The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  “Here’s to Simmer!” Josh toasted, raising his bottle high in the air. Blythe, Snacker, and I all clumsily clinked our bottles against his.

  “Okay, now open them neatly!” Snacker demanded as we reached for delicious-smelling bundles. “We have to show a little respect for the tamale! Fold your foil back and tuck it under the packet, and then gently peel back the banana leaves to reveal the contents! And don’t go dumping it out in a big mess, either!” Snacker was shouting excitedly. “Oh, yeah! Look at that baby!” Steam was rising up from his plate.

  Fact: to a person in a beer-induced haze, there is no better food in the world than fresh, hot tamales. “Good God, these are perfect,” I said with a groan.

  “Yeah, my friend really hooked me up with this recipe, huh?” Snacker looked very pleased with his dish. “You ladies will have to take some home with you.”

  “Yeah, if there are any left,” Josh said with a laugh.

  We worked our way through the salad and an obscene number of tamales without making much of a dent in the hundred or so that we’d cooked. The ones I’d take with me would be perfect for the nights I ate at home alone, the nights when Josh was working. And there’d be many nights like that. I sat back in my chair and faintly regretted that last tamale. I was stuffed. “Snacker, you have to give me this recipe. I bet these would be great to give as holiday gifts to friends.”

  “Oh, definitely. I usually do exactly that. And you’re in luck because I’ve already got a bunch of photocopies of the recipe. Here,” Snacker said as he reached behind him and grabbed some sheets off the counter.

  I gasped as I skimmed through the ingredients. “Fifty chicken thighs! Forty tomatoes!”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but if you’re going to go to the trouble of making tamales, you might as well make one giant batch,” Snacker explained.

  “I guess that’s true. It’s pretty labor-intensive, huh?”

  “True, but totally worth the time,” Josh added as he licked his fingers.

  “Hey, Snacker,” Blythe began. She pointed to his hand. “How did you get that big scar on your finger?”

  “Battle scar from a few years ago,” he explained. “Not a big deal. Everyone done here?”

  Josh started laughing. “Not a big deal, is that right? You’re not going to tell them?”

  “Come on, dude! Don’t do that to me! I’m trying to make a good impression here.” He winked flirtatiously at Blythe.

  “If she still likes you after this, then you’re safe!” Josh spoke way too gleefully. He stretched back in his chair. “So this was back in the days,” Josh started in his best storytelling voice. “Back in the days of mayhem, when we were known to get a little wild. Not like now, of course, because we are very serious and professional at all times.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” I laughed. “Go ahead.”

  “Snacker and I were working at this awful little restaurant together, where we were both line cooks. All we served was crappy frozen appetizers that we had to fry up for service and stuff like that. But the place was always packed, and the so-called chef was hardly ever around, so it was always me and Snacker frying up mozzarella sticks and wings. So one night,” Josh said as he took a swig of his beer, “Snacker and I were getting slammed at the restaurant, and he cut his finger pretty badly on a meat slicer. I tried to get him to go to the ER, but he said he wanted to wait until after service, since it was only the two of us and a dishwasher there. So we wrapped his finger up in a pile of bandages and taped it good and tight, so he had this big old sausage on his hand.”

  Snacker continued. “It was still bleeding a lot, though. So after a while, I went to change the bandage. When I pulled it off, all this blood started spurting out, and I guess I passed out.”

  Josh started giggling uncontrollably as he spoke. “So obviously I had to take him to the hospital. When we got there, I kept telling them that Snacker had been throwing up and that he felt really sick and all that.”

  “Why is this so funny?” Blythe asked. “This is a horrible story!”

  Snacker slammed his beer down with a smile. “Because Josh was trying to convince them that I couldn’t take any medication orally, and the only way to get any medicine into me was to stick it up my—”

  “No!” Blythe gasped.

  I leaned over and playfully pushed Josh. “Some friend you are!”

  “And that’s how I got this lovely scar.” Snacker held his hand up in the air, and we all clinked bottles again in honor of his kitchen wound.

