The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  “And what about that farrow stuff?” asked Heather, who was for once showing interest in Josh.

  “Well, I cooked it risotto style and served that with steamed salmon and a fennel-orange salad. I didn’t really know what to do with the food Gavin gave me. A mess of food like what he gave me doesn’t give you any freedom. It doesn’t let you show how good you really are. It shows what you can do with a restrained list of ingredients, but it really limits you. If you’re cooking in a restaurant, you won’t be working under those conditions, so I’m not sure how useful a mystery box like that was. But he obviously seemed happy enough with what I did to hire me. He’d seen my résumé and where I’d worked, so he knew I could cook. This was a way to see what I could do in unique circumstances, I guess.”

  “It sounds like you did a superior job, considering the food you were given. I love this concept of ‘auditioning’ for a chef position,” Mom said. “One thinks of ‘auditioning’ for the theater, but that’s really what you are doing. Trying out for the lead. And in order to get the part, you have to show off your performing arts talent! It’s wonderful!” Mom needed to lay off the wine; she was becoming a little too enthusiastic.

  “And so what will your schedule be?” Heather asked.

  Josh and Snacker looked at each other for a moment before Josh answered. “Probably six days until things get steady.” I guess they’d been trying to figure out who would deliver the bad news. “I’ll be off Mondays, and Snacker will be off Tuesdays.”

  My stomach dropped. Six days a week? What’s more, when classes were in session, I was cooped up with Naomi all day every Monday for my field placement. When was I ever going to see Josh?

  “That’ll just be temporary,” Josh said, mostly to me. I looked at him and tried to smile as though I completely understood and was prepared to be the ultimate trouper. “Gavin wants us both to have two days in a row off, but I know myself, and I won’t be comfortable until everything is running as cleanly as possible.”

  Noticing that I was likely to start wailing more loudly than even Lucy ever did, Dad jumped in. “Well, so, how is the menu coming? Are you all set?”

  “The New Year’s Eve menu is going to be a set menu with dishes from the regular menu, which is basically done, too. It’s a pretty big one. I think it’s too big, but Gavin wants it like that. Mostly he let me do what I want, except for what I refer to as the obligatory steak. Every restaurant I’ve worked at has insisted that there has to be some form of steak and potatoes on the menu. I love a good steak, but chefs everywhere are bored silly by having to cook it all the time. Anyhow, we’ll be open for lunch to get the shopping and business crowd, so we’ve got half of the dinner menu cut down into lunch-size dishes, plus sandwiches and stuff like that.”

  Crap. Open for lunch meant Josh would have to be there early. No more long mornings lounging around together. As much as he trusted Snacker, I knew that Josh would be there every day to prep for lunch. And wouldn’t be home until well after the last plate had gone out at night.

  “God, we have so much to do,” Josh said, leaning back in his chair. The weight of what he had taken on seemed finally to be hitting him. “Snack, do you know how to use that scheduling software I was telling you about?”

  Snacker shook his head. I knew Gavin had been installing all sorts of restaurant software on the computer that he and Josh would share. There seemed to be a program for everything: purchasing, recipes, inventory, and so on. Next to Ade, Josh was the least computer-literate person I knew.

  “With everything that goes on at a restaurant, how do you guys get breaks?” Ben asked, reaching for more of the delicious pork loin.

  “We don’t,” Josh said with some weird form of pride. “Most chefs don’t. You work from the minute you get there until after service. If things are slow, you take a few minutes to regroup and grab something to eat. I never eat a normal meal when I’m working. It’s just eat while you cook. Or sometimes you can make food for yourself and the staff around four o’clock or so, before the dinner rush, or after we close at night. The more you feed the staff, the happier they are, and the better job they do for you when you need them.”

  Josh was the kind of chef who worried more about his staff than about himself. He had the worst eating habits and would often eat nothing until late at night after he’d finished work. By then he’d be so hungry that he’d have a huge meal of food from the restaurant, or he and some friends would meet up in Chinatown and binge at Moon Villa. From what I could tell, most chefs ate terribly and lived with chronic heartburn.

