by Jane Heller
“The foundation for the chocolates we’re making today is Whitley’s milk,” the chef continued, with more seriousness of purpose than he’d shown in previous classes. Or maybe he was just happy that his week of being stuck with us was coming to an end, and he wanted to go out with a bang bang. “Whitley’s milk, along with their butter and cream, is something special, as you found out, so our chocolate desserts today, coming from that sweet, fresh milk, will be amazing. In addition to the candy-type items we’ll be showing you, I’ll be sharing the recipe for my exclusive signature dessert, the same dessert I’ve been serving at The Grow since the first restaurant opened. It’s my dark chocolate marquise with beet cremeux, beet-and-raspberry sauce, and salted pistachio croquant.”
We all looked at each other as if he’d been speaking Swahili.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to confuse you people.” He laughed. He really was in better humor. “A chocolate marquise is basically a rich chocolate mousse, but it’s dense enough to be sliced and served like a cake. Cremeux is a fancy French word for a creamy pudding.” He placed his hand on his heart and sighed. “Oh man, do I love pudding. I’m a total pudding freak.”
My friends and I went rigid at the mention of the nickname the killer had given Chef Hill—the killer who was sitting right in our midst, inches away, for God’s sake. Why oh why hadn’t we decided to do a week at a spa like normal women?
“A croquant is another fancy French word,” he chatted away. “It means ‘crisp’ and it’s made with nuts and caramelized sugar and crumbled over a dessert or eaten like brittle. Now if you’re asking yourself, ‘Why is he putting beets in his chocolate dessert?’ the answer is simple. Beets are sweet and earthy and marry beautifully with chocolate, but my whole purpose for promoting earthy desserts is to show respect and appreciation for farm ingredients and the men and women who grow them.”
There was applause, and then Chef Hill got cooking. Since it was our last class, he said it would be a demonstration as opposed to an actual cooking class, and that we should move from station to station and observe. His assistants would be making the candies: dark chocolate peanut butter bonbons, dark chocolate bark with ginger, macadamia nuts and coconut, and dark chocolate almond date balls. He would be concocting his signature dish, the dark chocolate marquise, himself.
I glommed onto Jonathan, who had staked out a prime spot for the marquise-watching.
“Hello you,” he said as Chef Hill began with the crust for the dessert, which entailed melting chocolate and cocoa butter and chilling it until firm. “I had fun dancing with you last night.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Did you straighten everything out with Robin Wright?”
“Robin Wright?” I almost forgot my own bullshit. “Oh, Robin. Sure. Thanks for asking.”
“While you were talking to a glamorous movie star, I stayed up to write my blog,” said Jonathan. “I had some new recipes I wanted to post.”
“Were they inspired by Chef Hill’s recipes?” Like maybe you’ve been copying them directly from his cookbooks?
I waited for him to answer until I realized he was busy watching Chef Hill make the marquise part of the dessert. So I watched, too, as the chef melted more chocolate and butter, whipped egg whites, stirred egg yolks into the chocolate mixture, folded in the egg whites, and poured it all into the chilled crust.
“No, they’re recipes I’ve been playing with on my own,” he replied when there was a break in the action. “I’d love to make them for you when you come to Palm Beach.” His expression saddened. “We don’t have much time left here, and I’m not crazy about having to say goodbye to you, Elaine. Tomorrow will be a zoo, and then we all leave on Sunday.”
If we’re still alive. “Are you looking forward to Bounty Fest?”
“Not really. I’ve had enough of our chef at this point.”
“But he keeps complimenting your work and saying you should go pro. I’ve heard him. And you’re so into his classes.”
He didn’t answer right away. He was concentrating on the way Chef Hill was putting together the beet cremeux, which involved extracting beet juice with a juicer and combining it with mascarpone cheese, heavy cream, and powered sugar.
“Jason Hill is talented and entrepreneurial, and I can’t help but envy him a little,” he said. “I didn’t mean to suggest I wasn’t grateful for whatever praise he doles out.”
So Jonathan envied Chef Hill. So what? It wasn’t as if he were some ne’er-do-well without any talents of his own. He was a partner in a law firm. Plus, he was way better looking than Jason Hill and probably had his pick of Palm Beach socialites now that he was single again.
