Turn Up the Heat (13 page)

“I’m sure
someone
will miss her,” he insisted. “I’m not going to lie on a memorial page! I’m sorry she was murdered, really I am, but I can’t honestly say that I’m going to miss her. Here, I’ll add more.” Josh grabbed his page back.

“She was a hard worker who interacted energetically with her fellow employees.”

“That sounds like she was doing calisthenics with everyone!” I complained.

“Take it or leave it, kiddo.” Josh shrugged his shoulders.

I growled. “I’m going to find someone who has something nice to say about this poor girl.”

“I love you for your optimism. I have to talk to Isabelle.”

“She better not be peeling carrots or sculpting cantaloupes all day!” I warned him as he walked over to her station.

Josh’s written comments did not bode well for my assignment.

Aha! Belita, the cleaning woman I’d spoken with the other day, crossed the kitchen and went into the dining area. She might be able to give me something about Leandra. With luck, it would be something positive. Belita, after all, hadn’t worked directly with Leandra.

Waving my papers above my head, I scurried into the dining room. “Belita! Belita!”

She turned to me and put down her bucket and mop. “Oh,
hola
, Chloe.” She smiled warmly and then brushed some straggly hair from her face.

“
Por favor,
could I talk to you?”

“
Sí
, okay,” she said, nodding. “I so honest, you know? Not like some of these others here!” She gestured to the bathroom. “I obey laws, okay? Who else, with this drugs everywhere? I do nothing wrong.”

Did Belita think that I was here to ask her about Leandra’s murder? “I just wondered if you had any happy memories of Leandra that I could write down here.” I showed her my memory pages. “Maybe you could ask your friends if they have anything to say about her?”

“Leandra?” Belita blew air from her lips. “She like the others, you know? Nobody sees me here except nice Jason and Josh. And that Gavin, he pay me in cash, which I like very much. But that girl never see me!”

Leandra regularly ignored the cleaning crew.
I couldn’t write that! “Would anyone else you know want to say something?”

“That Kevin! He takes bottles. All the time, he is taking bottles. Javier tell me this. That poor Gavin! He nice, nice man to me!”

We had hit a communication breakdown. Among other things, I didn’t know enough Spanish to discuss memory books. And what did Belita mean about Kevin? He was taking bottles? Her accent, however, made
Kevin
and
Gavin
sound similar. Maybe I had misunderstood. Or maybe not. Both Kevin and Gavin picked up and moved bottles. Kevin was, after all, a bartender, and Gavin owned Simmer.

“So Kevin took bottles?” I tried to clarify.

“
Sí,
Kevin take Gavin’s bottles to him! All the time! That Leandra know, and she no care!”

I still wasn’t following, and I didn’t have time to try to decipher what she was telling me. I wished that I’d taken Spanish in high school and felt embarrassed that I couldn’t understand Belita. She knew a hundred times more English than I knew Spanish. “Belita, did you like Leandra at all?” I was willing to take anything, even some neutral comment.

“Leandra was bitch!” Belita declared as she spat into a bucket.

I sensed a common theme.

“Okay. Well, thanks anyway.”

“You? You is nice girl. You, I like.” Belita patted my cheek and left to do her work.

Isabelle was one of the sweetest people I knew. I could certainly count on her to give me something appropriate for Monday’s celebration of Leandra’s life. I again braved the kitchen, where I now found Isabelle slicing beef tenderloin—and not, I was pleased to note, carving fruit displays.

“Hi, Isabelle,” I greeted her.

“Hey, Chloe! Look, Josh is letting me slice the beef for the party today. Isn’t that cool? Josh said I’ve been doing such a good job with everything else he’s taught me that he’s going to let me take on more responsibilities. I’m even helping him plate the dishes for that party!” She must have been the happiest beef slicer in the entire world. I silently thanked Josh for supporting her.

“I’m so glad that you’re enjoying your job. Josh must be impressed with you if he’s giving you more responsibility. He makes everyone pay dues and earn his respect, so you must have been doing something right.” In case she felt unfairly treated in Josh’s kitchen, I passed along some of my feminist insights from the previous night’s dinner.

Isabelle’s only response was to say, “Josh is great! I love it here!” She smiled as she continued working.

