Three Blonde Mice

by Jane Heller

  “Which part?” I said. “Failing a breathalyzer test or failing me?”

  She gave me such a sad face that I quit playing the martyr. I patted the end of the bed. “Come sit. Please.”

  She did, and I reached out for her hand and held it tightly. “Jackie, listen to me. I love you. And I get what you’ve been going through this past year. I’d be a disaster if my ex had hired a hit man to kill me on a damn cruise ship. I would have hired a hit man myself—not to kill Eric, just to castrate him.”

  “You still could,” she said with the faintest hint of a smile.

  “What I’m saying is you’ve been drinking more since the cruise, and it’s created a distance between us. There have been so many times when I suggest that we do things together, but you always opt for an activity involving a bar and a bottle. Take this trip. Instead of being with Pat and me after our classes at the end of the day, you’re with Alex having nightcaps. I’m sure Pat was only at the bar with you last night because she didn’t know any other way to get your attention.”

  “I figured you’d be with Simon every night,” she said. “That was the idea when he asked us if he could come.”

  “Even if he and I were still a couple, which we’re not, he loves hanging out with you and Pat,” I reminded her. “No excuse there. Sorry.”

  Silence.

  “I’m not the booze police,” I went on. “I’m the last one to judge anybody else. I just want you back, Jackie. Drink or don’t drink. Up to you. Just don’t lose yourself in it.”

  She nodded. “I didn’t even realize that’s what I’ve been doing until last night.”

  “I need you,” I said. “You’re my wise, tell-it-like-it-is sounding board, never letting me off the hook but always there when I need you. And now Chef Hill needs you, needs us. Personally, I don’t give a shit about him, but we can’t let him die.”

  “No, we can’t,” she said with her old gusto.

  “And since he and the cops don’t want anything to do with the death threat, it’s up to the Three Blonde Mice to save the day. I have no idea how we’re supposed to do that, but are you willing to try?”

  She gave me the thumbs-up. “I’m in—100 percent.”

  Just then Pat arrived. She too did a mea culpa for last night, only she called it a mea gulpa.

  “Has anyone noticed that I’ve been acting like a child?” she said. “That I’ve regressed into this dim bulb who just goes along and doesn’t say what she really thinks and bores everyone with constant references to Bill? How can you stand me?”

  “Oh, sweetie. Stop beating yourself up,” I said, even though she was right. She’d definitely been acting dim bulbish this week.

  “It’s like I’m not a mother without the kids around,” she said, “and it shocks me how liberating it feels—liberating and scary. I should be missing them more and instead I’m having a great time. My therapist would say I’m acting like a kid to compensate for my guilt.”

  Pat’s therapist, Dr. Margaret Danziger, had written a bestselling book called Smiley Face about how to be happy. Dr. Danziger was currently in the throes of a bitter divorce from a 60 Minutes producer.

  “I think that’s very self-aware of you, Pat,” said Jackie.

  “I agree,” I said.

  In the end, we aired grievances, admitted fault for various transgressions, vowed to be sturdier, more forgiving human beings. Sometimes friendships need a kick in the ass to keep them on track, and ours was no different. By the time we had to stop schmoozing and get ready for class, the Three Blonde Mice were solid. And we’d come up with phase one of a plan to catch the letter writer—a place to start, anyway.

  17

  “I like fish. I just don’t like the smell, especially this early in the morning,” said Jackie. Our group gathered around one of the many seafood counters at the emporium-sized Wendell Brothers Fish Market, a Connecticut institution where every conceivable species of fish and shellfish was sold and distributed to restaurants as well as to the general public. You name it, they had it, fresh or frozen, local or flown in from around the world, resting on a bed of ice in front of us or stored in the back.

  “I hear you on the smell,” said Alex. She held her nose, which, I noticed for the first time, was unnaturally turned up at the tip in the manner of someone who’d had over-zealous rhinoplasty. “Today is dock-to-dish day, so we’ll probably grow gills.”

  “I like fish, but I don’t cook it much at home,” said Pat. “The kids will only eat tuna out of a can, and even then it has to have melted cheese on it.”

