Topped Chef(12)
“Rats! I’m sorry, too.” The combination of feeling slightly tipsy and quite relieved made me babble. “The food has been wonderful so far. Can I wrap your steak and bring it to you?”
“Not necessary,” he said. “I won’t have time to eat it. I’ll call the front desk and give them my credit card number.”
“Don’t worry about it. What’s wrong?” I couldn’t help adding, my curiosity kicking up a notch. In the distance, outside the restaurant, I could hear the shriek of sirens heading down Southard Street. Toward him?
“Looks like a silly prank gone bad,” he growled. “Or if we’re really unlucky, a suicide.”
He never would have told me this much if he hadn’t just stood me up at one of the nicest restaurants in town. “Where are you?” I asked.
“At the old harbor,” he said. “Hang on another minute.”
Then I heard another man’s voice rumbling a question and Bransford’s tense bark in return. “Find the owner of the boat. Now! And for god’s sake, take a few pictures and then get the damn body down before the damn press gets here.”
And then he came back on the line to me: “Sorry. I don’t know when we’ll get things wrapped up. Probably late. We’ve got a lousy situation. Why don’t you finish eating and go ahead home and I’ll phone you later if it’s not too late.”
“Fine,” I said, at the same time I was signaling to the waiter for the check.
If there was a strange body on a vessel down at the harbor and Nate was in charge of the investigation, I wanted to find out what happened. Call me curious or just plain nosy, but I wasn’t going to sit here alone and continue forking down the calories—though leaving the chocolate lava cake broke my heart. I hung up, and asked the waiter: “Could you box up the steak and the dessert and bring the bill? I’m kind of in a hurry.”
* * *
I bungeed the aromatic package to the back of my bike and headed the few blocks over to the harbor. A quartet of blue lights flashed against the starlit sky, and beams of light probed the rigging of the moored boats. The water carried garbled gruff voices to the street corner where I’d stopped. The cops had gathered on one of the docks midharbor, and appeared to be peering through the forest of rigging to the darkness at the far end, where the mast of one of the smaller sailboats listed to the right. Squinting in the dim light, I was able to make out a bulky weight three-quarters of the way up the mast, which looked unlike any of the other boats’ equipment.
Swallowing hard, not wanting to think too much about that lump, I parked my bike and circled around to the finger that led to the sailboat’s dock, stopping at the chain with its rusty KEEP OUT sign hanging from the links. I peered at the weight again. Could it be a radar machine? An extra sail? A puff of wind gusted and the boat listed to a forty-five-degree angle, the dark lump swinging out toward the water, the mast groaning under the load.
I stepped over the chain and moved closer. To my absolute horror, the heavy weight took the definite shape of a human figure. Dangling from the mast. White sneakered feet were illuminated by the beam of a flashlight. The wind picked up, pushing the person back and forth on the groaning rope like an oversized metronome. Two officers struggled to lower the figure to land.
I started up the dock, edging a few steps nearer.
“Go easy,” said one voice to the other. “He hits the deck and we destroy evidence and our necks are on the block.”
As the figure lurched and bounced down the mast toward the deck, a bright searchlight was switched on, lighting up the bizarre details: first the curly platinum-blond hair that had to be a wig and the red lipstick. Then the discolored features, the protruding tongue, the bulging eyes. And finally, a black cloak. The body landed on the deck with a resounding thud.
“Turtle?” The word came out before I could stop it and echoed over the water. I clapped my hand to my mouth.
“What are you doing here?” Bransford’s voice boomed behind me, causing my pulse to gallop and my guilt-o-meter to surge.
I turned, met his angry eyes, and shrugged. “I was on my way back to houseboat row. I wanted to help. I brought your dinner over. I know I can’t work worth a darn on an empty stomach, so I thought maybe you—”
“Go home,” he said, and pushed past me toward the knot of cops and the body.
5
I would think a chef would look at me and kind of go, “Pfft, move on with your little fried self,” he said.
—Katy Vine
When I arrived at our houseboat, Miss Gloria was watching a rerun of a cooking show on the Food Network while talking on the phone with my mother. They’d become fast friends after my mom stayed with us for a few days earlier this month. On the TV screen across the room, Emeril was hacking a chicken to pieces and then dredging the pieces in egg and flour.