I followed suit, and felt a warm jolt, as though I’d just swallowed a shot of rum. Which I suppose I had.
“This is spectacular,” said Chef Adam.
“Though perhaps a little gimmicky?” I asked, and Toby nodded.
Once Buddy Higgs had finished telling us which chemicals caused the drink to gel, and finally cleared out of the way, Randy Thompson moved into the kitchen. He stood behind the counter, his hands behind his back, and smiled.
“A wedding is about the people, not the show. And people connect on a more honest level when the setting is casual. Hence, I’ve designed a picnic at Fort Zachary Taylor Park.”
He pulled a pitcher full of liquid and a small bag of mint from the refrigerator.
“I’ve got a mojito, too,” he said ruefully. “But no gelatin involved.” He turned to face Buddy Higgs. “By the way, Chef Buddy, on Duval Street, they’d call your concoction a Jell-O shot. And it’s usually sucked off someone’s belly. Hopefully not a beer gut.” A titter of laughter swept through the crew, but Buddy looked grim.
We watched Randy crush his mint leaves in the bottoms of three pint-sized mason jars, which he then filled to the brim with ice and a clear liquid. He delivered them to us and we sipped—refreshing and powerful.
“Since I’m proposing a casual setting, and maybe even a barefoot bride, I envisioned the wedding dessert as casual, too.” He pulled a tray from the freezer. “For the bride at the beach, what could be more fun than cake pops?”
He carried the tray over to us and we each took a ball of cake on a stick. Dark chocolate inside, a shell of white chocolate outside, studded with tiny silver beads of candy.
By now, I was feeling extremely light-headed, not to mention trembling from the sugar rush of the cumulative desserts. But the worst culprit had been the shimmery mojito. I reminded myself to watch for signs of alliance, either between Toby and Chef Adam, or either of them and the candidates. Pay attention to the subtext, I told myself. If something strange was going on among the little factions, I didn’t want to be caught unawares. I wanted the best candidate to land the show. But more important: If one of these people had killed Sam Rizzoli, the rest of us were also in danger. It was that simple.
Henri had seemed less distant than she had the other day. And Buddy had acted very confident. Either he was doing a good job hiding things or he was sure he had it nailed. Had he seen me last night on the yacht? Did he realize what I’d seen?
But I was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on the contest, my woozy mind wandering to the question of whether I’d ever get to plan a wedding. For me. Hard to imagine when I couldn’t even get through a first date without ending up all prickly and out of sorts.
“Judges?” boomed Peter Shapiro, interrupting my thoughts. “Your reactions to our contestants’ presentations?”
“I have two words for you,” said Chef Adam turning to face the camera. “Cake? Pops?”
“Yes, they were a little hokey, but you have to admit they were delicious,” I said, my words slurring just the tiniest bit. “And fun. I’d like to be a guest at Randy’s wedding reception. On the other hand, that gelatin ball might go over in Chicago or Los Angeles, but it doesn’t speak ‘parrothead’ to me. When I was a kid, I used to love those bath beads—the ones that look like gelatin until they dissolve in hot water. That’s all I could think about when he served us that Frangelico thing. Would it taste like soapsuds?”
Chef Adam glared at me as though I’d lost my marbles.
“The caterer has no business competing with the bride, in my opinion,” said Toby. “And the molecular gastronomy products shout look at me! On the other hand, I found the key lime cupcakes to be delightful.”
When we’d said all we had to say, and more, Peter signaled that the taping was over. “You people did well today. You kicked it up a notch. And you look good, too. The black is a big improvement,” he said to me. Then he touched his hand to his forehead and looked at Toby. “Everything all right with you?”
“I’m fine,” she answered with a forced smile. “Are we finished here?”
When Peter nodded, she leaped up and hurried across the courtyard.
12
That would be enough for him. To find her plums in season, and perfect nectarines, velvet apricots, dark succulent duck. To bring her all these things and watch her eat.