  “So what about staffing?” Owen asked with his mouth full. “How many seats are there anyway?”

  “About eighty seats, with another twenty at the bar,” Josh told us. “And in the summer, we’ll open up the patio out front and fit another twenty-five there. The kitchen staff is basically me, Snacker, five other guys to work the line, and two dishwashers. Then there’s front-of-the-house staff. Cole, the general manager, three bartenders, two hostesses, and a bunch of servers.”

  This whole picture started to make me nervous. I was worried that I’d hardly ever see Josh and that when I finally did, he’d be exhausted and destitute. I reminded myself, though, that this job was an emotional and financial investment for everyone involved and that between Gavin’s drive, Josh’s food, and the unbelievable location, there was no way that Simmer could fail.

  Was there?

  EIGHT

  Hoping to get off the topic of the work that Josh and Snacker had ahead of them, I changed the subject to the comparatively neutral topic of Oliver’s murder. “So, has everyone seen the news today? There’s been a lot of coverage about what happened last night at the gallery.” I adjusted Lucy so that her head rested in the crook of my other arm. For a six-month-old baby, she was feeling pretty heavy.

  Josh jumped in. “Oh, yeah, Chloe. I forgot to tell you. Detective Hurley stopped in to Simmer today.”

  “Really? What did he want?”

  “He asked me a lot about the ingredients I was using last night. And, get this, he wanted to know if I’d been using any prepackaged food. Can you believe that? Like I had a box of frozen dinners I was heating up? I guess you could count the panko crumbs as prepackaged,” he admitted. “But nothing else. He also wanted to know if I’d seen anyone eating food other than what I’d been making, particularly snack foods. I think there must’ve been traces of some kind of food on Oliver’s body.”

  Prepackaged food. Hannah had been eating those silly snap pea snacks. Hurrah! She’d thrown the Robocoupe at Oliver’s head and then rubbed her green hands all over his body. I should’ve just left her in front of the police station to make her return trip there easier. She had killed Oliver! Hannah in the role of murderer was fine with me, even though I had no idea why she would’ve wanted to kill her wealthy employer, who was clearly taking good care of her. Or had someone else deliberately left trace evidence of green snap pea powder to implicate Hannah? Or the murderer was someone else who liked terrible food? If so, Barry, the victim’s partner, was off the hook. Barry had traveled all over the world in search of fine food, and at the Eliot Davis Gallery, he’d appreciated Josh’s beef medallions and the accompaniments; he certainly hadn’t helped himself to Heather’s nasty snap peas. Barry’s wife, Sarka, was emaciated. At the gallery, I’d wondered whether she had an eating disorder or a serious illness. In either case, it seemed unlikely that she’d been carrying around prepackaged snacks. Then there was Oliver’s widow, Dora, who looked yellowed and ghastly despite Adrianna’s efforts. Could an addiction to junk food account for her unhealthy appearance?

  Before I could begin to mull over possible motives, I was drawn back in to the dinner table conversation. My parents, Heather, Ben, Josh, and I simultaneously told the tale of last night’s murder to Owen, Ade, and Snacker, all of whom had had the good luck not to attend the ill-fated Food for Thought. I’d already given Adrianna some of the details, but my family loved narrating their own versions.


  “And then this young woman began shrieking …”

  “I did my best to recall where everyone was …”

  “Naomi was droning on and on …”

  “I spoke to one officer who wanted to know …”

  “Damn, I should’ve driven faster!” said Snacker. “Look what I missed! Could I have some more of those potatoes? This dinner is incredible.”

  “Well, thank you.” Mom passed him the dish. “Although we can’t take all the credit. We had to consult with Josh, who was kind enough to tell us in excruciating detail how to put the pork loin together.” She smiled at him. Cute! I didn’t know Josh had done that. At least my parents approved of Josh. Who cared what Heather thought?

