Inherit the Word (The Cookbook Nook Series) Read online

“Of course you won’t. I won’t let you.”

  “Are you going to double my salary to keep me?”

  “Not quite yet.”

  Katie chuckled. “It was worth a try. Don’t worry. I’m sticking around for a long time. I love the café. It’s my baby.”

  I set up my station with items for three Caesar BLT salads: lettuce wedges, avocados, tomatoes, hardboiled eggs, already-cooked bacon, and blue cheese. While I was chopping tomatoes, Katie brought a bowl of ice water and placed it beside the lettuce wedges.

  “What’s my secret to great salads?” Katie said and didn’t wait for a response. “Glad you asked. Prepping the greens properly. Now, Jenna, take the lettuce and dunk them in that ice bath I’ve prepared.” She pointed to the bowl. “Don’t overhandle them, or the lettuce will wilt. Simply agitate them a bit. Hoo-boy.” She patted her abdomen. “Am I ever hungry. I couldn’t cook like this at home. Papa would grumble and moan. Plain meat and potatoes for him.” Katie’s father was not the most sympathetic man in the world. Recently I’d learned that he had verbally abused Katie her entire life, calling her ugly and worthless. She was neither.

  “Where will I find chicken breasts?” I said.

  “In the refrigerator. Second shelf from the bottom. Grab three eggs, as well.”

  I fetched the chicken breasts and, following Katie’s lead, dipped the pieces in egg and then rolled each in seasoned flour. Next, tentatively—I had never fried anything before, and hot oil doesn’t look all that friendly—I set the dredged chicken in a basket. No fear, no fear. I lowered the basket into a vat of bubbling canola oil and quickly moved back.

  “Eight minutes,” Katie said.

  I was more than willing to be patient. There wasn’t an oven mitt long enough to make my arm feel protected from hot oil. “Why does the oil have to be scalding?” I asked.

  “Oil has to be hot enough to seal the outside of whatever you’re cooking. If not, the food will absorb the oil.” As Katie chopped up eggplant, she said, “Butter is different. We want the onion slices to absorb the butter.”

  Bailey sautéed the onions until they were brown, and then she slowly added the eggplant and herbs. “Jenna, any word on what your mysterious key fits?”

  “No.” I told them about my failed Internet search yesterday for a matching key shape. Since then, I hadn’t had a moment to breathe, let alone do another search. I pictured Tito twirling his ring of keys, and although I had ruled out the key fitting the lock on a desk, I wondered if it might open an office door or a file cabinet. “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Miss O’Hara,” Bailey teased, referring to the literary Scarlett O’Hara’s infuriating procrastination.

  “I will. Promise. I just have bigger things on my mind.”

  “Bigger than the puzzle your husband left you?”

  “Bigger, as in another person in town is dead and Ellen Bryant might be the police’s main suspect.”

  “Don’t you think Mitzi killed both victims?” Katie asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  Katie hitched her chin at Bailey. “Toss in the leeks and mushrooms. Stir with a wooden spoon.”

  “I hope my mother is off the hook,” Bailey said.

  I hoped so, too. Why wasn’t Cinnamon Pritchett being more forthcoming? I filled Bailey in about the fight Keller had witnessed between Mitzi and Willie. She laughed at the idea of Mitzi out in public, wearing only a salon robe and blue cream on her face. Next, I recapped Mitzi’s flare-up with Sam at the shop, my suspicion that Mitzi had borrowed Ellen’s coat, and Sam’s verbal assault on Ellen.

  “What about Ellen’s sister, Norah?” Bailey said. “You don’t trust her. What if she’s framing Mitzi? What if”—she held up a hand—“and I know this is a reach, but what if Norah is the one lacing Mitzi’s drinking water to make her appear tipsy and off balance?”

  I said, “Don’t you think Mitzi, if she’s not a drinker, would have noticed something was different about her water?”

  “Vodka doesn’t smell.”

  “But it has a taste,” I countered. “And how would Norah have gained access to the water? She wasn’t here for the first round of the contest.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I wasn’t. Again I wondered whether Norah could have driven up from Los Angeles, sneaked into the alley, and killed her mother with no one the wiser.

  Bailey continued. “Are you sure she resigned her job as a hospital administrator?”

  “Why would she lie?”