  “Do you have any idea how much sodium there is in canned products?” said Gabriel. “And then there’s the mercury.” He hovered over Pat to get a better look at the rows of swordfish in the case; they were lined up in perfect symmetry, like synchronized swimmers on Propofol.

  “I grew up on canned tuna, Gabriel, and I’m still breathing,” said Jackie.

  “For now,” he said. “But we know so much more about health and wellness than we did all those years ago when you and your friends were growing up.”

  Jackie snickered. “Way, way back before the invention of the light bulb, you mean?”

  While Gabriel’s clenched jaw suggested he didn’t enjoy being teased, Alex gave Jackie a hug and then headed to another counter to inspect more fish. The two of them really had become fast friends, with Alex promising to fix Jackie up with her fiancé’s brother and Jackie promising to landscape the fiancé’s patio. But now that Alex was a suspect, Jackie would use their friendship to do some serious probing. We’d decided to probe them all, ask a lot of questions, get a better sense of who had an ax to grind against Chef Hill.

  “I don’t mean to be impolite, Gabriel,” said the always-polite Pat, “but you keep telling others what they should and shouldn’t eat and it’s getting monogamous.”

  The malapropism sent Gabriel marching off with a look of superiority. She leaned over and whispered, “Do you think he could be the letter writer?”

  “Maybe, but the idea is to engage him in conversation, not alienate him,” I said to both my friends.

  As far as I was concerned, every member of our group could be the letter writer: Gabriel, Lake, Ronnie, Connie, Alex, Beatrice and, yes, Jonathan. I desperately wanted him not to be the bad guy. Not when our romance was showing such promise. But I couldn’t rule him out just because he was a good kisser.

  “I think we should tell Simon what’s going on and ask him to help,” said Pat, who stood on her toes so she could reach up to finger-comb a stray hair out of my face in that gentle, maternal way she had. Since she was short and I was tall, we often had to contort ourselves to make physical contact.

  “Good idea,” said Jackie.

  I glanced over at him as he chatted with one of the fishmongers, and I felt the old pull, the old yearning. It had been Simon who’d helped me bring down the hit man the year before on the ship. Simon who’d taken my ravings seriously. Simon who’d been with me every step of the way until the villain was finally hauled off by the cops. Part of me was dying to tell him there was another nutcase on the loose. The other part wondered how I could confide in a guy who kept disappointing me. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “But let’s get back to the others. Give us a quick snapshot of Alex, Jackie. You’ve gotten to know her.”

  “Not that well,” she said. “Mostly I pump her for info about her fiancé’s single brother. He sounds like a good guy.”

  “The fiancé or his brother?”

  “Both, although I get the feeling that she’s settling with her fiancé. She doesn’t sound madly in love with him.”

  “Does this fiancé have a name?” I asked.

  “Rick,” said Jackie. “If she told me his last name I don’t remember it. He runs a successful family business, works all the time, and gives her a sense of security. When she marries him, she’ll be able to quit her job and write full time. I think that’s the attraction, to be honest.”

  “Maybe she has a lover on
the side,” Pat speculated.

  “Hm. Like Chef Hill,” I said. Maybe the blow-job-proficient Alex Langer was angry that the chef wouldn’t leave his wife for her and risk ruining his family-man image. “Has she nailed down her interview with him for her screenplay research?”

  Jackie didn’t get the opportunity to answer, because Chef Hill himself appeared at the entrance to the market.

  “Who wants to get fishy with me today?” he said as he clapped his hands numerous times.

  “I do!” Connie’s arm shot in the air—both arms, to be precise—and she hooted and cheered and spun around in a happy dance. Then she turned to us and confided, “That’s what Chef Hill says whenever he’s about to cook fish: ‘Who wants to get fishy with me.’ I’ve seen him three times and he always, always says it.” To prove that she was a genuine aficionado of his and had come to today’s class prepared, she was wearing his nautical blue “Who wants to get fishy with me” T-shirt over her muffin top. Was Connie Gumpers such a fan of his that one cross word from him could send her over the edge? Had he slighted her at a past appearance and she had come to Whitley to prevent him from ever hurting her again?