  “On a serious note,” Blythe said once we’d stopped laughing at Snacker’s misfortune, “what do you guys think about Leandra? Can you believe that she was killed with an apron from Simmer?” Blythe’s speech was starting to slur.

  “Pretty freaky,” said Josh.

  “Who has keys and the alarm code and could have gone in and out of Simmer after hours?” I wondered aloud.

  “All of us do.” Snacker gestured to Josh, Blythe, and himself. “And obviously Gavin. Wade and Kevin. And Leandra. What we don’t know is if she was killed inside and moved outside to the truck, or whether she was killed in Owen’s truck. Either way, it seems the killer ditched the apron with our laundry, because I don’t think the police found anything in the Dumpster in the alley.”

  “I can’t believe we have this memorial thing tomorrow. What a joke. But if you ask me, it was probably Wade who killed her,” Blythe offered up. “He is such a backstabber, I wouldn’t put it past him.” Snacker and Josh nodded in agreement.

  “Well, I don’t know if he killed her, but he is an asshole,” Josh said.

  “What’s wrong with Wade?” I asked everyone. The only thing I could remember to Wade’s discredit was Gavin’s having said that Wade was putting down Josh. Now, I had the feeling that there’d been more than that isolated incident.

  Josh put his arms on the table and leaned in. “Oh, he does shit like act like my best friend and then go and bad-mouth me to Gavin. For instance, one time, we had a small party for dinner, and I misread one of the orders, so things were about ten minutes late. Not a big deal, right? And the customers didn’t complain. But Wade took it upon himself to tell Gavin about it and say that I couldn’t keep up. Another time, I asked him to run to the store for me and pick up a gallon of scallops because we were low. Wade acted like it was no problem, that he’d be happy to help. Later I found out that he told Gavin that I was too lazy to do it myself, that I’d screwed up our ordering, and on and on. One minute he’s your best friend, and the next he’s shitting all over you. What’re you gonna do?”

  “Yeah, and I’m so sick of him kissing Gavin’s ass all the time,” Blythe said with a burp. “Wade talks crap about Gavin like we all do, but he’s Gavin’s faithful lackey. And meanwhile Gavin is running Simmer like it’s a chain restaurant or something, with his stupid management software.”

  Snacker said, “Gavin doesn’t know what’s going on at the restaurant most of the time. Josh, and even Wade, probably know three times more than Gavin does.” He nodded in Josh’s direction.

  I started carrying plates to the sink. “But mostly you guys like Gavin, right?”

  “A lot of time, he’s fine,” agreed Josh. “But then you’ve got the times he says stuff to me like, ‘I’d outcook you any day,’ or ‘How ignorant can you be?’ and ‘Can’t you get it through your thick skull?’ Yeah, he’s a dream. He thinks he can outcook me, and meanwhile he’s trying to have me precook and then freeze fish when it’s getting old. But the best is when he tries to jump on the line!”

  Snacker started laughing. “Yeah, any time Gavin tries to work with us, he gets all flustered and irritated because he can’t keep up, can’t deal with the chaos, and can’t keep from burning everything. Plus, he loses orders and just tries to cook whatever he feels like off random order slips!”

  “Yeah, Gavin’s a great chef,” Josh said with plenty of sarcasm. “Oh, and then there’s that time he blew up at me in the office, screaming that my food cost had gone
up ten thousand dollars in one week.”

  “What? How the hell did that happen?” I felt sick. Could Josh have messed up that badly?

  “Oh, my food cost was fine. It had gone up by a hundred dollars, which is nothing, but Gavin didn’t figure that out for another few days! He’d entered something in the wrong column of his goddamn spreadsheet. Do you think I got an apology?” Josh shook his head and tossed his hands up in the air. “But it’s his restaurant, right? He can do whatever he wants.”

  “Did he really do that?” Blythe sounded genuinely surprised. “I had no idea he was that bad to you. I know what I’ve heard him say to the servers, but I didn’t know he treated you like that, too.”

