I’VE NEVER MET A BRUSSELS SPROUT I LIKED. Which is why when I finally got around to checking my e-mail the next afternoon and found the little buggers on Jim’s list of what to bring to our fourth class, I wasn’t exactly thrilled.
But there were those twelve years of Catholic education to consider, and if I’d learned nothing else at Saint Charles Borromeo Elementary and then Bishop Ireton High, it was that homework was homework. Thrilled or not, I wasn’t about to argue. I dutifully wrote out my shopping list.
Brussels sprouts.
Canned chestnuts. (Canned? They came that way? And what was a chestnut, anyway? Aside from the fact that they roasted on an open fire in that Christmas song, I wasn’t sure I’d ever made the acquaintance of a chestnut.)
Butter.
Salt and pepper.
Sugar. (Now there was something I knew something about.)
A quart of your favorite fruit. (I’d already decided on apples.)
I finished my shopping list, fully aware that I was spending too much time on it, but nevertheless taking care that my writing was neat and perfect, checking and double-checking the supplies I needed to purchase against the copy of Jim’s e-mail that I’d printed out. All so I didn’t have to think about Drago’s murder, my near-death experience with the stove, and Eve’s crazy idea about the two of us as Jessica Fletcher clones.
Even thinking about Brussels sprouts was better than pondering all that.
By the time I was done, I still had twenty minutes left on my lunch break. I’d just decided to take a walk and clear my head when Eve breezed into the employee lunchroom.
No, she didn’t work at the bank with me. But she came to visit often enough. Everyone knew Eve and just naturally accepted her as one of the family.
She said hello to Dave and Stan, fellow tellers who were chatting near the coffee machine, then plunked down in the chair across from mine. “We have work to do,” she said, and as if to prove it, she plopped a briefcase on the table between us.
Seeing Eve with a briefcase is a weird sort of thing. Like seeing a dog pull a watch out of his back pocket. Half real, half cartoon. I might have laughed if there was anything funny about it.
Instead, I weighed what I wanted to say (which was something along the lines ofWhat on earth are you up to now?) against my desire not to hurt Eve’s feelings.
I shilly-shallied too long.
Tired of waiting for me to respond and apparently convinced that I was going to again point out that she was off her rocker (which I was), Eve raised her beautifully arched golden eyebrows and tapped her finger against the briefcase. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our investigation? I’ve been going over my notes all morning. There are some things we need to discuss before we continue our case.”
There were so many weird miscues in her statement, I didn’t know where to begin.Investigation? Notes? Our case?
It was enough to boggle the mind.
Fortunately, I am not the type who stays boggled for long. I shook myself out of my momentary stupor and decided to start with the most salient point and work my way backwards. “Eve,we don’t have a case. And what notes, anyway? You haven’t been taking notes. You never take notes. You spent four years in high school not taking notes.”
Eve’s smile was sleek. “That was then, this is now. And now that we’ve got an investigation to conduct, I figured I’d better turn over a new leaf. I knew you’d be too busy here at work this morning to do anything, and fortunately, I’ve got the day off. I sat down and made a list.” She dutifully pulled it out of the briefcase and waved it in front of my nose. “This is everything we know. Seems to me, all we have to do is prove that our friend Beyla had access to the poison and-”
“You’ve been watching too manyLaw & Order reruns.” I pushed back from the table, making it clear that I was putting some distance between myself and my friend’s lunacy. “We can’t do this, Eve.”
I swear, she wasn’t even listening.
“Remember what that hardheaded, cold-blooded scum-bag Tyler said?” she asked. “He said Drago was poisoned with foxglove. I went to the library this morning, Annie, and the nice librarian there helped me out. Did you know that foxglove used to be called witches’ gloves? And goblin’s gloves? And dead men’s bells?”
I didn’t, and I didn’t see why it was important, but I was impressed by the simple fact that Eve had done some research. I told her how much I admired her initiative.
Of course, that didn’t mean I was buying into her girl-detective scenario, and I told her that, too.
She pooh-poohed my protest with a wave of one hand. “Don’t you see what I’m getting at here? First that nice librarian-did I mention it was a man and that we’re having drinks together tomorrow afternoon?-first, he found a picture so that I could see what foxglove looks like.” This time when she reached into the briefcase, she came out holding a color-copied picture. It showed a riot of tall, spiky plants covered with drooping, bell-shaped flowers in shades from purple to white and every tint of pink in between. The colors reminded me of Monsieur Lavoie’s potholder display.
