The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  “We have. I’ll go hang out with your right-wing parents as payback. Deal?”

  Doug nodded, happy in the knowledge that my spending an evening with his less-than-liberal mother and father would more than compensate for having abandoned him at Simmer.

  My banana ice cream had melted, and the caramelized bananas were now cold, but even so, my dessert was wonderful. Doug had saved me a bite of the rich chocolate torte and had even left me a couple of raspberries. One taste and I had yet more reasons to be head over heels for my chef!

  “Is something going on with Owen?” Doug wondered aloud.

  “What do you mean? He looks fine to me,” I said, licking my fork in a display of uncouth table manners. “Adrianna’s the one I’m a little worried about. She’s spent half the night in the ladies’ room. It’s not the food, obviously. Everyone else is fine, and Josh is a fiend about fresh ingredients and a sanitary kitchen. What do mean about Owen?”

  “I don’t know. He’s all fidgety tonight, like he’s anxious or something.”

  “I have no idea.”

  As if on cue, Owen stood up from his chair. Unfortunately, he had tucked the tablecloth into his pants, so we all spent a few moments picking up spilled glasses and rearranging dinner plates.

  “My apologies,” Owen said formally. “I’m a little nervous. But I have something to say.” He buttoned his jacket and ran a hand through his hair. “Adrianna—” he began with a loving look at my best friend.

  Oh, my God! He was going to propose! This was so exciting! It’s not often that you get to witness a proposal. Usually you just get a giddy phone call from a friend, or one day your girlfriend holds up her hand to show off a new ring. But to be right here while my best friend got engaged was too exciting for words!

  No wonder Adrianna hadn’t been feeling well! She must have suspected that Owen was going to ask her tonight. She wasn’t sick; she was nervous. I looked wistfully at Ade and prepared myself for what was bound be a totally romantic proposal from Owen.

  Adrianna was ashen. Seriously. No color in her face whatsoever. Wow, maybe she hadn’t suspected after all. Maybe she really was surprised, and now the monumental significance of what was about to happen was sending her into shock. I wished that Owen would hurry up. What if Adrianna collapsed and had to be rushed off in an ambulance? Well, I’d miss witnessing my first marriage proposal, that’s what.

  Josh grabbed my hand tightly. “Uh-oh,” he said softly.

  Uh-oh? What does he mean by uh-oh? She was going to say yes. Why wouldn’t she? I turned to Josh with irritation. What was he talking about?

  “… I am completely in love with you,” Owen was saying.

  We all made appropriate oohing noises in support of Owen’s declaration.

  Josh squeezed my hand tighter. “Oh, no.”

  “What?” I whispered confused. “‘Oh, no’ what?” I was really annoyed at him for interrupting my enjoyment of Adrianna and Owen’s engagement.

  “Snacker,” Josh whispered back.

  Snacker? What did Snacker have to do with anything? Everything was under control in the kitchen. Only a few minutes earlier, he’d taken a solemn oath to handle everything. I knew that Snacker had been slacking off tonight and taking too many breaks, but …

  Oh. Shit.

  I spun around to face Adrianna, who looked as though she might go into cardiac arrest at any moment.

  Snacker hadn’t been taking those breaks alone.

  Ade caught my eye and silently begged me to get her out of this mess. No matter how seedy and slimy it had been of Adrianna to do whatever she’d been doing with Snacker tonight, she was still my best friend. But I felt more sympathy for Owen than I did for Adrianna. No matter how unpromising poor Owen was as a potential husband and no matter how vocationally lost he was, I couldn’t let him get shot down in front of everybody. I had to rescue Owen before he had his heart broken in public.

  I had to brainstorm quickly. I’d cause some kind of a scene, any kind, and ruin the moment so tremendously that Owen would be unable to finish his proposal. My two friends could talk about their six thousand conflicts and differences and dissatisfactions later. If Heather had only kept drinking, she could have been provoked to jump atop the table and perform a scene from Moulin Rouge.

  Owen was closing in on the big question. “… so what I want to ask you, Adrianna, is …”

  I was on the verge of faking a dramatic mental episode when noises from the back of the restaurant preempted me. Loud crashes sounded from what I thought was Josh’s office. A second later, someone or something slammed into what was definitely the door to the office, a door that was now closed.

