The bus trundled off down the street, and Phoenix looked around at Foster Park's greenery. They were back where they had started.
"So," Maya wondered, peering around him, "Back to the crime scene?"
Police-blue figures showed through the trees: the investigation carried on. Edgeworth probably had the entire force on the Beasley case, and there wasn't even an encouraging glimpse of Gumshoe's green coat.
"I don't think we'd be welcome at the crime scene today, either," Phoenix muttered. He looked across the park's grassy field to where the karaoke stage no longer sat. "And none of the wedding guests would have seen anything ..." Nothing more helpful than Vanderspiegle had seen, anyway.
Maya put a thoughtful finger to her cheek. "Could there be other witnesses? Oh, or maybe someone with music sense! They'd notice!" She brightened to megawatt levels. "Stewart helped Ms. Beasley with music power! That'd draw attention like a big neon sign, if there was anyone with music sense nearby!"
It didn't sound very conducive to being a secret Agent, but Foxx did say it happened sometimes. Phoenix rubbed his neck, and was glad to openly be a lawyer.
"All right, then ... Where to?"
Maya surveyed the streets, focused like she was deciding what to pile onto her plate first at a buffet.
"Hmm. Well, it'd work better if they could see, and if there wasn't a bunch of stuff in the way, and I think Missy said something about coordinating … Ohh, look, Nick! An open-air café, like in the movies!"
Five seconds without thinking about food: that had to be a new record. The little restaurant Maya was looking at was a stylish-looking place, though - wrought iron tables and chairs, shade umbrellas with breeze-fluttering edges, and an ornately scripted sign that stirred familiar in Phoenix's memory. He opened his briefcase a crack and dug inside, tactfully ignoring that Maya was dragging him by the elbow.
"Somebody at one of the tables might have witnessed what happened! And is that bread I smell? It is! Maybe they make their own big long sticks of French bread-"
Yes, Phoenix had definitely seen that tree-shaped logo before. He produced the battered Orchard flyer from the depths of his files, and wondered if Larry had a new job-of-the-moment yet.
"-Just like a real Paris cafe, and maybe people drink fancy coffee from tiny little cups and have those fluffy crescent-shaped biscuit things, I love those! What are they called?"
Phoenix managed to restrain Maya from walking into the street, long enough to check for oncoming traffic. The bistro was admittedly close enough to see the murder scene from. He didn't quite grasp the details of music sense yet but the Orchard's far edge - and its alleyway, maybe that alley Agents kept mentioning - looked about six hundred feet away. This could be a lead.
Bells jangled friendly as Maya shoved open the door, looking all around. The Orchard wasn't quite as stylish on the inside, not with the layer of food-smeared plates and napkins on all its elegant furniture. Broad windows let in the heavy afternoon sun, and a sliver of the park's green scenery was visible; maybe someone sitting outside could see Foster Park better.
"Oh, wow, Nick," Maya gasped. "Just smell that fresh-baked goodness!" She twirled gleeful, robes flaring around her, long hair swinging dark.
The yeast-warm scent tugged at his stomach, too - this place would be doom for his bank account, Phoenix was sure of it.
"But where is everyone? Fancy places like this usually have lots of swanky people in them." Maya scampered to the wooden counter, leaning over it and stretching onto tiptoes to see past a row of coffee machines. "Anyone here?"
Phoenix looked up from a huge potted plant - a withering specimen that could use some of Pearl's TLC - and he hissed, "Maya, that's the kitchen! We shouldn't ...!?"
She was already through the waist-high swinging door, grinning impishly at him. "I won't eat anything, Nick! Not until you pay for it!"
How comforting.
"I just want to have a look at-" and she broke off into a gasp of delight. "Is that an oven? It's huge!"
She disappeared around the corner. Against every sensibility in his body, Phoenix followed.
