Turn Up the Heat (8 page)

“Hi, guys. Hope I’m not disturbing you?” I winked at Blythe.

“Hi, Chloe.” Blythe smiled warmly, but she had the decency to look a little embarrassed. “You’re not disturbing us. Not at all. I can’t believe what happened to Leandra.” Jingling the silver bracelets on her wrist, she brushed her angled hair out of her eye. “I feel sort of bad that my last conversation with her was that tiff we had. She said that my breasts were so small that I looked like a guy. Granted, I’m no Pam Anderson, but she was really picking on me. The detectives seemed to really love that! Like I was so mad at her for what she said that I thought she deserved to die? But that’s what she’d said. And I told them I couldn’t have cared less what she thought about me. Did they give you a hard time, Snacker?”

Snacker was still so hung up on Blythe’s having said the word
breasts
that I almost had to snap my fingers to pull him out of his fantasy. “Snacker!”

“Oh! No, not really. Just a lot of questions about Owen.”

“I hope you didn’t say anything stupid, Snack.” I was worried that Snacker and Owen’s feud was somehow going to make things even worse for Owen than they already were.

“I didn’t!” he protested. “I just answered their questions.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m just a little stressed out for him.”

“Of course,” Blythe sympathized. “Listen, when all this cools down, we have to hang out again soon. I know you’ve got finals coming up, but we need a girls’ night out again, okay?”

“You’re on,” I agreed happily. Girls’ night out with Blythe was always fun. Because I had Josh, I didn’t mind that Blythe got all the male attention when we were out together, and I enjoyed helping her filter out the losers who hit on her.

“Yeah, girls’ night out.” Snacker was almost drooling.

Blythe laughed. “Which does not include you!”

“It certainly does not,” I agreed. “I’m going to see how Owen’s holding up. Catch you guys later.”

Owen looked almost as distraught as Gavin did, although for different reasons. Owen hadn’t suffered the loss of someone he’d cared about, but it had been far from easy for Owen to find Leandra’s body in his prized truck. It would’ve been awful enough to come upon a dead body anywhere at all, of course. But in a familiar and innocent place? A place he thought of as his own? Definitely not pleasant. Then there were the practical consequences. Owen was new at the Daily Catch and a new purveyor at the restaurants where he had accounts. His boss and his clients would understand what had happened, wouldn’t they? All the same, they’d hardly be happy that he’d failed to make today’s deliveries.

But I didn’t get a chance to talk to Owen. Before I reached him, two uniformed officers approached him and led him off for what was certain to be a long, long interview.

SEVEN

WHEN
I finally got home, I was determined to shake off the emotional effects of the murder and get some studying done for my final exams. This was Wednesday, and my first final was on Tuesday. I needed to get kicking. My place was on the third floor of an old house in Brighton, a district of Boston, and the major selling point when I rented the condo from its owner had been the parking space out front that was included in the rent. Because the neighborhood was right near a lot of colleges and big universities, it was packed with students who were always fighting over the few legal parking spots on the street. I had a small living room, an even smaller kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and a decent-sized bedroom that doubled as my homework area.

I tossed my keys onto the coffee table in the living room and looked into the bedroom toward my desk, which had almost disappeared beneath mountains of papers and books. In my absence, a stack of articles about cultural influences on behavior disorders had toppled over and buried my keyboard. That course had been listed as
Cult. Influences on Beh. Disorders
, and I’d taken it to mean it was a class on cults. Still, cultural influences had turned out to be okay. Before finals, the one-bedroom condo had been small. Now it felt cramped and suffocating. I sighed and then went to the kitchen to throw on a pot of coffee. The caffeine I’d had this morning wouldn’t get me through the studying, research, and paper writing that I had ahead of me. While the pot brewed, I filled up my cat Gato’s bowl. While he ate, I stroked his silky black fur. In return, in typically cranky Gato fashion, he turned his head and bit my hand. Brat! I’ve heard that when cats bite, they’re showing affection, but the people who make that claim about cats probably say the same thing about dogs.
Fido didn’t mean to chomp off a chunk of your arm and send you to the hospital for three weeks! He was just trying to tell you how much he loves you.