He placed his hand on my back as we watched Chef Hill make the beet-and-raspberry sauce for the dessert, followed by the salted pistachio croquant. I asked him more questions. Was he a letter writer? (He preferred texting.) Was he up on movie villains? (He was more of a reader than a moviegoer.) Did he bring a printer with him for his laptop? (He didn’t.) I kept trying to drag pertinent information out of him, and he kept trying to watch Chef Hill cook.
“It all looks good enough to eat,” I said as I trailed behind him. He was eager to move around the kitchen now, surveying the scene as Chef Hill’s assistants performed their respective tasks. “Beets with chocolate in that marquise thing. Who’d have put those two together, right?”
“Chocolate pairs well with lots of foods,” said Jonathan. “And beets are so sweet that they add to the richness of the cake.”
“So you’ve cooked with beets a lot?” I asked him.
“Many times,” said Jonathan. “With and without chocolate.”
“You have all of Chef Hill’s cookbooks too,” I said.
“I do,” said Jonathan. “I’m such a geek I brought my old copies with me so I could reread his best recipes.”
So much for the theory that the cookbooks had anything to do with Jonathan wanting to murder the chef.
During the break between the cooking of chocolates and the eating of the meal being prepared by Chef Hill and his staff, my friends and I huddled outside the kitchen and compared notes.
“You were right about Lake and Gabriel, Elaine,” said Jackie after I filled them in on my non-informative conversation with Jonathan. “Definitely a weird vibe there. He’s mad at her for being ‘out of control’ and she’s mad at him for being ‘conventional.’ She might even have used the word ‘bourgeois.’ I got the feeling she wanted him to do something and he was resisting. She made a crack about how he wasn’t very open-minded.”
“Maybe she wants to become a vegan and he doesn’t think it’s a good idea,” said Pat. “Bill believes that—”
“I thought you were gonna stop dragging him into every conversation,” Jackie groused.
“I was talking about Bill Clinton,” said Pat. “He’s a vegan.”
“Somehow I doubt the Vanderkloot-Arnolds were squabbling over tofu,” I said. “I wish we knew if it had anything to do with Chef Hill.”
“I tried,” said Jackie. “I also asked if they checked into the hotel early, before the rest of us got here on Monday. I wanted to find out if either of them had access to those tote bags, like if one of them was looking for Chef Hill’s bag, heard somebody coming, and stuffed the letter in yours in the rush to get out of there without being caught.”
“And what did they say?” I asked.
“Yes, they got here early,” she said. “They also admitted to being under a lot of stress lately, but what does it all prove?”
I sighed. “Not much, I guess, except that we can’t rule either of them out as suspects. Did you get anything interesting on the Gumperses, Pat?”
“Just things we already knew,” she replied. “Connie’s mad at the chef for not acknowledging what a fan she is. Ronnie’s definitely not a fan. He hates all this ‘sissy food,’ he called it.”
“And Beatrice?” I asked, since she was Pat’s responsibility, too.
“She needs one of those anger m
anagement courses,” she said. “She’s angry that Jonathan is thinking of quitting his law practice. She’s angry that Chef Hill complimented his cooking skills, and she’s really angry that her husband died and left her alone. She talked about what a perfect marriage they had. ‘We never had a single cross word,’ she said. ‘Not one fight—ever.’”
“Now that’s the first real piece of incriminating evidence against her,” I said. “No one has a perfect marriage. She has to be lying right there.”
“Elaine,” said Jackie and Pat simultaneously.
“I’m sorry, but none of it proves she wrote the letter,” I pointed out. “Jackie, did you get anywhere with Alex?”
“She’s been trying to score a one-on-one with Chef Hill for her screenplay research,” she said. “She asked him twice if he’d give her an interview tomorrow at Bounty Fest.”
“Aha!” I said. “The crazed letter writer plans to kill him at Bounty Fest! I was sort of figuring Alex was innocent, but we might have a match!”
“She’s a dental hygienist with a nice fiancé,” said Jackie. “She’s no murderer.”