  “What the hell is going on?” Josh took off across the dining room, dodging alarmed customers. Not to miss out on the action, I was right behind him. As we approached the source of the noise, I recognized Gavin’s voice, but he was shouting so frantically that I couldn’t make out his words. Still, there was no question that he was bellowing madly. Josh must be right about Gavin’s being the killer! He was in Josh’s office trying to finish off his second victim!

  Josh tried the handle on the door. “Dammit, it’s locked. Where are my keys?” He fumbled around in the pockets of his baggy chef pants until he produced a huge key ring and eventually found the right one and opened the lock. He was able to push the door open only a few inches when it snapped shut.

  “Snacker!” Josh called out. “Help me open this door.” I was mildly offended that Josh solicited help from Snacker. Typical for men to ask other men for help when it came to physical demands! I could have been just as useful as Snacker. I’d have to flex my biceps for Josh later.

  “Is that Gavin in there?” Snacker asked as he appeared. He threw a dish towel over his shoulder, and he and Josh leaned on the door together.

  “Yeah,” Josh grunted against the weight of the door. “We have to get in there. Push!”

  Like a silly cheerleader rooting for her team, I stood behind them.

  After two tries, the chefs forced the door open to reveal Gavin and Barry locked tightly together in a struggle. Just visible between them was a large handgun.

  Josh and Snacker took major steps back.

  So certain had I been that Josh was right about Gavin that it took a moment to absorb what I was seeing. The man clutching the weapon was not Gavin, but Barry. Barry was the one who held the gun, and Gavin was furiously trying to wrest it out of Barry’s hands.

  While in the process of trying to save his own life, Gavin was shouting, “You are not getting my restaurant from me, you maniac! It is meant to be mine, and you will not take it away!” This didn’t seem the time to be arguing with Barry, but it didn’t stop Gavin from screaming that he wouldn’t make Barry a partner if he were the last fruitcake on earth.

  I looked behind me in search of some large object to hurl at the two men. Where was that lethal ladle when we needed it? The couple at the table nearest me had a full bottle of red wine, so I reached between the horrified-looking pair of diners and grabbed the glass bottle. Raising my arm up, I aimed for Barry’s head and hurled the bottle as hard as I could.

  The bottle completely missed Barry and hit the ceiling light, shattering glass and knocking out the bulb. I momentarily remembered why I had always been the last kid chosen for teams in gym class. Apparently age hadn’t improved my pitching skills whatsoever, but the noise startled the two men long enough for an enraged Gavin to secure the gun from Barry’s hand.

  Gavin held the gun on Barry, who seemed to accept his defeat and was kneeling on the floor, the fight drained out of him.

  “See this creep?” Gavin hollered. “He thinks he’s some kind of godfather. Trying to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse. When I told him no amount of money could get him my restaurant, he pulled this gun on me. As if I would ever let you get your hands on my place. You’re disgusting, Barry.”

  I heard sirens wailing outside, and I was hoping that those were for Simmer and not for some other New Year
’s crisis. With all the traffic and people crowding the streets outside, I hoped the police could get here before Gavin hauled off and shot Barry.

  “Barry!” Dora said angrily. “You fool!”

  She and Sarka appeared now and stood next to me, Dora looking furious and Sarka looking near tears.

  “I knew you must have been the one who killed my husband. You and your idiotic ideas about opening an expensive restaurant. As if wasting all that money on grand tours of Europe wasn’t bad enough, then you wanted to sink all of Full Moon’s profits into some money-eating restaurant?” Gone was the meek, sorrowful Dora from this morning. This woman was on fire.

  “You ungrateful little shit!” she continued, shaking and pointing her finger at Barry. “After everything that Oliver did for you! You would have been nothing if Oliver hadn’t taken pity on you and let you become part of his company. He was the one with the brains and the business savvy, and you just kept trying to muck that all up. But he wouldn’t let you. Oliver blocked you at every step, at every stupid, costly step you tried to take.”

