The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  I couldn’t believe it. “What the hell are they doing here?” I muttered to Doug. Why did my family have to turn every event into a great big fat family reunion? Seated at the table, with bemused expressions on their faces, were Owen and Adrianna, with both of my parents and Heather and Ben and Walker and, incredibly, baby Lucy. What twenty-five-year-old wants to spend New Year’s Eve with her family? Her entire family! And what had possessed Heather and Ben to bring the kids here? Of all the nights not to get a babysitter! Walker was seated in a booster chair and hanging sideways off the arm clutching a blue train. A giant bowl of Cheerios sat in front of him, which led me to believe that at least my sister wasn’t going to ask to see a children’s menu.

  “Surprise!” My mother beamed at the family’s success in having snuck in here without my knowledge.

  “Yeah. Surprise!” I smiled weakly. “I had no idea.”

  No idea that I’d be doomed to celebrate the New Year’s Eve opening of Simmer by laboring to make conversation with my relatives. So much for a night of ogling my boyfriend in an alcohol-induced haze. Now I really needed a drink.

  SIXTEEN

  Ade had done her best to rescue me by saving two seats between hers and Owen’s for Doug and me. At least I wasn’t pinned between my parents. Doug immediately grabbed the seat next to Adrianna’s boyfriend.

  I scooted in next to Ade and whispered, “Did you know they were coming?”

  She stifled a laugh. “No. I swear I didn’t. Holidays with the Carters. Who knew?”

  “We just had dinner together the other night! I wanted tonight to be about Josh. Well, Josh and me. Anything but a night with my entire family staring at me and analyzing my relationship. Can I have a sip of that?” Without waiting for an answer, I picked up Adrianna’s glass of wine. It looked untouched, but I didn’t care whether it was or not; I needed a quick gulp.

  “So you must be Doug?” Heather introduced herself and the rest of the nut jobs at the table. I wasn’t sure if I was dreading an evening with my family because they irritated me on an individual basis or if it was the collective group of them that had the capacity to drive me insane. Well, I reasoned, dinner would last only so long, and I would still find some alone time with Josh late tonight.

  For reasons beyond me, Heather had tied a gigantic red silk scarf into a headband and sat across from me with a mammoth bow on top of her head.

  “What are you? Cindy Lou Who?” I couldn’t help myself. “You look like you hopped right out of a Dr. Seuss book.”

  “Lovely to see you, too, my dear sister.” She lifted a glass of what looked suspiciously like a martini to her mouth.

  “Heather! You’re still nursing! You shouldn’t be drinking,” I scolded, looking at Lucy to see whether the baby was intoxicated—although how anyone could tell, I had no idea, since babies had no muscle control to begin with.

  “Your sister stopped nursing this morning,” Ben informed me. “And now she’s drunk.”

  “That is correct. I am.” Heather reached into her glass and removed an olive, which she peered at intently for a moment before throwing it up in the air and catching it in her mouth. “And it’s wonderful.” She smiled happily.

  Oh, goody! With one sister loaded, no one would notice if I had a few too many drinks myself. Better yet, with any luck, Heather would make a spectacle of herself for the rest of the night and leave me alone. On second thought, if she did anything to ruin the night for Josh, I’d kill her.

  “Look, there’s Dora.” Adrianna pointed to the entrance.

  “With Barry and Sarka,” I said as the couple entered behind Dora.

  Gavin was politely shaking Barry’s hand while at the same time gloating over his acquisition of the prime Newbury Street spot that Barry had coveted, or so I suspected. Dora was monstrously overdressed in a long ivory gown with sequined patches—tacky, if you asked me, but it was probably some Badgley Mishka million-dollar design. Gavin showed the trio to a small table in the center of the restaurant.

  “So, Doug, tell us,” my father began, “as one of the few male students at social work school, you must be quite busy dating, I would guess. Anyone special?” Dad smiled innocently.

  “No, not at the moment. Although”—Doug stood up and took his jacket off to display his T-shirt—“I’m keeping my options open.”

  My family leaned in and slowly read his shirt. I watched their faces as the realization sank in.

