The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  “Now, even if they say no at first, you should always make a follow-up call,” Naomi instructed. “Every organization is required to have a sexual harassment policy, but not many places know how to educate their employees properly.”

  “So you want me to harass them about their harassment policy?” I suggested. My new boss glared at me. I couldn’t blame her for feeling disappointed in the quality of student she’d been assigned. “Um, who else will I be working with?” I asked.

  “Well, we have some volunteers who come in sometimes during the week to help out. And there’s a board that meets once a month in the evenings, so you’ll get to meet all those folks when you come to those. But for now, we’re a small group.” She smiled at me.

  “So, it’s pretty much just you and me?”

  “We’re a nonprofit organization, and at this point we don’t have the funds to pay for any other staff. But maybe that’s a project you’d like to take on while you’re here. Fund-raising. Fund-raising and getting the word out about our organization.” Organization was a generous term for this one-woman operation, but Naomi had to think positively, I supposed.

  We finished up with Naomi leaving me a big, fat folder detailing the history of the organization and the procedure for handling hotline calls. She said I could tackle the material when I returned on Monday. I didn’t see why I couldn’t take this bad boy home with me and read it in front of Days of Our Lives next week, but I just nodded and smiled and otherwise did my best to look breathless with expectation about my new line of work. How I was going to survive the year cooped up in this little room with Naomi was beyond me. “See you Monday,” I called with false cheer as I swiftly made my exit.

  I’m free! I’m free! On to my weekend! Oh, damn. I had Eric’s funeral tomorrow. What was happening to my life?

  I found my car in the lot and felt grateful that I’d had the foresight to park in a garage. Even though Friday afternoon traffic in Boston was going to be rough and I probably could have made it home faster on the T, this way I could be alone in the car rather then pushed up against some smelly frat boy starting his night early. I pulled up to the parking booth and handed over my ticket. “Fourteen dollars,” the burly woman in the booth called out.

  “That can’t be right. I was only here for, like, an hour?”

  “Fourteen dollars,” she repeated sternly.

  I sighed and reached inside my purse for my wallet, where I found nine dollars. It’d been a while since I’d parked downtown, but it didn’t seem possible that it could cost this much. I leaned out the window. “Um, I only have nine dollars in cash. Can I use a credit card?”

  “Cash only.” She laughed and shook her head at my naïveté about the big city.

  “Okay, well, let me just pull back into one of those spaces, and I’ll go to an ATM.” What a nuisance.

  “Sorry. Those spaces are reserved. And this ramp is a one-way, anyhow.” She was having more fun by the minute.

  “I can’t just pull into one of those spots for five minutes while I get some money?”

  She shook her head firmly. I looked at her in disbelief. What was she going to do? Keep me hostage here in the garage until money magically appeared in my purse?

  “Should I just leave my car here then?”

  “If you’d like me to have you towed, sure, go ahead.”

  I should’ve strangled her, but I’d seen enough murder for one week. Dammit. I started rummaging around my car looking for change. I finally pulled together another two dollars and forty cents and offered up my findings in the hope of release.

  “Honey, you’re still short over two bucks. Can’t let you go.”

  I snarled at her and continued ripping apart my car for money. I even climbed into the backseat, pulled up the floor mats, and dug in between the seats, where, to my delight, I uncovered some additional change, including a couple of quarters covered with a revolting semisoft crud. Still, money was money, and I’d found enough to get me out of there. Smiling smugly, I handed my encrusted findings to the beast in the booth.

  She peered at the coins and looked up at me with satisfaction. “I can’t take two of these quarters. They’re Canadian.”

  For a few seconds, I hated Canada. Then I revved my engine and shot the woman a menacing glare that apparently persuaded her to end the battle. She let me go.