“Number one, how do you know her fiancé is nice?” I said. “Number two, how do you know she’s not a murderer? She wears bandanas.”
“Elaine.” They both groaned.
“Hey, she’s the only one who’s admitted to wanting Chef Hill all to herself,” I said.
“For like twenty minutes,” said Jackie.
“It doesn’t take long to pull the trigger or hack someone with a meat cleaver,” I said.
“I can’t see it,” said Jackie, shaking her head. “I also spoke to Kevin, the forager. He reminded me about the amaranth.”
“What about it?” I said.
“That it can cause toxicity if eaten in large amounts. Remember how Lake and Gabriel were such experts in how to cook and eat it? We need to get into their cottage and see if they have bags of it.”
“Right,” said Pat. “Maybe their plan all along has been to keep putting it in Chef Hill’s food until it kills him.”
“Then why would the letter mention Bounty Fest?” Jackie pointed out.
“By the way, have you slept with Kevin yet?” I teased her.
She shook her head. “My sex drive seems to have died. Murder does that to me.”
She was getting antsy, fidgety, walking around in tight little circles, and it was contagious. Pat and I started following her, and we looked like a trio of hamsters in a cage. “Somebody in our group has a grudge against Chef Hill and I can’t believe we haven’t noticed it,” she said.
“We’ve noticed Connie’s grudge,” said Pat. “She told us she’s mad at him. And Beatrice. She doesn’t like him either.”
I stopped pacing and put my hands on my friends’ shoulders to stop them from pacing too. We were expending valuable energy. “And Jonathan doesn’t like him because he puts down food bloggers,” I said. “So what?” I threw up my hands in frustration.
Just then, Simon raced over us. He was out of breath, just like he’d been after our sexual acrobatics the night before. “I spoke to Larry,” he said referring to his boss. “He told me Jason Hill is having an affair with his sous-chef.”
“Male or female?” I asked.
“What difference does it make?” said Jackie.
“Just from a PR standpoint,” I explained. “Nobody’s surprised when chefs sleep around, so if the sous-chef is female, it’s kind of a nonstory. But if the sous-chef is a guy and Chef Hill turns out to be gay after claiming to be such a family man, it’s a bigger deal. Remember the letter? It said the chef had too many secrets of his own to contact the cops. Maybe his affair with the sous-chef is one of the secrets.”
“This is all fascinating, Slim, but the sous-chef is female,” said Simon. “Larry told me Chef Hill is having an affair with his investments advisor too—also female.”
“How does he have the time to fucking cook?” asked Jackie. “Maybe it’s his wife who wants to kill him. I would.”
“She’s probably one of those celebrity wives who enjoy the perks of being married to a famous person so they look the other way,” I said. “But maybe Connie found out about his indiscretions and got angry on the wife’s behalf.”
“Speaking of the Gumperses, one of my reporters does have a source in Kenosha,” said Simon. “Turns out Ronnie’s the one with a temper. He got into a physical altercation with a neighbor. It made the front page of the Kenosha News.”
“Must have been a slow news day,” I said. “What was the fight about?”
“Ronnie left an old washing machine on his front lawn for weeks, hoping somebody would buy it,” said Simon. “The neighbor told him it was an eyesore and so was the old Barcalounger he’d left on the lawn the month before. Fisticuffs ensued.”
“Was Ronnie arrested?” Pat asked? “He could be a rapper.”
“You mean he could have a rap sheet.” I turned to Simon. “Does he?”
“No,” said Simon. “The neighbor declined to press charges.”
“Okay, enough with all this conjecture,” I said, throwing up my hands again. “Let’s do some real digging.”
“How?” said Pat. “I’m out of questions to ask them.”
“I mean digging, as in digging around in their cottages while they’re not there.”
“You’re not talking about breaking in?” Pat’s eyes bugged out.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The housekeepers are constantly coming around with fresh towels and soaps and lotions. The keys sit right on top of their carts. I’ve seen them. I say we just go in and ransack.”
“Yeah, let’s ransack,” said Jackie. “Maybe we’ll find the murder weapon.”
“I’m in,” said Pat.
