The Diva Spices It Up

by Krista Davis

  But I did, and I was amazed by how cleverly someone had incorporated what had probably been the original kitchen with a modern one. A brick-lined fireplace, almost big enough for me to walk into, anchored one end of the expansive room at the back of the house. Soot covered the back wall of the fireplace. An iron arm with a hook on the end appeared to have been used to hold pots over the fire. I’d heard they also served to hang heavy cloths to dispel the draft from the chimney.

  “Is this kitchen from the 1800s?” I asked.

  Tilly beamed. “Isn’t it wonderful? Of course, the house must have been very different at the time. The previous owners incorporated the modern wall next to it.” She gestured toward a television, which had been mounted in built-in wall units that had been carefully crafted to resemble roughly hewn timber. Tilly paused in the center of the room at an island painted the color of moss. It held a six-burner gas cooktop mounted on granite. Behind the island, a floor-to-ceiling wall of maple cabinets swung around the back of the room and the interior wall. A small breakfast table was located near French doors that led to a walled garden. The room was stunning and cozy.

  “Your kitchen is beautiful,” I murmured.

  “This room sold us on the house. Wesley can spend all the time he likes in the formal living room, but this is where we live. You are so kind to come on board and help me finish this project. Could I offer you some coffee?”

  I readily accepted a mug. It smelled like fall, with notes of cinnamon and nutmeg.

  “What prompted you to write a cookbook?” I asked.

  Tilly sighed. “Have you met many congressional wives?”

  I had, but she kept talking and I didn’t stop her.

  “They’re brilliant. Clearly the lady congresswomen are, too. But the wives are like a Who’s Who of overachieving women. They’re doctors, judges, and engineers. I think one of them told me she was an astronaut! Honey, have you seen some of these women? They run miles every day and lift weights. I break into hives when I pass a gym on the sidewalk. One of Wesley’s staffers suggested the cookbook to sort of give me an expertise.”

  “But you’re a cool TV actress! Nothing’s more impressive than that. You’re already a star!”

  “Aren’t you sweet. I’m afraid that’s very much in the past. You’d be surprised how many of them are too young to remember me. Or maybe they were too busy studying for PhDs and curing diseases to watch TV. Really, they intimidate me!”

  I had heard some mean comments about Tilly’s current appearance. She had put on weight since her days on TV, but a lot of people gained weight as they aged. After all, she was a teenager when she was a TV star. She still radiated the same kind of enthusiasm that had made her popular. She was gorgeous, with intelligent eyes, jolly cheekbones, and a friendly smile. I bet some of those accomplished women were intimidated by her.

  Tilly placed a stack of papers on a pine coffee table. It was bound by a red gingham ribbon. We sat down, and she scooted it toward me.

  A shout arose elsewhere in the house. There was a solid stream of angry words, although I couldn’t tell what was being said.

  Tilly’s eyes grew large with alarm. She rose and ran down the hallway. I was on her heels.

  Everyone in the living room appeared to be in a state of distress, except for Mars. He clearly wasn’t happy, but he seemed calmer than the others.

  Wesley’s face was a frightening shade of magenta. Tilly went to him. “What happened?”

  “Somebody”—he looked from Mars to the other people in the room—“released a private e-mail from me without authorization, and now it’s been leaked to Twitter and is all over the web.”

  “What was it? What did it say?” asked Tilly.

  “I’m toast. It reveals information about our position on North Korea.”

  I gazed at their faces. If one of them was responsible, he was very good at hiding his emotions.

  I was proud of Mars when he said calmly, “We can fix this. You’ll survive it.”

  “What if the person who released it has more?” Wesley slumped into a chair. “I better not ever meet whoever did this. I’ll strangle him with my own two hands.”

  Tilly whispered, “Maybe I should make some chamomile tea.”

  In an angry tone, Wesley said, “Tea is not going to make this any better, Tilly.”

  Mars flicked his fingers discreetly. He wanted us to leave.

  I whispered to Tilly, “Maybe they need some privacy.”

