The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  “And,” she continued, “he wanted to know about that Veronica, that, uh, girl Eric was seeing before he met you. I told him the truth, which is that Veronica was a gold-digging tramp and that she probably murdered our son once she … well, once he broke things off with her.”

  “When exactly was that?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, dear. He wasn’t seeing her when you two started dating. I suppose it was about six weeks or so before he died. I know you two hadn’t known each other long, but when it’s right, it’s right. We didn’t even know he’d been seeing someone else after her—you, of course, as we know now. But Eric was probably afraid to introduce us to you after the Veronica fiasco. We all despised her. In fact, we had just found out about you the day he died. I’d spoken to him on the phone earlier in the day, and he told me that he was taking a young woman named Chloe to dinner. He said you’d been out together a bunch of times and that he was absolutely smitten.” Mrs. Rafferty’s eyes twinkled at the memory of that last phone call. “I just know you two would have been together forever.”

  “That’s enough, Sheryl.” Phil, who struck me as the more grief-stricken of the parents, looked miserable. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Can we just get through dinner, please?”

  I excused myself to use the bathroom but just needed a breather. Eric, it seemed, had invented a relationship with me and had lied to his parents, probably because he’d wanted to convince them that he was hooked up with someone other than the despised Veronica. Sheryl had not only believed him but had gone on to fantasize about our supposed romance and to cultivate the image of her son heading down the road toward blissful matrimony.

  Only when I’d walked out of the dining room did I realize that I had no idea where the bathroom was. I wandered through the living room and once again glanced into the study, where a computer screen illuminated the stacks of boxes. If I was going to play the amateur crime-solver, I was obliged to take a quick peek in there, wasn’t I?

  I stuck my head in the study and looked around. Only a few yards from where I stood was a rolltop desk on which rested a computer and a phone. The monitor told me that someone, Phil or Sheryl, was in the middle of losing a game of hearts and favored a tropical fish desktop theme. Most of the desk’s surface was thick with piles of bills and torn-open business envelopes. Immediately recognizable were envelopes from the same bank I used and bills from the same cable and electricity companies that sometimes dunned me for overdue payments. My own desk was often cluttered with unpaid bills, but even at my most impoverished or lazy, I’d never begun to create anything remotely like this picture of financial disaster. How could the wealthy Raffertys have fallen so behind in paying their bills?

  I tiptoed to the desk and took a peek at a bank statement that was lying open across one of the stacks.

  It was Eric’s bank statement. Maybe I could find out how rich he’d really been.

  I held the green paper close to the light from the monitor and scanned it as quickly as I could. The late-August date showed that it was the most recent statement.

  And Eric had been nearly broke. His final balance barely broke seven hundred dollars. I looked around quickly and grabbed an envelope from a credit card company. The account was also Eric’s. He’d owed a whopping amount of money for just that one card, an amount that did not, of course, include all the bills for utilities, other credit cards, and who knew what else. Oh, and his car was about to be repossessed.

  I left the study and headed back to the dining room. Although I hadn’t had time to think through the meaning of Eric’s debt, my new knowledge was giving me the creeps. The last thing I wanted to do was hang around here with the Raffertys for the rest of the evening.

  I stood in the dining room doorway and stared at the Rafferty family. “I’m so sorry,” I announced. “I’m not feeling well. I think I have to leave. Thank you for dinner.” Pivoting smoothly, I made for the front door.

  Having caught up with me, Sheryl had to rush to keep up. “Chloe? Are you all right?”

  “I’m just feeling sick. Probably all the stress. I need to go home and lie down. Thank you again for dinner.” I barreled out and practically ran to my car.

  I turned the key in the ignition, locked the doors, and sped down Brattle Street. Eric was broke. More than broke. In serious debt. Probably on the verge of bankruptcy. And he was planning to invest in Essence? I’d been convinced that he’d had money to invest. Had he successfully deceived his parents as well? When had Phil and Sheryl Rafferty discovered the truth about the dismal state of Eric’s finances? Had they known all along? Or found out only after his death?

