Cajun Kiss of Death

by Ellen Byron

  Ninette responded with a disdainful sniff. “I don’t call throwing a can of beer into a bowl of flour making bread.”

  Maggie followed her mother out of the kitchen into the dining room. Ninette placed the steaming bowl of calas in front of Chanson and hovered over him. She nervously tapped her foot. Chanson closed his eyes and inhaled the fragrance, then waited a minute for the steam to settle before tucking into one of the rice balls. He took a bite and groaned with pleasure. “Best. Calas. Ever.”

  Ninette almost collapsed with relief, and Maggie released the breath she’d been holding on her mother’s part. Doggies Gopher and Jolie, who had wandered into the dining, wagged their tails simultaneously like two furry metronomes. Ninette beamed with pride. “Oh my, thank you.”

  “The whole meal was outstanding.” The chef stood up, clasped his hands together as if praying, and bowed to Maggie’s mother. “Whatever you do, don’t open a stand-alone restaurant. I’ll never be able to compete.” He grabbed Ninette by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. “I’ve got to get back to the restaurant and start dinner prep. But thanks for this. I’ll never forget it.”

  Ninette blushed and giggled. She waved a hand at him. “Stop now. Y’all want me to pack up some leftovers?”

  “I would love that.”

  Ninette made for the kitchen. Maggie’s father Tug, who’d watched from the sidelines, was on her heels. “Don’t give him everything,” Maggie heard Tug say under his breath. “I’d kill for a bowl of that shrimp.”

  Maggie left her parents to their kitchen tasks and returned to her apartment, where she worked on the painting of Xander. After a few hours, she realized she was running out of white paint, so she made a trip into Pelican to pick up a tube at the mom-and-pop hardware store that graciously stocked her art supplies. An affable Black teenager wearing a butcher’s apron called hello to Maggie from outside Chanson’s restaurant across the street. Maggie darted over to give him a hug. “Hey, Clinton. How’s it going?” Clinton Poche and his younger sister Brianna were trusted occasional employees of the B and B.

  “Awesome. I got a part-time job as a waiter at the new restaurant.”

  Clinton modeled his apron, then struck a lightning pose like Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt. Maggie laughed. “That’s great. Congratulations.”

  “Yeah. My mom’s not too happy cuz I’m behind on my college applications. But I don’t wanna go to college. I wanna be a chef like JJ and Mr. Chanson.”

  “Sorry, I’m with your mom on this. Get an education while you can. I’m sure JJ and even Mr. Chanson would tell you the same thing. If you’re really committed to being a chef, maybe add a culinary school application into the mix.”

  Clinton didn’t look convinced. “Maybe. Hey, I heard about your mom making a meal for Chef Phillippe. He was going on and on about how good it was.”

  “That’s nice. I’ll tell my mother. She’ll be thrilled.”

  “I gotta go. I don’t wanna miss dinner.” His face lit up. “They give you a free dinner, a restaurant does. Did you know that? Tonight it’s gonna be fried fillet-of-catfish po’ boys. Talk about good, huh?”

  Clinton grinned and patted his stomach, then dashed inside the restaurant. Maggie ducked into Fais Dough Dough to pick up a check for the commission she’d earned from the souvenir line she’d created depicting local historical sites with her fluid brushstrokes. Vanessa was behind the counter, pulling an espresso for a customer. She’d convinced Lia and Kyle to buy a fancy coffee machine and turn the no-man’s-land between the bakery and candy shop into a small café area—sheer genius from a woman once anointed the laziest employee in Doucet Plantation history, her prior place of employment. “You sure you don’t want to add my wedding dress to that exhibit of yours at Doucet?” Vanessa asked after finishing up with her customer.

  Maggie gave her a look. They’d already been over this. “As I’ve told you a bazillion times, the exhibit traces the history of one particular dress that’s been handed down in the Doucet family for generations.”

  Vanessa sighed. “I would so love to get a tax deduction for that thing. Sure, I’ll get some use out of it as a Halloween costume, but I can’t do that every year. I don’t like repeating myself.”

