Free The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier by J. Michael Orenduff

the door. It was locked. I tried my front door key in the lock. It didn’t fit.
    I went back to the hotel to think. My first thought was that Scruggs was up to no good. My second though was not actually a thought. It was a feeling – guilt at suspecting a black man of ill-doing.
    So I asked myself if I would have formed the same conclusion had the person leaving Molinero’s office been Arliss Mansfield. I answered myself that I would. People in someone else’s office at ten o’clock in a dark and locked building arouse suspicion no matter what the color of their skin.
    But on second thought, Scruggs might have a better reason for being there than Arliss. Maybe M’Lanta had janitorial duties in addition to his scullery work and had just finished cleaning the office. A chef is less likely to have cleaning duties than a pot scrubber, so it would have been more suspicious to see Arliss in the office.
    My machinations on racial profiling weren’t helping me answer the one practical question confronting me – what, if anything, should I do?

20

    The completion of the test firing provided an excuse to visit Molinero’s office.
    I found him there Wednesday morning and knocked on his door. It had a window through which I saw him as he stood up. I pretended to take his standing as permission to enter and turned the knob hard enough that it clicked.
    It was locked. Molinero walked to the door, placed a key in the slot, and unlocked the door.
    “Sorry, I didn’t realize your door was locked. Maybe I should come back later.”
    “No problem,” he said. “I keep the office locked at all times because the personnel files are in here.”
    “And the safe,” I noted. It was a big one, built into the wall.
    He laughed. “Yes, for keeping the hordes of cash we’ll rake in starting on Monday. I see you have the charger.”
    “Actually, it’s only a test piece.” I handed it to him. “This is the background glaze I propose.” I handed him a piece of paper. “This is a sketch of an edelweiss that would be in bas relief.”
    He looked at the clay and the paper. “Excellent.”
    “You don’t want to study it for a while or talk it over with anyone?”
    “No. I like the drawing. I like the glaze.’’
    I was surprised at how easily he gave his consent for the design.
    I took a deep breath. I hate delivering bad news. “I can probably have four real chargers ready by Monday, so you’ll have a set for one table. But it will be at least a week and maybe even two before we’ll have the full one hundred.”
    “Even with the commercial place doing them?”
    “They aren’t the problem. They can glaze and fire a hundred plates in two or three days. The bottleneck is me. It will take me a long time to form the plates.”
    “Can’t that place – clay feet? – form them?”
    “Yes, but that would add to the cost. And I kind of wanted to do them myself to make sure they’re right.”
    “I’m sure they can follow your prototype. And don’t worry about the cost. We need everything to be here as soon as possible.”
    I was grateful he wasn’t upset about the delay or the additional money. I felt guilty about the negative opinion I had formed of him.
    “Anything else?” he asked.
    “No. I’ll start work right now on the prototype. I’ll be sure to finish in time for the place to be cleaned up before we open.”
    “Fine,” he said.
    I looked around the office for affect and asked the question I had been waiting to ask. “How do you keep your workplace so clean and neat?”
    “By doing it myself and never letting anyone else touch anything. I’m a neat freak.”

21

    Breakfast was Erdäpfellaibchen. I skipped it because I needed to work on the plate and because I didn’t like the way it sounded when it was announced.
    I must have felt some sort of inspiration because I finished the plate in just over an hour. As I set it aside to dry, I thought about all the people on Molinero’s list I had not consulted about