“That nice librarian-his name is Tony, by the way, and he is a little nerdy, just like you’d expect a librarian to be, but in a cute sort of way-Tony, he took his break early so that we could take a little walk around the neighborhood. You’d never believe it, Annie. When you know what you’re looking for, you realize that plenty of people grow foxglove. Tony pointed it out. All over the place. You see what that means, don’t you? It would have been easy for Beyla to get some and give it to Drago. I’m sure she knows that it’s poisonous-with names like that, it’s pretty obvious that the plant can do some serious damage.”
“It’s only pretty obvious to someone who knows all the old names.”
It seemed like a reasonable argument to me, but Eve was already way beyond it. She pulled out another printed-from-a-Web-site sheet. “Symptoms of foxglove poisoning,” she said, and reached into the briefcase again. She slid out two slim volumes. The title of one said something about poisonous plants in the garden. The other was, surprisingly enough, a history of witchcraft.
I fingered the first book, flipping through it to the section Eve had marked. I scanned the pages and read a brief history of foxglove. Scientists never put a lot of credence in its medicinal properties until some time in the late eighteenth century, but it was often used in country villages before that, as an ingredient in folk medicines concocted by people known to the locals as-
My blood ran cold, and I glanced again at the second book. “You don’t think-”
“That Beyla is a witch. Of course! That would explain why she wears black all the time.”
“Yeah, that or the fact that she’s style conscious, that she looks fabulous in black, and that it’s easier to build a wardrobe around one basic color than to try and mix and match. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”
There was nothing like a fashion discussion to snag Eve’s interest.
Usually.
This time she ignored me, and I knew for sure that I was in trouble.
“All we have to do is prove she did it,” Eve plowed ahead.
“If it was that easy,” I reminded her, “the cops would have already done it.”
“Yeah, if Beyla wasn’t so clever. She knows better than to drop her guard. You heard her-she said she didn’t even know Drago.”
“And we know she did.” I had to give her that one. I couldn’t ignore the fact that Beyla had lied, both to us and the police. I mulled over the thought. Naturally, my brain took it one step further. “And we know Monsieur Lavoie knew Drago, too. We saw Drago storm out of the store, and we saw how upset Monsieur Lavoie was by the whole thing. And then there’s John. He said he was having coffee with Beyla after class that night, but we know for a fact that-”
I heard my own words and the thread of excitement in my voice as I logically worked my way through the argument. Eve wasn’t one to miss little nuances. Her eyes lit up.
“Gotcha!” she said.
I wasn’t about to roll over so quickly. I tried one last objection. “Eve, we can’t-”
“You want to help me get back at Tyler, don’t you?” Her eyes grew sharp in a way that it was impossible for any best friend to discount. “You don’t want him to spend the rest of his happily ever after with what’s-her-name, talking about poor little Eve DeCateur and how she couldn’t even-”
“All right already!” I threw my hands in the air, surrendering. “But I’m only going to give this a few days.”
“A few days is all it’s going to take.”
“And I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to.”
“And I’m not going to do anything dangerous.”
“Annie! I wouldn’t dream of it,” Eve exclaimed. “I was thinking we could just start with a little computer research. I’m not very good at that sort of thing and…”
She left the rest of the sentence unspoken, but I knew just what she meant. I checked the clock that hung above the lunchroom door. “I’ve got ten minutes until I need to get back to work,” I told her. “Let’s get started.”
A couple minutes later, we were logged on to the Internet on the computer that sat on a table in one corner of the lunchroom. It was supposed to be a sort of company benefit, a place where employees could play games or check e-mail while they were on their breaks. But the computer was old and even slower than the one I had at home. Most of the time, no one used it.
Luckily, today was one of those times.
Because it seemed like the most logical place to begin, I Googled “Drago Kravic.” The computer went through its motions and, surprisingly, came up with a hit.
“Arta,” I read the little blurb and clicked on the URL. “Looks like Drago had something to do with an art gallery.”
Another wait, and then a home page popped up. “He owned it!” Eve exclaimed, reading over my shoulder and pointing to the screen. “It says here that Drago Kravic was the proprietor. Look, it’s right over in Georgetown. You know what this means, don’t you?”
I did, and just the thought was enough to make my stomach queasy.
It meant that after work and before Brussels Sprouts 101, Eve and I were going on a road trip.