  “Why don’t you donate it to—”

  The sound of a commotion outside distracted Maggie. She glanced out the glass door and saw Pelican PD officers Artie Belloise and Cal Vichet escorting Abel Garavant of Abel’s Home Cookin’ out of Chanson’s Cajun Kitchen in handcuffs. Kate and Trick followed behind them. Vanessa craned her neck to look outside. “What all’s happening out there?”

  “No idea,” Maggie said. “I’ll take a look.” She pushed the door open and stepped outside.

  “Thieves!” Abel yelled at the Chanson restaurant employees as the officers pulled him toward their patrol car. “Robbers!”

  A compact sedan screeched up the street, coming to a halt behind the police vehicle. Ash Garavant, Abel’s son and an ex-boyfriend from Maggie’s high school days, extracted himself from the sedan, which was too small for his tall, spindly body. He hurried to his father with long, loping strides. “Dad, I got your message. Who robbed you? What’s going on?” Maggie saw Ash register the handcuffs containing his father’s wrists. “What the hell? Why are you in handcuffs?”

  “Good question. Ask Cal and Artie here.” Abel cocked his head toward the restaurant entrance, where Phillippe, clad in a chef’s jacket, watched the fracas with an amused expression. “You’re the one they should be arresting,” Abel, apoplectic, yelled at the celebrity chef. “You stole my recipe, you dang SOB. You know you did. You stole the recipe for my fried catfish fillet!”

  Chapter 4

  Cal and Artie led Abel to the patrol car, his son on their heels. “We’ll get all this straightened out, Abel,” Cal said. “But right now, we gotta take you in for disturbing the peace.”

  Cal reached for the rear patrol car door, but an angry Ash blocked him. “You’re not taking him anywhere.”

  “Ash—”

  “You’re not arresting my father.”

  Maggie could see Ash was fighting the urge to explode. Vanessa, who’d come up behind Maggie, peered over her shoulder. “Should we do something?”

  Maggie shook her head. “I wish we could, but I know Cal and Artie. They wouldn’t want us getting in the way and possibly escalating instead of deescalating the situation.”

  “Ooh, listen to you sounding so police-y. From all those murders at the B and B, I guess.”

  “More from being married to a law enforcement official,” said Maggie with asperity. Nothing aggravated her more than being reminded of the killings that had bedeviled her family’s home and business. She turned her attention back to the unfolding drama on the street.

  “Ash,” Cal said. He kept his tone even but firm. “You need to move. Now.”

  “No!” yelled Ash, unable to control himself anymore. “Release my father! Release him, or I’ll—”

  Artie shoved himself between the two men. “Hey! That’s enough, Garavant.” Artie got in Ash’s face. “I’m gonna give you two choices. You can get in your car and follow us to the station, or you can get in this car”—he gestured to the patrol car—“and we can take you there in cuffs, like your dad. Your call. But make it quick. It’s fifteen minutes past my lunch break, and the hungrier I get, the meaner I get.”

  “Son,” Abel said, his voice quiet and tinged with defeat, “Don’t fight them no more. Just get to the station. We’ll hash it out there.”

  Ash paused, then backed away from the patrol car. He threw a furious look at the restaurant employees, then stormed back to his own vehicle. Artie and Cal maneuvered Abel into the back seat of the patrol car and got in the car themselves, Artie at the helm. He turned on the battered vehicle’s engine, which sputtered and died. Onlookers could hear a stream of invectives through the closed window. Artie started the car again. This time the engine kept running. The officers took off, followed by Ash, and Phi
llippe disappeared back into the restaurant. Kate and Trick lingered, talking to each other in hushed tones. Maggie left Fais Dough Dough and walked over to them. “Is it true? Did Phillippe steal one of Abel’s recipes?”

  Kate waved a dismissive hand. “Of course he didn’t. You can’t steal a recipe because you can’t copyright them.”

  “You can copyright the exact way a recipe is written,” Trick clarified. “The wording of it. But you can’t copyright the ingredients.”

  “But,” Maggie said, getting a sinking feeling as she thought of her mother, “what if someone has a secret ingredient?”

  “No such thing, really,” Trick said. “Take Coca-Cola, maybe the most famous ‘secret’ recipe in the world. They can protect their production process, their ‘trade secret,’ but that’s with their own employees, who could be sued for violating company policy for revealing anything about the recipe. If someone figures it out on their own, there’s nothing they can do about it.”