“Good idea. Bad execution,” said Simon. “If all three of you are out of the kitchen at the same time, people will get suspicious.” He nodded at Jackie and Pat. “I’ll slip out with Elaine while you two cover for us. Just keep the others busy enough not to notice we’re gone.”
“Jonathan will notice,” I said. “He likes me, remember?”
“If he asks, Jackie and Pat can say you had a PR emergency,” Simon suggested.
“Right,” I said. “Tell him I had another crisis with Robin Wright.”
23
Since this was the last sit-down meal with the members of our agritourism group, and since Whitley really wanted to showcase their bounty, the non-dessert portion of our meal prepared by Chef Hill and his assistants was a farm-to-table, dock-to-table, barn-to-table extravaganza.
For our first course we were served a carrot—unpeeled, unadorned, and unaccompanied by anything else—and it was the sweetest single carrot I’d ever tasted.
“What a joke,” said Ronnie, whose dissatisfaction with Chef Hill’s food philosophy was becoming more and more apparent. In a demonstration of protest, he snapped the carrot in two and shoved his plate aside, only to reconsider and gobble up both carrot halves in one mouthful.
Next came a salad, which consisted of exactly two cherry tomatoes, two radishes, and two types of lettuce, all dressed in nasturtium vinaigrette. The dish was nearly as spare as the carrot but it, too, was bursting with flavor. All fads and preciousness aside, both courses were delicious.
A cucumber gazpacho followed, as did hay-roasted asparagus topped with the yoke of an egg, halibut braised in duck fat and served on a bed of kale, three different cuts of Berkshire pork each dotted with a single artichoke, and fennel sausage garnished with pickled fern fronds and garbanzo beans—all beautifully presented and tasty, but I couldn’t let myself get distracted.
The plan was for me to sneak out during dessert, since we knew that it consisted of many chocolate courses, including Chef Hill’s signature dark chocolate marquise, and that it would take awhile. And there would be endless conversations of the type that occur at the end of a shared vacation experience—exchanges of e-mail addresses and pledges to get together that would never happen. Simon would follow me out
, and Jackie and Pat would make absolutely sure that everybody else stayed put.
“I’m not happy about missing all the chocolate,” Simon whispered in my ear.
“I’ll buy you a Milky Way if we get out of this place alive,” I whispered back.
I snuck out during the first chocolate course and followed the path to the cottages. I knew where the other agritourists were staying because I’d been to Jonathan’s cottage, Pat had asked Connie and Ronnie for their cottage number, and Jackie had asked Lake, Gabriel, and Alex for theirs. Fortunately, they were all clustered in the same area of the resort. I had input the information on my phone, which I powered up as soon as I stepped outside.
I approached the Gumpers’s cottage first, since it was the closest to the kitchen, and ran smack into a housekeeper wheeling a cart.
“Good afternoon,” she said.
“Same to you,” I said, noting not for the first time that Whitley Farm housekeepers were not only friendly but also well-dressed. No chintzy uniforms for them. They wore smart-looking gray dresses with short white bib aprons that had lace trim around their two front pockets.
“I am Sonia,” she said.
I didn’t want to be rude even though I didn’t have time to chat, so I said, “I am Elaine,” in an unconscious mimicking of her charmingly Slavic accent.
“I like purple top,” she said.
“This?” I pointed to my oversized blouse, which was long enough to resemble a caftan. It was pale lavender, had three buttons in the front, and was made of some light, gauzy fabric that didn’t make me sweat like a Berkshire pig in the summer. I wore it over jeans and camisoles, in this case white ones.
“Yes,” she said. “I like.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you enjoy stay?” she asked.
“Very much,” I said, tantalizingly close to the Gumpers’s front door and impatient to get to it, knowing Simon was probably on his way. I glanced at Sonia’s cart and didn’t see a single set of keys. Not on top of the boxes of tissues. Not dangling from a dust mop. Not nestled in a pile of fresh towels. A change of tactic was in order. “Sonia, I wonder if you could help me out. I seem to have forgotten my key.” I nodded at the Gumpers’s cottage. “Could you let me in? I’ll only need a few minutes.”