  Reluctantly, she followed me to the kitchen. Tilly didn’t have to say anything. Her expression made clear that she was worried.

  “Mars will handle it. It’s what he does, Tilly.”

  “How could that happen?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. But I do know that all e-mails go to someone. Maybe it was released by the recipient or someone in his office.”

  “Then it might not have been one of the people working for Wesley. That’s a relief!”

  We sat down again, and I tried to focus on the recipes bound in red gingham. The cover page was pristine. “There’s quite a stack here.”

  “I suppose Mars told you what happened.”

  I wanted to know more, and Mars’s explanation had been sketchy at best. “Only the bare bones.”

  She tilted her head and squinted. “Honestly, I don’t know what to think of it. Wesley says I take everything too personally. He might be right, but I find it odd that a person would contract to do a job and then quit working without any notice. She hasn’t even phoned about her paycheck.”

  “She didn’t tell you she was leaving?”

  “Not a word until Friday. It was so abrupt. Now, I’ll admit that she was acting a little bit peculiar the last time I saw her here. But if you were going to stop working, wouldn’t you have given some advance notice? She knew I have a deadline. If she didn’t have the courage to tell me sooner, at least she could have explained in a text. Even my ultramodern daughter says that’s the least she could have done.”

  I untied the ribbon and turned pages. The ghostwriter had scribbled extensive comments in the margins and made notations about the amounts of ingredients.

  “We had accomplished so much,” Tilly prattled. “It’s odd that Abby would have left when she did. It was so sudden. We hadn’t argued or anything. Why wouldn’t she have the courtesy to face me and give me two weeks’ notice? Wesley thinks she got a job that pays more. Call me old-fashioned, but in my book a person has an obligation to see a job through. You don’t just flit from one to the next.”

  I didn’t think I had met Abby. Old Town Alexandria was a relatively small place, but each season and new administration in nearby Washington, DC, brought new faces, so it wasn’t surprising that I didn’t know her.

  “Abby was as nice as she could be. I guess that’s why it hurts a little that she just up and left. I thought we were getting along pretty well.”

  “Was she very young? Maybe she wasn’t confident enough to finish the job or didn’t know she was supposed to give notice.”

  “In her forties, I’d guess. And recently divorced. She thought Wesley was fabulous and told me how lucky I was to have found such a great guy.”

  I wasn’t psychic. And I wasn’t a genius. But a little chill ran through me. What she was describing didn’t bode well for Abby. Had she left because of Wesley? I tried not to sound critical or rude. “I guess you tried to phone her?”

  “Of course. Her cell phone rolls over to voice mail. Isn’t that always the case? People see who’s calling and they don’t answer.” Tilly laughed. “Except for me. Honestly, half the time I can’t answer fast enough. My phone is usually stuck in my purse somewhere, and by the time I find it, the caller has given up.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “Oh sure. She has the cutest little place. You’d know it in a second. She made the most adorable wreath for her front door. It’s all lemons with touches of eucalyptus and magnolia leaves.”

  I knew that house. Daisy and I
walked by it regularly. The unique lemon wreath had caught my eye.

  Tilly studied her hands for a moment. In a soft voice, she said, “I went over there. Wesley said I shouldn’t go. That I should let her be. But I went, anyway.” She looked up at me. “I just couldn’t understand what had happened. I thought maybe I had offended her. You know? It’s so easy to do that accidentally. I try to be nice to everyone. Well, I’m sure you do, too. You understand. I haven’t told Wesley that I went to her house. I’m not sure why I haven’t told him. Nothing happened. Either she wasn’t home, or she wasn’t answering the door.”

  Tilly shrugged. “So here we are. What you need to know about me is that while I love to cook, I don’t measure ingredients and I don’t use the exact same ingredients every single time.”

  Ack! That would make it much more difficult to establish the recipe.

  Tilly went on. “Abby would come over here and watch me make the recipes for the cookbook and write them down. All the scribbles on those pages are her notes.” Furrows formed between Tilly’s eyes.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I hadn’t given it any thought before, but Abby usually took these pages home with her. I wonder how long she knew she wouldn’t be returning.”

