A Fine Fix Read online

  I must have appeared nervous, because he smiled and shook his head. “Not to worry. This is just a routine investigation. And yes, I’ve got men out there questioning people.” Goldman’s shaggy brown bangs fell into his eyes, and he smoothed them back out of his face, a boyish gesture I found kind of appealing. He needed a haircut.

  In fact, his white shirt sagged beneath the well-worn navy jacket, and his khaki trousers could use a good pressing. A bachelor, I thought. I checked out his ring finger to confirm. Daniel Goldman. Definitely single, and by his name, definitely Jewish.

  I hated myself for listening to my mother’s voice in my head. “Is he Jewish?” my mother would ask hopefully whenever I met someone new. “Single?” Not that it mattered. Any guy’s interest in me was only a ploy to get close to my thinner, cuter girlfriends.

  Like now. I had this single, Jewish guy’s attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Some things never changed.

  “You can start by telling me what time you arrived at the Schwartz residence today.”

  “Four o’clock on the dot. The party was starting at seven, and I always like to give myself a full three hours of prep time.”

  “Who greeted you when you arrived?” He positioned his pencil over the notepad.

  “That was Mr. Schwartz.” Poor guy, I thought. I had met Mr. Schwartz only twice, once at the Johnson and Wales graduation and again at the opening of his daughter Ally’s restaurant. But I’d never really spoken with him before this afternoon.

  Today I had liked him immediately, an approachable man with a balding head and pear-shaped body, his stomach bulging under the Parrot Head t-shirt. Mr. Schwartz welcomed us in, patted my back as if I were an old friend and led us into the kitchen, making us feel right at home.

  “He helped Zach and me unload the van.”

  “Zach?” Goldman’s pencil was poised again.

  “My partner. Zachary Cohen. We had a ton of food and utensils to bring in. We didn’t ask Mr. Schwartz to help. He just did.”

  My eyes began to tear up. I couldn’t get rid of the image of his dead body floating in the pool. “Maybe we shouldn’t have let him help us. It might have been too much stress on his heart on such a hot day. Could it have been a heart attack?”

  Detective Goldman’s eyes softened. “That’s exactly what we’re trying to find out, Miss Fine. So I appreciate your cooperation.”

  So it’s Miss Fine now, is it? I couldn’t tell if he was being respectful or continuing with his sarcasm. Why did I even care what this detective thought of me? Mr. Schwartz died today, and here I was ready to choose wedding patterns.

  He went on to ask questions about anyone who had come through the kitchen or anything I might have noticed by the patio. Then he dismissed me to attend to Mrs. Schwartz and asked me to send Zach to the living room for questioning.

  The guests were corralled into other rooms for questioning. I glanced out the patio door and saw that the band members were being held at the poolside cabana.

  A lone cop, supposedly guarding Mrs. Schwartz, stood by the stove shoveling in a mouthful of nachos. Mrs. Schwartz was slumped over the kitchen table, either fast asleep or intoxicated, her hand wrapped around an empty glass. I noticed that the punch bowl held considerably less sangria than when I’d first left the kitchen.

  The front door opened, and I recognized Ally’s voice. “Let me in. I have to see my mother. Mom, I’m here. Where are you?”

  “In here,” I called, walking toward the foyer.

  Ally’s eyes were red and puffy. She fell into my open arms, and I held on tight, murmuring into her hair. “Oh, Ally. I’m so sorry.”

  When she spotted her mother, she ran into the kitchen and knelt beside her, patting her back. “Mom,” she sobbed. “It’s okay. I’m here now.” She shook her mother’s shoulders lightly. “Mom?”

  Mrs. Schwartz lifted her head, her eyes squinting against the light. “Allison. Is that you?”

  Ally nodded, her eyes welling up.

  “Oh, baby. Daddy’s gone.” Mrs. Schwartz lowered her head again and sobbed, her shoulders heaving.

  “The detective wants to ask you some questions,” I said quietly to Zach.

  As Zach left the kitchen, he paused and put his hand on Ally’s back. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

  She turned to him and nodded.

