A Killer Kebab Read online

  Twenty minutes later the simple dough was mixed and the aroma of warm maple syrup and toasted walnuts wafted through the restaurant kitchen. While the first tray of cookies baked, I laid out a few of the recipes from Gladys’s shoe box on the clean prep counter and began to sort. Desserts and sweets went into one pile. Main dishes, side dishes, breads, and vegetables all got their own spot. This project wouldn’t be finished today, that was for sure. But I had nothing but time between now and next May when the restaurant opened back up.

  I was just popping a ball of raw cookie dough—which was of course a no-no since it contained raw eggs, but, well, I liked to live dangerously—into my mouth and taking the first tray out of the oven when the back door gave its characteristic screech and slam. Two men entered, brandishing sledgehammers. My jaw dropped when I realized the identity of one of the men. My cook’s son and my former employee, Russ Riley.

  TWO

  “Hey, Georgie,” Russ said. His unshaven chin was thrust out and he looked me in the eye, as if daring me to question his presence on my premises.

  Huh. After I’d fired him a few months ago, his mother, Dolly, had told me that he’d gone to Florida to look for work. Wrestling alligators or maybe operating the rides at some off-Disney park—those would be career opportunities open to him. He was on probation, so leaving the state was not allowed, but I certainly wasn’t going to rat him out. The farther away he stayed, the better, after the role he’d played in the mess my almost-ex-husband Spiro had gotten himself into a few months ago.

  I wondered, briefly, if I should be afraid. He was holding a sledgehammer. The lump of cookie dough slid down my throat in a buttery blob and I reached for the glass of ice water sitting on the counter. And reviewed where the closest chef’s knife was located.

  “What are you doing here, Russ?”

  His companion, a stocky guy with a butch haircut that screamed former military, seemed to be following the conversation closely. His lips were twisted into the merest hint of a smile.

  Russ set down the hammer, removed his Metallica ball cap, and smoothed his thick dark mullet with the fingers of one tattooed hand. He replaced the cap and smiled at me, revealing a couple of missing teeth. “It’s hunting season,” he said simply, as if that explained everything. Which, if you were Russ Riley, it more or less did.

  Funny Dolly hadn’t mentioned he was back. I’d seen her only yesterday.

  The other guy, still apparently quite amused by the exchange, doffed his cap to me. “Zach Brundage, ma’am.” His voice held a slight twang, not quite Southern. Pennsylvania or Delaware perhaps. “Steve said to tell you that he’d be here in a few minutes. He’s making phone calls in the truck.”

  Good. I wouldn’t have to worry about Russ with Steve around. Most likely. As long as I could keep him out of the walk-in freezer, which he’d often used as his personal supermarket when he worked here. Not that there was much in there now. Most of the inventory that was left when we closed for the season had gone to the Bay’s food pantry.

  “Those cookies smell good,” Zach said.

  “Oh, yeah, Georgie’s a great cook,” Russ said.

  I wanted to smack him. Instead, I told them, like a couple of children, that they’d have to wait until the cookies cooled down.

  “We can get to work, then,” Zach said. “Come on, Russ.”

  “I’ll lead the way,” Russ said. “I know this place like the back of my hand.” He glanced over his shoulder at me as they left the kitchen. “And I can’t wait to smash something.”

  Great. My disgruntled former dishwasher was now walking down my hallway with a sledgehammer. I was just about to call Steve and make sure he was on his way when the man in question came in through the back door. A sigh of relief escaped my lips.

  Steve glanced over at me. “Sorry,” he said. “I should have realized it would be uncomfortable for you to have Russ here.”

  “Well, a little, maybe.” More than a little, but less than a lot. I was probably being paranoid.

  “One of the guys on my crew is out with a hernia, so I brought Russ on at the last minute. I’ll keep an eye on him. It’ll only be a few days and he’ll be out of your hair.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” The second tray of cookies went into the oven as Steve went down the hall. I followed him, pulling my cell phone out of my pocket. The guys were standing outside the ladies’ room, and Steve gestured inside, already giving orders.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and pushed past Russ and Zach. “‘Before’ pictures.”

