Dying for Dinner (A Cooking Class Mystery) (16 page)

THOUGH I WOULD HAVE BEEN HARD-PRESSED TO
make a list of them, I guess there are some distinct advantages to working in a gourmet shop. I was able to prove it the next day when I used a pricey paring knife to slice apart the Bill Boxley license we'd found at Monsieur's. My knives at home would have chewed through the plastic and left behind a mess. This one, with its handle of crafted African blackwood, full-tang blade, and double bolsters (I have no idea what any of that means, but I heard Raymond describe the knives that way to a customer), slipped through the license like magic, right under the lamination, and after that, right under the photo of Monsieur that had been carefully pasted over the one of Bill Boxley.

I'd recognize that beard anywhere.

Truth be told, I sat there for a while, staring at my handiwork, completely stumped.

Monsieur took Bill's license and altered it to make it his own. But he didn't touch Bill's credit cards.

That was a good thing, right?

But it didn't explain why Monsieur wanted to be Bill Boxley.

Because Raymond couldn't help me out at the shop on Wednesday, I was working at Tres Bonne Cuisine alone. I stewed over the problem (there I go, using cooking analogies again) all that day. But Raymond being Raymond, he felt awful about leaving me in the lurch. Me being me . . . well, I'm not usually one to take advantage of other people, but this situation seemed to call for serious measures. So I took advantage of Raymond's good nature and his guilt and asked him to work on Thursday. He agreed--I knew he would--and, armed with the next most recent license in Monsieur's stash, I got up bright and early that morning and headed north to Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Too bad Eve was feeling better (I don't mean that to sound as callous as it does), because she was back at work at Bellywasher's. That meant I had to make the three-and-a-half-hour drive by myself.

While I drove, I thought over what I was going to say when the man who owned this driver's license, Fred Gardner by name, answered his front door. Would I ask all the same questions?

Have you ever lost your wallet?

Was the license taken?

How about your credit cards?

And whatever Fred Gardner told me, where would it get me?

And what would I do next?

I guess the entire experience should have been a lesson in not worrying until it was time to worry. Because when I went to the address listed on the license, I didn't find Fred Gardner. Or a house, for that matter. All I found on the corner of two busy cross streets was an empty lot.

Curious, yes?

And while I thought it over, I stopped at a nearby mom-and-pop diner for lunch.

I already had my burger and fries in front of me when I realized I was wasting a perfect opportunity. My waitress was named MaryAnn. She was a thin woman with strikingly red hair and even more startling gray roots and since everyone who walked in seemed to know all about her and her family, I guessed she'd been around for a while.

"Excuse me." She was walking away when I said this, and she held up one finger to tell me she'd be with me in a jiffy and fetched the coffeepot. It wasn't what I wanted, but I didn't object when she refilled my cup. "I wonder if you can tell me about someone who used to live around here. His name is Fred Gardner."

"Fred Gardner, the music teacher? You bet I knew Fred. Everyone in town knew Fred. I played in the high school marching band back when he was the director. Clarinet. If it wasn't for Mr. Gardner . . ." MaryAnn wore a red-and-white-striped apron. It was decorated with the kinds of pins school booster clubs sell, the ones with kids' pictures on them. She touched a hand to a picture of a prepubescent young man with short, sandy hair and big ears. He was holding a tuba that was practically as big as he was.

"Learned to love music from that man," she said. "And I passed that on to my kids and my grandkids. This is Jacob, my grandson. He can't wait until he's old enough to play in the same marching band as his granny did." She smiled down at the button. "He's a fine young man."

"I'm sure." I was. MaryAnn was just that kind of person. "Does Mr. Gardner still teach music at the high school?"

"Fred?" MaryAnn shook her head. "He's been dead for twenty years at least. They knocked down his house just a couple months ago. His kids sold the property. You know how it is. They live out of town somewhere and they don't give a damn. I hear they're gonna be building a car wash over there where Fred's house used to stand. Too bad. Used to be kids and music there all the time. Now, a car wash." She shrugged, surrendering to the inevitability of progress.

"Then maybe you can tell me . . ." I'd made a copy of the picture of Monsieur--younger and thinner even than he had been on Bill Boxley's license--from Fred Gardner's license. I pulled it out of the file folder next to the plate where my burger and fries were getting cold and held it up for MaryAnn to see. "Is this Fred Gardner?"

She took the picture out of my hands and looked at it closely. "No way!" She'd already made a move to hand the picture back to me when she took another look. "But you know, it looks like . . ." She turned the picture this way and that, her eyes narrowed.

"I've lived around here for a long, long time," she finally said. "That picture there . . . that looks like an older version of one of the boys I went to school with. He sat next to me in Mr. Gardner's music class one year . . ." A lightbulb went on inside her head. I could see the glow of it in her eyes.

"Norman Applebaum," she said, handing the picture back to me. "Can't say for sure, but it looks a whole bunch like him. We graduated together from William Allen High. Class of '67. My goodness, I haven't seen Norman in years. But I do recall hearing something about him." Again, she stopped to think. "That's it!"

Someone called to her and MaryAnn turned away. As she headed back into the kitchen to pick up an order, she delivered her final piece of information over her shoulder.

"He went out to Las Vegas. Yeah, that's what I heard. He went out to Las Vegas years and years ago. Last I heard, he came to a bad end out there."