I explained about the memory book and asked whether she had anything to contribute.

Isabelle’s face hardened. “Leandra didn’t like me very much. Did you know she called me ‘rat girl’? She used to tease me about having grown up the way I did, and she said Josh only gave me this job because he felt sorry for me. Do you think that’s true?” She clapped the knife down onto the cutting board.

“No. Josh didn’t pity you, Isabelle. Josh talked to you before he offered you this job, right?”

She nodded.

“Well, he must have seen something in you that gave him a good feeling about hiring you. Nobody made Josh hire you. You got this job on your own, and you’re keeping it on your own.”

Leandra was lucky to be dead. If she’d been alive, I’d have murdered her myself! Well, I’d have felt like it. In reality, I’d have delivered a nasty talking-to that included words like
ignorant
and
insensitive
, and I’d have engaged in lots of dramatic finger-pointing.

“Leandra was terrible,” Isabelle said. “She fooled Gavin into going out with her. He is nothing but wonderful, and I don’t know how she tricked him into liking her, but she did. So, no. I don’t have anything to give you for this memory book!” The usually soft-spoken Isabelle had raised her voice enough to make Josh and Santos look over.

I didn’t like the way Isabelle was acting. I understood it, but I didn’t like it. She clearly had a big crush on Gavin. Could she have been so distraught about his relationship with Leandra that she’d murdered her? The truth was, I didn’t know Isabelle very well. I’d met her when I’d volunteered at the agency that had been helping her to get off the streets and create a better life for herself. She’d seemed sweet and eager to work hard, but I hadn’t known and still didn’t know much else about her. Josh said she was a quick learner who was devoted to his kitchen. She could still have a dark side, couldn’t she? It was unthinkable to me that Isabelle was involved in Leandra’s death. Almost unthinkable.

My thoughts returned to Belita’s statement that Kevin was taking bottles. Could Belita have meant that Kevin was
stealing
bottles of liquor? Would a Simmer employee do such a horrible thing? What kind of person would undercut Gavin’s and Josh’s efforts to make Simmer a success? The same kind of person who would commit murder? If Leandra had found out about the stealing, she might have confronted Kevin and threatened to tell Gavin. I knew all too well how hard Josh was working to make Simmer profitable and how deeply Gavin cared about his restaurant. Meanwhile, their main bartender, Kevin, was stealing from the restaurant? What a terrible thing to do! Restaurants, I knew, made most of their money from alcohol sales. I’d been a little horrified to learn just how high the markups on alcohol were. The funny thing about restaurant alcohol sales, Josh had explained to me, was that cheaper bottles of wine were the ones that were marked up most, whereas the expensive, high-quality wines were marked up least. If someone—Kevin?—stole a bottle of wine that had cost Simmer ten dollars and would have sold for twenty-eight dollars, the restaurant’s loss would be greater than the original cost of the wine. But any thievery would cost the restaurant
something,
and if Leandra had discovered that someone was pilfering, she might have been outraged enough to confront the culprit. Perhaps Gavin’s girlfriend had paid dearly for protecting Simmer? Or, more true to her character, she was somehow protecting herself? My impulse was to present the idea to Josh and Gavin, but I was far from sure that I’d understood Belita correctly. She might not have meant that Kevin had been stealing.

I returned to the task of gathering material for the memory book. I hoped that the front-of-the-house staff, who’d worked closely with Leandra, would have fond recollections of her. At this point, I’d have been overjoyed to hear even a few neutral statements about Leandra: she’d liked roses, her favorite food had been raspberry sorbet, she’d preferred bourbon to scotch, and she’d been crazy about dancing to zydeco. Anything!

Snacker had slipped past me while I’d been speaking to Belita. He was now schmoozing Blythe while she set up tables. Forget it! I loved Snacker, but I wasn’t up for watching him salivate all over Blythe today. I’d try again tomorrow. I popped my head into the kitchen and quickly waved good-bye to Josh, who was on the phone and scribbling on a notepad. He looked so stressed out that I didn’t want to disrupt him. He covered the phone with his hands and blew me a kiss.

