From the Typewriter of Dorian Robert-Houdin
The Culinary Alchemist’s Toolbox
Cooking is a form of nurturing, and it shows others that you care for them. Yet cooking is not all of life. Do not neglect the people who need you.
As soon as Zoe called, Dorian set aside his soon-to-be mega-bestselling cookbook. It had taken up so much of his energy lately that he was not 100 percent devoted to the crimes afoot. Crimes that were now being solved without him! Culinary Alchemy: The Art of Transforming Simple Ingredients into a Feast of the Senses, was a foul temptress indeed.
Willow Matsumoto had been arrested for murder, yet Zoe did not believe her to be guilty. Detective Vega found evidence that Willow had lied about her whereabouts the night of the murder. The detective believed Willow to have been out the night of Betty Kubiak’s murder, contradicting Willow’s earlier statement in which she said she was at home sleeping. But now she was caught in a lie. A lie Dorian had learned about earlier, but he had not realized its significance. Members of the red-caped secret society had been observed the night of the murder. Willow had explained to Zoe that she had gone home after that meeting and had not joined her friends on their midnight waterfront stroll. The question was whether Willow was lying. Was she indeed at home asleep when her husband was being robbed by Betty Kubiak, or could she have been an accomplice to the dead thief?
The truth would be determined soon enough, but did they have time? Max and Perenelle were missing.
The familiar rumble of Zoe’s old truck’s engine sounded. Bon. She was home.
“Dorian?” Zoe’s voice called out less than a minute later. “It’s just me.”
He scampered down the stairs and met her in the living room.
“The detectives did not let you sit in on Willow’s interrogation?” he asked.
“I didn’t want to,” Zoe said. Her expression was bleak. “They think the best way to find Max and Perenelle is to get Willow to confess.”
“Yet you do not believe she is guilty.”
“I don’t know… I can almost see the truth, but not quite.” Zoe collapsed onto her beloved green sofa, leaning her head against the cushions.
“You must separate your worry from the truths that we know. Max mentioned the cabinet. This suggests the painting. Could it mean anything else?”
Zoe shook her head. “There were no damaged cabinets in his shop. He wasn’t going to the hardware store or a furniture store. Neither would make him disappear.”
Dorian clasped his hands behind his back and paced back and forth. “Why would The Apothecary’s Cabinet be of interest to Max, but not Brother and Sister? Would he not care more about getting your painting back?”
Zoe’s body jolted upright, as if she were a marionette being jerked awake by the strings of a puppet master.
“How are the paintings different.” She spoke the words not as a question, but as if she knew the answer.
“What have you realized?”
“Oberon Salazar. He was the one who found his wife’s body. He’s the one who would have seen that something was wrong with the body—and what was unexpectedly there in the lab.”
“What was there?” Dorian asked in rapt attention.
“The Apothecary’s Cabinet painting. That was the last ingredient in her recipe. That’s where the poisoned gas came from—pure alchemy being corrupted by backward alchemy.”
“Mon dieu.” Zoe had solved the murder! Dorian was pleased if she was indeed correct. Yet he could not but feel slightly rebuked. It was on his watch that Zoe’s beloved painting had been stolen. He had hoped to solve the crime, or at least play a pivotal role in helping Zoe. Perhaps his murder board had helped her put the pieces together, but he still felt he had let her down.
“Oberon loved April so much that his suspicions wouldn’t have been waved away by the convenient answer,” Zoe said. “And he’s the one who would have seen that April used part of the painting to complete the recipe. He might not know the term ‘backward alchemy,’ but he wasn’t wrong when he called it a curse. He wanted revenge.”
Dorian did not understand how stealing Zoe’s painting would bring about revenge. But Zoe now held her mobile phone to her ear as she made a telephone call, so he could not ask her to elaborate.
With deliberate, anxious steps, she walked the length of the living room while she telephoned two different detectives. From what he could hear, both attempts were in vain. She left a voicemail message for Detective Vega, and then for Agent Mitchell. This was wise of her—or so he thought, until he heard the words she spoke as she reached the end of her message to Agent Mitchell.
“But you cannot go in search of the degenerate killer yourself!” Dorian cried after she hung up.
“They know where I’m going,” the foolish alchemist said. “I can’t wait around for Oberon to kill Max and Perenelle like he did Betty.”
Dorian watched helplessly as she left.
This would not do. He must save Zoe from herself. As the foolish alchemist backed out of the driveway, he called for backup. Which, in Dorian’s case, meant three 16-year-old students and a 600-year-old absentminded alchemist.