  I wormed my way out into the downtown traffic and poked through it feeling sorry for myself. On the radio, horrible Mariah Carey shrilled the message that love takes time, and I felt myself drift back into that teenage stage of dreaming about young love and first kisses, and dancing in the school gym to Jamie Walters, Color Me Badd, and other musical mistakes of the early nineties. Had the dreams been mistakes, too? If not, when was I going to meet my true love? Where was my sweaty hunk? When was I going to make out to “Stairway to Heaven”? It was probably going to be a high school dance song until the next millennium, so even now, long after high school, there was still time, wasn’t there? Okay, I did dance to that song once in tenth grade with Billy Lajewski, but that damn Billy warned me at the beginning of the song that because it was really long, he wouldn’t be able to dance with me through its entirety. And even with only half a song, he’d had plenty of time to kiss me, which he hadn’t, so “Stairway to Heaven” didn’t count at all. I’d been so hopeful back then that I’d find a perfect love or that I’d at least tumble so quickly from one passionate relationship to another that I’d barely have time to catch my breath. So far, I was not living up to my high-school expectations. And that just about defines failure, doesn’t it?

  EIGHT

  Saturday morning marked the one-week anniversary of Noah’s philandering and my Internet dating error. The one-week anniversary of my enrollment in nightmarish social work school was approaching. Yay. And I had Eric’s funeral today. Yay, again.

  I called up Adrianna to find out what to wear. “If I were you, I’d wear something loud and obnoxious, gobs of makeup, and big hair. Don’t play into their impression of you as the grieving girlfriend.”

  Ade could’ve pulled it off, but I went ahead and scrounged up something that my mother would have deemed appropriate: black pants, sleeveless black top, and black blazer, all in different shades of black, since God forbid that I ever get it together to take things to the dry cleaner’s and prevent all my clothes from fading. The day was gorgeous and sunny, and I’d have to spend most of it dealing with the Raffertys while sweating in black. But between rescuing Oops paint and consoling the Raffertys, I felt as though social workers far and wide would be proud of me.

  I found the funeral home in Cambridge with no problem. Reluctant to commit even my car to the Raffertys, I avoided the funeral home’s lot, parked on the street, and fed the meter. After last night’s fiasco with the parking booth bitch, I had actually remembered to bring quarters. So here was my plan: I’d sit through the funeral service, make proper remarks to fellow mourners, briefly stop by the Raffertys’ after the service, and run home to change my phone number so they couldn’t find me ever again.

  I entered the funeral home through big wooden doors. A man in a suit asked for my name and then quickly escorted me down the aisle. The room was about half full, mostly with middle-aged people. My usher took me through the main room to the first row and presented me to a scrawny, pale woman in an expensive-looking black dress. “Ma’am? Ms. Carter has arrived.”

  “Darling, I’m Mrs. Rafferty. I cannot believe we’re meeting under these circumstances.” Eric’s mother leaned into me and wrapped me tightly in her bony arms. She eventually pulled back, but kept her grip on my upper arms and stared at me. “Oh, you must just be sick about all this.” Sheryl Rafferty had carefully styled gray-blonde hair. She’d managed to pull herself out of her grief long enough to accessorize with elegant jewelry and to put on makeup, but her perfectly applied blush didn’t hide her fatigue and obvious sorrow. She turned to the man next to her. “Dear, this is Eric’s fiancée.” Either Eric had been a pathological
liar, or Sheryl Rafferty had gone psychotic following her son’s death. “Chloe, this is Phil, Eric’s father.”

  Phil Rafferty was quite a handsome man, probably in his early sixties, with a full head of jet black hair, a color that wasn’t, I guessed, natural. The problem with men like this is that they don’t have the sense to just go ahead and dye their eyebrows to match their dyed hair. I mean, really, who has black hair and gray eyebrows? Mr. Rafferty looked as haggard as his wife but hadn’t gotten it together enough to look as collected as she. His tie was askew, his shirt rumpled, and his fake-black hair uncombed.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I offered meekly.

