Dying for Dinner (A Cooking Class Mystery) (12 page)

She read over my neatly written notes. "French. Owner of Tres Bonne Cuisine. Lives in Cherrydale." Eve wrinkled her nose. "See? I told you so. We know all that."

"Except there's more." I pointed to the next lines.

"Loves to cook. Good businessman. Reasonable boss, though not especially generous when it comes to salary and raises. Cares about his customers. Except for the Vavoom! thing."

Eve wasn't around the night Jim found me filling the Vavoom! jars so I filled her in about that part of the story. "Jim was disappointed," I said. "He didn't think his friend could ever be that--"

"Dishonest?" Eve flipped the page on the legal pad, but since there was nothing written past the first page, she flipped it right back. "It doesn't say here that he thinks Monsieur is dishonest."

"No." The thought sat uneasily with me, and I twitched my shoulders. "Jim didn't want to come right out and say it, so I didn't add it. But that's not the point." I reached for the pad and tapped a finger against the list. "The point is that it's a pretty short list. And pretty basic, too. Even though Jim has known Monsieur for years, he really doesn't know that much about him."

"Monsieur is a private person."

"But he's not." I thought about all those smiling faces on all those jars of Vavoom! "Monsieur is a showman. He loves publicity. He adores the spotlight. He's got a following in the area and he loves that, too. You've seen the way he perks right up when somebody walks into the shop and says they saw his picture in the paper or in some culinary magazine or another. The same thing happens at Bellywasher's when he's there and someone walks in and recognizes him. He's as happy as a kid on Christmas morning when that happens, and he's not shy about talking to anybody or about posing for pictures. So why is it that a man who loves to be the center of attention--a man we think of as our friend--why is it that we really don't know that much about him?"

Eve tipped her head. "I never really thought about it before," she admitted.

"Why would you? Why would any of us? We all meet people and we take those people at face value. They tell us they're cooks, and we believe them. Why shouldn't we? They tell us they're rocket scientists or horse trainers or that they work behind the counter at the local Starbuck's, and there isn't one reason in the world for us to stop and consider if they're telling us the truth or not."

Eve still wasn't sure where I was headed. At the risk of ruining her perfectly put together look, she worked her lower lip with her teeth. "Are you saying that Monsieur might not be who he says he is?"

"I'm saying we don't know. Maybe one of those licenses we found . . ." I looked toward the drawer of my computer desk because that's where I'd stashed the IDs. "I'm saying that maybe one of those people is the real Monsieur."

"No way." Honestly, I couldn't blame Eve for sounding so dead set against my idea. I didn't like the sound of it, either. I didn't like the way it made my insides uneasy, or the way just thinking that our friend may have deceived us made my skin crawl. "You can't fake being French, Annie. Everybody knows that. French people are . . . well . . . they're French."

"I'm not saying he's not French."

"Then what are you saying?"

I wasn't sure, and I didn't like admitting it. I sighed. "I'm saying we should check. That's all. How could it hurt? And how much can we possibly know about a person who wasn't born in this country, anyway?"

"You know a lot about Jim."

"That's different." It was, and Eve knew it. Which was exactly why she brought it up. That would explain why her eyes sparkled, too.

And why she smiled when she said, "You and Jim are falling in love, aren't you?"

The question wasn't out of line. I mean, Eve is my best friend.

"Jim is terrific." It was the truth, and I wasn't shy about admitting it.

"And?"

I didn't even try to hide my smile. "And we're falling in love."

"I knew it!" Eve was so happy for me, she shrieked. "I can't wait, Annie! I can't wait until he asks you to marry him."

When I think about Jim, I get all warm and fuzzy.

When I think about matrimony, my insides freeze up.

I guess that explains why I was suddenly feeling like a Slurpee.

I hugged my arms around myself. "There's been no talk of marriage," I said.

"But if there is--?"

"There isn't. There hasn't been. Marriage is a big step. Bigger than quitting my job at Pioneer. I wouldn't even think about it. I mean, after--"

"Peter?"

As a best friend, Eve should have known better.

She didn't. She gave me that look of hers, the one that's innocent and probing--all at the same time.

"Peter is a nuisance," I said. "I don't feel a thing for Peter. Not anymore."

"Then why has he been hanging around?"

"He hasn't been hanging around." I hadn't even thought about it, but now that I realized it, I was relieved. "I haven't seen Peter since the night of the poker game. He's ancient history. Like Tyler used to be to you."

Remember what I said about Eve being my best friend? Well, I was her best friend, too, so she shouldn't have sloughed off my comment like it was nothing at all.

"Are we going to tell Tyler?" she asked. "I mean, about Monsieur's IDs? I wonder if it's something the police should know about."

I was nobody's fool. I knew a change of subject when I saw it. Or heard it.

Like I was going to let that stop me?

Remember, we were talking best friends here, and best friends have a dispensation of sorts; they don't have to back off. Not when the subject is l-o-v-e.

"I think it's too soon to involve . . ." I made sure I put so much emphasis on this word that anybody could have seen--or heard--where I was headed. "I don't know if we should get Tyler involved." I said it again, just the same way. "Unless he is already. Involved, that is."

"Well, aren't you about as subtle as a presidential motorcade?" Eve tried to look put out, but a smile played around the corners of her mouth. "Truth be told, Tyler is not involved. Not currently, anyway. I mean, not in the immediate future."

It took a moment for this momentous news to sink in. Even after it had, I wasn't sure I'd heard her correctly. "Are you saying . . . ?"

