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“Or her.”

“What?” Faith asked.

“Or her. Him or her. You said we need to find him before he has a chance to strike again, but it could be a her.”

She stared at him incredulously. “You really want to talk about that right now?”

“Details matter,” he said, a little impishly. Then, less impishly, “Historically, poisoning has been favored by women. I’m only saying we should think about it.”

“Well, we’ve caught several male killers who have used poison.”

“I’m not trying to argue with you,” he said. “I was just saying we shouldn’t limit ourselves yet. We need to consider all possible options.”

“Thank you for that, Michael. I’m so glad I have your extra experience to rely on.”

He frowned at her. “Did you get pissy all of a sudden?”

She sighed. "I'm sorry. I Just… the whole West thing has me thrown off still, I think. I can already tell this is going to be one of those cases where we don't learn anything useful for a while, and we have to watch more people die while we wait. That's most of our cases, and normally I can handle that, but I can hear Benjamin Trainor's smug voice talking about how this poisoner reminds him of Ottis Toole and John Wayne Gacy and—"

"And you're not going to dwell on them because they don't know your job, you do." She frowned at him, and he said, "Sorry, I'm not going to coddle you right now. Emotions suck. We all have them. Yours suck, especially right now, but that's the nature of the beast. We have a job to do and getting pessimistic about it less than two hours in isn't going to help us."

She took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Do better.”

“Screw you!”

“There you go. Be angry with me. That brings out your competitive streak and makes you work even harder.”

She rolled her eyes and turned the subject back to the case. “Okay, so who are we going to see right now?”

“Chef Antonio Russo. The police interviewed him already and determined he wasn’t a suspect, but they still haven’t confirmed what killed Crestwood or if it got into her through the food.”

She frowned. “They still don’t know?”

He shook his head. "Sodium channel blocker, but it doesn't look like anything they've seen before. I don't quite follow the science-ese, but the molecules are constructed differently. They're thinking synthetic, but they haven't found a match among known chemists, pharmaceutical companies or research labs yet. That could take months, maybe even years, if they have to go global."

“So we can write off finding a smoking gun.”

“More like we have a smoking gun, but we’re cavemen who’ve never seen an axe before, let alone a gun. We know this fire stick killed two of our tribes people, but we don’t know how.”

“I love that your analogy makes us stupid.”

“Not stupid. Uneducated.”

“Yeah, that’s not better.”

“Sure it is. Because we're inquisitive, we won't stop asking questions until we find answers."

“Whatever works for you.”

They pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. Cucina Toscana had its own plot in Queen Village. The neighborhood was slightly less ritzy than Rittenhouse Square but far trendier. Ironically, Sushi Amaterasu was the trendier restaurant while Cucina Toscana was as old-school as they came. The staff all wore white shirts with black bowties and the tables were all set with white cloths, candles and wine glasses. The music was soft classical, and the overall ambience was one of traditional upper-class gentility.

Then there was the kitchen. Faith had gone through a phase where she watched most of the reality cooking shows on tv, but she had always dismissed the rowdy atmosphere portrayed in those shows as made for tv and not reflective of real life.

She couldn’t speak for all restaurants, but the kitchen at Cucina Toscana looked to be lifted straight out of a Cooking Channel show. Cooks in white frocks rushed around in what looked to Faith to be an utterly disorderly fashion, shouting at each other in Italian and English, mostly in swear words and colorfully raunchy epithets. She heard tinkling and crashing and more swearing as pots and spoons and plates and even a few knives sailed through the air toward the sinks and across counters.

There had to be some method to their madness because the counters rapidly piled with food as the cooks prepared for the dinner service beginning in just over an hour. Faith just couldn’t see what that method might be.

A man about the same size and shape as Chef Ito but with Roman features and a hat that added a full ten inches to his slight frame glanced at the two agents and frowned. He said something in Italian to his sous chefs and stormed over to them.

“What? What is it?” he snapped. “I talk to the police already, eh? I told them I don’t know what happened. That woman, Crestwood. She made a lot of enemies. But I don’t need to worry about it, eh, because my food is perfect! Six critics come here, they say my food is perfect. I have Michelin Star on the wall in my office, and if Crestwood hadn’t died in my dining room, I’d have a second in a month, eh?”

“Chef Russo, I presume?” Faith asked drily.

“Yes, that’s me. What do you need now? I have a dinner service to run.”

He lifted his arms dramatically as he spoke, and Faith got the impression that most of this was an act for the benefit of his brigade, who were watching the interaction with something between amusement and irritation.

“Why don’t we speak in your office, Chef Russo?” she suggested.

He lifted his arms again and rolled his eyes. “Come on, I have a kitchen to manage. Who’s going to run the brigade, huh?”

“It should only take a few minutes. You’ll be back on your way to earning another Michelin star in no time.”

Russo sighed heavily and threw his arms in the air a third time. "Va bene, allora, immagino che qualsiasi cosa tu stia facendo sia più importante. Dimentica i miei poveri commensali e i miei cuochi laboriosi."