  Maggie’s sinking feeling sunk further as she recalled Chanson’s raves about her mother’s cooking. “Still, it seems like stealing a recipe—”

  “Trick just told you,” Kate snapped. “You can’t steal a recipe.”

  “All right,” Maggie said in an even tone. “Borrowing another cook’s recipe would be bad form.”

  “Happens all the time,” Trick said. “When you think about it, it’s flattering.”

  Maggie pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t call Abel’s reaction flattered.”

  Kate huffed annoyance. “Typical reaction of an amateur. Come on, Trick.”

  “Abel’s been running his place since he was out of high school,” Maggie said to Kate’s and Trick’s retreating backs. “Abel’s Home Cookin’ has been in the Garavant family for generations.” Kate yanked the restaurant front door shut. “Amateur, my …” Maggie muttered the end of the sentence to herself. She turned to go but caught a glimpse of Clinton Poche through the restaurant window. Their eyes locked, but the teen quickly looked away, an unhappy expression on his face.

  It occurred to Maggie that JJ had never come out of Junie’s to see what all the noise was about. She walked over and stepped into the restaurant, which was empty except for Old Shari, who was wiping down the bar. “Hey, Shari. Where’s JJ?”

  Shari gestured to a side door with her bar rag. “The alley. Cleaning up.”

  Maggie left the restaurant for the alley through the side door. She found JJ knee-deep in rotting garbage. He wore plastic gloves, and a mask covered his nose and mouth. “Lord, what happened out here?” Recoiling from the smell, she put a hand over her nose.

  “Racoons got into the trash. Good thing the health inspector didn’t show up today.”

  JJ hoisted a shovelful of garbage into a heavy plastic bag. Maggie eyed it. “Since when do you serve crab legs?”

  “I don’t. I’d go broke if I had to charge my customers what it’d cost for me to make a profit on them. Someone else’s garbage accidentally got mixed up with mine.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t an accident.”

  JJ cast a melancholy look at Maggie. “It makes me sad that you’ve come to have such a suspicious nature.”

  “When you find yourself facing about a dozen murders in under two years, it’s kind of bound to happen. Need help?”

  “Sure. Grab a mask and a shovel.”

  Maggie did. She hefted a load into JJ’s almost-full bag. “I’ve got a question for you. Is it true you can’t copyright a recipe?”

  “Not the ingredients, only the way it’s written. You can trademark the name of a recipe if it’s super unique, but that’s it. Why do you ask?” Maggie filled JJ in on the Abel imbroglio. “Huh. Well, that’s too bad for Abel, but nothing he can do about it.” JJ tied off his trash bag and slung it into the restaurant dumpster. “People’s been telling me Chanson’s jambalaya tastes exactly like mine. Chanson stopped in here when he first took over LeBlanc’s lease and had a bowl of it. Gave me lots of compliments. I’m guessing he figured out my way of making it and duplicated the recipe. He must’ve thought if people like it here, they’ll like it there.”

  Maggie, infuriated, shoved a shovelful of trash into a bag with such force that the bag ripped. She grabbed a new one. “That’s terrible. I hate him for that.”

  “Don’t. I’m not worried. Junie’s has got something he don’t.”

  “What’s that?”

  JJ whipped off his mask, threw his hands in the air, and struck a pose. “Me!”

  Maggie laughed. “Yes, sir. And that’s something no one can compete with.”

  She helped JJ scoop up the rest of the garbage, then hied it home. Hungry, she stopped in the manor house and scouted the kitchen refrigerator for leftovers. The shrimp and calas were gone, but she dug up some shrimp remoulade, which she ate straight from the container. Gran and Ninette came in with a tray of dirty wineglasses and snack plates, having just finished serving the B and B’s wine-and-cheese hour. Gran wrinkled her nose. “What’s that awful smell?”

  “Me,” Maggie said. “Raccoons, who I cynically think may not have been raccoons, scattered JJ’s garbage, and I helped him clean up.”

  “It sounds like you’re implying someone from Chanson’s might be messing with Junie’s,” Ninette said with a frown. She filled the sink with hot, soapy water and began handwashing the crystal goblets. “That’s a bit extreme and not very nice, Magnolia Marie.”