I DIDN’T THINK DRAGO’S GALLERY WOULD BE OPEN, especially not just a few days after he died. In my mind, I pictured a black wreath on the front door and a line of sad-faced customers snaking its way around the block, waiting to pay their respects to the dearly departed owner.
Truth be told, I suppose that’s why I agreed to go to Georgetown with Eve. I figured we’d be there and back in twenty minutes. The trip might even prove to Eve once and for all that there were better uses for our time than sleuthing. Particularly when the sleuths didn’t know what they were doing.
And I still had to make a trip to the grocery store for those Brussels sprouts.
We stood by the curb on M Street, studying the building across the street. We could see the sleek turquoise and burnt orange Arta address sign. Much to my surprise-not to mention disappointment-the gallery lights were on, and we could see a man inside. It was raining, which seemed appropriate in a film noire sort of way. Eve shivered inside her lemon-colored tank top. Me, I was prepared; I slipped on my jacket. Just as I did, something clicked inside my brain.
I took another gander at the address.
“That’s it!” I reached into my pocket, suddenly remembering the piece of paper Drago pressed into my hand right before he died. “That’s what was written on the back of the restaurant receipt. The address of Arta. Look!” I pulled out the crumpled receipt and smoothed it so that Eve could read it.
She nodded, confirming my deduction, which, I will say, felt pretty darned brilliant.
“You know what it proves, don’t you?” Eve asked, and when I didn’t, she shook her head, amazed that I still wasn’t thinking like a detective. “We’re supposed to be here,” she said, and before I could come up with a dozen reasons why she was wrong, she grabbed my arm and pulled me across the street.
We pushed open the gallery door and found ourselves in a huge room with track lighting on the high ceiling. The paintings that hung on the redbrick walls were too abstract for me to decipher, and the sculptures… well, to my untrained eyes, they looked like rocks piled one on top of another.
The man we’d seen from across the street was on the other side of the room, looking at one of the rock piles. He certainly didn’t look like he worked there: he was tall, thin, and bald, and he was dressed in jeans, a dark golf shirt, and expensive sneakers. I figured him for a customer until I realized that there was no one else around. He refused to make eye contact, and I think he would have ignored us completely if Eve hadn’t headed right over to where he stood.
The man turned to us sharply, and murmured an uncomfortable, “Good afternoon!”
“Hi there! We’re interior designers,” I blurted out. Eve turned to me, eyes wide with surprise. OK, OK, so I wasn’t as good a liar as she was, but I figured I needed to take charge of the situation. “Redoing a home in Bethesda,” I continued. “We’re looking for just the right painting.”
“This is not possible.” The man’s voice was heavily accented, like Drago’s. And Beyla’s, for that matter. “This is a private gallery. You do not walk in without an appointment. If you will excuse me…” He backed away at the same time he gestured toward the front of the gallery. There was no mistaking what he meant.
Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
For all I knew about the world of art, this was how things were done. Still, to me, it seemed a funny way to do business. Or not to do business.
“I’m not sure you understand,” I continued. I could tell Eve was just as baffled as I was by his attitude, and not sure what to say. “We want to look at paintings. We want to buy.”
The man’s smile wavered around the edges. “Yes, yes. This is very good. But you must understand. You do not come to a gallery without an appointment. How do you say this? It is not done.”
Three cheers for my brain. It clicked into action again.
“But we do have an appointment. Or at least a referral.” The receipt with Drago’s writing on it was still in my hand, and I showed it to the man. “We met Mr. Kravic just recently at this restaurant. He told us to stop by. See, he wrote the address down for us. If you ask him-”
“This is not possible.” I guess he wanted to see the proof up close and personal, because he tried to pluck the receipt out of my hand. But I was faster. After I was sure he’d seen it-and Drago’s writing on it-I stuffed it back in my pocket.
He cleared his throat. “I am sorry to tell you, but Drago Kravic, he is not here.”
I managed a chirpy smile. “We can wait.”
“No, no. You are not understanding.” The man shook his head sadly. “My dear friend Drago, he is not coming back. He is dead.”
We feigned surprise. I thought Eve’s surprise was more convincing than mine, but like I said, I’ve never been much for prevarication. Still, I must have been convincing enough. The man turned a somber smile on me.