  “Gavin doesn’t give Josh credit for much.” Snacker patted Josh’s back. “One time, one time,” he held his finger up in the air, “he told Josh he was the ‘heart and soul’ of the restaurant. But the few times he’s been interviewed for articles or reviews on Simmer, do you think he sings Josh’s praises? No way. All he tells reporters and reviewers is how Simmer was his dream, his vision, and he takes all the credit. That’s why you never see Josh’s name in the paper. Gavin doesn’t want to share any of the credit.”

  I was embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t noticed the omission. There had been only a few reviews of Simmer since it had opened. The first review, a memorable one, had mentioned Josh. For some reason, it hadn’t dawned on me that the subsequent reviews had been about Gavin Seymour’s new restaurant and not about Simmer’s brilliant chef. The reviews and articles had described and praised the decor, the atmosphere, and the food, but Josh’s name had not appeared. Josh must have noticed. I felt guilty that I had not.

  “Snacker, that’s how it works. You know that.” Josh tried to wave off his friend’s words. “Gavin’s attitude is that he put me in a position to do what I want to do, but he gets to reap all the glory. He’s not going to allow anyone to write an article about Simmer that doesn’t feature himself. Who cares about me, right? He wants the credit for how good the food is. Like he had something to do with it.”

  I felt terrible about how underappreciated Josh was. “Does Gavin ever pull you out of the kitchen to meet customers?”

  “Oh, sure. When it’s larger parties, or he wants me to explain the specials. If it will make him look good to diners, then he’ll bring me out and say wonderful things about me in front of people. But mostly he pushes the fact that Simmer is his restaurant. Which it is, right? It’s his money, his power, he’s the boss, right? I’m just a cook.” Josh spat out the word cook as if it meant that his talents extended only to frying eggs and slinging hash.

  I didn’t know whether the beer was causing or simply revealing such bitterness, but I suspected that hidden truths were creeping out. I was slowly learning that Josh had been protecting me from how tough things were for him, and I guessed that he had been working overtime to maintain my impression that life at Simmer was great. Not that I blamed Josh for resenting Gavin’s brushing aside his significant contribution to Simmer’s success. But I had had no idea how difficult Gavin was behind the scenes. Josh worked himself to chronic exhaustion for a penny-pinching salary with no benefits, while Gavin paid himself generously, took all the credit, and saw to it that he got all the recognition. The overall picture was nasty. The stories about sexism in the culinary world had been bad, but I now saw them as depicting only one part of a pervasively ugly scene. I’d intended to ask everyone here why the dishwashers and the cleaners were the only Hispanic employees at Simmer, but I decided to tackle that issue another day.

  I threw my hands up. “Why do you guys do this to yourselves? Why don’t you get out of the business?” Stupid question. I knew what the answer would be.

  Josh softened a bit, and I saw some of the twinkle return to his eyes. “I’m a chef. It’s who I am, and it’s what I do. I don’t know anything else. And I’ll put up with what I have to until I can get my own place.”

  It was what Josh wanted more than anything else: a restaurant of his own that he could run his way. But I couldn’t imagine how he’d ever get the money together, especially with the salary he was earning now. A bank loan would be a gigantic risk. Would Josh take that risk? Probably. And would a bank even give him a loan?

  The four of us spent a few more hours talking together and listening to music before Josh and I decided to call it a night. We crashed in his room and left Snacker and Blythe on the couch in the living room. I still didn’t know what to think about Blythe’s auctioning off stolen goods on eBay, and didn’t know whether the thievery connected her to a greater crime. But I fervently hoped that Snacker wasn’t literally in bed with the enemy.

  FOURTEEN

  My cell phone shrilled loudly and woke me early on Monday morning. Man, did I have a raging headache! Must have been all those tamales …

  I rolled over in bed and fished my phone out of my purse. Shit. It was Naomi Campbell, my field placement supervisor. The sight of her name on the cell phone always made me feel slightly anxious; no matter how often I reminded myself that my Naomi Campbell merely shared a name with the phone-hurling model, I could never completely shake the expectation of bizarre abnormality. I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to meet Naomi at the office for my final student evaluation.

  “Hello,” I murmured into the phone. My voice was almost inaudible, but faintness was all I could muster.

  “Good morning, Chloe! Are you ready for your performance evaluation this morning? Can you come in at ten instead of noon?”