  “To make herself seem vulnerable. Maybe she never intended to run the diner with her sister. Perhaps she put the bug in Mitzi’s ear to buy the Word. Once the court settles her mother’s estate and Norah gets the cash from the sale of the diner, she’ll hotfoot it out of town.”

  I considered that possibility. “Norah said her boss was begging her to come back. She showed me her call list. There were tons of calls.”

  “Red or black numbers?”

  “Red.”

  “What kind of phone does she have?”

  “An iPhone.”

  “Same as me. Those are outgoing calls, not incoming. A technicality, I know, but it might matter.” Bailey left her post and plucked a piece of blue cheese off one of the salads.

  “Bailey Bird,” Katie snapped. “Never, never—”

  Bailey held up a hand. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t touch food headed for customers, but that plate isn’t going anywhere, and we’re friends, right?”

  Katie chuckled. “Yes. Forgive me. I’m in chef mode. I’m telling you, you do not want to hear restaurant horror stories. Chefs worry all the time about contamination and the like. If something happens to a customer, whether they get sick or hurt, the insurance claims can be ginormous.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “I don’t want to think about the financial consequences if we didn’t have insurance coverage.”

  “Money, money, money.” Bailey resumed stirring. “It’s always about money. Back to Norah. What is the value of the Word? Would she make out like a bandit if it were sold?”

  I said, “Ellen told me the diner wouldn’t make them rich.”

  “That’s if they held on to it,” Bailey said, “but I keep thinking about what Flora said when we talked to her at Home Sweet Home. She saw Sam chatting up Manga Girl at the bank, right? What if he wasn’t having an affair with her?”

  “He wasn’t. You saw her canoodling with that guy at B-B-Q the other night when we went line dancing. They looked hotter than hot.”

  “Exactly. So what if Sam was at the bank trying to secure a loan so he could purchase the Word? What if he, not his wife, asked Natalie to sell? Sam did the books. He would know if the diner is a cash cow.”

  “Ellen said Willie told her that the diner was sucking money like a Hoover.”

  Katie cleared her throat. “Ahem. Willie got kicked out of college for cheating on an economics test. I’m not sure if he could add two plus four.”

  “Willie met with the teller, as well,” Bailey said. “He might have been asking the same questions we’re posing.”

  I thought about the fight Keller had witnessed between Willie and Mitzi on the street. What if Willie had figured out that Sam wanted to purchase the diner? Then Willie told Mitzi, and she yelled, “You’re loco!” Had Mitzi approached Ellen simply to find out if Sam had made an offer?

  Katie said, “Jenna, you mentioned Manga Girl to Chief Pritchett, right?”

  I honestly couldn’t remember if I had. I had told Cinnamon that Willie had cleaned out his bank account the day he died. I wondered if she was following up on that lead.

  Bailey tapped her temple. “If you ask me, that bank teller is the key to all of this, and yet—”

  Crash! Glass shattered. Then more glass.

  Chapter 23

  HEART BATTERING MY ribcage, I whipped off my oven mitts, grabbed a carving knife, and raced out of the kitchen toward the café. The waitress at the Word had warned me to pay more attention to sec
urity. Had looters broken in? I paused at the end of the passageway, where the busboy trays hid from the diners’ view. Katie and Bailey joined me, each armed. I signaled for them to become still, and I peeked around the edge of the partition. The overhead lights in the café were dim. The lights on the patio gleamed a warm, tawny yellow. I didn’t see movement. I glanced in the other direction, toward the breezeway. The flower vase and preset glasses on a table for two were tipped over. The window beyond the table was intact. Store interior lights were on at Beaders of Paradise. I eyed the second floor of Fisherman’s Village. Lights were on in Surf and Sea, as well. There were a few cars in the parking lot, and a nicely dressed couple was exiting a Mercedes.

  Feeling braver because of the normalcy of the activity outside, I said, “Stay here,” then I stepped from my hiding place. “Who’s out there?”

  A blur of orange raced at me. Tigger. He yowled at the top of his lungs, then dashed under a table.

  “Kitty?”

  Another meow.

  “It’s okay,” I said to Katie and Bailey. “It’s Tigger.” No wayward teens. No burglar with a firearm.

  I set the knife in the busboy tray and hurried to capture the cat. He eluded me numerous times, darting beneath tables and circling the legs of chairs. I almost had him when my head snagged on a tablecloth. As I backed out on hands and knees, the cloth and the entire setting came with me. More glass hit the floor. “Dagnabbit,” I said loudly.

