French Pressed

Eight

Despite my extremely helpful cooperation with the authorities, Lieutenant Salinas refused to release Joy from informal custody until almost three thirty in the morning. He grilled her, took fingerprints, and had a policewoman search Joy’s person and clothing for any clues he could find.

After that, I put my foot down and demanded Salinas release Joy, which he did. To the detective’s credit, Salinas realized how hard it would be for Matt, Joy, and me to hail a taxi in this part of Queens in the middle of the night, so he had one of his squad cars give us a lift back to Manhattan.

The driver was Officer Brian Murphy, the big cop Matt had confronted on the street. The policeman didn’t say a word on the trip across the Queensboro Bridge and down to the Village. But when he dropped us off on Hudson Street, Officer Murphy did suggest that my ex-husband come back to a certain Woodside pub and look him up “after the doc cuts that cast off your arm.”

Somehow, I doubted the man wanted to buy Matteo a beer.

Joy was too distraught to go back to her empty apartment alone, and I firmly suggested she come back with us to the duplex above the Blend. Matt readily agreed.

By the time we got there, it was four in the morning, and we were exhausted. With Matt’s broken arm, I insisted he take the big mahogany four-poster, while Joy took Matt’s smaller bed in the guest room. That put me on the downstairs couch.

Matt pulled me aside after Joy went to bed and suggested I join him in the master bedroom. “We can share the bed, Clare. I promise I won’t touch you.”

His eyes were wide as a puppy dog. He failed to blink even once.

I thanked him very much and headed straight for the living room couch. Now, swathed in flannel pajamas and tube socks, I punched the feather pillow I’d snatched from the closet, pulled a knitted throw over me, and tried to get some sleep.

But sleep wouldn’t come. My mind was too agitated. I couldn’t let the question go: Who would want to kill Vinny? Brigitte Rouille might have done it… The woman was obviously unstable, and according to Joy, she’d been picking on poor Vinny so badly that he’d called in sick. But I knew there was a huge gap between picking on a subordinate at work and actually killing him. On the other hand, Brigitte almost slashed my daughter, an event I saw with my own eyes.

As crazy as she’d behaved with Joy, however, I frankly couldn’t see Brigitte Rouille bolting out of Solange and hopping a train to Queens to take out her frustrations on Vincent Buccelli in a homicidal bender. That assumption made me feel a little guilty about giving Salinas her name—but only a little.

If Brigitte wasn’t guilty of murdering Vinny, then she had little to fear from some police questioning. In fact, maybe a visit from the authorities would inspire the troubled woman to seek some professional help before she did hurt someone.

So who else could have done it? I’d been asking myself this for hours, of course, and after Salinas released my daughter, I’d specifically asked Joy about Vinny’s friends or a possible boyfriend. She said he was a loner, and it was totally news to her that he was gay. On the other hand, she confirmed that he’d never talked about having a girlfriend or liking any girl, and he’d certainly never made a pass at her.

If Vinny Buccelli was in the closet, could he have been carrying on some kind of secret gay affair that went badly?

By the end of the evening, Lieutenant Salinas had started asking questions around that exact theory. Vinny could have been the victim of a crime of passion, a gay lover or encounter that had turned deadly. If so, the young man’s secret affair could have been with another student at the culinary school or a fellow cook at Solange. Who else would carry a ten-inch French knife around with them?

As I lay there in the living room, watching the slowly breaking dawn lighten the world beyond my French doors, I considered calling Mike Quinn.

I’d thought about Mike earlier, too, while I was waiting for Joy to be released in Queens. But I’d decided not to bother him. He’d been leading his own important task force into the wee hours, and there was little he could have done to influence a man like Salinas anyway. I figured it would be better to let things play out, let Salinas see for himself that there was no reason to suspect Joy of murder.

I’ll be seeing Mike soon enough, anyway, I told myself. I’ll ask for his advice when he drops by the coffeehouse.

Finally, just before five, I dozed off.

Around nine I awoke to the sound of a coffee grinder. I moaned, rolled over on the couch cushions, and pulled the throw up to my neck. Technically, this was my morning to sleep in because Tucker was opening the Blend, but when I heard the sound of laughter a few minutes later, and smelled the aroma of my freshly brewing Morning Sunshine Blend, I sat up.

Voices and another laugh came from the kitchen. I got to my feet, wrapped myself in my baggy terrycloth robe, and approached the kitchen doorway.

“Okay, muffin,” Matt’s voice declared. “You made coffee for me, so I’ll cook breakfast for you.”

“With one arm?” Joy replied.

“I can cook an egg with one arm. Just watch me.”

I smiled, pausing just outside the room to eavesdrop a little more.

“Step aside, Dad, and I’ll cook you the best egg you’ve ever tasted!”