“I am sorry I have to tell you this distressing news,” he said. “I am Yuri Grul, Drago’s partner. It is a sad time for me. For all of us. If there is anything I can do-”
“Now that you mention it, you just might be able to help,” Eve piped up. She glanced around the gallery, wide-eyed and with one hand on her Kate Spade to prove to Yuri that she was serious when it came to spending money.
“That nice Mr. Kravic, he talked about a painting, and I’m just dying-” How Eve could make herself blush on command was a mystery to me. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh! I guess that’s not the best word to use, is it? You’ll excuse me, won’t you, sugar? What I meant to say, of course, is that the way Drago described it, why, I just know I’m gonna love that painting. We may not be able to get back here for a good, long while. So if you could just show it to me? I mean, if it isn’t too much of an imposition at a time like this.”
For a couple seconds, I thought Yuri was going to say it was. I almost wished he had-then we could get out of here and get back to minding our own business.
But mourning or no mourning, Yuri was obviously a man of business. He smiled in an oily sort of way that made me uncomfortable. “The name?” he asked.
“Why, it’s Eve DeCateur, and this is Annie Capshaw.” Eve pressed a hand to her heart and twinkled, but Yuri’s blank expression said it all. “Oh, you mean the name of the painting!” She rolled her eyes as if amazed by her own foolishness. “I just know it will come to me,” she said, chewing on her lower lip. “Maybe if you show us around?”
“Of course.” Yuri stepped back to allow us to get closer to the displays. That was my cue-we’d discussed that much on the way over, though I never thought we’d actually do it. If Eve could keep the gallery people distracted, I could snoop around. The thought of it sent a chill up my spine, but then again, I’d already concocted a whopper of a story to get us this far. I might as well go all out.
Besides, I knew that if I didn’t act fast, Eve would take matters into her own hands. And who knew what might happen then!
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment.” I did my best to look embarrassed. It didn’t take much acting-this whole thing was beginning to feel like a scene from a bad sitcom. “Ladies’ room?”
“Of course.” What else could Yuri say? He waved vaguely toward the other side of the gallery, and when Eve wrapped her arm through his and started to chatter, I took off in the opposite direction.
I found myself at the back of the building in a long hallway that struck me as particularly gloomy compared to the bright lighting out on the floor. I saw the door marked Ladies and passed it by, glancing over my shoulder to make sure Yuri wasn’t paying attention. I heard the light sounds of Eve’s laughter echo against the high ceiling, and Yuri’s lower, more guttural replies. Knowing she’d keep him busy for a few more minutes-and hoping a few minutes was enough time-I headed off to find the gallery office.
What was I looking for?
I really didn’t know. I only knew that Eve had this crazy idea that if I could get a peek into Drago’s office, I would find something that would give us a clue to the identity of his killer.
In Eve’s mind, of course, that killer was Beyla.
Did I believe it?
Honestly, I still didn’t know what I thought about Beyla. At that moment, the only thing I was sure about was that I wasn’t cut out to be a thief or a spy. My heart was pounding like the drum line of a high school marching band. My palms were sweaty. My blood was racing so fast and hard, it felt like it was going to spurt out of my veins.
I took a deep breath, attempting to get a grip and trying to reason through the panic cluttering my mind.
Therewas the receipt from Drago with the address of the gallery scrawled on it, I reminded myself. And there were his final words to me.
“This… important. You will see.”
Maybe Drago was trying to lead me here all along. Maybe Eve was onto something after all. Maybe this trip to the gallery was significant. Maybe I would find something in Drago’s office.
If Yuri didn’t catch me snooping around first.
The thought fueled my footsteps, and I picked up my pace down the hallway. There was a brass sign hanging beside the next door on my right that said Private. The door was closed, but it wasn’t shut all the way. I peeked inside.
One look in the office told me that any chance I had of finding a clue was officially gone.
All three of the file cabinets in the room were flung open, and file folders littered the blue and red rug on the floor. The desk drawers were gaping, too, and whatever had been in them was piled on the desk chair.
There was a window on one wall and a small safe under it. That had been opened, as well. It didn’t appear to me that it had been broken into. I may not be much in the burglary department but I do know a mess when I see one. The door of the safe was hanging open, and what looked to be record books kicked to one side definitely qualified as a mess.
Somebody had gotten here before us, and it seemed as though that somebody had an advantage over Eve and me.
He-or she-knew exactly what he-or she-was looking for.
And it was obvious that he-or she-would do anything to find it.