Smoked (The Alex Harris Mystery Series) Page 5

I scrolled through the blogs she had been posted in October. There were several scathing ones about the meat industry in general. I started to read them but as I was sitting here eating a meat-laden sandwich, I didn’t think this was a good time to discover how my ham came to be ham. There were also a couple blogs about a number of local vegan restaurants that were not living up to the vegan principal. Maria didn’t actually list their names but she gave almost GPS-accurate descriptions of their locations. Anyone with an actual GPS or a willingness to walk around the town could figure out who they were. One was located here in Indian Cove and another in the next town over. The truth was I had no idea there were so many vegan restaurants. Maybe there was something to this whole movement and I might just have to check it out. Of course this thought went through my head while the ham sandwich went into my mouth so how diligent would I really be? Who was I kidding? I did try to live a healthy life style and I usually prepared one meat meal a week with the others being salads, pasta with veggies, or rice. But if tortured I would have to admit life just wasn’t worth living without bacon tossed in once in a while and then there was my love affair with butter. And M&M’s. Maybe they were vegan. Chocolate came from a plant, right? Of course there was that Red Dye #40.

  I got back to my iPad and jotted down the general location of the restaurants. One of them wasn’t too far from Krueger’s and I could stop off as soon as I finished my sandwich. I took another bite and logged on to my Facebook page. I was just reaching for my pickle when a new post caught my eye. My mother had put up a picture of Riley. I looked to see if there were accompanying words announcing to the world he was free to a good home, but nothing. Just a picture of the dog sitting in my parents’ kitchen. Who did she think she was kidding? Riley was here to stay.

  I closed the iPad, tossed my trash in the waste container, and left the store. The restaurant was only a couple of blocks away and as it was a lovely day, I decided to walk. The downtown section of Indian Cove was pretty much the same as when I was a kid, with a few additions. Where some stores had closed shop years ago, several trendy cafes had sprung up. In warmer months tables with bright umbrellas lined the sidewalk giving the whole town a tourist feel. Of course with the beaches and our new boardwalk connecting them, I guess Indian Cove could be considered a tourist destination of sorts.

  I turned right at the end of the main street and walked another couple of blocks. According to the directions the restaurant should be coming up shortly. I looked at my watch. It was just about two and I figured this would be a good time to catch the manager or owner. The lunch rush would most certainly be over by now. As I approached I noticed the restaurant had a smart looking exterior. The shingles were painted in sea blue with a bright red door. There were several large pots with bushes on either side of the door and a deep yellow low wood fence bordering an area where outdoor tables were now stacked. Very inviting, was my first thought. The sign on the window said The Natural World. I walked over to the door. There was a sheet of paper stuck to it and I took a closer look. A phone number was listed and then in bigger, bolded letters someone had typed Closed until further notice.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I took a step back and moved over to the window. I cupped my hands up to my eyes and looked through the window. No lights. No people. I went back to the door and jotted down the number and then walked back to my car.

  Now what? Why was the restaurant closed? Did the blog have anything to do with it? I started to punch in the number on my cell phone but then stopped? What was I going to say? I thought about this for a few minutes and then punched in the number again, this time letting it go through. It rang twice and was answered by a woman.

  “Hello. My name is Alex Harris and I just stopped by your restaurant and noticed—.” Before I could get the next words out the woman on the other end started talking quickly.

  “Oh, wonderful, yes, you can come by right now. Where are you? Do you have a pen? Get a pen. I can give you directions.”

  I did as I was told, jotted down the woman’s address and told her I would be there shortly. I sat in my car looking at the phone. Well, this was easier than I thought. I preferred face-to-face interrogations. Listen to me. Did I really think of myself as a private investigator? No, of course not, but that was no reason to let the woman who had been on the other side of this call think I wasn’t.

  I started the car and drove to the turnpike. Three exits later, I left the turnpike and wound my way through a modest subdivision of older homes. I found the one I wanted and parked in front wondering what this woman I was about to meet thought I was here for? Surely she couldn’t know I was a neighbor of a woman who had written a blog about her restaurant and did she even know about the blog? Not everyone spent their day scouring the Internet for the latest postings.

  The front door opened and a woman who looked to be in her forties stood there waving at me. I locked my car and walked up a brick path to her home.

  “Hi, hi, come on in. Alex, right? I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee. Can I get you a cup?”

  “Would you happen to have tea?” I asked. The front door opened directly onto a living room. It was nice and neat but along with the neighborhood, the inside was also modest.

  “Sure. Of course. You just sit down and I’ll be right back. I’m Carol, by the way. Carol Corliss.”

  She hurried down a hall and I sat down in a straight-back chair next to a fireplace. On a small table next to me was an assortment of family photos. One was of Carol, a man I presumed was Mr. Corliss, and two boys who looked to be in their late teens.

