A Beeline to Murder

“Then what?” Abby replied, with a puzzled expression.

“I don’t know. Cigarettes are, for me, something to share with a woman after dinner, after a walk, after making love. But if you do not like smoking, then I must give it up.” Philippe’s eyes met hers.

“No, you don’t,” Abby shot back defiantly. “Maybe I don’t smoke. But you do. Friends allow friends to decide for themselves.”

“Is that what we are, Abby? Friends?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“For the Frenchman, there is none of this silly friends stuff like you have in that Harry and Sally movie. When a man with the French blood takes a woman to dinner, she must understand the signal he sends.”

“What signal is that?” Abby asked.

“La romance. What else?”

Abby felt a warm flush creep across her face, burning her cheeks.

“Oh, now I have embarrassed you,” Philippe said, waving his hands in the air. Apparently realizing that the timing was not right for that discussion, he said, “I will tell you about the first time I smoked. It was also the first time I kissed a girl.”

Although hockey had been his favorite sport, Philippe said, he also had played middle school football, as a second-string quarterback. After the starting quarterback injured his throwing arm in an on-field crush during one game, Philippe had taken the field and thrown a game-winning touchdown. It happened only once, but the girls looked at him differently after that. One, especially, took notice.

“Olivia,” Philippe said, “was a risk taker. She dressed provocatively in short skirts, tight sweaters, and lots of fishnet. She smoked. At a party with some friends, she led me outside and lit up. I tried it, too. I inhaled and held the smoke in my mouth and lungs, against the urge to cough. Olivia must have thought I was sexy, because she suddenly pushed against me and kissed me with her tongue in my mouth. When I exhaled and coughed violently, she asked what kind of French I was if I did not know how to French kiss.”

Abby laughed.

As Philippe spoke of the adventures he’d shared with Jean-Louis while growing up in Canada and immigrating to upstate New York, Abby listened attentively. His younger brother, he said, had always been the better looking and more creative of the two. As children, they were very close, but in high school Philippe’s love of hockey consumed most of his free time, while Jean-Louis’s early interest in cooking developed into a full-blown passion for baking. Philippe stayed on a course plotted out for him through high school and college to take on the family business of art acquisitions and sales. During his college years, he studied art and business by day and worked in his parents’ gallery in the evenings and on weekends. Despite his early propensity for cooking, Jean-Louis surprised the family when he decided to immerse himself in the culinary world, eventually settling on pastry as a specialty.

By the time Abby’s cell phone rang, playing the theme song to the TV series Cops—the ringtone that told her Kat was calling—she and Philippe had moved to the brown and cream quatrefoil-patterned couch. It was a little weird, making themselves at home in Jean-Louis’s apartment, but Abby soon acclimated, especially after Philippe had replenished their wine. Kat’s phone call interrupted Philippe’s story about when he was a teenager and was babysitting his ten-year-old brother while their parents went on an errand to the gallery. The boys wanted muffins and decided to make them. The batter was delicious, and the muffins would have been, too, had the oven not caught fire. The blaze singed Philippe’s eyebrows and caught the pot holders on fire before the boys managed to call for help. Although no serious damage was done, the kitchen smelled like burnt rags for weeks afterward.

“That’s when I realized I could appreciate food without cooking it,” Philippe said with a smile. “It traumatized me.” He sucked in a mouthful of red liquid and held it in his mouth a long moment before swallowing.