A Cookbook Conspiracy (11 page)

“That’s all right,” she said. “I know you’re busy taking care of Baxter.”

“Thanks for your understanding. Would you mind coming with me now to answer some questions?”

“Are we going to the police station?” she asked again. She was so tired, she sounded
like a naive young girl.

“No, no. Let’s just find a quiet table on the other side of the room.”

“Okay.” As she slid off her stool, I noticed her shivering, so I grabbed my coat and
handed it to her. “Here, put this on.”

“Oh, thanks, Brooks.” She tossed it over her shoulders, pulled it tight around her,
closed her eyes and sighed. “So much better.”

My crazy bald sister could be outspoken, judgmental, and crabby as hell. But right
now she looked so vulnerable, it almost broke my heart.

“May I sit with her?” I asked Jaglom. “I promise I’ll be quiet.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Sure.”

I took her hand, and we followed the good-hearted inspector to the far corner of the
room. He picked out a table for four and sat down across from us with his notepad
open in front of him.

“So you’re a chef,” Jaglom began. “That must be an interesting way to make a living.”

“I love it,” she said. “My specialty is vegetarian cuisine.”

“Ah. Now, I know that’s a healthy way to eat,” he said, patting his round stomach,
“but I’m more of a burgers-and-fries man myself. Probably obvious, right?”

Savannah smiled and I wanted to hug him.

“Now, Savannah, can you tell me what happened tonight? After the restaurant closed,
who else was here besides you and Mr. Cromwell? Just start wherever you want and I’ll
interrupt you if I have a question.”

Savannah recounted everything she’d told me and Derek earlier. Jaglom stopped her
often to ask her to repeat something or to
clarify something else. She named all the chefs and brought up what Baxter had said
about the fish knife. She remembered some details she’d left out of her explanation
to me and Derek.

Suddenly the front door was shoved open, causing us both to jolt.

“What the hell?” Inspector Jaglom muttered, then relaxed as two techs wheeled a gurney
into the restaurant. “It’s just the team from the medical examiner’s office.”

“Hear we’ve got a pickup,” one of the guys said, and the other one snickered. I could
tell they were a regular laugh riot around the morgue. A serious-looking woman walked
in behind them and waved to Inspector Jaglom. I figured she must be an assistant medical
examiner.

Savannah looked stricken by the lackadaisical attitude of the techs.

“It’s okay,” I murmured, slipping my arm around her. I could feel her shaking.

“But they’ll take him away,” she whispered.

“Right. And they’ll find out exactly how he died and maybe figure out who did it.
That’s a good thing. So just relax, okay?”

Easy for me to say. I’d forgotten all about Baxter being taken off to be autopsied.
I shuddered at the thought.

Fleischman, the female cop, jogged over to lead the gurney guys to the kitchen. Within
seconds they all disappeared around the corner.

Savannah stared at the front door for a full minute before Jaglom coughed tactfully.
“Can we continue?”

“Yes,” I said firmly.

Savannah nodded, took a deep breath, and began again. It took her a while to get back
up to speed, but as she spoke about Baxter and her chef friends, she grew more animated
and began to sound like her regular self.

The inspector took lots of notes and asked questions intermittently. He made Savannah
repeat a few more things, assuring her
that he just wanted to write the words down exactly as she related them.

He seemed to believe her. If that wasn’t true, then he was definitely better at playing
the good cop than his partner was. And as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I
worried that Inspector Lee might show up suddenly to play the bad cop. I glanced across
the room to check up on her and saw her deeply involved in an intense conversation
with Derek. Good. I hoped he would keep her busy until it was time to go.

Some time passed before the assistant ME and her tech guys reappeared with their gurney.
This time, though, they had a passenger, Baxter, zipped up inside a black body bag.
The guys negotiated the tables and chairs expertly and rolled out the door as quickly
as they had come in.

As silence fell, Derek approached the table. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Nope.” Jaglom closed his notepad and shoved it back into his pocket. “I think that’s
it for now.”

Savannah seemed surprised. “Are you sure?”