  “So, probably no girlfriends, then?” Heather removed herself from her martini long enough to ask.

  Our waitress came to the table, took drink orders from Doug and me, and left all of us with the menu.

  APPETIZERS

  Seared Shrimp with Corn Polenta and Sweet Corn Sauce

  or

  Grilled Lobster Tail

  with Black Beluga Lentils and Truffle Oil

  or

  Seared Scallops with Chanterelles

  and Pineau des Charentes, Served in Puff Pastry

  SALAD

  Baby Greens Wrapped in English Cucumber

  with Sesame-Honey Dressing

  ENTRÉES

  Grilled Steak with a Stilton Potato Cake,

  Roasted Baby Vegetables, and Peppercorn Sauce

  or

  Pan-Seared Salmon Roulades

  with Saffron-Tomato Coulis, Served over Jasmine Rice

  or

  Roasted Vegetable Wellington

  with a Red Pepper Vinaigrette and Balsamic Reduction

  DESSERT

  Layered Chocolate Torte with Fresh Raspberries

  or

  Banana Three Way

  One look at the mouthwatering menu made me mind my family’s presence less. Josh’s food made even Heather’s comments less grating!

  “This looks like heaven,” my father crooned. “What a way for Josh to open the restaurant!”

  “Sure,” Heather said, ignoring Walker, who was busy folding a menu into a paper airplane, “but everyone seems to be forgetting the fact that this isn’t Josh’s restaurant. He just works here.”

  I was about ready to grab her son’s paper airplane and fly it into her eye when our drinks came. I swallowed some wine and focused on deciding which mouthwatering entrée to have. Doug and I consulted with each other and agreed to order different things so we could share. When our waitress returned, I ordered the shrimp appetizer, followed by the steak and the banana dessert.

  Heather giggled. “A banana three way!”

  “Somebody cut her off,” I begged.

  Adrianna excused herself to go to the ladies’ room. The rest of us struggled to achieve relatively normal conversation.

  My father cleared his throat and whispered conspiratorially, “Did everyone see who’s here? The restaurant reviewer, Mishti Patil. I recognize her from her picture.”

  Josh was going to be more than unhappy about her presence. As this woman should know, it’s unfair to subject any restaurant to a review on its first night. It was obvious even to me, an outsider in this industry, that you cut a new place a lot of slack early on; you wait until it works out its kinks before you tear it apart. So far, nothing had gone wrong, but the evening had just started, and we hadn’t tasted any food yet. As confident as I was in Josh’s skill as a chef, I was worried that his food wouldn’t come out of the kitchen the way it was supposed to. It’s one thing for a chef to come up with fantastic dishes, but the quality of the food that actually gets plated and served depends on many other people besides the chef. Even with Josh and Snacker cooking on the line tonight, I was still afraid that some incompetent person had left bones in the salmon or had oversalted the salad dressing. I glanced around to see whether anyone was puckering or making faces. So far, everyone looked happy and festive. I tried to comfort myself by remembering that since Mishti had evidently been bribed to write a review, she’d presumably do a good one, no matter what. Furthermore, Josh had been so insulted about the bribe that I knew he’d outdo himself by proving that there was no need to buy good reviews
of his food. Mishti and her dining companion were five or six tables away. Although I couldn’t get a good look at them, they seemed to be doing all right for now.

  Our appetizers began to arrive, and I lit up as I saw Josh coming to the table carrying mine.

  “Hi, honey. Oh, this looks beautiful,” I said, gazing with admiration at my plate. Four huge shrimp, delectably butterflied, rested on a fluffy polenta circle dressed with a creamy yellow corn sauce. Josh shook hands all around and accepted praise and congratulations from everyone—well, everyone except Heather, of course, who busied herself with her napkin.

  Josh leaned in to me and said quietly, “So, you decided not to come to my restaurant with Sean, huh?”

  My stomach dropped. “What?” I whispered back.

  “Check your cell phone messages once in a while,” Josh snarled angrily. “Like I really needed this shit right now, Chloe.”

