Nate looked like a whole squadron of objections were floating through his mind, but in the end he shrugged. “Okay, I can introduce you to Spence. But I want to go with you. Otherwise he might think you’re like all the other budding tabloid reporters he’s been fending off. A lot of them have come out of the woodwork since Holmes died.”

  The staff at High Country had probably been getting a version of the same gawkers I’d been dealing with. A lot of people had probably gone to the restaurant to see the scene of the crime.

  “I’d be glad to have you come with me. Maybe you’ll think of things I don’t.”

  “Have you talked to other people about Holmes?” Nate looked like he was a little afraid of the answer.

  “I talked to a friend of mine who’s a waitress at High Country. That’s about as far as I’ve gone. But she mentioned Spencer Carroll.” I decided not to tell him Susa was part of my investigation since that would probably make me sound even nuttier than I already did.

  Nate cut us both wedges of the torte, which looked dark and chocolate-rich. “Have you found out anything yet?”

  I sighed. What had I found out anyway? “I found out he was a sleaze at work, so it wasn’t just me. He came on to a lot of different women, and he didn’t necessarily like taking no for an answer. And he worked at Solo in Denver, which is a place I know so I can ask other people about his time there. That’s about it so far.”

  “Are you looking for something in particular?”

  “A confession would be nice.”

  Nate narrowed his eyes.

  “I guess I’m looking for something that would give me some insight into the kind of man Brett was. What made him someone who got killed. I mean, there are a lot of sleazy people in the restaurant business, and nobody kills them. What pushed someone over the edge with Brett?”

  Nate speared a bit of cake with his fork. “What got him killed may have less to do with Brett’s character and more to do with the person who killed him. Maybe he just pushed somebody’s buttons.”

  “That’s true, but it still might help to know more about what kind of man he was. At least it would tell me who he was most likely to offend.”

  “When do you want to talk to Spence? He works dinners, although I think High Country does Sunday brunch, too.”

  Given that brunch was the best way for a restaurant to burn off last week’s leftovers, it made sense that High Country did one. “Maybe we could get together for a beer sometime.”

  “Let me see if he’s free tomorrow after his brunch service. Mid-afternoon work for you?”

  “Sure. I’ll even buy you dinner.” It was the least I could do after I talked him into this.

  “Or I could cook for you. I do a great dinner. And I’m not bad on breakfast.”

  My heart thumped hard. Was I ready for this? “Dinner would be fine.”

  Nate gave me a quick grin. “Dinner it is. Would you like to take some cake home for Mike?”

  “Sure.” I watched him divide the cake as my heart rate returned to normal. At least I wouldn’t have to make any decisions.

  Not until tomorrow night.

  Chapter 18

  I was going to check Susa’s file sharing folder when I got home to see if she’d had a chance to talk to Evelyn yet, but Susa beat me to it. She was playing with Herman in my front yard when I got back.

  “There you are,” she called when she saw me drive up. “I was about to go up to the main house to get Mike to let me in.”

  “If I’d known you were waiting, I’d have gotten here sooner,” I said, although that wasn’t entirely true. I wouldn’t necessarily have rushed home from Nate’s place.

  “I was out here checking a glitch in the farm’s billing system, and I figured I’d stop by to tell you what lousy notes you leave.” She bent down to scratch Herman’s ears, and he gave her a blissful grin.

  “When did I leave you a note?”

  Susa gave me an impatient look. “Online. Your notes from talking to Bridget. Those were probably the most opaque notes ever.”

  I sighed. “Right. Come on in. I’ll give you a blow-by-blow.”

  “And tea. I need tea if we’re going to talk about murder. It’s a requirement.”

  Fortunately, I had some tea. Also some thumbprint cookies from a couple of days ago. No way was I sharing Nate’s torte. We sat at my kitchen table with Herman sprawled at our feet, angling shamelessly for more scratches from Susa.

