When he got out…
Well, Norman didn’t make any apologies, and though I may have expected a few, I guess I could understand. It was hard for a guy with a record to find a decent job, so Norman did the only thing that was logical. At least in his mind.
He became Bill Boxley. And Fred Gardner. And all the other people I’d found IDs for. And he’d run a series of scams along the east coast and the west, until that fateful day when the cooking skill he’d learned at the Nevada State Prison led him to the opportunity to own his own gourmet shop.
“The rest…” Norman filled our wineglasses-again. “Like they say, the rest is history. I always liked cooking, and when the idea hit that I could own my own shop, well, I decided that would be like heaven on earth. I’ve established a great business, and I love doing what I’m doing. Très Bonne Cuisine is my life. This is where I belong. I’ve given up the scams… well, except for the Vavoom! I started an honest business and I want nothing more than to keep it going. I even thought about turning over a whole new leaf and letting the world know who I really am.” He shook his head, dismissing the thought just the way he must have when it first occurred to him. “How can I? Would you shop here if you knew I was a con? Would anybody pay the least attention to a guy who learned to cook in prison?”
We’d been seated around the table for hours, and Norman got up and stretched. “I’ve never been happier,” he said. “Until-”
“Until somebody walked in here and blew Greg away.” Even the taste of the expensive wine Norman poured couldn’t sweeten my words.
Norman shivered. “Just thinking about it makes me sick,” he said. “I swear, I don’t know what the guy wanted. He just walked in-”
“You saw him come into the shop?” Wine or no wine, late hour or not, I’d waited a long time to ask him these questions, and I wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass. “Did you recognize the man?”
“I never got a good look at his face.” The gesture Norman made reminded me of the old Monsieur Lavoie nonchalance. Except that now, Norman didn’t look nearly as debonair as he did confused. “Tall. Dark jacket. Jeans. That’s pretty much all I could see from the back office.” This time his shrug was all about despair. “I can’t really describe him. I wouldn’t recognize him again if he walked in here right now and asked to sit down.”
“Then how did you know he was looking for you?”
While I asked the questions, Jim pulled out the same notepad that had been in his pocket earlier that evening (I guess technically it was the evening before now that it was Friday morning). Norman talked, and Jim took notes.
“I was loading the car. You know, I was supposed to take stuff over to Bellywasher’s. The steel-clad roaster and the ice cream maker and…” As much as he loved food and the expensive cookware he sold to prepare it, Norman shrugged it all off as inconsequential in the face of what had happened. “I was going in and out and I heard Greg talking to someone, but hey, that’s not unusual, is it? The shop was open late that night and whatever the guy wanted, I knew Greg would take care of everything. He always did. He was-” Norman ’s voice got thick and he coughed away his emotion. “Greg was a nice guy. I hate that this happened to him. If I would have been braver. Or smarter. If I realized sooner that something was wrong-”
“When did you realize something was wrong?”
I could tell Norman had been avoiding thinking about the whole thing, that’s how pale and shaken he was. I couldn’t blame him. All the more reason we had to talk about it.
“What did he say?” I asked. “The guy Greg was waiting on, how did you know he was really looking for you?”
“I heard him…” Norman swallowed hard. “I heard the man raise his voice. He said, ‘It’s payback time, Norman.’ ”
Twelve
“IT’S PAYBACK TIME, NORMAN.”
Ignoring the confused looks on Jim’s and Norman’s faces, I drummed my fingers against the table and mumbled the words. “Don’t you get it?” I said, looking from one of them to the other. “It’s a clue.”
“Well, it’s how I knew the guy was looking for me, that’s for sure.” Now that it was morning and we didn’t need the lights, we’d opened the door that led into the main room of the cooking school. A stream of mellow sunshine poked into the room where we’d spent the night. Norman stepped through the sunlight to retrieve the waffles he’d just made. He put them down in front of us, and added a scoop of fresh strawberries and a dollop of whipped cream.
Something told me they didn’t eat like this back at the Nevada State Prison.
Norman sat down and cut into his own stack of waffles. “As soon as I heard him say that, I knew the guy was mixed up, that he thought Greg was me. I was in the back office and I was just about to step out front and tell him he had the wrong guy, but…” In spite of the sweetened whipped cream, Norman ’s expression soured. “That’s when I heard the first gunshot. After that, I didn’t know what to do. I guess I panicked. Instead of going out front, I called the cops.”
“That’s exactly what you should have done.” I gave him a sympathetic smile because I could tell the memory was painful for Norman. Rather than risk losing him to it, I made sure to keep our discussion on track.
“The killer did think Greg was you,” I said. “But not the you you are. The you you were.” That didn’t make any sense. Not even to me. I licked whipped cream from my lips and tried again. “You and Greg didn’t look anything at all alike now. But we noticed the resemblance between the young you and Greg in the pictures we found of you in the William Allen High yearbook.”
The look on Norman ’s face told me he was anxious to hear more of an explanation, but rather than get side-tracked, I put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“You see what this means, right?” I asked. “The killer is probably someone who knew you years ago. Or at least someone who’s seen pictures of you from back then. He did what we did when we looked at your graduation picture. We tried to imagine what the kid in the photograph would look like with a few years and a few added pounds. So when he walked into the shop and saw Greg-”
“He thought it was me.” Norman interrupted me. Which was just fine by me. It gave me a chance to take another bite of waffle. His expression fell and he set down his fork. “What a lousy way to die. Poor Greg. He didn’t even know what the guy was talking about. He didn’t know I was Norman. Nobody did. So why kill him? Why kill me? I mean, that’s what the guy thought he was doing, right? He thought he was killing me.” His pleading look pivoted between Jim and me. Which would have been just fine-if we had any answers.
The way it was, we sat in silence for a long while, eating our waffles and sipping the coffee Norman had brewed with just a touch of chicory. After a while, his shoulders rose and fell.
“I know I haven’t given you guys much reason to trust me,” Norman said. “I’m sorry for that. When I started this whole crazy Jacques Lavoie thing, I never thought I’d have friends who were so wonderful that I’d feel guilty for lying to them. But I do. I have you two, and Eve, and everyone over at Bellywasher’s. Believe me when I say I thought of telling you all the truth a thousand times. I just never got up the nerve. And I loved the whole eccentric French chef thing.” He gave us that Pepé Le Pew laugh, only this time it didn’t sound as jolly as it did downright phony. I wondered how I’d never noticed before. “I loved being in the limelight, having all the D.C. foodies beating a path to my door. Now…” He sat back and raised his chin.
“I want you to know that I’m sorry you had to learn the truth this way, and from now on, I’m going to be one hundred percent aboveboard with you. All of you. Always. I swear…” He raised his right hand like he would have done if he were in court. “I swear I never did anything to anyone that would make them want to kill me. I’m not a violent man. Never have been. The only thing I ever did was take some people’s money. And never a whole lot of it, either. Why would somebody want to kill me for that?”