  “Do we know what happens to the Full Moon Group now that Oliver’s dead?” my father asked the table.

  “Presumably Barry Fields takes over everything, right?” I guessed.

  “They probably had an insurance policy to cover this situation,” Owen said. Owen has tried out many jobs, including his most recent stint working on a blimp, and a few years ago worked for about six months at an insurance company. “It’s called a key man policy. You use it when you’ve got a relatively small business and you want to cover yourselves in case you lose a ‘key man,’ a crucial person without whom the business could collapse. They probably had key man insurance to cover the owners. You can use the insurance money to hire a replacement for the person who died, or you could buy out the shares of a business that were left to a family member. In some ways, it’s a pretty general policy, but it’s separate from regular life insurance.” Blah, blah, blah, boring, boring, boring. Thank God Owen didn’t work in insurance any longer. He did tend to change jobs faster than I could polish off a plate of Josh’s risotto, but at least most of his jobs were in fields more scintillating than insurance.

  “Speaking of jobs I’ve worked,” Owen added, “I wanted to announce that I accepted an offer today. I interviewed today to be a puppeteer’s assistant. Doesn’t that sound interesting?”

  Ade nearly choked on her food and looked at Owen as though he had utterly lost his mind. “Anyhow,” she said pointedly, obviously not wanting to discuss Owen’s latest radical change of career in front of everyone, “this Full Moon Group can keep everything going, and we can still go out for bad food and expensive drinks at the clubs.”

  “Unless Oliver was killed for this key man insurance money,” Josh added, “and Barry gets caught. Hard to run a bunch of clubs from a jail cell.”

  The idea of Barry as the murderer was an extremely disappointing one because it left Hannah completely out of the prison picture. But at least she wouldn’t have a job in Boston anymore and would move far, far away, not, as I envisioned it, back to New York, but to Tahiti, maybe, or South Africa or, ideally, Antarctica, where she might freeze to death. Yes, Hannah in Antarctica. I could live with that.

  But there was no reason to think that any of us at the table would be able to solve Oliver’s murder or that any of us had even seen his killer last night. The gallery had been crowded. Most of the people there had been strangers to all of us. Besides, anyone could have snuck into the back of the gallery through the back door that had been left open. The murderer might have slipped in and out without being seen by anyone at all.

  I finally returned Lucy to my sister and we wrapped up dinner. My hazelnut tart, which was topped with fresh whipped cream, got glowing reviews from the two chefs at the table. Obviously, I did not reveal that this was the second of two tarts I’d baked that day.

  We said our good-byes, and I reminded Adrianna that our visit to the shelter was tomorrow at one. In the morning—since “harassment doesn’t break for the holidays”—I’d have to face Naomi and hotline calls, but after lunch, I’d meet Adrianna at the shelter.

  Josh drove us back to my apartment, and although I was thrilled about his new job, I was still pretty worried that the fifteen minutes it took to drive from my parents’ house in Newton to my condo in Brighton would be the last time we’d be alone together until … well, until I didn’t know when. But we would have tonight. Snacker had insisted that Josh spend the night at my place, since the two of them would see plenty of each other at work. Snacker knew where his new apartment was, and Stein would be there to welcome him.

  “Josh,” I said when we got into bed, “I am really happy for you. Simmer is going to be so perfect. You’ve worked so hard, and you deserve this. Gavin obviously knows what he found in you, and he appreciates how talented you are.” I set the alarm to five thirty for Josh and turned the light off.

  “Yeah, we’ll see how everything goes. I wish we weren’t opening on New Year’s, because that adds more pressure to a first night, but it’ll all work out. Forty-eight hours from now, the opening will be over. Gavin’s a good guy. But he can be tough, and he definitely has set ideas about certain things.” Josh let out a big sigh and rolled over in bed to cuddle me.

  “Like what? The ‘obligatory steak’?” I asked. Then I kissed him.

  He kissed me back, slipped my T-shirt off, and moved on top of me.

