Miranda Bliss - Dying for Dinner

I am not that much of a drama queen, but I didn’t bother to remind Eve of that. I was too busy grabbing my purse from my office, sticking my head into the kitchen to tell Jim I’d call him when I found out what was going on, and heading for the door.

According to those online mapping programs, it’s a little more than eight miles from Alexandria to Arlington, and it should take the average driver somewhere around fifteen minutes to get there.

Eve is not anyone’s average driver. She’s got a heavy foot on the accelerator, little tolerance for other drivers who get in her way, and is subjective about what, exactly, constitutes a red light that is red enough to make her stop.

But traffic in the D.C. area is nothing if not brutal, and it took us nearly a half hour to make the trip to Très Bonne Cuisine.

By the time we got there, there were already four police cars in front of the place, their lights swirling.

TRÈS BONNE CUISINE IS ONE OF THOSE FANCY-SCHMANCY cooking shops where logic (and my own, sad history with the culinary arts) dictates that I should have felt like a fish out of water.

All that expanse of polished hardwood floors.

All that gleaming chrome, the sleek cabinetry, the granite countertops.

All that pricey cookware. And the knives that came in more sizes and for more specific purposes than I ever knew existed. And then there were the linens, so perfectly coordinated and so prettily displayed, they literally took my breath away. Especially when I took a gander at the price tags.

And yet even a kitchenphobe like me had never felt unwelcome or uncomfortable in Monsieur Lavoie’s shop.

At least not until that night, when I wound my way through the press of people gathered on the sidewalk as if I had every right to be there, stepped into the store, and saw the pool of blood on the floor in front of the cash register counter.

And the body lying facedown in it.

My stomach clenched and though I don’t know how I found the breath to make so much as a sound, I guess I must have let go a gasp of horror.

That would explain why the cop standing nearest to the door turned away from the crime scene and gave me a dirty look.

“No reporters.” He grabbed my arm, all set to escort me back out the door.

“I’m not-”

“No gawkers, either.”

“But I-” I might have been better able to state my case and my intentions (such as they were) if I wasn’t so transfixed by that body. From where I was standing I could see that it was a man and that he was clothed in crisply pressed khakis and a blue oxford-type shirt.

The same clothes Monsieur always wore at the shop.

“Get going, lady.” The officer’s voice snapped me out of my daze. “Or you’re going to leave here in the back of a squad car.”

“I can’t. I-” Who would have thought that I’d ever see Tyler Cooper as a savior! Yet when he appeared out of nowhere, walking up an aisle from the back of the store like he belonged there (which I guess he did, seeing that he’s an Arlington homicide detective), that was exactly my reaction.

“ Tyler!” I raised my voice and a hand so that he couldn’t fail to notice me. “ Tyler, I need to talk to you.”

I knew exactly when he caught sight of me. That would be when a dusky flush darkened his cheeks. As if praying for strength, he closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them again, he signaled for the uniformed cop to let me go.

“What happened here?”

Was that my voice? It was choked and breathy. I am anything but clingy yet I somehow found myself with my hand on Tyler ’s arm, holding on for dear life. “ Tyler, what happened? When did it happen? Do you know who did it? Is Jacques Lavoie-” I could barely get the words past the sour taste in my mouth. “Is he-”

“Dead?” Leave it to Tyler not to beat around the bush. He put a hand on my shoulder and turned me around to face the body just as the cop looking over the crime scene turned the victim onto his back.

“He’s dead,” Tyler said. “But it’s not Jacques Lavoie.”

“Greg!” I looked at the face of the retired teacher who loved to cook as much as he loved helping Monsieur with the everyday tasks of running the shop. Relief swept through me and instantly I felt guilty. Greg had worked at the store for nearly six months and in that time, I’d come to know him. He was a nice man, single, and he never made me feel stupid or inadequate when I walked into the shop on some mission or another from Jim. He was soft-spoken and helpful and though he could be prickly with customers who came in and acted as if their knowledge of food and wine made them superior to the rest of the human race, he’d always been kind to me.

“It isn’t Monsieur. It’s Greg. Poor Greg!” My vision blurred and I blinked, and tears streamed down my cheeks. I wiped them away with one hand. “What happened?”

“How about if I ask the questions?” I doubt if Tyler was being kind. Tyler didn’t have a warm and fuzzy bone in his body. I think he was just trying to make sure we stayed out of the way of the folks swarming over the crime scene. That’s why he turned me around the other way and, one hand on the small of my back, marched me down the nearest aisle. He finally stopped at a place where we were surrounded by a display of jars of Vavoom! on one side, and shelves of enameled cookware in brilliant primary colors on the other. “You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”

I tried. A couple of times. It was hard to get anything like a coherent sentence out of my mouth.

Because he’s the ultimate hard-nosed cop, I knew that would never satisfy Tyler. Like Jim is in the kitchen, Tyler is a stickler for procedure. I know (at least I suppose) that since he’s alive, he has a heart, but I am just as sure that it’s as cold as ice and as impenetrable as a brick.

I know this for a fact, too. Tyler, see, just happens to be one of Eve’s former fiancés.

Let me explain.

Eve has been engaged any number of times. And, since I guess the time she was engaged to the man who was a murderer and tried to kill us both doesn’t count, she’s broken off every one of those engagements.

Every one but the one to Tyler.

He’s the one who called off that wedding, and, Tyler being Tyler, he didn’t try to soften the blow. He told Eve point-blank that there was no way he could marry her because she just wasn’t smart enough.

Ouch!

Point of fact, it was Eve’s reaction to Tyler ’s attitude that sent us off in search of our first killer. After all, Eve reasoned as only Eve can, if she could prove to Tyler that she was smart enough to solve a murder, maybe he’d see that she wasn’t the airhead he thought she was.

Since that time, we’d solved that murder and a couple of others besides, but that hardly changed a thing. As far as Tyler was concerned, Eve was nothing more than an unfortunate footnote in his past. We’d heard through the local grapevine that Tyler was engaged to another cop named Kaitlin Sands. If memory served me correctly, the day of their nuptials was fast approaching.

What did I think about the whole Tyler/Eve situation? Honestly, I thought that the day Tyler and Kaitlin tied the knot should (theoretically) be the happiest of Eve’s life. Once Tyler was married, she could officially stop thinking of him as available. He’d be out of her life and her heart, once and for all.

Eve, of course, had a different take on the subject. For her, Tyler Cooper was like a severe case of poison ivy.

So far, she hadn’t found anything-or anyone-that could ease the itch.

But I digress.