—Allegra Goodman, The Cookbook Collector
On the way out of the studio, I had the happy realization that the police station was exactly on my route home. Before I returned to the boat to take a nap, I’d swing by to talk to Nate in person. I was feeling just this side of euphoric, happy and generous enough to realize that I’d been brusque with him lately. Maybe I’d overread his comments and his reaction to me the other night—he was only trying to do his job. And a brutal job it was. Just seeing the photo of the hanged man up close was devastating—how must it feel to be sifting through every detail of that murder?
I decided I would tell him everything I’d learned about the case so far, and then see if he might like to come over for dinner. But what to fix? I could try re-creating the seafood diavolo that Henri Stentzel had prepared for the first leg of the contest. But without the squid. I was off them after watching an Animal Planet rerun about their intelligence—how they watched humans with as much curiosity as the humans watched them.
What had the detective eaten the one time we’d been out to dinner? Nothing too unusual. But the spicy red sauce—no man could resist that. It would warm him from the inside out. I felt a small tremor of excitement, thinking about what might follow.
Maybe Miss Gloria could be persuaded to spend the evening with her friend Mrs. Dubisson, especially if I sprang for takeout. Or two tickets to the Tropic Cinema. And a cab to get them there. Or all of the above.
I parked my scooter in a visitor’s spot outside the station. Luckily another civilian had just been buzzed in through the locked front door, so I tripped in behind her, and was saved the awkwardness of calling and explaining myself to the clerk on duty. And I’d never, not once, had an easy phone conversation with the detective. In person was definitely preferable.
I followed the hallway around to the back of the first floor, and took the elevator to Nate’s second-floor space. Outside his office, I fluffed my hair and applied a quick layer of lip gloss. The thought flitted through my mind: Would he kiss me right now? Then I remembered the video camera hidden in his wall clock and had to laugh. He wouldn’t want the first stirrings of romance caught on videotape, fodder for the other cops’ teasing. I took a deep breath, arranged a sweet but flirty smile, and tapped on his closed door.
My heart galloped as I waited, then the door swung open. “Yes?”
Surprised didn’t begin to describe Nate’s expression when he saw me in the hallway. But he recovered quickly, smiled back and reached out to shake my hand. Behind him, in the chair beside his desk, sat a woman—a beautiful woman with enormous brown eyes, black hair, and radiant skin. The kind of gorgeous but slightly foreign-looking woman who tended to take first runner-up in the Miss America pageant, back when I was a girl watching the TV show with my mother. Stunning, but a little too ethnic to represent the US of A.
“Hayley. Did we have an appointment?”
Of course we didn’t have an appointment. “N-n-n-no,” I stammered. “I was driving by and just thought I’d stop in.”
The beautiful woman lifted one dark eyebrow, her perfectly shaped lips pursing like a resting bow. Yes, stunning.
After an excruciating pause he said, “Hayley Snow, meet Trudy Bransford, my wife.”
“Ex-wife,” she said to him, but added a smile that would have melted a softer man to a helpless puddle. In the running for Miss Congeniality, too.
She rose to her feet, crossed the room in two quick steps, and placed a slender hand in mine, which was still outstretched after the shock of the detective’s handshake, and then his announcement. I looked down. Her nails were capped with perfect pale
half-moons. No chips in the polish. No ragged cuticles either. She wore an eye-popping diamond engagement ring on her right hand.
“Your island is so lovely,” she said in her contralto voice. She barely reached his shoulder. Looked like she would fit perfectly tucked under his arm. “Have you lived here all your life?”
“Uh, no,” I said, finally meeting her eyes. “New Jersey. Recent transplant. My boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—invited me down here. The truth is we didn’t know each other well enough to weather that much intimacy—”
Nate cut in: “Can I help you with something?”
But other than this incessant babbling about my story of moving to Key West, my brain was firing blanks. “Just checking in about the murder. Any news?”
“Still following leads.” He bared his teeth into a feral grin.