  “Maybe she’ll have a change of heart and give you a call.”

  “At least she thoughtfully left them here for me so I wouldn’t have to start over from scratch. She knew she wasn’t coming back!”

  “Why did she take them home? Did she try re-creating each recipe?” This was beginning to sound like a lot of work!

  “Yes. That’s what you see there in the margins. We only have a few more recipes to go, so would that work for you?”

  I flipped the pages to a recipe for corn bread. Abby had crossed out the original amounts of sugar and baking powder and written new amounts in the margin of the page. I pointed as I spoke. “Are you comfortable that the notations in the margins are the correct amounts for the recipes, or would I have to cook or bake every recipe again to test it?”

  Tilly turned positively green. “That would be like starting all over again! We don’t have time for that. We would have to cook and bake nonstop.” She picked up the corn bread recipe and studied it. “I don’t think we need to start over on everything. Good grief! That would take a year, and the publisher is waiting for it. Besides, most of these changes are fairly minor.”

  I had to agree. But it was her cookbook and would bear her name, so she needed to be satisfied.

  Tilly moaned. “Here’s what we’ll do. How about if I select a few recipes and you select a few recipes and we make them with the amounts noted in the margins? Then we’ll know how close they are and whether we need to re-create all the recipes.”

  I smiled at her. I liked reasonable people. “That’s an excellent idea.”

  “You know, they tell me that some of the big chefs don’t write their own cookbooks. There’s simply no time for it. The ghostwriters watch them cook and write down the recipes, just like Abby did for me.”

  “Really?” I had no idea that was how it worked.

  “And it’s hard to find a good ghostwriter. Apparently, you need to adopt my voice so it sounds like me.”

  “I don’t think that will be too difficult. And you can always change anything that doesn’t sound quite right to your ear.”

  “Did Mars tell you we’re in a hurry?”

  “He mentioned that. How much of a hurry?”

  “I’d like to finish the last few recipes and turn it in three weeks from now.”

  I took a deep breath. It wasn’t too late to walk away. We spoke briefly about the payment. Mars had been correct about that.

  “We realize that this is an imposition,” said Tilly. “It’s hard to find someone who can drop everything and take on a three-week job. I’m sorry that it came to this. We would have been right on schedule if Abby hadn’t abandoned the project.” She shook her head in dismay. “Why did Abby have to leave me?”

  Chapter 4

  Dear Sophie,

  I’m bringing a casserole with a crispy bread crumb topping to my church potluck dinner. I can keep it warm in an insulated carrier, but how do I keep the top from getting soggy?

  Choir Director in Crum, West Virginia

  Dear Choir Director,

  Ovens are rarely available at potlucks, but if you’re lucky and one is available, you can pop it under the broiler briefly to crisp it up again. Either way, cover it with paper towels during transit to absorb the condensation.

  Sophie

  Later that afternoon, armed with a steaming mug of tea, I sat down at my kitchen table with the pages of the recipe book and got to work. The first thing I noticed was that the pages appeared to be out of order. They weren’t numbered, which I thought odd, but even stranger, they weren’t organized in any logical way that I could discern. Strawberry Shortcake and Grandma Peggy’s Sunday Go-To-Meeting Cake were followed by Chicken Sausage Lasagna, Heavenly Toffee Blondies, and Melt-in-Your-Mouth Kale Greens.

  I would have to ask Tilly about that. Maybe they were supposed to be arranged as complete meals. I had seen cookbooks set up like that before.

  I stopped at Creamy Macaroni and Cheese. That would probably be a good test recipe. And I had all the ingredients on hand. I set a pot of salted water on the stove to boil and placed flour, Colby cheese, Irish cheddar cheese, milk, and powdered mustard on the kitchen island. Abby had written 1 teaspoon paprika and 1 tablespoon yellow mustard in the margin. She’d also jotted BCS417 What did that mean?

