I shook my head. “No answer,” I said, with a look toward the phone on my desk. “I’ve been calling every half hour or so. But there’s no answer at his house. No answer on his cell, either.”
Jim’s white apron was a stark contrast to the smudges of exhaustion under his eyes. He looked over his shoulder, quickly checking to be sure that for the moment, everything was under control out in the restaurant. Only when he was sure did he step into my office and close the door behind him.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
In all the hours we’d worked on the problem, I’d never heard Jim sound this discouraged. Or this worried. I rose from my chair and crossed the room (it didn’t take long; my office is lilliputian). I would have given Jim a hug if there wasn’t a smear of marinara across the front of his apron and I wasn’t wearing a white sweater.
I put a hand on Jim’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “We’re going to find him,” I said, and honestly, I believed it. “Monsieur can’t have just disappeared off the face of the earth. He has to be somewhere.” I was grateful that Jim was listed as the emergency contact on the note that hung over the cash register at Très Bonne Cuisine. That meant the cops had contacted him directly the night before. He was in the loop, and he wasn’t getting all his information about the murder and Monsieur’s disappearance secondhand from me. “You heard what Tyler said when he called you last night,” I reminded him.
“You mean about Jacques making that phone call. The one that alerted the police to the trouble.” Jim nodded. A lock of hair fell onto his forehead, but he didn’t move to brush it back. The curl of hair made him look younger. And more vulnerable.
I’d heard people talk about heartstrings, and at that moment, I knew for certain they were real because mine tugged in sympathy.
“ Tyler said that phone call means Jacques is as right as rain,” Jim said. He didn’t have to; I remembered the call as well as he did. But I let him talk. He was bolstering his own spirits, and trying to buck up mine, too. “Jacques was able to make the phone call, so he must not have been hurt. Tyler said it means we shouldn’t worry that he might be… you know.”
I couldn’t blame Jim. I didn’t want to say it, either. I didn’t even want to think about what he was thinking about, so I didn’t. I concentrated on the facts instead.
“When I was at the shop, Tyler told me the back door of Très Bonne Cuisine was open when the police arrived. I think that means that when the killer came into the store, Monsieur must have been loading his car with the stuff he was supposed to bring over here for your class. Of course, I didn’t get a chance to look around the store. If I could have gone back there, maybe I’d know for sure.” A stab of embarrassment reminded me that after Tyler had given me more time than he probably should have at an active crime scene, he unceremoniously escorted me from the premises and told me to mind my own business.
Which was exactly what I was doing, I reminded myself.
Monsieur was our friend. This was our business.
With that in mind, I went right on. “He didn’t come right out and say it-you know how Tyler can be-but I got the feeling he thinks that Monsieur walked back in and realized something was wrong. I’ll bet Monsieur was all set to help. You know he wouldn’t just turn tail and run. Not when a friend is in trouble. He’s not that kind of person. But then he must have heard the shots, and that’s when he called 911 and got himself out of there. It was the smart thing to do and it also means that he’s safe. He’s just-”
“Missing? Disappeared into thin air? Hiding? That makes the least sense of all. Why would he want to hide? Why would he need to?”
These were the same questions that we’d been over the night before-again and again, until our heads spun and our brains were as fried as the ravioli on the day’s menu. Before I could try to drum up some answers that sounded new, different, and even vaguely plausible, there was a rap on my door.
Heidi, our waitress, opened it and came inside. In my office, three is the proverbial crowd and when Jim stepped closer, I stepped back to keep my sweater from getting ruined. Heidi, smart girl that she is, didn’t waste any time.
“The party at table four is ready for their birthday cake,” she told Jim, and he assured her he’d be right there. I knew the Tennessee whiskey cake Jim had made the day before was a special order for a group of regulars and that he was proud of his recipe. There was no way he wasn’t going to serve it himself.
Before he stepped back into the restaurant, he looked toward my phone. “You’ll try again?”
I didn’t have to answer. He knew I would.
Before he closed my door, though, he turned to me one more time.
“He was the one who gave me my first real job when I came to this country, you know.” Jim’s smile was brief. “I was barbacking here for Uncle Angus, but there’s only so much of that a young fellow can do, especially one who’s itching to cook. Jacques’ shop was brand new and when I stopped in to look around, he saw that I was interested, and knowledgeable. I’d taken a few cookery courses back in Scotland, but I’d never seen anything like that shop of his. I started out unpacking boxes, stocking shelves. I learned a lot there, and Jacques gave me a chance to cook, and to teach.”
I knew the story, of course, but I didn’t bother to point this out to Jim. As I’d seen in so many investigations, those left behind to deal with the aftermath of a tragedy needed space to explore their feelings and a chance to talk.
“But this isn’t a tragedy,” I told myself the instant Jim was out the door. And then I felt guilty. Because of course Greg’s death was exactly that. Monsieur’s disappearance, on the other hand?
Right now, that was a mystery.
As always, my mind and Eve’s were apparently moving in the same direction. That would explain why the moment I was back at my desk and staring at those endless columns of blurred numbers again, she slipped into my office and plunked into the chair next to my desk.
“You’re going to take the case, right?” Eve didn’t wait for me to answer. She’d left her purse in my office that morning and she got it out of the bottom drawer of my desk, dug inside, and pulled out a tube of lipstick. “I mean, you pretty much have to, don’t you? What with Monsieur being our friend and all.”
“I dunno.” I rolled my chair back. “It’s not that I wouldn’t like to know more-”
“Of course you would.” Eve uncapped the lipstick, applied it, and smacked her lips together. “You’re a smart woman with an inquisitive mind.”
“But we don’t have much to go on.”
“You mean the cops don’t.” Eve pulled a mirror from her purse. She pouted into it, checking her lipstick. “You’re oodles smarter than they are, Annie. You’ve proved that more than once.”
“I have, but-”
“And you know you could do it again.”
“I might be able to, but-”
“And you want to, don’t you?” She looked directly at me when she said this and, face-to-face with the sheen of excitement in Eve’s blue eyes, I found it impossible to speak anything but the whole truth and nothing but.
“It is interesting to investigate,” I said, my words tentative. “I’ll admit that. I like solving the puzzle of a case. I like knowing that a victim has found justice and the person responsible will be punished. But-”
“But? But what?” She shoved both lipstick and mirror back in her purse, tucked the purse in the bottom desk drawer, and sat up straight. “You are not telling me that you’re going to give up on Monsieur Lavoie, are you, Annie? Because I just know that can’t be true. He’s our friend. And you’re the best detective this side of the-”
“Oh, no. Don’t try to pull that on me!” I was up and on my feet even before I realized it. “Being curious about what happened to Monsieur is one thing. Being thought of as some kind of Sherlock Holmes is-”