  “Good idea,” Russ drawled as I snapped a few photos. “You bringing in a TV crew to film us?”

  Before I could respond, Steve cut in. “Shut up and get to work, Russ. Didn’t you say your truck needed a new tranny? Winter jobs in Bonaparte Bay are hard to come by.”

  Russ glared, but picked up his sledgehammer and entered the ladies’ room, a place I was willing to bet he’d never been while he worked here. At least I hoped not.

  “I’ll have him out of here as soon as I can,” Steve said.

  I shrugged. “If he gets out of line, best thing to do is call Dolly.”

  Steve nodded. “Best damn cook around. It’s a long time till spring when I can get another piece of her apple pie.”

  The timer dinged from the kitchen. I headed back to my domain and pulled the tray from the oven. While the cookies cooled, I set up a platter and loaded the dishwasher, then started a fresh pot of coffee. The unmistakable sounds of smashing tile came from the other side of the house. Every blow caused me to flinch. Destruction, even though it paved the way for something new, was uncomfortable. I set the platter by the coffeemaker and wrote out a quick note that I was going out for a while and that Steve and the crew should help themselves. Would I be held liable if Russ choked on his? It might be worth a lawsuit.

  Bundled up in a warm parka, scarf, hat, mittens and boots, I set out.

  Theresa Street, the main drag of Bonaparte Bay, was closed up tight, and had been for a month now. The tourist season ends on Columbus Day, and begins again on Victoria Day, which is the weekend before Memorial Day. Canadians celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday as a holiday—and some of them cross the St. Lawrence River to celebrate it in Bonaparte Bay. But right now, the tour boats were gone, the ticket booth was shuttered, and almost every business in the Bay, from Roger’s Jewelry Shoppe to the T-Shirt Emporium run by my friend Midge, were closed for the winter. A couple of businesses stayed open—the Express-o Bean coffee shop and Kinney’s drugstore.

  I turned up Vincent Street, wiggling my gloved fingers and blowing out a frosty breath. The weather had turned frigid all of a sudden. I’m not sure why that surprised me every year, but it always seemed to come as something of a shock. I stepped up onto the front porch of a house sheathed in white clapboards. A sign hung next to the door: “Peter and Kimberlee Galbraith, Certified Public Accountants.” Under that was another sign: “Hair-Brains.” I’d be making a stop at both businesses.

  Kim peered at me over a stack of files when I entered. She smiled and rose to greet me. Just five feet tall, she could barely see over the pile, even on her feet. Kim and her husband, Pete, both accountants, were still a couple after more than a decade of working and living together. They’d done quite a bit better than Spiro and I had. But that was water under the international bridge and I was optimistic about the direction my life was taking. Spiro was as happy as I’d ever seen him, now that he’d found love with Inky, the guy who ran the tattoo shop in town.

  “Hi, Kim.” I pulled off my knit cap and gloves and shoved them into my pockets, then smoothed my flyaway hair with my hand.

  “Georgie! Seems like ages since I’ve seen you.” Kim came around the desk and sat down in one of the visitors’ chairs, motioning me to sit in the other. “Sorry about the mess.” She glanced around. “We only have an assistant at tax time and things get a little out of contr
ol the rest of the year.”

  “Looks like a successful business to me, with all the work you can handle.” I unzipped my coat. “And Bonaparte Bay needs those. I’m having some work done at the restaurant—”

  Kim cut me off. “You’re not changing the menu, are you?” Her eyes took on a worried look. “Because a life without Sophie’s baklava or Dolly’s pies just isn’t worth living.”

  I laughed. I felt the same way. “No, no. Just updating the restrooms. Can you cut a check to Steve Murdoch? He’s already started work and I want to get him the first installment.” I gave her the figure.

  Kim’s face clouded over. “Sure. Do you want to wait while I write it out? It’ll only take a minute.” She went over to the printer, rummaged around in a drawer underneath it, and pulled out a box of checks marked “Bonaparte House.” She loaded a check into the printer, then returned to her seat behind her desk.

  “Poor Steve.” Keys clacked as she worked.

  “What about Steve?” I hoped he wasn’t sick.

