The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  Next I checked voice messages. The first was from the lawyer in charge of Uncle Alan’s estate, and this lawyer apparently had time to do things other than send e-mails to friends making up stories about his exes. His message was an unamusing lecture reminding me yet again that the credit card I had been given was strictly for the purpose of buying myself school-related items. He remained irrationally convinced that Williams-Sonoma, Gap, and J. Crew sold nothing related to social work.

  The next message was from Sean. “Chloe, I really need to see you. It’s important. Can you call me back as soon as you get this?” I jotted down his number on the back of a gas bill and sighed. Clearly, Sean had seen me and was bowled over by an intense desire to reunite with his past love. Did I really want to call him back? I decided to start dinner and mull over the question.

  I opened the fridge to see what I could throw together and had to fish through a whole mess of other food to find what I wanted. Josh had stocked my fridge with what seemed like hundreds of free samples of food he’d been given by purveyors. When restaurants need food, they don’t go to supermarkets; rather, they get deliveries from meat, fish, vegetable, dry goods, and alcohol companies, among others. And even when a restaurant was all set up with its purveyors, representatives from rival companies stopped in periodically to try to win the restaurant’s business by dropping off packaged samples of products. Some samples were ordinary things like chicken breasts and sirloin steaks, but others were fancy cuts of meat and various high-end products that Josh didn’t need. I now had ten individual-sized packets of gourmet pasta, including one of black-and-white-striped ravioli stuffed with lobster, and another of Gorgonzola and roasted red pepper tortellini; two sealed bags of ground lamb; a Cornish hen; venison sausage; a package of pork chops; and an unidentifiable duck part. When Josh gave me samples, I usually threw them into the freezer, which was now crowded with them. Once I’d sorted everything out, I happily realized that I had all the ingredients for one of my favorite winter dishes.

  I started to assemble ingredients: kielbasa, onions, garlic, white beans, canned tomatoes, kale, chicken broth, and a variety of dried herbs from the spice rack. “That Kielbasa Thing,” as I ineloquently referred to it, was a thick, delicious, hearty, comforting stew. It was not named something like Kielbasa Surprise, because I avoid cooking or eating anything called a festival, a carnival, a medley, a party, or, especially, a surprise. In my experience, Pasta Surprise all too often means Surprise! There are jelly beans in your macaroni! Furthermore, festivals, carnivals, surprises, and such reminded me of the disaster known as Recipes and Memories of the Carter Family, which was a nightmare collection of supposedly touching stories and secret recipes gathered by some distant relative of my father’s. My parents, Heather, and I had each felt obliged to fork over twenty-five dollars for the small three-ring binder that contained mysteries of the Carter clan. When the book arrived, I opened the binder and immediately found a hint of problems to come. Paper-clipped to the title page was a small sheet with the heading, “Errors Discovered After Cookbook Returned from Publisher.” When making the King Ranch Chicken, I should not use ½ cup of chili powder, but 1 teaspoon. The Popcorn Cake recipe required an angel food cake pan and not an angle food pan. The Bundt Cake Supreme-O needed ¾ cup water, not the “¾ bunches of water” called for in the book. When I made Outdoor Cooking Banana Boats, I was not to be confused by the phrase “with o cutting,” which should be read as “without cutting.” Whew!

  The book included the following gastronomic calamities: Magic Marshmallow Crescent Puffs, Centipede Surprise, Pretzel Salad, Dishpan Cookies, and Old-Timer’s Soggy Cherry Cake. Million Dollar Salad was made from canned cherry pie filling, canned crushed pineapple, Cool Whip, condensed milk, and, anomalously, a fresh ingredient, namely, bananas. When I bravely showed Josh the cookbook, he was admirably tactful. His only comment was that Fritos did not belong in a cheesecake.

