Murder in the Apple Orchard

by Sandi Scott

  “Which hasn’t actually bothered to hire me on as anything other than a freelance contractor.”

  “I was counting on you.”

  Just then, Ashley’s phone rang. She picked it up to check the number and froze, an American number but not her parents. She let it buzz and go to voice mail. “You could have said something,” she said.

  “You could have asked for permission.”

  “Your company could hire me as a full-timer,” she said. “Until then? This is supposed to be a vacation. A chance to try something new. Not to be cooped up in an apartment when all of Paris is outside, waiting for me. I’ve barely left the neighborhood. I haven’t even seen the Catacombs yet, let alone the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower or the ...”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I get it. But why two solid weeks at a café? Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, out having fun?”

  “I wanted you to go with me when we see the big things,” she said. “Trying to see the Louvre on my own sounds lonely.”

  “And we will — just not now, now is too busy.”

  “That’s what I figured.” Ashley grinned in excitement, “So, I’m going to take two weeks and learn how zee French really cook, no? And if you’re still too busy when I get done, we’ll talk about it.”

  “You really want to do this?” he asked.

  “I do. I really, really do.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, ASHLEY showed up at L’Oiseau Bleu with three other students. The fourth had already dropped out. The students included one American couple, Jack and Jill Smith, and one very intense young Paris-born Frenchwoman named Marie Prieur, whose goal was to learn the ins-and-outs of running a small restaurant business and open her own café. They would not be taught full-time by Monsieur Lemaire, but by his sous chef, a woman named Patty LaFontaine. She wore a striped blue-and-white Breton shirt, black pedal pushers, blood-red lipstick, and a disdainful smirk.

  After talking to Jack and Jill Smith, and then Marie Prieur, Ms. LaFontaine turned to Ashley and said, “What about you, ma chère? What brings you here?”

  “I’m on vacation,” Ashley said. “I’m a programmer.”

  “And you’re taking two weeks out of your vacation to learn how to cook the Parisian way, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  Ms. LaFontaine rolled her eyes. “Americans — as if it were that easy — this will be the hardest two weeks that any of you will ever spend in a kitchen, and you still won’t have learned how to cook like a Parisian when you’re done here because that accomplishment requires years of dedication! Personally, I don’t think any of you are going to make the whole two weeks.”

  Ashley quailed inwardly. She just met her first real French chef – and was completely terrified of her. Gulp!

  THE FIRST DAY WAS NOTHING but prep work and knife skills, something that Ashley had never really been interested in. She was a baker at heart — not a cook. She struggled not to let herself get discouraged as she chopped her way through onions, onions, and more onions. Chef Lemaire walked through their area, praising the work that Ms. LaFontaine had just been criticizing. “Très bien, très bien.”

  Ms. LaFontaine rolled her eyes at him the second his back was turned. “The pieces of onion are not even and will not caramelize properly.”

  Ashley repressed a smile. Seeing that Ms. LaFontaine’s standards were above even that of the chef made her feel about a thousand times better already. If she could survive the mean sous chef, she could survive anything.

  Next, they roasted bones and vegetable scraps for broth and then simmered and skimmed the broth, in between practicing their knife skills. Now, the onions had to be caramelized for soup. Soon, Ashley felt like she was sweating onions out of her pores as she stirred. “No, no, not like that!” was the constant refrain she heard from Ms. LaFontaine.

  Will I ever pass the sous chef’s scrutiny? Ashley felt glum as she looked back into the pot she was stirring.

  By the end of the day, the Smiths were looking daggers at Ms. LaFontaine’s back. Marie Prieur leaned over to Ashley and whispered, “I heard them telling Chef Lemaire that they wanted a refund!”

  “I can’t blame them,” Ashley whispered back.

  “What? Are you leaving, too?”

  “If Ms. LaFontaine thinks that all it takes to drive me off is a few sarcastic comments, she’s going to have a surprise first thing tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Marie said. “That’s the way to do it.”

  The bread had already been made, fortunately. The onion soup, now carefully seasoned, was ladled into crocks, topped with toasted slices of baguette, and sprinkled with Gruyère.

