Клео Коул - French Pressed

Joy frowned. She was quiet a long moment. Finally, she exhaled and nodded. “Okay,” she whispered.

Matt glanced at me. His expression had gone from firm and parental to almost helpless. He’d gotten Joy to cooperate, but he clearly had no idea what to ask her next.

That’s okay, I thought, because I do.

“Joy,” I began, after clearing my throat. “Tell us exactly why you went over to Vinny Buccelli’s apartment in the middle of the night. I’m still a little fuzzy on the details…”

My daughter folded her arms and leaned her back against the granite sink. “If you want the whole story, then I’ve got to start at the beginning.”

“Fine.” I glanced at Matt. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Well, Mom, after you and Grandma left the restaurant last night, I talked to Tommy. I told him about Brigitte and all the trouble she’s been causing. But it seemed to me he was barely listening. Didn’t say a word, you know? Then I thought maybe he’d want to go out with me after work; we did that a lot when we first started seeing each other. But Tommy just blew me off.”

Joy scowled and looked away, obviously still upset by his treatment. “He was doing something with his friend Nick, or so he said. He promised we’d have ‘a talk’ tomorrow, which is today, I guess.”

A talk, I repeated to myself, feeling a buoyant lift of hope. When one lover told another they needed to have “a talk,” it usually meant a talk about breaking up. I could only hope Keitel was about to do just that with my daughter.

“Were you upset with Tommy?” I asked Joy. “Was that why you went to see Vinny?”

“I was upset, yeah. But that’s not why I went to Queens. I went because Vinny left me a cell phone message asking me to come over and see him after work.”

Matt spoke up. “You played that phone message for Lieutenant Salinas, right?”

Joy nodded. “He impounded my cell phone, too. ‘Evidence,’ he claimed. He gave me a voucher, told me I’d get it back in a few weeks.”

“What did the message say?” I asked. “Try to remember exactly.”

Joy stared at the ceiling. “Well, Vinny sounded kind of weird. Mysterious, you know? I mentioned that he called in sick yesterday, right?”

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.