  A chapter devoted to cooking tips and household hints advised the reader to dress up buttered, cooked vegetables with canned French-fried onions and never to use soda to keep vegetables green because it destroys vitamin C. I learned that instant coffee mixed with a little water makes a great paste for cleaning wood furniture and that ice cubes will help sharpen garbage disposal blades. The latter was actually a useful idea. The garbage disposal was exactly where most of the food from the book belonged. I began to worry about my lineage and to wonder how my father escaped the familial craving for something called Stuff (a combination of hamburger meat and canned mushroom soup) and a genetically determined longing for ham loaf containing ground ham, ground pork, oatmeal, fruit juice, and ketchup. His food-snob genes, I decided, must have come from his mother’s side of the family. I’d inherited them, of course. Even so, no snooty food queen, I loved homemade casseroles, soups, and good old-fashioned lasagne. I just didn’t want Jell-O in my casserole, Red Hot candies in my soup, or canned peas in my manicotti.

  I went ahead and sliced the kielbasa and onions, put them in a big pot over low heat with some olive oil, and threw in some dried herbs. While I waited for the onions to soften, I smashed four cloves of garlic with the flat of a knife and opened the canned tomatoes and cannellini beans. In other words, I avoided returning Sean’s call. I still could not believe that he had called me. And wanted, no, needed to see me. It felt wrong to go off and see Sean while I was involved with Josh. Not that Sean had invited me to a pay-by-the-hour motel or anything, but the prospect of having any contact with him made me a little uncomfortable. Plus I had all that leftover baggage and guilt that comes from a breakup, and I had no interest in getting together to rehash the past, or worse, hurt Sean again. On the other hand, if Josh could go running off to cook dinner for Hannah the night before Simmer opened, why should I feel guilty about a friendly visit with Sean? Especially because I was willing to bet that I could get Sean to go to one of the Full Moon restaurants with me. Maybe I could get a feel for how the employees were treated and whether or not Naomi’s anonymous caller was telling a credible story. That Kielbasa Thing would keep nicely. In fact, it always tasted best on the day after it was made.

  I picked up the phone and called my ex back while I tossed the garlic into the pan.

  “Hey,” Sean said, “I’m really glad you got back to me. Can you meet me somewhere so we can talk?”

  “Sure. What about Eclipse? Can you be there at seven?”

  Sean agreed. I hung up and finished cooking. I added the tomatoes, the beans, and some chicken broth, waited for the stew to reach a slow simmer, crammed two huge handfuls of kale on top, and put the lid on. When the kale had wilted, I stirred the pot and turned the temperature way down to let the dish cook gently.

  I didn’t have the energy to go through the whole blow-drying thing, so I took what I called a half shower, which meant tying my hair up in a knot and dodging the water spray while sudsing up. A raid on my closet yielded a fuzzy pale blue scoop-neck sweater and simple pants. When I’d finished redoing my makeup and flatironing my hair, I pulled the kielbasa off the stove and filled the sink with cold water. I dumped four trays of ice cubes in and set the hot pot in the water bath to cool for a few hours until I got home. Josh had taught me never to transfer hot food directly to the refrigerator, where it became a haven for bacteria, and he’d warned me that if I covered a hot dish and then immediately refrigerated it, I might just as well inject myself with the evil-sounding Bacillus cereus. Safe temperatures for perishable food were very hot and very cold. I hoped I was following his directions correctly. I had a nagging feeling that I should’ve divided the stew into small portions to make sure it cooled rapidly, but there was a limit to my supply of Tupperware.

  After delivering a lecture to Gato on peeing nowhere except in his litter box, I left to meet Sean.

  It was finally getting cold in Boston, so cold that I was happy to step into the warmth of Eclipse. The seasonally brutal winds had numbed my ears and cheeks, and I cursed myself for not having bothered to wear a hat and
scarf. For the night before New Year’s Eve, Eclipse was quite busy; I’d expected everyone to be home saving money and building energy for the big night. Good Lord, this place was tacky! The solar system had apparently exploded in it. Three-dimensional neon planets hung on the brick walls, a planetary mural had been graffitied behind the bar, and the ceiling was littered with tiny lights meant to look like stars. Even with all the neon business everywhere, the room was so dark that I could barely find Sean. I eventually located him at the bar nursing a Guinness. In a simple pullover and khakis, he looked remarkably, and even irritatingly, well-dressed. When we were dating, he’d been a notoriously poor dresser.