Trudy grinned, too, a wide, generous smile that reached all the way to her eyes, lighting her face up along the way. She tipped her head and tapped two fingers on his chest. “He was never too good at sharing information. I can see that hasn’t changed. He doesn’t like to talk about his feelings either.”
“No problem.” I held up a hand and began to shuffle backward from the door out into the hall. “Nice to meet you, Trudy. Catch you later.”
Then I wheeled around and burst the length of the hallway, listening for his following footsteps but not surprised to hear nothing. I vaulted down the stairway to the first floor, thinking I couldn’t bear to be trapped in the elevator with anyone else where I’d have to act normal and unruffled.
At least I hadn’t rushed into his office announcing my intention to cook him dinner, nattering on about the level of heat in the pasta sauce. That would have been too mortifying for words.
Very near tears, I pushed the heavy door from the stairwell into the hallway and nearly slammed into Officer Torrence. His expression of surprise, followed quickly by sympathy, cracked my dam.
“Oh my,” he said, glancing up the stairs and frowning. “You’ve come from the detective’s office. I’m sorry. How did you get in? I would have warned you she was here if I’d known you were coming.”
I started to sniffle in earnest. He circled an arm around my shoulders and shuffled me around the corner to his office. He handed over a box of generic brand tissues and shut the door, waiting for me to pull myself together.
A million questions surged through my mind. How long had Trudy been here? I remembered from an article I’d read about their home invasion a couple of years ago that she lived in Miami. Had he asked her to come down? Had they been talking all along? Where was she staying? Were they reuniting? Was that hair color real? And why the hell hadn’t he said something, like warned me that his wife was back in the picture? His wife.
But Torrence shouldn’t be put in the position of feeding me information about his boss. And to preserve the tiny shreds of dignity I still had intact, it felt important to act as though those details couldn’t have made the slightest difference. So I blew my nose and wiped my eyes and tried to smile. “You do have a way of finding me in shaky condition.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Not to worry. Can I help you with something? Besides him?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
I laughed. “I had some thoughts about the murder, that’s all. That’s what I came to tell him.” I shuddered and squared my shoulders.
“You might as well tell me,” he said. “I can pass it on.”
“It will sound silly.”
“Okay.” He nodded.
“You know that Sam Rizzoli was a judge for the cooking contest I’m involved with?”
He nodded again.
And then I told him about my conversation with Toby Davidson. “She’s afraid that someone might be targeting us three other judges. I spoke with our executive producer this morning—he swears that none of the candidates have been preselected to win. That was one idea Toby had about a possible motive—that one of the candidates believed that Rizzoli would gum up the machine.”
“That’s a big leap,” said Torrence.
“As Toby pointed out,” I argued, “there’s an awful lot riding on the outcome. It’s not only a local fundraiser. Winning could mean a huge game change in someone’s career. And we’re definitely not all in agreement. Chef Adam really loves this guy Buddy Higgs. Toby seems to like Henri Stentzel. And so far I’m leaning toward Randy Thompson. Except for the cake pops. Randy suggested cake pops for a wedding.” I hated to agree with Chef Adam on much of anything, but in this case, after thinking it over, I had to admit he was right. “At first, I thought it was a fun idea. But when he described how they’re made, I realized he’d lost his mind. He actually admitted that his ingredients were a boxed cake mix and a can of Betty Crocker icing.”
Torrence’s eyes had begun to glaze over like the chocolate frosting on one of Randy’s treats. Torrence was clearly no chef. He wouldn’t have a clue about how using a cake mix would be anathema to a culinary professional.
“All I’m saying is no one’s a lock. But I keep wondering who’s got the biggest stake in winning the contest. And how far would he or she go to be sure he or she won?”
Torrence squinted and shook his head. “To be honest, your theory, while interesting, feels like quite a stretch. How would killing off another judge garner a win? More likely it would end the contest.”
“Point taken.” The same thing Peter had said. But then I reminded him about last night, how Toby dove into the water off Mallory Square when she thought someone was shooting at her. “Doesn’t that mean something?”