  “Here you go,” Carol said five minutes later, placing a cup of tea on a coaster on the table. “So you’re looking to go into the restaurant business or do you already have a place?” She took a seat opposite me on the floral sofa. “It’s really a great location for a restaurant and business has been booming. That’s part of the problem. I don’t have a moment for myself anymore and with two kids and my husband’s new job, it just became too much for me to handle on my own. All the equipment is installed and we can negotiate a price for that as well if you don’t already have your own. The restaurant dining room is fully furnished with all new tables and chairs, custom-made drapery and high-end carpeting. Really, we spared no expense at all when we opened. If you’re not going to throw your whole heart and soul into it then why bother.” She finally took a breath. I studied her for a moment and despite her talkative, friendly demeanor, Carol Corliss looked sad. Almost heartbroken.

  I took a sip from the cup I had been holding and then placed it back on the coaster. “Mrs. Corliss, I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding.” Of course there was. I never had a chance to tell the woman why I wanted to speak with her. But now that I thought of it, the sign on which her phone number had been written had also said For More Information. She clearly thought I was here to buy her restaurant.

  “Do you think I’m here to buy your restaurant?”

  “Why, yes, of course. Isn’t that why you called?”

  “No. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. Let me explain. My neighbor died the other night, in fact, it looks like murder, and her daughter hired me to help prove her father didn’t do it.”

  “What does this have to do with me and my restaurant?” she asked looking totally bewildered.

  “My neighbor, Mrs. Kravec, had a blog and in one of her posts she made references to local vegan restaurants that—”

  Carol Corliss put both hands out in front of her indicating for me to stop. “Wait just a minute. Are you saying your neighbor is Maria Kravec?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “And you’re telling me that she’s dead? Murdered? Maria Kravec who writes the Vegan View is dead. You’re absolutely positive?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. As a matter of fact, I was the one who called the ambulance.”

  Carol Corliss jumped up from the sofa, her shoulder-length red hair falling out of the clip she had used to hold it on top of her hea
d. She stood in the middle of the room, punched her fist in the air and yelled out, “Hallelujah”!

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Carol? Mrs. Corliss. Calm down.”

  Mrs. Corliss continued to dance around the living room. The woman was positively overcome with joy. I’ve never seen someone so happy at another’s demise.

  “Oh my God! Wait until my husband hears this. Where’s the phone?” Carol looked around the room, still pumped up by this joyous news. “Oh, right. In the kitchen. Excuse me for a moment.”

  Carol flew out of the room leaving me to ponder this latest development. One could certainly come to the conclusion, based on her display of jubilation, that Carol was more than a bit happy about Maria Kravec’s untimely death. A death, I might add, that seemed to be the result of a methodical murder. So, was I alone in this house with a killer? No, I didn’t think so. Carol Corliss seemed much too surprised to hear the news. And happy. Would a killer dare show such joy over a crime they committed? Of course she could be faking it, but would she then jump up to call her husband if she had indeed padded the pile of leaves with poison ivy?

  I could hear her talking in the kitchen but her voice was much more subdued than I would have expected based on her recent over-the-top reaction. I heard her put the phone down and I picked up my tea, taking a sip as she came back into the room.

  “He already knew.” Carol shook her head. “He should have called me. Lord knows we both need some good news these days.”

  “About that,” I began as I turned slightly and put my cup back on the table. “Why exactly are you so happy that Maria Kravec is dead?”

  “How long have you got?” Carol asked with a snarl. “Wait a minute. Who are you? Are you the police?”

  “Not exactly. Mrs. Kravec’s daughter hired me to look into her mother’s murder.” Okay, so I wasn’t exactly taking any money, but Carol Corliss didn’t need to know that.

  “And the police think the husband did it? Why? Was she writing a blog about him too?”

  I didn’t say anything but my look must have given me away.

  “You’ve got to be kidding! She was blogging about her husband? Does he own a restaurant too?”

  I shook my head. “No, he’s a butcher.”

  “She was high and mighty with that Web site of hers and she was married to a butcher? Was she even vegan to begin with?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I think she was just getting into it.”

  “That blog of hers. She ruined our business.”

  “So things aren’t booming like you claimed a couple of minutes ago?” I asked.

  She had the good manners to look chastised. “No. Things are not booming. More like bombing. I thought you were a potential buyer. Do you know anything about the restaurant business, Alex?”

  “Ah, no, not really.”

  “It takes a lot of money and a lot of time to build up a reputation. Frank and I, that’s my husband, we’re both vegetarians. Raised our kids that way too. We always wanted to open up a vegetarian restaurant, grow our own vegetables and make a real go of it. How many people get to realize their dream?”

  “Well, I started up my own business, with my sister. So I think I can understand your desire to have something of your own that you started,” I said.

  “Exactly. And how is your business going?”

  “Fine. Good, actually.” I wasn’t about to tell Carol Corliss about my sleepless nights over We’re Just Your Type. After all, it looked like the woman was currently out of a job and she just might need to sign up at a local agency to find work. And I wanted that agency to be mine.

  Carol got up and walked to the window overlooking the front yard. “We put everything we had into that place. All our money, our time, our energy.” She turned and looked at me. “Thank God we didn’t touch the money we set aside for the kids. They’re both in college and that’s the one thing that’s going good for us. They’re doing great.”

  “But what exactly happened? Why do you blame Maria for…for what exactly? Why are you selling your dream?” I asked.

  Carol walked back to the sofa and took a look into her cup of coffee. “I need another. Can I get you more tea?”

