Murder at the Tokyo American Club by Robert J. Collins

Author:Robert J. Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0-8048-1673-5
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Chef Juan Carlos was miserable. "Too much," he told himself. "This is all too much."

The murder of the club general man ager and the discovery of his body in the swimming pool was obscene. "I will never swim in that pool again," vowed the chef, a man who had never swum in the pool at all.

The subsequent discovery that only the manager's head was in the pool and that the body itself belonged to a security guard from the Russian Embassy was the work of the devil. "Mon Dios," pleaded the chef, "forgive me for ever working here."

The finding of the security guard's head in a bucket next to the kitchen service area was for Juan Carlos an unspeakable horror. "From now on, I'm cleaning my own kitchen," the chef proclaimed to all who'd listen.

The general suspicion the police seemed to have was that because his knife and cleaver were somehow involved in the murder the chef was also involved. That was a grosspersonal insult. "I would poison my enemy with a tasty souffle," the chef thought, indignant.

And now to have strangers—worst of all policeman strangers—watching his every move in the kitchen was enough to tax the equanimity of the most callous of souls. Chef Juan Carlos was miserable.

Admittedly, preparing food for the Sunday buffet-style brunch was considerably easier than the more complex job of responding to random food orders from the menu. Most items could be prepared well in advance. Nevertheless, the Sunday staff in the kitchen was usually composed of rookies who required greater supervision, and to have strangers around and in the way was intolerable. Chef Juan Carlos thought momentarily of complaining to the manager, but then it was the manager's inconsiderate act of being murdered that brought about all the problems in the first place. "Why did I ever leave Barcelona," Juan Carlos lamented for at least the seventy-third time that weekend.

The sausage-making equipment was kept in a room that had originally been a corridor between the kitchen meat coolers and the baking ovens. The new refrigeration units were larger than the ones installed when the kitchen was built, and their bulk effectively closed off one end of the corridor. By contriving to have pantry shelves constructed at the other end of the corridor, Juan Carlos had fashioned a private workroom for himself, complete with a small gas range and refrigerator. It was there that he developed and tested new recipes, prepared special dishes, and made his sausage. The room was a haven away from the steam, heat, noise, and ordered chaos of the main food-service area.

Chef Juan Carlos told the policemen on duty in the kitchen that he had work to do and that he would be spending an hour or so in his private work area. "You don't follow me there for any damn reason," he said. One of the policemen did appear to express a genuine interest in how sausage was made, and after several minutes of agitated conversation, Juan Carlos relented. "You must help me then," he insisted.

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