Step On A Crack

Chapter 49

AFTER I TOLD HIM I needed to interview the kitchen staff, mon ami Henri promptly led me through a set of swinging Tiffany blue doors and translated my question for the chef.

The chef looked like Henri’s shorter and pudgier older brother. He seemed affronted by the questions. He’d personally fixed the First Lady’s meal, and there was no way, he said angrily, that he had put any peanuts in her foie gras.

The only explanation he could fathom was that a foolish prep cook had spilled peanut oil on the dish during the controlled chaos of a busy night, but even that seemed patently absurd to him. The chef then said something in heated French before sweeping a couple of pots off the stainless-steel counter and storming off. I caught the word American, and thought I heard the word Snickers.

“What was that last part?” I said to Henri.

Henri blushed.

“The master chef suggested perhaps that the First Lady snacked on a… candy bar before her meal arrived.”

So much for repairing French and American relations tonight, I thought.

“Has there been any turnover in the staff since the night she was here?” I said.

Henri tapped a long finger against his bloodless lips.

“Yes,” the maître d’ said. “Now that I think of it. One of the prep cooks, Pablo, I believe was his name, stopped showing up for work a day or so after the terrible accident.”

“Any last name on Pablo? An address? Off his employment application perhaps?”

Henri squinted as a pained, sorrowful, almost penitent expression crossed his features.

“It was like you were saying before about formal and informal. Pablo was more of an informal hire. We have no application per se,” he said. “His leaving was not even a real concern. Our turnover rate for prep staff, like in most restaurants, is quite high.”

“I’ll bet,” I said.

“Wait,” Henri said. “I believe he left some things in his locker. Would you like to come down and take a look?”

I did, and downstairs in Pablo’s old locker, I discovered two items.

A pair of dirty sneakers and a crumpled Metro North Hudson line train schedule.

The case of the dirty sneakers, I thought. Encyclopedia Brown would have been impressed.

Yet another dead end, or so it seemed at that moment anyway.

I stuffed the kitchen helper’s things into an empty Duane Reade bag I found under the locker. Maybe we could ID Pablo from prints. If he wasn’t already back in Central America.

It was a pretty sad lead, I realized, but better a sad one than none at all.

“Do you have a clue?” Henri asked excitedly, and I lifted the bag of “evidence.”

I slammed the locker with a resounding bang.

“Very rarely, Hank,” I said.