  Bailey and Katie laughed.

  “Don’t,” I warned.

  After two more attempts, I nailed Tigger as he scurried down the hall, heading for the bookshop. “Gotcha, you little scamp.” I held him high, his face meeting mine, my thumbs wedged beneath his forearms. “Did you think I’d forgotten you?” His plaintive eyes widened. Yes. He was right. I had. I was a terrible mother. Angst coursed through me. I tucked him close to my chest and nuzzled my chin into his fur. “I’m sorry. I’ve been so preoccupied. Forgive me.” I took him into the stockroom and checked his food. Empty. More guilt. More apologies. When he was settled and I felt sure he knew I hadn’t abandoned him, I cleaned up the mess our game of chase had made, and I returned to the kitchen.

  “Back to Manga Girl,” Bailey said as if we hadn’t been so rudely interrupted.

  I washed my hands. “Hey, guys. Maybe we shouldn’t be obsessing like this.” I meant what I said. My stomach was in knots. My heart, though calmer, hadn’t returned to a moderate beat. I almost felt as if talking about murder was drumming up bad karma. Had Tigger picked up on it? “We aren’t professionals. Crystal Cove has a solid police force with a savvy chief.”

  “You’re wrong,” Bailey argued. “We should be talking and theorizing.” Using a Belgian accent à la Hercule Poirot, she added, “It keeps our little grey cells working. And lest you forget, this is our town. We want it to be a safe haven. And we need to exonerate my mother. Right?” She thumped the counter.

  Her fervor reignited mine. “Right.” So what if my insides were roiling? I had an obligation. “Back to Manga Girl.”

  Bailey rapped the counter a second time. “Good. Now, what if she is serving a dual purpose? What if she is arranging Sam’s loan as well as having an affair with him?”

  I thought of the ticket Mitzi had snatched from Sam’s pocket earlier. She’d demanded to know if he was going away with her. Had she meant Manga Girl? I couldn’t picture the bank teller throwing over her cute Asian boyfriend for a weathered man like Sam, but love, as Sam had reminded me at the memorial, could be blind.

  Katie cleared her throat and fussed with her apron. “Um, Jenna, based on something you said while we were line dancing, I’ve been doing some digging on Sam.” She held up her latex-covered hands as if under arrest. “Okay, I admit it. I’m a glutton for gossip. I wanted to know more about him, especially after Mitzi’s meltdown at the grocery store last Thursday. You said that she adored Sam too much. I wanted to know why. I mean, he’s not that special to look at. His nose is too thick, his forehead too high.”

  “He’s got nice eyes,” Bailey said.

  “They’re narrow and beady.”

  “Crinkly,” Bailey countered.

  I said, “I think he’s sort of handsome in an aging-television-detective kind of way, and he seems engaged in the lives of those he loves.”

  “However, he hasn’t been very supportive of Mitzi at the Grill Fests,” Bailey countered.

  “Today he was.”

  “Not really,” Bailey said. “He left early again.”

  “Why did Mitzi marry him?” Katie asked. “She has oodles of money. She doesn’t need him for financial reasons.”

  “Maybe he’s good in the sack,” Bailey said.

  I laughed. “Maybe he’s hypersexual, and that’s why he’s having affairs.”

  “Pfft.” Katie waved us off. “If I were going to have an affair with a married man, I’d want him to be super hot.”

  “Super hot doesn’t always mean good in bed,” Bailey said.

  “Keller isn’t super hot,” I noted. “He’s charming, don’t get me wrong—”

  “I wouldn’t have an affair with him,” Katie said.

  “You wouldn’t?” Bailey and I chimed together.

  “To be specific, you have an affair if one of the partners is married. Otherwise, it’s called a relationship. That”—Katie held up a finger—“I would have with Keller. He’s so . . .” She wriggled with enthusiasm. “But I’m straying.” Using a teaspoon, she tested the soup, then tossed the teaspoon into a discard cup. “Mm, good. Anyway, I was chatting up one of Mitzi’s best friends, the gal who runs The Enchanted Garden, and I got the inside scoop.”

  I knew the garden center, with its decorative arbors, eclectic garden art, and rows of perennial plants. It was a mini-wonderland. I had my eye on a wrought-iron, dragonfly-shaped wind chime.