  “Hi, Sean,” I said as I removed my coat and sat down on a barstool next to him.

  “Hi, Chloe. Thanks for meeting me. I hope I didn’t interrupt your night.”

  “No, not at all. I’m just starving though. Can I borrow your menu?” I felt suddenly nervous, as if at any minute Sean might confess his undying adoration and propose. “Have you eaten? Do you want something?” I was trying to avoid whatever topic Sean had in mind. The last thing I wanted to do was rehash our past or discuss our nonexistent future.

  “Sure, I could eat,” Sean said, picking up his menu. “But, listen, the reason I called you—”

  I cut him off. “Look, it’s Barry.” Eclipse’s owner was at the other end of the bar speaking with one of the bartenders. He caught my eye, smiled, and came over to our seats.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon, Chloe,” he said, shaking my hand. In my eagerness to find a strong motive for Hannah to have murdered Oliver, I was almost disappointed that Barry failed to attempt any inappropriate touching, thereby confirming that Full Moon establishments were rife with sexually aggressive behavior. Did I really expect him to just reach out and grab my boob as confirmation?

  I introduced Sean and Barry to each other and got a puzzled look from Barry, as though he’d caught me cheating on Josh.

  “Sean is an old friend of mine,” I said. “He was at Food for Thought the other night,” I explained, meaning that Josh knew of Sean’s existence and that I was not some horrible tramp involved in clandestine meetings with other boys in nightclubs.

  “We just stopped in for a bite to eat,” I said. “To catch up.”

  Barry nodded. “Everything is on the house for you two. Frankly, I couldn’t ask someone with your taste to pay for the food here. It’s garbage, if you ask me. Oliver really wanted standard bar food here, so that’s what we did. I don’t know how you can eat here when you’re used to Josh’s food. I don’t know if you know, but I used to go to Magellan all the time.”

  Magellan was Josh’s old restaurant, where he’d run a very successful kitchen. He was reusing some of his best dishes from his stint there by putting them on Simmer’s menu.

  “I’m sure everything will be fine,” I assured Barry. “Not all food has to be totally upscale all the time, right?”

  Barry shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose. Well, anyhow, go ahead and order whatever you can stomach and consider it covered. Sean, it was nice to meet you.” He shook Sean’s hand, smiled at me, and left.

  We looked at the menu and, after Sean had proclaimed that everything looked great, the bartender took our order for spinach and artichoke dip with tortilla chips, buffalo wings, and loaded potato skins. It wasn’t exactly a high class selection, but that kind of food definitely had its place.

  “I’ve got dinner plans later,” Sean said, “so I probably shouldn’t eat too much, but I’m starved.” From what I remembered, Sean was always hungry.

  I reached across him for the three-page laminated descriptions of Eclipse’s bar offerings. “I think I’m going to get a drink.” I scanned pictures of neon-colored concoctions.

  “Chloe, the reason I called you is about what happened the other night,” he began again.

  “Uh-huh,” I nodded, searching for the bartender. “Oh, excuse me. Could I have a Global Warming, please?” I’d just ordered the most politically incorrect drink I’d ever seen, but it had lots of rum.

  “When I was at the gallery the other night, I was looking for the restroom, and I accidentally came across one of the office rooms back there. I saw a man and a woman in there. And the man had himself pressed up against the woman, forcing himself on her. I was about to step in, but the woman didn’t seem to need my help. She pushed him away and said every four-letter word I’d ever heard. Then she started hitting him with a bag of chips. I’m not sure how much good that did, but it did seem to surprise him. I didn’t realize it until later that night, but the woman was Hannah. And when I saw the newspaper the next day, I figured out that the man was the guy who was killed: Oliver.”

  I knew it! “So Oliver was after Hannah?” I asked excitedly. “Wait, could she have been holding a bag of dried snap peas? And not chips?”

