Ever practical, I decided it was best not to think about it.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I told Eve, partly because it took my mind off the diamonds, and mostly because time was a-wastin’. “We’re going to do a little research. About Monsieur. I figure if we find out all we can about him, then we’ll be able to figure out what he’s up to with the IDs. And where he might be.”

Eve had recently seen her aesthetician, so when she shook her head, her blonde hair gleamed in the glow of my desk lamp. “I don’t know. Think about it, Annie. We know all there is to know about Monsieur. He’s our friend.”

“Do our friends tell us everything?”

I paused here. A long time. Which gave Eve the perfect opening to bring up Tyler. She hadn’t said one word about him in days. Naturally that made me suspicious. I was dying to know what was up with him. And her. And them.

When she said not a thing, I waited even longer.

That didn’t work, either, so I puffed out a breath of exasperation and went right on. “I’ve asked Jim,” I told her. “We sat down together last night and talked for a long time. I told him to tell me everything he knew about Monsieur.” There was a yellow legal pad on my desk and I picked it up and handed it to Eve. “That’s all he knows.”

She read over my neatly written notes. “French. Owner of Très Bonne Cuisine. Lives in Cherrydale.” Eve wrinkled her nose. “See? I told you so. We know all that.”

“Except there’s more.” I pointed to the next lines.

“Loves to cook. Good businessman. Reasonable boss, though not especially generous when it comes to salary and raises. Cares about his customers. Except for the Vavoom! thing.”

Eve wasn’t around the night Jim found me filling the Vavoom! jars so I filled her in about that part of the story. “Jim was disappointed,” I said. “He didn’t think his friend could ever be that-”

“Dishonest?” Eve flipped the page on the legal pad, but since there was nothing written past the first page, she flipped it right back. “It doesn’t say here that he thinks Monsieur is dishonest.”

“No.” The thought sat uneasily with me, and I twitched my shoulders. “Jim didn’t want to come right out and say it, so I didn’t add it. But that’s not the point.” I reached for the pad and tapped a finger against the list. “The point is that it’s a pretty short list. And pretty basic, too. Even though Jim has known Monsieur for years, he really doesn’t know that much about him.”

“Monsieur is a private person.”

“But he’s not.” I thought about all those smiling faces on all those jars of Vavoom! “Monsieur is a showman. He loves publicity. He adores the spotlight. He’s got a following in the area and he loves that, too. You’ve seen the way he perks right up when somebody walks into the shop and says they saw his picture in the paper or in some culinary magazine or another. The same thing happens at Bellywasher’s when he’s there and someone walks in and recognizes him. He’s as happy as a kid on Christmas morning when that happens, and he’s not shy about talking to anybody or about posing for pictures. So why is it that a man who loves to be the center of attention-a man we think of as our friend-why is it that we really don’t know that much about him?”

Eve tipped her head. “I never really thought about it before,” she admitted.

“Why would you? Why would any of us? We all meet people and we take those people at face value. They tell us they’re cooks, and we believe them. Why shouldn’t we? They tell us they’re rocket scientists or horse trainers or that they work behind the counter at the local Starbuck’s, and there isn’t one reason in the world for us to stop and consider if they’re telling us the truth or not.”

Eve still wasn’t sure where I was headed. At the risk of ruining her perfectly put together look, she worked her lower lip with her teeth. “Are you saying that Monsieur might not be who he says he is?”

“I’m saying we don’t know. Maybe one of those licenses we found…” I looked toward the drawer of my computer desk because that’s where I’d stashed the IDs. “I’m saying that maybe one of those people is the real Monsieur.”

“No way.” Honestly, I couldn’t blame Eve for sounding so dead set against my idea. I didn’t like the sound of it, either. I didn’t like the way it made my insides uneasy, or the way just thinking that our friend may have deceived us made my skin crawl. “You can’t fake being French, Annie. Everybody knows that. French people are… well… they’re French.”

“I’m not saying he’s not French.”

“Then what are you saying?”

I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t like admitting it. I sighed. “I’m saying we should check. That’s all. How could it hurt? And how much can we possibly know about a person who wasn’t born in this country, anyway?”

“You know a lot about Jim.”

“That’s different.” It was, and Eve knew it. Which was exactly why she brought it up. That would explain why her eyes sparkled, too.

And why she smiled when she said, “You and Jim are falling in love, aren’t you?”

The question wasn’t out of line. I mean, Eve is my best friend.

“Jim is terrific.” It was the truth, and I wasn’t shy about admitting it.

“And?”

I didn’t even try to hide my smile. “And we’re falling in love.”

“I knew it!” Eve was so happy for me, she shrieked. “I can’t wait, Annie! I can’t wait until he asks you to marry him.”

When I think about Jim, I get all warm and fuzzy.

When I think about matrimony, my insides freeze up.

I guess that explains why I was suddenly feeling like a Slurpee.

I hugged my arms around myself. “There’s been no talk of marriage,” I said.

“But if there is-?”

“There isn’t. There hasn’t been. Marriage is a big step. Bigger than quitting my job at Pioneer. I wouldn’t even think about it. I mean, after-”

“Peter?”

As a best friend, Eve should have known better.

She didn’t. She gave me that look of hers, the one that’s innocent and probing-all at the same time.

“Peter is a nuisance,” I said. “I don’t feel a thing for Peter. Not anymore.”

“Then why has he been hanging around?”

“He hasn’t been hanging around.” I hadn’t even thought about it, but now that I realized it, I was relieved. “I haven’t seen Peter since the night of the poker game. He’s ancient history. Like Tyler used to be to you.”

Remember what I said about Eve being my best friend? Well, I was her best friend, too, so she shouldn’t have sloughed off my comment like it was nothing at all.

“Are we going to tell Tyler?” she asked. “I mean, about Monsieur’s IDs? I wonder if it’s something the police should know about.”

I was nobody’s fool. I knew a change of subject when I saw it. Or heard it.

Like I was going to let that stop me?

Remember, we were talking best friends here, and best friends have a dispensation of sorts; they don’t have to back off. Not when the subject is l-o-v-e.

“I think it’s too soon to involve…” I made sure I put so much emphasis on this word that anybody could have seen-or heard-where I was headed. “I don’t know if we should get Tyler involved.” I said it again, just the same way. “Unless he is already. Involved, that is.”

“Well, aren’t you about as subtle as a presidential motorcade?” Eve tried to look put out, but a smile played around the corners of her mouth. “Truth be told, Tyler is not involved. Not currently, anyway. I mean, not in the immediate future.”

It took a moment for this momentous news to sink in. Even after it had, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “Are you saying…?”

“The wedding has been postponed again. They set a new date. They pushed it back again.” Eve looked much too pleased by this announcement, but before I even had a chance to feel

A) appalled

B) frightened

C) worried

D) all of the above

she breezed right on, “ Tyler says it was by mutual agreement. That’s how he put it. Mutual agreement. He said that over the last months, he and Kaitlin have grown apart. You know, the way some couples do. They thought if they postponed the wedding, they might be able to work things out.” She shrugged. Not like she’d been thinking about it and couldn’t make sense of the situation. More like Oh, well, what the heck, Kaitlin’s loss is my gain.