  “Ma chère,” Ms. LaFontaine told Ashley, “I am ashamed of you. That is an entirely insufficient amount of cheese. If I were to send that bowl of soup out to one of our customers, do you know what they would say? Où est le fromage?”

  “Sorry.” Ashley sighed and looked at the floor.

  “Don’t be sorry. Be wonderfully excessive, especially with cheese. When all is said and done, people come to France for two things: cheese and pommes frites.”

  “Not the Louvre?”

  “Mais non! You cannot eat La Joconde!”

  “What’s that?” Mr. Smith asked.

  “The Mona Lisa. Sacré bleu! Stir those onions before they burn.”

  After all that drama, however, the onion soup proved to be the most delicious that Ashley had ever tasted.

  Is Ms. LaFontaine and her unending pickiness worth it? Ashley thought to herself as she quietly sipped her portion.

  THE SMITHS DIDN’T THINK so. The next day, they were gone. When Marie and Ashley arrived for class at dawn as requested, Ms. LaFontaine was sitting outside the front door smoking a cigarette while she waited for them.

  “The tourists are finally gone,” she said, apparently ignoring the fact that Ashley was essentially a tourist too. “Now we get down to the real business. Come with me.” She took them down to the far end of the street with wire carts to shop at the markets for the restaurant. “In America, restaurants have all their produce delivered from the back of a truck. All their meat, everything—even fish!”

  “You’re not serious!” Marie said.

  “No, it’s true,” Ashley said, “but how did you know, Ms. LaFontaine?”

  Mumbling behind her cupped hands as she lit another cigarette, Ms. LaFontaine said, “Because I’m originally from Manhattan, ma chère, and stop calling me Ms. LaFontaine — it makes me feel old — my name is Patty.”

  “Wait, where did you say you were from?” Ashley was incredulous.

  “I’m from Manhattan. What of it?”

  Ashley shook her head. “I don’t know if I would have ever figured that out, um, Patty.”

  Patty let out a laugh. “All right, let’s see if your fish observation skills are better than your people observation skills. What kind of fish is this?”

  “Um ...”

  “Sole,” Marie inserted quickly.

  “Correct. What are the classic methods of preparing sole?”

  Marie rattled off several in rapid-fire French.

  “Good. Today, we’re going to be doing sole meunière—très simple if the sole is good, and this is very good, so we’re going to be serving it to customers! The two of you are going to handle every sole meunière order that comes up for lunch today. And guess what? Today, L’Oiseau Bleu is having a special on sole meuniere! Are you up for it?”

  They both assured her that they were. Ashley’s guts clenched. She hoped she wasn’t lying to both herself and the formidable Ms. LaFontaine.

  THAT AFTERNOON ASHLEY went home exhausted but happy. Not only had she made sole meunière all day, but after a while, Patty had pulled Marie off the station with her, “Too crowded for two, non?” and had Marie cooking steaks for steak-frites orders. Thankfully, the day was slow because a few times they slowed down and ran behind, or dropped things, or overcooked something – but mostly it was a good day. Ashley climbed the stairs to the apartment, let hers
elf in, and threw herself on the bed. Serge was out. She looked around for a note, but didn’t find one, so she texted him.

  Home soon? Ashley got up, took a shower, and then sat cross-legged in her bathrobe on the bed.

  Sorry, working late. Big project.

  She knew he wasn’t trying to make her feel guilty, but she felt guilty anyway.

  Supper?

  No, all good.

  Serge had been staying out late for a while now, working on projects for his company. He had an office cubicle that he could use at the company and had been spending more and more of his time there. So much time that Ashley was starting to wonder. Is he losing interest in me? Cheating on me? Nah, she’d never seen him so much as look at another woman. All he ever talked about since they had come to Paris was work – and money. As a working couple, they could easily afford a bigger apartment if the size of this one was really bothering Serge that much.

