by Lois Winston
The program started at four. The title scrolled across the screen and then our sexist Head Chef Jean Fortier waved as bright music played and the camera zoomed in. Fortier wore what looked like a uniform from Archibald’s: white smock and chef’s hat.
“What’s Eldon going to think of the uniform?” I wondered aloud. Eldon was a born bureaucrat, the kind who counted towels and uniforms. He would have counted beans had Archibald’s served anything so humble.
“Eldon probably supplied the uniform in exchange for a plug,” Patsy said.
I had to agree. That sounded like Eldon. “Is this filmed in his own kitchen?”
“Yeah.” Suzanne clamped her lips and a blush spread up her neck.
Suzanne was sweet, built like a Barbie doll, and had once dated Fortier, which may have qualified her as a “dumb blonde.” But she wasn’t. Under the spray of frizz, lively brown eyes checked out the world. Of all Fortier’s formers, she’d been on the most equal footing. She had an AA in Culinary Arts and Hospitality from Cabrillo College and was anxious to move up the ladder. She’d used Fortier for advancement as much as he’d used her for sex. Ironically, it had been Suzanne’s promotion to head of the garde manger that had opened the door for Eldon to hire Delores Medina, Fortier’s latest pursuit. According to kitchen lore, Fortier had once, long before my time, romanced Esperanza Medina, Delores’s mother. The kitchen was a regular Melrose Place. But Suzanne showed none of the ire of a woman scorned. She’d gotten what she wanted.
On the screen, Fortier flashed a brilliant mouthful of straight white teeth and modestly introduced himself as the King of Cuisine. “Everybody loves something sweet, dahlin’,” he said, laying on his New Orleans accent. “Especially me.” He winked.
“The pig,” Patsy muttered.
The man in the gray, pinstriped suit watched the program from his table. The bartender looked up worriedly from the sports section, but the guy didn’t make any indication he’d rather see baseball.
“Today I’ll show you how to whip up a special delicacy—oeufs a la neige,” our gorgeous Jean Alcee Fortier continued. “Don’t worry. It’s easier to make than to pronounce.” I could imagine women around the county tuning in for the eye candy. He could whip up tuna salad for all they cared. He turned a careful profile to the camera as he poured milk into a chicken fryer.
“If Buzz had gotten the show, that could be you up there, Patsy,” I murmured, even as I wondered if that were true. Would a local station air someone as radical looking as Patsy?
“Hey, bartender,” Patsy called.
He raised his head from the newspaper.
“Got any darts?”
He ignored her, looking back at the sheets spread on the counter.
Fortier spelled the name of the dessert, a rather nice touch, I thought, in spite of my anger. Note to self: spell Sabala for people right off. On the phone, people assumed I’d said Zavala, and in fairness Sabala was a corruption of that name. People didn’t make this assumption when they met me face to face, as I didn’t look Mexican, or even the half-Mexican I was.
“Another name is ‘floating island’ because we’ll create little islands of meringue in a delectable custard. In N’ Awlins, we make this as a birthday treat.”
“I bet he’ll be able to sell his cookbook now,” Suzanne said.
Patsy and I exchanged blank looks over her golden head. We hadn’t known anything about a cookbook. Because Chef Fortier behaved stupidly, it was easy to forget that he was talented and capable.
“Why did you want to watch him on the big screen?” Suzanne teased Patsy, insinuating that even she might be vulnerable to his charms.
Patsy snorted. “He wouldn’t fit on a little one.”
“Poor Buzz,” I said. “I wonder if he’s watching.”
“Why torture himself?” Patsy chugged the last of her Red Hook as Fortier separated eggs with expertise. “If I were Buzz, I’d kill the asshole.”
“Yeah,” Suzanne said dreamily, eyes locked on the screen, apparently stripping Fortier to his full glory, as I’d seen him two weeks earlier.
The memory of the locker room incident fueled a fire in my gut. Later that day, Fortier had backed me into a corner of the kitchen and breathed into my ear, “A little too much for you?”
“Why,” I’d whispered back, “does a guy with a gorgeous girlfriend, young enough to assuage any mid-life crisis, need to harass a thirty-something, married woman?”
