Miranda Bliss - Cooking Up Murder

“This… important. You will see.”

Maybe Drago was trying to lead me here all along. Maybe Eve was onto something after all. Maybe this trip to the gallery was significant. Maybe I would find something in Drago’s office.

If Yuri didn’t catch me snooping around first.

The thought fueled my footsteps, and I picked up my pace down the hallway. There was a brass sign hanging beside the next door on my right that said Private. The door was closed, but it wasn’t shut all the way. I peeked inside.

One look in the office told me that any chance I had of finding a clue was officially gone.

All three of the file cabinets in the room were flung open, and file folders littered the blue and red rug on the floor. The desk drawers were gaping, too, and whatever had been in them was piled on the desk chair.

There was a window on one wall and a small safe under it. That had been opened, as well. It didn’t appear to me that it had been broken into. I may not be much in the burglary department but I do know a mess when I see one. The door of the safe was hanging open, and what looked to be record books kicked to one side definitely qualified as a mess.

Somebody had gotten here before us, and it seemed as though that somebody had an advantage over Eve and me.

He-or she-knew exactly what he-or she-was looking for.

And it was obvious that he-or she-would do anything to find it.

“SMUGGLING.”

“Art forgery.”

“Fake antiques.”

“That’s almost just like art forgery. That doesn’t count.”

Eve rolled her eyes. At least she remembered to keep her voice down. We were in class (Fabulous Fruits and Vivacious Vegetables), and as we had all the way from Georgetown to Arlington, we were trying to figure out what sort of shady dealings Drago could have been involved with that would have resulted in his office being trashed-and in Drago being killed.

Eve whispered to me while she opened her can of chestnuts. “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the gallery.”

“Except that Drago said the gallery was important,” I reminded her. “That’s why we’ve got to concentrate on crimes that involve art. Unless Drago wasn’t involved in anything illegal at all.” Don’t ask me why, but that was a new thought. I had been running on the assumption that Drago was a bad guy.

“Maybe he was an innocent bystander,” I suggested. “Or a government witness. You know, like on all those TV shows.”

“Of course he wasn’t!” Eve practically sneered. In a beauty queen sort of way, of course. “You saw him that evening when he was coming out of here. And you saw him when he and Beyla were arguing. He was one nasty dude. Bad as bad can get.”

“I hope that’s not the Brussels sprouts you’re talking about.”

We’d been so deep in our speculations, I had no idea Jim was standing right behind us until his comment interrupted our discussion. I jumped, and the chestnuts I was just pouring out of the can landed half in the sink and half on the floor.

“Sorry.” Jim sprang into action. He stooped to retrieve the chestnuts on the floor. I suppose in the great scheme of things, I should have been grateful for his gallantry.

Except that I bent to get them at the same time.

We clunked heads, and both of us came up rubbing our foreheads.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. I was all set to bend down again when I saw that Jim was going to, too.

“Sorry.” It was his turn.

We exchanged uncertain smiles, and though it was unspoken, we made the executive decision to let the chestnuts stay put for a while.

“So…” He concentrated on the ones that had landed in the sink. When he leaned over to scoop them out, his arm brushed mine.

I suppose I was still jittery from the whole snoop-around-the-gallery adventure, not to mention the way we made our excuses to Yuri and hurried out of there after I found Drago’s office looking like a tornado had gone through it. I sucked in a breath as my arm involuntarily jumped.

“I hope I’m not that scary.”

The smile Jim turned on me was as hot as his accent. And believe me, that accent was plenty hot.

I reminded myself that he was just being nice, like any cooking teacher would naturally be to any cooking student, and did my best to corral the suddenly out-of-control fantasies that threatened to leave me grinning back at him like some brainless bimbo. Or worse, like a woman whose head was too easily turned by something as simple as a man being nice to her.

Even when the man in question was the yummiest thing she’d seen since the last pint of Funky Monkey she’d gone through.

He turned off the hot-as-hell smile just as quickly as he had flashed it and backed away enough to take in both Eve and me in one quick glance.

“So, you were saying? About the Brussels sprouts?”

I was still too electrified by the brush of Jim’s skin against mine to cobble together any sort of reasonable response. It occurred to me that I knew I was in trouble when I left the logical replies to Eve.

“Not Brussels sprouts,” Eve said. So far, so good. That seemed sensible enough. She leaned in closer and lowered her voice even more. “We were talking about Drago.”

That was not sensible!

I jumped again, this time back into the conversation before the spark of interest that lit in Jim’s hazel eyes kindled into anything else. Like curiosity. Or more questions.

“Oh, Eve, you are such a kidder!” I gave her arm a playful whack and turned to Jim, my discombobulation forgotten in the face of my need to steer us clear of a subject we had no right to be discussing. Not with Beyla and John only a few feet away. “Of course she’s not talking about that poor dead guy. We didn’t know the dead guy. We don’t know anything about the dead guy. We were just talking about the Brussels sprouts.”

I flashed what I hoped was an extremely carefree smile and returned my attention to my chesnuts. Jim stood in silence for a moment, regarding us with a glimmer in his eye. Then he turned and walked away.

As I watched him go, I found myself wondering just how much he knew.

“He’s cute.” Eve’s words cut into my thoughts.

“Not what I was thinking,” I told her.

“Yeah. Right.” She smiled broadly.

“I mean it. He’s cute, all right. But that’s not what I was thinking.”

Her gaze followed Jim as he made his way to the front of the room. His back was to us. He was wearing tight jeans that stretched nicely over his butt.

Need I say more?

“Oh honey, if you weren’t thinking about that…” Eve grinned, then eyed me, curious. “What were you thinking?”

“That we shouldn’t say too much in front of strangers. That we don’t know who to trust. That we haven’t sorted things out yet and that means we don’t know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.”

Eve’s expression wilted. “You don’t think-”

“I don’t know what to think,” I told her, and it was true. Deep down, I didn’t believe that there was anything shady about Jim.

But if that was true, why was I more nervous than ever just thinking about him?

BY THE TIME I WAS BACK IN CLASS THE NEXTevening, I was still mulling over the questions that filled my head, as crowded and as noisy as the summer tourists out on the Clarendon streets-the ones I had to fight my way through to get to the shop.

There was the good guy/bad guy question: which people associated with Très Bonne Cuisine could we trust?