  He left the table. I immediately pulled my phone out of my purse and punched in my codes. The only message was the extremely pissed-off one from Josh: “Chloe. Glad you had a good time last night with Sean at Eclipse. Seems like a great guy.” Click.

  That damn Hannah! She obviously had seen me at the bar with Sean. So much for my covert getaway. That bitch had probably waited all of thirty seconds before scampering back to Josh with news of my supposed infidelity and luring him back to her lair to cook her a romantic dinner. Although Josh had no reason to be jealous, I hadn’t planned to tell him about my harmless date-that-wasn’t with Sean. I mean, the conversation had centered around Hannah and the murder. Still, I’d been spotted out with an ex-boyfriend. And what had Josh himself been up to with Hannah? I still didn’t have an explanation about the shopping list in his handwriting. Not that I’d asked him yet.

  “What was that about?” Doug asked me.

  “Long story,” I answered.

  I sampled my shrimp and, as cranky as I now was, knew that it was one of Josh’s best dishes ever. The sweetness of the polenta and corn were a delectable match for the spiciness and saltiness of the shrimp. Josh had taught me that to make flavors balance out in a dish, you needed to combine opposites.

  Our salads arrived. Long lengthwise slices of cucumber were wrapped about brightly colored greens to form low cylinders. Enoki mushrooms sprouted out of the tops of the salads, which were covered in a glistening sesame-honey dressing. I took a taste. My salad was as delicious as it was beautiful.

  But until I’d straightened things out with Josh, I was going to be crabby and upset for the rest of the night. And where was Adrianna? She still hadn’t come back from the ladies’ room, and I needed her. In situations like this, I had a tendency to blow things out of proportion and act rashly, whereas Adrianna had a contrasting tendency to retain her sanity.

  I excused myself from the table, but everyone was too occupied in savoring the food to notice. It’s amazing how quickly complete confidence in the solidity of a relationship can change to incredible fear that everything is about to collapse. I just hoped that Josh would believe me when I assured him that nothing nefarious had transpired between Sean and me. I also hoped, of course, that Hannah hadn’t taken advantage of Josh once she’d made him doubt my devotion.

  As I hurried through the restaurant, I was so focused on finding Josh that I barely noticed any of the other diners. Reaching the doors to the kitchen, I suddenly realized that I couldn’t just barge in. This was opening night, the tension was high, meals were now being prepared and served, and, for all my sense of involvement with Simmer, I didn’t work here. For a moment, I stood there helplessly. Then one of the doors flew open, and I nearly collided with a server carrying an overloaded tray of food.

  “Sorry,” I muttered apologetically and ran off to the bathroom to figure out what to do. I was such an idiot! Why hadn’t I just told Josh about meeting up with Sean? Now it just looked like I was hiding something.

  I pushed open the bathroom door to find Adrianna in front of the mirror shaking her hair out and applying lipstick.

  “Where have you been? I need your help,” I whined. “It’s Josh.”

  “Sorry. Just preening, you know. What’s going on?” Ade leaned toward the mirror to get a close-up view of her perfectly applied makeup.

  “Cheater.”

  Ade stood bolt upright. “How do you know?” She stared at me in the mirror, disbelief running across her face.

  “That’s what Josh thinks.” I explained Hannah’s dirty deed and went on to say that not only did I look like a cheater but that Hannah had probably tricked Josh into cheating on me.

  “Oh.” Her face relaxed a little. “That’s ridiculous. You did nothing wrong, and we both know Josh wouldn’t touch that little rat girl again. You’re being silly. Go find him and straighten this mess out. Is our food there yet? I’m starved.”

  “The appetizers came. And the salads. I’ll be back at the table in a minute.”

  “See you then.” Adrianna left me alone.

  Everything was going wrong! The last thing I wanted was to fight with Josh at Simmer’s opening. As I’d gathered from Isabelle when she’d called me, Josh had been in a foul mood all day. Poor Josh! Instead of being free to devote himself exclusively to the preparations for opening night, he’d been plagued by thoughts of my hooking up with Sean! Was it narcissistic to imagine that Josh would be so overwhelmed with misery over me that he wouldn’t be able to function? So what if it was narcissistic! I didn’t care. I had to fix everything right now.