  Mr. Rafferty practically fell onto me as he threw his arms around my neck and pulled me toward him. Ah, whiskey breath. That could explain his disheveled appearance. The poor man started sobbing as he hugged me tightly. At a loss about what to do, I lightly patted his back.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead. I can’t,” he cried. This hardly seemed the same loud-spoken man I’d talked to on the phone yesterday. But grief hits people in different ways and at different times, and I was sure that the morning whiskey hadn’t improved this man’s ability to cope with pain. “Thank God that damn Veronica hasn’t shown up. I was afraid she’d try to make this day worse than it already is and come in here screaming and crying and making a big scene and saying how much she and Eric loved each other. I would’ve had to have her thrown out. I’m so glad you don’t have to see that stupid bitch and listen to her lies.” Actually, Veronica was beginning to sound pretty entertaining. And she could’ve taken the focus off me.

  Sheryl tugged me away from Phil’s grip. “You’ll sit with the family, of course, Chloe.” Of course I would: no hiding in the back pew by myself. Sheryl introduced me to some aunts, uncles, and cousins sitting nearby. “Now, we’ve had Eric cremated.” Sheryl paused as if uncertain about how to continue. “You can see the urn right up there among the daylilies. After the service, we’ll take him home where he belongs. Oh, here comes the minister. Should be a lovely service. Just what Eric would have wanted.” She patted my knee as I sat down between her and her husband.

  The minister began speaking about Eric. I thought I might learn a little something about who this dead man was, but the minister’s eulogy consisted mainly of general remarks about death and loss, many of which were drowned out by Phil’s choked crying. I found myself checking my watch. I did perk up, though, when the minister began to speak about Eric’s love of food. The minister evidently knew Eric quite well. He discussed Eric’s interest in investing in Essence (“sure to be a huge success”) and then read an alphabetical list of Eric’s favorite foods. By the time he hit wasabi, I was losing interest again. Finally, he introduced Madeline Rock, owner of the famous Magellan restaurant.

  I brightened up and looked to my left as an attractive woman rose from her seat and took center stage. She was wearing what Adrianna had told me to wear. This restaurant diva strutted confidently up to the podium in a blue wraparound dress, high heels, and a silver necklace. Madeline had long brown hair that she had pulled back in an elegant knot tied at the base of her neck—hard to pull off unless you had the stunning face and body she did: beautiful ivory skin, shapely legs, and perfect breasts. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to admire or detest her. She arranged herself in front of the audience and somehow managed to look sensational without appearing disrespectful.

  “As we all know, Eric loved the restaurant world. He was a big fan of my restaurant, Magellan, and was a frequent diner at my establishment. When Tim and I owned Magellan together, we used to joke that Eric was like an unpaid member of the staff. He adored the smells and sounds and sights of a bustling restaurant on a Saturday night. He loved the chaos and the excitement and the energy that came from a successful restaurant. Our staff knew his favorite dishes and could always count on him to order that evening’s special. I remember the night we ran the duck marinated in Calvados with Bhutanese red rice, pearl onions, and apple-pear chutney. He was so thrilled with the dish he thumped the table with his hand and yelled, ‘That’s how you do it!’”

  I heard some laughs and murmurs of understanding among the mourners. Way to kick this funeral into high gear, Madeline.

  She continued, “And that’s the Eric we’ll all miss. His enthusiasm and support were unmatched. I don’t think Tim and I would have survived the ups and downs of the past few years without Eric’s positive energy. When Timothy looked into opening his new restaurant, Essence, I know how much Eric wanted to be part of that opening and that partnership. And now that Eric is gone, we must continue to support Essence as Tim and his crew work to make it a restaurant Eric would have been proud of.”

  Now that was pretty generous of her. From what I knew, restaurants opened and closed faster than you could say, “Check, please,” so encouraging diners to go to the competition was admirable. But Eric had said that Tim and Madeline had had an amicable divorce. It seemed to be true. Madeline smiled affectionately at Timothy, who was seated beside her empty seat. “Now I know this a difficult day for us all, but I think the best way to remember Eric is to enjoy what Eric enjoyed—food. So the chefs at Magellan have prepared some of Eric’s favorite dishes, and the Raffertys have kindly invited us back to their house, where I hope we can all benefit from the healing power of gourmet food and share memories of Eric together. Thank you.” Madeline finished her speech and returned to her seat right next to Tim. They looked so perfect together that I couldn’t imagine what had broken them up.