When I passed Wade, who was on the patio wiping down tables, I held out my stack of pages for the memory book. “Hi, Wade. Would you do me a favor and hand these out to the staff? My e-mail and phone numbers are on here, so people can get in touch with me.”

“Sure thing. I’ll make sure to have people give you something. It’s really nice of you to do this.” I hoped Wade thought it was
so nice
that he’d force loving memories out of everyone at Simmer.

I was driving home when my cell rang. Adrianna.

“Hi, honey. What’s up?”

“Oh, Chloe! Where are you? Can you stop by?” She sounded distressed.

“Of course. I’m on my way back from Simmer. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” The books I’d bought for her were in the car. This would be a good chance to drop them off.

Ade pulled open the door before I had time to knock. She looked anything but happy. “The police are still pestering Owen! Can you believe that this is happening right now?” At least she wasn’t crying this time. But, boy, was she mad.

“What do they want from him?” I stepped into her living room—or what was left of it. Boxes took up most of the space, including space previously occupied by air.

“They made him go down to headquarters to give another statement. And he asked me to say that I’d spent Tuesday night with him. I can’t do that! Chloe, it’s not true. I told him he doesn’t have anything to hide, and he said it would just make things a lot easier if I gave him an alibi for this Leandra mess. I know he’s right about that. But I can’t lie to the police.” Adrianna paced the floor.

“Does he have his truck back yet?” I asked. “Has he been making his deliveries at least?”

“They still have the truck, but like we thought, his boss let him use another one, and Owen seems overly pissy about it, if you ask me. I mean, who cares what truck you use to drive fish around Boston? But he has lots of accounts and big orders, so he should get paid pretty well this week. At least there is that. Are you hungry? I made these seven-layer bars that I can’t stop eating.”

I was always hungry. “Yeah, those sound good.” They weren’t exactly lunch food, but I wasn’t complaining.

“Oh,” I managed between mouthfuls, “I got you something.”

“You did?”

I handed over the bag with the books on pregnancy and baby care. “I thought these might make you feel better. I know how upset about stuff you’ve been recently, and I thought it might be helpful for you to read what people who’ve actually had babies have to say. I didn’t really know what to pick for you. You can return them if you like.”

“You’re the best!” When Ade flung her arms around me and squeezed me, I felt her belly push into mine. “I’m totally going to read them! You’re right. I’ve just been hiding out trying not to think about being pregnant, and it’s not working out for me. I’ve got to take charge here and be more in control. Knowledge is power, as they say, right?”

“I’m so glad you like them.”

“And I’m going to call your sister, too.”

I gave Ade another hug. “She’d love to hear from you. And this mess with Owen will get straightened out. I promise.”

I was going to make sure of that.

ELEVEN

BACK
at home, I devoted the rest of Friday, including the evening, to conquering the DSM. I made piles of flash cards with symptoms and descriptions on one side, and diagnoses on the other. I did my best to follow Doug’s suggestion to associate the diagnoses with people I knew. So, had Kevin succumbed to kleptomania? Or to something more sinister? What about Snacker? For the purposes of the exam, I categorized him as suffering from hyperactive sexual desire disorder, a diagnosis I based on his need to flirt shamelessly with every woman in sight. I then decided that Gavin was having a major depressive episode consequent to Leandra’s death. Josh’s diagnosis was acute stress disorder—in response to pressure at the restaurant—and Belita’s was obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her need to clean? Yeah, I was stretching the categories more than was acceptable, but I was determined to do well on the test, no matter who got stuck with which diagnosis. My only regret was that I didn’t know people with the interesting or peculiar symptoms required to help me remember agoraphobia (with or without history of panic disorder) and dissociative amnesia. At this rate, I’d succumb to trichotillomania: the irresistible urge to yank all my hair out.

I called Doug to see whether he had any brilliant advice for a struggling social work student.

“He’s not telling you what’s on the test,” Terry said as soon as he picked up the phone. Stupid caller ID.

“I wasn’t calling for that,” I lied. Doug must have warned his boyfriend to screen my calls. “
Beware of students seeking classified information!
”

“I’m sure you weren’t.” He laughed. “Doug isn’t here, anyway. Do you want to leave a message?”

“No. No message. Just called to check in.” Another lie.