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suspects to check out.
    Hopefully Detective Shelton would be doing the same thing.
    Unfortunately, it appeared he’d already put my aunt on his suspect list.
    We arrived at Aunt Abby’s home a little after seven. My aunt said she had stuffed bell peppers in the freezer she’d microwave for dinner and set about busying herself with preparing the meal. Dillon went off to his bedroom, no doubt to answer e-mails, update his Facebook page, tweet his latest thoughts, and do a bunch of other Internet-related stuff. Maybe I could ask him to check Craigslist and find me another reporting job—once this murder business was resolved.
    I headed for the RV to change into my comfy jeans and a “Bay to Breakers” T-shirt I’d stolen from my ex-boyfriend. After pouring myself a glass of cheap wine, I sat down at my laptop at the tiny kitchen table and Googled “Oliver Jameson Bones ’n’ Brew.”
    Yelp popped up first. I opened the page and began reading the comments by amateur critics.
    â€œ. . . lousy food, poor service . . .”
    â€œ. . . This used to be such a great place, but it’s really gone downhill. . . .”
    â€œ. . . Save your money and spend it at one of the yummy food trucks across the street. . . .”
    Ouch.
    The reviews continued much in this vein, including the one I’d written about the restaurant’s decline. Only rarely did I see anything complimentary. I wonderedhow the restaurant had managed to stay in business all these years with so many negative comments.
    Next, I checked for a Facebook or Twitter link to either Oliver or the restaurant, but I found no social media contacts. Maybe the place was too old-school for that kind of networking. Or maybe Jameson didn’t feel he needed to get the word out anymore, since the restaurant had been around for so long.
    Finally I found a piece another reporter at the
Chron
had done on Bones ’n’ Brew a number of years ago. It mentioned that Oliver Jameson had taken over the restaurant from his father, Nigel Jameson, after the older man passed away from a heart attack. A photo of the two men proved the “like father, like son” theory, at least in physical characteristics. Both had male pattern baldness—one advanced, one with trim still around the edges. Both were stocky, as if they’d enjoyed their own cooking a little too much. And both were about the same height. They even wore nearly identical chef’s whites with their names embroidered in black. But while Jameson Senior sported a smile, revealing a row of crooked teeth, Junior looked as if he’d just bitten into a lemon.
    After a little more research, I found a solid lead, thanks to
Gastronome
, an online magazine that featured stories on various chefs from around the world. According to a recent article, Oliver Jameson’s place once had a prestigious reputation, earning two Michelin stars. Since then, the rating had plummeted. The critic, a woman named Paula Bouchard, called him a “second-rate chef” and a “third-rate human being.” Jameson shot back at her in a letter to the editor, calling her “Palate-less Paula” and “Big Mac Bouchard.”
    Harsh. I wondered if there was something else besides food that had caused such venom.
    The article noted that Jameson had also had numerous confrontations with his kitchen staff and was known to have fired some of the best sous chefs in the business. At one point, he’d threatened his former pastry chef with a meat skewer and had to be bailed out of jail by his father. Jameson had also been accused of lying to a group of vegetarians for not disclosing that he used chicken stock in his soup, of buying out-of-date ingredients from questionable suppliers, and of using illegal poisons to handle his vermin problem. Within the last seven years, most of his staff had either quit or been fired and had sued