  While I shredded the cheeses and the pasta boiled, I thought about the guy I had followed the previous day. What on earth would possess a person to open a municipal garbage can? Even more baffling, why would anyone withdraw trash from it?

  It had to be something he had done before. The maneuver of placing the tie between his lips was completely automatic for him. And he had moved so swiftly. I would have had trouble figuring out how to open the top of the trash can.

  But the biggest question in my mind was, Why? It made no sense unless someone had left something there for him. It must have been the soda can. The whole thing was strange. It amazed me that he had pulled off this bizarre act in broad daylight in front of at least a dozen people, yet I appeared to be the only one who had noticed it.

  Forcing my thoughts back to cooking, I drained the macaroni and set it aside while the cheese melted into the milk I had warmed in a large saucepan. I liked the way Tilly cooked the onions first and added flour to them. The recipe was very simple except for the BCS417 notation that I didn’t understand.

  If that was some kind of recipe shorthand, I wasn’t familiar with it. Was there a shorthand for recipes other than standard measurement abbreviations? I opened my laptop and searched. It was pretty much what I thought. A person might write cinn instead of cinnamon, or bs for baking soda. But overall, the only shortened versions were common standard abbreviations, like T for tablespoon and t for teaspoon. I saw nothing at all about numbers. Maybe she meant ¼ or ½ of a tablespoon? But that kind of measurement would be written as teaspoons.

  I preheated the oven, poured the macaroni into the delightfully aromatic cheese sauce, and stirred to mix it. After pouring it all into a casserole dish, I mixed panko with grated Parmesan and sprinkled it over the top.

  As I closed the oven door, my kitchen door opened. I knew who it was without looking. My best friend and across-the-street neighbor, Nina Reid Norwood, had an uncanny ability to know when something was cooking in my kitchen.

  “It has to bake for twenty minutes,” I warned.

  “It smells wonderful!” Nina opened a drawer and took out a spoon, which she used to scoop up the dregs of cheese sauce in the pot. “Mmm. There’s just nothing better than cheese.”

  She gazed at the stack of recipes on the table. “You’re writing a cookbook?” she asked excitedly.

  “Not exactly. I’m ghostwriting one for Tilly Stratford.”

  Nina nearly dropped her spo
on when she squealed. “You’ve met her?”

  “She’s very nice. You’ll like her.”

  “I’m sure you need an assistant. Right? Don’t all ghostwriters have assistants? And tasters?”

  I doubted that was the case, but I laughed and said, “Your help would be most appreciated. Actually, it pays pretty well because she’s in a hurry to get it done. I’m hoping I can finally rip out the old bathroom. Hey, Nina, do you know someone named Abby Bergeron?”

  “Don’t think so. What did she do?”

  “She quit working as the ghostwriter for Tilly rather abruptly.”

  Nina licked the spoon and asked, “Did they have a fight? Maybe Abby wanted her name on the cover along with Tilly’s?”

  “If they had a spat, Tilly isn’t admitting it.”

  Nina scraped the pot, trying to get every last drop. “Maybe you should have a chat with this Abby and find out what’s really going on.”

  “I think that might be a good idea. I found an odd notation on this recipe, too. I have no idea what it means.” I pointed it out to her.

  “R P C one four two,” she read. “I don’t have a clue. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the recipe. Maybe she was on the phone and didn’t have anything to write on. It sounds like an apartment number.”

  “It does look like one, doesn’t it? Maybe she was supposed to meet someone.” I pawed through the recipes in search of something else to try. “Oh yum! How do Bourbon Apple Fritters with Caramel Sauce sound?”

  “That’s the kind of thing Tilly cooks? Why am I not her best friend? Now I really have to meet her.”

  The recipe sounded simple enough. I had some apples in the fridge and usually had a bottle of bourbon around. And then I drew a sharp breath. “Nina, I don’t think it’s an apartment number.”

  She looked over my shoulder. “C C T one thousand eighty-five,” she read aloud.

  Trying to keep the recipes in order, I flipped through the pages. “Here’s another one. M G B four one four three. And another. C P S three eight one one.”