The word “harass” backed him off about an inch. He smirked, raised a perfect, thick eyebrow, and stretched one arm to the wall. Even in a chef’s jacket and even with my anger, there was no denying his musky masculinity. He exuded pheromones like a skunk.
I slugged him in the breadbasket.
Fortier emitted a satisfying grunt and released the arm.
Victor, the dishwasher, dropped a huge, stainless steel bowl on the tile. “Ow, a la chingada.” As the bowl spun and rang, I slithered past Fortier.
He grabbed my arm. “If you even think sexual harassment, forget it. I’ll get you for assault. I have a witness,” he hissed. “You don’t.”
Suzanne nudged my shoulder and brought me back to the reality of the sports bar. “Buzz should make some preserves and not quite cook them enough,” Suzanne said jokingly. “If he left them in the kitchen, the King of Cuisine would taste them sooner or later.” It was a strain for Suzanne to be so “bad,” but she wanted to fit in with the crowd.
“Sooner,” Patsy said. Fortier was famous for sampling and critiquing.
“Botulism is not a reliable vehicle. Even if you canned sloppily, you wouldn’t be guaranteed botulism, and there’s no way of knowing whether you’ve produced it or not, short of testing the stuff on your cat.”
The bartender, who’d slid down the counter to check on us, stared at me, as did Patsy and Suzanne. It wasn’t botulism, but me that fascinated them, much as a squished bug might.
“Don’t you know murder is my hobby?”
“Tell us the best way to do it. How would you kill Fortier?” Patsy rubbed her hands together and cut her eyes toward the bartender with a smirk on her face.
Beyond Patsy’s shoulder, the suited man raptly watched the program. He extracted a black leather organizer and a gold pen from his jacket.
For a moment I imagined using Fortier’s head as a volleyball, but Patsy hadn’t asked for the most satisfying method, she’d asked for the “best.” I assumed that meant a successful way that would avoid detection. “Poison.” I was a lightweight drinker and felt buzzed as I started my second beer. “Take Empress Wu, who rose from a concubine to be the only female leader in the history of China. If her husband so much as looked at another woman, the woman had a way of dying after dinner, didn’t matter if it was her sister or her daughter.”
My audience had lost interest in the program. Three sets of eyes gazed at me. I rarely had a chance to hold forth on my favorite topic, so I continued, a little disappointed that I hadn’t snared the interest of the suited man.
“Then there’s Agrippina, who killed Claudius by feeding him a mushroom from her plate. Or, for a serious alchemist, take the Marquise de Brinvilliers. She tested her stuff on children in a charity hospital.”
Suzanne wrinkled her nose. “That’s awful.”
“Well, she must have perfected the art, because when she went to nurse her ill father, she slowly poisoned him to death, and he was so unaware of the connection that he thanked her for her care with his dying breath.”
“Gives me the willies.” Suzanne pulled a pink scrunchie from her hair, shook the blond frizz down and then pulled the spray up and re-banded it, so it looked more or less as it had before.
“Oh,” Patsy said, “you ever seen I, Claudius?” I could tell this was gang-up-to-gross-out Suzanne, a common kitchen pastime. “I can understand why Agrippina killed that idiot.” Her face took on a meditative look. “Murder was probably the only way women could gain power in those days.”
“Well,” I said, “go
ing back to the original question, given the overworked state of the police and the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s easier to get away with murder than books or movies would have you believe. Especially if you use poison and plan.”
“Sorry to interrupt.”
Patsy and Suzanne jumped, but I’d seen Mr. Slick moving toward us. What he lacked in height, he made up for with tailoring. The suit was well cut and he looked like money down to his supple, Italian loafers.
“I noticed that you seem to know this chef.” Dark, all-business eyes glanced at the screen. “He’s very good. He’s a natural in front of the camera, and with his looks and that accent, he’ll make the female audience swoon.”
Patsy and I swapped looks of amusement since neither of us was in need of smelling salts.
“Who are you?” she asked.
From the leather organizer he slipped out a card and plunked it on the counter. His name was less important than the curly black words: Exploration Channel, Programming Acquisition and Development.