I heated milk in the microwave, stirred in some sugar, and filled my cup to the top with steaming coffee. Despite the horrors of the morning, I had to get focused on school. What I’d been learning in my classes told me that I was in a posttraumatic state, but I was actually more worried about Owen, Josh, and Snacker than I was about myself. What’s more, I felt guilty about having left Gavin surrounded by employees who were probably failing to provide the support he needed. But I felt worst about poor Owen, who was probably still being questioned by the police. Leandra’s body had been in his truck, so I could understand why the police were interested in him. Still, there was no other connection between Owen and Leandra. I reminded myself that I was the one who’d actually discovered her body and that, even so, the police hadn’t locked me up. Consequently, Owen would probably be released after he’d made a formal statement. Or so I hoped.

Thinking of Owen reminded me that I needed to call Adrianna to see how she was handling the news about Leandra, Owen, and the truck. In fact, since we usually talk at least five times a day, I could hardly believe that I’d waited this long to call her. Yes, I was going to devote the entire day to studying, but a few minutes on the phone wasn’t going to interfere. Certainly not.

Adrianna picked up after a few rings. “Hi, Chloe. How are you? God, I think I slept, like, eleven hours last night. My morning client canceled, and so now I don’t have anything until four. I might go take a nap. I swear, I’m never going to wake up until this baby comes out.”

“Well, you sound awake now,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I had a cup of coffee, which I haven’t done in months. My ob-gyn said it was okay to have a cup a day, but this is the first time I have, and I think it’s hitting me pretty hard. So I’m exhausted and wired at the same time. How’s the studying going?”

“I just got home, so I haven’t started yet, but I wanted to see how you were doing.” I assumed she wasn’t thrilled to hear about her fiancé’s body-in-the-truck problem.

“How I’m doing with what?” she asked, confused.

“Owen hasn’t called you?” I couldn’t believe it! What was Owen thinking? How could he possibly not have called Adrianna? He’d done nothing wrong; he was blameless. Why hadn’t he told Ade?

Adrianna’s tone changed. “No, he hasn’t called me. What’s he done now? Quit his job and become a trapeze artist or something?”

“No, he hasn’t quit.” I braced myself for her reaction. “Somebody died in his fish truck.”

There was a very long pause followed by laughter so intense that Ade was in danger of pushing the baby out too early. “That’s ridiculous!” she sputtered. “In his fish truck? That’s impossible. How could anyone…Chloe, stop it. This is not funny.”

“I’m not kidding!” I insisted. “It was Leandra. Our server at Simmer.”

“What?” she said, gasping for breath. “Seriously? Leandra died in his truck? I thought you were joking. Did Owen find her there?”

I told her all about our morbid discovery and finished by saying that Owen was still at the restaurant talking to the detectives. “He said he was going to call you,” I added.

“Well, he hasn’t. I haven’t heard from him all day.” Now she sounded pissed.

“I think he was pretty worried about how you’d react.” I refrained from mentioning her hormonal state, which made her burst into tears over the smallest thing, including any reference to her hormonal state. She and Owen had had a huge fight the previous week when he’d forgotten to pick up a Pino’s cheese pizza on his way home. Well, they hadn’t exactly had a fight. Rather, Adrianna had come close to throwing Owen out a window, and he’d calmly waited for her to cool down. Ade had felt neglected and forgotten and miserable, and she’d claimed that Owen didn’t care about her at all. Owen, after offering profuse apologies, had run out to get the pizza. Returning home, he’d learned that his darling pregnant girlfriend had changed her mind and now wanted palaak paneer from the Indian restaurant on Beacon Street. The usually rational Adrianna had become unpredictable. Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t really blame Owen for not calling her. Just wait until she learned that the police were interested in Owen! I didn’t want to be around when she heard that.

“Look, it’s not like Owen did anything,” she said. “So why would I be mad? Like you told Owen, the seafood company will give him another truck to use until he gets his back from the police.” Adrianna spoke with a mouthful of food. I actually encouraged her to eat as much as possible, and I did it for a selfish reason: the more she ate, the faster she outgrew her clothes, and the faster I got temporary hand-me-downs. That’s an admission I could make about only one person in the world, and the one person is Ade, my best friend.

I said, “It’s just that Owen is so concerned about making money right now. And preparing for the baby. He didn’t want you to be disappointed in him.”