  I knew the two of them had a past together, but I wasn’t sure where that stood. All I knew was that it had ended badly a few years before, and Zach had suffered for it. As had I. In all our years as friends, Zach and I shared everything. But that time he’d closed himself off and shut me out when all I’d wanted to do was provide him comfort and a shoulder to cry on.

  The basement door opened, and the young man I’d seen earlier wearing the white shirt and bow tie emerged holding a bottle of wine. Probably in his early twenties, he was tall and tanned with hair a blend of colors from a rich caramel to a white blond and had the kind of chiseled features you saw only on the pages of a fashion magazine.

  His hazel eyes darted from person to person, as if trying to make sense of the commotion in the kitchen. “Uh…I’m looking for Trudie Fine,” he announced to no one in particular.

  I swallowed hard. This Adonis was here to see me? “I’m Trudie Fine.”

  “Hi,” he said, his face breaking into a smile, accentuating the cleft in his chin and exposing a set of luminous white teeth. “I’m Bradley Miller, your bartender.”

  Chapter Three

  It was ten o’clock. Zach and I sat at the Schwartzes’ kitchen table, held hostage with Bradley Miller, the agency bartender. Zach had been the one to use the words “held hostage.” Personally, I wouldn’t have minded being trapped on a desert island with Bradley. Every time he smiled, I was sure he could see the polka dots on my apron thumping wildly.

  I saw the way Bradley and Zach watched Ally when she walked her mother upstairs to her bedroom. The same way all men regarded Ally, tall and thin and gorgeous with straight blonde hair. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

  According to her own rendition of the story, Allison Schwartz had been adopted, the product of a fifteen-year-old cheerleader who had gotten herself knocked up by the high school star quarterback. Hence, her gorgeous features.

  Still, Ally and I got along well as roommates at Johnson and Wales. Apparently, she’d chosen me as the one person she could come to about anything, including her boyfriend problems. And she often took my advice. Ha! Me, who never even had a boyfriend. In return, she taught me how to maximize my best features with clothing and makeup. Unfortunately, nothing could cover up my double chin or my bulging derrière, which had already maximized themselves.

  Unlike me, Ally studied restaurant management, wanting others to do the cooking while she controlled the money. After graduation, the Schwartzes bought their daughter her own restaurant, Ally’s Galley, in Georgetown. They hired a chef straight from the Cordon Bleu and an experienced bar manager from New York. Ally handpicked the wait staff and host. The menu was haute cuisine, the ambiance exquisite and the grand opening a huge success with raves from food critics. Her restaurant soon was making money.

  If I sound jealous, maybe I was. But only at first. Ally’s wandering spirit caught up with her. She tired of handling the books and hired a business manager for his hunky looks and great ass and put all her energies into screwing him. To be perfectly blunt about it, eventually he screwed her and ran off with the profits. Ally could not convince her father to bail her out, and she had to close the restaurant.

  “What I don’t understand,” Zach said to Bradley, “is exactly when you got here. And what were you doing in the wine cellar?”

  Bradley flashed his white teeth at me again then turned to Zach. “I’ve already told the police. It was about eight o’clock. I didn’t ring the doorbell because I was late and heard the band playing. So I walked around to the backyard. Most of the guests had arrived, and I headed to the bar. But you were already setting it up, Zach. That’s your name, i
sn’t it?”

  “Yeah. That’s me. But why didn’t you tell us you were here?” Zach’s outstretched hands asked for an explanation.

  “Mr. Schwartz spotted me with my bow tie and signaled me over to him. He asked me to find a particular bottle of Spanish wine, a vintage Tempranillo, for one of the guests to taste.” Bradley pointed to the bottle with both hands in a spokes-model gesture.

  “But you would have had to come through the kitchen to go down to the wine cellar,” Zach persisted. “Trudie would have seen you.”

  “Zach, I saw the whole thing,” I said, finally able to pry my gaze away from Bradley. “Mr. Schwartz directed him to go into the wine cellar through the outside stairway.”

