Isabella marched up the street toward Angel’s apartment. Her right knee was a little scuffed, thanks to the fall she’d taken in the alleyway outside the restaurant. Some idiot had thrown a dirty chef’s jacket away, and she’d slipped on it as she climbed out of the bathroom window. She ignored the pain.
It was starting to get chilly. Isabella wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and walked more quickly. She was glad she’d brought it with her. She’d figured she might need to use it as a rope to lower herself out of the restaurant. This was one trip on which she didn’t want Jones, or Neil Flambé, tagging along. Luckily, the window had been large and on the ground floor, so she was able to jump out quickly, before being followed.
Neil had said she’d easily recognize Angel Jícama’s apartment. As she crossed Fourth Street she heard the faint bleating of a goat and caught the unmistakable smell of purple hyacinth carried on the breeze. She smiled. Just about there.
The building almost looked abandoned. The brick was dirty and old, and a few of the windows on the main floor were covered in plywood. There was only one light on, and it shone from a window on the top floor.
“Angel,” Isabella whispered to the shadows.
It was fate that had brought her to Vancouver, it had to be. She was finally going to come face-to-face with the man who had killed her father.
Larry sat down with his third coffee. He’d snagged a private booth at the café and had his Han’er dictionary and the photocopied pages of Polo’s notebook spread out in front of him. He had scribbled notes and corrections on every available bit of white space.
He took a big slurp. “Ahhhh,” he said with a smile. “Caffeine and the great Kublai Khan, what a combo!”
Larry had made a bet with himself that Neil would screw up the date with Isabella by the time he’d finished his second cup. Miraculously, Neil hadn’t phoned yet. In fact, Larry had had enough time to finish translating the notebook.
The last chapter was weird and frightening. Marco Polo wrote it as a letter, or maybe, Larry thought, as a kind of written confession to God of his great sins. Polo had only hinted at his great disaster earlier in the notebook. Now he spelled it out.
Polo said that he had brought a great weapon onboard his ships—a weapon he didn’t know was a weapon at first.
Larry examined his notes.
“We had gathered spices from everywhere we weighed anchor. We hoped to sell them in Persia for a great price. Then a calm stopped us at sea for weeks. Food ran out. There was nothing left but the barrels. The crew, in desperation, locked us up—the Polos, the captain, and the princess. Then they broke into the stores. They mixed what they could to make a kind of soup. We heard the shouts of singing and joy from below the deck. Then the shouts grew quiet, one by one. We heard gasping and clawing, and then we heard nothing.”
The Polos and the princess spent an uneasy, sleepless night, wondering what had happened. In the morning Polo broke the lock on the door. He emerged to see scores of dead men, their faces blue and twisted into hideous smiles.
Neil had described the faces of the dead chefs to Larry. It sounded the same.
Larry figured that this explained why so many of the crew died on the trip and why the Polos and the princess survived. They’d been locked up during a starvation-induced mutiny.
“The princess, in her hunger, snuck a sip of mixture. We stopped her before she could consume more. She began to choke. We held her head so that her throat could not completely close and she lived. The princess appeared drugged and could not have done this for herself. After a few minutes she was able to take a deep breath. This seemed to please the seas, as a breeze immediately filled the sails of our ship.”
At first, Polo had looked on this discovery as an amazing opportunity. His unfortunate crew had concocted a horrible but effective weapon. Polo had scooped the remaining spices and gunpowder back into their barrels. He no longer planned to trade the cargo. Now he hoped to use it to help Venice rule the world.
Then disaster struck closer to home. The confession continued.
“My relatives broke into the gunpowder and spices last week. The mixture has now found its way into Venice. It has killed dozens. Many were my friends. They have all died with the same horrible smiles on their blue faces. The Doge and his officials believe it is a plague, brought to Venice by the remains of our crew. I will not correct them. There is no way to trace the poison once it has done its horrible work.”
Larry read the last paragraph of the notebook.
“I had hoped to use this weapon in war, but it is too dreadful. The only hope I have now, the only consolation, is that the deadly mixture has all been used up. There is no more, and the spices can be mixed again only by traveling my exact route home. I swear to God Almighty that I will never tell where I have truly been.”
