“Right. Although I don’t know how much of a queen I’ll be if Fowler decides I’m a murderer.”

  “Fowler’s not that dumb. He’ll come around.”

  We ordered lunch and Caroline brought our iced teas. I let Bridget take a couple of sips and settle in before I broached the subject of Brett.

  “What exactly do you want to know?” she asked, frowning.

  “I’m not all that sure. I mean, he kept making passes at me, but I don’t think we ever had a normal conversation. Did he do that at the restaurant, too?”

  “Not to me, he didn’t. At least not twice. He made an offer once, and I told him where to stick it. I don’t think I was his type. He sure as hell wasn’t mine.” Bridget is a few years older than me, and she looks like a mom. She definitely doesn’t look like somebody who’d like to have an evening of tequila shots and wild sex.

  “Who was his type?”

  “Hard to say—I mean he’d come on to anybody in a skirt. But I did notice he seemed to go after low mileage types.”

  I frowned. “And by ‘low mileage’ you mean…”

  “Young,” Bridget said flatly. “We have a few waitresses straight out of high school, although Denny doesn’t like to hire too many of them because they can’t serve booze, not even beer. Those were the ones Holmes really went after. I know one of them went out with him for a while. I think she was eighteen, so she wasn’t a minor, even if it was just barely. Then he dropped her. She quit a couple of weeks later. Hard to think of anybody pining over a jerk like Holmes, but she was really young, like I said.”

  “Did anybody call him on it?”

  “Like who? Outraged dad? Her parents are divorced, and her mom waits tables in Norcross, gets home around midnight. Carrie didn’t have anybody to give her advice. Not that she wanted any. Believe me, I tried to give her some.”

  Caroline delivered our lunches, and we spent a few minutes eating, while I tried to think of other things to ask that might give me useful information. “How did Denny feel about Brett?”

  Denny was the manager at High Country. The owner lived in Aspen and dropped by maybe once a month.

  “They didn’t fight much. But I got the feeling Denny wasn’t too impressed with him. Holmes kept trying to add stuff to the menu, expensive stuff usually. Denny’s not what you’d call a big gourmet. He’s more a bottom line type. He and Brett disagreed on food choices pretty regularly.”

  “Is there anybody in the kitchen I could talk to? Somebody who could tell me how he ran things?”

  Bridget paused for a moment, thinking. “The best one would probably be Spencer Carroll. He’s the one who’s running the kitchen now. He stepped in the day the cops let us reopen. They’ll probably bring in somebody else to be the head chef eventually, but Spence is in charge at the moment. And he’s doing a good job. My guess is Denny would like to hold onto him, but the owner will probably bring in another hot shot from Denver.”

  I took a bite of my ham and cheese sandwich. Spencer Carroll would possibly be someone who could tell me the kind of kitchen manager Brett had been. That might not give me much insight into his possible enemies, but it would tell me a lot about what kind of person he was. When you work with somebody in stress conditions, you get a good idea of their character.

  “How could I get in touch with him?” I had a feeling if I just showed up at High Country, he’d be too busy to see me.

  Bridget gave me a slightly sneaky grin. “Why not ask your boyfriend? I’ve seen the two of them hanging around together. And it’s a beautiful sight to behold, believe me.”

  I blinked at her. “My boyfriend?”

  “The cook from Robicheaux’s, the younger one.” Bridget’s grin faded. “Aren’t the two of you together? I thought I heard you were.”

  My cheeks flushed pink. What are you, fifteen? “We’ve gone out together, yeah.”

  “So ask him to get you an introduction to Spence. Maybe even have him come along. The restaurant scene is pretty clubby around here. Everybody knows everybody else.”

  Except Nate didn’t know Brett. Or he said he didn’t.

  Don’t go there.

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll call him. Anything else you remember about Brett?”