  She dropped a printed copy of my notes on the table. “Young girls, anybody in a skirt, heartbroken waitress, Carrie, run-ins with Denny over costs, worked at Solo, Spencer Carroll, impressed with himself.” She raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Okay, it’s not that opaque. Or anyway, it’s not if you’re me. That’s what Bridget told me about Brett. Not that it’s anything we didn’t already know. He was a womanizer, went after ‘anybody in a skirt.’ He particularly went after the young and naïve, like this Carrie who was a waitress there and dated him for a while. He also didn’t get along with Denny, the manager at High Country, but I’m not sure that’s relevant because why kill him when he could just fire him?”

  “They could have fought. Maybe it wasn’t premeditated.”

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t. But Denny Rohrbacher has never struck me as the type to hit somebody over the head in a rage.”

  “There’s a type who does that?”

  “You know what I mean. He’s really buttoned up and professional. I can’t even imagine him losing his temper, let alone killing somebody in a rage.”

  “Buttoned up people can have meltdowns. What’s this about Solo?”

  “Solo is the restaurant where Brett worked in Denver. I know people there. Maybe I can find out why he left his job.”

  “I thought he left because High Country offered him more money.”

  “Unlikely. A Denver restaurant’s always going to pay better than one in Shavano. But the job at High Country was probably a promotion. My guess is he worked on the line at Solo. Getting the head chef job at High Country would be a definite move up.”

  “And impressed with himself is pretty clear.” Susa glanced up at me. “Next time I recommend complete sentences.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I grabbed a cookie. “Did you talk to Evelyn?”

  Susa gave me a slightly smug smile. “I did indeed. I even bought her a latte at Beans On the Rocks.”

  “What did you find out? Was she going out with Brett? Did they have a ‘thing’?”

  Susa’s smile lost some of its smugness. “Yep and yep. She’s broken up over Holmes, which I don’t understand. She says they weren’t dating any more. Or not exactly dating, anyway. But she still seems to be hung up on him.”

  “What does ‘not exactly dating’ mean?”

  “In my opinion, it means he was going out with other women while occasionally sleeping with Evelyn, but she’s not ready to admit it. She says they were ‘on a break’ and seeing other people. But I got the feeling he was the only one doing that. She was waiting around for him to come back full time.”

  “Oh. That’s sort of sad.”

  “Sad but also annoying. I mean I think she tossed you out of the running for Sweet Thing just to make him happy. And he still cheated on her.”

  “Did she know who else he was dating?”

  “She didn’t mention it. And based on what the waitress at High Country told you, it could well have been more than one woman. I don’t think Evelyn’s much of a possibility as a murderess, though. She’s passive, if you know what I mean. More likely to sit around and mope than take a club to him.”

  “No, not a probable suspect,” I agreed. “Plus she doesn’t seem strong enough to bash him over the head. Of course, we don’t know how much force that took. I mean, maybe whoever did it just happened to hit a weak spot.”

  “I could see if I could access the autopsy report. It might be on the city computers.” Susa gave me a bright smile.

  I shook my head quickly. “No. Don’t do that. We don’t need it, and it could get us both into big trouble if they found out you were doing it.”

  “You’re no fun.” Susa pouted. “So who’s Spencer Carroll?”

  “The chef at High Country. The guy who took over for Brett. I figure he’d be a good source of information about what Brett was like professionally. I want to find out if he was as annoying in the kitchen as people said he was.”

  “You’re going to try to talk to Carroll?”

  “Yeah. Nate knows him. He said he’d introduce me.”

  Susa gave me a long look. “You told your boyfriend you want him to introduce you to another man? And he agreed? That sounds a little sketchy.”

  I started to say that Nate wasn’t my boyfriend, but then I paused. He was my boyfriend. Sort of, anyway. He was closer to being my boyfriend than anyone had been in a while. “I explained why I needed to talk to Carroll. And Nate’s going to come along to vouch for me.”

  Susa grinned. “To vouch for you and maybe to keep an eye on this Spencer so he doesn’t make a play for you.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m not some femme fatale. I’m a six-foot Greek with crazy hair.”