THREE
Before trying to drive, Suzanne, Patsy and I walked to the nearby Carpo’s to put food in our stomachs. Carpo’s was a noisy family restaurant featuring some of the best fries anywhere and slabs of homemade pie.
I called Chad to let him know I’d go from the restaurant to my volleyball class. I kept shorts, my old athletic shoes, and kneepads in my car: clear signs of an addict.
“I hope you don’t plan to go poking your nose into Fortier’s business,” Chad said. I’d given him an abbreviated version of my run-in with Fortier, and Chad knew that I’d met with “the girls” to watch the show, but his remark still seemed to come for no discernible reason.
“I beg your pardon.” I slathered on the indignation to make sure he heard it over the background clatter of trays and noisy children. Even though it came from left field, I understood Chad’s insinuation. I did want to know how Fortier had landed Buzz’s show. Depending on the person asked, I was nosy or curious, stubborn or persistent.
“Have you been drinking?” Chad asked.
“Only two beers.”
“I hope you aren’t driving.”
“Not at the moment.”
Chad sighed.
I didn’t think drinking and driving was a joking matter, either, but my husband’s attitude annoyed me.
“Are you sure you should go to volleyball?”
I sighed, reassured him I would be fine, and went to join Patsy and Suzanne who had reached the front of the line. They had drawn the eyes of every man who could look without craning from a booth or getting socked by his wife. It didn’t hurt when I joined them. My hair tumbled down my back, accenting my strong, five-foot-eight build. I wasn’t as cute as Suzanne or as striking as Patsy, but I could hold my own somewhere in the middle ground.
The three of us spent an hour eating, speculating about Mr. Slick’s business card and what it could mean for Fortier, and lamenting that the opportunity hadn’t befallen Buzz.
“But if it were Buzz,” Suzanne said, “the guy might not have been interested. He specifically mentioned Jean’s sex appeal.”
“Don’t you think Buzz is sexy?” I asked, nibbling the end of a substantial fry and challenging the two women across the table.
Patsy’s muscled arms moved into an elaborate, palms-up shrug and the dragon on her bicep moved, shooting out its flame. “Sexy? Penises are the most ridiculous-looking things in the world. How can anything so obvious be erotic?”
“There’s more to men than their penises,” I snapped. Patsy’s male bashing could get tiring.
“Tell them that.” She took another big bite of burger. In spite of all her effort to look like a self-proclaimed “dyke,” Patsy’s creamy, oval face remained doe-like.
I looked at Suzanne.
She stopped mid forkful of salad and squirmed in the vinyl booth. “What?”
“Do you think Buzz is sexy?” I suspected Suzanne had shifted her affection to my friend, although Buzz didn’t believe it. Working around Fortier had obliterated his sense of his own sex appeal.
“A little,” Suzanne said. She put down her fork and rearranged her hair. “Not like Jean.”
“Thank God he’s not like Jean,” Patsy muttered. “He’s an asshole.” She used both hands to pick up her burger, and let a trickle of juice run down her forearm.
“Do either of you know how Fortier got that show instead of Buzz?” I asked, steering the conversation away from Patsy’s impending diatribe. I wondered, not for the first time, what had made her so bitter.
They both shrugged. “Geez, I thought if anybody would know, it would be you,” Suzanne said.
“When I’ve asked about it, Buzz mutters and says Fortier is an asshole.”
“See,” Patsy crowed. “Buzz agrees with me.”
“Everybody agrees with you,” I said.
“Being an asshole runs in the family,” Patsy said. “I hate Fortier’s little twit niece, too.”
“Alexis?” I hardly knew the girl because she worked the afternoon shift, but Patsy had to deal with her as part of the pastry department.
“She’s sweet.” Suzanne shivered. The summer evenings cooled fast with incoming fog, and apparently the crowd and steam from the kitchen were not enough to warm her fragile shoulders.
“If you don’t mind room temperature I.Q.’s.” Patsy wiped her face and threw a wadded napkin onto the center of the table. “Uncle Jean this, and Uncle Jean that,” Patsy mimicked. “She acts like Fortier’s a fuckin’ god. She’s been in pastry like four months and the other day she starts telling me how to improve my mousse.”