  Sean took a sip of his beer. “I guess. There was some green on the bag, now that I think about it. I wasn’t really paying attention to what brand she was using to batter the guy with. Maybe I should’ve gone in to help her, but I guess I was afraid of embarrassing her. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but then Oliver was murdered, and it wasn’t until the next day that I made the connection. And I’d seen Hannah fighting with him. I’m not sure whether or not to tell the police about it.”

  My Global Warming arrived. I took a long drink and then remembered that I was driving and shouldn’t drink much of it. Before responding to Sean, I pretended to be studying the contents of my glass. Okay, I thought, so the anonymous woman who’d been calling Naomi worked for the Full Moon Group, as did Hannah. The caller was being harassed, as was Hannah. At least one time, that is. So, was Hannah, in fact, the caller? Was Hannah driven to kill the man who was harassing her? As overeager as I was to throw Hannah in the slammer, it sounded as if she’d defended herself pretty effectively against Oliver. From what I knew of her, she was outspoken and tough. I wasn’t sure she would’ve put up with routine harassment from her boss.

  Then I caught myself. I had just blamed the victim. As Naomi was forever pointing out, harassment was not something that women allowed or didn’t allow. Strong, independent women were victims of harassment all the time.

  Our food arrived in all its deep-fried, high-calorie glory. “Ooh, this looks good,” Sean said, grabbing a chicken wing. Sean’s culinary preferences seemed to have deteriorated since we’d dated. In those days, he hadn’t displayed a marked craving for frozen appetizers. “So, what do you think? About calling the police?” He had a large glob of buffalo sauce on his cheek.

  “I’m thinking,” I answered, scooping up dip with a tortilla.

  If Hannah was the anonymous caller, she certainly had the support of the Boston Organization. More to the point, at the Eliot Davis Gallery, when Oliver had forced himself on her, she’d known that she was not alone in dealing with harassment—if, of course, she was our caller. And Naomi had been right there in the gallery. A terrible thought entered my mind: If the anonymous caller was Hannah, Naomi, who had spoken to her quite a few times on the phone, would have recognized Hannah’s voice when they met at the gallery. Naomi, herself the victim of harassment, had a passion for defending harassed women and had a particular interest in this case since she had formed a relationship with the caller. Seeing Oliver at the Eliot Davis Gallery, had Naomi connected Hannah’s description of her harasser with Oliver, who was also there that night? Maybe Naomi had even witnessed a scene like the one Sean had just described and had taken radical action to end Hannah’s victimization. With all of her yoga muscles, Naomi could easily have lifted up the Robocoupe and slammed it down on Oliver’s head. I had a clear image in my mind of Naomi leaving the office this morning for the Eliot Davis Gallery, supposedly to deliver a gift to Eliot. But didn’t criminals often return to the scene of the crime?

  “Chloe?” Ugh, Sean still had the sauce on his cheek. Couldn’t he feel it? Should I shove some napkins at him or just reach over and clean him up? Or would he take that the
wrong way?

  “No, don’t call the police.” The last thing I wanted was for Naomi to be implicated, and if the police heard about the harassment Sean had seen, they’d inevitably follow the new lead to my supervisor. “I don’t think the Hannah and Oliver incident has anything to do with his murder,” I lied.

  “Good,” my ex said. “I still feel like I should’ve done something when I saw them fighting. I didn’t really want to have to tell the police about Hannah because—”

  “Look,” I interrupted. “It sounds like Hannah handled it.” I was done talking about Hannah the Horrible.

  Relieved that Sean obviously had no interest in reviving our failed relationship, I asked him about his life and caught up on his family. Twenty boring minutes later, I had heard every detail of his parents’ cruise to Alaska and of his nephew’s rise to stardom on the local T-ball team. Sean hadn’t been dating anyone seriously but was still looking for that special someone. Yawn.

  We finished eating. I felt bloated and gross. Whenever I gorged myself on Josh’s food, I felt full, but I never had the disgusted and disgusting sensation that this food was giving me. Barry had warned us that the food was garbage. He hadn’t been kidding. But I had to admit that I was really enjoying my drink, and drinks were, after all, what the place was about. I stretched my back, which was cramped from sitting on the uncomfortable stool.

  Even with the dim lighting, I spotted Hannah right away.