“Of course I’m not disappointed in him! His business is great.” She happily listed a bunch of restaurants that were regular customers of Owen’s. “The only problem he’s been having is when his accounts don’t pay up and he’s got to go after them to collect money. But he hasn’t been there long enough for his restaurants to rack up big overdue bills, so it’s all right. Except, did you know that Simmer is COD? It isn’t too surprising. I mean, since Josh’s last paycheck bounced.”

What? I had no idea that Josh’s check had bounced. Nor did I know that Simmer had to pay cash for seafood deliveries. COD struck me as a bad sign. And if Simmer was on a COD basis with the Daily Catch, what kind of credit did the restaurant have with its other purveyors?

“Chloe?” Adrianna interrupted my thinking. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. You didn’t know about Josh’s check?”

“No, I didn’t. I’m pretty surprised.”

“Josh told Owen, who told me, so I assumed you knew.”

“Well, it’s probably just because Gavin overspent so much when he was renovating Simmer. Josh said that Gavin made the huge mistake of hiring people by the hour or the day instead of having a set price for the job, so he wasted a ton of money. But I’m sure it’s just temporary. Simmer seems busy enough, so they’ve got to be recouping some of that loss. Gavin must owe tons of money, though, considering everything he had done there. That’s just part of starting any new business, right?”

“Mmm…I suppose so,” Ade mumbled through bites of food. “Anyhow, I’m sure Owen will call me later and tell me everything. If he was in any real trouble, he’d have called by now. Listen, I’ve got two garbage bags full of clothes for you, and I’d rather you take them now so I don’t have to pack them up to move.”

Yay! More clothes! “Cool. Can I pick them up tonight?”

“Yes, and you don’t need to sound so happy about it. Don’t take pleasure in my getting fat.”

“Ade, there is a gigantic difference between gaining weight during pregnancy and just gaining weight. And I love you either way.” Belatedly, I realized that
gigantic
had been a poor word choice. Fortunately, Adrianna didn’t seem to notice.

“And don’t ruin my stuff. I’m taking it back someday.”

We hung up, and I finally started to do some work. During the study breaks I allotted myself, I tried to reach Josh, but he wasn’t picking up his cell. Finally, a little after five o’clock, he called to say that he, Wade, Kevin, and some other staff from Simmer were going spend the evening with Gavin so that he wouldn’t have to be alone.

“We’ll be closed again tomorrow, so maybe I can see you?” Josh said. “Not how I like to get a day off, but I’ll take it.”

“Argh!” I groaned. “I’ve got a DSM review class tomorrow that Doug is leading, and I have to go to that.” The DSM’s official name was the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision,
and it was intended for mental health professionals, a group that was evidently supposed to include me. Me! I just couldn’t begin to picture myself actually categorizing someone according to the DSM’s axes of mental disorders. I mean, my response to the DSM was that I’d much rather spend the day with my boyfriend. “But maybe tomorrow night?”

“Well, I was hoping to spend most of the day at home with you doing unspeakable things, but I can wait until tomorrow night to commit a handful of sins,” he teased. “But first, maybe you’d want to come out with me and some of my fellow chefs for dinner? Digger called. He wants us to meet up with him and Lefty.”

“Sure, that’d be fun. And
then
you’ll do these unspeakable things to me?”

“Absolutely.”

We hung up without my asking him about Simmer’s apparent financial problems. I couldn’t bring myself to mention the matter when the restaurant was about to stay closed for another day. Also, I figured that Josh had a reason for not telling me. The hours he worked put a strain on our relationship to begin with. Maybe he was concerned that I’d think that the financial problems were somehow his fault. I didn’t think any such thing. On the contrary, as I probably needed to make clear to Josh, I had total confidence in his ability to do his job and do it exceptionally well.

With visions of dirty deeds dancing in my head, I still managed to work for another few hours before I gave up and drove to Adrianna’s to collect my wardrobe. When I walked in, I wasn’t surprised to see that her moving boxes were lined up neatly against the walls of her apartment. On each box was a large white label that stated, in purple block capitals, the contents of the box and the room in which it was to be deposited. Adrianna was the only person I knew who could maintain a high level of order and cleanliness while in the middle of a move. The last time I’d moved, I’d thrown the toaster in with my underwear and my books in with my hair dryer, and I’d wrapped my computer in a duvet. Nothing had been labeled.