Her voice and footsteps reverberated in the empty kitchen. The sound emphasized the space’s barrenness, adding to the bleak atmosphere. Without the bustle of chefs chopping vibrant ingredients and lighting things on fire, the restaurant seemed cold and clinical. The stainless-steel surfaces resembled morgue tables. The containers for knives morphed into carts for medical instruments.

“Philip!” Imani shouted. “Philip.”

A door opened. Philip emerged from a small office on the side of the kitchen. He wore his chef’s jacket. Imani had always found the uniform attractive in the way that military and police dress were sexy. They implied a certain discipline and drive, a willingness to reach an objective regardless of the obstacles. Is that why Philip hadn’t told her about the restaurant’s struggles? Had he thought securing financing his task to complete no matter what?

“Imani?” Philip’s voice rose at the end, asking why she’d come without verbalizing the question.

“I spoke to Tonya,” Imani said. “She insists that she never had an affair with Nate.”

Philip scratched at his jaw. Blond stubble lined the edges of it. In the overhead light, the bristle resembled needles on a prickly pear, the ones that would dig under the skin, causing days of swelling and itching.

“You don’t believe her.” His tone told more than asked.

“I don’t know what to believe.”

Philip drew closer. Imani spotted a swath of red at the hip of his jacket. Stains were a sign of a bad day in the kitchen. On a good one, all the food and by-products remained confined to cookware. Stains meant spills, mistakes, and lost revenue.

“Tonya came here, and I spoke to her. I told her that her connection to Nate, and the fact that she hadn’t mentioned anything, rubbed us the wrong way. I—”

A metallic banging cut him off. Philip’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling and the unseen source of the noise. He raised his voice to be heard over the clatter. “I told her that she needed to find someplace else to live.”

Imani patted the air, encouraging Philip to lower his voice. “Isn’t she here now?”

The racket continued, like hail hitting a metal gutter or the sound of pots and pans striking a fire escape. Imani had heard plenty of the latter in the pandemic’s early days when New Yorkers had made a nightly ruckus to show appreciation for frontline health care workers.

“No.” Philip’s volume ticked up another notch. “I assumed she’d gone back to the house to get her daughter and leave.” He put his hands on his hips and scowled at the overhead tiles, admonishing whatever lay behind them to be quiet. “Damn pipes. There must be a leak somewhere—or rats got into it.”

The thought of vermin scurrying above made Imani shudder. “You need an exterminator.”