Larry put down his coffee. “Wow,” he whispered to himself. That explained it. That was why Polo hadn’t included his real route home in the official version of his journey home that he wrote with Rustichello. Larry knew that he had found the key to the whole mystery . . . sort of.
The murder weapon was a mixture of spices—spices that Polo had assembled on his journey home. And the spices had to come from the exact places Polo had visited. But the spices didn’t kill on their own. Apparently, they had to be mixed with gunpowder.
And that was where Larry got stuck. He took another sip of his coffee and reread the passage again.
“Gunpowder . . .” Larry let the word play across his lips as he sat back to think about what he’d just read. Gunpowder was a weapon on its own, for sure, but Polo didn’t mention anyone getting shot.
Larry sipped again, and thought some more. Who the heck would ever eat gunpowder? The crew had been starving and desperate, but Polo’s relatives in Venice weren’t. Even still, gunpowder? It must taste awful.
Larry took a final long drink of his coffee, lifting his chin to get the last drop.
As he did, his eyes fell on the cans and packages that lined the wall behind the front counter of the café.
“What the—?!” he said, spitting the coffee over the top of his papers. His eyes locked onto a small green can with the word “GUNPOWDER” in red letters on the label.
Larry was up like a shot. He bumped and pushed his way to the front of the line, ignoring the angry shouts of the patrons behind him.
“What is that?” he shouted at the woman behind the counter, pointing at the can.
“What?” she said, glancing over her shoulder.
“That!” Larry pointed again.
“That?” The woman squinted at the shelf and seemed to focus on the green can.
“Yes, THAT.” Larry was practically yelling now.
“That’s tea,” she said with a shrug.
“Gunpowder is tea?” Larry said, incredulous.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s one of the oldest kinds. It’s from China. It’s rolled up in little balls that look like gunpowder. You add hot water and the tea leaves—poof—expand.”
“Tea!” Larry shouted. “Polo didn’t mean gunpowder gunpowder!” He reached across the counter and landed a huge kiss on the server’s cheek. “He meant gunpowder tea!”
“That’s great,” the woman said, backing away. “Now please, there are fifteen caffeine-junkies behind you who are going to kill you if you don’t move, like, right now.”
Gunpowder tea. That was the key. First the killer had to find all those specific spices. Then the killer had to mix them together with not just any tea, but gunpowder tea. Then add the cumin and voilá, an all-natural untraceable poison. That’s why Polo never mentioned tea when he and Rustichello wrote their account. It was part of what had killed his crew and friends, part of the life he wanted buried forever.
Larry grabbed his notes and sprinted down to the restaurant to tell Neil what he’d found. He arrived just as a police cruiser was pulling away from the curb.
“Nice place,” Larry said, chuckling. “I hope it wasn’t the chef they were arresting.”
Larry walked inside. Neil wasn’t at the table. Neither was Isabella. Jones the human boulder was gone too.
“Uh-oh,” Larry said. “This doesn’t look good.” Neil must have really messed up the date. He walked up to the front desk.
“Excuse me, gorgeous,” he said to the waitress, “but have you seen a kind of geeky redheaded guy or a really cute Mediterranean-looking young woman? Or maybe this huge guy, probably ate with his fingers, grunted?”
“They all left,” she said, frowning. “The young woman went to the bathroom and never came out. The big guy went looking for her about a minute later. Then he walked out the front door and turned right.”
Larry loved waitresses. They noticed everything.
“The redheaded kid took a phone call and ran out. Then he left in that police cruiser. He may have been in cuffs.”
“What?”
“Cuffs. You know, as in arrested?”
“Oh no,” Larry said. Why would the police arrest Neil? And if Neil had been arrested, his mom and dad were going to kill Larry.
“And they stiffed me on the bill, handsome,” the waitress said. “Since you obviously know them, you can cover it.” She handed Larry the bill for Neil, Isabella, and apparently Jones’s dinner as well.
“A hundred dollars!” Larry shrieked.
Now he was going to kill Neil. He paid the bill, then ran into to the alleyway to grab his motorcycle.
Larry stopped.
Jones was sitting on the seat, staring right at Larry.
Larry saw his eyes. He didn’t look happy.
“You and this machine aren’t going anywhere until you tell me where I can find Isabella.”