  I fumbled in my purse for my cell phone and called Josh, who picked up almost immediately. I could hear the noise from Magellan’s kitchen in the background.

  “Chloe?” Josh asked.

  “Yeah, I just left dinner.”

  “So you’re okay? I was worried about you. But since you’re all right, did you find out anything useful?” Josh asked over the banging of pots and the sound of running water.

  “Well, they didn’t exactly throw down their forks and confess to killing Eric, but I did find out something interesting. It looks like Eric was broke.”

  “That’s impossible. Eric ate out all the time, he drove a nice car, and he was going to put all that money into Essence. Besides, he bragged about his financial-planning business all the time. He said he could hardly keep up with all his clients.”

  “He may have spent money like he was loaded, but I saw his bank statement at the Raffertys. His account is nearly empty. He could’ve had other bank accounts, but I don’t think so, Josh. There were piles of unpaid bills in his name. His car was going to be repossessed. And he had the biggest credit card bill I’ve ever seen.”

  “His parents told you all this?” To someone in the kitchen, he shouted, “I haven’t boned it yet.”

  “Um, no,” I admitted. “They didn’t tell me. I kind of snooped in their study. Very briefly, though. I didn’t see everything that was there. When I excused myself from the table, I said I had to go to the bathroom, so I didn’t want to stay away too long.”

  “Chloe! What if they’d seen you?”

  “Too late now. I ran out right after that. I said I wasn’t feeling well. Anyway, Eric was broke!”

  “Chloe,” Josh said in disbelief, “do you realize what this means? Eric conned Tim. He never could’ve invested in Essence. Do you think Tim found out?”

  “I have no idea. I haven’t had time to put any of the pieces together. But, hey, don’t say anything to anybody about this yet, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. Of course not,” Josh agreed. “I’m coming!” Josh hollered away from the mouthpiece. “It’s in the walk-in.” To me, he said, “Listen, I have to go. The kitchen is out of control tonight. I have to work tomorrow, too, actually, because we’ve got another party coming in, but I’m still cooking dinner for you on Monday, right?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “I can’t wait.”

  I sighed and continued my drive home. Cursing chefs’ hours, I went to bed early and slept late. Alone, of course. I spent Sunday working my way through the long list of required readings for school and writing a short paper for my General Practice class. In the paper, I was supposed to address how my newly defined sense of self as a social worker had shifted my thinking, heightened my awareness, and impacted daily interactions with those around me. Impacted daily interactions! That’s a direct quote. Ugh. I turned out four pages of bull in an hour. But I have to admit that as I did the required readings and wrote the paper, it occurred to me that if I’d been taking my classes seriously, I could’ve improved the interviewing and information-gathering techniques I’d been using with my … clients. Well, not clients, exactly. In fact, not clients at all. The Raffertys. Anyway, if I’d followed the standard intake format we were being taught in class, I’d have learned about their physical health, socioeconomic status, and family trees. I might even have been able to entice Eric’s
parents into revealing the details of their history with Eric, their parenting experiences, and their mental complexities. My thought processes momentarily halted. Did a couple so exceedingly boring actually have mental complexities? I nonetheless resolved to take my educational endeavors more seriously than I’d been doing.

  With that resolution in mind, I headed off the next morning to face Naomi, the minioffice, and harassment of employers about sexual harassment. On the T ride downtown, I even tried to convince myself that I enjoyed being packed like a smiling sardine among cranky commuters.

  Naomi was barely visible behind her desk, the top of which held about six thousand manila folders. “Is that you, Chloe? How are you?” Braided as ever, she emerged, walked toward me with open arms, and embraced me. Energized as I was about learning what social work school had to teach—and not knowing what else to do—I hugged her back.

  “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Wonderful. I think we should start each day with a hug and a short staff meeting about our inner goals for the day. This is a stressful line of work, and we need to begin with all our emotional ducks in a row, don’t you think?”