  Bridget picked up her last potato chip. “He was really full of himself, but you probably know that already. He wanted us all to understand he’d been sous chef at this big restaurant in Denver, Solo. Every other thing he said started with ‘When I was at Solo.’ I mean, who cares, right? The chef at Stumptown had a place in Napa before he came here, and the guy at South Fork was a head chef in Chicago. It’s not like we’re the back of beyond in Shavano.”

  “He was pretty impressed with himself.”

  “But he wouldn’t have stayed here much longer. That’s the irony of it. If somebody killed him to get him out of the way, they wasted the effort. But my guess is whoever killed him did it because he was such a dick.”

  I found myself nodding slowly. “That makes sense.”

  Professional rivalries were real, but I didn’t know anybody who’d kill over a job. And Brett had other problems, most of them arising from his winning personality. Whoever killed him probably had a very good reason.

  Chapter 17

  After I went back to the farm, I took a few minutes to do what Susa had suggested and wrote up my notes. I hadn’t wanted to write anything while Bridget was talking, but I did want to remember what she’d said. Unfortunately, my notes looked pretty thin.

  Young girls, anybody in a skirt, heartbroken waitress, Carrie, run-ins with Denny over costs, worked at Solo, Spencer Carroll, impressed with himself.

  If somebody knocked me off before Susa and I solved the case, no one would be able to make sense of this except me.

  It did give me some leads, though. For one thing, I knew people who worked at Solo, the place where Brett claimed to have been head chef. I doubted that was true, but I knew someone I could ask.

  And then there was Spencer Carroll, the new head chef. I could ask Nate for help if they were friends. That had its good and bad points, however.

  I couldn’t decide how to approach Nate. If I asked him to dinner again, he might think I was ready for more than dinner. I wasn’t sure I was, but I wasn’t sure I wasn’t. Plus asking him to set me up with another man while we were on a date seemed a little crass.

  I needed to talk to him in a neutral setting where I could lay out the whole project and explain how Spencer Carroll fit in. The farmers market would be a good bet.

  I decided to try texting him.

  —Are you doing a demo at the market this weekend? Want to do lunch?—

  He texted a few minutes later:

  —Yeah, and yeah.—

  So at least we had a date. Now I needed a plan. I needed to give Nate the entire story so he could see why I wanted to talk to Spencer Carroll.

  Only I wasn’t sure what that entire story was. I was pretty much going on instinct, talking to people in hopes that I’d hear a piece of information and something would go ping in my mind. In my ideal scenario, everything would suddenly be clear in an instant. That happened to me sometimes when I was cooking—I’d think of a combination of flavors and suddenly I’d know just what I needed to do.

  But that was cooking, and this was murder. I knew how very unlikely it was that I’d figure everything out in a flash. Nonetheless, it was the best idea I had at the moment.

  Spencer Carroll might be part of that ping moment. It wouldn’t hurt to hear someone else’s story about Brett as part of my information gathering.

  On Saturday, I loaded several cases of jam into the truck. It didn’t hurt to be optimistic, even though I was more and more convinced that my sales were going to be lackluster. Nothing like starting with a positive attitude. On the other hand, I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than bitterly disappointed.

  The market was even more packed than the previous weekend. The local farmers had more produce to sell since their crops were beginning to come in, and tourist season was in full swing. Some itinerant musicians had set up in the park, playing jug band music over a modified amp. A few craft booths had been set up along the paths, with people selling wooden toys and stained glass window ornaments and jewelry. It was busy and hectic and crowded. Dolce and I sold a lot of jam.

  I tried to convince myself that I’d sold as much as I usually did, but that wasn’t true. During the summer, each weekend’s sales normally exceeded the one before it until we hit Labor Day and the tourists headed home.

  While my sales that Saturday were healthy, they weren’t much over last Saturday’s sales. I’d obviously had the advantage of a lot of tourists buying my stuff to take to their rented condos. But I’d had fewer locals than usual.