  “Who else wants to get fishy with me?” Chef Hill urged us, clapping his hands again, only this time while he crouched into a squat like a football player about to tackle an opponent. “Come on, people. Let’s see some enthusiasm!”

  Jonathan edged his way over to me and whispered that he wouldn’t mind kissing me right in front of everyone.

  I said I wouldn’t mind either. I had to pretend nothing was amiss and that we were still on track to become Mr. and Mrs. Birnbaum in order to find out more about him and his true feelings about the chef.

  “Jason Hill is an entertaining piece of work, isn’t he?” he asked, bumping me lightly with his shoulder. He seemed to want to touch me but was being circumspect in the public setting.

  “At least he’s trying to educate us about food,” I said. I was feeling more compassionate toward the chef since he only had days to live.

  “Yeah, he’s all about saving the planet through responsible farming and cooking, but, according to an article about him in the Wall Street Journal, he’s got three mansions, a Gulfstream, a hundred-foot yacht, and a garage full of Ferraris. Not so great for our carbon footprint. Methinks he’s not the purist he appears.”

  There was an undercurrent of bitterness in Jonathan’s words. Was he deeply miffed about the chef’s swipe at food bloggers—miffed enough to kill him?

  “He must make millions from his Planetary Empire operation,” I remarked.

  “Many millions,” said Jonathan. “Makes you wonder if he deserves all the glory he gets.”

  “You don’t think he does?” I said, trying to sound like a merely curious person as opposed to someone who was dying to inject Jonathan with truth serum.

  He laughed at himself. “I’m not usually so cynical about people, Elaine. Forgive me. For all I know, Chef Hill is a great humanitarian.”

  No, Jonathan didn’t write the letter, I decided. He was a kindly, prosperous, much-better-than-average-looking lawyer with a clinging mother.

  “Could I interest you in another get-together tonight?” he asked with a sly smile. “Having you all to myself would be a treat for me.”

  “For me too,” I said. “It’s a date.” If Jonathan had a murderous side, I’d unearth it. If he didn’t, I’d let him kiss me some more.

  “I’m taking you all for a little spin around the cases here so you’ll know what’s what,” said the chef. “Then we’ll hop in the shuttle outside, go back to Whitley’s kitchen, and start cooking fish, the whole fish, and nothing but the fish.”

  I’ll spare you his guided tour of Wendell Brothers Fish Market. Suffice it to say that when buying whole fish, pick the ones with bright, clear eyes; for fillets, make sure the flesh isn’t faded with age; and for shellfish, only buy from markets with a fast turnover.

  By noon we were back in the kitchen, forming a semi-circle around the center island where Chef Hill was demonstrating the method for cutting up a whole halibut so that every conceivable part of the fish could be used, either to make stock or to prepare it for our meal. I’d never seen so many knives. At one point, he wielded a very sharp fish-cutting knife that was as long as a sword and could easily decapitate a person. At another, he used tweezers—“pickers,” he called them—to pluck out tiny bones. At another, his tool of choice was a pair of scissors to cut off some of the skin. All of his instruments bore his initials and were in gleamingly pristine condition, including the mallet he would use to make carpaccio later and the mortar and pestle for mashing spices into a paste—all possible weapons of destruction.

  “You guys are gonna have a true dock-to-dish meal today, using products from Wendell Brothers market and Whitley Farm as the main ingredients,” said Chef Hill. “I’m all about the fresh, people, all about the fresh, so let’s get started—bang bang.”

  First came the fish stock. Chef Hill asked for a helper, and Lake volunteered, of course. While we all looked on, she diced a carrot, a celery stalk, and an onion and sprinkled them into a pot of cold water containing the halibut carcass. Then her job was to bring the water to a simmer for twenty minutes, until the skin flaked away from the bones.

