Josh stood silently by the door as he absorbed my tirade. I found it satisfying that he looked crushed. Good! He deserved to feel hurt.
“I thought you loved me!” I screamed. Hot tears fell down my cheeks, and I didn’t bother to wipe them away. “I thought you loved me,” I repeated, my voice cracking.
Josh took a step forward, “Chloe, of course-”
“Stay away from me!” I ordered.
I heard a loud creak a few yards away and saw first a fist and then a head sticking out a first- floor window in the building next to us. A man’s voice demanded, “What the hell is going on out here now?”
I squinted in the dark. “Norris?” I could just make out the crabby neighbor I’d spoken with on the morning of the fire, the one who’d complained so much about Digger’s cooking. “Hi, Norris. It’s me, Chloe. From the other day.”
“That building is condemned, young lady. Can’t you read? I ought to call the police.”
“Sorry to bother you. We’re just…” I scowled at Josh and corrected myself. “I’m just leaving.”
“Hey!” Norris snarled. “What’s that?” he said, pointing to Digger’s messenger bag. “Are you stealing now? Looting? Jesus Christ, that damned chef is causing as much trouble now that he’s dead as he did when he was alive. All I want is peace and quiet. No noise, no smells, no women, and no robbers! Get outta here!” Norris pulled his head back into his apartment and slammed the window shut.
I started to walk quickly to my car but could hear Josh clamber down the front steps and follow me. I kept walking.
“Chloe? Chloe? Come on. Please talk to me,” he said as he caught up to me. “Slow down, would you?”
“You want to talk? Talk to yourself all you want. I’m going home.”
“Digger,” he said. “At least talk to me about Digger.”
I stopped but kept my back to Josh. Okay, I could do that. “How did you hear?” I asked sadly.
“Snacker called me. That’s why I’m here.”
“Yes, I figured it didn’t have anything to do with me.” I gripped Digger’s bag more tightly. “So what were you doing in his apartment?”
“This story about Digger causing the fire just isn’t credible. Digger was a pro, Chloe. He was careful, and he’d never just leave something on the stove and forget it.”
I faced Josh. “Is that what they’re saying? All I heard is that the fire was an accident.”
Josh nodded. “Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense.” He dropped his head. “Why didn’t you call me and tell me about Digger?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t my place to anymore. I knew someone would get in touch with you, and obviously someone did. It didn’t have to be me.”
“It would’ve been nice if it’d been you.”
“Yeah, Josh? A lot of things would’ve been nice,” I spat back.
He bit his lip and stared at me. “So what were you doing here? What’s in the bag?”
I continued walking. “I came to get Digger’s recipes.” I briefly explained about helping with Hank Boucher’s cookbook and saw Josh’s eyes widen at the mention of the celebrity chef’s name. “I thought it would be good to include some of Digger’s work, and his girlfriend, Ellie, seemed to agree. Well, at least she did at first… Anyhow, I need to get home and start sorting through this stuff. Kyle will be expecting to hear from me.” When we reached my car, I got in without glancing at Josh. Then I rolled down the window.
“Who’s Kyle?” he asked.
“Kyle is… It doesn’t matter. Do you, uh, do you need a ride?”
“No.” Josh shook his head. “I have Snacker’s car.”
“Good. Tell Snacker I said hello.”
“I’m staying with him in my old room until I find out what’s going on here. The couple I work for was really understanding. They told me to take as much time as I needed.”
“How nice for you,” I said sharply.
“I’m not going back to Hawaii until I find out how Digger died. I think he was murdered, Chloe.”
I gripped the steering wheel. I had no idea what to say. Something was off about Digger’s death, but I wasn’t jumping to the conclusion that he’d been deliberately killed. There was no reason to think so. Or was there?
“Listen, can we talk sometime?” he asked.
I started the engine. “I have to go, Josh.” I rolled up the window.
“Chloe, come on!” He had the audacity to sound annoyed.
I took off, leaving Josh standing alone on the curb.
I flew down the street, my heart pounding and my brain full of four-letter words. I was positively bullshit about the run-in with Josh. I’d been completely unprepared. With no defenses at the ready, I’d fallen victim to my visceral reaction to Josh and had totally made out with him in the heat of the moment. If I’d been braced for an encounter with him and had been thinking rationally, none of that hot-and-heavy action would have occurred. At least, I didn’t think so. It was some comfort that I’d yelled at him. If I’d been the reason he’d come back, maybe I’d have felt differently. I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t fault him for the reason he’d returned. His close friend had just died, and he wanted to know how and why. Still, it had been easier to have Josh in Hawaii than it was to have him in Boston, that was for sure.
I vacillated between anger, desire, and depression as I drove home. My brain and my heart felt ready to explode. Even when I had reached the safety of my apartment, I was still agitated. I rushed through the living room and into the bedroom, where I simultaneously turned on my laptop and lifted the phone from the cradle to scan caller ID. No new calls. At the computer, I unblocked Josh’s e-mail address from my message program and hit Send/ Receive four times in a row. No new messages. Good, right? I didn’t want Josh calling or e-mailing me, I told myself. That was why I’d changed my cell number and blocked his e-mail address in the first place. Of course, I’d kept my old landline number. There was that. Still, he was now in Boston, and how was I supposed to move on with him right here? I could practically feel his presence in the city, and my awareness that he was right nearby was going to make it almost impossible to block him out of my consciousness. Here I was, right now, poised by the phone and computer, waiting for some kind of contact from him! And if Josh did call or e-mail me, it would probably be to ask about Digger. On that topic, why was Josh so sure that Digger had been murdered? God, it was tragic enough that Digger had died in the fire. But murdered? I shook my head. Maybe Josh’s suspicion was his way of trying to deal with the loss of his friend.
No matter where Josh was or what was going on with him right now, I had to focus on the rest of my life. School, for instance, still required a lot of work, and I had plenty of cookbook activities to distract me. Plus, the money was pretty damn good. I decided to take a quick look through Digger’s bag in search of material for Hank Boucher’s book.
I opened the messenger bag and cringed. The fabric of the messenger bag reeked of smoke, and the contents smelled equally foul. They consisted of exactly what I expected from a chef: large notebooks filled with scribbled recipes, a few typed pages with notes scrawled on them, and two small notebooks with more recipes, as well as permanent markers, a kitchen thermometer, and some inventory pages. God, he was worse than Kyle! This kind of chaos must be a man thing. But as I’d hoped, the disorganized bag was filled with mouthwatering menus and recipes. Everything about the contents of the bag was so Digger that I teared up as I deciphered his writing. What’s more, I knew that Kyle would be as eager as I was to put some of Digger’s recipes in the cookbook. There was a stromboli recipe that looked delicious. Digger had written,
I was feeling good about honoring Digger’s memory when I came upon some of Josh’s recipes in Josh’s own handwriting. Running my hands over the familiar script, I felt terribly sad. The consolation I’d found in the thought of including Digger in the book suddenly vanished, and everything about the smoky bag felt heartbreaking, as if there were nothing left of Digger’s life except some smelly recipes. I felt more or less the same way about my relationship with Josh. Corny as it sounds, it was as if what we’d shared had also gone up in smoke, and all I had left was this ugly, stinky mess.
The phone rang, and my stomach dropped. I glared at the caller ID as I waited for the number to appear. It could be Josh, I told myself. Did I want it to be Josh or not? I wasn’t sure.