  Determined to clear up the misunderstanding, I pushed open the restroom door. As a server returned to the kitchen, I followed him into the madness. Josh and Snacker were moving at warp speed, finishing plates that were lined up across one of the counters. The two chefs garnished dishes with herbs, wiped drops of sauce off the edges of plates, and adjusted the positions of food to give the most artful effect. Snacker had a dish towel in one hand and was cleaning sauce off the edges of the dishes, and Josh was glaring at the plates as if daring them to be more outstanding than they already were.

  “Okay, Chef. These are ready to go.” Snacker stood back proudly.

  “And they would’ve been ready to go sooner if you hadn’t kept disappearing on me.” Josh didn’t even look at Snacker. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with you tonight, but get it together.”

  Snacker had the decency to look ashamed. “Gotcha. Orders are up!” he called out.

  “Thank God. What took so long?” growled a waitress.

  I slipped out the door. This was not, after all, the time to explain myself to Josh. I returned to our table at the front and sat down.

  Our appetizer and salad plates had been cleared. Doug was raving about his lobster tail. “That was ridiculously good. You better watch yourself, Chloe, because if I get the chance, I’m going after Josh myself.”

  I willed Heather not to applaud, but she was too busy chugging down a glass of water to celebrate the possibility that my gay friend would swoop in and steal my boyfriend. By the time my steak arrived, I felt significantly more positive about resolving this misunderstanding with Josh. He was under monumental stress today; his snapping at me probably had less to do with me than with the pressure to pull off opening night.

  Obligatory or not, my steak was phenomenal. The tangy taste of the Stilton potato cake worked beautifully with the peppery seared beef. The baby vegetables were still slightly crunchy and full of flavor. When Doug fed me a bite of the roasted vegetable Wellington, I nearly groaned with delight: the pastry was light and crisp, the vegetable filling was delectable, and the red pepper and balsamic sauces were heaven. Now I was really feeling better about Josh; this food was like make-up sex.

  Another glass of wine later, and we had all cleaned our plates. I was totally stuffed, but had I been in the privacy of my own home, I’d have picked up my plate and licked it. I wasn’t sure how I was going to cram a dessert into my stomach, but there was no way I was going to miss out on the banana creation, which I knew from Josh consisted o
f caramelized banana slices served with banana ice cream and topped with a rum sauce and banana chantilly.

  Josh and a server brought out our desserts.

  “I’m sorry,” my chef whispered in my ear. “I’ve been an asshole. I’m just really edgy tonight with the opening. Snacker talked me out of my mood, but I don’t like the thought of you with another guy.”

  I looked up at him and smiled. Yay! He was over it!

  “But,” he added, “what were you doing out with Sean last night?”

  Okay, he wasn’t quite over it.

  “Sean called me and asked me to meet him, so I did. And what about you? Were you at Hannah’s place last night cooking for her?”

  “What are you talking about?” Josh looked at me, stunned. “I didn’t cook anything for Hannah. I was busting my ass here all night.”

  My family was even more interested in this interchange than in the food being served. To the best of my recollection, this collective distraction from food was completely unprecedented. A family first! And an unwelcome one, of course. Josh and I needed to continue our discussion away from the table and, especially, away from my parents.

  “Josh,” I said, “can you come talk to me for a few minutes? Somewhere else. Not here.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, things are calming down in the kitchen. Snacker’s taking another break, but it’s mostly dessert orders that are in, and the rest of the guys can handle that. We can go to my office.” Heather’s face sank with disappointment that she wasn’t going to witness a fight between Josh and me.

  Adrianna stood up with us to use the ladies’ room again. “That wine is just running through me,” she explained, although I was pretty sure I’d consumed most of her glass.

  I followed Josh through the maze of full tables. At least he was holding my hand.

  “Josh, it’s no use pretending nothing is up with Hannah, because I saw the shopping list you gave her. It wasn’t just that it was your kind of food—it was in your handwriting. She made me pick her up from the police station the other day and then forced me to chauffeur her around town to shop for the ingredients for the dinner you were making her.”