Silver appliances loomed everywhere in the kitchen, and the black tops of stoves and grills lined one wall. Chaos reigned here too, in cluttered piles of bowls and long splatters of bright-coloured sauces. Not quite what Phoenix had expected a professional kitchen to look like, but all he had to go by was a few cooking shows he watched that time he had the flu.
"You could make an awful lot of burgers in here," Maya said, inspecting the wide oven perched at her eye level.
"Hamburgers aren't baked, they're grilled." He at least knew that much.
"Oh." Gingerly taking the door handle, Maya pulled the oven open enough to peek inside - heat rolled out in shimmering waves. "Well, you could make a lot of ... What else could go in here? Pizza? I don't know, we just stewed everything in crock pots back in Kurain."
Crock pots the size of a cement mixer, probably, if they had Maya to feed. Phoenix rubbed at a smudge of dark grease on his suit - he'd have to be more careful about brushing past surfaces - and muttered, "Just don't touch anything, all right? We don't-"
"Shhh," she hissed, scurrying past Phoenix, "I hear something!"
He followed Maya's gaze to the open door at the far end of the kitchen - yes, there were voices drifting in from there.
"-can't even keep the crème anglaise full," one snapped, female-sharp and growling. "Fish sticks! Fine, I'll get on another batch."
Low, murmuring reply.
"Half a batch, then, and so apple-picking help me if that brings the food cost up another-"
An instant's warning as the voice got louder - Phoenix could only watch someone fire-coloured storm around the corner and crash into a surprised-yelping Maya.
"Kohlrabi freakin' slaw salad with hoisin-sauced duck!"
Who knew food could sound so much like profanity?
"Broil it au gratin, geez," the cook snarled, convulsively brushing at her red-trimmed chef's whites. She glared at Phoenix and Maya. "Who are you people, and what the hell are you doing in my kitchen?!"
"Wha-" Maya spluttered, "I'm sorry! We didn't, uhh ... You tell her, Nick!"
Why him?! Phoenix scrambled for words under the cook's glare - if only Foxx would speak up and guide him.
"We're, err, lawyers and-"
"Suits?!" the cook screeched, bristling harder. "Oh, yeah, you think you can just walk in anywhere you please like you own the whole rice-fluffin' place, don'tcha, Mr. Thirty-Six Dollars An Hour Plus Benefrickin'fits?! Why, I oughta-"
Phoenix's mind raced, latching onto the papers and rabble he carried. Evidence. Maybe if he showed her something ...
"Uhh, what I mean is," and he pulled the sloppy-folded Orchard flyer from his pocket, "We heard about your restaurant." Phoenix held it out, like a roast trimming offered to a frothing wildcat. "A-and we just, uhh, wanted to see what it was like."
She snatched the sheet and glared at it, green eyes tracking over the lacy text and widening slightly.
"...Huh." She glared at Phoenix - milder than before - and gave the paper back. "Nice that somebody has one of these. I dunno what I'm paying that meathead flyer boy for."
"We're really sorry," Maya tried, a hand held meek to her mouth. "It just smelled so good in here!"
The cook straightened, eyeing Maya. Flattery, it seemed, soothed the savage beast.
"It better smell good, after all the orders we fired today." She suddenly held out a square hand to Phoenix. "Cherry LaFlamme. Owner and head chef. You are?"
"Phoenix Wright, and my assistant Maya Fey." He winced - Cherry had a very commanding grip. "We're investigating a case, would it be all right if we-"
"Just stay outta the way," Cherry snapped, waving her free hand. "And don't touch anything, last thing I need is somebody frittering around in here."
With a nod to Maya - what, Cherry didn't break other women's knuckles? - she stalked off, gathering metal bowls and hissing to herself. Maya crept closer to Phoenix's side.
"Wow, I thought she was going to cook us for dinner," she murmured.
He wouldn't put it past Cherry. But if she oversaw this restaurant and might have witnessed something... Watching the cook flick her ragged red braids and pour cream into a bowl, Phoenix scratched together a handful of courage and approached.