He pursed his lips. “I won’t beat around the bush, Ms. Wainwright. You’re a person
of interest in this investigation, so I’ll advise you not to leave town for the time
being.”

Savannah looked alarmed. “But I don’t live in town. I live in Sonoma.”

“She owns a restaurant in Dharma,” Derek explained. “We always know where to find
her.”

I flashed him a grateful smile.

“I’m there all the time,” Savannah added.

Jaglom glanced at all three of us before he nodded, then took his notepad out again
and jotted down the name of the restaurant and several phone numbers.

“Please call me there anytime. I want to help.” Savannah looked at me. “Can we go
home now?”

“If it’s okay with the inspector.” I glanced at Jaglom.

He nodded. “You’re both free to go for now.”

“Then let’s go.” I shook hands with Inspector Jaglom. “Thank you so much.”

He seemed to recognize that I was thanking him for being considerate to my sister,
and he returned a gentlemanly salute. I just prayed that his amiability stemmed from
his belief that Savannah was truly innocent.

Just as we were gathering our belongings to leave for the night, Savannah’s chef friends
trudged into the restaurant, herded by two cops. Every one of the chefs looked like
the walking dead. They’d obviously been roused out of a sound sleep.

I would have had more sympathy for them if I hadn’t been stuck here for the past few
hours myself.

Colette saw Savannah first and ran to hug her. “I can’t believe he’s dead.” She sobbed
quietly on Savannah’s shoulder.

“I know,” Savannah said, sniffling. “It’s horrible.”

Kevin, looking stunned and bleary-eyed, plodded over and clutched them both. “We saw
him less than two hours ago. It can’t be true.”

The group hug grew larger as the other chefs joined them.
There were more sniffles and moans, and I had to walk away because I was starting
to well up again. My eyes wouldn’t survive the night if I kept crying. I didn’t even
like Baxter Cromwell, but I still couldn’t keep the tears from falling as I watched
and listened to his friends mourn him.

My gaze focused in on Margot, who stood on the sidelines watching and waiting, just
as I’d seen her do before. After a moment, she approached Savannah and gave her what
looked like a warm, meaningful hug.

“You poor thing,” Margot murmured. “Have you been here the whole time?”

“Yes. I was so exhausted, so I went to rest in the ladies’ room while I waited for
my sister to pick me up, and then I walked into the kitchen and—”

“Savannah!” I cried.

“What?” She whipped around. “What’s wrong?”

“I need your help with something.”

“Okay, okay,” she muttered, then looked at Margot. “I’ll be right back.”

I grabbed her arm and dragged her into the ladies’ room.

“What are you doing?” she said irately. “What happened?”

I checked under the doors of the two stalls to make sure we were alone, then locked
the door. “You can’t discuss the details about what happened tonight with any of your
friends. Especially about you finding Baxter and pulling the knife out of his gut.”

“Why not?”

“Because from now on, this is a criminal investigation. If you discuss the details,
you could be giving the killer a way to frame you for murder.”

She groaned with impatience. “That’s ridiculous.”

But I could tell I’d frightened her, and I gripped her shoulders for emphasis. “Just
please don’t say anything to anyone except the police. Or me and Derek.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” she whined. “My friends would never do anything
to hurt me.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I wish you were right, but unfortunately one of your friends could be Baxter’s killer.”

“Brooklyn, that’s—”

I held up my hand to stop her. “Let’s play a little game. Say I’m the killer.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Humor me. So you and I are talking and you confide in me that you’re the one who
found Baxter. And I’m fascinated! I want more particulars because, you know, we’re
friends. And you can’t help but go into all the gory details about pulling that big,
bloody knife out of him.”

She made a face, but I could tell she was catching my drift.

“So when it’s my turn to talk to the cops,” I continued, “I let it slip that all those
years ago in Paris, Baxter treated you so badly and cheated on you and finally dumped
you. He hurt you really badly. I might elaborate on some of the fights you two used
to have.”

“You’re getting silly.”