“You said yourself that she’s parroting Fortier.” I used my most pacifying voice. Patsy in a full-scale rant was not a pretty sight.
“No doubt. People are idiots.” Patsy rose from the booth. “Present company excepted.”
“You know, we could just not give the business card to Fortier,” I said.
Suzanne’s expression made me feel ashamed of myself.
Later, as I drove my ‘66 Karmann Ghia to volleyball class, I combed through everything Buzz had said about the cooking show, which took about one minute.
I drove past Gayle’s bakery, which held no temptation for me. I spent five mornings a week with my nose encrusted with flour, invaded by the smells of sour dough baguettes, apple muffins, and snickerdoodles. The aroma from the bakery simply reminded me of work, and watching the cooking show had stirred up old questions. Chad’s comment about my nosiness held something akin to foresight.
I parked in the nearly full lot of the New Brighton Middle School gym and climbed out into the chilly mist. My mother used to call me Carol Cat; she also frequently reminded me that curiosity killed the cat. The admonishment had done nothing to deter me, and I was fully alive at last report.
As I approached the double door, a pack of middle-aged people in shorts and sweats, their faces and hair damp, poured from the gym. But there were still plenty of people playing volleyball. I entered the comforting embrace of sweat and dust and reverberating noise.
A volleyball bounced toward me across the wood floor. How had Fortier usurped Buzz’s show? I scooped up the ball and tossed it to its owner. I planned to find out.
FOUR
For the next couple of weeks, I steered my conversations with Buzz toward the cooking show, using my most skillful interview techniques.
He coughed up nothing.
After one of our breaks, he heaved a huge sigh, grasped both of my shoulders and said, “Carol, you have to stop pestering me about this.”
And I realized I did, or I might lose a friend.
So, I concentrated on questioning my co-workers. Eventually I had to concede that no one knew squat, although rumors abounded.
“He must have bribed someone,” Patsy offered.
“He bedded the woman in charge,” Todd, the back-line cook, said.
“A woman was in charge?”
“I dunno.”
&n
bsp; The riddle of how Fortier stole Buzz’s show gnawed at me for months. Unable to solve it, I invented scenarios that flamed my dislike of Fortier. So, when he pulled a mini stepladder over to my bakery and plopped down, my first thought was to escape his presence, even though he looked waxen and woozy. He even sat down, which was unlike him.
I didn’t stick around to see what was wrong. “Gotta help Esperanza with a wedding cake.” I hustled over to pastry, hoping that he didn’t get sick in the bakery.
A few minutes later, when Patsy grabbed Head Chef Jean Alcee Fortier’s raven hair and hoisted his face from my lebkuchen dough, I uncharitably thought that even half dead the man remained a pain in the ass. Fortier’s body fell heavily against Patsy. She and Todd lowered him to the tiled floor near the dishwashers.
Eldon waddled rapidly, like a prodded duck, to the hall phone to call 911.
A crowd of kitchen workers jammed the hallway outside my bakery. “Is he breathing?” asked Delores Medina. Tears welled in her blue eyes. Esperanza, her mother, stood behind her with a hand on either shoulder.
Todd pressed two fingers to Jean Alcee Fortier’s carotid artery. “I don’t feel anything. Can anyone here help me with CPR?”
“Yo.” Patsy knelt down. She pushed back Fortier’s chin, probed his mouth with her fingers, and breathed into the body while Todd worked his chest like bread dough.
The sight of Patsy putting her lips to the bloodless ones of Fortier was nearly as astonishing as his yellow, apparently dead body.
Delores stifled a sob.
“Pobrecita.” Esperanza tried to turn her daughter to her breast, but the girl stared, transfixed, at the man on the floor.
Eldon returned from the phone and grumped. “What was he doing here? He was supposed to go home sick. This is just what we need, for a known chef to die in our kitchen. How is that going to look?”
“El Punetero,” Victor muttered. Everyone but Eldon knew he’d been called The Masturbator, but no one smiled.
“He’s breathing!” Delores cried.
“No, mija,” Esperanza said. “That’s Patsy’s breath causing the movemen’.” Esperanza’s accent was heavy enough to make her both sexy and hard to understand.