  Of course, I’d still had some. Bianca had stopped by to pick up the case of peach preserves she’d ordered from me. Harry grabbed a couple of jars of apricot, proclaiming loudly to anyone listening that my stuff was the best in the state. And there were those who dropped by to get a glimpse of the woman who might have murdered the chef last week. They didn’t stay long and they didn’t buy much of anything, but they stood just beyond the edge of the crowd, watching me with avid eyes.

  I decided I never wanted to be famous again. Or infamous, for that matter.

  Nate swung by around eleven with a paper plate. “Here you go—mac and cheese.”

  It looked heavenly, all thick sauce and buttery crumbs on top. I took a quick bite and tasted cheddar and cream, along with a little kick of chili. “Very nice. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Will you be through by two?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. I might even be through before that depending on when the tourists flocked off to grab lunch.

  “Maybe we can do a picnic. I’ve got a couple of things I want to go over with you.”

  That sounded serious, but given that I had a couple of things to go over with him, too, it worked for me. “A picnic sounds fine.”

  The rest of the market passed quickly. I paid Dolce and then packed up the case and a half I had left. That was a bit more than last week, but I’d brought more so it probably evened out. Probably. I wouldn’t know for sure until I looked at my spread sheets and checked the sales figures. I had no reason to be concerned about it.

  Except I sort of did. I knew I hadn’t had the customers I usually had, and I knew the ones I was missing were my locals. Some of them might have stayed home rather than buck the crowds, but some of them were avoiding me. I needed to get them back, and the best way to do that was to find out who killed Brett.

  Good luck with that, Roxy.

  Nate showed up at two with a cooler over his arm. “Give me a ride to my place? I figure we can eat in the backyard again.

  “That works,” I said, trying to tamp down my worries. Nate didn’t need to hear me whining again. At least not until he’d had a chance to eat some lunch. “I really like your yard.”

  “I do, too.” He grinned at me. He seemed a little more excited than usual although I wasn’t sure why. Surely a picnic wasn’t that big a deal.

  The grass in Nate’s yard was long and lush, waving slightly in the afternoon breeze. I could smell pine and a hint of the roses just beginning to bloom in Madge’s front yard.

  He brought out a classic red-checked tablecloth and spread it on the picnic table. Then he dragged up a couple of Adirondack chairs and I sank into one, stretching my legs out in front of me.

  “I’ve got chicken sandwiches and potato salad, courtesy of Coco. Also a bottle of wine, courtesy of me.” He pulled a chilled bottle of white out of the cooler and placed it in the middle of the table, along with a couple of plastic wine glasses. “And there’s chocolate cake for dessert.”

  “Also from Coco?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I did that one. I’m trying to brush up some of my skills so I don’t get rusty. I don’t get many chances to experiment around the café.”

  He handed me a sandwich wrapped in parchment paper, and I sank into my Adirondack. I’d spent the last several hours worrying about my sales and trying to keep up with the tourists, who tended to scrape the sample bowls dry at a great rate. It felt wonderful to be sitting in the shade, dining on something civilized. The chicken was thick and juicy, piled on Bianca’s four-grain with some kind of special spread, maybe a flavored aioli.

  It was terrific. The potato salad was terrific. The wine was terrific. I could feel my tense muscles relaxing, feel at least some of my stress slipping away.

  I thought about bringing up Spencer Carroll and decided to let that slide for a while. I was enjoying myself too much to bother at the moment.

  “So I had an idea,” Nate said, a little hesitantly.

  I glanced up from my plate. I’d forgotten he’d said he had some things to discuss. “What idea is that?”

  “I entered the café in the Taste the Market contest. For Best in Shavano.”

  Taste the Market was a big competition the farmers market held on Fourth of July weekend. It featured a lot of the vendors from the market, all vying to get to the top of whatever category they were entered in: best pie, best cheese, best salsa, best jerky, and so on. There was a best jam category and I’d won it pretty consistently, but I was a little nervous about entering this year.

  The judges were locals, and I was afraid they’d drop me to the bottom of the rankings.

  “That’s great,” I said. “What are you going to fix? Do you have to do a whole meal?”

  “Main, sides, and dessert.”

