“Claire!”
I could hear Lala’s voice calling up the stairs. I shoved Marco’s note back into my pocket and pulled the green silk robe over my pajamas. I looked in the mirror and saw a stranger: ghostly skin, red-rimmed eyes, hair sticking up wetly. My hands were trembling.
“Claire? It’s Lala! Are you up there?
I ran my fingers through my hair and half stumbled down the hall to the spiral stairs. I could feel the smooth oak under my bare feet and cool bronze as my fingers skimmed the banister, but my legs were shaking violently. Marco. What had he done?
Lala was at the bottom of the stairs, peering up. My oldest friend had an odd look on her face—anxious and wary—and as she pushed back the fur lined hood of her parka, I could see shadows under her gold-flecked eyes.
She flung her arms around me. “My God, Claire. You look like hell. What are you doing in your pajamas? Where have you been? I’ve been calling and calling! It’s all over the news! What is going on?”
I inhaled Lala’s scent—a powdery trace of Je Reviens mingled with—was it toast? It was her own smell, warm and comforting. Something burst inside me.
“Oh Lala, it’s so horrible—“ I began. I could feel the tears coming to my eyes. Stop it, I told myself. You will not cry. I sat down on the bottom stair step and began to sniffle.
“You don’t mean—Marco didn’t—“ She stopped short.
“Kill Max? I don’t think so, but—Oh, Lala, they found his body in the Porsche and it was in the river and there was a bullet hole—and I don’t know where Marco is and—“ A big tear slid down my cheek. I licked it away with my tongue. It was salty. “And then I found this—“
I thrust the small tightly scrolled piece of paper at Lala. She perused it, frowning slightly as she got to the end.
She pursed her lips. I could see a dozen questions forming in her mind. “Where did you get this?” she asked sharply.
My voice quavered: “I broke a jar of pepper yesterday and it was there on the floor with the glass and the peppercorns. The phone rang and I just stuck in my pocket. I forgot about it and then I found it again a few minutes ago. He must have written it the night he disappeared.“
“There’s a lot of strange stuff here. It’s like he was writing in code. What is the day you tumbled into his arms and the place you love the best? And his old uncle? And what the heck are Balas rubies?”
I wiped my eyes. “Do you have a Kleenex?” Lala pulled a pale blue tissue out of her pocket. I blew my nose. “I’m hungry.” I stood up and padded down the hall to the kitchen.
Not everyone wishes you well… Could he have meant Lala, my oldest and dearest friend, the one who knows all my secrets? Maybe I was too quick to show her Marco’s note. Could I trust her? Could I not? Because if I couldn’t, there was no one. Miserably, I felt a hard cold knot of suspicion twisting inside me. I was becoming a paranoiac.
Lala followed me down the hall, taking off her parka. “Claire, stop doing that!” I turned. “Doing what?” She glared at me. “You know what. Avoiding the matter at hand. That is so typical. Whenever you don’t want to face something, you start cooking.”
It’s true. I always cook when I’m upset. Or when I’m trying to duck some unpleasantness, like a deadline, or the memory of a dead man, or the possibility that my husband is a murderer. I cook when I don’t know what to do next.
There is something reassuring about kitchen rituals. You can feel quite productive even when you are procrastinating up a storm. Dicing onions with a sharp blade, pulverizing garlic in a mortar and pestle, toasting long pepper and cumin seed, inhaling their warm fragrance, sizzling them together in oil, pouring in homemade chicken stock and waiting for it to come to a bubble—well, before you know it, you’ve made an Indonesian Cauliflower Soup. You can lose yourself in the cutting, pounding and toasting, and kill (bad choice of words) an hour—and then you get to sit down and eat something delicious.
“Claire,” Lala said firmly. “You have to let me help you.” I stood there, wavering.
Then, from behind us, came a voice. “Did I hear something about food?”