I nodded.
“That was weird, right there. For Vinny, going to work at Solange was like a kid going to Disneyland. He totally loved it—”
“And the message?” I interrupted.
“Vinny said he needed to talk to me. He said he wasn’t really sick, but that he couldn’t come back to work until we spoke. I knew he was on prep today, which meant he’d miss two days if we didn’t talk. So I knew whatever he had to say was really important.”
“And he left this message when?” I asked.
“Around nine thirty. Tommy won’t allow the staff to use cell phones during service, so I didn’t retrieve the message until after midnight. I was already changed into my clothes to go home.”
“Who else was in the kitchen when you were getting ready to leave?”
“Tommy and his friend Nick were there…and Ramon was finishing the cleaning with Juan, the dishwasher.”
“No other cooks were hanging around?”
“No. Everyone was gone by then: the sauté chef, Henry Tso; the pastry chef, Janelle Babcock; everyone. The waiters were gone, too.”
“What about the executive sous-chef, Brigitte Rouille?” I asked.
Joy shook her head. “Brigitte never came back after she ran out the back door.”
“And the maître d’? Did he disappear with her?”
“No, Monsieur Dornier came back to the restaurant. Then he and Tommy had a talk in the back of the kitchen, which to me sounded more like an argument. Then Dornier left, too. That was weird, because those guys are really tight. I never saw them fight like that before. But then the whole night was pretty intense, with Tommy skipping out on yet another dinner service and Brigitte freaking like she did.”
I nodded and sipped more coffee, considering how long Brigitte had been gone from the restaurant. But then Dornier and the cooks had left before Joy, too. Any one of them could have gotten to Vinny before her.
Who else did that leave? I closed my eyes and replayed a memory of Tommy Keitel shaking my hand in the restaurant’s kitchen, his creepy friend Nick walking in behind him. That had taken place around ten thirty.
Dr. Neeravi’s lilting Indian accent replayed in my head. “Someone—perhaps the perpetrator—opened all of these windows. Now, perhaps it was done to dissipate any smell from the body, preventing a neighbor from alerting the authorities right away. Or perhaps the perpetrator knew it would help mask the time of the murder.”
Could Tommy Keitel have killed Vinny? I wondered. He certainly could have done it, given Dr. Neeravi’s ballpark guess on the time frame. But what in the world would have been Keitel’s motive to murder an innocent kid like Vincent Buccelli?
I was silent so long Matt cleared his throat and tried to jump in with the questioning: “So, let me get this straight, Joy. You were hanging around later than everyone because you were waiting to speak with Tommy? And you wanted him to go out with you?”
“Yeah.” Joy nodded. “Until he dismissed me like some kind of servant—”
Or employee, I couldn’t help thinking. Which you still are, even when you’re sleeping with the boss.
I was dying to underline that point to my daughter, but I held my tongue. The last thing my distraught offspring needed right now was another sermon from Mom, especially when Tommy himself was pretty much making my point for me.
“…so then I left the restaurant and called Vinny back,” Joy went on. “I got a busy signal, and I figured he was home on the phone. I took the R train to Times Square, switched to the 7, and got to his place around one, I guess.”
I thought about that busy signal. “I suppose Vinny could have been using the phone then. Or the killer could have knocked the phone off the hook by that time.”
“Yeah,” Joy said softly. “I know that now.”
I frowned, remembering how Joy had looked in Solange’s kitchen last evening with all that béarnaise sauce splattered on her chef’s jacket. Vinny’s pooled blood wasn’t that much different in color, and I shuddered, sick with the idea that my daughter could have just missed walking in on Vinny’s brutal murder. What would have happened then? Would Joy have been stabbed to death, too?
“Okay…” I said, my voice sounding a little shaky. I paused to drown my dread with more coffee. “Then what happened next? How did you get through Vinny’s front door and into his apartment?”
“Easy.” Joy shrugged. “I had a key.”
“A key?” Matt said, surprised. “Why did you have a key? Were you sleeping with Vinny, too?”
It was an unsavory question to ask your own daughter: Was she cheating on her married lover with her gay best friend? Matt managed it without blinking an eye.
“I wasn’t seeing Vinny on the side,” Joy said. “Vinny had no interest in me as anything but a friend—I guess now everybody knows why.”
Matt blinked. “Oh.”
“I mean, Vin was a quiet guy, but he was really cool and really talented. He gave me this impression that he liked someone back in Ohio, and that’s why he wasn’t seeing anyone here. Maybe that was true, or maybe it was just a line he gave everyone. Maybe he just wanted to keep his private life private.”
“So why did you have a key to Vinny’s apartment?” I asked.
“Because sometimes me and Tommy…” Joy scratched her head, looked away.
“What?” Matt pressed.
“This is just too weird to tell you guys.” Joy shook her head, started to walk out of the kitchen.
“Honey, please.” Matt stood up, caught her arm. “You need to remember we’re on your side.”
“We are.” I nodded. “And you do need to tell us everything, Joy.”
After studying the floor for almost a minute, she finally admitted, “Tommy and I…we were sort of using Vinny’s place. You know, romantically.”
Oh, Lord. That word again. I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on. “How often?” I whispered.
“A few times a week, in the beginning. There’s this wholesale cheese importer just around the corner, Newton’s Fresh Market, and Tommy took me there my first week working at Solange. Tommy’s really into cheese, and he thought it would be a real education for me to visit one of the places that imports it for him.”
A real education? Right. I tried not to visibly cringe.
“It was great. We had a lot of fun tasting these amazing European cheeses. Tommy was flirting with me, and…Well, I had the key to Vinny’s place because whenever he visits his family in Ohio, I feed his fish and water his plants. So I suggested to Tommy that we go around the corner and use Vin’s apartment to…you know…”
Joy shrugged. She still hadn’t looked Matt or me in the face. Matt sat down again, exchanged glances with me. My ex-husband appeared to be as surprised as I was.
“Joy, did we hear you right?” I asked. “Are you telling us that you’re the one who suggested taking Tommy’s flirtation to the next level? Tommy wasn’t the one to seduce you?”
Joy shifted her feet, obviously uncomfortable. “You have to understand…I’ve been really into Tommy for a long time…” Her gaze moved from the floor to the window to the ceiling, anywhere but on us. “Ever since I read his book two years ago, I thought he was amazing. And then he taught a class at my school, and I totally wanted to work for him. But what really blew me away was when he flirted with me my first day on the job. Tommy never touched me or sexually harassed me or anything like that. He just gave me this amazing private tour of Solange’s wine cellar and cheese cave—”
“Cheese cave?” Matt interrupted.
Joy nodded. “Tommy’s really proud of his cheese plates. He changes the choices every week, and he picks the selections out personally. The cave’s just this small refrigerated room in the basement, where the temperature is constant. Anyway, we got in there, and he started feeding me cheese and joking with me. He was totally flirting. After that, just being around him was a high for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”