  I suppressed the impulse to quack.

  Naomi smiled broadly and pulled two chairs together so that they faced each other with little space in between. “Okay, now grab a seat, and we’ll get started.”

  Braids, I thought, must have taken too many antidepressants. Empathic social worker that I was becoming, I played along. We took our seats, our knees practically pressing together.

  “Now,” Braids began, “I myself am not a terribly religious person.” She brought her hand to her chest. “But I still take the time every morning to thank a higher power for giving me the strength to rise to the challenges I face every day here at this organization.” She took my hands in hers and closed her eyes. “I’m so grateful for the opportunity to work with Chloe. I welcome her today, and every day, as we share in our determination to protect the women of Boston from hostile work environments. I will work hard to be the best possible supervisor I can be, and I will put aside my own troubles while I help women whose needs are greater than mine.”

  She opened her eyes and pursed her lips as if to contain overwhelming emotion. Were those tears in her eyes? She squeezed my hands and let out an enormous breath. “Okay. Now, your turn. If you’re religious, you’re free to say a prayer if you’d like.”

  “Oh, no thanks. Um,” I stammered. There were probably thousands of traditional thank-you prayers and asking-for-strength prayers out there, not one of which I knew. I closed my eyes and did my best. “I, as well, am grateful for the opportunity to work with you. And I, as well, want to have my emotional ducks nicely aligned so that I may perform to my full capacity as a social worker.” I opened one eye to see Naomi swell with pride at my willingness to expose my inner self.

  “Wonderful!” she leaned over and gave me another hug. “Now, on with our day!”

  I spent a good part of the morning pretending to organize the filing cabinets and reviewing procedures for answering the hotline calls I had so far avoided.

  Naomi was on the phone when the dreaded hotline phone rang. I glanced over at my supervisor, who was in the middle of informing a caller that the practice of referring to female employees as “babes” was outrageous and unacceptable, and needed to be stopped immediately. It belatedly occurred to me that when I’d been invited to pray, I should’ve asked God to divert Naomi’s attention from comparatively minor deviations from feminist ideals and toward the existence of genital mutilation and other truly horrifying crimes against women. She looked up at me and signaled me to pick up the call.

  I lifted the receiver from the ancient-looking phone. “Hello? Boston Organization Against Sexual Harassment and Other … Things.” What the hell were we called?

  “Hi, this is Ellen,” a young-sounding voice told me. “I spoke with Naomi a few weeks ago about my problems at work, but I wanted to see if I could talk to her again.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said with relief. “She’s busy right now. Can I take a message?”

  “No, Chloe,” Naomi called from her desk. “You take it. You can do it! You’re ready!” Then she returned to her own call.

  “Naomi is on another line,” I told Ellen. “But she asked me to try to help you.” Feeling a little panicky, I scrambled to find my oversized binder with its hotline-call instructions. “Um, can you tell me what’s wrong at your workplace?”

  Ellen proceeded to tell me about her job as an office assistant for a small private law firm in Needham. There were three male lawyers, and Ellen was the assistant to one of them. Although she loved her work, got along well with the two other lawyers and their female assistants, and wanted to keep her job, her boss was a dirtbag. He made passes at her, told offensive jokes, and showed her his favorite pictures from the latest Penthouse.

  “I did everything Naomi told me to do. I documented every incident on my computer and then printed it out and mailed a copy to myself. I told him clearly that his actions made me uncomfortable and that he needed to stop. But then he tried to make me sit on his lap while he dictated a letter, and that was the last straw. The firm is so tiny that we don’t have a human resources department I can turn to for help. And the other girls don’t want to help because they like their jobs and their bosses. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to go to the police, because I don’t have any real proof. Besides, he says he’s just joking around and doesn’t mean any harm.”