  I did my best to silence the enormous belch that erupted from my stomach. “No problem. See you soon.”

  I’d totally forgotten about this evaluation. The absolute last thing I felt like doing was hauling myself out of bed to hear Naomi tell me what a failure I’d been in my field placement. Naomi was deeply, even spiritually, devoted to the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace, and I was sure that she had spent the past year in constant disappointment that she had ended up with an intern far less devout than she was. Unfortunately for Naomi, I was the only intern she had. In fact, since Naomi and I were the only people who worked at her so-called organization, the term itself was somewhat misleading. Anyway, as Naomi’s intern, I’d done my best. Okay, maybe not my very best or even my ordinary best. But I had definitely improved during the year, hadn’t I? Well, I’d improved, although probably less definitely than Naomi had hoped I would.

  My major task at the BO, an acronym I never used in front of Naomi, had been to respond to hotline calls. When Naomi had first referred to the hotline, I’d envisioned a red phone with flashing lights that would ring nonstop with calls from women in need of help. Despite our efforts to “get the word out,” as Naomi always said, I was lucky to get one call a day from a woman experiencing harassment at her job. I enjoyed the few calls that came in, and I learned to handle them pretty well, but I’d filled my two days a week at the BO largely with attempts to look busy: I’d tossed papers around the office and pretended to do research on the Internet. I could imagine all too well Naomi’s evaluation of my performance.

  I looked at the clock. Eight thirty. Josh was long gone, and Snacker probably was, too. I had to get moving. Stumbling to the bathroom, I could barely tolerate the sense that my brains were bashing against my skull. On the sink, I found a large bottle of aspirin—probably stolen from somewhere, too—and swallowed two while I gulped water from the faucet. I took a steaming shower and sulked about the hangover from hell, the impending meeting with Naomi, and Leandra’s memorial service, which I’d have to attend later today at Simmer. I wrapped myself in what I hoped was a semiclean towel and opened the bathroom door.

  “Hi, Chloe.” In front of me stood Blythe, who looked as bad as I felt.

  “Oh! Hi. I didn’t know you were still here.” I pulled my towel up a bit.

  “I had way too much to drink to drive home, so I really had to sleep here,” she said sheepishly.

  “Uh-huh … and …?” Somethi
ng must have happened between Blythe and Snacker. I did my best to pretend that I was hearing wonderful news. In fact, if Blythe was the thieving eBay seller I thought she was, then the news that she and Snacker had spent the night together was thoroughly bad.

  Blythe shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Well, okay, a little maybe,” she admitted with a small smile. So much for my garlic vinaigrette warding off Snacker. “But nothing serious. I like Snacker, but he’s probably too much of a playboy for me. Anyhow, can I use the bathroom? I have a class that I’m going to be late for.”

  I stepped into the hall. “Yeah, sure. Sorry. I have to get going, too, so I’ll see you at the memorial thing this afternoon?”

  “Oh, God. That’s right,” Blythe said with a sigh. “I’ll be there.”

  I filled a plastic bag with tamales, sped home, breaking a lot of traffic laws on the way, and, in an attempt to look professional, threw on good pants and a blazer. With no time to dry my still-wet hair, I slicked it back into a tight ponytail, grabbed the term paper that I had to drop off at school later, and fought my way through traffic to make the ten o’clock meeting with Naomi.

  “Your last day!” Naomi’s voice bounced off the concrete office walls. She spun around in her chair and looked at me with a mix of what appeared to be pride and sadness.

  This was my last day. The reality hadn’t hit me before. Now it did: I wouldn’t be coming to this gloomy, windowless cell anymore. I wouldn’t be staring at the phone waiting for it to ring, or taking lunch breaks that were too long, or fretting over how to transfer calls from my phone to Naomi’s. Maybe I would miss these two cramped rooms, the cafeteria tables that served as desks, the smell of Naomi’s patchouli incense. Probably not.

  But I would miss Naomi. Although we were polar opposites, I had grown to like her. Her die-hard social worker style had initially put me off, but I’d learned to appreciate how great she was at this job and how many women she rescued from horrendous harassment.