He stomped past them out of the kitchen, continuing to rant. Faith exchanged a look with Michael, then followed him. Turk trotted next to her, his nose to the ground.

“You smell something boy?”

He snorted a negative, then continued to hunt. She reached down and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, boy. We’ll get him. Or her.”

“Your dog have fleas?” Russo asked.

Faith’s lips thinned. “No, my K9 unit does not have fleas.”

“I find fleas in my establishment, I call your boss and complain.”

Faith smiled slightly, imagining the fiery Russo in an argument with the gruff Special Agent-in-Charge Grant Monroe. That might actually be fun to witness. “Sounds good.”

Russo nodded curtly, then opened the door to a small office. The three FBI agents filed in, and as Faith suspected, Russo’s demeanor calmed considerably when the door closed. When he spoke again, his accent was far more subdued as well.

“Look, guys, I get you have a job to do, but I do too. You need to call ahead if you want to talk to me. I don’t mind coming down to the station. Or the field office or wherever. But I can’t have you guys in and out of my restaurant. It’s a bad look.”

“A woman collapsing dead in your dining room is a pretty bad look,” Michael pointed out.

Russo’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I know. But I don’t know what happened to her. Look, I talked to the police. I knew who she was, and I knew she was coming. I personally inspected every single thing that we used for her. Even the tablecloths and the napkin. I made everything she ate and poured everything she drank. That makes me the number one suspect, I get that, but I also proved to them that I’m not an idiot. First of all, I don’t bear any ill will to Miss Crestwood personally. All food critics are imbrogliones , but I don’t hate any of them. I beat them by making food so exceptional that they can’t help but acknowledge it.”

“And if someone refuses to acknowledge it?”

Russo shrugged. “Then they’re idiots. “Any fool can taste my food and know it is exquisite. If Elizabeth Crestwood tried to claim otherwise, she would make herself look stupid. It wouldn’t affect me.”

“Your confidence is admirable,” Faith said drily.

He shrugged again. “I am good at what I do.”

“What if I told you I ate here last week, and it was the worst Italian food I’d ever tasted?”

“I’d say you were lying,” he replied immediately. “Listen, why would I kill her? Like your friend said, it’s a bad look for me. A very bad look. People don’t want to eat somewhere a woman dies in the middle of her meal. I worked hard to build my reputation, and because some porca puttana decided to poison someone in my dining room, it’s all gone.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. I didn’t kill Elizabeth Crestwood, but if you find out who did, bring him to me, and I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Faith said, “I’ll settle for hearing in your own words what happened last week.”

Russo sighed. “I prepare her table. I tell my ma?tre d’ to treat her like gold. I make the bread and chill the water for her service, then prepare her meal. Caprese salad, beautiful minestrone, perfect prosciutto on crostini for the appetizer, grilled trout with risotto. I prepared the tiramisu myself as well. All of it by my own hand.”

“When did she die?”

"She eats the salad; then she dies in front of my server when he brings the minestrone. She never even got to taste my risotto.”

He seemed genuinely moved by that loss. Faith sighed and said, “And no one on your staff acted strangely that day? No one seemed suspicious?”

He scoffed. “Of course not. We are the finest Italian kitchen in Philadelphia. Why would we care if some imbroglione didn’t like our food? There is no reason to kill her over it. That has done far more damage than any review could.”

His face softened, and he said, “I do hope you find whoever did this. My daughter is training to be a chef. I don’t want her to suffer as I have.”

Faith stifled her disgust and said, “If you think of anything else we should know, please call us.”

She handed him a business card. He took it without looking at it and tossed it on the desk. Faith decided she liked Chef Ito better.

She led Michael and Turk out of the restaurant. When they were outside, Michael asked, “What do you think?”

“I think he’s telling the truth. He’s full of himself, but he’s not insecure. He’s not wasting any tears for Crestwood, but he’s sincerely pissed that she died in his restaurant.”

“So we still have nothing?”

“Not necessarily. Both of them died while eating their appetizers.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know yet. Possibly nothing. But it could mean something.”

He sighed. “Lovely.”

“Hey, don’t you get pessimistic after that lecture earlier.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fair enough. Where to next?”

“The coroner. I don’t want to wait for the tox screen to know exactly what happened to our victims.”

"Good idea. I don't suppose I can convince you to stop for dinner after that. All this food surrounding us is making me hungry."

“Let’s see what the coroner has to say, then go from there.”

“Sounds good.”

They started toward the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office. Faith considered the connections they had so far. Two food critics dead before they could sample the meal they intended to critique. Something about stifling their voices perhaps?

It was frustrating not to have answers, even this early in the case, but Faith was somewhat more hopeful after talking to both chefs. This mystery might not be so tough to solve after all.

Then again, Faith had thought that before only to wake up to news of another victim. She had to caution herself not to be too arrogant. Overconfidence could mean more dead innocents.