  Oh God, how could I help this poor woman? I flipped to the appropriate section of instructions in my binder and desperately tried to imagine what Braids would say. “Well, okay. Ellen, my name is Chloe, and I work with Naomi,” I said as I scanned the page for advice. “Have you thought about trying to get together with the other women from the firm outside of the office?” Ellen used the word girls, but I wanted to spare Naomi a fit of feminist apoplexy. “Maybe you could meet in a neutral setting so you could explain how truly upsetting your boss’s actions are to you. See if you can elicit some help from your coworkers. Maybe they could talk to the other lawyers in the practice?”

  “I can try, but to be honest, I just don’t think that’s going to help,” Ellen said sadly.

  Naomi walked by me, gave me the thumbs-up sign, and headed out the door.

  “All right, look,” I said to the harassed Ellen, “Naomi would kill me if she heard me, but I don’t think that’s going to work either. So, as I see it, you have two choices. The first is to tell this idiot off, quit, and get the hell out of there. There’s no reason you should have to put up with him.”

  “Yeah, except the pay is good, and I don’t have that much work experience, so I don’t think I could get another job like this.”

  “Got it. Well, then, if I were you, the next time he makes a pass at you or whatever, you accidentally-on-purpose kick him solidly in the crotch, apologize profusely, and go about your business. If he says anything, you insist that you didn’t mean any harm. Do that two or three times, and I’ll bet he backs off. It’s simple behavioral conditioning. Punish bad behavior!”

  “You think that will work?” Ellen asked.

  “Good chance it will. Call me back and let me know how it goes.”

  “I definitely will! Thank you so much for all your help and for listening to me. It feels good just being able to talk about it with someone who understands.”

  As I hung up, I felt more than pleased with myself. Finally, this poor woman had been given some sensible advice!

  Naomi returned a few minutes later. “Chloe, I am so proud of you. You handled that call like a real professional,” she gushed. “Doesn’t it feel wonderful to help someone?”

  “Yes. I really think I did help,” I agreed.

  I worked on my field placement journal by faking some new entries. “Am in charge of all harassment hotline calls now and am struggling to maintain professional distance while providing empathic ear to distressed callers. Am following guideli
nes well and developing more confidence in own abilities to handle calls independently. Also working on defining own personal counseling style as advised in General Practice class. Building strong relationship with wonderful supervisor.”

  While Naomi was on a bathroom break, I also put in a call to Detective Hurley. I got his voice mail and left a message to inform him that Eric Rafferty had been horribly in debt and would not have been in a position to invest in a hot dog stand much less in a fancy restaurant. I felt sure that the detective would later thank me for my brilliant discovery.

  After telling Naomi that I wanted to do research on the Internet about my field placement, I ducked out of the office early. The real story was, I wanted to make a trip to CVS to buy condoms for my date with Josh.

  I hit the local CVS in Cleveland Circle and, as discreetly as possible, dropped a big package of Trojans in my basket. Better to stock up now than to have to repeat the mortification of sliding birth control across the counter to some smirking teenage cashier. I browsed the aisles in search of anything to cover up the lifetime supply of condoms. The razor blades I added to the basket were too small to hide anything. But look at that! A wonderful new alternative to shaving! The product, a Smoothie Pad, was a small exfoliating cloth that promised to rub the hair off with no messy shaving cream, no nicks, and no painful wax. Yes! I could hardly wait to get home to Smoothie Pad away all unwanted body hair and be all silky for Josh tonight.

  When I walked past Eagles’, Stein was by the window. So happily preoccupied was I that I raised the CVS bag up as I waved to Josh’s roommate. He waved back and then smiled broadly. No wonder. The damn see-through bag had prominently revealed enough condoms to halve the birthrate throughout Greater Boston for the next ten years. Blood rushed to my face. Stein must’ve assumed that I’d been flaunting the contents of the bag. Oh God. Any explanation I could offer would make matters worse. What’s more, if I went inside the deli, I’d either have to carry the bag with me, its contents plainly visible, or park it outside and then retrieve it when I left as if I were a madwoman who’d mistaken a wholesale purchase of Trojans for her bicycle.