Turn up the Heat

sure he’s got tons of women all over him, but I don’t know of anyone specific.”
    After another twenty-five minutes in which I described my observation of the linen deliveryman and gave a step-by-step description of finding the body and calling 911, I was done. I hoped I hadn’t said anything to implicate Owen. Or Snacker. Had I given the impression that Snacker despised Owen so much he could have plopped a dead body in Owen’s truck to frame him?
    Josh and Snacker stood together, both increasingly irritated that they couldn’t get into the kitchen. Owen stood with them but was uncharacteristically quiet.
    “It’s not like anyone got poisoned, right?” complained Snacker. “Everything probably happened in the alley and Owen’s truck, not in the restaurant and certainly not in our kitchen.” Snacker was taking every opportunity to point out Owen’s connection to this crime.
    “The thing is, we don’t know how Leandra died. There were red marks on her neck, but there wasn’t any blood, right? Did you see any?” I asked.
    “No,” Snacker admitted.
    “Her death just couldn’t have been natural. It’s not like she suddenly felt ill, wandered into an unlocked fish truck, shut the door, and died.” I paused. “At least that’s not very likely.”
    “Maybe she killed herself,” Josh suggested.
    I rolled my eyes. “In a fish truck?"
    Josh looked over my shoulder. “I’m up, I guess.” He left to be grilled by Detective Waters. Owen finally decided to call Adrianna. Predictably, Snacker felt the urge to flirt with beautiful Blythe. And when Snacker felt an urge, he always succumbed to it.
    Gavin sat alone. Ever the social work student, I decided that it was no time for him to be by himself. Consequently, I pulled out a chair, sat down, and adopted my best therapist posture, legs and arms uncrossed and relaxed, ready to receive what the client had to say.
    Simmer’s owner looked at me sadly, blew his nose, and reached for a glass he’d managed to sneak from the bar. I could smell the alcohol from my chair. “I really, really cared about Leandra. I’m not sure we were in love yet, but we were definitely heading there.” He blew his nose again and wiped his sleeve across his eyes. “And to top it all off, this could really hurt Simmer. I’ve got great plans for all of us. I know we’ve got a few kinks to iron out, but the seminars I’ve been attending on restaurant management all say that the staff may take a while to be trained properly. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have exact methods for taking inventory and keeping track of everything. It might seem like petty stuff, but it’s all about crunching numbers. There are so many ways to lose money that we’ve got to be on top of everything.”
    Gavin was talking more to himself than to me. He was, I thought, struggling to focus on anything but his girlfriend’s murder. Denial. Typical defense mechanism. And a helpful one in getting him through this crisis. So I wasn’t worried about Gavin’s mental health. Simmer’s finances didn’t worry me, either. I assumed that the servers’ hourly rate was pretty low—it always is—so Gavin himself wasn’t losing a lot of money by overscheduling the front-of-the-house staff, whose principal source of income was tips. What really concerned me about Simmer was what Wade had described: namely, the effect of Gavin’s number crunching and management efforts on the servers’ tips and on the morale of everyone who worked at Simmer.
    Gavin suddenly switched to speaking directly to me. “And you know what? Josh is the best chef around. Never mind what anyone says. What does a GM know about food or running a kitchen anyhow?”
    Huh? I thought Wade really liked Josh. More often than I could remember, I’d heard the GM gush about how delicious Josh’s specials were, how hard Josh worked, and how great it was to have an executive chef of his caliber at Simmer. Now, come to find out, Wade had been bad-mouthing Josh to Gavin? The hypocrite! Instead of plastering his hair with all that gel, he should’ve used oily, greasy goo so he’d look like the slimeball he was.
    Gavin took a large gulp from his glass. “We ought to be open today. Not only can we not afford to be closed, but Leandra knew how much this place meant to me. I know she’d want us to be open. What the hell happened, anyway? Leandra shouldn’t have been alone. What was she doing? Where was everyone? It was Wade and