  So, the big question now had to be, what was for supper? Ashley was tempted to go back to L’Oiseau Bleu to eat; on the other hand, that might seem just a bit too obsessive. Instead, she went downstairs to the little cheese shop just two doors from her apartment and bought a Brillat-Savarin cheese and some crusty bread. Belgian chocolate truffles from the chocolate shop next door to the cheese shop had somehow found their way into her shopping bag as well by the time she returned to the apartment. Hiding in the fridge were some greens for a simple salad and a bottle of Alsatian Pinot Blanc wine.

  Ashley ate her supper sitting on the bed while she watched an episode of Poirot on her laptop. Eating along could have made her feel lonely, but she was content, at least until her phone rang. She jumped up to grab it, almost knocking over the bottle of wine that was on the table beside her, then stopped – another call from the U.S. that wasn’t her parents. Who was it? A bit long-distance for a telemarketer—the number was area code 361, so whoever it was lived near her Texas home.

  Wait? Could it possibly be Ryan Brady? Although she had switched to a phone that would work in Europe, Ashley hadn’t figured out how to import her contacts yet. The Texas area code made her wonder though, could Ryan be trying to call?

  Ashley had met Ryan at the computer software company, Smith Corp, where they both worked as programmers. He was a nice guy, and she’d considered dating him a couple of times, but he’d always ended up dating someone else – one of a series of super-tall, blonde leggy women from Dallas with long, straight hair and perfect makeup. Ashley was obviously not his type although they had fun just hanging out together.

  Then Serge had come into her life on a motorcycle and wearing a black leather jacket, the first genuinely hunky geek that she’d ever met. Ashley was enchanted at first sight. The phone continued to ring. Maybe she should answer, then again, maybe she shouldn’t. She and Serge were serious about each other, far more serious than Ryan would ever be about any of his girlfriends.

  Ryan was a classic geek that way, Ashley was sure his love for computers would forever outstrip his love of any woman. Conversely, Serge seemed like a bad boy, but he was really a softie. Ashley wanted nothing more than to settle down, get married, and live the rest of her life with Serge and she was sure he felt the same way, too. She knew they were on the same page, at least they had been, until this past week when he had started ignoring her in favor of work. Ashley sighed.

  No, tonight was absolutely not the night to talk to Ryan, regardless of what he wanted. She’d be too tempted to pour her heart out to him instead of working through things with Serge, and if Serge found out, he might go haywire. Tonight, it was just her and the man with the magnificent mustache, that funny little Belgian, Hercules Poirot.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DAYS FLEW BY. NOT only were the classes taking up most of Ashley’s time and energy throughout the day but she, Marie, and Patty were spending time together in the evenings. The restaurant was presided over in the evening by Chef Lemaire without fail—which left plenty of time for the three of them to start exploring Paris by night, which mostly meant restaurants, cabarets, and dance clubs. They even went to the Moulin Rouge, the famous cabaret where the entire interior of the main floor was red. Atop the front door, there was a neon-lit red windmill that turned all night. The dancers looked like Vegas showgirls—or maybe it was the other way around—Vegas showgirls all looked like Moulin Rouge dancers!

  Serge continued to be AWOL. When he did stop back at the apartment after Ashley returned from the cooking class, he was cranky and irritable and snapped at her if she said two words to him. Her romantic interlude in Paris wasn’t very romantic anymore! But she didn’t let it get her down, at least not too much.

  The cooking segment had gone very well. Ashley now believed she could handle any of the stations at the restaurant except, ironically, being a prep cook. She just couldn’t cut things fast enough. Patty promised her that more speed would come with time and that she just needed to think of herself as a ninja. Marie, of course, had the knife skills of a ninja assassin-swashbuckling pirate chef. Even Patty was impressed. Ashley wasn’t bothered, she had always maintained that her true chance to shine would be during the baking week. “I’m no ninja. Je suis une pâtissièr!”

  “We shall see,” Patty said, chuckling wickedly. “Cooking is easy. Baking is hard.”

  “You’re wrong,” Ashley couldn’t be swayed, “it’s the other way around.”

