Cook the Books

need a ride?”
    “No.” Josh shook his head. “I have Snacker’s car.”
    “Good. Tell Snacker I said hello.”
    “I’m staying with him in my old room until I find out what’s going on here. The couple I work for was really understanding. They told me to take as much time as I needed.”
    “How nice for you,” I said sharply.
    “I’m not going back to Hawaii until I find out how Digger died. I think he was murdered, Chloe.”
    I gripped the steering wheel. I had no idea what to say. Something was off about Digger’s death, but I wasn’t jumping to the conclusion that he’d been deliberately killed. There was no reason to think so. Or was there?
    “Listen, can we talk sometime?” he asked.
    I started the engine. “I have to go, Josh.” I rolled up the window.
    “Chloe, come on!” He had the audacity to sound annoyed.
    I took off, leaving Josh standing alone on the curb.
    I flew down the street, my heart pounding and my brain full of four-letter words. I was positively bullshit about the run-in with Josh. I’d been completely unprepared. With no defenses at the ready, I’d fallen victim to my visceral reaction to Josh and had totally made out with him in the heat of the moment. If I’d been braced for an encounter with him and had been thinking rationally, none of that hot-and-heavy action would have occurred. At least, I didn’t think so. It was some comfort that I’d yelled at him. If I’d been the reason he’d come back, maybe I’d have felt differently. I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t fault him for the reason he’d returned. His close friend had just died, and he wanted to know how and why. Still, it had been easier to have Josh in Hawaii than it was to have him in Boston, that was for sure.
    I vacillated between anger, desire, and depression as I drove home. My brain and my heart felt ready to explode. Even when I had reached the safety of my apartment, I was still agitated. I rushed through the living room and into the bedroom, where I simultaneously turned on my laptop and lifted the phone from the cradle to scan caller ID. No new calls. At the computer, I unblocked Josh’s e-mail address from my message program and hit Send/ Receive four times in a row. No new messages. Good, right? I didn’t want Josh calling or e-mailing me, I told myself. That was why I’d changed my cell number and blocked his e-mail address in the first place. Of course, I’d kept my old landline number. There was that. Still, he was now in Boston, and how was I supposed to move on with him right here? I could practically feel his presence in the city, and my awareness that he was right nearby was going to make it almost impossible to block him out of my consciousness. Here I was, right now, poised by the phone and computer, waiting for some kind of contact from him! And if Josh did call or e-mail me, it would probably be to ask about Digger. On that topic, why was Josh so sure that Digger had been murdered? God, it was tragic enough that Digger had died in the fire. But murdered? I shook my head. Maybe Josh’s suspicion was his way of trying to deal with the loss of his friend.
    No matter where Josh was or what was going on with him right now, I had to focus on the rest of my life. School, for instance, still required a lot of work, and I had plenty of cookbook activities to distract me. Plus, the money was pretty damn good. I decided to take a quick look through Digger’s bag in search of material for Hank Boucher’s book.
    I opened the messenger bag and cringed. The fabric of the messenger bag reeked of smoke, and the contents smelled equally foul. They consisted of exactly what I expected from a chef: large notebooks filled with scribbled recipes, a few typed pages with notes scrawled on them, and two small notebooks with more recipes, as well as permanent markers, a kitchen thermometer, and some inventory pages. God, he was worse than Kyle! This kind of chaos must be a man thing. But as I’d hoped, the disorganized bag was filled with mouthwatering menus and recipes. Everything about the contents of the bag was so Digger that I teared up as I deciphered his writing. What’s more, I knew that Kyle would be as eager as I was to put some of Digger’s recipes in the cookbook. There was a stromboli recipe that looked delicious. Digger had written, Family recipe, good comfort food. Restaurant possibility or no? Digger hadn’t been sure that the stromboli would fit in at the Penthouse, but he’d