  Jonathan was Chef Hill’s point man for the bouillabaisse. It was a major job that involved large chunks of the halibut, cod, and snapper and every conceivable type of shellfish, but he was up to the challenge. He even knew how to cut the “beards” off the mussels, and Chef Hill once again told him he should have his own restaurant, which made Beatrice scowl.

  Gabriel was designated as the one to pitch in on the achiote-seasoned salmon fillets, which were to be baked inside banana leaves that had been passed over a flame to char and soften them. Alex, Jackie, and Beatrice worked on the fennel-infused rice while Pat, Connie, and Ronnie assembled Chef Hill’s crab and avocado appetizer as well as his blueberry tartlets. That left Simon and me to help out with the salmon carpaccio.

  “I assume you want me to do the honors with this salmon,” he said after Chef Hill stepped away from our station.

  “Why, because you think I’m inept?” I said.

  “No, because you have an aversion to raw fish, ever since you read that Daily Beast article about sushi and parasitic roundworms.”

  “I’m fine,” I said and nudged him away from the counter. I began slicing the salmon into perfectly equal portions, pulling the tip of the knife through the fish with the care of a surgeon.

  “Not bad,” he said, nodding at my work.

  “Thank you.” I covered each piece with plastic wrap, as per the recipe, picked up the mallet, and started pounding the crap out of them. I was so unhinged by the letter and its implications that I must have been taking out my anxiety on the poor salmon.

  “Hey, easy there, Slim.” Simon grabbed the mallet out of my hand and began to strike the pieces less forcefully than I had. “The idea is to flatten them a little, not beat them into submission.”

  I stepped back and regarded the pieces I’d butchered. They looked like pink Swiss cheese after what I’d done to them, after what a lunatic letter writer had done to me. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself.”

  Simon focused on making the vinaigrette for the salmon, whisking as he spoke. He was adorable in his apron, the bastard, and as a result I had trouble concentrating on my job, which was preparing a plate of capers and raw red onions for the garnish.

  “I see no possible purpose for raw red onions or for capers,” I said. “Onions were put on this earth to give us heartburn, and capers are essentially tiny pickles that roll off our knives and forks onto the floor only to get crushed by our feet and then wedged into the soles of our shoes.”

  Simon looked up at me. “You like capers, so what’s really bothering you?”

  I hadn’t decided whether or not to tell him about the letter, so I said nothing was bothering me and why was he even asking.

  He smiled. “Because when
there’s something sinister and dark going on in that brain of yours, you scrunch up your face and knit your brows together.”

  “Sounds attractive.”

  “It is. You are.”

  “Stop saying things like that.”

  He went back to whisking, and I went back to contemplating Chef Hill’s demise.

  “Okay, maybe there is something on my mind,” I said, since there didn’t seem to be any harm in getting Simon’s opinion about the would-be killer—in an abstract way. “Here’s a hypothetical question for you. If one of the people here, one of our fellow agritourists, turned out to be a murderer, which one do you think it would be?”

  Simon kept on whisking, didn’t even flinch. Anyone else would have been thrown by the question, but he knew me, knew how my mind worked, knew that it often went to murder and mayhem for seemingly no reason. “Well, if I had to choose a psycho in this group from what little I know of everybody—just first impressions, you understand—I’d probably choose Jonathan.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because he’s into you, and you’re into him, and I’m jealous.”

  “Not a good reason. Pick somebody else.”

  He thought for a minute. “Okay, I pick Beatrice.”

  “Because?”

  “When we were making strawberry crumble together that first day, she was badmouthing Jonathan’s cooking hobby without a trace of remorse or shame,” he said. “That’s one of the common characteristics among psychopaths: lack of remorse or shame.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Assuming she’s capable of murder, what sort of weapon do you think she’d use?”

  “I don’t see her as a hatchet murderer, and she’s unlikely to know anything about explosive devices,” he said as he folded the salmon into the vinaigrette. “Strangulation is probably out, too. She has very small hands. If I had to guess, I’d say she’d use either a knife or a gun.”

  “A gun? You think she owns one?”

  “A revolver—a .38 Special.”

  I tapped him on the shoulder. “When did you get so knowledgeable about guns?”