  I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she turned the heat on under the tea kettle and got another tea bag from a canister on the counter. Behind her, through the kitchen window, I saw a large patch of yard that I assumed was the garden where she grew vegetables for her restaurant.

  She saw me looking outside and her face looked sad. “We were doing good. It was all starting to come together. After almost two years, we were getting a reputation for innovative food, fresh produce, a welcoming ambience. The New Haven Register did a story on the vegan movement and profiled us. We started to get a lot of traffic from students, professors. It was all good. And then that blog. It ruined us. And it wasn’t even our fault. Do you know what casein is?”

  I shook my head. Carol handed me my cup and we returned to the living room.

  “Neither did I. We make most of our meals in the restaurants. We use vegetables from our garden and I supplement with stuff I buy from local small farmers. But we serve a few things, mostly on the lunch menu, which I purchase through our distributor. We are primarily a vegetarian restaurant but have been adding quite a few vegan dishes to our menu. There are so many differences between the two and I’ve taken some classes, I do my research. I try to offer good food at good prices.”

  “So what about the casein,” I asked steering the conversation back to the blog.

  “It’s a milk protein used in processed foods. It’s vegetarian but not vegan, being milk. I get vegan burgers from our distributor and as it turns out, he’s been misrepresenting his vegan products. The burgers had fillers like casein and ground shellfish.”

  “And Maria Kravec wrote about this in her blog?”

  Carol nodded her head. “Yes, she did.”

  “But how did she know? Can you taste it?”

  Carol reached for the hair clip that had fallen earlier and twisted her hair back up on top of her head and secured it. Most redheads I’ve known have light eyes, usually blue, but Carol’s were a deep brown. She was a pretty woman, on the thin side, and clearly had a lively personality, but this business with the blog had clearly taken a toll.

  “How did she know? She hired someone to come in, order food, and then take samples back to a lab for testing.”

  “Why? Why would someone do that?”

  “That’s what I want to know. Why would anyone do a thing like that? We poured everything into that place. If she had found something, all she had to do was let us know. Of course we pulled the burgers right away and I was in the process of searching for a new supplier, but…people stopped coming. These blogs, they travel through cyberspace faster than a rocket. In less than two months, we’ve gone to no customers. People hear that you have something in your food that shouldn’t be there and they stop coming. Things get blown out of proportion.” Carol shook her head. “It’s not like we had a health department citation or someone found a severed finger in their casserole. We couldn’t afford to have any staff, we had no money coming in and a lot needing to go out.” She reached for her coffee and took a slow sip.

  “Before we started the restaurant I was an executive assistant at a law firm. I made great money and my husband was the purchasing manager for a manufacturing firm in Bridgeport. He had to go back. Of course his job was gone so now he works on the loading dock for a lot less money and it’s back-breaking work. He’s fifty. I’ve been offered my old job and I’m going to take it, but I have to close everything up first and try to sell the business. Look,” Carol said as she leaned forward on the sofa. “I’m not a bad person. I’m sorry the woman is dead. I am. But she was a nasty piece of work. I didn’t even know her, for God’s sake. Why would she attack my business like that over something that could have been easily fixed?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. She was my neighbor but I didn’t really know her at
all.”

  “You said you were trying to prove her husband didn’t kill her and since you’re here, I guess you thought maybe I did?”

  “Well, I had to check. What about your husband?”

  Carol shook her head but for a second I saw hesitation in her eyes. I was going to have to find out exactly where Mr. Corliss worked and have a chat with him.

  “Well, I’m sorry I took up so much of your time and good luck with finding a buyer.”

  Carol stood up and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I understand. And no, for the record, I didn’t kill her. But,” this time Carol’s smile was something like the Cheshire cat, “I just might be able to tell you who did.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  For a second there I thought Mrs. Corliss was going to give up her husband, but no, it wasn’t going to be that easy. I was now headed to the Great Wall, a vegan restaurant in Pirates Cove. Yes, I know. Indian Cove. Pirates Cove. Our forefathers didn’t seem to have much imagination where town-naming was concerned. Truth be told, I always wanted to come from Pirates Cove. I mean, really, how cool would that be? And town lore had it that somewhere along the beach pirates had buried their booty. I spent many a summer day digging on that beach as a kid to no avail. And I wasn’t the only one. It got so bad the town had to pass an ordinance to stop everyone from digging up the beach. And as far as I knew, no treasure was ever found so it might very well still be there.

  I pulled into a small parking lot in front of the Great Wall and went in. This restaurant was still in business and even had a few customers. I asked to speak to the owner and a few minutes later I was introduced to Julie Vang.

  “If someone did kill her then she deserved what she got,” Julie Vang, a petite Asian woman, spat out. “She had a lot of nerve writing stuff about my place.”

  “So it was all lies? A misunderstanding?” I asked looking around. The Great Wall was not as quaint as the Natural World. The outside was just a worn looking building, typical of low budget strip malls and the inside was dark, a bit musty and clearly no expense at all had gone into the décor. The red carpet needed to be replaced or at least cleaned and the heavy drapes needed to be taken out back for a good beating with a broom.