  The printer whirred and a sheet of paper shot out the top. “Well,” Kim said. “I don’t know all the details, but it’s going around town that Jennifer’s having an affair.”

  My heart sank. “Poor Steve” was right. Jennifer was nuts. Steve was a decent, good-looking guy with a successful business. He did well enough that she didn’t have to work outside the home if she didn’t want to—which was apparently the case—and she was always dressed to the nines, even just to go to the Dollarsmasher supermarket or the bank.

  “I hope this doesn’t send him back to the booze,” Kim continued. Steve never made any secret that he was a recovering alcoholic. I’d seen him pull out his sober chip more than once at the restaurant and run his fingers around the edge. And I’d heard he was sponsor to a couple of other Bay residents, though I didn’t know who.

  “That would be a shame.” I hoped Steve and Jennifer could work it out. But I was living proof that no matter how amicable or necessary the breakup, there could still be a lot of emotions to sort through. “So who’s she having the affair with?” I felt a little guilty about gossiping, but not quite enough to make me want to give it up. Bonaparte Bay could be dead boring in the off-season. Gossip was one way to pass the time during the long winter.

  Kim put the check into an envelope and handed it to me. “I heard it was Jim MacNamara.”

  My lawyer. What a jerk. At least he was single, his wife having left him years ago. And his son, Ben, was a grown man who now worked with his father. But that didn’t excuse him for sleeping with a married woman. Once my divorce was final, maybe I’d look around for another attorney. Right now, well, I wanted the paperwork finished.

  “Thanks,” I said, deciding to deliver the check to Steve myself and zipping it inside my purse. “See you around at the Bean.”

  “Gotta keep that place in business.” She grinned. “The better they do, the more accounting work for me.”

  I stood up, throwing my coat over my arm. Kim showed me to the door. “Stay warm.”

  “You too.” I went across the hallway and opened the door to Hair-Brains.

  I’d only intended to go in and make an appointment to get my hair done. But Lesley had had a cancelation so an hour and a half later, I found myself walking back to the Bonaparte House with a fresh new haircut, blond highlights and some darker lowlights, and even a manicure in Pale Petal Pink. The wind had picked up and I considered stopping in to warm up at Spinky’s, the restaurant Spiro and Inky were opening. They’d hoped to have it running by now and to keep it open year-round, but they’d experienced a number of delays and were now planning on a spring opening. Maybe, just a little, I wanted to show off my new look, even though it was hat-flat already. Inky would appreciate it, even if Spiro might not. But it was cold, and dark comes early in November. As good as I looked, I wanted nothing more than to heat up a couple of frozen tiropita—flaky golden phyllo pastry wrapped around a cheesy filling—for dinner, then to curl up on the couch upstairs and read my new Raphaela Ridgeway romance novel and wait for Jack’s call at nine o’clock.

  When I got back to the Bonaparte House, the parking lot was empty. The kitchen door was locked and a note was taped on the window.

  GEORGIE. WE FINISHED FOR THE DAY. DEMO’S DONE AND WE’LL START CONSTRUCTION TOMORROW. YOU DIDN’T ANSWER YOUR CELL SO I WENT AHEAD AND LOCKED THE DOOR. HOPE YOU BROUGHT A KEY. IF NOT, CALL ME. —STEVE.

  Fortunately, I did have my key, which I turned in the lock. The place was blissfully silent. No banging, hammering, or snotty criminal ex-employees.

  I pulled out my cell phone. There was a missed call from Steve, which had probably come in about the time I was getting blow-dried. I hung up my coat at the back door, dropped my purse inside my office, and headed for the restrooms to document the progress.

  “Progress” was a relative term. I snapped a few photos of the men’s room first. A pile of debris lay in one corner. The toilets and urinals had been disconnected and were lined up against one wall, destined, I assumed, for the great porcelain graveyard, wherever that was. They were decades old, so I didn’t think they had any salvage value, but if some enterprising soul wanted them, they were welcome to them. A fine layer of light-colored dust lay over everything, probably from the old plaster. I was grateful to Steve for putting up a plastic sheet on the doorway to contain the mess.