  “There’s an outside entrance?” Zach asked. “Okay. So you’re downstairs in the wine cellar.” Zach was frustrated. I could tell by the way he shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to make sense of Bradley’s story. “You’re in the wine cellar for what…forty-five minutes? An hour? It’s taking you all that time to find this bottle? And right outside, a woman screams, sirens wail and cops run through the house herding the guests from room to room, and you don’t hear a thing?” Zach almost levitated out of his seat as he spoke.

  I frowned. Zach had some good points. After all, we didn’t know who this guy was. He could have disposed of the real bartender to get into the party. Could he have harmed Mr. Schwartz in some way? That senator who had called the police suspected some kind of foul play that needed investigating. I scanned the room for my Santoku in case I’d need it for protection. What had that cop done with my knife? It had cost me more than the price of a steak dinner at Morton’s.

  Bradley leaned back in his chair, folded his arms and grinned. “Nope. Didn’t hear a thing. Wine cellars have thick walls, and there must have been a thousand bottles down there. It took me a while to figure out his system, and I was determined to find this bottle if it took me all night.” He turned his heart-stopping smile on me. “I wanted to make a good impression on Mr. Schwartz—the boss.”

  “Except,” I said, pointing to myself and then Zach and trying to ignore my thumping heart, “I’m your boss, and Zach is your boss. The client is important, of course, but you report to us.”

  Bradley reached out and took my hand so that my finger now pointed to him. “I guess I didn’t make a good first impression after all, Boss.”

  His eyes pleaded for mercy, and he brought my finger to his lips and kissed it. A tremor flickered through my body.

  “I hope you’ll give me another chance,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t,” a voice said.

  I glanced up.

  Detective Goldman glared at me, his eyes hard. Then he turned to Zach. “Mr. Cohen, I’d like to bring you in for further questioning.”

  This snapped me to attention.

  “What? Bring me in where?” Zach’s hair stood on end from running his fingers through it.

  “What do you mean, ‘bring him in for further questioning’?” I asked. “You mean to say you interviewed all those people, let them go home and Zach is a suspect? Is there some question of foul play?” As I spoke, I stood up and approached the detective but thought better of sticking my finger into his chest as I had initially intended.

  “I didn’t say anything about considering him a suspect. I just need to continue our conversation at the station. He was out on the patio a good part of the evening, both before and after the party began. He may have seen something important but didn’t realize it at the time. And yes, foul play is always a possibility. Anyway, we need to let Mrs. Schwartz get some rest. So let’s all get out of here.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked. “So you think foul play might be involved and you’re going to leave Mrs. Schwartz and her daughter alone in this house tonight?”

  The detective rolled his eyes. “I’ve got men stationed outside. And we’ve got the crime scene roped off. Nothing to worry about, Miss Fine.” He gestured to Zach to follow him.

  “Wait a minute. I need Zach to help clean up and load the van. I can’t do this by myself.” The housekeeper had been questioned and was so distraught over what had happened to Mr. Schwartz that the police had let her go home.

  I surveyed the kitchen. Uneaten casseroles and bean dishes sat dried in their pans. A mixture of dirty and clean dishes, glassware and silverware were piled on every surface. The chicken, forgotten in the oven, had burned beyond recognition, and a charred scent hung in the air along with the charred remains of A Fine Fix.

  “I’ll help you,” Bradley said. “That is, if you’ll give me a chance to prove myself.”

  Zach stood by the detective, a bewildered expression on his face.

  “Zach,” I said, “As soon as we have everything cleaned up and in the van, I’ll come down to the station to pick you up.” I watched as Goldman led him out of the kitchen and waited until I heard the front door shut.

  With Zach gone, I felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Everything inside me, all my hopes and dreams, had deflated in an instant like a fallen soufflé. I took a deep breath.

  “Okay, Bradley,” I said, turning and handing him an apron. “Prove yourself.”

  Chapter Four

  In my purple apron, I must have resembled a grape Popsicle, frozen in the center of the Schwartzes’ kitchen surveying the disaster around me. “Where do we even start?” I murmured, more to myself than to Bradley. After all, I was the professional. I’d cleaned up kitchens messier than this. Of course, I’d always had Zach with me. We were a team. I’d rinse and stack the plates, while he soaked the utensils in hot soapy water and lined up the stemware on the counter.