“Better than my famous peppers and eggs?”

“Much better,” Joy said.

“Then I defer to your expertise.”

I heard a chair move and then a clank as a pan hit the stove top. The refrigerator door opened next.

“That’s how I got my job at Solange, you know.” Joy said. “For my audition, Tommy told me to cook him an egg.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a test,” Matt said.

“You’re wrong, Dad. According to Tommy, it’s the simplest ingredients that truly test a chef’s skill and imagination—not to mention technique.”

I continued to listen, feeling only a little guilty for spying. It was a charming domestic scene that would have warmed my heart a decade ago, when it would have counted. Now it only made me sad and maybe a little resentful, too.

It was so easy for the two of them now. But then Matt always had been the yearned-for parent. Oh sure, he showed for the important moments: birthday parties, school plays, high school graduation. He’d arrive laden with presents and stories about exotic, faraway places. For Joy, those were the good times, with a doting, if temporary, father. And then Matt was gone, before the return of the disappointments, arguments, and frustrations of normal, messy, everyday living.

During Matt’s absences, I raised my daughter as well as I could, but I resented having to be the sole authority figure, the de facto disciplinarian, the spoilsport, the stickler. I was the miser who vetoed things that were too costly, the prude who said no to activities a teenager didn’t have the maturity to handle.

“You know, I can make a pretty good egg,” Matt said.

“Sure. Uh-huh,” Joy said skeptically.

“Don’t you remember those peppers and eggs I cooked for your eleventh birthday?”

“That was my ninth birthday, Dad. And the answer is yes, I remember—”

“Doesn’t seem that long ago.”

“That’s because you’re old now.”

“Excuse me, little girl, but those eggs must have been pretty good for you to remember them.”

“How could I forget such a disgusting, greasy mess?”

“You’ve got to be kidding! My peppers and eggs are world famous.”

“You should have drained the peppers before you added the eggs.”

“Drain the peppers? But that’s where the savory flavor is—”

“It’s grease, Dad. Artery-clogging, cottage-cheese-thigh-creating grease. All it does is make you fat.”

“Fat? Do I look fat to you? No, wait, don’t answer that. I’ve been living pretty easy with Breanne, and this arm has interfered with my workouts for the last few weeks.”

“Is that why you’re getting a paunch?”

I covered my mouth to stifle the snort.

“I do not have a paunch,” Matt replied, sounding appropriately irritated. “What are you, size four?

“Six.”

“In my opinion, you should eat more. You don’t want to end up like the skinny models in Breanne’s magazine. They wolf down the catered lunch, then throw it back up right before the shoot.”

“Gross,” Joy said. “I could never do the bulimia thing, which is too bad, because I love to eat. And my butt’s too big.”

“Your butt is not too big,” Matt rightly affirmed. “In fact, you look skinny to me, and nobody trusts a skinny chef. You should pack on a few pounds, just enough to show you like to eat. Look at your mother—”

“Ahem!” I exclaimed, deciding it was a good time to cut Matt off.

Walking into the kitchen, I found Joy standing by the stove in sweatpants and a T-shirt, and my ex-husband lounging at the table, his hand around a mug, a floor-length silk Japanese kimono swathing his muscular body (Breanne again. No doubt).

Matt brightened when he saw me. “Clare? How did you sleep?”

“Sleep?” I muttered. “What’s that?”

“Come here, Mom,” Joy said, looking serious.

“What?” I said. “What did I do now?”

My daughter’s arms opened wide. “You only totally came to my rescue twice!” she exclaimed, and before I knew it, Joy was hugging me like she used to when she was a little girl. “Thank you, Mom,” she said, swaying back and forth with me in her arms. “You were so great, coming to Vinny’s last night and standing up to that detective! I don’t know what I’d do without you! I love you!”

My eyes met Matt’s. He was smiling so big I thought his face was about to split.

“Am I dreaming?” I whispered to him.

He shook his head. “Your daughter loves you. You don’t believe her?”

“Joy,” I said, “your dad helped last night, too. I never would have made it up to Vinny’s apartment without your father’s innate ability to act like a big, dumb jerk.”

Matt rolled his eyes.

Joy laughed. She released me and stepped back. “Daddy told me what he did. I thanked him already.”

“I see.”

“So, sit down!” Joy insisted. “I’m about to cook you both the best eggs you’ve ever tasted.”

I took a seat across the table from Matt. Joy poured me a fresh cup of Morning Sunshine. Then she returned to the stove, where she added a second frying pan and a tiny sauté pan to the clutter on top of the range.

“I was telling Dad about Tommy asking me to cook him an egg for my audition,” Joy explained. “Of course, I realized that a four-star chef would expect a four-star egg, so I prepared it in the style of Fernand Point—he’s the man who invented French nouvelle cuisine.”

