my cheeseburger pizza. It smelled really good inside Bucharest. Directly in front of the door was a desk, where the hostess was busy on the phone taking a reservation. To her right was a doorway into a dark, wood-panelled bar, and behind her was a long, narrow hallway. I'd seen the same setup in restaurants in other old buildings in the area, and I suspected the hallway led into a room in the back that was the main dining area. With a smile at the hostess, I pointed in that direction, like I knew where I was going and who I was looking for.

Actually, I did.

I just didn't know who I'd find her with when I got there.

The hallway opened into exactly the kind of room I expected, but unfortunately, when it did, there was no place to stand back and stay out of sight. Eve was eager to get wherever we were going, and when I stopped to peek around the corner, she kept going. She bumped me from behind and, like it or not, I was catapulted out of the shelter of the hallway and into the room.

Even in the dim lighting that passed for ambiance, I saw Beyla immediately.

And she saw me.

She was seated at a table for two, her back to the windows that ran along that entire side of the restaurant. Though I could tell she struggled to keep her expression impassive and her eyes on the man seated across from her, one look at me and she went as white as the tablecloth she was clutching in her hands.

Naturally, the man seated with his back to me turned to see the cause of her alarm.

"It's Yuri!" I grabbed Eve's arm and pushed her back the other way before she even had a chance to peek into the dining area. "She's with Yuri. Damn it! Something tells me we shouldn't have come. He might be trying to get information out of her. Or--" I stopped dead. "Or they might be in this thing together!"

The very thought was enough to get me going again. With Eve leading the way, we raced toward the front of the restaurant. The hostess was nice enough to ask if we needed assistance finding the party we were looking for, but we didn't stop to return the pleasantry. In fact, we didn't stop at all. We had just made it to the front door and Eve was already outside under the awning when a hand clamped down on my shoulder.

I wasn't surprised when I turned and saw that the hand belonged to Yuri.

"Ah, Miss Capshaw!" He smiled in a way that would make anyone watching us think we were old friends. "So good of you to take the time to stop by. You will join us for dinner?" He backed up a step and made a broad gesture, like a waiter showing a guest to table.

"No, thanks. I'm not very hungry."

"But surely that is why you are here?" Yuri motioned toward the dining room again. I stayed put. "What else would bring you to Bucharest on such a rainy night?"

I peeked around Yuri's shoulder toward the back dining room, picturing Beyla there.

"I might ask you the same thing," I said.

Surprise flickered across his face. I couldn't tell if it was because he didn't expect me to come right out and ask why he was consorting with the enemy, or because of the nasty tone in my voice.

He lit a cigarette. Apparently the No Smoking sign above our heads (in English and Romanian) did not apply to him. As he slowly dragged in and let out a lungful of smoke, he narrowed his eyes just a bit, as if he'd never seen me clearly before and wanted to get a better look.

"What is that saying about the bees and the honey? You can catch more by being sweet, yes? You see what I mean? I am being sweet to Beyla so she does not think that I know what she has done. In the meantime, I try to find out what she knows. And what she doesn't know."