"Ms. LaFlamme-"
"Don't call me Ms." She whisked the cream mixture harder, like it was to blame. "Sounds old."
Tough to say how old she actually was, with all those glower lines.
"Sorry," Phoenix said, and tried, "Uhh, Cherry, did you see anything unusual yester-"
"Look, I don't have time to cake-flippin' chat right now," Cherry spat. She shot a baleful look at him. "So poke around somewhere else, will ya?"
She was definitely not in the mood to cooperate - why did Phoenix always get the difficult ones? Stifling most of a sigh, he motioned to Maya and they turned away.
"If you're that bored," Cherry added, "Why don'tcha bug my apprentice. Make sure he's not running around like a headless chicken. That'd be great."
Maybe the apprentice would be more helpful, or at least less likely to serve the two of them up with gravy. Phoenix nodded, and headed for the back of the kitchen.
Cherry had appeared out of what seemed like a storage nook. Shelves full of empty plastic tubs and bottles lined the walls, above rows of huge cooking pots. Nothing interesting, but Maya sauntered along the row, tapping the pots like they were supposed to be musical instruments. Maya would be Maya. Phoenix looked around the room and spotted a small window on the outside wall, maybe looking out on the alleyway but the glass was too hopelessly clouded to tell. Just by the look of the grubby wood frame and rust-dark hinges, Phoenix suspected he couldn't open it if he wanted to.
With a few more dull clanking noises and a disappointed pout, Maya left the pots. "Nothing here. Hey, let's go find that apprentice, Nick."
He couldn't argue with that - letting Maya touch Cherry's equipment was asking for trouble, anyway. The nook led to a stairwell with plaster walls aged yellow, and they took the rubber-edged stairs down.
The tempting smell of baked goods only intensified as they reached the bottom. Noting doors along the way - including a gleaming silver door with a weird handle, which had to be a huge refrigerator - Phoenix followed Maya until another kitchen opened up ahead. There were more massive ovens and a lanky, white-clad cook minding them.
"Excuse me," Maya chirped.
The cook looked up, and startled like he had hit his head on the ceiling.
"Oh! I-I'm sorry, the temperature j-just ..." He smiled sheepishly, and adjusted his white cap.
"Sorry to interrupt," Phoenix asked, "But are you Cherry's apprentice?"
"What are you making?" Maya added, in a tone normally saved for proposing marriage.
Shuffling closer, the cook clasped his hands in front of his oily-smeared apron. "Baguettes, uhh, j-just a few loaves. And yes, I'm Chef LaFlamme's apprentice, my name's Barley Dempster. You can call me Barley. O-Or Dempster." His smile grew even more sheepish. "I couldn't help overhearing you running into Chef LaFlamme, I-I didn't mean to be rude."
Barley wasn't the one who needed to worry about manners.
"I'm Phoenix Wright, this is my assistant Maya Fey. We're investigating a murder case, could we ask you a few questions?"
"Murder?! O-oh dear ..." Barley wiped his hands on the apron, and fidgeted some more with his cap, poking mousey hair back under it. "If I can help you, o-of course! I-I just can't forget to watch these baguettes, Chef LaFlamme, she-" A sudden intensity came to Barley's gaze. "Please, don't think poorly of her. She's, w-well. It's been a bad day. And yesterday. Y-Yesterday was a bad day, too."
Yesterday was the day of the murder. Phoenix lifted a careful hand and prodded his communicator's round nub.
"Hmm?" came Foxx's murmur. "I'm here, Phoenix."
It never hurt to make sure.
Maya yanked her stare away from some racks of cooling pastries. "Is this place really busy?"
"Um." He glanced away, and shifted. "It's ... well, it comes and goes. A bunch of tourists have been coming by lately, w-we're not used to rushes like that. And then LaFlamme worries when it's slow ..."
From the sound of things, the Orchard was either empty or packed at any given time - no happy medium.