I ignored her. “And when I’m asked to tell the nice detective what happened earlier,
I’ll tell him that I came back to the kitchen to get something I forgot, and I saw
you and Baxter in the middle of a terrible argument. You were so angry with him, I
was afraid to interfere, so I just left quietly.”

Savannah frowned. “But we weren’t arguing.”

I rolled my eyes. She could be so obtuse sometimes. “I know you weren’t. But I’m a
desperate killer and I’m willing to do anything to escape being caught. So I have
to make up lies, get it? Okay, so I also remember seeing that big, sharp fish knife
right there on the counter next to you while you were arguing with Baxter. So I mention
that to the cops.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I don’t want to go to jail!”

“Oh, right.”

My sister was brilliant, but she was tired. I knew she understood what I was saying;
it was just taking her some time to catch up.

“So as I talk to the cops,” I continued, “I’m planting seeds, making stuff up, laying
the groundwork to make
you
look like the guilty one. Because, after all, you were seen with the bloody knife
in your hand. You told me all about it.”

Savannah opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Do you get what I’m saying?” I asked, because I could never be sure she was paying
attention.

“Yes, yes,” she said crossly. “I get it. I still don’t believe one of my friends could’ve
killed Baxter, but I understand what you’re saying.”

“And you won’t say a word about anything to anyone?” I reiterated.

“I said yes.”

“Okay. We can go back out there now.”

“Sheesh.”

Fine, I was a pain in the neck, but at least my sister wouldn’t go to jail. Not if
I had anything to say about it.

Once the two detectives had everyone’s names and basic information, they split up
the interrogation duties. Lee took over the private dining room located off another
hallway behind the bar, and Jaglom settled at the table at the far corner of the front
room where he had interviewed Savannah earlier.

I wasn’t sure if they had planned it that way or not, but Inspector Lee ended up interviewing
all the men, while Jaglom spoke to all the women.

The cops had given Derek and me the okay to go home, but Savannah didn’t want to leave
her friends. She was worried that
the police might cart one of them off to jail, so she wanted to be here to lend her
support. She insisted she wouldn’t be able to sleep, anyway.

I was about to protest when Derek murmured, “You know you want to stay, too.”

It was true, damn it. So did that make me a crime scene junkie? Or a homicide detective
groupie? More questions with no answers.

Since I was staying, I wanted to pay close attention to what was going on. From my
seat at the end of the bar, I watched the interplay between Inspector Jaglom and each
of the chefs he interviewed. Occasionally I could snatch a snippet of conversation—because
I did indeed have ears like a desert fox, as Savannah had claimed recently.

Then I overheard Kevin say the word
cookbook
. I watched her carefully and saw her grit her teeth as she rocked in her chair, holding
her stomach as though she was in pain. It was subtle, but I saw it on her face.

Was she talking about the cookbook Savannah had given Baxter? She seemed agitated,
but just as anxious to hide her reactions from the inspector. Unfortunately I couldn’t
hear the words she was saying.

I had to get closer, but discretion was key. I stood and stretched and yawned, then
said in a clear voice, “You know, I think I’ll be more comfortable waiting in one
of those padded booths.”

Yeah, discretion was my middle name.

Halfway across the room, I slid casually into a booth, got myself settled, and folded
my arms on the table. Resting my head on my arms, I pretended to doze off. My hair
fell in a curtain over my face, giving me the perfect shield for sneaking peeks at
Kevin. I could hear her better, but it was a little tough to see her through all my
hair.

It gave me a new level of respect for Cousin Itt from
The Addams Family
.

Kevin was still speaking so quietly that I could catch only every other word or so.
What I did hear, while intriguing, seemed to have nothing to do with the subject of
murder or bodies or bloody knives. Or even cookbooks.

But then one word she said jumped out at me. “Blackmail.”

Blackmail?
Was Baxter being blackmailed? He didn’t seem like the type of person who’d willingly
pay off a blackmailer, even to keep an embarrassing or incriminating secret hidden.
No, Baxter was the type who would expose the blackmailer to the world and reap the
commercial benefits. But maybe not. I suppose we all had deep, dark secrets to hide.