  “Good for you. It’s great publicity.” Best In Shavano was the most competitive part of the contest. Even if the café didn’t take home the prize, they’d get a lot of good exposure.

  Nate took a quick sip of his wine, like he was fortifying himself. “I was hoping you’d give me a hand.”

  I frowned. “I don’t do many main dishes. Unless they involve jam.” Other than the cooking I’d done for Uncle Mike over the past couple of years, I hadn’t really done much in the kitchen beyond my business.

  “Mine might involve jam, but that’s not when I need your help with. I wanted to include as many local products as I could in whatever I fix. I know some of the producers around here, the ones at the market, but I don’t know them all. I figure you do.”

  I took another bite of my sandwich. “I probably do. I can certainly help you find anything you need if it’s produced around here. Using locals is a really smart strategy, particularly if you can use other market vendors.”

  “Great.” Nate’s grin had that flush of excitement again. He was really into this. “And maybe you can give me a character reference if anybody needs one.”

  My own smile faded a bit. “I’m not sure a character reference from me would be helpful right now. In fact, you might want to limit any references to me when you talk to people.”

  Nate shook his head. “Come on, Rox. These people know you. You grew up around here. They’re not going to suspect you of murder. Not seriously.”

  “Some of them won’t. Some will. But of course I’ll help you regardless. What kind of menu are you thinking of?” It was a clumsy redirect, but I didn’t want to waste time complaining about the gossip.

  Nate ran through a list of possible main dishes, with me kibitzing and making suggestions for suppliers. He actually had some ideas for main dishes that involved jam, usually pork or chicken with jam-based sauce. I had more ideas for things I tried out myself: duck breast with blackberry jam, lamb with sour cherries, even a killer baked bean recipe with apple jelly instead of maple syrup. Uncle Mike ate well.

  By the time we’d finished lunch we were both grinning with excitement, jazzed with recipes and food joy. And white wine.

  Nate grabbed my hand to pull me out of my Adirondack, then held me close in a warm hug. “This is great. Thanks, Roxy, I knew you’d be the one to talk to about this.”

  I was caught between really liking the feel of his arms and having a mild panic reaction to being held. I decided to go with the liking rather than the panic. “You haven’t told Bobby?”

  He pulled back slightly to look at me. “I haven’t told anybody but you. And the people at the contest when I turned in our entry.”

  That struck me as a bad idea, given Bobby’s probable reaction to being out of the loop. “You should maybe discuss it with him. Or at least with your mom. I mean, you’d be representing her restaurant.”

  “I know.” He rested his forehead on mine for a moment. “I will. But I wanted to go in with a main dish in mind so it won’t seem quite so crazy.”

  “You’ve got a lot of good ideas. It’s not crazy at all.”

  Another moment, and he raised his head again, smiling down at me. “Want some cake?”

  “Love some.” I followed him to the picnic table where he lifted out what looked like a chocolate torte, with a dense, luscious chocolate frosting.

  “I haven’t done much baking since I was in school,” he said. “It was never my big thing, but Spence was talking about flourless chocolate cake the other day. Made me want to try it again.”

  As an opening to talking about Spencer Carroll, that seemed almost too perfect, like the gods were smiling. Given that they hadn’t smiled at me much during the past week, I decided to grab my chance. “Is that Spencer Carroll from High Country?”

  “Yeah. We ran into each other at City Market last week.”

  “I need to talk to him. Could you introduce me?”

  Nate frowned. “Spence? Sure, I guess so. Why do you want to talk to him?”

  “He worked with Brett Holmes before…well, before. I’m trying to get as much information about Brett as I can, so that I can maybe figure out what happened to him and why.”

  Nate’s brows arched up. “Isn’t that what Fowler’s supposed to be doing?”

  “And he is. I mean, I guess he is. But I want to know for myself. I’m losing business over this, losing customers. And I’m losing sleep. I’m worried about my future. I need to know what happened to Brett, or at least I need to find out as much as I can.”