  Katie continued. “This gal knows Mitzi real well. The two are in a garden club together. Mitzi buys all her potted herbs from her. She was a fount of information. She revealed that, prior to moving to Crystal Cove, Sam managed a few businesses in San Francisco. They all failed. Sam lost a job at a big firm because of those mistakes, but money guys land on their feet, she said, and Sam was no exception. Another company hired him in a matter of months, the kind of firm that dismantles other companies.”

  “Like that guy in Pretty Woman.” Bailey snapped her fingers. “Richard Gere. I saw the movie multiple times.”

  “Didn’t that come out when we were, like, seven?” I said.

  “So? I belonged to a Richard Gere fan club. I saw all his movies.”

  “He did some edgy films,” I said.

  “My mother didn’t know. Talk about Mr. Gorgeous. I would definitely have an affair with him. I don’t care how old he is.”

  Katie clicked her fingers. “Yoo-hoo. Back to Sam. That’s how he met Mitzi. One of her father’s businesses, a lumber company, did well from the dismantling. Mitzi was running the place at the time.”

  I gaped. “Mitzi was a corporate woman? But she’s got a thriving home business.”

  “Like the three of us, she had a previous career,” Katie said. “When her father passed away, she inherited a gazillion bucks, so she gave up the corporate lifestyle to marry Sam, who, my garden lady friend confided, Mitzi claims is her soul mate.”

  “Why did they move to Crystal Cove?” I asked.

  “I’ll bet Sam instigated it,” Bailey said. “He probably had to escape a bad reputation in the city.”

  “Nope.” Katie wagged her head. “Mitzi made the determination. She wanted fresh air and no more corporate offices. She thought Sam would thrive as a financial consultant in a smaller community. As resourceful as she is, she knew she could build a business here.”

  Bailey sniggered. “I’ll bet she wanted to wrangle him out of the city so he wouldn’t have a bevy of gorgeous women from which to choose.”

  “We have lots of beautiful women in Crystal Cove,” I said.

  “Of course,” Bailey co
nceded. “Just not as many.”

  As we continued preparing dinner, a string of what-if questions cued up like line dancers in my mind. Walk, walk, walk, clap. What if Sam resented Mitzi’s bossy ways? Clap. What if he had hoped to revive his career in San Francisco, but because of her immense wealth, she held sway? Clap. What if he were having affairs to retaliate? Clap. Sam had gone to the bank and signed some kind of official papers. Why? Something wasn’t adding up. What was I missing?

  Katie said, “Bailey, ladle up three bowls of soup. Jenna, open the bottle of chardonnay, and pour us each a glass.”

  As Bailey and I obeyed, Bailey said, “What’s going on in that brain of yours?”

  I shared my muddled thoughts.

  Bailey said, “Maybe Sam wanted to purchase Mum’s the Word to prove to his wife he could run a business all by himself. Maybe he was under-stimulated in itty-bitty Crystal Cove. That could be why he is having affairs, too.”

  “If, indeed, he’s having affairs,” I argued. “Which brings us back to motive. We know what Mitzi would have gained from Natalie’s death: the demise of a rival not only in the Grill Fest competition but also in the bedroom. What would Sam have gained?”

  “Easier access to Natalie’s daughters, so he could purchase the Word,” Bailey said.

  “What if he and Natalie weren’t having an affair?” I cut off the protective seal from the wine bottle, set the automatic corkscrew over the top, and levered out the cork. “What if Natalie had evidence of Sam having other affairs and threatened to tell Mitzi? Loose Lips Might Sink Ships, as the old war posters claimed. Her death assured her silence.”

  “Jenna, it’s time to remove the basket of chicken from the hot oil,” Katie ordered. “Put on an oven mitt and carefully lift it out. Drain it over the vat to the right. Then arrange the lettuce on plates and top with all the other fixings.”

  As I followed orders—without fear, I might add—I recalled that day on The Pier when Natalie had argued with Lola. Natalie had flirted with Sam. She had toyed with her hair and talked to him sweetly. And he had flirted in return. But then Natalie had turned icy cold. She had been a study in fluctuating emotions. “Here’s another option: What if Natalie was in love with Sam, but he didn’t reciprocate that love? What if she was pressing him to end his marriage?”