  Sheryl and Phil each held one of my hands as the minister continued the service. After thirty more minutes and four more speakers who waxed poetic on Eric’s seemingly endless appetite for cuisine, I was starving. When things finally wrapped up, I asked Sheryl for directions to their house. “Oh, just leave your car here. You can ride back with Phil and me, and someone will drive you back here when the party’s over.”

  Party? Interesting choice of word, but the idea was, after all, to celebrate Eric’s life. Odd, though. There was no way I was going to be stuck in a car with these loons and then get trapped at their house—that would totally ruin my getaway plan.

  “Oh, it’s okay. I can drive myself. Just give me directions,” I said hopefully.

  “Nonsense. You’re too upset to drive,” she insisted.

  I dutifully stayed with my dead date’s parents as they hugged and exchanged proper words with the funeral attendees. Mrs. Rafferty left briefly to retrieve the cobalt blue glass urn that now held her son’s ashes, and then we made our way out to their car.

  “Chloe, dear, would you please hold Eric for me. I’m so upset I’m afraid I may drop him.”

  Her fear was, I thought, justified not only because she was shaky but because the urn was fragile. About twelve inches high and six inches wide, it looked liked a flower vase inexplicably topped with a lid. Fortunately, its blue glass was opaque. Still, gross, gross, gross! I should have been grateful that there was no revolting graveside service or, God forbid, an open casket, but holding human remains was still pretty vile.

  “Sure,” I relented. I tentatively took the urn from her and felt my stomach roll over. I was not going to make it all the way to the Raffertys’ house holding this thing, What if the top came off and I got sprinkled with Eric’s ashes? What if we had an accident and the vase shattered? As we turned the corner at the end of the street, I placed Eric, so to speak, next to me in the rear driver’s side seat and buckled him in with the seat belt. There. Safe and secure. Sheryl Rafferty turned her head around and stared at me in horror and disappointment, clearly hoping I’d have held her beloved in my arms.

  The Raffertys and I, with Eric in his urn, made a silent fifteen-minute drive to an upscale section of Cambridge and parked in their driveway off Brattle Street. Their house was phenomenal. Really phenomenal, like old-money phenomenal. A massive old gray Victorian, the house was surrounded by a fence with an electronic gate that let us in to park. The yard was beautifully lands
caped with late-blooming flowers. A bright yellow Nissan Xterra was parked next to us. I hopped out of the car quickly before anyone made me carry what was left of Eric and waited while Phil Rafferty reached in the backseat to unbuckle his son.

  I followed the Raffertys inside the house, which had crown molding, hardwood floors, and high ceilings. Mrs. Rafferty excused herself to go to the kitchen to check on the food preparations. Mr. Rafferty led me to the living room to await the arrival of the other guests. He placed Eric’s ashes on the mantlepiece, presumably to give everyone a view of the guest of honor. We sat uncomfortably together on an antique couch while I tried to think of something to say.

  “It was a lovely service. I’m sure it was just what Eric would have wanted,” I managed. A fresh crying fit overcame Phil, and I looked around the room, hopelessly wishing someone would come and rescue me.

  Someone did. Madeline swooped in through the front door. “Oh, Phil. I am so sorry for your loss,” she said as she crossed the room and seated herself in an armchair near us. “This is a terrible day for you. Why don’t you go freshen up and splash some water on your face. I’ll make sure there’s hot coffee waiting for you when you get back.” Phil nodded, rose numbly from the couch, and plodded across the room to the staircase. Madeline turned to me. “Hi, I’m Madeline Rock.” She stretched her hand out to mine. “Call me Maddie.”

  “I’m Chloe Carter. Nice to meet you. Eric spoke very highly of you.”

  “So you and Eric were …?” she started.

  “Honestly, no. But I can’t seem to get anyone to understand that. I was on a blind date with him the night he died, but somehow everyone seems to think we were much more. His parents seemed so excited about the idea, I just haven’t had the heart to try to clear things up.”