  Dora turned to me, tears streaming down her face. “Barry couldn’t take it anymore.” Then she paused and eyed me suspiciously. “Weren’t you at my house today?”

  I nodded.

  “Huh.” Even in her crazed state, she seemed confused that someone of my low status could be present during this high drama. She turned back to Barry. “So, the night you killed Oliver, you’d had it with him ridiculing you for your pompous, contrived love of art and fine food! And you thought killing him would give you what you wanted?”

  Dora lunged toward her husband’s killer, and Josh and Snacker grabbed her before she could get more than a few feet.

  The police entered the restaurant, pushed their way to Josh’s office, relieved Gavin of the gun, and took Barry into custody.

  Sarka whimpered next to me. “Oh, God, Barry. What have you done?”

  EIGHTEEN

  “New Year’s Eve was not what I expected.” I lay snugly in bed with Josh spooning me.

  “You’re not kidding.” He let out a roaring yawn. “Barry seemed completely harmless. I cannot believe he’s the one who killed Oliver.”

  In spite of what he’d just said, Josh seemed more insulted than surprised by the revelation that Barry was the murderer. It was, I thought, a deep and personal offense to Josh that a fellow food devotee, someone who shared Josh’s own passion for fine cuisine, had twisted and even perverted that zealous love as Barry had done. As I mulled over the murder, I could see that years of Oliver’s dismissive attitude toward Barry and toward his dreams had finally provoked Barry beyond endurance. Had Barry also been enraged by Oliver’s interest in Sarka? I didn’t know. But Barry’s principal motivation had certainly been his ardent desire to make his fantasy restaurant become a reality. He must have realized that with Oliver alive, the Full Moon Group would never take the financial risk of opening a fine-dining establishment but would continue to limit itself to glorified and lucrative bars. On the night of Food for Thought, Oliver had poked fun at what he’d viewed as Barry’s pretensions about art and food—or so it must have seemed to Oliver. Barry, however, must have felt that his most profound dreams and passions, together with his most cherished images of himself, were being ridiculed and dismissed. In my view, Oliver’s taunting had been only one trigger for the murder. What had inflamed Barry, I suspected, and what had incited him to kill Oliver at the earliest moment, had been hearing Oliver’s mockery at Simmer’s booth. At the booth, Barry had been confronted with the reality of a man, Gavin, who was realizing the dream stolen by Oliver. Furthermore, Barry had tasted and loved Josh’s delectable medallions of beef. I hoped that Josh would never realize that his culinary genius had helped to provoke a murder. Indeed, when Barry killed Oliver, the taste of Josh’s food must still have been lingering on his palate. Last night, on New Year’s Eve, when Barry had tried to make Gavin an offer he couldn’t refuse, the scene had almost replayed itself: savoring Josh’s food at Simmer itself, not merely at the booth, Barry had lashed out at the man who was denying him access to his unrealized fantasy of owning a fine restaurant with Josh’s marvelous food.

  I was admittedly disappointed that Hannah had nothing to do with Oliver’s murder, but it was comforting to realize that having sunk her claws into Sean, she’d probably leave Josh alone. Furthermore, with Eliot the only partner in the Full Moon Group left alive or out of jail, the future of the group’s establishments was uncertain, and Hannah’s PR work in Boston was over. I prayed that she’d move back to New York and disappear permanently from our lives. Sean was a decent person who deserved a healthy relationship with someone who adored him. That relationship wouldn’t be with me, and I hoped it wouldn’t be with Hannah, who, besides everything else, is a manipulative liar.

  When the police arrived at Simmer last night, Detective Hurley was among them. When he questioned me, I happened to mention that I’d picked up Hannah after he’d held her all night at the station. And he’d done no such thing! Detective Hurley got defensive: Hannah was nothing more than a witness, and the police certainly did not subject her to any kind of all-night interrogation. With typical self-dramatization, Hannah had set up a phony crisis from which she intended to have Josh rescue her. On the night of Oliver’s murder, she’d slept in her own bed, or maybe in someone else’s; and in the morning, she’d gone to the police station, stood outside, and pretended to have been inside all night. I probably won’t tell Sean. He wouldn’t believe me. He’ll have to figure out Hannah for himself.