"She does everything herself," Barley went on. "I just do the baking a-and some of the prep. A-and I wash dishes. LaFlamme takes care of the food, the inventory, bookkeeping, serving the tables. I-it's cheaper than hiring anyone. I-I haven't seen her outside the bistro in ... in, ah, goodness. Years." He frowned to himself.
"I guess anyone would be stressed out if they worked that hard," Maya murmured.
"It's just what a restaurant does. I-It's always like that for the owner, it just hasn't been Chef LaFlamme's week. O-Or her month, actually."
Did Barley honestly mean that to be reassuring?
"S-she wasn't always- Cherry w-wasn't like this before. I-I guess it hasn't been her year, either ..."
Phoenix didn't need a magatama to sense the secrets here, in the way Barley wouldn't meet their eyes anymore.
"Can I ask how you know her?" he tried.
A pause stretched out while Barley contemplated the linoleum. He turned to the ovens, peered inside each one with a creak and thump, and turned back to fidget miserably with his cap.
"You met in the grocery store, right?" Maya tried, with a knowing smile. "Your eyes met over a vegetable display, and you both knew you were destined to make really good food!"
Did that happen anywhere other than romance movies? Phoenix managed not to roll his eyes - because Barley had brightened faintly at the comment.
"Not quite ... I met her in culinary school. I-it was hard, I'm not much good with a knife. I sat in on an advanced pastry arts class, and she was just there to brush up. Cherry's amazing, her sauces are absolutely world-class. I was watching her put the finishing raspberry coulis on a plate, completely concentrating like that food was the most important thing in the world, and that's when I knew-"
Looking up from fiddling with his apron strings, Barley flushed.
"Uhh, a-anyway, I convinced her to take me on, a-as her apprentice. I dropped out of culinary school, and I've been learning from her ever since." His sheepish smile crept back. "I-I'm better off as a baker than a cook."
"Smells like it," Maya said. She pointed eagerly at a tray full of pastries. "Are those the flaky crescent-biscuit things? What are they called?"
Barley inflated with pride. "They're called croissants. We brown the butter for better flavour! A-and the other ones are passionfruit mille-feuille. You can try them, if you'd like, they're Cher-uhh, Chef LaFlamme's recipes. P-please tell me if they're all right."
And Phoenix was about to warn him that Maya could make a plague of locusts look like charming house guests, when Barley tensed, eyes going wide.
"Oh dear, oh heavens," he gasped, scurrying past them and away. "Should have beaten those egg whites longer, oh dear-"
If Phoenix listened closely, he could make out words in Cherry's far-off shrieking: -sonuvafishmonger, why do I even bother!? Dempster! I said get UP here!
Wandering back to Phoenix's side, a second croissant in hand, Maya wondered through a mouthful, "He seems nice. Kind of tense, though."
She could say that again.
"Foxx? Do you have any records on these two?"
"We know them very well," came her voice in his ear. "The Orchard bistro opened three years ago and it's been distracting patrolling Agents ever since."
"Really?" Maybe that alleyway had Agents in it all the time, not just when police were there to catch them.
Idle keystrokes as Foxx replied, "Yes, Ms. LaFlamme has never needed direct assistance, she just has extreme variations in her natural rhythm - and that's a guaranteed way to catch a passing Agent's attention. Mr. Dempster received Agent support eight months ago, while preparing a large food order by himself. Would you like the specs on that?"
Specs, from Foxx, would probably be technological gibberish to Phoenix. His brows twisted.
"Uhh, I don't think we'll need those, thanks."
"Food service professionals," Foxx went on, "Have an overall high stress level, which can make field evaluation difficult. There are criteria for whether a target is handling a problem well on their own, but Ms. LaFlamme is … pushing those boundaries."
That was a polite way to put it.
"Your thoughts, Phoenix?"
"I ..." He wondered if Cherry had her rabies shots. "We need to find out what Cherry saw at the time of the murder, but she won't talk to us. Barley says she serves the tables ..."