Neil had never been arrested before. He’d been in prisons, sniffing for contraband spices and smuggled food, but he’d never been behind bars for anything he’d done wrong.
Now he was stuck in the back of a clammy squad car with Nakamura, on his way to jail. Neil tried his best to convince Nakamura that he was innocent. Nakamura sat next to him and said, “I’d like to believe you, Neil, but there’s a lot of evidence, and the chief gave me no choice. She’s watching me like a hawk.”
“What evidence?” Neil asked.
“I’m not allowed to say,” Nakamura said.
“Hey, Nakamura,” Neil said, his recent vow to be kinder suddenly forgotten. “Remember how you got promoted to inspector in the first place? That was thanks to my nose and a little thing called intentional salmonella poisoning.”
“Yeah, at the Ritz Hotel. I remember. Insurance scam.”
“Well, a little payback here, okay?” Neil said.
Nakamura sighed a long sigh. He knew the evidence was substantial, but something was still nagging at him. It was all fitting together too easily, and there was still no clear motive. He owed Neil a chance to explain himself.
He whispered to Neil, “Pretend to be hurt, like you have a concussion.”
“What?”
“Flop your head onto my shoulder. Act like you’re deeply asleep.”
Neil did his best imitation of Larry at eight in the morning. “I don’t feel so good. My head hurts. I need a coffee,” Neil said, and then dropped his head onto Nakamura’s shoulder. Stromboli turned around and Nakamura just shrugged. “I guess he hit his head when you were putting the cuffs on,” he said.
“I was really careful this time. I didn’t hurt him a bit.”
“Well, maybe he hit his head when we put him inside. He’s got a huge lump on the top here.”
“Oh, sorry, kid,” Stromboli said.
Neil just moaned.
“Hey, can you turn on some music or something?” Nakamura asked. “The traffic is a mess and I want something to distract me from this kid’s breathing.”
“Sure thing, Inspector,” Stromboli said. He turned on a classic rock station.
“Thanks,” Nakamura said. Then he whispered low so only Neil could hear. “Saffron is more lucid now. She’ll recover, but she says it was you who jumped her.”
“What?” Neil said, a little too loud. Stromboli turned around quickly.
“Talking in his sleep.” Nakamura shrugged again, lifting Neil’s head in the air, then cringing a little as it came back down on his shoulder blade. “See, I can’t even wake the kid up when I do that. He’s out cold.”
On cue, Neil shouted sleepily again, “Ouch, my head.”
“All right, all right,” Nakamura whispered, “don’t overdo it. Anyway, Saffron says she heard a young guy’s voice and saw red hair underneath a ski mask. Neil, we’ve found your hair at two of the crime scenes. And your prints are on the Polo notes. Can you explain that?”
“No,” Neil said.
”Then there’s the handwriting.”
“What handwriting?”
“The chief found a note at Saffron’s, saying that there was a new superspice you’d found and that you’d give her a chance to sample and buy it if she would meet you alone in her kitchen. It was in your handwriting and it had traces of the spices all over it.”
“But there were no notes like that at the other crime scenes. I would have smelled them!”
“Unless you’re the killer and didn’t want them found.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Neil said.
“That’s circumstantial evidence,” Nakamura said. “And the worst is your locker at school.”
“What about it? I’m surprised you got past the cheese.”
“Well, we did. And we found a box inside with some cumin seeds and the spices for a chai. The lab is looking it over right now. Then there’s the clincher—your collection of the original recipes from each murdered chef tucked inside your home-economics binder.”
“Home-economics binder? I never even open that stupid thing,” Neil said as loudly as he safely could. The folder had lain in his locker, completely untouched, since that last day in the library.
The library! Neil sat up like a bolt. He’d had his folder with him that day! Berger had come to ask him for an assignment he’d missed. Neil had handed him the folder and turned back to reading Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Like a clumsy Italian salad dressing, everything was starting to congeal horribly in his brain.
Young voice.
Pathological hatred of Neil.
Anybody could get a red wig and a ski mask.
It made dreadful sense.
“Bergerrrrrrrrrr!!!” Neil yelled.
The driver turned around. “Hey, Inspector,” he said, “do you want me to put a gag on him as well?”
“No,” Nakamura said, “but get the chief on the horn, pronto.”