  Across the narrow hall, a similar plastic sheet had been hung in the door to the ladies’ room. I drew back the curtain and stepped inside. The same fine white dust coated the disemboweled space. The hideous pink and black tile? Completely gone. It was amazing what three guys and some sledgehammers could do in a few hours. The disconnected toilets here too lined one wall.

  I spun slowly, snapping pictures around the room. And froze. A bubble of nausea rose from my stomach and up my esophagus and my eyes closed involuntarily. When the threatened eruption didn’t happen, I opened my eyes and stared. I hadn’t been wrong. Oh, how I wish I had.

  I dialed my cell phone.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” Damn. Cindy Dumont again.

  I swallowed. “Cindy, send Rick or Tim to the Bonaparte House. Tell them to use the back door. Call an ambulance. And don’t you dare make a snarky comment or I’ll ban you from my restaurant permanently.”

  THREE

  Across the room, partially hidden by the old stall walls that had been removed and stacked along the perimeter, a body lay motionless, sprawled in an ocean of blood that appeared to be seeping into the exposed subfloor of my ladies’ room. It was facedown, but unless I had a cross-dresser I could see the body was a man. He wore a dark suit, stained darker by the blood that soaked it. A shiny metal stick about two and a half feet long and the diameter of a dime stuck up like a flagpole from the man’s back.

  The breath caught in my throat as I stared at the threaded end of that metal stick. I knew what that was. I’d been slicing meat off it in the restaurant kitchen for years. It was the spit that formed part of the vertical rotisserie on which we cooked our gyro meat.

  I backed out of the room, getting myself tangled up in the plastic door and almost falling in my haste to get out. My feet carried me, with no conscious effort of my own, to the kitchen. The rotisserie stood in one corner, cleaned and disassembled for the winter. My hand reached for the knob of the cabinet next to the machine. The spare parts, including the spit, should be inside there. But I pulled back, as though the handle radiated heat. There could be fingerprints on there, ones I shouldn’t smudge. Because if that was my spit, somebody must have opened this cabinet and removed it. I’d placed the apparatus there myself, along with the other loose parts, more than a month ago.

  But the suspense was killing me. Who was the man lying dead in my restaurant? And was it, in fact, a piece of my equipment that had skewered him? I tore myself away. I couldn’t help the man. It wasn’t like I could move him without doing mor
e damage than he’d already suffered. And what if the attacker was still here? I threw on my coat and raced outside.

  The wail of sirens grew louder. One of Bonaparte Bay’s two cruisers pulled into the parking lot, light bar flashing, tires spraying up gravel as the vehicle came to an abrupt stop. Deputy Tim Arquette got out of the vehicle and came toward me, his hand on the butt of his gun. “What’s going on, Georgie?”

  I pointed to the kitchen door. “Inside. There’s a body in one of the restrooms. I came home from getting my hair done and he was there.”

  Tim gave me the once-over. “Looks nice,” he said. “Stay out here. I’ll go in and make sure the perp is gone.”

  I nodded and sat down at the picnic table. My eyes were glued to the back of the restaurant, waiting for Tim to come back.

  “Hey,” said a voice. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  A few deep breaths of air that frosted my lungs and I was back under control. “Hi, Brenda.”

  She sat down next to me, tossing her big shoulder bag onto the table. The sky was streaked with the last purple rays of the setting sun. A shiver ran through me.

  “Who’s dead?” Brenda asked. Bonaparte Bay’s Dumpster Diva never minced words. “I heard it on the police scanner,” she explained. Brenda Jones had a fairly lucrative business, keeping the Bay’s streets and alleys free of returnable cans and bottles. She was also a valuable source of information.

  “All I know is that he’s wearing a suit.”

  Brenda frowned. “When I was making my rounds this afternoon, I saw . . .”

  At that moment, Tim strode out the door and across the parking lot toward us. He jabbed his finger at his phone screen then put the device to his ear. Brenda and I both leaned a little closer, hoping to hear what he had to say. It wasn’t necessary. He spoke loud enough. “Cindy, is that ambulance en route? They’re only coming from three blocks away, for God’s sake. Not that it matters, he’s dead.” He paused, presumably while Cindy spoke on the other end. “You heard me right. It’s Jim MacNamara.”