Ten

I HAD STARTED OUT ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO A LIFE of crime. I knew it, and I wasn't at all comfortable with it.

I guess that's why, that night as I slid a copy of the William Allen High School class of '67 yearbook across the bar at Bellywasher's, my hands shook just like they had back at the Allentown Public Library when I swiped the book.

Yes, I said swiped. As in filched, purloined, lifted, (gulp) stole.

"I'm going to send it right back," I said, even though Eve and Jim hadn't asked where the book came from or what I was planning on doing with it. "The folks at the library wouldn't let me check it out. I don't have a library card for their system, plus, they said yearbooks can only be used for reference in the library. And I could have just photocopied Norman Applebaum's senior picture, but there are other pictures of him in there. He was in the drama club. And on the newspaper staff. And I thought we could take our time and really look at the pictures and we could make our own copies, and I wanted your opinions, and I promise, I really will send it back. I'll even send a note of apology." I swallowed hard. "I don't think I'll sign it."

Jim kissed me on the cheek. "You'd make a terrible criminal. It's one of the things I love about you. That, and the fact that I never have to worry about the bev naps going missing." He held up one of the little square napkins that were stacked on our bar and every other bar in America. "You'd take one to wipe up a spill and buy me a case to replace it."

I wasn't just reinforcing my position when I answered him. I wanted to make sure Jim wouldn't think less of me now that he knew I had felonious tendencies. "But I really am going to send the book back."

"As well you should." Jim skimmed a hand over the cover of the book. It had been a busy night at Belly-washer's and he'd taken a break from helping Marc and Damien clean up after the pub closed. There was a smudge of something chocolate across the front of Jim's white apron. "This yearbook is more than forty years old." He said
book
the way he said
cook
and it speaks to how upset I was that I hardly even noticed (hardly) the little thrill that raced along my skin at the sound of those delicious, long
o
's. "There probably aren't many yearbooks left from back in '67. No doubt this book is valuable to the people in that town. Even more valuable to all the alumni."

"It's a one-of-a-kind treasure." Eve joined in, as serious as I'd ever seen her. "In fact, I just heard something on the radio. There's been an all points bulletin issued. They said something about being on the lookout for a gourmet-shop worker with curly hair. They said she's shifty."

That's when I realized they were teasing. It helped. A little. So did the vision in my head, the one of me taking the yearbook to the post office first thing the next morning, putting it in an overnight envelope, and sending it right back to Allentown where it belonged.

Before I could do that, though, we needed to get down to business.

I told my conscience to shut up and flipped open the yearbook to the section where the seniors' graduation pictures were prominently displayed. The photos were arranged alphabetically. It didn't take long to find Norman.

I didn't need to ask Jim and Eve to take a gander. Even before I poked my finger at the black-and-white photo, they bent closer for a better look.

While they did, I bit my tongue, the better to keep my opinions to myself. After all, I'd had three and a half hours in the car with the William Allen High School yearbook, and in those three and a half hours--the yearbook open on the front seat beside me--I'd had plenty of opportunities to glance over at the picture of the young man with shaggy hair and wearing a Nehru jacket.

"So?" I'd waited long enough. I wanted to hear what they thought. After all, that was why I'd pilfered the yearbook in the first place.

My impatience didn't stop Eve from peering at the picture a while longer. Jim did her one better. He took the book over to where an overhead light shone directly above the bar cash register. He stared at the photograph of Norman for a long time before he shook his head.

"That's the hell of it, isn't it?" he said. "A person changes a great deal in forty years. I've seen pictures of my own mum from way back then. Wouldn't even know it was her if she didn't tell me."

I was hoping for something more conclusive, and I guess my expression gave me away, because Jim handed the book back to me. "There's a resemblance, sure enough. If you add more than forty years, and more than forty pounds, and a whole lot of gray to his hair . . . yeah, this Norman fellow might look like Jacques. But if it's really him . . ."

"Let me see it again." Eve reached over and grabbed the book out of my hands. She wrinkled her nose. "Yeah," she said. "It's him. For sure. Maybe. Or maybe not."

My spirits sank. I'd already been over the
definitelys
and the
maybes
and the
maybe nots
inside my head. All the way back from Allentown. I was hoping Eve and Jim would be more help.

I squinted at the picture, trying to imagine the fresh-faced boy in it wearing a crisp, white Tres Bonne Cuisine apron and smiling back at me from a jar of Vavoom!

"Let's say it is him." I threw out the suggestion because standing there wondering was getting us nowhere. "That leaves us with even more questions. If Monsieur started life as Norman Applebaum and then he was all those other people . . ." I thought about the stack of phony IDs and my spirits slumped even lower. "It's overwhelming. I mean, where do we even begin?"

Pub keeper that he is, Jim knew exactly where. He poured a glass of white wine for me, a glass of red for Eve (her current favorite was Shiraz), and a bitter, dark beer for himself. He put the glasses on the tray, carried the tray to a nearby table, and pulled out chairs for Eve and me.

"We're getting ahead of ourselves," he said. "And that's going to accomplish nothing at all."

"But--"

He stopped me with a look. "It isn't like you to get so discouraged," he said. "You've never lost faith in yourself and your detective abilities before. Not with any of your other cases. You're feeling down because you're worried about Jacques."