"The wedding has been postponed again. They set a new date. They pushed it back again." Eve looked much too pleased by this announcement, but before I even had a chance to feel

A) appalled
B) frightened
C) worried
D) all of the above

she breezed right on, "Tyler says it was by mutual agreement. That's how he put it. Mutual agreement. He said that over the last months, he and Kaitlin have grown apart. You know, the way some couples do. They thought if they postponed the wedding, they might be able to work things out." She shrugged. Not like she'd been thinking about it and couldn't make sense of the situation. More like
Oh, well, what the heck, Kaitlin's loss is my gain
.

Which I'm pretty sure is why my stomach did a flip-flop.

"You know how it is sometimes, Annie," Eve said, ever the bearer of wisdom when it came to any relationships but her own. "You and Peter, you could never work things out, either."

"I tried. Peter wasn't interested." I would have thought she'd remember. "But that's beside the point, which is--"

"That we're supposed to be talking about Monsieur. Research, isn't that what you said?" In a message as un-subtle as that presidential motorcade, Eve reached over and flicked on my computer screen. "It's nearly three, Annie, and I have to be back at Bellywasher's in a little bit. We'd better get down to business."

There was no use arguing and, hey, since I'd probably spend the rest of the years I knew Eve worrying about her romantic entanglements--and since I planned to know her for the rest of my long, long life--I figured there would be time enough later to quiz her about Tyler. For now, we had Monsieur to think about.

With that in mind, I Googled his name.

"Eight pages of citations!" I bent closer to the screen for a better look. "Here's the Tres Bonne Cuisine home page," I said, pointing to each line as I went. "Here's an article about the appearance he's scheduled to make at the big D.C. food show in a couple weeks. He's one of the main presenters. That's what Jim says, anyway. Monsieur is supposed to be doing a demonstration of French cooking."

"I wonder what they'll do if we don't--"

This was something else I didn't want to think about. Two weeks was a long time. Too long to go without word of our friend. Rather than consider it, and the emptiness that assailed me when I thought about the way I'd feel if we hadn't made some positive progress by then, I kept on reading.

"Here's a page that talks about Vavoom! and how popular it is." I shook my head and clicked to the next page.

"Look! Here's one that says something about Monsieur's early life in France. That's exactly the kind of information we're looking for." I clicked on the article and when it popped up, Eve and I both bent forward, eager to read more.

The article was a profile piece that appeared in
D.C. Nights
, the local (and locally influential) culinary magazine, seven years earlier, long before I'd known Monsieur, or Jim, or that a place as terrifying to a kitchenphobe as Tres Bonne Cuisine even existed. The headline declared Monsieur the "King of D.C. Cuisine." It appeared right above a full-color photograph that showed a beaming Monsieur in a blinding white chef's jacket. He was smiling in that devil-may-care way of his while he motioned in a very Gallic,
voila!
sort of way to the sign over the front door of Tres Bonne Cuisine.

"Gosh, I hope he's all right." Eve's sentiments pretty much echoed my own thoughts. I glanced over to see that, as she looked at the photo, her eyes filled with tears. "What if he's--?"

"Not going to talk about that," I said, and because the photo of Monsieur made the same impression on me, I scrolled down to the body of the article as fast as I could. "Not even going to think about it. All we're allowed to think about is what we can do to find Monsieur. For now, this is what we can do."

Eve agreed, and reached into her purse for a tissue.

At the same time that I instructed my computer to print the article, I started skimming.

"He's been in this country for seventeen years now," I told Eve, and without me even asking her to do this, she grabbed the legal pad and added the information to my list. "His mother was named Marie. She was a pastry chef back in France and he credits her for giving him a lifelong interest in food and a desire to prepare it correctly and serve it with flair. His father was Pierre Lavoie, a sommelier. That's a wine expert," I added, because I knew even without her asking that Eve didn't have a clue.

"Monsieur was born in a little town in France called Sceau-Saint-Angel. The family bloodlines go back there for hundreds of years. Wow. Imagine having that kind of wonderful, rich heritage. I'm surprised he didn't talk about it more. I've never heard him even mention Sceau-Saint-Angel, have you?"

"No." Eve squinted at the screen so she could copy down the proper spelling of Monsieur's hometown. "Maybe he had an unhappy childhood."

I read some more. "Maybe not. He talks about accompanying his parents on trips to wineries and orchards and to the markets where they purchased the freshest ingredients for their cooking. Look, here he says something about the first time he went to Paris and ate at Laperouse." I added another aside for Eve's benefit. "It's an old, old restaurant. Very famous. Supposed to be romantic, and with fabulous food."

"So we know Monsieur had a happy home life." Eve rapped the pen against the pad. "Maybe something terrible happened to him after he came to this country. You know, unrequited love. Or a love triangle with another chef and a gorgeous food critic. Or--"

When Eve got this way, it was best to stop her before things got out of control. That's why I asked her to get the article out of my printer and put it in the file folder I'd left on my desk, the one where I'd written
Monsieur
on the tab.

I printed out some of the other information we found out about him, too, but honestly, by the time we were finished, we still didn't have much to go on.

Except for that information about Sceau-Saint-Angel, of course.

I checked the clock, did some quick mental calculations, and Googled the name of the town.

A couple minutes later, I had the phone in my hand.

"How's your high school French?" I asked Eve.

AS IT TURNED OUT, EVE'S HIGH SCHOOL FRENCH WAS
nonexistent.

I should have remembered that.

Eve took four years of Spanish. It wasn't that she was some kind of fortune-teller who anticipated our current global economy. Or that she had an inkling of how valuable it would become to be truly bilingual.

The way I remembered it, there was a cute football player who Eve had her eye on back in our high school days, and since he was Puerto Rican by birth, he was taking Spanish for an easy A. While I muscled my way through French I, II, and III under the eagle eye of Sister Mary Nunzio, Eve struggled just enough in Spanish class to make sure she needed extra tutoring from you-know-who. She went steady with that cute linebacker for the better part of our junior year.