  But Zach wasn’t with me tonight. Zach was on his way to the police station for questioning. Why? Why Zach, the most trustworthy human being I’d ever known? My business partner, my best friend. Once, when I’d cut my finger chopping onions, he had cleaned the wound, applied a bandage and continued all my prep work. When the van’s battery went dead late one night after I’d dropped him off at home, he’d driven to rescue me with his jumper cables. Tonight he was the one in trouble, and I couldn’t even help him. Not even to be with him at the police station for support.

  Here I was in the midst of ruins. Just a few hours ago, this job was our icing on a cake, our big break into the politically powerful Washington society. Now, who would hire A Fine Fix to cater their parties? Our company would only be a gruesome reminder of what had happened to Mr. Schwartz. I still couldn’t believe it myself. This afternoon, Mr. Schwartz had been full of life, joking with Zach and me as he helped unload the van. He had greeted me with a warm bear hug, as if I were a member of his family. Why did the police suspect foul play? Who would want to hurt a man like Mr. Schwartz? Certainly not Zach.

  “Oh, Zach.” I began to tremble and covered my face, a loud sob escaping my lips.

  “It’s okay, Trudie.” Bradley’s voice soothed me as he put his hands on my shoulders.

  “No, it’s not okay.” I shook my head, angry tears spilling down my face. “It’s not okay that Mr. Schwartz is dead. It’s not okay that Zach is at the police station. And it’s not okay that tonight A Fine Fix has reached its expiration date and is ready for the garbage disposal.”

  Bradley’s eyebrows creased together. “Trudie, you’re going to sit down now and pull yourself together.”

  He turned me around, draped his arm around my shoulder, and escorted me to a kitchen chair. I turned my head toward him and breathed in the citrus and spice scent of his aftershave. I felt warm and safe, enveloped by his arm, and could have stood like that all night. He sat me down and handed me a couple of tissues from the box Mrs. Schwartz had been using. Then he ladled out a generous serving of sangria from the punch bowl.

  “Here. Drink this.”

  I shook my head. “I never drink on the job.”

  He laughed. Gazing around the empty kitchen, he set the glass on the table in front of me. “I think it will be fine this one time.”


  “Thanks. You’re not such a bad guy after all.”

  I took a big gulp and started to stand up. Bradley put his hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back down. “You relax a while and let a pro take over.” He slipped the apron I’d given him over his head and tied the back. Then he removed his bow tie, rolled up his shirt sleeves and dug right in to the sink full of dirty dishes, rinsing them and putting them into the dishwasher.

  “A pro, huh? Let’s see what you can do.” For a guy with a drop-dead gorgeous face, I hadn’t expected him to know how to scrape out one dirty pan, not to mention a whole kitchen full.

  The sangria mellowed my mood. After a few minutes, I joined him at the sink and began drying and stacking the large platters, pots and pans. “You’re pretty good at this. Where’d you get your know-how?”

  He didn’t answer at first, and I thought that maybe he hadn’t heard my question. Then, concentrating his efforts on a sauté pan that already shone like a mirror, he blurted, “Many hours with my mom in the kitchen…watching her cry.”

  I stopped drying the pot in my hand. “Why was she crying?”

  He put the pan in the drying rack and reached for another. He turned to me, opened his mouth and then closed it and shook his head. “My father was never around. Always with another woman.” He dipped his head, but continued. “Not always the same woman, mind you,”

  “She knew about those women?” I asked.

  “We both knew. He wasn’t very good at hiding his relationships. Truthfully, I think he wanted her to know. It was easier for him. He didn’t have to work so hard at hiding his comings and goings. And when he finally left us, it wasn’t such a big surprise.”

  I wondered why he was revealing so much to me. We’d only just met. “I’m sorry,” I said, touching his arm.

  When his muscles tensed, I pulled my hand away.

  “I got over it long ago.” He turned off the faucet and dried his hands on the apron. “Now can we change the subject?”

  “Okay.” I leaned back, my elbows resting on the counter. “There is something I’m curious about. Tell me, why is someone with your looks working as a for-hire bartender when you could be earning big bucks doing photo shoots for GQ?”