I glanced at my ex. “Are you paying attention? This is what you paid for, you know.”

“Yeah.” Matt smiled, rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. “I think it was worth it.”

Joy took two small china dishes and immersed them in a hot water bath. Then she lit the gas under the pair of frying pans and dropped a pat of butter in each. “We start with butter in a gently warming pan—”

“Butter?” Matt said. “I thought nouvelle cuisine was supposed to be light, not full of butterfat.”

Joy shrugged. “Monsieur Point had a saying about butter. ‘Du beurre! Donnez-moi du beurre! Toujours de beurre!’”

“Butter, give me butter, always butter?” Matt translated.

“Exactly,” Joy said. “A lot of fine cooking can be done without butter, but nothing from the great syllabus of French classics—and nouvelle cuisine is no different. Okay, Dad, let’s move on, shall we?”

Matt’s eyebrow rose at his daughter’s pedantic tone. I laughed into my coffee cup.

Joy checked both pans. “Now that the butter is just warm enough to spread, but not hot enough to foam, crackle, or spit, I take two eggs—” She displayed the tiny white orbs to us in a fair imitation of a magician presenting his beautiful, delicate doves. “I crack each one into its own saucer. Then I slide the egg carefully into its own buttery pan.”

I watched as she deftly slipped the eggs into the melting butter, first one, and then the other. She adjusted the flame until it was barely more than a blue glow under each pan.

“At this low temperature I slowly cook the egg until the white barely turns creamy, and the yolk heats up but doesn’t solidify.”

With a knife, Joy plopped another lump of butter into the sauté pan, turned on the gas. “In a separate pan I melt more butter.”

Matt glanced at me and whispered, “When will these eggs be done? Next Friday?”

“I heard that, Dad!” Joy snatched the china from the hot bath, dried each plate. Then she glanced into the pan. “Perfect,” she announced. “Now I slip the egg onto a slightly heated serving plate and pour the fresh, warm butter over it. Then a touch of ground sea salt and fresh cracked pepper.”

Joy turned to face us, a plate in each hand. “Voilà! The perfect egg.”

She set the plates down in front of us, handed me a fork. I touched the yolk with the utensil, and then tasted it. It was sweet, like butter, and silky, too. I’d never tasted an egg quite like it. I took a bit of the white. It was creamy and delicate.

“Wonderful,” I cooed.

“Absolutely amazing!” Matt declared. “Delicate and buttery and perfectly seasoned.”

“So I guess Chef Keitel must have been impressed,” I said.

“Well, I got the job,” she replied with a shrug.

“How about Vinny?” I asked. “Was he given the same challenge?”

Joy’s face fell. She nodded silently. “Vinny was so talented. Tommy told me his eggs were amazing, even better than mine.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Matt said, licking his fork.

“Vinny didn’t even let his egg get near a pan. He separated the white from the yolk, cooked them both in buttered saucers set over boiling water, then reunited them at the moment of cooked perfection. He used sea salt for seasoning—and white pepper so no dark spots would spoil the look of the finished dish.” Joy looked away. “Vinny was such a great cook…and he was a really good friend to me…I can’t believe how I found him last night, lying there that way…in all that blood…” She wiped at a tear with the neckline of her T-shirt. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

I took a fortifying sip of coffee and then carefully said, “Joy, I’d like to ask you a little more about all that. About what happened last night.”

She shook her head. Turning, she started cleaning up the pans. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s over now and—”

“No, Joy,” I told her firmly. “Honey, listen to me. This isn’t over. Whoever killed Vinny is still out there. You have to talk about it, help us understand, so we can help find whoever hurt him.”

“Why? Why can’t you just let the police handle it? Why can’t you—”

“Butt out,” I interrupted. “That’s not an option. Not anymore. Not with Lieutenant Salinas on the case. I have no doubt he still suspects you of something, Joy—if not hurting Vinny, then maybe knowing something about who did or helping to cover it up.”

“But that’s crazy! Don’t you think so, Dad?” Face flushed, Joy stopped trying to clean up. She looked to her father. To my surprise, Matt was shaking his head in agreement—with me!

“Your mother’s right, Joy. You have to tell us whatever you know. Everything, you understand? Even if you think it’s something we won’t like hearing. We’re your parents, and we love you. If you can’t trust us, who can you trust?”

Joy frowned. She was quiet a long moment. Finally, she exhaled and nodded. “Okay,” she whispered.

Matt glanced at me. His expression had gone from firm and parental to almost helpless. He’d gotten Joy to cooperate, but he clearly had no idea what to ask her next.

That’s okay, I thought, because I do.