  “You don’t want to know.” He slipped under the covers.

  I didn’t. No, not right now.

  NINE

  Ah, the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace! My home away from home. It was December 30, the morning of the day before New Year’s Eve. Why was I stuck spending school vacation here? I looked around at the dreary office, which showed evidence of my failed efforts to organize the Organization. I had arranged and rearranged the few pieces of furniture, attempted to file the millions of papers floating around the room, and lined up the shoe boxes that Naomi used for the few office supplies we had: four staplers, two tacks, seven thousand rubber bands, and a green pen. The monthly budget for office supplies was about three cents, and the board of directors had not approved my lively proposal to renovate the depressing two-room office. Envision an inspiring decor … tropical colors and accent lighting … Consider the research that demonstrates a strong correlation between the physical environment and emotional health … The board, however, had evidently decided that cheesy industrial felt carpeting, concrete walls, and battered cafeteria tables provided a work setting suitable for an agency devoted to helping the harassed. The board must have felt that since our hotline callers never saw us, the office could continue to look like a disaster area, and no one would be the wiser. In the hope of hanging one of my mother’s wreaths, which were hideous but colorful, I had tried to force a nail into the concrete. After many failed attempts with a power drill, I’d left a bent nail, sans wreath, hanging sadly from a concrete block.

  I scooted my chair closer to what served as my desk. The folding chairs and folding cafeteria tables gave the impression that we were some kind of covert agency that might suddenly need to pack up quickly and disappear. I picked up the phone to check for messages, found that there were none, and flopped back in my chair. As much as I griped about social work school and this internship—pardon me, field placement—I really did want to accomplish something while I was here and consequently found myself wishing that somebody would call for help. It seemed to me that very few people knew about this organization, whereas I was pretty no sure that throughout Greater Boston, women were being harassed at work and needed help. Nobody deserves to be frightened or, in some cases, terrorized at work. It occurred to me that if I didn’t loathe Hannah so much, I could pick her brain for marketing ideas to let women know that we were available. The one request of mine that the board had granted was for high-speed Internet access for the computer, so I speedily searched the Web for ways to “get the word out.”

  I had a few hours to kill before I had to go meet Adrianna, so I called Josh, who said I could pop into Simmer on my way.

  Just after I hung up, Naomi burst in the door. “Good morning, Chloe!” she said breathlessly, her arms laden with binders and notebooks. What she did with all these materials was beyond me.

  “Morning
, Naomi,” I said, quickly looking for something on my desk to suggest that I was engrossed in work and not fantasizing about what Josh might make me for lunch.

  “We obviously need to have a staff meeting after the horrible evening we experienced together. Let me put my things down, and then we’ll talk.” Uh-oh. I was in for one of Naomi’s “staff meetings,” which meant that the two of us would sit practically on top of each other and bare our souls.

  The phone rang. I hoped it was someone who’d need my help for the next hour. “Hello? Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace. How can I help you?” It had taken me months to get that greeting down pat. I’d suggested to Naomi that we simply call ourselves the BO, but, reasonably enough, she’d vehemently objected to the abbreviation. At least Naomi put up with my calling us the Organization. In return, the BO remained strictly my own unspoken name for our agency.

  “Good morning. Is Ms. Campbell in, please?” a male voice asked politely.

  “One moment, please, and I’ll connect you.” I always liked to give the impression we were a huge company and that I would have to transfer the call through a complicated phone system to track down the person being called.

  “Naomi, it’s for you,” I called into our only other room, the office where Naomi kept her desk. Hers, much to my annoyance, was actually a desk and not a folding cafeteria table. Maybe one day I would qualify for real furniture, too!

  “Oh, hi!” Had she just giggled? “One minute.” My supervisor had the nerve to shut the door between our two rooms. I knew it! She had a romance brewing! And with a man! Maybe I would use our staff meeting to investigate Naomi’s love life.

  Moments later, Naomi reentered the main room, attempting to hide a smile. “Okay, let’s get going here.”