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His breakfasts were actually worth getting up for. Even ones that came after a night of giggle-interrupted sleep.
“Madison was having none of it. So I bought white pepper. She thinks it’s salt and is happy.”
“You’re a good man, Tom Burrell.” I turned back to the cabinet. His spices sat on a plastic gizmo shaped like bleachers, so each row stood higher than the one in front, making them all visible... in contrast to the hodgepodge in the town house. I wondered if that drove Tom nuts. It drove me nuts sometimes and I wasn’t nearly as neat as he was.
I spotted the white pepper, snagged it, and handed it to him over his shoulder, then reached for the cabinet door to close it.
I should get one of these bleacher things or a lazy Susan like Keefe had.
The memory of his lazy Susan of spices turning — well, lazily — flashed into my mental vision. The names of the spices on the tins and bottles going past slowly, then stopping.
“Nutmeg,” I said aloud.
“You’ve never said you like nutmeg on eggs,” Tom said from a distance. “Don’t think it will work for Madison, different color, still too bug-like. Happy to try it another time.”
“No. Not on eggs. Though according to Diana, you can use it in practically anything.”
He turned, spatula in hand. “Like what?”
“Chili and tacos — that’s what really got me. But she also said potatoes, meat dishes, and...” I scoured my memory. “Sauces. Like creamy ones for pasta.”
“Interesting.”
“Okay, Chef Tom, but that wasn’t the point. I was thinking nutmeg being in Keefe’s kitchen cabinet.”
“It’s not salt and pepper, but it’s not so exotic I can’t imagine him having it. Sort of thing you buy and keep forever. Ulla could have bought it, for that matter.”
“He had four tins of nutmeg. I could see an ordinary person having two — you’re not sure you have it for a specific recipe so you grab it to avoid another trip to the supermarket. But he had four.”
“Four nutmegs?” Tom repeated.
“And at least two were new.” I squinted into my memory. “Or newish.”
He turned back to the eggs. “I take it we’re going to Keefe’s place after breakfast.”
I’d come back to the present enough to hear the faint grin in his voice, envision the deepening of the lines around his eyes.
“Darn right we are. Or I am—”
“Not alone. Not where somebody was murdered.”
We’d talk about that later. “—right after we eat those delicious eggs and all the pounds of bacon you made and deliver the girls to Madison’s parents.”
****
Two of the containers from Keefe’s kitchen cabinet held only nutmeg. Both of the newer ones. That was either smart of him — the new tins were certainly the ones that seemed more likely hiding places to me and the ones I checked first — or he had nothing hidden here.
Tom picked up one of the older, worn tins. “Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
He held the tin up to the light from the window. “Looks like...”
He poked at the tin.
“Looks like what?” He was driving me nuts.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he took out his pocket knife, deliberately and delicately pressed the tip along the raised rim all around the bottom of the tin.