  Maggie debated telling Ninette about the dustup with Abel, then decided not to. I need more verification about this recipe thing, she thought. In the meantime, let Mom enjoy the accolades from Chanson. “Sorry, Mama. I’m still recovering from an hour of dumpster filling.”

  “I highly advise a shower, chère.” Gran’s recommendation came out muffled, since she’d covered her nose and mouth with her hand.

  “Talk about extreme,” Maggie said.

  She started for the kitchen door, stopping to tease her grandmother with a hug. Gran affectionately pushed her off. “Go. And take that ghastly scent with you.”

  Maggie left for her apartment. She noticed Dyer Gossmer sitting on a wrought-iron bench, puffing on a vaping pen. He nodded a greeting. “I’m taking a break. I needed a smoke, but I didn’t want to burn the place down.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, especially considering vaping could kill you faster than cigarettes.”

  “Here’s hoping,” the glum writer said.

  “Can I ask you something about the restaurant business? I think I already know the answer but wouldn’t mind a second or third opinion.”

  “Shoot. And I mean that literally. I just read Kate’s notes on the chapters I gave her. I’m gonna have to type with one hand and hit the bottle with the other.”

  “Can chefs really steal each other’s recipes?”

  “Sure. It’s common practice. They try to pass it off as inspiration or an homage. But …” Dyer stopped to inhale, then released a cloud of smoke. “It’s a little different with Chanson. Chefs generally tinker with a recipe. Make it their own. Change the name. Not Chanson, at least not once he got famous. Too busy promoting himself to do the hard work of coming up with interesting new dishes. So, he began borrowing. He made a bad name for himself in New York, which is why he moved his operations here to Louisiana. Much easier when the recipes are generic like jambalaya or grits and grillades.”

  “Unless there’s a secret ingredient,” Maggie said, thinking of Ninette’s calas.

  “Oh, there are no secret ingredients with this guy. He’s a genius at sniffing them out. More than that, he’s got a way of knowing the exact amount to use, which is the real secret. Interesting stuff, huh?”

  “Very.”

  “Too bad I can’t use one word of it in his ‘autobiography.’ Or the fact that his last restaurant, Chanson’s LA in LA, bombed. The reviews were vicious. LA is all about hype. The minute there’s a stink on a place, it might as well have a communicable disease. Chanson couldn’t even get a real housewife or bachelorette to show
up and take a selfie.”

  Dyer took a big suck on his vape pen, held it in as long as he could, and then let the smoke burst out of him. Maggie coughed and batted it away. Her eyes watered. “I’m guessing you’ve got a personal interest in this question,” he said. “My advice is, forget it. There’s no going up against Nonstick.”

  * * *

  Following Dyer’s advice, Maggie dropped her concern about Ninette’s recipe and spent the next few days focusing on prepping the Doucet exhibit. She brought her portrait of Xander with her to work, where she could paint in secret. She was working on it when Ione came into her studio carrying a large arrangement of roses. “What are those?” she asked.

  “They came for you. I guess Bo’s getting an early start on Valentine’s Day.” Ione raised her eyebrows suggestively, much to Maggie’s embarrassment.

  She took the arrangement from her friend and placed it on a table in front of the large window that flooded the space with light. Maggie pulled a small card off a stanchion tucked among the roses and opened it. “Roses are red, violets are blue,” Maggie read. “This is the first of many gifts for you.”

  Ione crossed her arms in front of her chest and made a face. “A poet he ain’t.”

  “It’s not from him.” Maggie turned the card around to show Ione. “It’s signed, ‘From Your Secret Admirer.’ ”

  “Huh.” Ione took the card and examined it. “Well … maybe it’s from him pretending not to be him. It’s your first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. Maybe he wants to make a big deal out of it and build to some kind of surprise.”

  “That could be,” Maggie acknowledged. “I won’t say anything to him, at least not yet.”

  Her cell pinged. Ione gave a sly grin and wiggled her eyebrows again. “Maybe that’s your man seeing if you got any surprises today.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes as she checked her phone. “That’s strange,” she said. “It’s an alert from my bank. My overdraft protection kicked in. It shouldn’t have. I deposited my paycheck a few days ago.”

  “I hope it’s not a problem from our end.”