  Susa raised her eyebrows almost to her hairline, a really good trick I wished I could imitate. “How many times do I have to tell you this? You are gorgeous. Men look at you and their jaws drop. You are like one of those models from the eighties, like Cindy Crawford or, hell, Verushka.”

  “Verushka was the sixties,” I mumbled, blushing.

  “So you’re a throwback. Anyway, stop running yourself down. The guy in Denver doesn’t represent all men.”

  “It’s not about him, not really.”

  “Yeah, it is. And believe me, I’m not telling you to get over it. I know it’s not something you get over. I am telling you to stop blaming yourself. And to stop thinking what happened in Denver means there’s something wrong with you. There’s something wrong with men like that guy.”

  Susa gave me a fierce hug, as I fought tears. She was right, and I knew it on some level. I just hadn’t been able to convince myself entirely.

  But I was working on it.

  “Okay.” Susa folded her arms. “What’s next? Where do we go from here?”

  “I need to talk to the people I knew at Solo and to Spencer Carroll. But I thought of something you could check out. You’re friends with the principal at Shavano High, right?”

  “Dolores Cantu? Yeah, I have a contract for the high school administration Web site. They wanted me to do the student site, too, but I said no way. I’d be spending all my time stopping those little jerks from hacking each other.”

  “Okay, Brett did some kind of program over there. Cooking demos or something. He bragged about it at the Merchants Association, but I don’t remember the details. Could you find out what he did and what they thought of him?”

  “Sure. Should be easy enough. He’s still the number one topic around town.”

  Brett and the possibility I’d killed him. We were both trending. “Great. I’ll call you when I’ve talked to Spencer Carroll.”

  “Yeah, I want to hear about that. I’m guessing there’ll be some definite male displays going on. Maybe even a little antler clashing.” Susa swallowed the last of her tea. “Gotta go. Complete sentences, Rox. Remember.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Nate and I met Spencer Carroll in a tavern off Second. He’d picked the place, and it was about as far from High Country as you could get, at least culturally—old school Shavano grunge with a juke box and a couple of pool tables. But since it was Colorado, they also had an extensive craft beer list.

  Carroll was playing pool when we walked in. He wasn’t quite as tall as Nate, but he was stockier, with a butcher’s build—well-developed chest and arm muscles, like he’d been wrestling beef carcasses for a while. His curly black hair stood out in a corona around his head, and he had a short beard and moustache with a few silver threads. He looked up and grinned as we walked in.

  “Hey, Robicheaux, gone any further with that short rib recipe?”

  Nate grinned back. “Haven’t worked on it much since the last time I talked to you.” He put a hand on my elbow. “This is Roxy.”

  Carroll put down his pool cue and stepped forward. He had that same slightly glazed look I was used to by now. Yes, I’m six feet, and I’ve got a lot of hair. Get over it.

  “A pleasure.” He sounded a little choked.

  “Can we sit down somewhere?” Nate asked. “Roxy’s got a couple of questions for you.”

  Carroll nodded toward a table at the side. “Take the booth. You want a beer?”

  Nate shook his head. “Seltzer for me. I’ve got prep waiting.”

  “Me, too,” I said quickly. “I mean, not prep but jam stuff.” Off duty chefs are known to knock back a few, and I wasn’t ready for that in the middle of the afternoon.

  Carroll shrugged, then headed for the bar as I sat down on one side of the booth. Nate sat beside me, a little closer than he needed to. Male displays, Susa had said. Maybe she had a point.

  Carroll came to the booth, sliding in opposite me. He pushed a glass of seltzer my way, smiling. “Here you go. Now what can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to ask you about Brett Holmes,” I began.

  Carroll’s smile faded. “Oh, man, not Holmes. I’m so sick of that son of a bitch. Hard to believe he’s more of a pain in the ass dead than he was alive, but that’s what’s happened.”

  I couldn’t argue with him. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be asking you about him normally, but the cops seem to think I’m a suspect, and I feel like I need to know as much about him as I can.”

  “A suspect? Why the hell would you be a suspect?”

