Seventeen

NORMAN… ER, JACQUES… DID SAY CLAUDE BROOKING was a friend, so I assumed they might have some things in common.

Like charming little gourmet shops.

Or cute French accents (even if they weren’t real).

What Eve and I discovered-after we wasted precious minutes searching for Claude in the maze of booths selling everything from cookware to cookie mixes to knife sharpeners-was a mishmash of tables piled with every cheap kitchen gadget imaginable. (Yes, I know, this makes me sound like a cooking snob, and honestly, it’s not like me, but a couple weeks at Très Bonne Cuisine is bound to do that to a person).

Claude’s merchandise was displayed around a huge RV that had been pulled right onto the site. Just in case that wasn’t conspicuous enough, the RV had a yellow banner draped across the side of it that proclaimed Brooking Cooking in huge red letters.

And Claude Brooking?

I didn’t even have to ask. Claude Brooking had to be the guy in the blue, yellow, and orange Hawaiian shirt who was doing his best to schmooze a couple of ladies into buying colorful little plastic cups that clipped over the side of a pot.

“You’ve never seen anything like these,” he said, and forget the French accent. Claude and Norman must have known each other back in New Jersey. “Look at this, sweetie. You put your egg in here, see. Then you hang this contraption onto your pot and boil your egg. Then…” He slipped the plastic holder off the pot with a motion that said voilà, even if Claude didn’t. “You can serve the egg right from this thing. Is that wonderful, or what? And the price? For anybody else, these are four for twenty dollars. But today only as a show special…” Claude gave the women a wink. “Today only and only for you two, you get all four of them and a set of matching measuring spoons for a mere twenty dollars. It’s once in a lifetime. I’m a crazy man even to offer you this kind of deal. What do you say, ladies? Can I wrap up a set for each of you?”

They were all too eager, and I checked my watch-again-and waited as patiently as I could while Claude rang up the sale.

When he was done, I stepped forward.

“For you, little lady…” Claude wiggled his eyebrows at me, then slid his gaze to Eve, who was standing at my side. “Today only and only for you two, I’m willing to deal. What will it be?” He gestured toward the hodgepodge that was his on-the-road showroom. “Anything at all. Including me, if you’ll take me home.”

I would have laughed, just to be polite. If I had time. “Jacques Lavoie,” I said instead. “He’s a friend of yours, right? He’s doing a cooking demonstration and-”

“He’s back?” Claude’s hair was way too dark for a man of his middle years. So were his eyebrows. They shot up his forehead. “I called him a couple times and left messages. He never called back.”

“He’s been busy. So are we.” I scanned the tables, searching for a mandoline. When I didn’t see one, I had no choice but to throw myself on Claude’s mercy. “His demonstration is about to start and-”

“Really? That’s so cool!” Claude reached under the table, produced a sign that said Out to Lunch, Be Right Back, and balanced it on a pile of tea infusers. “You going back to the amphitheater?” he asked. “I’ll walk with you.”

“That’s fine. Really.” The only way to stop him was to put a hand on his arm. “But Jacques needs a mandoline.”

“Going to play music, is he?” A few weeks before, I might have laughed at the joke. Now I knew how lame it was and Eve didn’t get it at all, seeing as how she didn’t know about the musical instrument or the kitchen gadget. Claude was the only one who chuckled before he asked, “Jacques, he needs it now?”

I checked my watch again and gauged the time remaining against how far we had to walk back to the amphitheater. “He needs it right now.”

Claude nodded his understanding and started looking. He looked on the table where the tea infusers were stacked, and on another table dotted with precarious piles of strawberry hullers, cherry pitters, and cheese graters. Failing there, he moved on to a third table, this one filled with staggering heaps of folding chopsticks (I know, I’d never heard of them, either), can openers, and oven mitts that could supposedly withstand temperatures of up to five hundred degrees.

“I know I’ve got a mandoline here somewhere,” Claude said along with something else, but by this time he was down on his hands and knees, searching through the boxes stowed under the tables and it was hard to hear him. “If you can just be patient…”

“I’m trying,” I said from between my gritted teeth, and because she understood, Eve gave me a pat on the back.

When Claude popped back up from the nether reaches of his stock supply, I breathed a sigh of relief-until I noticed he was empty-handed.

“Might be in the RV,” he said, poking a thumb over his shoulder. “Give me a minute, will you? I’ll just go inside for a quick look-see.”

He did, and when he did, I dropped my head into my hands.

“I wanted everything to go smoothly,” I grumbled. “You know, just to make this easier for Norman.”

“He’s nervous, but he shouldn’t be.” At my side, Eve didn’t look nearly as edgy as I felt. “ Tyler ’s got everything under control,” she said. “There are cops stationed at all the doors. There are cops backstage and in the sound booth of the amphitheater, and even in the audience. Nobody is going to get close enough to Norman to kidnap him. Nothing’s going to happen to him.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to his cooking, either, not if we don’t get that mandoline so he can slice the onions for the French onion soup.” I glanced over my shoulder toward the RV. There was no sign of Claude. “You don’t suppose the inside of that place looks anything like the outside here, do you?” The very thought was enough to offend my sense of order, and I shivered. “How’s he ever going to find that mandoline in time?” I scanned the booths nearest to us. If one of them had a mandoline, believe me, I would have bought it with my own hard-earned money and headed straight for the amphitheater with it. The way it was, there was a super-duper cleanup mop being sold at the booth to our right, and all-organic potato chips on our left. There wasn’t a mandoline in sight.

There was no sign of Claude, either, and because the precious minutes were ticking away, I stepped around the tables that bordered his space and headed up the stairs and into the RV, with Eve right behind me.

My intuition was right on: The inside of Claude’s RV looked a whole lot like the outside space where he did business. There were boxes piled on the floor and on the table behind the driver’s seat and the built-in bench behind it. There were boxes stacked three high to our left, all along the hallwaylike space that led to a room where I could see a couple of built-in bunk beds that were stacked with boxes. I could see open packages of gadgets scattered about, and charge receipts (both new and used). I could see plastic carry bags that said Brooking Cooking on the side, and ripped-open cartons that had at one time contained everything from measuring cups to salt shakers.

I could see everything and anything-but Claude.

“Claude?” Over my shoulder, I gave Eve an “I don’t know what’s going on” sort of look and, leading the way, I sidled toward the bedroom, my back pressed to the wall of boxes. “Claude, are you all right? Did you find the mandoline? We don’t have a lot of time and-” My gasp drowned out the rest of my words.

That’s because I found Claude lying facedown on the bedroom floor. There was a quickly growing pool of blood around the gash at the back of his head.

“Oh, my gosh!” Behind me, I felt, rather than saw, Eve pull back. She never did do well with blood and gore.