Miranda Bliss - Dying for Dinner

I thought about the shop and the blood on the floor and how it wasn’t supposed to be cleaned up until the next day, and my stomach flipped like it hadn’t flipped in a long time. Well, at least not since a couple minutes before when I ran into Peter. “Of course, if there’s something you need…,” I said, and I didn’t sound convincing, even to me. “But I doubt the cops will let me in. They’re probably still processing the crime scene.”

“Oh, no, not to the shop.” Jim gave me a quick, apologetic smile. “It’s his home where I’d like you to go. I think we should pick up the mail, maybe turn on a light or two. You know, make the place looked lived in so that no one notices he’s gone and gets it into their heads that this might be a good time for a burglary.”

“Of course. I should have thought of that myself.”

“I’d go on my own, but there’s a bride coming in just a bit for a consultation on a wedding luncheon next month.” He glanced up at the clock that hung above the bar. “The lunch hour is just about over. Take Eve with you, why don’t you. That’s better than you going off alone.”

Grateful for the distraction and glad to have a legitimate excuse to tell Peter we’d have to catch up another time, I went into the kitchen to find her.

“This is perfect, Annie.” She practically purred when I told her we were going out. “A chance to dish the dirt on Tyler and Peter and investigate, all at the same time.”

It was exactly what I had been thinking.

Except for the Peter part, of course.

The Peter part I still wasn’t ready to talk about. At least until I could think it over and figure out what the heck had just happened.

Of course, that didn’t prevent Eve from trying to get every little morsel of info out of me. She talked all the way to Cherrydale, a stone’s throw from the Clarendon neighborhood where Très Bonne Cuisine is located. She was still talking when we maneuvered our way around a dark sedan just pulling away from the curb. We parked in Monsieur’s driveway.

I’d been to the house a couple of times before, and this time, just like then, I was impressed by the charming 1920s bungalow. Monsieur had owned it for little more than a year, and he’d renovated it from top to bottom. I knew that though it was small, it was packed with every modern convenience, from a media room to the kind of sleek and well-stocked kitchen most food lovers only dream of.

I also knew that if I was going to find out where Monsieur was and why we hadn’t been able to find him, this was the perfect place to start.

“Wait.” I put a hand on Eve’s arm and stopped her when she was about to pop out of the car. “Let’s take a couple minutes and just look at the place. Anything seem weird to you?”

She stared at the house. “Not a thing. You?”

“No.” I hated to admit it, but facts were facts. My hopes dashed, I pushed open the car door. “I was hoping we’d see something glaring. You know-”

“Like a written note from Monsieur, telling us exactly where he is and why?” I didn’t have to look Eve’s way to know she was smiling.

“That would be nice, but I’d settle for the next best thing.”

“Which is…?”

We stepped into the house and I picked up the mail that was lying on the floor near the chute. “Nothing interesting here, that’s for sure,” I said, thumbing through Monsieur’s mail. That day, he’d gotten a cell phone bill, a cable bill, three catalogs from cookware suppliers, and an invitation to join a cookbook-of-the-month club. All of the mail was ordinary. “Maybe there’s something here in the house that will give us a clue.”

There wasn’t. Not in the sleek, modern kitchen or the media room or the living room with its stylish furniture and walls faux painted to look like seude.

By the time I worked my way upstairs to Monsieur’s bedroom, I’d pretty much given up hope of finding anything at all.

Of course, that was before I was brazen enough to look through Monsieur’s dresser drawers. And what I found there…

“Eve!” She was checking out the bathroom and I guess she heard the hum of excitement in my voice, because she showed up lickety-split. “Take a look at these.”

I held out a handful of driver’s licenses for her to look at.

“They’re from different states,” she said, shuffling through them. “This one’s from Nevada and this one’s from Maryland and this one’s from West Virginia. And they all belong to different people. Why would Monsieur have all these folks’ driver’s licenses?”

I couldn’t blame her for missing the point. Even though it was practically screaming at us. I mean, after all, who would have imagined…

My hands trembling and my mouth suddenly dry, I took the licenses from her and fanned them out. “Sure, the states are all different,” I said. “So are the names. But look at the pictures, Eve. The pictures are all-”

“Oh, my goodness!” Eve’s mouth dropped open. Now that I was holding the licenses, she was free to point one perfectly manicured finger at them. “Annie, do you see what I see? All those pictures on all those licenses… they’re all Monsieur Lavoie!”

I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE CLEANING CREW USED TO get the bloodstain off the floor at Très Bonne Cuisine, I only know that whatever it was, it worked like a charm. By the time they were there for a couple hours, there was little sign left of the horror that had happened in the shop only two nights before.

I watched as they finished the floor and started in on the counters, the front display window, and the area around the cash register. There wasn’t any blood in any of those places-not that I could see, anyway-but Jim had put me in charge, and as the person in charge, I decided that I wasn’t taking any chances; a thorough cleaning was definitely in order.

Besides, if I worried about the work crew and (since we were paying by the hour) how much the whole thing was going to cost, I wouldn’t have to think about those-

“The drivers’ licenses, Annie. We really need to concentrate on those licenses.”

Eve was right, but even as she zipped past, refilling the stock of the store’s trademark mint green shopping bags that were kept behind the front counter, I kept my sights-and my mind-on the cleaning crew.

It beat going over what I’d already gone over so many times in my head.

What were all those licenses doing in Monsieur’s house? Why was his picture on them? What was Monsieur up to, exactly?

And could it have had anything to do with Greg’s death and Monsieur’s disappearance?

“I dunno.” So much for my resolve. Sure, I’d sworn I wasn’t going to talk about it, or even think about it, for that matter. But as Eve worked on stowing the bags within easy reach of the cash register, I just couldn’t help but tell her what I was thinking. The whole thing was eating at me, and as always, it was easier to talk out the problem than it was to let it bounce around inside my head until my brain hurt. “It just doesn’t make sense, Eve. Those drivers’ licenses, they can’t have anything to do with Monsieur’s disappearance.”

She paused in the middle of what she was doing, wrinkled her nose, and tipped her head. “No. They can’t. But we should look into them anyway. What if Monsieur is a Russian spy? Or an undercover agent for some rogue dictator state? What if he’s an alien and their technology is better than ours, of course, so they’ve learned how to make their people… or beings… or critters… or whatever they are, look just like us, and they’re living among us and we don’t know it?”