  “I had a couple of arguments with him. Public ones. And I don’t have an alibi because I was home alone when he was killed.”

  Carroll raised his eyebrows in Nate’s direction. “You weren’t around?”

  “Unfortunately, no. They’ve looked at me, too. But since I only met Holmes once, they didn’t seem to think I was much of a suspect. Even if we did have a run-in the one time we met.”

  Carroll turned to me again. “This is getting interesting. But let me tell you, you weren’t alone. A lot of people got into fights with Holmes. Regularly. The guy couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and a lot of people wanted to shut it for him.”

  Nate frowned. “Including you?”

  “I wasn’t his biggest fan. But I didn’t get into it with him much. He pretty much left me alone—if I ever walked out, he’d have been up the creek. He’d have actually had to do some serious cooking.”

  “What kind of cook was he?” I asked. “He talked a lot about what a kitchen stud he was, but I never ate at High Country, so I don’t know what you guys turned out.”

  “He talked a lot,” Carroll agreed. “Most of it was crap. I don’t know why he left Denver, but I doubt he was as big a kitchen stud as he said he was. He had decent skills, but so do most of us in the kitchen. I wouldn’t say he was much ahead of the rest of us.”

  “But the owner brought him in to be head chef, right?”

  “Theoretically. My guess is Holmes talked his way into that job. He didn’t have head chef skills. He made menu suggestions, but they were mostly crap that he heard other restaurants were doing. I mean he heard some restaurant on the Front Range started using CBD oil in their drinks, and he was ready to start adding CBD to everything on the menu. Denny told him to get a grip.”

  “Okay.” Brett had always struck me as the type who was more interested in talking than actually doing anything innovative. “How’d he get along with the rest of the kitchen?”

  Carroll gave me a dry grin. “Shitty, thanks for asking. Most of the guys ignored him as much as they could. But he could be a real jerk. We had a woman on the line for a while. Really great on stuff like steak frites. But Holmes kept hitting on her until she got fed up and quit. She moved on to Breckenridge. The guys were so pissed at him one of them dropped a steel skillet on his foot, accidentally he claimed.”

  “Ouch.” That struck me as a bad thing to do to a good piece of carbon steel.

  Carroll smiled. “It was full of mushrooms and hot butter. Lucky for Holmes he was wearing steel-toed boots and jeans.”

  “Okay, so he was unpopular with the other cooks, and he was a hound around women. I knew that already, but it’s good to know I’m not the only one who had trouble with him.”

  “He was a jerk, like I said. Everywhere he went he caused trouble. He had some kind of deal at the high school in town, and he even got into trouble over there.”

  I’d heard about Brett doing something at the high school, but I hadn’t heard he’d had problems over it. “What did he do that got him in trouble?”

  “Don’t know exactly. I just heard he was kicked out of the program for high school mentors. Although I gotta say I’m amazed anybody thought that asshole would be a good mentor in the first place.”

  I was, too. But Brett struck me as someone who’d be good at talking his way into things, even if he had no intention of following through. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll check it out and see what information I can find.” I’d let Susa know what Carroll had told me. Maybe she could get the high school principal to share a few details. “You remember anything else about him?”

  Carroll shook his head. “He wasn’t all that interesting, to tell you the truth. Just another kitchen blowhard.”

  “If you do remember anything else you think would help, would you let me know?”

  Carroll’s grin turned sultry. “Absolutely. Just give me your phone number, and I’ll call you if I think of anything helpful.”

  “Why don’t you call me,” Nate said flatly. “You’ve already got my number, and I can let Roxy know what you’ve got to say.”

  Carroll chuckled. “Can’t blame a man for trying, Robicheaux. But okay, I’ll call you if I think of anything.”

  “Good enough. Any more questions for Spence, Rox?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I can think of.”

  I’d had more than enough antler clashing for one afternoon. Spencer Carroll was cute, but Nate was cuter. And I was still shaky about dating one guy, let alone two. “Thanks for your help.” I slid out of the booth, following Nate.