  The great news was Naomi’s innocence. After the police took Barry into custody and removed him from Simmer, I spent some time with Naomi. As I’d guessed, she had recognized Hannah’s voice at Food for Thought and had realized that Hannah was the hotline caller in need of help. Even though Naomi had known that Hannah was being harassed, she hadn’t taken violent action. In quintessential Naomi style, she’d been trying to convince Hannah to file a complaint against Oliver and had been in the process of locating a good lawyer to represent Hannah in her lawsuit. Naomi told me last night that the toughest part of helping Hannah had been keeping the secret from Eliot, who she knew was a silent partner in Oliver’s business and who was oblivious to the way Oliver treated women. Eliot’s relationship with Barry and Oliver had been strictly business. Nonetheless, it had been a struggle for Naomi to find herself plotting a nasty lawsuit against one of her new love’s partners.

  With Oliver dead and Barry in jail, Dora and Sarka were now both without husbands. I had no sympathy for Dora, but I felt sorry for Sarka. I couldn’t help wondering whether her longing for what seemed to me a stereotyped version of a normal, stable home life, together with what I guessed was a mild eating disorder, hinted at some perception of her husband’s disturbance and his potential for violence. No matter what, I could only begin to imagine how hurt and betrayed she felt by Barry’s actions.

  Even though it was eleven thirty in the morning, I’d had only a few hours of sleep and was totally bleary eyed. The sleep I did get was restless and filled with bad dreams. I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, thinking a good hit of caffeine might help. Josh looked as exhausted and drained as I was.

  “Why don’t I start a pot of coffee and then go downstairs and take someone’s paper, okay?” I hoped Noah hadn’t picked up his, since it gave me a sick sense of satisfaction to steal his newspaper whenever I could.

  When I’d successfully returned with Noah’s paper, and we both had steaming cups of coffee, we curled up on the couch together. I flipped through the pages to see if Mishti Patil had reviewed Simmer.

  “Here it is!” I cried excitedly.

  “Stop, Chloe. I don’t want to see it if she did. It’ll be a fake review that she was paid off to do.” Josh tried fervently to grab the newspaper out of my hands, but I stood up, spilling coffee all over myself, ran across the room, and locked myself in the bathroom.

  I skimmed the review while Josh rattled the door, saying, “It doesn�
�t count! I don’t want to hear it!”

  “Listen, listen! ‘Although there are issues to be addressed at Simmer, I am happy to report that Simmer is a welcome addition to Newbury Street.’ Blah, blah, ‘beautiful decor … the wait staff struggled to keep up at times …’”

  Josh was now pounding on the door. “Stop reading!” he begged.

  I paid no attention. “‘The food was worth the wait … outstanding lobster tail … lentils still had a bite to them … best salad dressing in Boston … salmon was overcooked but had potential … average chocolate torte …’”

  Josh stopped banging. “‘Average chocolate torte’? Average? Who does she think she is?”

  “Do you know what this means?” I said excitedly.

  “It means she doesn’t know the first thing about chocolate,” Josh said angrily.

  “Yes, but it also means that she wrote a real review. Gavin didn’t pay her off! Or, if he tried, she didn’t accept his offer. No one bribes someone to write a mediocre review. And for Mishti, this review is pretty good. She doesn’t give out compliments easily. And, God, she said you have the best salad dressing in all of Boston!”

  After a long pause, Josh said, “I guess that’s pretty good.”

  “It’s more than pretty good. Can I come out now?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, let me read the whole thing.”

  I unlocked the bathroom door and handed him the paper. When he was done, I was going to clip out the review and make copies of it. I took the crossword out of the paper and left Josh alone for a few minutes to read Simmer’s first review in its entirety.

  “I’m going to call Adrianna and see how she’s doing.”

  “Do you think she got any sleep?” Josh asked with concern.

  “I hope so,” I said doubtfully and went and sat down in the kitchen.

  Learning that Barry was the murderer would have been enough shock for one night without the preceding revelation about Adrianna’s messing around with Snacker. When I reached her on the phone, practically the first thing she said was that she was pregnant.