Maya swallowed more pastry. "She was close enough to sense Stewart's music, maybe?"
"LaFlamme doesn't have innate music sense, to my knowledge," Foxx said. An unsure frown lined her voice; her keys clicked rapid. "Let me confirm that with other Agents. I know exactly who to ask."
Realization spreading over her face, Maya wondered, "If it hasn't been her day, her week, her month or even her year ... Do you think she killed Ms. Beasley, Nick?" Her horror didn't stop her from licking the butter off her fingers.
He hadn't thought about it such blunt terms - did he think Cherry LaFlamme could wield a weapon and kill someone? Maybe over a blow to her chef's pride, maybe furious and red-blinded with the stress of her work? What exactly had the murder weapon been, anyway?
"I don't know ... Let's see what we can find here. Maybe Barley can- Maya, will you stop eating those?"
"He asked me to try them," Maya said, and bit into another golden-brown victim, "To see if they're all right. I have to try enough to make an informed decision!"
Taste-testing didn't usually involve eating anyone out of business, to Phoenix's knowledge. He sighed.
"Let's at least-"
Phoenix turned, and managed to step back as Barley scurried by - apron flapping, wide-eyed, muttering a steady litany of oh dear.
"Is something wrong?" Maya was so filled with concern that she gobbled the last of her croissant.
Looking away from the open oven door with a start - maybe he hadn't even noticed the two of them standing there - Barley made a panic-twisted attempt at a smile.
"I-I-It's, goodness, I-I'm sorry, the soufflés f-fell- I-I didn't open that oven, I promise, it m-must have- the egg whites, I-I'm sorry, they would have turn out if I h-h- if I had done it r-right, dear heavens, oh dear, Chef LaFlamme has taught m-me better-"
Souffés hadn't turned out ... because an oven had been opened? Phoenix met Maya's gaze: she knew, and her hand rose slow to her mouth.
"I didn't think looking would hurt anything," she whispered, watching Barley bustle for a moment. She turned tear-shining eyes back to Phoenix.
"I didn't know, either," he said. Fine cuisine could be so complicated sometimes. Rubbing his neck, he tried, "Barley-"
"Chile syrup!" Barley shoved an oven door closed, turning to his countertop to look for something that, to his wide-eyed horror, wasn't there. "Oh dear, the chile syrup! I-I'm sorry, LaFlamme just, oh g-goodness I-I still h-haven't- b-but where could they be?!"
"Uhh ..." No wonder Agents were drawn to this bistro - Phoenix would have tried a little jig if he thought it would help. "Chile syrup...?"
Barley dug through the recipe cards and spoons littering his workspace. "J-Just a l-little package of- of- oh dear, I-I could pay for new ones- They're chile peppers, j-just a little p-package of dried peppers for the tarts, they're the- oh heavens, if we're out of her signature- B-but the s-shipping time! Ohh, I can't do that, have to- I-I'd better whip more egg whites, those soufflés-"
And then he bolted toward the storage corridors, and doors began to slam.
"Nick," Maya murmured. She gave Phoenix the puppy eyes once more, "Can we help him? If it's my fault he got in trouble for those soufflé things ..."
If they wanted any information, Phoenix and Maya would need to soothe a pair of the most high-strung people on the planet. Did the universe think this sort of thing was funny?
Running a hand over his hair spikes, Phoenix sighed. "I guess so. But where do we start?"
For a moment - tipping her head to consider - Maya looked a lot like her late sister. "He said the chile peppers he needs are in a little package ... Maybe he dropped it somewhere?"
And that meant the very important chile peppers could be anywhere.
"I hope he didn't drop them into a big pot of anything," Maya wondered. "Unless it was a dish that's supposed to be spicy. Like chili dogs! No, those aren't very fancy. I can't think of anything that's spicy and fancy, can you?"
It was going to be a very long day.