“I heard about the incident in this morning’s report,” Torrence said. “Good thing you were there to pull her out. I think her body would be floating toward the Bermuda Triangle about now if you hadn’t. Shark bait.” He rubbed a finger over his mustache. “I shouldn’t say much, but we have examined the footage from the Mallory Square webcam before and after the time your friend went overboard. We didn’t find much—only a fuzzy sequence of her ducking, and then leaping over the concrete lip into the water. And then you followed soon after. One man came up to the edge but he appeared to be talking to you, not shooting.”
“That was Tony,” I said. “He’s not a threat. Except to himself. He’s homeless and I don’t think he really wants to change that. I’m sure he didn’t care to stick around and get harassed by Key West’s finest.” I grinned to take the edge off my words.
“These are all excellent observations.” Torrence’s voice was gentle. “You’re a real student of human behavior.” He paused and lapped his lower lip over the upper.
“But—”
“But there isn’t any real evidence to substantiate your theories. To be honest? I think your friend is nervous.” He drummed his fingers on the desk, thinking. “Don’t you find it odd that a woman who can’t swim and says she’s terrified of the water dives into the harbor right at the point with the worst current?”
“Unless she really heard a gunshot. Unless she panicked because of that and tripped and fell in.”
“Yes, but no one else heard it. You yourself said you didn’t hear it.”
“I thought it was firecrackers.”
“Does it occur to you that she’s lying about something? I even wonder if she’s suicidal. Is it possible that she intended to drown herself but then panicked when the reality of what she was about to do hit her? Did you get the sense she was feeling down last evening? Do you know her well? What has she been like the past few days?”
“I only just met her,” I admitted, hating to think how much sense his questions made. “So I don’t have any idea of what she’s like normally. She did seem nervous right off the blocks and it’s gotten worse each day. A few times she’s told us what she really thinks about the Topped Chef contestants, but speaking out seems to set her back. She worries about what other people think of her opinions. And whether we’ll disagree.” I balled up the tissue in my fingers and fired it at his trash can. “I never considered whether she might be depressed.
That would explain some things.”
“Such as?”
“She’s quite well known for a memoir about food and grief. It wasn’t that long ago that she lost her husband. Then she wrote a book about the experience, which was a huge bestseller.”
My friend Eric would probably have said she might have been better off letting herself feel her sadness, instead of writing about it for the general public. That way she would have had a better chance at putting it behind her instead of having her face rubbed into it everywhere she turned.
“But I do wonder how she’ll follow up on a success like that.”
He adjusted his glasses. “Hmm. I’ll pass your information along.” Then he stood up, a signal that our impromptu counseling session was over. “Anything else?”
“One more thing.” I described the idea that sprang from my pirate wedding research—how maybe Rizzoli had been strung up to teach someone a lesson. I did not mention the photo on Derek the dockhand’s iPhone because he’d never forgive me if his cell got impounded as evidence. How many early mornings had he rolled out of bed to clean spilled beer and puke off that catamaran to afford the darn thing?
Torrence walked me to the door. “You feel free to feed me any information you come across.” He read off his cell phone number and I punched it into my contacts list. “I may look old-fashioned but I do accept text messages. I am not putting you ‘on the case.’ Understand? You don’t have a deputy star pinned to your chest. You’re not to go rushing around like a junior detective. Don’t do anything, other than keep your eyes and ears open. Got that?”
“Roger that,” I said.
He grinned, and then chucked my chin. We walked down the hallway and he held the door to the outside. I stood blinking in the sudden sunlight, feeling as though all the ground had shifted subtly beneath me. I seemed to have lost a boyfriend, but gained a friend. Which left me feeling a little hollow, but not as bad as I might have if I hadn’t run into Torrence. Boyfriends, in my limited experience, were dust in the wind. Friends, my rocks and anchors.
Topped Chef: A Key West Food Critic Mystery Page 11