“Oh, that was good!” Eve practically purred the words, and I wondered if she was making fun of me. But when I looked at her, she was grinning.
“I didn’t look like a dope?” I asked.
“Honey, you couldn’t look like a dope if you tried.”
My spirits were buoyed, but there was only so long they could stay afloat.
My shoulders drooped. “I looked like a dope. He thinks I’m a dope.”
She clicked her tongue and flipped her dough. “If he thought you were a dope, he wouldn’t have asked to meet with us tonight.”
My turn to click my tongue. “You don’t think he wants to see me, do you?”
Eve raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t have a chance to answer. Jim was back at the front of the room, calling for our attention. He told us to finish up our kneading, and showed us how to grease the container we’d use to let our dough rise. By the time I’d flipped my globe of dough in the container to grease it on all sides and covered the whole thing with plastic wrap, I’d decided the why-did-Jim-really-want-to-talk-to-us thing wasn’t worth discussing. Who was I kidding, anyway? Anytime Eve and I were in a room together, guys only had eyes for her.
Except for Peter.
The thought snuck up on me and smacked me like I’d been thwacking my dough ball. Annoyed with myself, I shook my head and tucked the container with the dough in it on the shelf under our workstation.
“It’s difficult to say how long it will take for your dough to double in size,” Jim told the class. “So we’ll take a break now. Rising time depends on the temperature of the air and of your dough. The amount of yeast you used makes a difference, too. Drafts cause problems: they’ll make your dough rise too slowly and unevenly, so make sure you’ve got it wrapped good and tight.”
I did all that and washed my hands. I was just about to ask Eve if she wanted to head over to the natural foods store for a yogurt when she informed me that she had other things to do.
“Tony.” She held up her cell phone. “You remember? The librarian? I’ll run outside and do that and pick you up a sandwich. You want ham or roast beef?” she asked, but before I even had a chance to answer, she was already out the door.
The other members of the class scattered. Jim disappeared into the kitchen area where we washed up our pots and pans, and I didn’t want to risk going after him and looking pathetic.
I drummed my fingers against the countertop, considering my options. I decided I might as well keep playing detective.
I took a deep breath and strolled over to Beyla and John’s workstation. It was as clean as a whistle. I checked out Jim’s workstation at the front of the classroom, too. I suppose if I really wanted to find something, I would have given it more than a quick once-over. But I wasn’t a real detective, and as I mentioned before, I didn’t want Jim to be a bad guy. Besides, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing suspicious.
That took care of our suspects here at Très Bonne Cuisine-all except one.
I gathered up my purse and went off in search of Monsieur Lavoie.
HE WASN’T DOWNSTAIRS IN THE SHOP. HE WASN’T IN the back storeroom, either, or in the tiny, neat-as-a-pin office I could see through a doorway behind the front counter where jars of Vavoom! were lined up in tidy, come-and-get-me rows.
In fact, Monsieur Lavoie was nowhere to be found.
A real detective would have been suspicious. After all, it was Saturday afternoon, and though the store was empty at the moment, the streets outside were chock-full of summer tourists. The man had a business to run. How could he do that when he wasn’t even in the store?
Of course, I wasn’t a real detective, even though I was pretending to be one. Though Monsieur’s absence offended my sense of order and challenged my concept of customer service, I didn’t see how it affected our case.
I was just about to chalk the whole thing up as a big ol’ nothing and head out for that yogurt when I heard a noise outside the back door.
Like the sound of glass breaking.
Maybe I was getting into the whole girl-detective schtick after all, because before I even realized it, I was heading to the back door, curious to know exactly what was going on.
Don’t get me wrong: I still wasn’t a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants sort of person like Eve. Before I got to the door, I grabbed one of the wooden meat tenderizing mallets on display with the other cooking utensils. After all, Drago had been murdered in that parking lot. I wasn’t going to take any chances.
I leaned my ear to the door and heard another piece of glass shatter. Carefully, I turned the knob and just as cautiously, I opened the door just a crack. Nothing could have surprised me more than what I saw: Monsieur Lavoie. He was standing at least fifteen feet away from the Dumpster. One by one, he was chucking glass bottles into it. Just like he’d been doing the night Drago died.
“Monsieur?”
He spun around when he heard my voice and tucked his hands behind his back. Though he tried for a smile, his complexion was ashen.
“So, you are… how do you say it? Breaking, yes?” Monsieur shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. He looked over my shoulder toward the door. “Your classmates, they are coming out here, too?”
“No. Just me.” Before the little Frenchman could see that I was using his stock as a potential weapon, I set the meat tenderizer down on the nearest counter and stepped into the parking lot. I closed the door behind me. “Speaking of breaking, I heard some noise. I thought maybe something was wrong.”
“Wrong?” He laughed in that Gallic way that made me think of Pepe LePew. “What could be wrong on a day like today? It is beautiful, yes?”
It was, and I wasn’t about to argue the fact. I stepped toward the street, poking my thumb over my shoulder in the general direction of the whole foods store. “I’m just heading out for a yogurt. Can I bring you back something?”
“No, no.” Monsieur’s smile jiggled around the edges like a poorly set Jell-O mold. “I am fine. Really. You can just run along, yes?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well… good-bye.” I set off across the parking lot and over to the sidewalk where just a few days before, Eve and I had stood and watched Beyla and Drago have a knock-down-drag-out. As I did, I noticed Monsieur Lavoie turned completely around to watch me leave. It might have been the most natural thing in the world, but I couldn’t help but notice that by doing so, he made sure I couldn’t get a look at what he was holding behind his back.
Was I finally thinking like a detective?
Maybe, because as I walked away, I had already decided I knew two things.
Number one: He didn’t want me to see whatever he was holding.
And number two?
That was pretty much a no-brainer. Monsieur Lavoie could have disposed of the whatever-it-was simply by tossing it over the side of the Dumpster. But he didn’t.
Whatever he was getting rid of, Monsieur wanted to make sure it was gone for good. As in smashed to smithereens.
Apparently whatever it was, he wanted to make sure no one else found it, either.
“I’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU.”
Eve was waiting for me at our cooking station when I got back from our lunch break. I half laughed, wondering how a roast beef or a ham sandwich could cause the shimmer of excitement in her eyes. But then I noticed that she wasn’t holding either. Suddenly, I was glad that I’d had that yogurt after all.
“Bread dough?” I put away my purse and pulled out my own bowl. The dough inside was as flat as a pancake. “Looks like I could use some.”
“No, silly.” Eve made a face and looked around to make sure no one was listening.
I looked around, too, and just like my dough, my spirits fell. All around us, our fellow students were returning from lunch and checking on their creations. I could hear their murmurs of amazement when they saw how what had been heavy, dense balls of water and flour had magically transformed into light and airy clouds of yeasty-smelling wonder.