  Patty snorted, but when it finally came to baking week, Patty had to admit that Ashley was correct. The first day Marie had broken down hopelessly in tears while trying to make croissants with Ashley humming happily to herself. Chef Lemaire himself had come in early to help ‘finish’ Ashley as a baker. “By rights, ma chère, you should have a world-class pastry chef teaching you tricks. Alas, only I, Chef Lemaire, is here to show you what I know of the secrets of the French flours and sugars and yeasts and leavenings, along with the secrets of le beurre. The butter.” He lowered his voice and looked at Ashley with a secretive smile as he finished speaking.

  Chef Lemaire was a man who loved his butter. Not only did he take her around to several professional flour shops and introduce her proudly to the owners, but he also coached her on how to judge cream and make butter; sharing his secrets how to make of European-style cultured butter. They worked on French buttercreams and pastry creams, macarons, petit pots, cream puffs, gateaux basque, Napoleons, and every sort of crepes imaginable! The only thing that everyone had difficulty with was the crêpes.

  Customers seemed to think that the L’Oiseau Bleu crêpes were perfectly fine, because they were, but Ashley knew that the crêpes could be better. That week, a lot of crêpes were passed out to the customers, free of charge, to keep the results of her current obsession from going to waste.

  The end of the week came too quickly and then it was time for Ashley and Marie to say goodbye. On the last day, they both received certificates saying that they had completed the L’Oiseau Bleu training for French cooks, which meant exactly zero as a professional certification but made them both glow with pride.

  “I knew if I could last through baking week here, at L’Oiseau Bleu, I could survive anything,” Marie said with tears in her eyes.

  “You have greatly improved your skills as a baker,” Chef Lemaire said generously.

  “I have, but my real love is in cooking traditional French dishes.”

  “And at that, mademoiselle, you are superb!”

  “Thank you.” Marie embraced the chef around his enormous stomach in a fond embrace. He patted her on the back, looking around to Patty with a panicky look on his face. He was not an expressive man.

  “And you, ma chère, Ashley,” Chef Lemaire said once Patty had helped Marie to a chair and given her a glass of red wine to fortify her, “could bake anywhere you like in Paris.”

  “Thank you.” She restrained herself from embarrassing the chef with another hug, but she still felt the emotional impact of the words.

  Patty gave them both hugs and kissed them on both cheeks. “If ever eithe
r of you needs a job, come and see me. I’ll find you one. Either here, or with a good chef who speaks some English, non? And not bad pay for the wages either.” She named an amount that, when mentally translated from Euros to dollars, was less than what Ashley made as a programmer or doing white-hat hacking jobs but still was nothing to sneer at. She could live on that easily in Paris, and that was saying something.

  Marie thanked her and said that she planned to get more training at the big Paris cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu.

  “Wow!” Ashley said. She was truly impressed.

  Patty and Chef Lemaire both smiled. “You will not only get the best training but also the instructors and the certification itself will open the highest doors in your favor,” the chef said.

  Patty added, “You’ll do fine. They’re nothing compared to some of the things I put you through. They spend half the time trying to teach knife skills that you’re already better at than many of the staff.”

  Ashley wasn’t quite ready to take that huge step even if it was for just the Diplôme de Pâtisserie and not cooking and baking. For one thing, what would Serge say? She sighed. She had no idea what Serge would say because he had barely been around at all in the last two weeks. “Are you all right?” Patty asked, as the three of them walked out of the restaurant, their elbows linked. They were on their way to an Algerian restaurant near the Varenne stop on the Metro.

  “Boyfriend issues.”

  Ashley had talked about Serge before. Every time she’d done so, Patty would always go very quiet as if biting her tongue. Finally, though, she said what was on her mind.

  “Are we friends,” Patty asked, “or am I just the terrible sous chef who makes you do all the work while she steps outside for a smoke break?”

  “Yes,” Ashley said without hesitation, “we’re friends.”

  “Then, as a friend I have a few words of advice, Serge will never be good for you. If a man only acts as though he loves you when you are at his beck and call, especially when you’re working for him, then it won’t last.” Ashley tensed up. She had a feeling that Patty would say something like that.